"That hound, Prescott, made a slick dodge to drag me into his disgrace," Dodge declared, to those whom he thought would be interest in such remarks. "It was a clever trick! couldn't put me in disgrace, for there is no breach of regulations in borrowing a handkerchief for a moment. But Prescott made so much of that handkerchief business that it served his purpose and dragged him out safely before the court."
"Do you think Prescott was really guilty of a crib?" asked one of Dodge's hearers.
"I can't prove it, but I know what I think," retorted Dodge. "His effort to draw me into the row shows what kind of a fellow he is at bottom."
"I'd hate to think that Prescott would really be mean enough for a crib."
"Think what you like, then, of course. But a fellow guilty of one meanness might not stop at others."
Dodge talked much in this vein. Cadets are not tale-bearers, and so little or none of this talk reached Dick's ears until Furlong came along, one day, in time to hear Dodge holding forth on his favorite subject.
Yearling Furlong halted, eyeing Cadet Dodge sternly, keenly.
"Well," demanded Dodge, "what's wrong?"
"I don't know exactly," replied Furlong, with a quizzical smile. "I think, though, that the basic error lay in your ever having been born at all."
Dodge tried to laugh it off as a pleasantry. He had met Furlong once, in a fight, and had no desire to be sent to cadet hospital again with blackened eyes.