But Dick shook his head. Though he possessed a fair voice, the singing of sentimental or mournful ditties was not in his line that night. He heard the strumming of guitars and mandolins as he left camp behind.
Dick did not hurry, even to get away from the music. He kept on up the road, and by the hotel, but was careful not to enter the grounds, though three or four yearlings called gayly to him from the hotel veranda. He had no permission for tonight to visit the hotel.
"I'm not going to get into a row with the K.C. for a stupid little violation like that," he muttered.
Presently Dick's stroll took him over in the neighborhood of "Execution Hollow," the depression in the ground below where the reveille gun is stationed.
Suddenly Dick halted, an amused look creeping into his face.
"Now, who'd suspect good old Greg of getting into sheer mischief, all by himself?" the class president asked himself.
For Holmes was bending a bit low, a hundred yards or so away, and stealing toward the fieldpiece that does duty as reveille gun.
"It would be a shame to bet on what Greg's up to—-it would be too easy!" muttered Prescott, standing behind a flowering bush at the road's edge. "Greg is going to load the reveille gun, attach a long line to the firing cord, and rig it across the path here, so that some 'dragger,' coming back from seeing his 'femme' home, will trip over the cord and fire the gun. The dragger can't be blamed for what he didn't do on purpose, and cute little Greg will be safe in his tent. But if Greg should happen to be caught it might mean the bounce from the Academy! And, oh, wow!"
Cadet Prescott's heart seemed to stop beating. Glancing down the road he saw a man standing, there, in the olive drab uniform of the Army officer. Captain Bates, of the tactical department, was quietly watching unsuspecting Cadet Holmes.