"What's up?" demanded Anstey, lacing a legging.
"The sky is about the color of ink over old Crow's Nest," reported
Greg.
Just then there came a vivid flash of lightning, followed, in a few seconds, by a deep, echoing roll of thunder. The summer storms along this part of the Hudson River sometimes come almost out of the clear sky.
"I'm always thankful for even the smallest favors," muttered Anstey, with a yawn.
"We'll have to make up this drill some other day, when it's hotter," Dick observed, but he nevertheless dropped on to a campstool with a grunt of relief.
Yes; each of these three cadets could now have a campstool of his own in quarters, for Prescott, Holmes and Anstey were all yearlings.
And a yearling is "some one" in the cadet corps. For the first few days after his release from the plebe class the yearling is quite likely to feel that he is nearly "the whole thing." By degrees, however, the yearling in summer encampment discovers that there is a first class of much older cadets above him.
There are no second classmen in summer encampment, until just before the time to break camp and return to barracks for the following academic year. Members of the new second class—-men who have successfully passed through the first two years of life at the United States Military Academy—-are allowed two months and a half of summer furlough, during which time they return to their homes.
Readers of the foregoing volume in this series, "Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point", are already familiar with the ordeals, the hard work, the sorrows and the few pleasures, indeed, of plebe life at West Point.
These readers of the former volume recall just how Dick and Greg reached West Point in March of the year before; how they passed their entrance examinations and settled down to fifteen months of plebedom. Such readers recall the fights in which the new men found themselves involved, the hazing, laughable and otherwise, will be recalled. Our former readers will recollect that about the only pleasure that Dick Prescott found in his plebedom lay in his election to the presidency of his class—-position that carries more responsibility than pleasure for the poor plebe leader of his class.