“Now, Don,” said one of the boys, who had not an opportunity to speak to him before, “is it true that Lester and Williams took the crew off Mr. Packard’s yacht at the risk of their own lives?”
“It is,” answered Don, readily. “Bert and I were there and saw it all. It was a brave act, and everybody who knows the circumstances says so.”
“But still Lester pulled the quilts over his head and feigned illness when the bugle sounded; and Jones, who belonged to your company, was left behind because he hid in one of the coal-bins,” said Joe Packard.
As Don could not deny this, he said nothing about it. He took his mail as soon as he could get it, and then he and Bert mounted their ponies and rode homeward, accompanied by the Packard boys.
The two brothers spent this vacation in much the same way they spent the first one after their northern friends, Hopkins, Curtis, and Egan had gone home. Bert studied hard in the hope of being able to exchange his single bar for a captain’s shoulder-strap at the next examination, but Don never looked into the book. He had earned a long rest, and had come home to enjoy it in his own way. He rode and hunted to his heart’s content, swung Indian clubs, punched the sand-bag with heavy dumb-bells, and ran a mile every pleasant day at the top of his speed with a view of lowering the academy record during the next encampment. When the time came to go back he was ready, and his mother saw him depart without any misgivings. Don had showed her that he could behave himself, if he set about it in dead earnest, and now that he had tried it for a whole year, and made many friends and won his promotion by it, she was firm in her belief that he was well started on the right road at last. Don thought so too, but he did not for a moment relax his vigilance. He could not afford to if he were going to make Egan’s prediction come out true, and wear the lieutenant-colonel’s shoulder-straps during his last year at the academy. If he desired to use the authority and enjoy the privileges those shoulder-straps would give him, it was necessary that he should win them at the very next examination.
A few days before they left Rochdale, Don and Bert rode over to Lester Brigham’s to see if he would be ready to start when they did—not because they wanted him for traveling companion, but because they thought it would be a friendly thing for them to do; but Lester received them in so freezing a manner, and showed so plainly that he did not care for their company, that they left him to himself and set out for Bridgeport alone.
“I don’t want anything to do with them or the crowd they run with,” soliloquized Lester, as he saw them ride away. “I shall have friends enough at the academy without them. Enoch said he knew of two or three good fellows, who had about half made up their minds to sign the muster-roll this year, and if he brings them with him, they may be able to think up some way in which we can enjoy ourselves. We have already tried the only plan I could think of, and I shouldn’t have thought of that if it had not been for Huggins.”
Lester reached Bridgeport without any mishap, and when he stepped out of the carriage that took him and his trunk from the railroad depot to the academy, he found Williams and Jones waiting for him. The “good fellows” were there also—three of them, and of course they were boys after Enoch’s own heart. They lived on Long Island, and Enoch went to school with them before his father moved down into Maryland. They had not come to the academy to learn, but because they wanted to take part in the sports and pastimes which fell to the lot of the students, and which Enoch had described in glowing colors; although he had never said a word concerning the long, tiresome hours of study and drill that came six days in the week as regularly as the deep tones of the big bell rang out from the cupola. They wanted the honor of belonging to the school, a portion of whose members had stood up so manfully in defense of law and order; but they never stopped to ask themselves how they would act, should they be called upon to perform a similar service.
“Here we are!” exclaimed Enoch, as he grasped Lester’s hand in both his own and shook it cordially, “and I have good cause for complaint already. That little snipe, Bert Gordon, has been detailed to assign the boys to their rooms (more favoritism right at the start, you see), and when I asked him if he would be kind enough to chum you on me, he replied he did not think it would be just the thing to do.”
“Why wouldn’t it?” demanded Lester, after he had shaken hands with Enoch’s three friends, who were introduced to him as Dale, Barry, and Morris.