"Hum! Well, don't do it again. You may write me out a page of field tactics and consider yourself relieved of arrest. Don't do it again. Good night, Captain Hamilton."
Dick saluted and swung away, highly pleased at the lightness of his task. He heard the major and his comrade-in-arms laughing as he strode away, and the instructor in tactics exclaimed:
"That's not a circumstance to what we used to do, eh, Ned, when we were camped near some city and wanted to go in and have a good time?"
"That's right," agreed his friend.
Dick's little escapade was known all over the academy next morning, and there was almost universal condemnation of Porter's act. But Dick, to the no small astonishment of his chums, declared that the deposed left-end had done just right.
"What are you sticking up for him for?" asked Paul in some indignation. "It'll get so all the other sentries will do the same thing."
"Well, that might not be so bad. Besides, I do think he did right—even though class custom is against it. Then, too, I don't want to get on unfriendly terms with him. I hope to keep in touch with that old miser Duncaster through Porter."
"Oh, yes, about your father's business. How is it coming on?"
"Not very well. I hear that the other side has made a very good offer to Mr. Duncaster, but he has turned them down the same as he did me. There are other matters cropping up, however, that make things complicated in the electric road business, and poor dad is worried to death. I don't know what his next move will be."
"Did you hear whether or not we'll have a game with Haskell?"