“Because you would be sneered at by the whole corps. Because they would call you a coward and insult you as one, cut you dead! You could not stand it one week.”
“What else?” inquired Mark, calmly.
“What else! What else could there be! For Heaven’s sake, man, I won’t have it! I couldn’t make the class understand the reason. You’d be an outcast all the time you were here.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes.”
And Mark turned and gazed at the other, his brown eyes flashing.
“Mr. Fischer,” he began, extending his hands to the other, “let me tell you what I have thought of you. You have been the one friend I have had in this academy outside of my own class and Wicks Merritt; you have been the one man who has had the fairness to give me my rights, the courage to speak for me. I have not always taken your advice, but I have always respected you and admired you. And, more than that, I owe my presence here to you.”
Mark paused a moment, while his thoughts went back to the time.
“I had enemies,” he continued at last, slowly, “and they had me in their power. They had persuaded the superintendent that I was a criminal, and I looked for nothing but disgrace. And it was you, then, and you only of all the cadets of this academy, who had honor and the courage to help Texas prove my innocence. And that debt of gratitude is written where it can never be effaced. My debt to you! And now they want me to fight you!”
The captain shifted uneasily.