CHAPTER I.

AN INTERESTING LETTER.

“Hey, there, you fellows, I’ve got a letter to read to you.”

He was a tall, handsome lad, with a frank, pleasant face, and a wealth of curly brown hair. He wore a close-fitting gray jacket and trousers. The uniform of a West Point “plebe,” as the new cadet is termed. He was standing in front of one of the tents in the summer camp of the corps, and speaking to half a dozen of his classmates.

The six looked up with interest when they heard what he said.

“Come in, Mark,” called one of them. “Come in here and read it.”

“This is addressed to me,” began Mark Mallory, obeying the request and sitting down. “But it’s really meant for the whole seven of us. And it’s interesting, as showing what the old cadets think of the tricks we bold plebes have been playing on them.”

“Who’s it from?”

“It’s from Wicks Merritt, the second classman I met here last year. He’s home on furlough for the summer, but some of the other cadets have written and told him about us, and what we’ve been doing. And this is what he says about it. Listen.

“DEAR MARK: Whenever I sit down to write to you it seems to me I can think of nothing to say, but to marvel at the extraordinary rumpus you have kicked up at West Point. Every time I hear from there you are doing still more incredibly impossible acts, until I expect to hear next that you have been made superintendent or something. However, in this letter I really have something else to tell you about, but I shall put it off to the last and keep you in suspense.

“Well, I hear that, not satisfied with defying the yearlings to haze you, and actually keeping them from doing it, which is something no plebe has ever dared to dream of before, you have gone on to still further recklessness. They say that you have gotten half a dozen other plebes to back you up, and that, to cap the climax, you actually dared to go to one of the hops. Well, I do not know what to say to that; it simply takes my breath away. I should like to have been there to see him doing it. They say that Grace Fuller, the girl you saved from drowning, got all the girls to promise to dance with you, and that the end of the whole business was the yearlings stopped the music and the hop and left in disgust. I fairly gasp when I picture that scene.

“I hesitate to give an original person like you advice. You never heeded what I gave you anyway, but went right ahead in your own contrariness to do what you pleased. I guess you were right. But I want to warn you a little. By your unheard-of daring in going to that hop you have incurred the enmity of not only the yearlings, whom you have beaten at every turn, but also of the powerful first class as well. And they will never stop until they subdue you. I don’t know what they’ll try, but it will be something desperate, and you must stand the consequences. You’ll probably have to take turns fighting every man in the class. When I come back I expect to find you buried six feet deep in court-plaster.”

Mark looked up from the letter for a moment, and smiled.

“I wish the dear old chump could see me now,” he said.

Wicks’ prediction seemed nearly fulfilled. Mark’s face was bruised and bandaged; one shoulder was still immovable from a dislocation, and when he moved any other part of himself he did it with a cautious slowness that told of sundry aching joints.

“Yes,” growled one of the six listeners, a lad from Texas, with a curious cowboy accent. “Yes, hang it! But I reckon Wicks Merritt didn’t have any idea them ole cadets’d pile on to lick you all together. I tell you what, it gits me riled. Jes’ because you had the nerve to defy ’em and fight the feller that ordered you off that air hop floor, doggone ’em, they all had to pitch in and beat you.”

“Never mind, Texas,” laughed Mark, cheerfully. “They were welcome. I knocked out my man, which was what I went out for. And besides, we managed to outwit them in the end, leaving them deserted and scared to death on the opposite shore of the Hudson. You’ve heard of clouds with silver linings. I’m off duty and can play the gentleman all day, and not have to turn out and drill like you unfortunate plebes. And, moreover, nobody offers to haze me any more while I’m a cripple.”

“It’d be jes’ like ’em to,” growled Texas.

“That’s got nothing to do with the letter,” responded Mark. “There is some news in here that’ll interest you fellows, if Texas would only stop growling at the cadets long enough to give me a chance. Too much fighting is spoiling your gentle disposition, Texas.”

“Ya-as,” grinned the Southerner. “You jes’ go on.”

“I will,” continued Mark. “Listen.

“I got a letter from Fischer yesterday. Fischer is captain of your company, I think. He tells me that that rascally Benny Bartlett, the fellow from your town who tried to cheat you out of your appointment, but whom you beat at the examinations, turned up a short while ago with a brand-new plot to get you into trouble. It reads like a fairy story, what Fischer told me. He had a printer’s boy hired to accuse you of bribing him to steal for you the exam. papers. The superintendent believed him and you were almost fired.

“Fischer says he went out at night with that wild chum of yours, Texas, and the two of them held up the printer’s boy and robbed him of some papers that showed his guilt. Well, Mr. Mallory, I certainly congratulate you on your luck. You owe a debt of gratitude to Fischer, who ought to be your enemy really, since he was one of the hop managers you riled so.

“And now for the news I have. I write to tell you--and I know it will surprise you--that you are not yet through with that troublesome Master Bartlett.”

“Wow!” echoed Texas, springing up in surprise. “What does he know ’bout it?”

“Wait,” laughed Mark, by way of answer. “Wait, and you’ll see. Wicks is quite a detective.

“As you’ll notice by the postmark of this letter, I am in Washington, D. C., at present. And what do you think? I have met Benny Bartlett here!

“I can hear you gasp when you read that. I knew him, but he didn’t know me, so I made up my mind to have some fun with him. I picked up an acquaintance with him, and told him I was from West Point. Then he got intimate and confidential, said he knew a confounded fresh plebe up there--Mallory, they called him. Well, I said I’d heard of Mallory. And, Mark, I nearly had him wild.

“In the first place, you know, he hates you like poison. I can’t tell you how much. This paper wouldn’t hold all the names he called you. And, oh, what lies he did tell about you! So I thought to tease him I’d take the other tack. I told him of all your heroism, how you’d saved the life of the daughter of a rich old judge up there, and were engaged to marry her some day. I threw that in for good measure, though they say it is a desperate case between you and her--upon which I congratulate you, for she’s a treasure.”

“I wonder what he’d say,” put in one of the six, “if he knew she’d joined the Banded Seven to help fool the yearlings?”

“I told him,” continued Mark, reading, “all about how you’d prevented hazing and were literally running the place. Then I showed him Fischer’s letter to cap the climax. And, Mark, the kid was crazy. He vowed he was coming up there to balk you, if it was the last thing he ever did on earth.

“His father has a big pull with the President, and is using it with a vengeance. He pleads that his son did magnificently at the congressman’s exams, and only failed at the others because he was