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This, in itself, is enough to make him worry, but the next thing he hears is worse. Just at evening call to quarters, Jim Burton comes to his room.

“Have you heard anything about this report of Stanley’s last night?” he asks, and McKay, ordinarily so frank, is guarded now in his reply. For half an hour he has been pacing his room alone. McFarland’s revelations have set him to thinking. It is evident that the colonel’s suspicions are aroused. It is probable that it is known that some cadet was “running it” the night before. From the simple fact that he is not already in arrest he knows that Mr. Lee did not recognize him, yet the secret has leaked out in some way, and an effort is being made to discover the culprit. Already he has begun to wonder if the game was really worth the candle. He saw her, ’tis true, and had half an hour’s whispered chat with her, interrupted not infrequently by giggling and impetuous rushes from the other girls. They had sworn melodramatically never to reveal that it was he who came, but Billy begins to have his doubts. “It ends my career if I’m found out,” he reflects, “whereas they can’t do much to Stan for visiting.” And thus communing with himself, he has decided to guard his secret against all comers,–at least for the present. And so he is non-committal in his reply to Burton.

“What about it?” he asks.

“Why, it’s simply this, Billy: Little Magee, the fifer, is on orderly duty to-day, and he heard much of the talk, and I got it out of him. Somebody was running it last night, and was seen down by Cozzens’s gate. Stanley was the only absentee, hence Stanley would naturally be the man suspected, but he says he wasn’t out of the barracks. The conclusion is inevitable that he was filling the other fellow’s place, and the colonel is hopping mad. It looks as though there were collusion between them. Now, Billy, all I’ve got to say is that the man he’s shielding ought to step forward and relieve him at once. There comes the sentry and I must go.”

Relieve him? Yes; but what means that for me? thinks poor McKay. Dismissal; a heart break for mother. No! It is too much to face; he must think it over. He never goes near Stanley all that night. He fears to meet him, or the morrow. His heart misgives him when he is told that there has been a long conference in the office. He turns white with apprehension when they fall in for parade, and he notes that it is Phillips, their first lieutenant, who draws sword and takes command of the company; but a few moments later his heart gives one wild bound, then seems to sink into the ground beneath his feet, when the adjutant drops the point of his sword, lets it dangle by the gold knot at his wrist, whips a folded paper from his sash, and far over the plain his clear young voice proclaims the stern order:

“Cadet Captain Stanley is hereby placed in arrest and confined to his quarters. Charge–conniving at concealing the absence of a cadet from inspection after ‘taps,’ eleven–eleven-fifteen P.M., on the 7th instant.

“By order of Lieutenant-Colonel Putnam.”

CHAPTER VI.

THE LAST DANCE.

The blithest day of all the year has come. The graduating ball takes place to-night. The Point is thronged with joyous visitors, and yet over all there hovers a shadow. In the midst of all this gayety and congratulation there hides a core of sorrow. Voices lower and soft eyes turn in sympathy when certain sad faces are seen. There is one subject on which the cadets simply refuse to talk, and there are two of the graduating class who do not appear at the hotel at all. One is Mr. McKay, whose absence is alleged to be because of confinements he has to serve; the other is Philip Stanley, still in close arrest, and the latter has cancelled his engagements for the ball.