Bill Stevens was sent to prison for a term of eight years.  Phin, being only seventeen, was allowed to plead his youth.  In his case justice was satisfied with his commitment to a reform school until he should be twenty-one years of age.

And so ended the story of the mysterious burglaries.

CHAPTER XXV

Conclusion

One evening about a week after these events Dick and Dave were sitting in the former’s room chatting, when Greg Holmes and Dan Dalzell, apparently in great good humor, broke in upon them.

“When do you go to West Point, Dick?” queried Greg.

“I’m ordered to report to the adjutant there on the first of March,” Prescott replied.

“Mind my running up there with you?” demanded Greg.

“Why, I’d be tickled to pieces, if you can afford the trip, Greg.”

“Oh, I guess I can,” laughed the other boy.  “Dad is going to pay my freight bill.”

“See here, you fellows, you can’t have been reading the newspapers much, since you two were appointed,” broke in Dan Dalzell.

“What have we missed?” challenged Dave.

“Why, didn’t you know a thing about Senator Frayne and his appointments?” went on Dan Dalzell.  “The Senator doesn’t appoint from a single district.  He appoints at large from the whole state.  Senator Frayne announced, a while ago, two appointments-at-large, one for West Point, the other for Annapolis.”

“And we went up to the state capital yesterday,” rattled on Greg.  “We went through the examinations.  The winners weren’t named until this morning.  You’ll find it in the evening papers, later to-day.  I go to West Point, and Dan goes to Annapolis.”

“What?” yelled Dick, leaping as high as he could jump.

“Tell it to us again!” begged Darrin huskily.

“Oh, it’s all a fact, straight and right enough,” Greg assured them happily.

Then and there the four chums executed a war dance.  It seemed too wonderful to believe.

“But isn’t Gridley the whole show?” demanded Dave presently.  “Four cadetships in the same year to one little city!”

“Well, we had to win ’em from other comers,” retorted Greg.  “And none of us are out of the woods yet.  We’ve got to pass at West Point and at Annapolis.

“This is great!” quivered young Prescott.  “But wouldn’t it be grand if only Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton had gotten in line, too, and gone along into the service with us?  Then all of the old Dick & Co. would have been enrolled under the battle flag.”

“But you know what Tom told us,” put in Darrin.  “He said he wouldn’t live at West Point, and he wouldn’t be caught dead at Annapolis.  Tom is all for becoming a great civil engineer—–­a builder of railroads and all that sort of thing.”

“Well, Harry Hazelton is just as bad,” said Greg.  “He’s all for doing engineer stunts in the wilderness, too.”