Greg turned up late that afternoon for practice.  What he showed the captain and coaches had them fairly “rattled” with desire to slip Greg into the nine.

“I’m much obliged to you all,” Greg insisted gently, “but I told you I wasn’t going to try for the nine.  I never played a game without Prescott, and I know I’d be a hoodoo if I did.”

Though a great lot of pressure was brought to bear upon him, Holmes still held out.  It was his privilege to refuse to play, if he so chose.  Above all, the coaches, who were Army officers, could not urge him.

“That man Holmes is just the fellow we need to round out the team,” complained one of the players to Durville.

“Yes,” sighed the captain of the Army nine; “and Holmesy tells me that he’s a tyro to Mr. Prescott.”

“Then Mr. Prescott must be a wonder on the diamond,” grunted the other cadet.

“I hear that he is,” assented Durville.  “By the way, you remember Darrin and Dalzell, who helped the Navy team to wipe the field up with us last year?”

“I reckon I do.”

“Well, it seems that Prescott, Holmes, Darrin and Dalzell were all members of the athletic squad in the same High School before they entered the service.”

“Darrin and Dalzell are going to make it possible for the Navy to wipe us up again this year, too,” continued the other cadet plaintively.

“I don’t believe they would, if we could put in Mr. Prescott and Holmesy for this year.”

“But we can’t, Durry.”

“No; I know it.”

“So what’s the use of talking.”  Nevertheless, there was a lot of talking, and dozens waylaid Greg and tried to induce him to reconsider.  But he wouldn’t, and that was all there was to it.  No one even thought of lifting the ban from Prescott in order to gain either or both of these cadet athletes.  West Point cadets are consistent.  They will never lift the ban, once they believe it to have been justly laid, just in order to make a better athletic showing.  The Academy authorities demand that a team athlete shall stand well in his studies and general discipline; the cadets themselves demand also that the man who carries their athletic colors must conform to cadet ideals of honor.  And Prescott, being in Coventry, surely was not to be regarded as a man of honor.

Washington’s Birthday had come and passed, and Prescott still lingered in the cadet corps.  Indeed, he seemed as determined as ever upon graduating.

There were limits, however, to class patience.  It was Anstey who got on the track of the news and brought it to Greg.

“A class meeting is to be called ten days hence,” reported the Virginian.  “The meeting will be announced at supper formation to-night.  It is set well ahead in order to give the fellows plenty of time to think over the subject for discussion.”

“That discussion,” guessed Holmes, “is to be as to the best means of driving Dick from the corps.”