looking up
presently.

"Appendix?" inquired Dan suspiciously.

"Oh, stow all that, little boy!" retorted Dave. "No; did I tell you that
I had a letter from Dick Prescott?"

"I think you mentioned something of the sort, last winter," Dalzell
admitted still suspicious.

"No; I got one this morning from good old Dick," Darrin went on.

"All right," Dan agreed. "What's the answer?"

"I haven't had time to read it yet," Darrin responded. "But here's the
letter. Maybe you'd like to look it over."

Across the study table Dan Dalzell received the envelope and its
enclosure rather gingerly. Dan didn't like to be caught "biting" at a
"sell," and he still expected some trick from his roommate.

It was, however, a letter written in Dick Prescott's well-remembered
handwriting.

"I understand that you are both on the Navy team, and that you made good
in the first game," wrote the West Point cadet. "I hope you'll both stay
in to the finish, and improve with every game. Greg and I are plugging
hard at the game in the little time that the West Point routine allows
us for practice. From what I have heard of your game, I think it likely
that you and good, but impish old Dan, are playing against the very
position that Greg and I hope to hold in the annual Army-Navy game.
Won't it be great?"

"Yes, it will be great, all right, if the Navy contrives to win," Dan
muttered, looking up at his chum.

"Either the Army or Navy must lose," replied Dave quietly.

"And just think!" Cadet Dick Prescott's letter ran on. "When we meet,
lined up for battle on Franklin Field, Philadelphia, it will be the first
time we four have met since we wound up the good old High School days at
Gridley. It seems an age to Greg and me. I wonder if the time seems as
long to you two?"

"It seems to me," remarked Dan, glancing across at his chum, "that you
and I, David, little giant, have been here at Annapolis almost ever since
we first donned trousers to please the family."

"It is a long time back to Gridley days," assented Darrin.

Then Dan went on reading.

"Of course you and Dan are bound that the Navy shall win this year," Dick
had written. "As for Greg and me, we are equally determined that the Army
shall win. As if the resolutions on either side had much of anything to
do with it! It will seem strange for us four, divided between the two
sides, to be fighting frantically for the victory. However, if Greg and I
go up against you two on the gri