ree or four days later Dick asked Darrin:

"Did you hear the outcome of the Fordham affair?"

"No," Dave admitted.

"I just heard it all up at 'The Blade' office. The fact that
the Military School cadets escorted us in such formal manner to
the railway station attracted a lot of attention in Fordham.
The principal of the High School there started a quiet investigation
of his own. Barnes and two other fellows on the Fordham eleven
have been suspended from school until the School Board can take
up their cases and decide whether they ought to be expelled.
The Fordham principal has also made it plain that next year's
team will have to be scanned by him, and that he'll keep out of
the eleven any fellows who don't come up to the tests. There's
a jolly big row on in Fordham, and Barnes isn't having any sympathy
wasted on him you can just bet."

"It serves him and that whole football crew just right," blazed
Darrin.

Hazelton's injury kept him out of school only a fortnight. The
supposed break in his leg turned out to be only a sprain.

While school teams like that commanded by Barnes are rare, they
are found, now and then. Yet the fate of rowdy athletes in the
school world is usually swift and satisfying. Other schools refuse
to compete with schools that are known to put out "rough-house
men."

Dick & Co. had laid by their togs. They had said farewell to
school athletics.

In the winter's basket ball they did not intend to take part.
For the baseball nine, that would begin practice soon after the
new year, there was plenty of fine material in the lower classes.

"I feel almost as if I had been to a funeral," snorted Darrin,
when he came away from the gym. after having turned in all his
togs and paraphernalia.

"It's time to give the younger fellows a show," sighed Dick.

"You talk as though we were old men," gibed Dave.

"In the High School we are," laughed Dick. "We're seniors. In
a few short months more we shall be graduates, unless-----"

There he stopped, but Darrin didn't need to look at his chum.
Both knew what that pause meant.

CHAPTER XVIII

The Would-Be Candidates

The big stir came earlier than it had been expected.

Every boy who has followed such matters in his own interest will
appreciate what the "big stir" means.

Congressman Spokes, representing the district in which Gridley
lay, had a vacant cadetship at West Point within his gift, and
also a cadetship at Annapolis.