.

"The majority has had its way for months. Is it not now time,
if the class will not grant full justice, at least to grant something
to the wishes of the minority?"

"What do you mean?" asked one of Dick's opponents. "Mr. Prescott
will let himself be found deficient in at least one study, won't
he, and thus take his unpopular presence away from the Military
Academy?"

"I cannot answer that," admitted Anstey slowly. "Doubtless many
of you will be surprised when I tell you that I have had no word
in the matter from Mr. Prescott. I have not even mentioned the
subject to his roommate, Mr. Holmes."

"Then whom do you represent?" demanded the other cadet.

"Myself and other believers in Mr. Prescott," replied Anstey simply.
"The very least we ask is that you stop punishing so many of
us through Mr. Prescott. Gentlemen, do you not feel that any
man who commands as many friends in his class as does Mr. Prescott
must be a man above the petty meannesses of which he was accused,
and for which he was sent to Coventry?"

"I've been one of the sufferers through Mr. Prescott," commented
Durville grimly. "As for me, I'll admit that I'd be glad to see
the 'silence' lifted. I feel that Mr. Prescott has been punished
enough, and that, if we now lift the 'silence,' he would be more
careful after this. I think he has been chastened enough. If
I could find any reason whatever for refusing to vote for the
end of the Coventry, it would come from the question as to whether
any one class has the right to upset the traditions and establish
a new precedent for such cases."

"There is the most of the case in a nutshell I am afraid," declared
Cadet Douglass. "In our interior corps discipline we not only
work from tradition, but we strengthen or weaken it for the classes
that are to follow us. Have we any right to weaken a tradition
that is as old as the Military Academy itself?"

These simple remarks, made with an absence of bitter feeling,
swung the tide against Dick. The meeting in Anstey's room lasted
for more than an hour. When the meeting broke up Anstey and some
of his advisers felt convinced that to call a class meeting would
be merely to bring about a vote that Prescott was to be kept in
Coventry for all time to come.

Anstey told Greg the result of the meeting, but Holmes did not
tell his chum.

"It's all settled as it ought to be," declared Cadet Jordan.

"You mean-----" asked Durville.

"Why, either Presco