The fight was fierce but short.

Harple entered the drill-hall from the stairway, stood for a moment in terrified astonishment, and then pushed his way violently through the crowd to the enraged combatants.

“Stop this!” he cried, laying a firm hand on each wrestler; but in an instant they had broken from his grasp, and fell, struggling, panting, and still fighting, to the floor.

“Bright!” he called, kneeling above them, and trying to gain a new hold, “Bright, for goodness’ sake!”

The door from the dining-room was opened, and in the doorway was framed the stalwart figure of Colonel Silsbee. He took in the situation at a glance, and strode hastily toward the combatants. The crowd separated as if by magic to let him pass; but before he reached the struggling figures on the floor, they, too, had become aware of his presence, had loosed their hold of each other, and had risen to their feet.

They were a sorry sight. Their clothing was torn, their hair dishevelled, their faces bruised and bloody. For a moment there was no sound in the room; the silence was appalling. Then Colonel Silsbee spoke,—

“Boys, this is disgraceful! I hope never to witness a scene like this in my school again. Lieutenant Brightly and Cadet Belcher, you will both report at my office at half-past seven o’clock. Drummer, beat the mess-call!”

Belcher was led back to the faucet by his friends, and Brightly was hurried up to his room by Harple, while the battalion fell in for supper.

“Charley, I’ve made a fool of myself, haven’t I?” asked Brightly, when the door of their room was closed on them.

“I’m afraid you have, Bright,” was the reply. “I guess you’ve spoiled everything now. You’ve lost your shoulder-straps without doubt.”

Harple took the pitcher and hurried down the hall for some warm water with which to bathe his friend’s wounds. “I haven’t much hope for you after this,” he said, returning. “You simply won’t listen to advice.”

“Well, how could I help it, Charley?” Brightly stood in his shirt-sleeves, waiting for the water. His wrath was rising again at the remembrance of Belcher’s taunting words.

“How could I help it?” he repeated. “A fellow would have to be more than human to stand such abuse. It was simply impossible not to strike him.”

“Well, there’s no use talking about it; that part of it’s over. The next chapter is what you’ve got to look out for now,—the one that opens up at half-past seven. If I thought you’d take any advice at all, I’d counsel you, when you get in before Colonel Silsbee, to own up, say you are sorry, agree to abide squarely by your sentence, and then go to work and get back to your old place again.”

Harple bathed his chum’s face and neck carefully, and dressed a slight wound on the cheek. Clean linen and a fresh coat restored Brightly to an appearance of respectability, and then the two hurried down to the supper-room.

At half-past seven o’clock the principal of Riverpark Academy sat in his office, awaiting the appearance of the offenders. He was troubled and anxious,—not so much because two of his pupils had engaged in a rough-and-tumble fight, as because the entire school seemed trembling on the verge of disorder, of which he feared that this encounter was the first serious manifestation.

For some weeks he had noticed this tendency toward mischief and toward rebellion against rules of the school, and it worried him. He had had the same experience in former years; but the warmth of the advancing season and the excitement of out-door sports had heretofore served to dissipate disorderly tendencies, and he could only hope that such might now be the case.

Promptly at the hour named Belcher came into the office. A moment later Brightly entered also. They stood respectfully, undergoing with apparent composure the sharp scrutiny of the principal.

“Boys,” said Colonel Silsbee at last, “I did not summon you here to hear excuses for your conduct. There can be no possible excuse for it. It is intended that this school shall be composed of soldiers and gentlemen, and they never descend to such encounters as yours has been. The instinct that impels one man in the heat of passion to strike another is a brutal instinct, and in my school it must be kept down. I intend to subject each of you to severe punishment; but lest I should do either of you an injustice, I desire to hear from you an account of the trouble, and of the causes which led to it. Belcher, you may give me your statement.”

The lad addressed advanced a step and laid his hand on the table.

“It began,” he said, “this afternoon at drill. Lieutenant Brightly was in command of our platoon. I wasn’t able to do the wheelings properly; it wasn’t my fault, either. But Brightly insulted me, and called me an idiot; and he wasn’t satisfied with that, but he rushed at me and struck me a blow with his sword. To-night, in the drill-hall, I asked him why he did it. He answered me impertinently, and I called him a bully. Then he struck me, and the fight began. You came in in time to see the end of it.”

“If you had a grievance against Lieutenant Brightly, why did you not report it at headquarters, that an examination might have been made and justice done? Why did you take the matter into your own hands?”

“Well, I—I thought I had a right to. Brede told me I had a right to, Captain Brede. He said an officer was no better than a private out of ranks. He said I ought to thrash Brightly for what he had done.”

A look of surprise and pain came upon Colonel Silsbee’s face,—of surprise, that Belcher should thus try to lay the blame of his conduct on another; of pain, that the ranking cadet-officer in his school should have given such advice.

“Captain Brede was greatly mistaken,” he said quietly. “Lieutenant Brightly, let us hear your account of this affair.”

“Belcher has given a pretty correct version of it,” responded Brightly, “except that of course he has colored the facts to make in his favor. I have nothing further to say.”

“Very well,” said Colonel Silsbee. “I still see no excuse for either of you. Belcher, you may go. Brightly, you will remain for a moment.”

When the door had closed behind Belcher, the principal motioned the other lad to a chair.

“Brightly,” he said, and there was kindness in his face and voice, “I have had it in mind for some time to have a little talk with you, and the occurrence of to-night seems now to have made it a necessity. You have not, of late, been keeping up to your usual standard in any department; your manner also has been indicative of dissatisfaction and carelessness. I am sorry for this, because I had grown accustomed to thinking of you as one of my first boys. Where does the fault lie, Brightly? Is it with us, or is it with you?”

The lad hesitated a moment before replying. Finally he said, “I didn’t think my standing and conduct here were appreciated. I tried to do very well, but it seemed to me that my efforts met with punishment rather than with reward. Of course that discouraged me, and lately I haven’t tried very hard to keep up.”

“Do you wish me to understand that you were disappointed in the rank assigned to you in the battalion?”

“Well, I thought I deserved to rank higher than first lieutenant.”

“I see. I can understand your feeling. But if a mistake was made, the mistake and the fault were ours, not yours. Moreover, there was no slight put upon you. You were given a very honorable position; it was your duty as a soldier to acquiesce in our judgment, and to accept the situation without question. To give you my reasons for making the appointments that I did, while you are in your present state of mind, would be subversive of discipline.

“I regret this affair of to-night more than you do,—very much more. I should be glad to relieve you of its consequences if it were possible, not only for your own sake, but for your mother’s as well; but it is not possible; my duty to you and to the school forbids it.

“I shall be obliged to suspend you from your office for a time; not long, I hope. It is my wish, also, that your mother may not learn of your disgrace until she can be informed also of your reformation and restoration.”

“I should prefer that myself. I think her feelings have been already sufficiently hurt in learning that I was not considered worthy of the promotion to which she believed, with me, that I was entitled.”

There was no repentance manifest in Brightly’s voice; the spirit indicated by it was still unyielding.

Colonel Silsbee looked up sharply at the boy. “Has your mother made a complaint to you on account of the appointment?” he asked.

“N—no, I can’t say that she has. I don’t think she would do me an injustice like that.”

The emphasis was too plain to be misunderstood. The stern look came back into the principal’s face.

“You may go now,” he said. “And you may consider yourself suspended from office until such time as an order to that effect shall be published.”

Brightly bowed, and left the room somewhat haughtily. His punishment was to be greater than he had anticipated. He had expected to receive discredit marks enough to cut deeply into his standing in deportment; but he had not thought that he should be reduced to the ranks, even for a short time. He felt that his sentence was unnecessarily severe; that it was unjust and uncalled for. It bruised his pride, it awakened animosity in his mind, and roused rebellion in his heart.

It was not long after Brightly had taken leave of the principal that Brede was also summoned to the office. He arose, walked across the schoolroom with his accustomed swagger, and passed in through the office-door with the usual supercilious smile upon his lips. The entire school wondered what he had been summoned for, but only Belcher and Brightly guessed aright. They knew instinctively that his visit had to do with Belcher’s awkward excuse for his own fault.

When Brede returned to the schoolroom some fifteen minutes later, he had lost something of his swagger; the curl on his lips was less pronounced, and his face was more than usually pale. Every one who saw him knew that his interview with Colonel Silsbee had not been a pleasant one.

Moreover, from that night on he ignored both Brightly and Belcher; the men in the ranks noticed that he grew more quick-tempered and morose; the principal and teachers in the school found that he became less careful of his standing.

On the evening following the fight between Brightly and Belcher the following order was published at retreat:—

Brightly promptly gave to the acting adjutant all papers pertaining to the office, which were principally tables showing the merits and demerits credited to each student in the line of conduct.

The system of marking deportment at Riverpark was, in many respects, an excellent one. Every evening, at retreat, one of the older cadets was appointed to act as officer of the day for the following twenty-four hours. It was his duty to make entry in the “officer of the day’s book” of such offences as were reported to him by the principal, the teachers, or the cadet-officers, and of such also as came under his own notice in the schoolroom, where he occupied a position at the desk throughout the day.

On Friday evenings it was the duty of the adjutant to go, attended by a clerk, to the office of the principal, and while the clerk read from the book the reports of offences, the principal would assign the number of demerit marks to each, and the adjutant would record them on his list opposite the name of each offender.

He also kept a list of merit marks, a certain number of which cancelled a certain greater number of demerit marks. If the excess of demerit marks reached a certain amount, it made the offender a delinquent for a day; a certain greater amount extended the term of his delinquency to two days, three days, a week, and so on.

The balance against some of the more careless and mischievous boys was always so large as to put them on what was known as perpetual delinquency. Of this last class “Plumpy,” as the fat boy was affectionately called by his companions, was a conspicuous and shining example.

A delinquent was not allowed to leave the grounds under any pretext. Besides that, he was confined to the schoolroom during the hour or two of every afternoon when the other boys were at leisure, at play, walking in the country, boating on the river, or visiting the town. This confinement came especially hard on Saturday afternoons, when the hours of permitted absence extended from two to six o’clock, and there was a general exodus from the school of all but the unhappy delinquents.

It was the duty of the adjutant to keep these deportment lists and records in his possession, and to make up from them the tables of conduct that entered into the term reports and determined each student’s standing.

The three students who, at the close of each year, bore the highest rank in studies and deportment formed the honor grade, and each of them was entitled to wear the honor-grade chevron.

It was not easy at first for Finkelton to comprehend this somewhat complicated method of keeping the records, and he asked Brightly one day to come up and explain it to him. Brightly replied, somewhat abruptly, that he believed he had fulfilled his entire duty when he turned the papers over, and that he knew of no reason why he should spend his time in the labors of an office from which he derived neither profit nor honor.

But the next day his better nature came to the rescue, and he went up to Finkelton’s room to acknowledge his fault, and to offer assistance.

“I was too bearish yesterday,” he explained. “I didn’t think what a mean way it was to speak till afterward. I’ll show you anything you want to know about the records, and be glad to.”

Finkelton received him rather coldly.

“I haven’t the lists here now,” he said. “Captain Brede came and got them this morning to figure out his company’s standing as against Harple’s. Besides, I won’t need your assistance; I got all the information I wanted from another source.”

Brightly was surprised and chilled by Finkelton’s manner toward him. They had been very good friends. But after a moment’s thought, he knew that he merited the implied reproach; and without another word he turned and went away. Ten minutes later Brede came into Finkelton’s room, bringing the adjutant’s papers with him.

“I’ve brought back the lists, Fink,” he said, “and here’s a curious thing in this one that I want to show you.”

He spread out on the table the general record and pointed to Brightly’s name on it.

“Do you see,” he continued, “that some one has scratched out a 25 in the balance opposite that name and left it a 5?”

“That’s so,” replied Finkelton, scrutinizing the paper closely. “That certainly has been a 25. I didn’t notice it before. Do you suppose Brightly has done a thing like this?”

“Well, a man’ll do a good deal to save an honor-grade chevron. Twenty-five would have lost it for him, five will let him make it yet. See?”

“Yes, but I can’t quite believe that of Bright. Maybe five is correct after all.”

“If it is, what was the use of mutilating the weekly lists? You look at them and you’ll see that they’re changed too. I tell you I believe he’s altered them himself. The colonel didn’t cut him in standing when he suspended him, and the fellow wants to take home a big report to show to his mother, and make her think he’s been at the head of the heap all the time.”

Finkelton was rummaging among the weekly lists.

“Don’t you think,” continued Brede, “that you’d better call Colonel Silsbee’s attention to the matter, anyway?”

“Well, I might,” responded Finkelton, slowly; “but I don’t know that it’s my duty to, and maybe—” He paused for a moment, recalling the somewhat strained relations existing at present between him and Brightly; then he added: “I’ve no objection to doing it, though. I believe I owe him no favors.”

“Just so,” assented Brede. “I think such a rascally and clumsy trick ought to be exposed. You might do it to-night when you go in to the office to make up the reports. I’ll go in with you as clerk if you want me to, and then I can explain how I came to detect the fraud. See?”

Finkelton nodded. He had entered unsuspectingly into a cruel plot laid by an unscrupulous schemer.

Ten minutes later, when Brede left the room, his eyes had a wicked gleam in them, and his thin lips were curled in pleasant contemplation of satisfying revenge. He himself had erased the figures. He had been guilty not only of a mean and cowardly act, but of a criminal one as well. Yet conscience did not smite him, nor fear of discovery cause him to hesitate.

Finkelton carried out to the letter the programme laid down for him by Brede. He took the captain into the office with him that evening to assist in making up the weekly report. At an opportune moment Colonel Silsbee’s attention was called to the erased and substituted figures opposite Brightly’s name and Brede very glibly related the story of his discovery.

Colonel Silsbee was much surprised and perplexed. He could not believe that Brightly had deliberately falsified the record. The lad had always been scrupulously honest. He questioned Brede and Finkelton closely, but they gave him no further information. Finally he said,—

“Brightly shall not be condemned without a hearing. Whatever his faults may have been of late, I cannot credit the fact that he has been guilty of so gross a misdemeanor as these papers would seem to indicate. We will call him in and hear what he has to say.”

The school was gathered in evening session, and unusual quiet rested on the assembly, when Colonel Silsbee appeared at the door of his office and summoned Brightly. The suspended officer laid aside his book, and walked up the aisle and across the open space by the desk with a smile on his face.

He had quite expected to be called. He had felt sure that Finkelton would not be capable of making up the reports. Now it had proved so. They were in a snarl, and needed him to assist them in the unravelling.

The idea seemed to please him greatly. He closed the office-door behind him and advanced to the table at which the principal and the two cadets were sitting. His first glance revealed to him that something more important and more serious than the disentangling of reports had occasioned his presence.

Colonel Silsbee was the first to speak.

“Brightly,” he said, “my attention has been called to the fact that erasures have been made opposite to your name in the reports which have, until recently, been in your possession. It is apparent that large balances on the demerit side have been changed to small ones in your favor. I do not ask for an explanation from you, as that would seem to prejudge you. I only ask whether the balance as it now stands on the general roll is the true one. Your simple assertion as a gentleman and a soldier will decide the matter to my satisfaction. You may examine the papers.”