“Go ahead, if you think you can make anything by it,” said Lester, as he tumbled into bed. “But if you know when you are well off, you will keep a still tongue in your head. No one outside the crowd knows that you had anything to do with it, and they never will know it either, unless you choose to tell it. But I _did_ hear that the train was behind time. If you don’t believe it, ask Enoch.”
The court-martial did just what Forester said it would do. The judge-advocate could not make the law cover the case, and all he could do was to prosecute the conspirators for stretching their passes—that is, for going to Hamilton and Bordentown when they ought not to have gone any farther than the village. Lester and Enoch received the heaviest sentences, losing all their credit marks and being gated for sixty days; but they did not seem to mind it very much, for were they not looked up to as the originator and manager of two of the most daring conspiracies that had ever been concocted within the walls of that academy? It had the effect of putting the students on the alert, and from that time forward it would have been impossible for anybody to interfere with a class dinner.
After the court-martial adjourned nothing happened to relieve the monotony of the academy routine. The first-class boys felt so very bitter against Lester and Enoch that they would not speak to them except when they were on duty and could not help it (they knew that they gave the former more credit than he deserved), but they were much too honorable to take revenge upon them, as they could have done had they been so disposed. On the contrary, Colonel Mack, for fear of being considered vindictive, more than once overlooked offenses which he ought to have reported, and the teachers knew it and took him sharply to task for his neglect. This won him the good will of all except the very meanest of Lester’s followers, who would have reported him in a moment if they had had the chance to do it.
That was a long term to some of the students, but the end came in due time, the encampment was over, the visitors had gone to their homes, and the much-dreaded examination was a thing of the past. The result was what everybody thought it would be, so far as two boys were concerned. When Colonel Mack took off his shoulder-straps Don Gordon put them on, and Bert was promoted to a captaincy. Enoch, Lester, and Jones did not get even a corporal’s _chevrons_, and although they could blame no one but themselves for it, they had a good deal to say about favoritism, and Lester hated Don Gordon more cordially than ever.