Captures on the spot he had made but two—Geordie, breathless, bewildered, and half blind, and his second, Connell, who stood by his friend through thick and thin. All the others had scattered the instant the warning cry of the scouts was heard; First Class men and yearlings, veterans of such occasions, darting over the parapet and across the road and down the rocky, thickly-wooded steep towards the chain-battery walk, better known as "Flirtation;" while Mr. Allen, too dignified to run in pursuit, stumbled, as ill-luck would have it, on the men he least desired to come upon, if, indeed, he desired to capture any.
But he recognized both Ross and Jennings as they darted away, and saw them prominent in the ring. This meant jeopardy for two pairs of chevrons. Ross, slipping back to camp at the first opportunity, eagerly questioned Pops and Connell, who had been escorted thither by the officer. Had Mr. Allen asked them to name the others interested? He had; but, as became cadets, they declined to give their names. Glenn and Otis, the other two First Class men on the ground, had quietly retired among the trees in rear of them on hearing the alarm, and then made their way out of the gate as the Lieutenant took his helpless prisoners down the wooden stairway at the southeast angle. They had not been seen.
As for Allen's coming, it was accidental. Strolling with a friend from the hotel around the road that skirts the edge of the heights, he heard sounds from across the grassy parapet no graduate could mistake. A fight, of course! and having heard it, it was his duty to interfere. The next minute he was through the north gate and bearing down on the battle, when the outermost yearlings caught sight of his coming and gave the alarm.
Ross and Jennings did not attend the hop that night. Before they had had time to array themselves in fresh white trousers and their best uniform coats, Mr. Glenn, the adjutant, had returned from the commandant's tent and gone straight to his own. Presently he emerged, girt with sash and sword-belt, and that meant business. No use for any one to run and hide; that merely deferred matters.
"Mr. Ross, you are hereby placed in close arrest, and confined to your tent. Charge—promoting a fight. By order of Lieutenant-Colonel Hazzard," was the pithy address he delivered to his class-mate, with precisely the same amount of emotion which he might have displayed had he informed him he was detailed for guard duty on the morrow. And yet seconders or promoters of cadet fights were by regulations regarded as challengers, and, as such, subject to court-martial and dismissal. Then he went in search of Jennings, and though that worthy did for a moment contemplate the possibility of hiding somewhere, he was too slow about it. Those who heard Mr. Glenn this time declare he threw a little more emphasis into the curt order.