Mark started back instinctively; and Bull sneered as he saw it.
"Coward!" he repeated. "Coward! The corps shall know of this!"
Mark knew that expostulation and explanation were useless and unnecessary. He said not a word, but saw the girl safely brought to shore. And then, sad and heavy at heart, he turned and walked back toward the camp.
Bull Harris stayed, to reap the fruit of his labors. He held the half-fainting, half-hysterical girl in his arms and wiped her straying hair from her face and sought to calm her. He seemed to like his task, for when she was better he made no move to stop.
"Did he push you over?" inquired Bull, insinuatingly.
"No," cried the girl, with fierceness. "He did not. But I hate him!"
"You might say he did then!" the yearling whispered softly.
Mary Adams glanced at him with a sharp look.
"I might," she said, "if I chose. And I may. What's that to you?"
"To me!" cried Bull clinching the girl's hand in his until she cried out. "To me! I hate him! I could kill him!"
"You were rude to me once," she muttered.
"Yes," exclaimed Bull. "I was. You liked him, and I hated you for it."
That was a lie, but the girl did not choose, for some reason, to say so.
"Come," she said, striving to arise. "Help me home."
"One moment!" cried Bull, holding her back. "Promise me one thing, one thing before you go."
"I know the whole story, Mary," he said. "I know how he has treated you, how he has cast you off, made a puppet of you, and all for that Grace Fuller! You say you hate him. So do I. Promise me, promise me to be revenged if you have to die for it."
Bull took her home that night, though he was in no hurry about it. He came in after taps, for he thought it would do him good to hand in his explanation that he had been saving a girl's life, and restoring her to consciousness. A girl; perhaps a girl upon whom murder had been attempted.
He evaded all details, however, and went to his tent chuckling triumphantly at his evil work that night.
He had laid a foundation for trouble, but would success follow?
Two more surprised cadets than the two who uttered this last exclamation it would be hard to imagine. They had been sitting on a bench near Trophy Point, and one of them had been carelessly tinkling a mandolin. He had dropped the instrument and leaped to his feet. Now he was staring with open mouth at the new arrival, who bore the extraordinary tidings.