"We had Woods licked," said Connell, emphatically. "Graham had him down when the rush came. Everybody seemed to know which way to go except ourselves. We ran slap into Lieutenant Allen, and he had to stop and take my name instead of gobbling the others. Yes; we've got to go to the guard-tent, they say. There's no helping that."
This was hard news indeed. Fights are so seldom interrupted, and the system is looked upon so eminently as a matter of course, that nothing but the most outrageous luck could have led to this catastrophe; and then to think of Graham's being the victim—Graham and his second—while the real aggressors had escaped scot-free!
"Not scot-free, either," said one lucky plebe, who had seen the battle and yet escaped capture—"not scot-free, by a long chalk. Mr. Woods got one Scotch lick he won't forget in a week." Whereat some of the group took heart and laughed; and then who should appear but the adjutant, Mr. Glenn.
Geordie looked up through a fast-closing eye as he buttoned his jacket. "Hit pretty often, I guess, but I didn't notice it much at the time. What troubles me is that it's got Mr. Connell into the guard-house."
"Well, that's just what I've come to see you about," said Glenn. "Don't worry a particle. No one's more sorry you were caught than Mr. Allen himself, I'll bet. You've got to go to the guard-tent, but that's only for a few days. There's no dodging regulations, of course; but there you'll be let alone, and there'll be nobody to bother you. You've won the sympathy of the whole corps, and you did well, plebe." And here the adjutant put his hand on Geordie's shoulder. "That throw was tip-top!"
And then the assembled plebes would have been only too glad to give three cheers for the adjutant; but so big a gathering of the "animals" attracted the instant attention of their natural enemies, the yearlings, who swooped down to disperse the crowd, and the patrol came from the guard-tent, and with much show of severity the corporal directed Pops and Connell to fetch their blankets and come along.
And so, solemnly, the two culprits were marched away amid the subdued remarks of sympathy on every hand—even the group of elders about Ross—and in much better frame of mind than that magnate, for the orderly came at the moment to summon Mr. Glenn to the commandant's tent. That meant the colonel wanted his adjutant; and that probably meant that those cadets whom Allen had seen and recognized as participants in the forbidden fight were now to be placed in arrest.