Now here was a question. Woods had all the advantage of the year's splendid gymnastic training, under as fine a master as the nation could provide. Every muscle and sinew was evenly and carefully developed. He was lithe, quick, active, skilled with foil, bayonet, and broadsword, and fairly well taught with the gloves. He had borne himself well in the two or three "scrimmages" of his plebe year, and the Third Class were wellnigh unanimous in their prediction that he'd "make a chopping-block of that plebe." Geordie was bulkier than his foeman, a splendid specimen of lusty health, strength, and endurance; but he lacked as yet the special training and systematic development of the yearling.
"Take 'em a year from now," said Mr. Ross, "and there's no question but that Woods'll be outclassed; but to-day it makes one think of Fitz-James and Roderick Dhu."
And so the afternoon wore away, and the excitement increased. Jennings was in his glory.
"It'll be a beauty," was the way he expressed himself. "That plebe's a plucky one. I may have to give him a lesson myself yet." And he bared his magnificent arm, and complacently regarded the bulging biceps.
"If it's two years from now when he tries it on," remarked Mr. Otis, when Jennings's remarks were repeated to him, "may I be there to see! It's my belief Mr. Jennings will get a lesson he richly deserves."
Despite every effort to keep the details secret, nine-tenths of the corps knew that the fight was to come off in Fort Clinton during supper-time, and such was the eagerness to see the affair that, despite the urgings of Mr. Ross, the referee, and Mr. Jennings, no less than thirty or forty old cadets fell out after parade, as they were then allowed to do in case they did not care to go to the mess-hall. It was a hot night, too, and so short was the time between evening-gun fire and the opening waltz that many of the corps were in the habit of "cutting supper." The thinned ranks of the battalion, therefore, conveyed no meaning to the officer in charge. Jauntily the gray and white column went striding away across the Plain, drums and fifes playing merrily. Pops never hears the jolly notes of "Kingdom Coming" now without feeling again the throbbing of his heart as he quickly doffed his gray trousers and donned a pair of white, so as to be in uniform with the older cadets, Connell doing the same. Benny and Foster, though mad with excitement, had been ordered to go to supper. The absence of so many from one table would have aroused suspicion. One or two plebes in C and D Companies determined to be on hand to see Graham through, though rare indeed are there cases of unfair play. They had borrowed old dress-coats and white trousers. Mr. Ross had duly seen to it that at a certain moment the sentries on Three and Four should be at the distant end of their respective posts and facing away from Fort Clinton, and as the battalion disappeared down the leafy avenue by the "Old Academic," Mr. Otis came to Graham's tent.