"I'm sorry to see you sick, sir." "I'm not sick, Benton.

But, again, what are you doing here ?" Benton was an enlisted man who, for pay, had been accustomed to serving Dodge more or less surreptitiously.
"My enlistment ran out last week, sir.

So I quit the cavalry to try a three-year term in the hospital corps." Here was Cadet Dodge's opportunity! He bribed Benton to bring him his clothes and to promise silence.
"It would be time in a military prison for me if I told, sir; so you can be sure I'll keep still," was Benton's remark as he let the cadet out of a back door.
As he went softly in through the east sally port, Dodge noted with joy that almost nobody was around.
"I can get by without detection," he chuckled.

He did get just inside the doorway of the subdivision in which Cadets Prescott and Holmes dwelt before he attracted attention.

There he passed two yearlings.
"Is that you, Mr.Dodge ?" rather sharply demanded one of these yearlings.
"No, sir," Dodge replied in a strained voice and sped on upstairs.
"Queer," muttered one of the yearlings.