"I wouldn't let anybody slap me without getting back at him.

I guess if I did that I'd make a mighty poor soldier." At these words Captain Putnam's face became a study.

He had been on the point of reading Jack a stern lecture on the disgrace of breaking the school rules, but now he paused.

When at West Point a certain upper classman had once pulled his nose and, regardless of consequences, he had knocked the fellow down and dragged him by the heels through the dirt of the road.

He had considered himself justified in his actions, and his whole class has stood by him.