represent practically every state in the Union.

Readers of a former series of books, "THE HIGH SCHOOL BOYS
SERIES," will not need to again be introduced to Dick Prescott
and Greg Holmes. Such readers will well remember these two
manly young Americans as members of that famous sextette,
"Dick & Co.," famous in the annals of the good old Gridley High
School.

Nor will such readers need to be told how Dick won, over the
heads of forty competitors, the nomination of Congressman
Spokes, the boy carrying all before him in a rigid competitive
examination at the Gridley High School. The same readers will
remember how Greg Holmes secured his own nomination from
Senator Frayne. This was all related in the closing volume of the
High School Series, "THE HIGH SCHOOL CAPTAIN OF THE TEAM."

Our former readers will also recall that Dave Darrin and Dan
Daizell "ran away" with the nominations for cadetships at
Annapolis, while Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton, the last of
famous Dick & Co., went West seeking their careers as young
engineers.

To be a cadet at West Point, and then to blossom out as an officer
in the Regular Army--this had long been Dick's fondest hope. Greg,
too, had caught the Army fever, and now suffered from it as
severely as Dick Prescott himself.

And now, at what seemed like the critical moment, this tedious
waiting was almost maddening.