Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

To them Jack turned with some heat, and observed, "You fellows make me tired. You aren't under-class men now; you're old enough to know better than to size up people by under-class man standards. Just because Stacy has not learned to swear or smoke, and because he worries and fusses and gets pale over what he came to college for, you think you have a right to laugh at him. I respect him, and I wish to the deuce I was more like him. Little Stacy is all right. And he'll be in it all right some of these days, and he'll do a great deal more good in the world than most of us."

This was the longest speech Jack Stehman had ever made, and he was duly applauded and guyed for it. But he was serious. He had a Sunday night sour on. It was junior year for Stehman also, and he too had been coming to some conclusions about his college course. But of a different kind.

It was nearly half after six when Stacy heard his friend's big voice echo across the campus. As he pattered down the stairs in his stiff, new Bluchers, he could not help wishing that Stehman had come a little earlier. Not that he was hungry, but the campus would then have been more crowded, while Stehman called, "Hello, Ray Stace."

As they passed under the lamp-post and Jack said "Hello" to somebody going in the other direction, Stacy remembered how that once he would not have believed that he should ever be walking as he was now with Stehman's big, strong arm upon his shoulder, the same arm that had brought down many a canvas jacket. But that was long ago.

When they reached the club, Stehman kicked the mud from his big, heavy shoes on the porch steps, and Stacy did the same for his bright new little ones. The door flew open and the brightly lighted interior of the club was before them. Stacy caught a glimpse of an open fire and deep, comfortable places to lounge in beside it, and some etchings on the wall. He heard knives and forks and many voices, all going at once, and laughter and exclamations. He spied a waiter hurrying in with a tray full of dishes. A little nigger boy, with innumerable buttons on his jacket, began to help him off with his overcoat, and just then he heard one voice exclaim emphatically, "Doc., I say they can't do it," and he wondered what it was and who could not do it.

Stehman said, "Come over here a moment--no, this way."

"Oh, this way?" said Stacy. He was led to a large open book with names written on it.

"Will you give us your distinguished signature?" said Stehman, dipping the pen in ink and handing it to him.

"Where shall I write--oh, yes, of course." Stacy wondered how many people would read Horatio B. Stacy, introduced by John Carter Stehman.

Though he had made up his mind to have confidence he felt a little flustered. Perhaps the voices of many diners and the sight of many rooms and various passage-ways and the negro buttons were a little too much for him. Besides his glasses were blurred at coming in from the cold and that always rattled him.

Possibly his host noticed this, for he said, "Boo, I'm cold. Let's warm up before grubbing," and led him to the fire and pushed him into a chair big enough to hold two Horatio B. Stacys.

He was perspiring now, but he held out his hand to the cheerful blaze as if to get all he could of it. He looked at the andirons and the crackling wood and glanced up at the etchings. He thought, "It must be very fine to have all this every day."

"Well, do you feel as though you could eat something?" Stehman lifted him by the coat-collar.

Stacy made answer, in a familiar tone, "I'm ready any time you are, Jack," and then to himself, "Keep cool now."

Stehman, with his hands in his pockets, led the way with his slouching football walk which the freshmen studied on the way to recitations. Stacy followed. He slouched pretty well, but his pockets were at the very top of his trousers, so that his little coat turned up behind.

They entered the bright, noisy dining-room. "Jack, why so late?" some one was calling out, when suddenly there came, "Hello, Stace." "Hello, Kay." "Hello there, Stace." "How do do, Stace." Most all of them seemed glad to see him, and he was quite overcome with answering them all. Jack showed him where to sit.

After the waiter had pushed the chair under him and he had unfolded the napkin there came in a solemn voice from the end of the table, "Horatio, how do you do this evening?"

"Why, Lint, old man, how are you?" he returned quickly in a strong tone. Then he smiled a little because Linton might be guying him. But he was not.

It seemed that many eyes were upon him and he felt embarrassed and strangely lonely because his host had turned to speak about something to someone on the other side. So he gave his glasses an unnecessary rub and took three sips of water in quick succession.

The waiter placed the soup before him, and while he was occupied with it he had time to gather himself together. Some of the fellows, he noticed over his glasses, leaned over or else slipped way down in their chairs in the same purposely reckless manner of under-classmen days. But he held his little shoulders back and used his spoon very daintily. He would show them that he had good table manners.

Stehman now began to chat with him in his easy familiar way. But the big fellow's manner always seemed to indicate that he was mindful of how much higher was Stacy's class rank than his own.

He was more at ease now, only whenever the conversation flagged he could never think up anything to renew it with. He suspected that he was blushing, and there really was no reason for blushing. These were all his own dear classmates, some of whom he knew quite well, and they all seemed kindly disposed toward him and included him in their general remarks and even addressed him sometimes in particular. He made up his mind that he must say something to Dougal Davis across the table.

He took a drink of water and wiped his lips and cleared his throat and spoke. "Dougal, have you poled up Billy's history for the written recitation?" Which was the very sort of thing he meant to avoid. But it was too late now.

"No, but I expect to put a wet towel around my head and hit it up until three o'clock to-night," Dougal answered, sincerely.

And Stacy thought he was joking. He therefore laughed, saying, "Like fun you are."

He never could tell when some of these fellows were in earnest, and Dougal Davis was something awful to him anyway because he stood higher in the class than Stacy himself, and yet had time to be mixed up with half a dozen outside interests of college life and did a comfortable amount of loafing besides.

"I suppose you have it all down fine, Stace?" asked Timberly, agreeably, "and will pound out a first group as usual."

"Naw," boldly replied Stacy, "I've barely looked at it. Don't intend to bother with it." That was the way to talk.

But it was all wasted, for just then Lamason came in with a suit-case in his hand and his town clothes on, and everybody was crying "Yea-a" in loud, shrill tones, and some one began singing "Oh, to-day is the day that he comes from the city," and all joined in, even little Stacy, though he did not know the words and blushed and closed his mouth again when any one looked in his direction.

Meanwhile Lamason, without smiling, or seeming to be aware of the noise, said, "Bring me some dinner, Henry, please," and taking a _Princetonian_ from his pocket began to read an editorial on the lack of lamp-posts on the south campus, and paid no more attention to the remarks about his good-looking clothes than to Timberly, who was painstakingly mussing up his nicely brushed hair. It impressed Stacy. Except that they no longer considered it funny to throw things or to be profane without necessity, the fellows seemed to be as free and jolly as in under-classmen days. He had supposed that there would be some dignity about a great fine elective club with white curtains at the window and a board of governors.

While beginning upon his roast beef the waiter placed a small, narrow glass by his plate. He heard the "pop" of a drawn cork behind him. He had understood that the club constitution forbade alcoholic beverages. The waiter was filling his glass. He heard something hiss and sizzle, but he did not like to look because it would be so obvious. This would be a good opportunity to show these fellows that he was not such a shark as they supposed. Still, after keeping out of temptation so many years, he did not like the idea of running the risk of becoming a drunkard now. But, perhaps, it would not be wrong to taste a little of it.

"Are you fond of Apollinaris, Ray?" asked Stehman, emptying his glass at a gulp. "I'm a disgusting guzzler of it."

"Oh, yes, I'm--I like it very much," said Stacy. Stehman asked him to have another piece of roast just to keep him company, and without giving time for answer, Stacy heard him say, "Two second, Henry--rare." Jack made him drink another bottle of Apollinaris, too, though it pricked his tongue, and he said he did not want it, and he felt that he was imposing upon his friend when he saw him write out another voucher for the amount.

Most of the table had finished by this time. They were smoking with their coffee. Those who could afford it were smoking cigars and those who had used up their credit with the Cigar Committee were solacing themselves with pipes. Some there were who did not smoke at all.

"Our crowd," Jack explained, "makes it a matter of principle never to leave the table for a half hour or so. It's good for the digestion."

Three or four of the fellows were leaning back with their heads on the backs of chairs or on one another's shoulders. One was slouching with his elbow on the table and with his other hand he played with the salt-cellars. And some looked perfectly contented and happy, and some looked grave or sour, and all were beautifully and completely indolent, and everything seemed comfortable and happy and Bohemian to Stacy, and he thought it fine to eat his dessert with the smoke floating about it.

Dougal Davis opposite was blowing fat, well-formed rings aimed at the top of Stacy's Apollinaris bottle, while Linton, without looking up, was informing him, in picturesque, though hardly complimentary language, that he had a mouth splendidly adapted to ring-blowing. Davis kept on sending rings across the table, and paid no attention. Stacy wondered whether they were on bad terms with one another. Perhaps it was rude in him to listen. They seemed so much in earnest.

It was difficult to understand these fellows. Some of them he knew to be as hard students as himself, and yet they seemed to be as much in with the crowd as the others. Someone would say something in a most impressive, sober way, and nobody seemed to notice it, or else everyone laughed. Of course he knew that what they were saying during dinner about their extreme poverty was meant humorously, even by those of the fellows who tutored or wrote for the papers to help themselves along. But what troubled him was that he could not catch the drift and join in and be like the rest of them. Once, when everybody laughed heartily, and Pope bowed his head and said, "I acknowledge that I am sat upon," Stacy laughed, too, and said "Pretty good," though he did not know what it was, and hoped that no one knew he was bluffing.

From another part of the house came the pounding of billiard-cues and a few emphatic remarks, varied at intervals with a yell or a loud laugh. In another room three or four voices were singing, perhaps unconsciously, and the strong final notes reached the dining-room. Upstairs someone was exclaiming, "I had next on that!" From the lounging room came the notes of a piano, and Stacy said, "That 'Pilgrim's Chorus' is a beautiful thing, isn't it, Jack?" for Stacy knew.

He had enjoyed his dinner, and was perfectly self-possessed. He could look about the room at everyone without flinching. Henry brought the coffee in very pretty cups, with the club design on them. The buttons came in at Stehman's ringing. "Jackson, get me a ---- Ray, you don't smoke, do you?"

"Oh, yes, I do," Stacy replied.

"Oh, I beg your pardon--bring some Perfectos, Jackson--please pardon me, I forgot entirely that you smoked. I must have mixed you up with someone else. I thought sure you did not smoke."

He seemed so cut up about it and his voice so pathetically apologetic that Stacy felt sorry for him, and had to say, "That's all right, Jack. You see I have just begun. That is, I haven't been smoking very long, you know, on account of my eyes." But he hoped the others did not hear.

"Will you have a cigarette first?" Stehman asked.

"No, I prefer a cigar," said Stacy, in a fine, deep voice. Stehman lighted a cigarette.

Horatio had never smoked but one cigar before, and he was not certain about how much of the end to bite off. But it seemed to draw all right when the buttons held a match for him. It did not make him feel the least bit sick. He thought he held it between his first and second fingers rather well.

His host began to talk about the Dean's English again, and Stacy changed the subject. Of course Jack meant it out of consideration for him, but Stacy could talk about other things than his studies. Presently Jack began again. "What collateral reading are you doing in the Public Law course, Ray---- What's that you're saying, Timber?"

"Oh, nothing," said Timberly, smiling satirically. "We are just amused a little bit at your posing as a heavy poler. That's all."

But Jack only frowned, and turned again to Stacy, who knew the others were paying attention, and so made answer, "Don't intend to read anything. I've quit taking notes on the lectures, too. A syllabus at the end of the term will have to do me." That ought to show them.

Nobody said anything for a moment, and when he looked up he could not tell from their faces what they thought of his remark, though Linton seemed to wear a quizzical smile. But then that fellow always seemed to be sneering or else looking oblivious.

Then Smith, who was a track athlete, went on with his conversation with Pope. He was venturing the opinion that Princeton's prospects for the spring were poor. He was a young man who thought he had a dignity, and he liked to have people pay attention to what he said. He had reason to suppose that his opinions on athletics amounted to something. So he was rather astonished, as were Stehman and the rest of the table, when Stacy's high voice burst in with, "No, now, you don't mean it, Smithie. You are joking, aren't you?" There was no reason why he should not be familiar and play horse like the rest.

At first there was such a pause that he felt himself blush, and he feared he had offended Smith, who had stopped talking and was blushing a little, too. Then suddenly Timberly burst out with a snorting laugh, and then Davis and then the whole crowd, even Linton, and Stacy himself, because he had made such a hit, laughed modestly, though still blushing, at which they all laughed still more. He did not know it was so funny as all that. That was not half as witty as he could be, as he would show them.

But just then Stehman interrupted and claimed attention. "Timber," he called down the table, "I heard a new one to-day on Jimmie McCosh." Stehman then told a story about the Doctor's falling on the slippery stones on McCosh walk, and what he said when he could not get up. Like most imitations of dear old Jimmie's Scotch, Stehman's sounded like a poor Irish brogue. It was not a very good story, but the fellows imagined how it would sound if told well, and then laughed because it was good old Jack Stehman. Stacy thought he could do better than that.

Everything was quiet. Now was the time. He cleared his throat. "Say, fellows, this is the way the president talks in chapel." His voice was high and unnecessarily loud. He arose and took hold of the lapels of his little coat and raised his brows and compressed his lips and looked side wise through his glasses and repeated very quickly in a strange voice, "The seven Arabic numerals do not form a sufficient basis for crystallization about which the cardinal virtues may cluster." Then he promptly sat down and began to puff vigorously upon his big cigar.

The fellows smiled surprisedly and looked at each other. Then they laughed. They stopped a moment; then one by one they began to laugh again, as if the thing were growing on them. Finally they roared and kept on roaring.

At home they always applauded when he got that off, although his mother thought it wrong in him, but they did not pound on the table and scream and slap each other on the back, as these fellows were doing now. It must have been because this audience was more familiar with the original. But he hardly heard them.

"Say, fellows, I'll tell you the story of the little boy who stole the jam!" he exclaimed, excitedly. Before Stehman and one or two others of this same crowd he had tried once in freshman year to tell this same story, and failed for lack of courage. He was not the least bit frightened this time.

He leaned back in his chair and imitated the boy's voice and blew smoke between sentences and gesticulated with the cigar in his hand; and when he had finished everyone pounded and screamed and applauded as before, while he only shut his lips tight and tried to look serious, as all good _raconteurs_ should. Would not this be fine to write to Fannie about?

"Good! Good!" they were shouting to him. "Give us another, Stace. You're a good one. Do the Dr. Patton act again. These fellows haven't seen it."

"No, we haven't seen it. Let her go."

Stacy raised his eyes from the table-cloth. Those of the juniors that had left and some of the seniors, hearing the racket, had come in to see what was up. The piano had ceased. Fellows were pushing into the room with cues in their hands and their coats off. Some of them were sitting on the table. Some had their arms about one another's shoulders. Leaning against the door-post, with a pipe in his mouth and a merry twinkle in his eye, stood a senior named Bangs, whom Stacy, in freshman year, feared more than anything on earth. He had never, until this moment, forgiven him.

Before Bangs and over half the active membership of the club did little Stacy, who used to cross the street to avoid being looked at, jump up on a chair and with greater gusto than ever, with his funny little mouth twisted up, with his voice strained to produce a peculiar resonance, repeat part of a sermon once preached by the president of the college. And when he had finished, his hearers were doubled up on the floor with laughter.

Throughout all this Stehman alone seemed unappreciative. He laughed in a nervous way. Once he said, "Let's go sit by the fire." Could it be possible that his good friend Jack, who was accustomed to being the most popular, was--no, he would not think that of him.

"Do something else," they were crying. "Go on. Go on. Please!"

If he wanted to he could double them up once more, this time with an imitation of Jimmie Johnson's stuttering, but he absolutely declined. He knew that brevity was the soul of wit. "Stacy, you ought to go on the stage!" one of the seniors exclaimed.

But he only answered, "Naw. That don't amount to anything. Shoot." And then they all began laughing once more at the mere remembrance of it.

Jack arose to go. Stacy picked up the huge cigar, which had gone out, and jamming it firmly between his teeth, strode after his host. He walked past the fellows, who were still laughing, as modestly and with as unconscious an expression as Jack Stehman himself wore on the football field when running back to his place after making a touch-down and the crowd was cheering.

In the hall he said, "I think I'll have to go now, Jack." His voice was joyously nervous. He could not hold in much longer.

"Must you go, Ray?"

"Yes. I must finish a letter. Good-night, Jack, old man. I've had a bully time."

The buttons was helping him on with his coat, and he repeated, "Good-night, Jack, old man. I've had a bully time." His voice nearly broke.

Then the door closed, and Stehman, who was angry, turned toward the convulsing crowd by the fire and said, in a calm voice, "I greatly admire what you fellows have done this evening. You are indeed typical Princeton men. Oh, you have the true spirit."

"Fine poler, your quiet, inoffensive, young friend," some one rejoined with a chuckle.

"Not ashamed--as you were reminding us the other night--not ashamed of being a poler either," said the fellow Stehman had jumped on for being a kid.

"Wow!" cried Bangs, with a groan of laughter. "I haven't had so much horse since sophomore year."

Then Linton spoke. "Jackie, dear, don't look that way. It's not nice. And do not chew a rag because your little poler did not develop as you wanted him to. You must learn to part with your ideals----"

"And, Jack, you must admit," interrupted Davis, "that it was absurdly comical. It was mean to laugh, but how could we help it? His standing up there and kicking up his poler antics, like an old cow, and thinking all the time that he was----"

The rest was cut short by Stehman's bringing his big fist down upon a table by the window. "But, Dougal," he thundered, "that doesn't make any difference. He was my guest. Because he tried to bring himself down to our tone you fellows let him make a fool of himself, and sat there and laughed at him, like a set of snobs. Jackson, get my coat."

"You needn't talk so loud," growled a sarcastic-faced post-graduate. "The people across the street don't care to hear about it."

"Don't go away with your back up, Jack," Linton shouted after him good-naturedly. "And you need not worry about little Stacy. The best time he ever had in college was with us snobs here to-night, and he's probably chuckling to himself now on his way across the campus about the big tear he made."

But little Stacy was not doing anything of the sort. One of his new Blucher shoes had come untied when he had jumped up on the chair to do the president act, and he stopped to tie it by the light of the club window. And it was wide open.

THE HAZING OF VALLIANT

This story begins with a girl. She was small and had a nose that turned up and a quiet appreciation of the ridiculous. All summer long she sat on the sand without a veil and was nice to two little boys in clean duck trousers and buzz-saw hats which blew off sometimes.

One of these was eighteen years old and had a complexion that women envied and felt like kissing. He was small and dainty and smelt like good soap. His name was Valliant. The other was a little older, considerably bigger, and much more self-assertive. Except for his duck trousers he wore orange and black with his class numerals on everything. That might have made but little difference. But the girl decided that she would like it more if they would become angry for her sake, which they one day did.

After that whenever the little one was alone with her his voice was soft and his manner thoroughly abject. She liked this. She liked his sweet-and-cleanness also. The other, whose name was Buckley, had an untamed, defiant way of tossing his shoulders, like an unbroken stallion. She liked that still more. When she sat out dances with him, she put him where the arc-light on the veranda would play upon his eyes, which were good, and talked about the other boy's nice manners.

Best of all she liked to have both about her at once. The sophomore breathed lungfuls of cigarette smoke and told her how hard his class would haze the freshman in the fall, and how cold the canal was on a frosty night, while the sub-freshman only gazed out over the legs and arms splashing and gleaming in the surf, and tried to smile in a way to show Buckley that he was not taking offence. For what could a sub-freshman do?

Then the girl would poke the end of her red parasol in the sand and say: "I think it would be just too mean of you to haze Mr. Valliant. He is such a good friend of mine." This was because it is woman's nature to take the part of the weak and oppressed.

But one day the sophomore made a remark about "pretty pink-cheeked boys," which had been better left unsaid. Then arose the younger one and shaking impressively a slender, pink-nailed finger, he spoke. "You had better not try to haze me, Will Buckley. Do you hear what I say?" Which was the very worst thing he could have said. Besides it was decidedly fresh.

But he was very much in earnest and quite angry and his young voice broke in the middle. The sophomore laughed mirthfully and the girl became genuinely sorry for a moment, despite the humor of the situation; and as she watched his dainty legs retreating over the dunes toward the cottages it repented her of having stirred up enmity between the two, and she resolved from that day to make up for it. This she did by being always good to the little one in the presence of the big one, which seems short-sighted in her.

Thus did one small girl amuse herself throughout the week, and then, when Saturday evening came and the children were left to burn cigarettes by themselves, she entertained the men with it, who came down to spend Sunday. For her nose turned up and she was good at mimicry. She won't be mentioned again.

* * * * *

In the glorious old days of untrammelled class activity when everyone recognized that there were certain duties owed the freshman by the sophomore class, as Hall talk was due them from the upper-classmen (another good old custom now defunct), you had only casually to drop word to a freshman on the way to recitation to wait for you when night came, back of Witherspoon--as you would bid a classmate come to a spread in your room--and he would turn up promptly and smilingly, take his little dose meekly and cheerfully, and go to bed a better boy for it and brag about it every time he dined out in Christmas holidays. But all that is changed now.

Even in the days of which this is written, which were only comparatively modern times, one had to play a very careful game to do any hazing. The freshman was beginning to hesitate about putting out his light when you yelled up at him from the street. People were putting strange notions in his head. He was beginning to think he had a personality. They were telling him he had rights. The old glory had departed along with Rushes and Midnight Cane Sprees and Horn Sprees and Fresh Fires to make room for a University spirit and linen shirts. At the present rate of retrogression--mark the prediction--it will not be many years before the freshman will be allowed to wear the orange and black and the sophomore a silk hat! When that day comes, may it be that a certain Old Grad. will have attended his last reunion.

Twice had Buckley waited near the house where Valliant ate his dinner. But it's quite light after dinner in September. He had gone to the house where he roomed, and asked the landlady if any of the gentlemen wanted to join the Y. M. C. A. But that, like the _Nassau Lit._ and _Princetonian_ subscription-list-game, had been played out; the door was closed in his face. Then for three successive nights he waited in an alley near by, and on the third night the freshman came. But with him an upper-classman friend.

Buckley said things and kept in the shadow. But the freshman had good eyes and said as he took out his keys, "Oh, is that you, Mr. Buckley? Why, how do you do? Aren't you coming up to see me?" That was horribly fresh.

"Not now," Buckley growled. "Which is your room?" Excusing himself from the upper-classman, who was enjoying all this, the freshman led Buckley into the alley-way, and pointed up at the wing of the house. It was a large one and many people lived in it. "That room up there next to the one with a light in it. See?" he said in polite, friendly tones. This was decidedly fresh.

Buckley said he would come up later on in the evening, which, of course, he had no intention of doing, and saying "Good-night" good-mannerly enough, he slinked off, and the freshman took his friend up the stairs, which smelled of damp carpets.

The next night Buckley got his gang together. They blew smoke in one another's faces and decided that a little exhibition of oarsmanship in a basin of water with toothpicks would do to warm up with. Then a cross-country jaunt would be appropriate, running, walking, and crawling to the canal. Here, as the freshman was proud of his shape, he would be given an opportunity of displaying it while the moon reflected in the water. And, if he felt cold after that, he could climb a telephone pole for exercise--they didn't want to be inconsiderate of his comfort--and sing "Nearer my home to-day, to-day, than I have been before," at the top of it. Then with a few recitations and solos on the way back he could be put to bed. This would be a good night's work.

It was nearly two o'clock when they carried the ladder into the alley-way. They laid it down in silence.

For several reasons this was to be a right nervy go. A young professor and his young wife had a suite of rooms in the house. But it wasn't that which troubled them. This was. The moon shone full and strong upon the clear, blank wall of the house, and it was in plain view from a certain spot a distance of about two blocks away. Across this spot a certain owl-eyed proctor was pretty sure to pass and repass off and on all night.

That was the reason they were sitting on the ladder waiting for a signal from Colston, who was over by the certain spot watching for the certain proctor.

"Buck, which is the freshman's room?"

"It was the one next to the light and the light was in the room over the side-door."

"Second or third story?"

"Sist! not so loud. Why, let's see, the third."

"Yes," said Haines, "don't you see the window's open up there. None of the family would do that. Town people would never air----"

"Listen!"

A whistle came from the silent distance, the first bar from "Rumski Ho," then a silence, then the same bar repeated. And by this they knew that the proctor had walked into the open space and out of it again, and that if they hurried they could put the ladder against the house, send a man up it and take it away again before the proctor crossed the open space once more.

Buckley started up. The others leaned against the bottom round to steady it. Then he came back for a moment. "Don't take it away until I get all the way in--until I wave my hand. There's plenty of time. Keep cool," he whispered, as he nimbly began his ascent. For his descent he was to rely upon the stairs, the freshman, and his own persuasive powers, for what are freshmen and stairs made for?

Buckley was a right devilish young man, and typically a sophomore. The year before he had climbed the belfry of old North and stolen the bell-clapper and gained class-wide renown. Already this term he had mounted the water-tower and painted the freshman numerals green. The very night before this he had run around the eaves of Reunion, which is no easy trick, with "Bill," the night proctor, behind him, and when he dropped off the bottom round of the fire-escape into the arms of another proctor, he had wriggled out again. Still there are sensations peculiar to scaling a ladder stretching toward the black of an open window, with a moon throwing shadows of yourself and the rounds of the ladder against the dull bricks of an old-fashioned house, while old North strikes two in the distance. Buckley felt them.

The ladder did not quite reach, and he had to stand on the top round and stretch for the sill. Then he pulled himself up, got one foot over, took a longer grip on the inside of the window, dragged the other foot up, as you would climb a high board fence, and was in the room with both feet. He leaned out and waved his hand. The top of the ladder silently swung out from the wall and swooped down in silence. Buckley turned and started across the room.

He could feel the heavier atmosphere of indoors. A small clock was ticking somewhere. He detected a faint scent of mouchoir powder, and was just remarking to himself half consciously that it was just like that pretty-faced freshman, when from somewhere there came a soft voice, saying, "Is that you, dear?"

Then, before all the blood near his backbone had time to freeze into little splinters of ice, he said, "Shsss," and stepped out of the moonlight and into the shadow, which is the best thing to do in case you are ever in a similar situation. Buckley's instinct made him do it.

Across the silence the soft voice floated again and mingled with the moonlight, "Oh, I'm not asleep. But why did you stay so long, Guy, dear?" There was another sound. It was the squeaking of a bed-spring.

Then, as Buckley's knees stiffened tight against each other, he spied coming toward him something white, with two black streaks hanging half way down, which as the thing came into the moonlight, he saw to be long braids of dark hair. Also, the light showed a tall, slender figure clothed in but one garment, which was white, and a face which was young and beautiful. Buckley had never seen a woman dressed that way before, and he closed his eyes.

But he felt it coming nearer and nearer. He stood up perfectly straight and rigid in the darkness as two arms reached up and met about his neck. The arms were soft, and they smelt good.

Buckley did not budge, and the soft voice began, in a sort of whisper, "You have not forgiven me yet?" It began to sob, and he felt the sobbing against his orange and black sweater. "You know I did not mean it. Won't you--forgive her? Won't you forgive--her?" And Buckley fully realized that he was in the thick of some romantically ghastly mistake, and that the only thing he could do to make it worse would be to speak or show his face.

For fully half a minute he stood thus motionless, with his arms at his sides, gathering himself together, and trying to think what to do. And when he had made up his mind what to do he gritted his teeth and put both arms about the Clingy Thing.

And when he had done that the Clingy Thing began to purr in soft, plaintive tones, which undoubtedly were sweet, and would probably have been appreciated by Buckley if he had not been so rattled. "Tell me that you _do_ forgive me. Say it with your own lips."

Buckley said nothing with his lips. He was biting them.

"Guy, speak to me!"

Buckley didn't.

"Speak to me, my husband!" A soft, fragrant hand came gently up along his cheek, which tingled, and over his eyes, which quivered, and pushed back the hair from his brow, which was wet. Suddenly she raised her head, gave one look at his face with large, startled eyes, then, with a shuddering gasp, she recoiled.

But Buckley was not letting go. This is what he had been preparing for. Keeping one arm about her waist he threw the other around the neck in such a way that he could draw it tight if necessary, and said in one breath, "For heaven's sake, don't scream--I can explain!"

"Ugh! Oh, let go! Who--let me go or I'll screa-ch-ch-ch."

But Buckley didn't let her do either. He pressed on the windpipe, feeling like three or four kinds of murderers as he did so. Then, as she struggled with feeble, womanly might, Buckley did the fastest thinking he had ever done in all his nineteen years. The door of the room--was it locked? The stairs--where were they? The front door--was the night-latch above the knob? Was it below? Would it stick? All this time she would be screaming, and the house was full of men. He would be caught. He was in for something. But was he hurting her? He began to talk.

"Oh, please, if you scream it'll only make things awfully awkward. I got in here by mistake. I can explain. I'm not going to hurt you. Oh, please, keep quiet."

She tried again to wrench away from his grasp, and Buckley drew her back with ease, feeling half sorry for her poor little strength. "Promise me you'll not cry out and I'll let go."

"Yes, yes, I promise," said the scared voice. "Anything. Only let me go."

Buckley released his grasp. She fled across the room. He thought she was making for the door. He sprang toward it to keep her from running downstairs and arousing the house. But she only snatched up an afghan or something from the sofa, and holding it about her retreated to the dark part of the room.

Buckley couldn't see her now, but he heard her moan, "Oh dear, oh dear!" in a muffled tone, and he felt that she must be cowering in the corner farthest away from him, and it made him have all sorts of contempt for himself. Then he talked again, standing with his back against the door and looking toward the dark. "I don't know who you are," he began in a loud, nervous whisper, "but whoever you are, I wish you wouldn't cry. Please be calm. I want to talk to you."

"I don't want to hear you--I don't want to hear you."

"Not so loud, or we'll be heard."

"Oh, oh, how can you trade upon my necessity? Haven't you a grain of manhood, a spark of kindness in you----"

"Yes, yes, lots," said Buckley. "Listen to me. Please listen. It's all a big mistake. I thought I was coming to my own room----"

"Your own room!"

"I mean my classmate's room--I mean I thought a freshman roomed here. I wouldn't have made the mistake for anything in the world. You aren't half as sorry I got in your room as I am--Oh, yes, you are!--I mean I'm awfully sorry and wish to apologize, and I hope you'll forgive me. I didn't mean anything----"

"Mean anything!"

"Really I didn't. If you'll only let me go down and promise not to wake the house before I get out, why, no one will ever know anything about it, and I'll promise not to do it again. I'm awfully sorry it happened." Buckley started for the door.

"Mrs. Brown--Mr. Brown, help! murder!"

"Oh, for heaven's sake don't!" cried Buckley.

"I will. Just as soon as I get breath and strength enough I mean to wake the house, the neighbors, the whole town if I can."

"No, you won't!" Buckley started across the room.

"Stop!" she cried.

He stopped. The voice was commanding. It seemed already quite strong enough to scream. He said: "You promised not to scream."

"But you forced me to promise."

"Are you going to scream?"

"I am." She was getting her breath.

"Oh, don't; please don't. If I wanted to, I could hurt you. I don't want to hurt you. Ah, have pity on me!"

The bold, bad sophomore was down on his knees, with his hands clasped toward the dark, where the voice came from. He was very sorry for himself.

"You stay right there in the moonlight."

"Right here?"

"Right there. And if you dare to move, I'll scream with all my might."

Buckley first shivered and then froze as stiff as if a hair-trigger rifle were pointing at him. "How long must I stay here?" he asked, without moving his head.

"Until my hus-- Until daylight," returned the voice.

"Until daylight!" repeated Buckley. There was something impressive in the deep, rich voice of this tall young woman, and whoever she was, Buckley could tell, from the refined tones, that she was a lady. He could just make out the gleam of her face and of one arm in the dark corner.

Outside, the crickets were scratching in the warm, still night. It was after two o'clock. A moon was shining in his left eye. And he, William Buckley, was kneeling, with his hands stretched imploringly toward a girl whom he had never seen before, in the third story of an old-fashioned Princeton house, which he had entered for the first time by a ladder which, by this time, was resting serenely against a freshly painted house in Mercer Street, whither it had been borne by four classmates, who were now at the corner of Canal and Dickinson Streets, as per agreement, and cursing him for taking such a long time to pull one small freshman out of bed. Meanwhile, the moon was approaching the window-post.

"Please, oh, please, whoever you are," he began, in earnest, pleading tones, "won't you forgive me, and let me go?"

There was no answer.

"I am a gentleman. Indeed I am! I wouldn't harm a girl for the world. Please let me go. I'll be fired--I mean expelled from college for this. I'll be disgraced for life. I'll----"

"Stop!" The voice seemed to be calm now. "While it may be true that you did not break into my room with intent to rob or injure a defenceless woman, yet, by your own confession, you came to torment a weaker person. You wanted to haze one of the freshmen in this house; that was it. And when my husband----"

"Oh, have mercy on me. Won't you have mercy?" Then he began to tell her what a good boy he had always been, and how he had always gone to church, and how fond his mother was of him, and that he was the pride and ambition of the family, and similar rot, showing how completely scared to death he was. "Just think what this means to me," he concluded. "If I'm fired from college, I'll never come back. I'll be disgraced for life. All my prospects will be blighted, my life ruined, and my mother's heart broken."

She gave a little hysterical sob, as if the strain were too great for her. "Yes, for your poor mother's sake; yes, go!" she exclaimed.

"Oh, thank you with all my heart. My mother would, too, if she could know. I don't deserve to be treated so well. I shall always think of you as my merciful benefactress. I can never forgive myself for causing you pain. Oh, thank you."

Buckley, the sophomore, who had strode into that room so manfully, in the full pride of his sophomorish strength and orange and black, grovelled across the room and out of the door, then tip-toed his way down the hall stairs, silently pulled back the latch of the front door, and sneaked off, with his tail between his legs.

The outside air did him good, and by the time he reached his impatient class-mates he had thought up a fairly good lie about the freshman's being ill, quite seriously ill, and about his stopping to look after him a bit, which they admitted was the only thing to do under the circumstances, though it was blamed hard lines, after all the trouble they had taken. "Better luck next time, Buck," they said, and went to bed.

By the ten o'clock mail next morning Buckley received a letter in strange handwriting. It said: "Just as a tall woman looks short in a man's make-up, so does a short man look tall in a woman's make-up, and you should know that blondes are hard to recognize in brunette wigs. I could have done more artistic acting if you had come up earlier, when I had on my full costume. You ought to know that a real girl wouldn't have behaved quite that way. You see you still have a number of things to learn, even though you are a soph. Sort of hard luck, all this, isn't it, old man? Hoping that the rouge will wash off your lips and that you will learn to forgive yourself, I am your merciful benefactress, H. G. Valliant."

This is the freshest thing I ever heard of.

There was a P. S. which said: "Whether or not this thing gets out rests entirely with you and your hazing friends."

Of course it did get out, as all such things do; but Valliant was not bothered again by sophomores, though he ought to have been hazed up and down and inside-out and cross-wise by the whole college.

You can see him if you attend the next production of the Dramatic Association.

HERO WORSHIP

Near Old Chapel he used to linger on the way from recitations, buying things from old black Jimmie and pretending to be amused by his stuttering conversation while he watched the passers-by. And when The One came along for whom he waited, he said to himself, "Oh, he's wearing his brown shooting-coat to-day," and turned and gazed after him until out of sight, wondering what lecture he had at that hour and how he would get along at it. Then passing on slowly across the campus he turned out upon the street.

When he reached his room, Darnell said to another freshman that lived in the house, "I saw Lawrence to-day. He was walking with his arm around Nolan. He passed right by me." And he could also have told just how he nodded to the fellows along the walk and how he swung his legs. Darnell thought that Lawrence's gait was just right. So was his manner of dressing. Somehow Darnell could not make his corduroy coat hang in that way. It lay back all right, but it would not stay snugly up on his shoulders as Lawrence's did.

He used to see him quite often now, for by this time he had learned at what hours Lawrence's lectures came. Which was more than the senior himself knew, for he had always to look at the schedule tacked up on the back of the door over the faculty and absence committee summonses.

Darnell remembered the first time he saw Lawrence. It was on the morning of the first day of the term, while he was sitting in the office of the old Nassau Hotel, quietly waiting for his mother and trying not to appear green and thinking that everyone who came in was a sophomore and wanted him. It was raining, he remembered, and people came scurrying in with their trousers turned up and mackintoshes on. Lawrence came in alone.

He came with his impressive stride and a very long paddock coat and a new kind of shooting-cap which he brought back with him from Piccadilly the first of the month. He frowned and glanced about the room. And when he found the two faces he was looking for and strode across to where a worried-faced gentleman in a silk hat was reading the paper beside a freshman with a grinning face, he said, holding out his hand, "So you have arrived." It was just the patrician tone of voice that Darnell had expected when he saw the face.

When Lawrence stretched out his hand his long coat fell open and disclosed an orange monogram of many closely intertwined letters shining against the black of his undercoat. It was worked upon the breast-pocket, and the freshman wondered what that mysterious insignia might mean.

He watched him as he jerked his head and blew smoke in the damp air. The way he tossed the ashes away was perfect. And when Lawrence suddenly turned and, looking frankly in the freshman's father's eyes, said with a reserved smile, "You need not worry about that, Mr. Jansen," and stretched an arm about the freshman's shoulder, Darnell thought he would rather be that freshman than anyone in the world--except the owner of the arm.

Then he began to speak again, and Darnell found himself leaning forward a little. He remembered thinking, "I don't care if it is impolite to listen."

Lawrence said in a rapid manner, without opening his teeth very wide, "The team? We brought them down from the island last evening. Sea air is a good tonic to begin a season's training with, and they are all in excellent shape. Billy, you must bring your father down to the field to see my big brown babies." Darnell remembered every word, though he did not understand quite what it meant at the time.

Soon after getting settled he took pains to pick up an acquaintance with this freshman. That was the time he first found out that the senior was one of the Lawrences. The freshman said, "Yes, he's a mighty fine fellow. He played on his class eleven in his freshman year." But that was all Jansen said. He did not enthuse as he should have. He had no more than the ordinary fear and reverence of a freshman for a senior. There was a man on the team named Stehman. He was the one this freshman turned and gazed after on the campus.

But now Darnell knew more about him than Jansen did. From the last year's "Bric-a-brac" he had learned the senior's club and what committees he was on, and the book opened up now, of its own accord, to the picture of the Glee Club. He could have told you Lawrence's middle name and his street and number at home, and his campus address as well. Whenever the freshman went to night session of Hall he looked up as he went by to see if the room in West were lighted, and he wondered what he was doing up there behind those curtains. Once, while passing by, some one was calling "Hello-o-o, Harry Lawrence!" and in Lawrence's own voice came a muffled "Hello! Come up." It did not seem quite right for them to be noisy and familiar with Lawrence as with ordinary fellows. He did not understand how Lawrence allowed it.

* * * * *

In Jansen's room it was, and Old North was ringing curfew, when Lawrence shook his hand and said in his peculiar throaty voice, "Glad to know you," or else "Glad to meet you." He never could be certain which it was. It was on a Tuesday evening, and he had made a poor recitation in algebra that day. He noticed that Lawrence was only about an inch taller than himself.

Darnell looked straight back at him and said, "I think I have heard my sister speak of you, Mr. Lawrence. She met you down here at the sophomore reception last June." His voice was perfectly firm and strong, but his mouth persisted in drooping a little at the corners. He could not help that.

Lawrence said, "Yes, I remember very well," which delighted the freshman's sister Louise, when Darnell wrote to her about it, just as much as if it had been true. "Is your sister coming down to any of the dances this year?" added the senior.