As the measured tread of the steps of the students marching in military
time rang out on the porch, Harry could not restrain his feelings, and
jumped to his feet, pacing excitedly up and down his room.
For moments that seemed eternal after the sound of the tramping came, he
listened for the peremptory knock.
At last it came, and as it rang out, with significance the boy could
never forget, his heart almost stopped beating--then he was dully aware
that his aunt had gone to the door and opened it. He heard the sound of
excited voices, then it seemed as though there were a mighty crash
against the door of his room, in rushed several of the boys whom he
knew, seized him, tossed him to their shoulders and started down the
stairs, not a word having been spoken. But as he gained the outside
door, the boys assembled in the yard broke into a chant of triumph, and
with the new student still borne aloft, they retraced their steps down
the street, the rhythm of their song growing in its delirium until they
reached their society room.
But once Harry was inside the sacred precincts, guarded by the four
plastered walls, he was no longer the good fellow sought by his
schoolmates, but the victim of initiation--and before he had performed
all the stunts which were put up to him, it was early in the morning.
And when he made his way to his aunt's house, it was not the carefree
boy who had been borne forth on the shoulders of his friends, but a
youth, bedraggled, and with a more proper appreciation of his utter
insignificance in the scheme of life.
Proud to think that her nephew had been picked out for one of the
members of the secret society, Mrs. Watson sat up, with the purpose of
welcoming him when he returned home. But as hour after hour went by
without his appearing, after the manner of a woman, she began to fear
that some harm had befallen him. Accordingly, when at last she heard his
halting footsteps on the porch, she threw open the door, and greeted him
fondly.
But Harry was so used up that he failed to appreciate the tenderness of
the caress, and, realizing the fact, his aunt sent him to bed with the
injunction to sleep as late in the morning as he pleased.
Sore, indeed, was Harry when he awoke the next morning, but as he noted
the glance cast at him by the other fellows passing on the way to
school, glances in which there was a certain amount of envy, he began to
forget the ache and pain, caused by the anything but gentle thumps he
had received during his initiation, and by the time he had reached the
schoolhouse, he was quite his natural self.
But though the boy was in exuberant spirits, it did not take him long to
realize that a depression had fallen upon his society mates, and he lost
no time in trying to learn the cause.
"What is it?" he asked Paul and Jerry, as they came toward him.
"It's fierce, that's what it is," returned Jerry.
"But why don't you tell me what it is?"
"Because nobody knows _exactly_," asserted Paul.
"We'll know, though, just as soon as chapel's over," announced Jerry, in
a voice so doleful, that the last vestige of Harry's enthusiasm
vanished.
Not far into the school grounds had Harry and his companions proceeded,
before the boy had found that the gloom shared by his society brothers
was reflected in all whom he met, and though he nodded to such of the
boys and girls as he knew, when there was any response at all, it was
merely perfunctory.
"Sort of a dismal morning to hand out to a new Pi Eta, what?" exclaimed
Misery.
But Harry had become too imbued with the spirit of disaster to make any
reply, and as he took his seat in the chapel, he was as anxious-eyed as
any of the others.
The formal chapel service over, Mr. Larmore closed the Bible with
decided emphasis, and then, taking off his glasses and wiping them
nervously, he leaned over the little reading table and gazed at the
hushed students before him.
"I'm sorry, very sorry, to tell you all that there were depredations
committed last night in the physical laboratory belonging to the school.
"Several pieces of valuable experimental apparatus were destroyed.
"I believe that you all have too much understanding to make it necessary
for me to dwell upon the heinousness of such acts.
"The incident, bad as it is of itself, is particularly unfortunate in
view of the fact that there was, as I understand, an initiation in one
of the Greek letter societies last night!"
The significance of the principal's words were so unmistakable that, as
they were uttered, a gasp of shocked surprise ran through the benches of
the students.
Not one among them was there who did not know that Harry had been the
boy who was initiated, and, as if drawn by an irresistible impulse, they
turned their gaze upon him.
Again clearing his throat, Mr. Larmore started to speak, when a boy rose
from the seats occupied by the seniors.
"My name is Thomas Dawson. You know me, Mr. Larmore. So do the other
people of Rivertown and the scholars of the high school.
"I had the honor to be elected a member of the Pi Eta during my freshman
year, and, in the memory of what the society stands for in scholarship
and in manliness, in high ideals of school life, I resent most
emphatically the imputations in your remarks cast upon the initiation
into the Pi Eta society last night!"
Never before had such a defiance to the principal of the school been
made, and as the boys and girls who pursued their studies within its
brick walls heard it, they were seized with an amazement even greater
than at the words of the principal.
But the cup of their surprise was not yet filled.
Pausing a moment after his statement, that the dramatic effect of his
utterance might be the greater, Dawson exclaimed:
"In the name of the members of the Pi Eta society of Rivertown High
School, I demand to know the authority for your statement that it was
any of our members who caused the breaking of the apparatus?"