ignorant, which was wrong, of much that he might have experienced, and he bade fair to graduate a typical poler with a bad breath and an eye on Commencement stage and special honors. Sometimes, to be sure, dark questions arose in his mind, strange, shameful yearnings that caused him to read whole pages without taking in a word of it. But then, all polers have wild moments when they feel that they would rather play on the team than win the Stinnecke Scholarship, so Stacy should not have been distressed.

But sometimes it seemed to him that even those classmates whom he knew only slightly and did not understand at all, those fellows who seemed to do nothing but loaf about the campus all day and sing and shout at night, while he was running his hands through his hair and his eyes through Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," they, it seemed to him, were getting a poetry out of college life that he was missing. "But never mind," he would say to himself. "They will regret it some day. They will wish they had done as I am doing, instead of wasting golden opportunities which come but once and which glide by like ships upon the sea of life." Then he would pull his hair and start at the top of the page again. It is better to have First Group than the Glee Club.

But there were some fellows who could do both. Some fellows stood high in the class and were in with everybody besides. Why could not he be like that? This question came to him quite suddenly in junior year, and he tipped his head to one side and began to think about it. He kept on thinking.

He was still thinking about it one Sunday afternoon in chapel when big Jack Stehman, the tackle, came stalking down the aisles and threw himself down beside Stacy, and the oak creaked. He was fresh and clean and rosy from a long 'cross country tramp, and he said, "Hello, Stace," in a hearty whisper. It was not from policy like the smiling hello of a man a few pews in front, but because he felt like it. Stacy enjoyed being saluted in that way, and if the big fellow grabbed and pinched his thin leg he would beam for the rest of the hour, even though he found a blue spot there at night when he undressed in Edwards Hall.

It was because of his way of saying hello, as much as his great football record, that Stehman was one of the most popular men in college, and nobody worshipped him more than did Stacy, not even the freshman who gazed across the pews and wondered what it would be like to be on familiar terms with a man of that sort. Stacy had at one time feared that there was something sinful in his own admiration; Stehman was a fourth-group man.

He was thinking that his big class-mate looked just as strong and clean and good as during the season. Just then Timberly, in the pew behind, lay hold of Stehman's hair, drew his head back against the rail, and then rubbed his own vigorously against Stehman's. "Little Jackie's had his long locks cut, hasn't he?" he said. His teeth were gritted and there was a sweet caress in his Southern voice, for he loved his good pal Jack Stehman, though he would have called you profane things if you had accused him of it. Stehman smiled, and said, "Let go, Timber, you ass, the organ has stopped."

Little Stacy, watching this out of the corner of his glasses, said, solemnly, "I'd give my first group for that," and then bowed his head in prayer. He thought about it all through the service instead of listening as he should have done to a returned missionary who told how many widows there were in India under thirteen years of age, and other interesting things.

The next day, when he walked with Stehman from a lecture by the Dean on Robert Southey, he tried to catch his friend's tone of hello. Jack said it to about fifty men between Dickinson Hall and Reunion, and it sounded as though he were glad to see everyone of them, and he was. Stacy liked to be seen with the big fellow. But he did not blush and keep silent as in sophomore year when he was first permitted to walk with him. He tried to show everyone that he was used to it.

This time something happened. When they reached the place where the stone walks meet, in front of South Reunion, Stehman put a big hand on his shoulder, and said, "Stace, will you dine with me this evening?—Oh, yes, you can. I have an engagement in Dougal's room now. I'll yell for you on the way to the club. So long." Stacy opened his mouth and gazed after him until out of sight. Then he shut it and started for his room. This was unexpected.

He had often thought about these large swell clubs with their elective membership, and he had walked by the houses when the members were lounging out in front. He had heard snatches of songs and the click of billiard-balls from within, and he wondered what they did and said and how it looked inside. And now he was going to see one of them, the one he admired the most of all.

At his own little eating club, he and the others said that many of the club men were snobs, and declared that they would have nothing to do with them. He wondered if his friends envied them in secret, as he did. At any rate he would not dread answering them the next morning when they asked, "Where were you for dinner?"

When he reached his room he changed his necktie for a more becoming one. At least he thought it was. And he put on his new, heavy, tan shoes, like those Stehman and so many fellows wore. He would show them that he knew things. Then he sat down and wrote to his sister Fannie about it, as he did once before with a trembling hand, when he won that essay prize in Hall and came late to dinner in consequence, and all the fellows cried, "Yea-a, Stacy, Sophomore essay prize!" He had pointed out that club to Fannie when she and his mother came over at Commencement, and he had told her that Stehman was in that one. She knew who Stehman was.

Stacy little imagined that he was of so much consequence, but Stehman, the tackle, had been talking about him on Sunday evening by the club fireplace. Two of the fellows who were younger than juniors ought to be had smiled at what he said.

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