e halls of Nu Delta; one minute
and thirty seconds after nine, and all's well in the halls of Nu Delta;
one minute and forty-five seconds after nine, and all's well in the
halls of Nu Delta," and so on for an hour. Then he was relieved by
another freshman, who took up the chant.

Nightly the freshmen had to entertain the upper-classmen, and if the
entertainment wasn't satisfactory, as it never was, the entertainers
were paddled. They had to run races, shoving pennies across the floor
with their noses. The winner was paddled for going too fast--"Didn't he
have any sense of sportsmanship?"--and the loser was paddled for going
too slow. Most of the freshmen lost skin off their noses and foreheads;
all of them shivered at the sight of a paddle. By the end of the first
week they were whispering to each other how many blisters they had on
their buttocks.

It was a bitterly cold night in late February when the Nu Deltas took
the freshmen for their "walk." They drove in automobiles fifteen miles
into the country and then left the freshmen to walk back. It was four
o'clock in the morning when the miserable freshmen reached the campus,
half frozen, unutterably weary, but thankful that the end of the
initiation was at hand.

Hugh was thankful for another thing; the Nu Deltas did not brand. He had
noticed several men in the swimming-pool with tiny Greek letters branded
on their chests or thighs. The branded ones seemed proud of their
permanent insignia, but the idea of a fraternity branding its members
like beef-cattle was repugnant to Hugh. He told Carl that he was darn
glad the Nu Deltas were above that sort of thing, and, surprisingly,
Carl agreed with him.

The next night they were formally initiated. The Nu Delta house seemed
strangely quiet; levity was strictly prohibited. The freshmen were given
white robes such as the upper-classmen were wearing, the president
excepted, who wore a really handsome robe of blue and silver.

Then they marched up-stairs to the "goat room." Once there, the
president mounted a dais; a "brother" stood on each side of him. Hugh
was so much impressed by the ritual, the black hangings of the room, the
fraternity seal over the dais, the ornate chandelier, the long speeches
of the president and his assistants, that he failed to notice that many
of the brothers were openly bored.

Eventually each freshman was led forward by an upper-classman. He knelt
on the lowest step of the dais and repeated a