shrinking young orators and the keen derisive
eyes below.

The chapel was a very imposing structure to Bradley. It was square and
papered in grey-white with fluted columns of the Corinthian order of
architecture, and that touch of history and romance did not fail of its
effect on the country boys fresh from the barn-yard and the corn-rows.
It added to their fear and self-abasement, as they rolled their slow
eyes around and upward. The audience consisted mainly of the pupils
arranged according to classes, the girls on the left and the boys on
the right. In addition, some of the towns-people, who loved oratory, or
were specially interested in the speakers of the day, were often
present to add to the terror of the occasion.

Radbourn came in with Lily Graham, talking earnestly. He was in the
same section with Bradley, a fact which did not cheer Bradley at all.
Jack Carver came in with a jaunty air. His cuffs and collar were linen,
and his trousers were tailor-made, which was distinction enough for
him. He had no scruples, therefore, in shirking the speaking with the
same indifference Nettie Russell showed.

Milton, who came in the first section, was joking the rest upon their
nervousness.

"Say, when did you eat y'r last meal?" he whispered to Bradley.

"Yesterday morning," Bradley replied, unable to smile.

All the week the members of the last section had been prancing up and
down the various rooms in boarding-houses, to the deep disgust of their
fellow students, who mixed harsh comments throughout their practice, as
they shouted in thunder tones:

"I came not here to talk. ('Then why don't you shut up?') You know too
well the story of our thraldom. ('You bet we do, we've heard it all the
week.') The beams of the setting sun fall upon a slave. ('Would a beam
of some sort would fall on you.') O Rome! Rome!"--('Oh, go roam the
wild wood.')"

All the week the boarding-house mistresses had pounded on the
stove-pipe to bring the appeal of "Spartacus to the Romans" down to a
key that would not also include all the people in the block. All to no
purpose. Spartacus was aroused, and nothing but a glaive or a
battle-axe could bring him to silence and submission. The first section
now sat smiling grimly. Their revenge was coming.

After the choir had sung, the principal of oratory, note-book in hand,
came down among the pupils, and began the fateful roll-call.

The first name called was Alice Masters, an ambitious, but t