to vulgar day,
and his face flushed with timidity. He sat down with a feeling of
melancholy in his heart, as if something divine had faded out of his
life.

But Radbourn reached out his hand in the face of the whole school and
said, "First rate!" The pupils had the western love for oratory, and
several of them crowded about to congratulate him on his speech.

Bradley did not feel at all sure of his success. He had been something
alien to himself in that speech, and he could not remember what he had
said or done. He was not at all sure that he had done the right thing
or the best thing. He was suspicious of his power because he no longer
felt it. He was like a man who had dreamed of flying and woke to find
himself paralyzed. After his triumph he was the same great, awkward,
country hired-man.

"Say, look here, Talcott," said Radbourn, as they met at the door of the
chapel going out, "I'm going to propose you as a member of the Delta;
come up Monday, and I'll put you through."

"Oh, they don't want me."

"Don't be so modest. They're in need of just such men. You'll be in
demand now, no fear about that."

There was a struggle now to get him into the societies, which were,
as usual, bitter rivals. He was secretly anxious to be one of the
debaters. In fact he had counted more on that than upon all the rest of
the advantages of the school. He thought it would please _Her_ better.

He joined the Delta, over which Radbourn presided, and wore the society
pin with genuine pride. He sat for several meetings silently in his
seat, awed by the excessive formality of proceedings, and the
strictness of the parliamentary rules. It was a curious thing to see
the meeting come to order out of a chaos of wrestling, shouting,
singing members whose excess of life filled the room like a crowd of
prize-fighters.

_Rap! Rap!_ And the sound of the gavel stilled the noise as if each man
had received a blow on his head.

They took their seats while the stern president remained standing. One
final rap, and the room was perfectly quiet, and every member an
inexorable parliamentarian, ready to question decisions, or rise to
points of order at the slightest infraction of Cushing's manual.
Radbourn ruled with a gavel of iron, but they all enjoyed it the more.
Half the fun and probably half the benefit of the society would have
been lost with the loss of order.

This strenuous dignity awed Bradley for a time. His fellows seemed
transformed