e
represented. After the music of "Old Nassau" had ceased the curtain fell
once more. Then followed Warren as a Cornell oarsman, Gallup as a
Columbia tennis player and Tom Forrest, with a sixteen-pound hammer
behind him, poised for a throw. Forrest wore Dartmouth's colors and made
an unmistakable hit.

But the audience was agog for the next picture. Harry had devised the
tableaux and had insisted upon being allowed to appear as Vassar. And
although to Jack and Chub and Roy a girl's college had seemed out of
place on the programme, yet they were too grateful to Harry for her
assistance to think of refusing her. And when the curtain rolled up for
the last time they were all very glad they hadn't. For Harry was the
success of the evening.

She was standing two-thirds-face to the audience, a black mortar-board
cap on her head, a flowing black gown reaching to her feet and a book
under her arm. The pose was grace itself. But the crowning glory of the
picture was Harry's hair. She had coiled it at the back of her little
head, thereby adding several years to her apparent age, and the intense
light of the sizzling gas-jets made it glow and shimmer like red gold. A
very bright, happy and demure-looking Vassar student she made, and a
pretty one, too. Roy, watching from the wings, could hardly believe that
the smiling, grown-up young lady in front of him was the red-haired
little minx who had "sassed" him so sharply in the stable yard that
first day of their acquaintance!

The applause grew and grew; at the back of the hall John, the gardener,
had forgotten his awe of the surroundings and was "hurrahing" loudly,
egged on by the admiring women servants. And then suddenly the applause
gave place to cries of alarm. Persons in the front row sprang to their
feet. Those behind them pushed back their chairs and, without knowing
the cause, became imbued with the panic of those in front. Someone cried
"Fire!" and instantly the place was in an uproar.

[Illustration: "It was Roy who dashed across the stage."]

But those in the wings had seen as quickly as those in the audience, and
it was Roy who dashed across the stage, picked Harry bodily from the
dais, laid her down and crushed the flames out of her black gown with
his hands before scarcely any of the others had recovered from their
momentary panic. Harry, white-faced but silent through it all, was
helped unharmed to her feet and the curtain came down with a rush. It
had been "a na