going to see her, if I have to fight
my way in."

"And be arrested. No, that's not the way, Badger. I'll see Elsie and
Inza this evening, and we'll find out something definite."

"You have helped me before in this matter, Merry!" the Kansan gratefully
exclaimed.

"And am ready to do so again. I feel more certain now than I did then
that Winnie is not in danger of throwing herself away on you. Pardon me
for speaking so plainly."

"Oh, it's all right!" the Westerner admitted, though his face colored.
"I used to be a dog when I boozed round, and that's what Fairfax Lee has
against me now, of course. He thinks I am the same. But I've sworn off
on the stuff, and you know it."

"I'll have a talk with the girls, and well see then how the land lays,
and what can be done."

"It will be a favor--the biggest favor, I reckon, that any man ever
received."

A number of voices were shooting Merriwell's name in the campus.

"You'll have to go, I allow," said the Westerner, gripping Merriwell's
hand. "But the first news you get send it to me. Don't stop for expense,
or anything else. Send it along--cab, telephone, telegraph, special
messenger, or a dozen, if there's danger one may not reach me--anything,
just so you whoop the news to me. I'll be walking barefooted on cactus
spines every minute from now until you make some kind of a report."

Merriwell returned to the campus, where Yale tradition was gathering the
members of the junior class back of the fence, near Durfee Hall.

The ceremony of "slapping" is peculiar in many respects. No official
announcement is made of the fact that this formal and queer manner of
announcing elections to the senior societies is enacted. No announcement
of the coming event is given to the public. The members of the junior
class are not notified by any one that they are expected to appear on
that spot by the fence at a certain time to be ready to be "slapped," if
they have been lucky enough to be chosen for membership in the great
senior societies. Nevertheless, the entire junior class, with half the
college, and hundreds of spectators from the city, gather there on the
third Thursday afternoon in May, between the hours of four and six
o'clock, and witness or participate in the spectacle.

"Slates" had been made up weeks before, and shrewd guesses given as to
who would be chosen to this society and to that, though it was all mere
guesswork. Nearly every one had agreed, however, that Merriwel