e application and determination that wins all
things.

Landers' nature though was that of the born combatant. The class that
laughed openly at his first tremblingly bashful, and ludicrously inapt
answer at quiz, was indelibly photographed upon his memory.

"Before this session is complete--" he challenged softly to himself,
and glared at those members nearest him in a way that made them
suddenly forget the humor of the situation.

But youth is ever tractable, and even this short time had accomplished
much. Already the warm, contagious, college comradeship possessed him.
Violent attacks of homesickness that made gray the brightest fall
days, like the callous spots on his palms, were becoming more rare.
The old existence was already a dream, as yet a little sad, but none
the less a thing without a substance. The new life was a warm,
magnetic reality; the future glowed bright with limitless promise.

"The first day of the second month," remarked Landers, meeting a
fellow-classman on the way to college hall one morning.

"Yes, an auspicious time to quit--this," completed the student with a
suggestive shuffle of his feet. "We've furnished our share of
amusement."

Landers looked up questioningly.

"Is that from the class president?" he asked.

"Yes," answered the other, "hadn't you heard? No more dancing, 'his
nibs' says."

They had reached the entrance to the big college building, and at that
moment a great roar of voices sounded from out the second-floor
windows. Simultaneously the two freshmen quickened their pace.

"The fun's on," commented Landers' informant excitedly, as together
they broke for the lecture-room, two stairs at the jump.

The large department amphitheatre opened up like a fan--the handle in
the centre of the building on the entrance floor, the spread edge,
nearly a complete half-circle, marked by the boundary walls of the
building, a full story higher. The intervening space, at an
inclination of thirty odd degrees, was a field of seats, cut into
three equal parts by two aisles that ran from the entrance,
divergently upward. The small space at the entrance--popularly dubbed
"the pit"--was professordom's own particular region. From this point,
by an unwritten law, the classes ranged themselves according to the
length of their university life; the seniors at the extreme apex of
the angle, the other classes respectively above, leaving the freshmen
far beyond in space.

As guardians of the two