The middle of September was past. The school authorities had survived the worst of the confusion of registering, allotting rooms, smothering complaints, turning away unpromising applicants, evading the tearful entreaties of parents, arranging schedules, laying down rules. The second-hand furniture dealers were sold out, having reaped a cash harvest of a hundred per cent on goods bought of the mortally impecunious three months before. The student dealers in fountain pens and athletic supplies were making hay in dazzling sunshine. Football, the great industry of autumn, clamored for devotees. The first notes of the year-long wail over the food at Alumni Hall already floated in the air. With screech of bearings and groan of ill-fitting machinery, the Seaton mill had begun its one hundred and twenty-third manufacturing season. Would the product be worth while? It depended quite as much on the quality of the raw material provided as on the process of manufacture.

Sam Archer came to Seaton with vague but highly colored expectations, due in no small measure to the entertaining reminiscences of adventure and romance which his Uncle Fred delighted to tell. Uncle Fred had preceded him in school by twenty-odd years. The school had been smaller then, and the life simpler. The boys still boarded around the village in private houses, the sports were general affairs requiring no special training, the school itself formed a big fraternity with few distinctions except such as come naturally to superior personality. Uncle Fred, being a bright, friendly, whole-souled fellow, learning easily and possessing a natural aptitude for games of all kinds, had been a conspicuous figure in the school. He looked backward upon his Seaton days as the happiest period of his life; Sam looked forward to his with an eagerness born of long-fondled hopes.

Sam moved into 7 Hale, to which he had been assigned, and waited to see what kind of a comrade this appointed room-mate was to be. When two days went by without sign of a Peck, he called at the office and learned that the absentee was expected on the morrow; his coming, however, depended on the results of the examinations which he was taking in Cambridge; if he did not appear, another room-mate would be provided.

Ruminating dolefully on this uncertainty about a most important matter, Sam reached home in time to catch a caller who was just turning from the door. It was Bruce, a good-looking fellow of the ruling oligarchy—likewise captain of the track team. He had been pointed out to Sam on the first day of school.

“Hello!” called Bruce. “Do you live in this entry?”

“Yes,” responded Sam, “in Number 7. My name’s Archer.”

“Then you’re the fellow I’m looking for. Where’s Duncan Peck?”

Sam opened the door for his caller. “He hasn’t come yet. I’ve just been to the office to see about it. They didn’t seem sure that he’d come at all.”

“I’m awfully afraid that he won’t, myself. He wrote me that he had to make twelve points to get back. I don’t believe he can get twelve points in twelve years.”

“Won’t you sit down?” asked Archer, politely.

“No, I thank you. I’ve got to get home.” The visitor gave a glance at Sam’s lanky figure. “—Do anything in athletics?”

“Not much,” replied Sam, modestly. “I played football and baseball in the high school, but our teams wouldn’t be called anything here. I ran the high hurdles too.”

“Did you?” The track captain’s interest became keen immediately. “What time have you made?”

“Nothing very good. Eighteen seconds was my best.”

Bruce’s eagerness languished. “You ought to do better than that. If you don’t play football, get Collins to help you this fall.”

When the next day passed and no Peck appeared, Sam quietly moved the furniture of the stay-away to the other bedroom, and took up his quarters in the corner room, which possessed obvious advantages over its mate. The reasoning here was as straight as Euclid. This unknown quantity, Peck, as original occupant, enjoyed a prior claim to the desirable room. Against all later comers the Archer claim took precedence. Any claim, however good, is strengthened by actual occupancy. If Peck wasn’t coming, Sam might as well have the room as give it to some one else.

That evening Archer received a call from three inhabitants of his “well.” They came in boldly, addressed him jauntily, and proceeded to throw the sofa pillows at each other and his own surprised self. Presently one grabbed a baseball bat and called for a game with the pillows. Another seized a tennis racquet and began to whack a ball with indefinite recklessness, but largely at Archer’s head. When one of the missiles narrowly escaped the shade of his new lamp, Sam, whose ire had been rising, waded into the chief offender, threw him down and beat him hard with the pillow, was pulled off by another, on whom he immediately turned with the same vigor, gave cuffs and received them, and was finally, after a hard struggle, subdued by the combined efforts of the three. After this the trio let him up, shook hands with him, assured him that he was “all right,” and departed suddenly. They had hardly time to escape into a room close at hand, and Sam to pick up his cushions and the tennis ball, when an ominous knock was heard at the door, and Mr. Alsop appeared.

“What’s all this noise, Archer?” he began sharply. “Don’t you understand that no rough-housing is tolerated in this building?”

“Yes, sir,” panted Sam, non-committal.

“What’s been going on here?”

“I’ve had some visitors.”

Mr. Alsop eyed him sternly. “Who were they?”

Now this was a very wrong question for Mr. Alsop to put. If he had possessed half as much common sense as energy and devotion to supposed duty, he would never have asked it. He counted on the newcomer’s inexperience, and hoped to get a grip on two or three unruly characters in his well, which would help him in maintaining order in his territory later on. He did not consider that in extorting evidence from the new boy he would be exposing the thoughtless betrayer to months of annoyance and contemptuous treatment at the hands of the mischief-makers. Fortunately Archer’s instinct was truer than the instructor’s.

“I don’t know their names,” he said.

“Describe them!”

“I don’t think I can, sir.”

Mr. Alsop threw at the incompetent a glance of scorn. “Well, you can send them to me.”

Archer’s look glanced from Mr. Alsop’s angry face to the door of his bedroom, thence to the floor, thence squarely back again to the teacher.

“I’d rather not, sir.”

There was a moment’s silence. Mr. Alsop had shot his bolt; he was not prepared to make an issue of the refusal of a boy to betray his associates. “You can at least tell them that if this thing is repeated, you are likely to get into serious trouble!—You can do that without offending your sense of honor, I hope?” he added, with an accent of sarcasm.

“Yes, sir.”

The teacher turned and retraced his way to his rooms downstairs. Two doors were pushed quietly open as he reached a lower floor. From each emerged a studious boy holding a finger between the leaves of a book. The pair crept to the stair railing, heard the steps descend the last flight, and a door close. Then they scurried for Archer’s room.

“What did he say?” demanded the first eagerly as soon as the door was shut behind him.

Archer began an account of the conversation.

“Did you give us away?” interrupted number two.

“Wait till I am through, can’t you?” responded Sam. “No, of course I didn’t.”

“Shut up, Lordie, and let him tell it!” commanded the other. “We want it all.”

Archer finished his repetition, omitting nothing.

“You’re the right stuff,” declared the one called Lordie. “Just like the old sneak to try to get it out of you because you’re new. Last year he got little Roberts fired for nothing at all. He thinks he’s the whole institution—faculty, trustees, and all.”

The door opened abruptly. Number three rushed in and closed the door softly behind him. “Look out! he’s coming again!”

Numbers one and two dived for the bedroom. Number three settled into a chair and opened an Anabasis which lay on the top of a pile of books on the table. There was a gentle tap at the door.

“Come in!” called Archer. Mr. Alsop entered.

“Visitors again so soon?” he asked, seeking to cover his suspicion with an air of pleasantry. “You seem to have made friends early, Archer.” He glanced at the book which lay open on the lap of number three. “I didn’t know you took Greek, Taylor.”

“I don’t,” answered Taylor. “I just picked the book up. Looks hard, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t think it is really any harder than a modern language, if the modern language is seriously studied. In fact, many teachers are of the opinion that the college requirement in Greek is easier than that in German.”

Neither Archer nor Taylor disputed or commented on this opinion. “Won’t you sit down, sir?” said Archer, suddenly recalling his obligation to a guest.

“No, I thank you,” replied Mr. Alsop. “I returned to speak of something which I ought to have emphasized when I was here a few moments ago. The responsibility for order in the dormitories is really laid upon the students themselves. Every student is expected to see to it that no unseemly disturbance is made, and that nothing is done to interfere with the studies of others. The whole matter is left in your hands, and you are put on your honor to do nothing unworthy of the dignity and name of the school. It’s in the dormitory life that the spirit of the school especially shows itself. We trust you to conduct yourselves like gentlemen, without being watched, and put you on your honor to do so.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Archer, conscious of a peculiar feeling, a mixture of approval of the theory and suspicion as to the practice.

“That is all that I wanted to say. Good night!”

The boys echoed the salutation piously, and the room was left in momentary quiet. Soon the two hidden worthies emerged from the bedroom, and pranced across the floor, chuckling.

“My eye!” cried Lord. “Did you ever hear such stuff? He puts you on your honor, and then tries to make you tell who rough-housed you, and comes sneaking up here to see if he can’t catch some one. That’s a good one!”

“Just go and tell him something in confidence and see what would happen!” exclaimed Fowle (so his name proved to be; his mates called him “Birdie”). “He’d bring it all up before the faculty, and you’d be fired like a shot, as Murphy was last year. That’s his kind of honor.”

“Are they all like that?” asked Archer, in consternation. He had been taught to respect his teachers.

“No, only about half,” said Lord. “There are some I’d be willing to tell anything to, and do ’most anything for. There are others who aren’t worth wasting cusses on. Alsop thinks he’s the greatest man since Washington—and what is he?” He snapped his fingers contemptuously.

“When’s Peck coming?” demanded Taylor, abruptly.

“He was due yesterday, if he passed his exams.”

“Too bad if he doesn’t come. He’s an awfully good fellow and lots of sport. Know him?”

Archer shook his head. Fowle took occasion, while his friends were intent on this conversation, to make a good shot at Lord with a sofa pillow. Lord seized the pillow, but made a wild return. Fowle jeered. The fracas seemed in a fair way to begin again when Taylor interfered, and with forceful prophecies of the fate that would befall them all if they got to rough-housing again, persuaded the pair to “quit their fooling” and take themselves off.

That same afternoon Mr. Peck’s stenographer brought him a telegram, which ran thus:—

“Got ten points what shall I do send money quick.”

The father dictated immediately the following answer:—

“Go back to Seaton try again will send check there.”

The next day Archer saw his room-mate.