I awoke the next morning to an insistent knocking at my door. I sprang out of bed and opened it. In the hall, their dress showing signs of much haste, stood Sayer and Braley. They did not wait my invitation, but strode at once into the room and, throwing the rumpled covers from the bed, plumped down upon it.

"See here," said Braley, without prelude, "what's this talk about Fred's calling a special meeting of the senior class for tonight? Do you know anything about it?"

I smiled my way out of a pajama top. "Really?" I exclaimed. "Well, I did hear Fred say something about it last night."

"Oh, so you talked it over with him? Did you ask for the meeting?"

I had thrown on a bathrobe. "Yes, I did. Why?"

"That's what we want to know. Why, why?"

I looked up from tying the cord about my waist. "That's just what I'm not going to tell. Not until the meeting.""Well, perhaps we know."

"You probably do. You deserve to."

"What do you mean by that?" Sayer jumped up and towards me. He was doing his best to fight, I could see—but I would not give him the chance—not prematurely!

Braley waved a conciliatory hand. He was a large, stoop-shouldered fellow with long, light hair and an enormous forehead. He had the most important and sumptuous manners I have ever met.

"See here, now," he said, "you really must tell us all you know about this thing. You really must." He was very earnest about it. They were both uneasy, it was easy to see.

"I'll tell you nothing," I said. "You will have to wait until tonight, and then——"

"Threatening us, are you?"

"No. I'm kind enough to warn you, that's all. I don't want you to go to the meeting unprepared."

"Oh, so it has to do with my remarks to the freshmen candidates, has it?"

"And mine?"

"I've given you all the warning that fair play demands," I said. "Look to your consciences for means of defense." And, flinging a towel over my shoulder, I darted away for my morning shower, leaving them in possession of the room. When I came back, a few minutes later, it was apparently empty, and I thought them gone.

I was almost dressed when I went into the clothes closet to select a tie from the rack I had there. There was a sudden rustle and movement of the clothes at the back of the dark little place. Two men closed in on me, dragged me into the depths of the closet. I reached out blindly, furiously. My fists hit only against the rows of my own clothes hanging there. A couple of coat-hangers clattered down. I stumbled and fell over my satchel. Then the door slammed shut. As I lay there, stunned, in the darkness, I heard the key turning in the lock, from the outside. They had sealed me in.

I had no doubts but they had been Sayer and Braley. Though I had never imagined they would go as far as this—and the fools! what did they think they could accomplish by locking me up for the day?

It was easy enough to breathe in the tiny, black square. I was in no danger. I groped my way to the suitcase and sat down on it for a few minutes. My head pained me terrifically. My forehead was hot. I put my hand up to it and felt a fast-swelling bruise. My fingers grew wet with something warm. It wasn't just perspiration.... I knew that—and that, in the struggle, I must have hit my head against one of the hooks. Or had one of them hit me in the dark with some sharp thing that he held in his hands?

I stood up again unsteadily, found the door handle—yes, it was locked. I was in my stocking feet; I could not kick through a panel. I reached along the wall, found a hook. I flung the clothes from it, gave it both my hands and all my strength in a sudden pull. It gave way with a spurting of loosened plaster.

It was a large, heavy hook. It made a good ram. I crashed upon the two upper panels with it. One of them split at length—and when I rammed the ugly iron thing against it again, it broke into splinters and my arm went through it. Light came through dimly—and, three minutes later, I had knocked out the whole panel, climbed through and staggered out into the room.

The mirror showed me a bad cut over my right eye. I staunched the flow of blood as best I could. It was so humorous an incident—like one of the famous adventures of Frank Merriwell!

I played it out, though. I did not go out of my room the whole day. In the afternoon I telephoned Fred, the class president, about it. He came over to see me—and he didn't treat it as lightly as I did. He wanted me to have a doctor, for one thing. I promised I would see one, as soon as the meeting was over, that night.

"You'd better," he said. "That cut is mighty close to some of the most important nerves of the eye."

It was evening when I ventured out. Over in the big assembly hall the meeting of the senior class had already begun. I stole across the campus with my coat collar turned up and my hat far down to hide my face. I did not want to be recognized until I was ready. I hung about outside the ruddy windows of the hall, watching the crowded groups that sat within. They were listening intently to someone on the platform that I could not see—but I knew that it was Fred, presiding. Fred—and he was explaining it all to them, perhaps, in that deep-voiced way of his.

Then, as I watched, I saw how the heads of all who sat within the scope of my spying craned suddenly towards the side of the room. I knew what that meant, too. It meant that either Sayer or Braley had risen from his seat to make reply to the president's accusation.

Then, amazed, I heard applause and laughter. The muffled clapping of hands went on for minutes. So they approved these things that the two editors had done, did they? So they could laugh and clap to hear how Sayer and Braley had crushed the spirit out of two young Jews in front of fifty other freshmen?

I grew too angry to wait. I was not going to dawdle idly in the background, waiting for a foolish, theatrical entrance cue—I wasn't going to "stand aside" a moment longer!

I hurried into the building, up stairs and around corners until I was at the very threshold of the hall. The big mass of men there, the lights, the noise of their clapping, ten times louder from within—all of it gave a tightening to my throat. My knees began to tremble violently.

It was Braley who was speaking. He was waving his hand with his usual sense of the grandiloquence of his remarks. I heard, I suppose, only the last of them—but that was enough:

"I regret, of course, that I should have had to give pain to these two poor little kike freshmen. I regret that I have thereby offended no less a person than the president of the class. But there is the broader way of looking at this thing: that of the interest of the whole community. And I believe, as every man in this room believes, that it would be ten times better that all Jews be debarred from our college. If not that, then certainly from all our college activities, in order that real Anglo-Saxon fair play may prevail! If any man, including the Jew who has instigated this protest against Sayer and myself, wishes to refute this, let him step forward now or be forever silent."

He sat down grandly, amid huzzas.

I do not know whether he or Sayer actually meant me to be incarcerated during all that day and night, while the meeting went forward so famously. Probably they had had it in mind when they played the vindictive little prank, and had been ashamed, when in better senses, to come back and release me. Certainly Sayer, who sat close to the door, turned pale when he saw me now.

I went slowly to the front of the room. My eyes pained me and I was nauseated. But I had ceased to tremble and was calm with a fury that checked all nervousness.

"The Jew who instigated this protest is here to back it up," I said slowly. "He is here to appeal to the 'real Anglo-Saxon fair play.'"

I could feel in the air the antagonism which I must down. I knew, as never before, how bitter and insensate was the prejudice which I must conquer by fifteen minutes of quiet words.

What I said doesn't count: I hardly remember most of it, anyhow. Before me, as I talked, the faces swam away into a dim and meaningless strip. I was not talking to these raw, swankering college boys. I was talking to something beyond—to something that was infinitely brighter and more glorious than I had ever known before. I was talking to something beyond all earth—to Someone....

And I was appealing, was summoning, calling Him down to my aid. I was speaking His words, in the spirit of His ancient fighting prophets. I was fighting His fight. The calm frenzy in my heart was of His instillation. For years I had sought Him. For years I had shunned Him, knowing my need of Him. For all the days of my life I had borne the fierce justice of His words as a lonely burden—and now, now....

"And I shall fight and fight," I cried, "in the name of God—the God that is over all of us, of whatever race, creed or color—for the things that are fair and right and just. I shall have justice for a little East Side Jewish freshman as you shall have it, too."

Then suddenly, as if blinded by the refulgence of what I saw, my eyes began to water and grow dim. I stood there, tense, and did not mind the pain that was in them. But I could speak no more.

And slowly the men rose and went out, quietly, strangely—looking back sometimes to where I stood—not comprehending everything, I suppose, but moved beyond all common approbation. They had been conquered.

Braley remained alone with me in the deserted hall. I looked at him across a row of seats and began to laugh.

"You didn't even say a word to them about that rotten trick we played on you," he said, shamefacedly, his glib manners gone.

"I didn't have to," I replied. "Besides, I forgot."

"Well—er—thanks! You could have had us expelled!"

But the pain and dizziness were beyond standing now. I tore off my hat, so that he had a glimpse of the long, sullen cut over my eye.

"Look out!" he cried, leaping up on the platform, to hold me—for I was falling to the floor.

I remember laughing again, long but weakly. "I didn't have to! I didn't have to!"

And after so much light, there came the darkness.