sn't a half-bad idea, is it?" said Georgia Ames,
reflectively. "It's got us all acquainted a lot faster than anything
else would, I guess,--even if there wasn't any food."

"Considering that we've done everything else, you children might find
the food----" began one of the ghosts, but a bell in the corridor
interrupted her.

"Is that the twenty-minutes-to or the ten o'clock?" asked another ghost
anxiously.

"Ten," said a freshman. "The other rang while we were chasing smiles."

"Then we're locked out," cried a small ghost tragically, and three
sheeted figures rushed down the hall, tripping over their flowing robes
and struggling with their masks as they ran.

"My light is on. Will they report it?" asked little Ruth Howard shyly
of Georgia Ames.

"Mine will be reported all right before I've done with it," declared a
ghost gloomily. "I've got to study for a physics review. I oughtn't to
have come near this festive function."

"Same here."

"Come on, Carline. Don't you know the action of going home?"

"Jolly fun though, wasn't it?"

The initiation party dissolved noisily down the dusky corridors.

Next day the college rang with the report that hazing was now practiced
at Harding. Strange accounts of the Belden House party were passed from
group to group of excited freshmen who declared that they were "just
scared to death" of the sophomores and wouldn't for the world be out
alone after dark, and of amused upper-classmen who allowed for
exaggerations and considered the whole episode in the light of a good
joke. But a particularly susceptible Burton House freshman, who sat at
Miss Stuart's table and burned to make a favorable impression upon that
august lady, repeated the story to her at luncheon. Miss Stuart received
it in silence, wondered what the truth of it was, and asked some of her
friends about it that afternoon at a faculty meeting. Of course some of
the wrong people heard about it and took it up officially, as a matter
calculated to ruin the spirit of the college. The result was that Miss
Ferris and Dr. Hinsdale were furnished with the names of some of the
offenders and requested to interview them on the subject of their
misdemeanors. Miss Ferris unerringly selected Madeline Ayres as the
ring-leader of the affair and Betty Wales as the best person to make an
appeal to, if any appeal was needed, and set an hour for them to come
and see her.

Madeline, who never looked at bulletin-boards, did not get h