ber for the
amusement of all these fools?"

"I expect it will be rather a rag," said Michael hopefully, but he found
it tantalizing to hear farther down the table snatches of conversation
that heard more completely would have enlightened him on several points
he had not yet mastered in the ceremony of wine in the J. C. R. However,
it was useless to speculate on such subjects in the company of the
lugubrious Mackintosh. So they talked instead of Sandow exercises and
mountain-climbing in Cumberland, neither of which topics interested
Michael very greatly.

Hall was rowdy that evening, and the dons looked petulantly down from
high table, annoyed to think that their distinguished visitors of Sunday
evening should see so many pieces of bread flung by the second-year men.
The moon-faced Warden was deflected from his intellectual revolutions
round a Swedish man of science, and sent the butler down to whisper a
remonstrance to the head of one of the second-year tables. But no sooner
had the butler again taken his place behind the Warden's chair than a
number of third-year men whose table had been littered by the ammunition
of their juniors retaliated without apparent loss of dignity, and
presently both years combined to bombard under the Scholars. Meanwhile
the freshmen applauded with laughter, and thought their seniors were
wonderful exemplars for the future.

After hall everybody went crowding up the narrow stairs to the J. C. R.,
and now most emphatically the J. C. R. presented a cheerful sight, with
the red-shaded lamps casting such a glow that the decanters of wine
stationed before the President's place looked like a treasure of rubies.
The two long tables were set at right angles to one another, and the
President sat near their apex. All along their shining length at regular
intervals stood great dishes of grapes richly bloomed, of apples and
walnuts and salted almonds and deviled biscuits. The freshmen by
instinct rushed to sit altogether at the end of the table more remote
from the door. As Michael looked at his contemporaries, he perceived
that of the forty odd freshmen scarcely five-and-twenty had come to
this, the first J. C. R. Vaguely he realized that already two sets were
manifest in the college, and he felt depressed by the dullness of those
who had not come and some satisfaction with himself for coming.

The freshmen stared with awe at Marjoribanks, the President of the J. C.
R., and told one another with re