kept on answering questions. Say! that man was a regular
magazine gun, loaded with interrogation points. Was there any danger to
life on these trains? Would it be possible for him to take a ride in a
stage-coach? Were train robbers still plentiful? Had gold ever been
found around Siwash? Were the Indians troublesome? Did we have regular
school buildings or did we live in tents? Had not the railroad had a
distinctly--er--civilizing influence in this region? Was it not, after
all, remarkable that the thirst for learning could be found even in this
wild and desolate country?

And Siwash is only half a day from Chicago by parlor car!

I answered his questions as well as I could. I told him how hard it was
to find professors who wouldn't get drunk, and how we had to let the men
and women recite on alternate days after a few of the hen students had
been winged by stray bullets. I had never heard of Greek, I said, but I
assured him that we studied Latin and that we had a professor to whom
Caesar was as easy as print. I told him how hard we worked to get a
little culture and how many of the boys gave up their ponies altogether,
wore store clothes and took 'em off when they went to bed all the time
they were in college; but, try as I would, I couldn't make the answers
as ridiculous as his questions. He had me on the mat, two points down
and fighting for wind all the time. His thirst for knowledge was
wonderful and his objection to believing what his eyes must have told
him was still more wonderful. There he was, half-way across the country
from New York, and he must have looked out of the car windows on the
way; but he hadn't seen a thing. I suppose it was because he wasn't
looking for anything but Indians.

All this time Petey was circulating about the car, taking aside members
of the Rep Rho Betas and talking to them earnestly. The Rep Rho Betas
were the Sophomore fraternity and were the real demons of the college.
Each year the outgoing Sophomore class initiated the twenty Freshmen who
were most likely to meet the hangman on professional business and passed
on the duties of the fraternity to them. The fraternity spent its time
in pleasure and was suspected of anything violent which happened in the
county. Petey was highbinder of the gang that year and was very far gone
in crime.

We were due home about ten P. M., and just before they untied the
conductor Petey hauled me off to one side.

"It's all fixed," he said; "it's