r coat lapels and when they got in the house they
gave the Eta Bita Pie yell and sang about half of the songbook. Maxwell
had not only pledged them, but he had educated them.

After we had stopped carrying the bunch about on our shoulders, and had
put the roof of the house back, and had righted the billiard table, and
persuaded the cook to come down out of a tree in the back yard, we
allowed Maxwell to tell his story.

"It was perfectly simple," he said. "Didn't expect to be kidnapped, of
course; but it's all in the day's work. You've no idea what a job I had
getting colors to pin on these chumps. If it hadn't been for my pink
garters and a blue union suit I'd put on yesterday--"

We stopped Maxwell and backed him up to the starting pole again. But he
was no story-teller. He skipped like a cheap gas engine. We had to take
the story away from him piece by piece. He'd dodged his Smiths down a
side street, it seems, on the plea that there weren't any more Smiths
coming--and they might as well go over to his room. All would have been
well if one Smith hadn't got an awful thirst. There was a corner drug
store on the way to the room and while the quartet were insulting their
digestions with raspberry ice-cream soda a college man with a wicked eye
came by. A few minutes later, just as they were crossing the railroad
viaduct near Smith's home, two closed carriages drove up and six husky
villains fell upon them, shouting: "Chi Yi forever!" And after dumping
them in the carriages, they sat on them while the teams went off.

"After I'd got my man's knee out of my neck," said Maxwell, "I didn't
seem to care much whether I was kidnapped or not. It would bind us four
closer together after we escaped; and, besides, I have never found
kidnapping to pay--too much risk. Anyway, they drove us nothing less
than twenty miles and bundled us into an old deserted house. The leader
told us, with a whole lot of unnecessary embroidery, that we were to
stay there until we pledged to Chi Yi if we rotted in our shoes. Then,
of course, I saw through the whole thing. It was an Alfalfa Delt gang
disguised as Chi Yis. The Alfalfa Delts would send another gang out the
next day, rout the bogus Chi Yis and allow the poor Freshies to fall on
their necks and pledge up. That used to be popular at Muggledorfer.

"I did the talking and let my knees knock together considerably. I told
them that we'd been too badly shaken up to think, but if they would let
us