miliation on his election at "the Sociables,"
which was now only a day off.

Braider told him, with rather a long face, that his chances had been
rather shaken by the affair, and that there was again some talk of
pushing Culver against him. This alarming news drove all immediate
projects of virtue out of Dick's head. Not that membership of the club
was his one ideal of bliss; but, being a candidate, he could not bear
the idea of being defeated, particularly by a young ruffian like Culver.
So he indulged in all sorts of extravagances on the last day of his
probation, and led Heathcote on to the very verge of a further
punishment in order to recover some of the ground he had lost with the
"select" twenty.

After school he could settle to nothing till he knew his fate. He
dragged the unsuspecting Heathcote up and down the great Quadrangle
under pretext of discussing Tom White's boat, but really in order to
keep his eye on the door behind which the select "Sociables" sat in
congress.

Heathcote saw there was a secret somewhere, and, feeling himself out of
it, departed somewhat moodily to Pledge's study. Dick, however,
continued his walk, heedless if every friend on earth deserted him, so
long as Culver should not be preferred before him behind that door.

He was getting tired of this solitary promenade, and beginning to wonder
whether the "Select Sociables" had fallen asleep in the act of voting
for him, when a ball pitched suddenly on to the pavement between his
feet.

He couldn't tell where it came from--probably from some window above,
for no one just then was about in the Quadrangle.

He stooped down to pick it up and pitch it back into the first open
window, when, greatly to his surprise, he saw his name written across
it, and discovered that the ball was not a tennis ball at all, but a
round paper box, which came in two as he held it.

Dick was not superstitious. He had scoffed at the Templeton ghost when
he first heard of it, and made up his mind long since it was a bogey
kept for the benefit of new boys.

But it certainly gave him a start to find himself, at this late period
of the term, when he had almost forgotten he ever was a new boy, pitched
upon as the recipient of one of these mysterious missives.

The letter inside was written in printed characters, like those
addressed to Heathcote.

"Dick," it began.

"Hallo," thought Dick to himself, "rather cheek of a ghost to call a
fellow by his Chr