all students--Ken had read that
on the card sent to him, and also in the papers. But manifestly the
upper-classmen had a different point of view. Ken had gotten a glimpse
into the immense reading-room with its open fireplace and huge chairs,
its air of quiet study and repose; he had peeped into the brilliant
billiard-hall and the gymnasium; and he had been so impressed and
delighted with the marble swimming-tank that he had forgotten himself
and walked too near the pool. Several students accidentally bumped him
into it. It appeared the students were so eager to help him out that
they crowded him in again. When Ken finally got out he learned the
remarkable fact that he was the sixteenth freshman who had been
accidentally pushed into the tank that day.

So Ken Ward was in a state of revolt. He was homesick; he was lonely
for a friend; he was constantly on the lookout for some trick; his
confidence in himself had fled; his opinion of himself had suffered
a damaging change; he hardly dared call his soul his own.

But that part of his time spent in study or attending lectures
more than made up for the other. Ken loved his subject and was
eager to learn. He had a free hour in the afternoon, and often he
passed this in the library, sometimes in the different exhibition
halls. He wanted to go into Carlton Club again, but his experience
there made him refrain.

One afternoon at this hour Ken happened to glance into a lecture-room.
It was a large amphitheatre full of noisy students. The benches were
arranged in a circle running up from a small pit. Seeing safety in the
number of students who were passing in, Ken went along. He thought he
might hear an interesting lecture. It did not occur to him that he did
not belong there. The university had many departments and he felt that
any lecture-room was open to him. Still, caution had become a habit
with him, and he stepped down the steep aisle looking for an empty bench.

How steep the aisle was! The benches appeared to be on the side of
a hill. Ken slipped into an empty one. There was something warm and
pleasant in the close contact of so many students, in the ripple of
laughter and the murmur of voices. Ken looked about him with a feeling
that he was glad to be there.

It struck him, suddenly, that the room had grown strangely silent.
Even the shuffling steps of the incoming students had ceased. Ken
gazed upward with a queer sense of foreboding. Perhaps he only
imagined that a