“A few times,” answered Frank, with a quiet smile.

“That’s all the better.  I won’t have to show you how to start in.  Here, here—­that hand goes on the other glove—­I mean that glove goes on the other hand.  That’s the way.  Now we’re off.  Left forward foot—­er, left foot forward.  Hold your guard this way.  Now hit me if you can.”

Almost like a flash of lightning Frank’s glove shot out, and he caused the glove to snap on Harry’s nose.

“Whee jiz—­I mean jee whiz!” gasped the astonished boy from Ohio.  “You’re quick!  But it was an accident; you can’t do it again.”

He had scarcely uttered the words before Frank feinted and then shot in a sharp one under Harry’s uplifted guard.

“Great Scott!  You do know some tricks!  I’ll bet you think you can box!  Well, I’ll have to drive that head out of your notion—­I mean that notion out of your head.  Look out for me now!  I’m coming!”

Then Harry Rattleton sailed into Frank and met with the greatest surprise of his life, for he found he could not touch Merriwell, and he was beaten and hammered and battered about the room till he finally felt himself slugged under the ear and sent flying over a chair, to land in a heap in one corner of the room.  He sat up and held his gloved hand to his ear, which was ringing with a hundred clanging bells, while he stared astounded at his roommate.

“Wow!” he gurgled.  “What have I been up against?  Are you a prize fighter in disguise?”

That experience was enough to satisfy him that Frank Merriwell knew a great deal more than he did about boxing.

As Frank sat by his window listening to the singing, on the evening that this story opens, he was wondering where Harry could be, for his roommate had been away since shortly after supper.

Frank knew the merry singers were sophomores, the malicious and unrelenting foes of all freshmen.  He would have given not a little had he been able to join them in their songs, but he knew that was not to be thought of for a moment.

As he continued to listen, a clear tenor voice struck into that most beautiful of college songs when heard from a distance: 

  “When the matin bell is ringing,
    U-ra-li-o, U-ra-li-o,
  From my rushy pallet springing,
    U-ra-li-o, U-ra-li-o,
  Fresh as the morning light forth I sally,
  With my sickle bright thro’ the valley,
  To my dear one gayly singing,
    U-ra-li-o, U-ra-li-o.”

Then seven or eight strong musical young voices came in on the warbling chorus, and the boy at the window listened enchanted and enraptured, feeling the subtle charm of it all and blessing fortune that he was a youth and a student at Yale.

The charm of the new life he had entered upon was strong, and it was weaving its spell about him—­the spell which makes old Yale so dear to all who are fortunate enough to claim her as their alma mater.  He continued to listen, eagerly drinking in the rest of the song as it came through the clear evening air: