“This meeting is adjourned!” bellowed the chairman, and there was a thronging toward the doors, while the frothing Linski asseverated:  “I’m a-gunna git my say, I tell you!  I’ll have my say!  I’ll have my say!”

He had more than that, before the hour was over.  A moment after he emerged from the building and came out, still hot, upon the cool, dark campus, he found himself the centre of a group of his own classmates whom he at first mistook for sophomores, such was their manner.

...As this group broke up, a few minutes later, a youth running to join it, scenting somewhat of interest, detained one of those who were departing.

“What’s up?  What was that squealing?”

“Oh, nothing.  We just talked to that Linski.  Nobody else touched him, but Ramsey Milholland gave him a peach of a punch on the snoot.”

“Whoopee!”

Ramsey was laconic in response to inquiries upon this subject.  When someone remarked:  “You served him right for calling you a boob and a poor fish and so on before all the society, girls and all,” Ramsey only said: 

“That wasn’t what I hit him for.”

He declined to explain further.

Chapter XII

“The way I look at it, Ramsey,” Fred Mitchell said, when they reached their apartment, whither the benevolent Colburn accompanied them, “the way I look at it, this Linski kind of paid you a compliment, after all, when he called you a fake.  He must have thought you anyway looked as if you could make a better speech than you did.  Oh, golly!”

And as Ramsey groaned, the jovial Mitchell gave himself up to the divan and the mirth.  “Oh, oh, oh, golly!” he sputtered.

“Never you mind, Brother Milholland,” Colburn said gently.  “The Lumen is used to nervous beginners.  I’ve seen dozens in my time, just like you; and some of ’em got to be first rate before they quit.  Besides, this crazy Linski is all that anybody’ll ever remember about to-night’s meeting, anyhow.  There never was any such outbreak as that in my time, and I guess there never was in the whole history of the society.  We’ll probably suspend him until he apologizes to the society—­I’m on the board, and I’m in favour of it.  Who is the bird, anyhow?  He’s in your class.”

“I never saw him before,” Ramsey responded from the deep chair, where he had moodily thrown himself; and, returning to his brooding upon his oratory.  “Oh, murder!” he moaned.

“Well,” said the senior, “you’ll know him when you see him again.  You put your mark on him where you can see it, all right!” He chuckled.  “I suppose I really ought to have interfered in that, but I decided to do a little astronomical observation, about fifty feet away, for a few minutes.  I’m ’way behind in my astronomy, anyhow.  Do you know this Linski, Brother Mitchell?”

“I’ve talked to him a couple o’ times on the campus,” said Fred.  “He’s in one of my classes.  He’s about the oldest in our class, I guess—­a lot older than us, anyhow.  He’s kind of an anarchist or something; can’t talk more’n five minutes any time without gettin off some bug stuff about ‘capitalism.’  He said the course in political economy was all ‘capitalism’ and the prof was bought by Wall Street.”