All over the campus surges a crowd; students of the other classes, seniors who last year stood in the compact gathering at the tree and left it sore-hearted, not having been “taken”; sophomores who will stand there next year, who already are hoping for and dreading their Tap Day; little freshmen, each one sure that he, at least, will be of the elect; and again the iron-gray heads, the interested faces of old Yale men, and the gay spring hats like bouquets of flowers.

It is, perhaps, the most critical single day of the four years’ course at the University.  It shows to the world whether or no a boy, after three years of college life, has in the eyes of the student body “made good.”  It is a crucial test, a heart-rending test for a boy of twenty years.

The girl sitting in the window of Durfee understood thoroughly the character and the chances of the day.  The seniors at the tree wear derby hats; the juniors none at all; it is easier by this sign to distinguish the classmen, and to keep track of the tapping.  The girl knew of what society was each black-hatted man who twisted through the bareheaded throng; in that sea of tense faces she recognized many; she could find a familiar head almost anywhere in the mass and tell as much as an outsider might what hope was hovering over it.  She came of Yale people; Brant, her brother, would graduate this year; she was staying at the house of a Yale professor; she was in the atmosphere.

There, near the edge of the pack, was Bob Floyd, captain of the crew, a fair, square face with quiet blue eyes, whose tranquil gaze was characteristic.  To-day it was not tranquil; it flashed anxiously here and there, and the girl smiled.  She knew as certainly as if the fifteen seniors had told her that Floyd would be “tapped for Bones.”  The crew captain and the foot-ball captain are almost inevitably taken for Skull and Bones.  Yet five years before Jack Emmett, captain of the crew, had not been taken; only two years back Bert Connolly, captain of the foot-ball team, had not been taken.  The girl, watching the big chap’s unconscious face, knew well what was in his mind.  “What chance have I against all these bully fellows,” he was saying to himself in his soul, “even if I do happen to be crew captain?  Connolly was a mutt—­couldn’t take him—­but Jack Emmett—­there wasn’t any reason to be seen for that.  And it’s just muscles I’ve got—­I’m not clever—­I don’t hit it off with the crowd—­I’ve done nothing for Yale, but just for the crew.  Why the dickens should they take me?” But the girl knew.

The great height and refined, supercilious face of another boy towered near—­Lionel Arnold, a born litterateur, and an artist—­he looked more confident than most.  It seemed to the girl he felt sure of being taken; sure that his name and position and, more than all, his developed, finished personality must count as much as that.  And the girl knew that in the direct, unsophisticated judgments of the judges these things did not count at all.