So she gunned over the swarm which gathered to the oak tree as bees to a hive, able to tell often what was to happen.  Even to her young eyes all these anxious, upturned faces, watching silently with throbbing pulses for this first vital decision of their lives, was a stirring sight.

“I can’t bear it for the ones who aren’t taken,” she cried out, and the chaperon did not smile.

“I know,” she said.  “Each year I think I’ll never come again—­ it’s too heart-rending.  It means so much to them, and only forty-five can go away happy.  Numbers are just broken-hearted.  I don’t like it—­it’s brutal.”

“Yes, but it’s an incentive to the under-classmen—­it holds them to the mark and gives them ambition, doesn’t it?” the girl argued doubtfully.

The older woman agreed.  “I suppose on the whole it’s a good institution.  And it’s wonderful what wisdom the boys show.  Of course, they make mistakes, but on the whole they pick the best men astonishingly.  So many times they hit the ones who come to be distinguished.”

“But so many times they don’t,” the girl followed her words.  Her father and Brant were Bones men—­why was the girl arguing against senior societies?  “So many, Mrs. Anderson.  Uncle Ted’s friend, the President of Hardrington College, was in Yale in the ’80’s and made no senior society; Judge Marston of the Supreme Court dined with us the other night—­he didn’t make anything; Dr. Hamlin, who is certainly one of the great physicians of the country, wasn’t taken.  I know a lot more.  And look at some who’ve made things.  Look at my cousin, Gus Vanderpool—­he made Keys twenty years ago and has never done a thing since.  And that fat Mr. Hough, who’s so rich and dull—­he’s Bones.”

“You’ve got statistics at your fingers’ ends, haven’t you?” said Mrs. Anderson.  “Anybody might think you had a brother among the juniors who you weren’t hopeful about.”  She looked at the girl curiously.  Then:  “They must be about all there,” she spoke, leaning out.  “A full fifty feet square of dear frightened laddies.  There’s Brant, coming across the campus.  He looks as if he was going to make some one president.  I suppose he feels so.  There’s Johnny McLean.  I hope he’ll be taken—­he’s the nicest boy in the whole junior class—­but I’m afraid.  He hasn’t done anything in particular.”

With that, a thrill caught the most callous of the hundreds of spectators; a stillness fixed the shifting crowd; from the tower of Battell chapel, close by, the college bell clanged the stroke of five; before it stopped striking the first two juniors would be tapped.

The dominating, unhurried note rang, echoed, and began to die away as they saw Brant’s hand fall on Bob Floyd’s shoulder.  The crew captain whirled and leaped, unseeing, through the crowd.  A great shout rose; all over the campus the people surged like a wind-driven wave toward the two rushing figures, and everywhere some one cried, “Floyd has gone Bones!” and the exciting business had begun.