The play was in full action.  Grave and responsible seniors worked swiftly here and there through the tight mass, searching each one his man; every two or three minutes a man was found and felt that thrilling touch and heard the order, “Go to your room.”  Each time there was a shout of applause; each time the campus rushed in a wave.  And still the three hundred stood packed, waiting—­ thinning a little, but so little.  About thirty had been taken now, and the black senior hats were visibly fewer, but the upturned boy faces seemed exactly the same.  Only they grew more anxious minute by minute; minute by minute they turned more nervously this way and that as the seniors worked through the mass.  And as another and another crashed from among them blind and solemn and happy with his guardian senior close after, the ones who were left seemed to drop into deeper quiet.  And now there were only two black hats in the throng; the girl looking down saw John McLean standing stiffly, his gray eyes fixed, his face pale and set; at that moment the two seniors found their men together.  It was all over.  He had not been taken.

Slowly the two hundred and fifty odd men who had not been good enough dispersed, pluckily laughing and talking together—­ all of them, it is safe to say, with heavy hearts; for Tap Day counts as much as that at Yale.

John McLean swung across the diagonal of the campus toward Welch Hall where he lived.  He saw the girl and her chaperon come out of Durfee; and he lingered to meet them.  Two days ago he had met the girl here with Brant, and she had stopped and shaken hands.  It seemed to him it would help if that should happen today.  She might say a word; anything at all to show that she was friends all the same with a fellow who wasn’t good enough.  He longed for that.  With a sick chaos of pain pounding at what seemed to be his lungs he met her.  Mrs. Anderson was between them, putting out a quick hand; the boy hardly saw her as he took it.  He saw the girl, and the girl did not look at him.  With her head up and her brown eyes fixed on Phelps gate-way she hurried along—­and did not look at him.  He could not believe it—­ that girl—­the girl.  But she was gone; she had not looked at him.  Like a shot animal he suddenly began to run.  He got to his rooms; they were empty; Baby Thomas, his “wife,” known as Archibald Babington Thomas on the catalogue, but not elsewhere, had been taken for Scroll and Key; he was off with the others who were worth while.  This boy went into his tiny bedroom and threw himself down with his face in his pillow and lay still.  Men and women learn—­sometimes—­as they grow older, how to shut the doors against disappointments so that only the vital ones cut through, but at twenty all doors are open; the iron had come into his soul, and the girl had given it a twist which had taken his last ounce of courage.  He lay still a long time, enduring—­ all he could manage at