“Mr. Chairman,” he said, “we have all been moved by the eloquence of our popular president. I want to say, however, that I feel very strongly that the considerations that should guide us in this affair are not those of sentiment or of personal friendship. I think, Mr. Chairman, that the president of this Society has no right to ask us to vote for a fellow on his nomination as a personal favor to himself. The argument that it is up to us to give Finch a better show in the school than he’s had, by electing him to this Society is no doubt generous, but it is sentimental. I agree with Mr. Deering that we should do everything in our power to make Finch’s life a pleasanter and a happier one than it probably has been. I do not think, however, that to do this it is necessary to elect him to the Dealonian Society, the membership of which is supposed to be made up of those who really represent the various activities of the school. I sincerely trust he will not be elected.” With that he sat down, and some one immediately called for a vote. The Dealonian voted on membership by roll call, the secretary reading the names and the boys responding _Placet_ or _Non Placet_, as the case might be. To Tony’s surprise boy after boy voted in the affirmative. Tack Turner, one of “the crowd,” was the first to blackball, but after him the voting again was favorable. Wilson’s name was the last called. “Non Placet,” he said quietly, without looking up. “The name is rejected,” said Wendell, and resigned the chair. The meeting went on, several other names were proposed and accepted. After the adjournment, Tony, bitterly disappointed not in the result, which he had feared, but by the means it had been obtained, avoided speaking with his friends, and hurried out. In the corridor he came face to face with Kit. Their eyes met, and Tony’s lip curled contemptuously. “Well,” he exclaimed sarcastically, “you were successful, weren’t you!” Kit stared back with a dark scowl on his good-looking, usually kindly face. “I did as I thought right,” he answered. Tony smiled with a look of insulting incredulity. “Let me congratulate you on your sense of duty.” Then he hurried on to his own room, and fell to work with self-deceptive industry at his books. CHAPTER XVI A RIFT IN FRIENDSHIP The prominent members of a particular set of boys can scarcely be on bad terms with each other without the relations of them all being more or less affected, and this was certainly the case with our friends at Deal. Tony had more and more become the real leader of the little circle, so that Kit’s defection partook of the nature of a rebellion.