For some days the “shaking-down” process which every college has to go through at the beginning of the scholastic year went on――with small satisfaction to any sober-minded member of the faculty, or to fellows who, like Larry Donovan, were not yet imbued with that elusive thing called “college spirit.” Hazings, some of them mild, and some not so mild, went on nightly. Freshmen, unwarily out after dark in numbers too small for defense, were paddled, painted, and made to do stunts ridiculous, and sometimes rather harrowing. After the Welborn incident, Larry refused to pay any heed to the nightly call of “Freshmen out” and Dick forbore to urge him. But at last a night came when the call――unheeded when it was raised from the sidewalk――was hurled in at short range by Welborn himself. He found Larry alone, poring over his mathematics, as was his usual custom. “Hey! what the dickens are you hived up here for, when the Soffies are out in force and murderin’ us?” he roared. “You’d sit here with your nose in a book while they’ve got your side-partner, Dick Maxwell, half naked and chased up a tree back of the athletic field? You haven’t any red blood in you, Donovan; that’s what’s the matter with you!” Larry jumped up so suddenly that his chair went over with a crash. “Show me!” was all he said; and a minute later he was racing at Welborn’s heels, down the street and across an open lot to where half a dozen yelling Sophomores were doing a scalp dance around a big black-walnut tree. In the higher branches of the tree to which they had driven him by throwing clods at him a slender figure in a close-fitting suit of underwear was picked out by a light of a small bonfire. And the autumn night was cold. Welborn spoke for the first time as he and Larry were hurling themselves over the fence. “B-better get some more of the fe-fellows!” he gasped. “There are too many of ’m for just us two!” But Larry acted as if he hadn’t heard. “Come on!” he said; and, two to six, they went in. It was a warm little tussle for a few minutes, with most of the rules eliminated. Like Larry, Welborn had played foot-ball; and, again like Larry, he had the weight. Bucking the dancing ring as one man, they broke the line; and another tackling rush dissipated it. Back in their room, Larry once more planted himself before his book, but as he opened it, he said to Dick, without looking up: “You may count me in on that bridge business, if you like. I don’t ‘savvy’ that sort of thing, as you know; but those fellows need a lesson――and they’re going to get it. No; don’t make any mistake,” he went on, as Dick was about to offer congratulations. “I haven’t any ‘class spirit’ or ‘college spirit,’ or whatever you call it. But when they hit you, they hit me; that’s all.”