Merriwell, Frank (Fictitious character) -- Juvenile fiction; Yale University -- Juvenile fiction
They found it closed. Usually it was open until after midnight. By
patient inquiry they learned where Miller lived and they went there.
Miller was not at home.
The students rather wished that they could report the matter to the
police, but that would have brought the Pi Gamma affairs into public
notice and so they decided not to do so.
It might be said right here that during the rest of the week of
initiation they made vain efforts to get track of Miller. He had
disappeared.
An assistant was in charge of the shop, who pretended to be very much
mystified at his employer's absence. Whether he was telling the truth or
not could not be proved.
The main fact was clear; Miller had played his trick so successfully on
Frank that he was afraid of the consequences and was keeping out of
sight.
Frank was a little lame on the following day, but not sufficiently so to
be kept from going about as usual. The initiation, therefore, proceeded
during the week according to regular custom.
During the daytime Frank attended lectures and recitations with
regularity, and as he afterward said, did rather more studying than at
any other week during his college career.
Every evening there was a meeting of the "Pigs" in the room of some
senior member, where exercises of a more or less ridiculous nature,
similar to those already described, were had. Usually, too, there was an
excursion upon the street, but in these instances the neophyte was not
blindfolded.
Frank had had to do numberless small errands, and one evening was
devoted almost wholly to sending him from house to house to ask for a
piece of cake or a slice of bread.
His mentors always stood near to see that he followed out the
instructions literally, and in every case he complied.
Rattleton and Diamond suffered more from the experiences of these
evenings than they had on the occasion when their nerves were tested by
being driven blindfolded through the streets.
Diamond lost his temper several times and flatly refused to go on with
the initiation, whereupon the seniors would give him a host of black
marks.
He took the black marks as seriously as Frank did, and always became
very penitent.
"I suppose I can do what other fellows have had to do," he grumbled,
"but I can't see any sense in such tomfoolery."
Then the seniors would discuss the matter gravely, and decide that as
Diamond was a well-meaning fellow, they would let the black marks go
this time, so that he could start over with a clean score.
Before the week was over Frank began to see through the black-mark
farce, and he realized that it was a part of the scheme to make a
neophyte get as many black marks against himself as possible, and then
as a special favor allow him to start over again; nevertheless, he
continued to obey instructions as carefully as possible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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