Geoffrey simply bowed in reply to these remarks; his blood began to boil at his visitor’s assumption of superiority, and his fingers began to tingle to take him by the collar and walk him out of the room. “However,” young Mapleson resumed, rubbing his white hands and winking at his comrades, “we must not be diverted from the object of our visit. We have called upon you, Mr. Huntress, to test your powers of oratory; you will kindly favor us with a speech. Be seated, my fellow sophs.” Everet Mapleson helped himself to the easiest chair in the room, and waved his hand toward his companions as a signal for them to do likewise. Geoffrey saw by the expectant faces around him that there would be no reprieve for him, and though he inwardly rebelled against having his privacy thus unceremoniously invaded, and at being peremptorily ordered about by a conceited fellow younger than himself, as Mapleson evidently was, yet he knew he would get off easier if he made light of his uncomfortable situation and indulged their caprice, at least to a reasonable extent. CHAPTER VIII. THE HAZER HAZED. Accordingly Geoffrey smiled and bowed, remarking, in an off-hand way: “I fear that my powers as orator will be somewhat disappointing to you, gentlemen; nevertheless, I will favor you to the extent of my ability.” Assuming a somewhat exaggerated attitude of dignity, he began reciting one of Cicero’s orations, rendering it in the original with perfect ease and fluency, while his audience listened as if spell-bound to the smoothly rolling sentences. But this display did not satisfy Mapleson. He insisted that Geoffrey should give a recitation in a reversed position—the speaker standing on his head. This proposal was received with shouts of “Shame!” “No, no!” “You are going too far, Everet!” Geoffrey’s eyes glowed with indignation, and a spot of vivid scarlet settled on each cheek. He saw that the young Southerner intended to degrade him. “I think you have made a serious mistake,” said Geoffrey, boldly approaching Everet Mapleson, “if you expect to humiliate me. If you are _sure_ that these gentlemen will not be satisfied until they see how I would look standing in a reversed attitude——” “Quite sure, and we’ll soon prove it if you don’t get about it,” was the satirical interruption. “Then I will give you a text from the ancient Phœdrus, and at the same time gratify your friends—by proxy.” Geoffrey made a sudden spring as he uttered those last words, seized the young Southerner about the waist, whirled him to the floor quick as a flash, and grasping him by the legs, held him aloft in this reversed position with a grip of iron, while he repeated, in a voice of thunder, that Latin maxim: “_Sæpe intereunt aliis meditantes necem._ Often they who plot the destruction of others become the victims of their own machinations.”