Clearly, thought Marcia Dayne, in the silence that followed, something big was already happening. But how to help it on she could not tell; so, with a desperate effort to do the right thing, she contrived to turn the subject It seemed to her it had become too difficult to go further just now without peril to Joe's strange new interest, as well as to a very new and tremulous little hope that had begun to sing in her own heart. The shift of the talk was a true Institute change, and would have been most disconcerting to anyone unfamiliar with the ways of young Christians; but Marcia was sure that what had been said would not be forgotten, and she knew there would be another time. It was this that made her say, "I wish you boys would suggest what sort of stunt our district should give on stunt night; you know the time is getting short." "That's a fact," exclaimed Marty, sitting up. "Stunt night is to-morrow, and our delegation has to fix up the stunt for the Fort Adams District. Let's get to work on something. We've been mooning long enough." For though Marty never thought as quickly as Marcia, he too felt some instinct of fear lest by an unfortunate word they should break the spell of Joe Carbrook's interest in the "Big Idea," and promptly the four were deep in a study of stunts. To the uninitiated, stunt night at the Institute is without rime or reason, but not to those in charge who are looking ahead to Sunday. They know that the converging and cumulative psychic forces which the Institute invariably produces must be tempered, along about midway of the week, by some sharp contrast in the communal life. Otherwise, the group, like over-trained athletes, will grow emotionally stale before the week is done, and at the end of that is let-down and flatness. Hence "stunt night." In the early Institute years it was easy, as in some places it still is, for stunt night to be no more than clowning, witless and cheap; but there is a distinct tendency to exercise the imagination in producing more self-respecting efforts. Cartwright, happily, is one of the forward-looking Institutes, and stunt night, crowded with most excellent fooling, produced two or three creditable and thought-provoking performances. One of them deserves remembering for its own sake. Besides, it is a part of this story. The home missions class furnished the inspiration for it, and called it "Scum o' the Earth," an impromptu immigration pageant. A boy who had memorized Schauffler's poem stood off stage and recited it, while group after group of "immigrants" in the motley of the steerage passed slowly through the improvised Ellis Island sifting process. It was all make-believe, of course, all but one tense moment. Then Phil Khamis stepped on the platform, incarnating in his own proper person the poet's apostrophised Greek boy: