The fellows were quiet for a moment after they had droned out the chorus, each one putting his own meaning into that sweet old song of farewell, and then, to break the charm, a small voice with a Spanish roll in it, piped "Tamales!" at the crack in the door. "Hey!--Lupe!--make him sing!" They raided the stock first, and rendered happy with the jingle of silver the quaint little remnant of the race who named their valley for the blessed Santa Clara. Then, when he had counted it and put it safely away with the officious assistance of Pellams Rex, they set him on the table in his blue overalls and over-sized hat and made him sing for them in his pathetic treble, "La Paloma," and for encore, "Two Leetle Girl een Bloo." Pellams removed him after that, claiming that Langdon was about to tell the story of his life, which could not be published in the Sequoia. Jimmie Mason had sat there all this time, taking it in and drinking with the others, but there was never a cloud on his brain nor a waver in his movements. The rest of them wandered from the motif; each was composing a fugue of his own, according to the mould of his nature. Scraps of their conversation floated in on him between songs--"Got him just below the knees--now!"--"and the difference between me and a tank is in the inferior receptivity--ain't that a peach?--of the receptacle"--"Now, the fallacy of the original proposition, as Herbert Spencer hath it, lies in the expression of the component particulars"--this was Langdon--"that proves that if I had a board Pellams would be summarily chastised"--"Put it down and order up another, here's good drink going stale"--"Whoa, Pegasus, old hoss, that's my tamale you have designs on"--"and cut his name there"--"sing it down! This is to break training for the third time"--"What's the matter with ----ty-eight?"--All this came in on him, as he watched them grow from geniality to hilarity and then on toward enthusiasm. They had forgotten him; only now and then someone shied a cracker at his head and told him to "jolly up." Another drink, and the patriotic stage was upon them. The King ordered a glass, standing, to the Team, and one with a foot on the table to the Captain, and one with both feet on the table and glasses to the ceiling to the Victory next fall. Someone started the yell; it went round the table. Then they joined in on "Here's to Stanford College," with a verse for every class and its yell at the end, and before they were done there were three howling factions, each trying to cry the others down. Frank Lyman, he of the steady head, who was quiet or hilarious as he willed, but was never beyond the point where he willed to be, sat watching good-humoredly from his corner, and noted that Jimmie Mason's voice had risen the loudest, and that he, too, had forgotten the motif.