The late arrivals were swarming in carriages, or on top of heaped express-wagons, just as the school used to surge hilariously back. The windows were open, crowded with eager heads; the street corners clustered with swiftly assembling groups, sophomores almost entirely, past whom isolated, self-conscious freshmen went with averted gaze, to the occasional accompaniment of a whistled freshman march. Despite himself, Stover began to feel a little tightening in the shoulders, a little uncertainty in the swing of his walk, and something in his back seemed uneasily conscious of the concentrated attack of superior eyes. They entered the campus, now the campus of the busy day. Across by the chapel, the fence was hidden under continually arriving groups of upper classmen, streaming to it in threes and fours in muscular enthusiasm. There was no division there. Gradually the troubled perceptions of the night before faded from Stover's consciousness. The light he saw was the clear noon of the day, and the air that filled his lungs the atmosphere of life and ambition. At every step, runners for eating-houses, steam laundries, and tailors thrust cards in their hands, coaxing for orders. Every tree seemed plastered with notices of the awakening year, summons to trials for the musical organizations and the glee club, offers to tutor, announcements of coming competitions, calls for candidates to a dozen activities. "Hello, Dink, old boy!" They looked up to behold Charley De Soto, junior over in the Sheffield Scientific School, bearing down upon them. "Hello, Tough, glad to see you up here!" De Soto had been at Lawrenceville with them, a comrade of the eleven, now prospective quarter-back for the coming season. "You've put on weight, Dink," he said with critical approval. "You've got a bully chance this year. Are you reporting this afternoon?" "Captain Dana asked me to come out for the varsity." "I talked to him about you." He asked a dozen questions, invited them over to see him, and was off. They elbowed their way into the Coöp to make their purchases. The first issue of the _News_ was already on sale, with its notices and its appeals. They went out and past Vanderbilt toward their eating-joint. Off the campus, directly at the end of their path, a shape more like a monstrous shadow than a building rose up, solid, ivy-covered, blind, with great, prison-like doors, heavily padlocked. "Fee-fi-fo-fum," said McCarthy. "Which is it?" said Stover, in a different tone. "Skull and Bones, of course," said McCarthy defiantly. "Look at it under your eyelids, quick; don't let any one see you." Stover, without hearing him, gazed ahead, impressed despite himself. There it was, the symbol and the embodiment of all the subtle forces that had been disclosed to him, the force that had stood amid the passing classes, imposing its authority unquestioned, waiting at the end of the long journey to give or withhold the final coveted success.