"Will I make it--will I ever make it?" he said to himself, drawing a long breath. "To be one of fifteen--only fifteen!" "It is a scary sort of looking old place," said McCarthy. "They certainly have dressed it up for the part." Still Stover did not reply. The dark, weighty, massive silhouette had somehow entered his imagination, never to be shaken off, to range itself wherever he went in the shadowy background of his dreams. "It stands for democracy, Tough," he said, as they turned toward Chapel Street, and there was in his voice a certain emotion he couldn't control. "And I guess the mistakes it makes are pretty honest ones." "Perhaps," said McCarthy stubbornly. "But why all this mumbo-jumbo business?" "It doesn't affect you, does it?" "The trouble is, it does," said McCarthy, with a laugh. "Do you know what I ought to do?" "What?" "Go right up and sit on the steps of the bloomin' old thing and eat a bag of cream-puffs." Stover exploded with laughter. "What the deuce would be the sense in that, you old anarchist?" "To prove to my own satisfaction that I'm a man." "Do you mean it?" said Stover, half laughing. McCarthy scratched his head with one of the old boyish, comical gestures Stover knew so well. "Well, perhaps I mean more than I think," he said, grinning. "In another month I may get it as bad as that little uselessness Schley. By the way, he wants us over at his eating-joint." "He does?" "He's a horsefly sort of a cuss. You'll see, he'll fasten on to you just as soon as he thinks it worth while. Here we are." They pressed their way, saluted with the imperious rattle of knives and plates, through three or four rooms, blue-gray with smoke, and found a vacant table in a far corner. A certain reserve was still prevalent in the noisy throng, which had not yet been welded together. Immediately a thin, wiry fellow, neatly dressed, hair plastered, affable and brimming over with energy, rose and pumped McCarthy's hand, slapping him effusively on the back. "Bully! Glad to see you. This is Stover, of course. I'm Gimbel--Ray Gimbel; you don't know me, but I know you. Seen entirely too much of you on the wrong side of the field in the Andover-Lawrenceville game." "How are you, Gimbel?" said Stover, not disliking the flattery, though perceiving it. "We were greatly worried about you," said Gimbel directly, and with a sudden important seriousness. "There was a rumor around you had switched to Princeton." "Oh, no." "Well, we're certainly glad you didn't." Looking him straight in the face, he said with conviction: "You'll be captain here." "I'm not worrying about that just at present," said Stover, amused. "All right; that's my prophecy. I'll be back in a second." He departed hastily, to welcome new arrivals with convulsive grip and rolling urbanity, passing like a doctor on his hospital rounds. "Who's Gimbel?" said Stover, wondering, as he watched him, what new force he represented. "Hurdler up at Andover, I believe."