CHAPTER XIII--A SERIOUS CHARGE

As the measured tread of the steps of the students marching in military time rang out on the porch, Harry could not restrain his feelings, and jumped to his feet, pacing excitedly up and down his room.

For moments that seemed eternal after the sound of the tramping came, he listened for the peremptory knock.

At last it came, and as it rang out, with significance the boy could never forget, his heart almost stopped beating--then he was dully aware that his aunt had gone to the door and opened it. He heard the sound of excited voices, then it seemed as though there were a mighty crash against the door of his room, in rushed several of the boys whom he knew, seized him, tossed him to their shoulders and started down the stairs, not a word having been spoken. But as he gained the outside door, the boys assembled in the yard broke into a chant of triumph, and with the new student still borne aloft, they retraced their steps down the street, the rhythm of their song growing in its delirium until they reached their society room.

But once Harry was inside the sacred precincts, guarded by the four plastered walls, he was no longer the good fellow sought by his schoolmates, but the victim of initiation--and before he had performed all the stunts which were put up to him, it was early in the morning. And when he made his way to his aunt's house, it was not the carefree boy who had been borne forth on the shoulders of his friends, but a youth, bedraggled, and with a more proper appreciation of his utter insignificance in the scheme of life.

Proud to think that her nephew had been picked out for one of the members of the secret society, Mrs. Watson sat up, with the purpose of welcoming him when he returned home. But as hour after hour went by without his appearing, after the manner of a woman, she began to fear that some harm had befallen him. Accordingly, when at last she heard his halting footsteps on the porch, she threw open the door, and greeted him fondly.

But Harry was so used up that he failed to appreciate the tenderness of the caress, and, realizing the fact, his aunt sent him to bed with the injunction to sleep as late in the morning as he pleased.

Sore, indeed, was Harry when he awoke the next morning, but as he noted the glance cast at him by the other fellows passing on the way to school, glances in which there was a certain amount of envy, he began to forget the ache and pain, caused by the anything but gentle thumps he had received during his initiation, and by the time he had reached the schoolhouse, he was quite his natural self.

But though the boy was in exuberant spirits, it did not take him long to realize that a depression had fallen upon his society mates, and he lost no time in trying to learn the cause.

"What is it?" he asked Paul and Jerry, as they came toward him.

"It's fierce, that's what it is," returned Jerry.

"But why don't you tell me what it is?"

"Because nobody knows _exactly_," asserted Paul.

"We'll know, though, just as soon as chapel's over," announced Jerry, in a voice so doleful, that the last vestige of Harry's enthusiasm vanished.

Not far into the school grounds had Harry and his companions proceeded, before the boy had found that the gloom shared by his society brothers was reflected in all whom he met, and though he nodded to such of the boys and girls as he knew, when there was any response at all, it was merely perfunctory.

"Sort of a dismal morning to hand out to a new Pi Eta, what?" exclaimed Misery.

But Harry had become too imbued with the spirit of disaster to make any reply, and as he took his seat in the chapel, he was as anxious-eyed as any of the others.

The formal chapel service over, Mr. Larmore closed the Bible with decided emphasis, and then, taking off his glasses and wiping them nervously, he leaned over the little reading table and gazed at the hushed students before him.

"I'm sorry, very sorry, to tell you all that there were depredations committed last night in the physical laboratory belonging to the school.

"Several pieces of valuable experimental apparatus were destroyed.

"I believe that you all have too much understanding to make it necessary for me to dwell upon the heinousness of such acts.

"The incident, bad as it is of itself, is particularly unfortunate in view of the fact that there was, as I understand, an initiation in one of the Greek letter societies last night!"

The significance of the principal's words were so unmistakable that, as they were uttered, a gasp of shocked surprise ran through the benches of the students.

Not one among them was there who did not know that Harry had been the boy who was initiated, and, as if drawn by an irresistible impulse, they turned their gaze upon him.

Again clearing his throat, Mr. Larmore started to speak, when a boy rose from the seats occupied by the seniors.

"My name is Thomas Dawson. You know me, Mr. Larmore. So do the other people of Rivertown and the scholars of the high school.

"I had the honor to be elected a member of the Pi Eta during my freshman year, and, in the memory of what the society stands for in scholarship and in manliness, in high ideals of school life, I resent most emphatically the imputations in your remarks cast upon the initiation into the Pi Eta society last night!"

Never before had such a defiance to the principal of the school been made, and as the boys and girls who pursued their studies within its brick walls heard it, they were seized with an amazement even greater than at the words of the principal.

But the cup of their surprise was not yet filled.

Pausing a moment after his statement, that the dramatic effect of his utterance might be the greater, Dawson exclaimed:

"In the name of the members of the Pi Eta society of Rivertown High School, I demand to know the authority for your statement that it was any of our members who caused the breaking of the apparatus?"