"I call your attention," shouted Baker, above the uproar, "to the fact that this neophyte is making loud sounds with his voice."
"That must be a black mark, then!" declared the other seniors, taking out their books.
Frank wanted to protest that he had been told to make a noise, and that he could not very well obey one rule without breaking the other, but he thought it best to keep quiet.
He learned later that the complaint against his making a loud noise was made for the very purpose of causing him to protest, for that would have brought another black mark against him.
As he kept his mouth firmly closed the seniors failed to catch him there, but they put a black mark down nevertheless, so that within the first five minutes of his initiation Frank had had four points scored against him.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE TEST OF NERVE.
Frank felt really worried about it, although it did seem to him that the marking was absurdly unfair.
"These fellows haven't any reason to complain of a professor's marking of examination papers," he thought, "if this is the way they treat a fellow student."