The last stage of the initiation that can be described was one of the most ridiculous.
Frank was still blindfolded and bound. He was led, he knew not where, but at last halted within a doorway. There his hands were untied and he was told to kneel.
He did so, and found that he was at the foot of a flight of stairs.
"You are now going to ascend," said Baker, solemnly, "to the mystic regions of Pi Gamma. It is becoming that a neophyte should enter there in a modest attitude, therefore you will go on your hands and knees until commanded to rise. Proceed."
Frank immediately began to climb the steps upon his hands and knees. The moment he began to move his ears were fairly deafened with a hideous uproar.
It seemed as if a tribe of demons had been let loose around him. There was an infernal clatter, made, as he afterward learned, by beating upon tin pans and shaking large squares of sheet iron.
There was a chorus of savage yells and shrieking. The air was foul with the odor of firecrackers that were exploded close to his ears. Every kind of barbaric noise that student ingenuity can invent was brought into play.
"By the bones of Cæsar!" thought Frank. "If I hadn't been pretty well seasoned by adventures before this, I believe I should be scared."
As it was, far from being scared, he shook with laughter as he slowly and patiently climbed up the stairs. It seemed as if they would never end.
It was a winding stairway, and went from the ground clear to the top of the high building.