Whoever saw them supposed that some process in a secret society initiation was going on, and if they caught sight of the unhooded figure in the middle of the group, they undoubtedly supposed that it was a neophyte.
Miller longed undoubtedly to cry for help whenever the party met anybody, but with a student clinging to each arm and hands raised to choke his voice, he dared not so much as whisper.
So at length he was brought without interruption to the back entrance of the building, where he was hustled into the doorway and blindfolded. There, strangely enough, he found his tongue for a moment.
"You fellers let me alone, or you'll all go to jail for it," he muttered.
A chorus of hoarse, long-drawn "ahs!" was the answer to this.
The outer door was closed then, and Miller was told to kneel.
"I won't do it!" he protested. "I'm not going to have my head struck off with an ax——"
"Kneel, you scoundrel!" cried the voice of Baker, who was the leader of the party.
They did not wait for him to kneel, but pushed him to his knees. He found himself as the neophytes did, at the bottom of a stairway; then they told him to mount, and prodded him in the back and legs to make him start on.
Miller started, for he could not help himself. His journey upward then was like that described in the case of Frank during his initiation.