The air of mystery surrounding membership in these senior societies, the honor which their membership confers, and the fact that but a few men, comparatively, out of any junior class can be elected to them, create an absorbing interest.
Skull and Bones, or "Bones," as it is popularly called, is the wealthiest and most respected. Then follows Scrolls and Keys, or "Keys," with Wolf's Head third in order of distinction. The names are taken from the society pins. Each of these societies has a handsome and costly club-house, whose secrets are no more to be arrived at than are those of the sphinx and the pyramids.
Conjectures as to what society would get the most prominent members of the junior class had engrossed a good deal of thought for several weeks. Each society takes in fifteen members, or forty-five in all, out of the two hundred and fifty or more men that usually compose the junior class. As every junior is anxious to become a member, the feverish interest with which the subject is regarded by the juniors may be imagined. This interest had gradually spread throughout the college. Now the subject suddenly leaped to such importance that it overshadowed the ball-game which Yale was to play against Princeton, and the coming boat-race at New London, in which the phenomenally popular Inza Burrage was to be the mascot of the Yale crew.
Class spirit, that wildly jovial night, seemed to melt the sophomores into a fraternizing, loving brotherhood, where discord was unknown, even though the class contained such opposite elements as Buck Badger, Jim Hooker, Donald Pike, Pink Pooler, the Chickering set, Porter, Cowles, Mullen, Benson, Billings, Webb, and others. Though these might join in class dances and marches, and howl themselves hoarse in honor of the sophomores and of Yale, some of them could no more unite in any true sense than oil and water.
The campus was brilliantly illuminated. Powerful calcium and electric lights bored holes through the darkness, turning night into day. All the windows of all the dormitories which face the campus were crowded with students and with women.
Three of these windows held Frank Merriwell's friends. Frank was there, with Inza, Elsie, and Winnie, together with Mrs. Hodge and Inza's invalid father, Bernard Burrage.
"As in life, the good and the evil mingle," sighed Dismal Jones, as his eyes fell on Jim Hooker and other honorable sophomores who were marching in close proximity to the Chickering set. "The wheat grows up with the tares, and the result is an everlasting bobbery."
"There will be tears in your wardrobe if you don't quit walking on me!" squeaked Bink Stubbs.
"Climb up on a chair," advised Danny, who had already taken his own advice, and was thus able to look down into the campus without stretching his neck until he was in danger of converting himself into a dromedary. "It's just great!"
"Can't be anything great for me that holds that Chickering crowd!" Browning grumbled.