took a wild possession. They sang their songs and yelled themselves
hoarse. People turned and watched and smiled, setting this down as one
more prank of those university fellows.

They swarmed into the theater, with Stephen in their midst, and took
noisy occupancy. Opera-glasses were turned their way, and the girls
nudged one another and talked about the man in the middle with the queer
garments.

The persecutions had by no means ceased because they had landed their
victim in a public place. They made him ridiculous at every breath. They
took off his hat, arranged his collar, and smoothed his hair as if he
were a baby. They wiped his nose with many a flourishing handkerchief,
and pointed out objects of interest about the theater in open derision
of his supposed ignorance, to the growing amusement of those of the
audience who were their neighbors. And when the curtain rose on the most
notoriously flagrant play the city boasted, they added to its flagrance
by their whispered explanations and remarks.

Stephen, in his ridiculous garb, sat in their midst, a prisoner, and
watched the play he would not have chosen to see; watched it with a face
of growing indignation; a face so speaking in its righteous wrath that
those about who saw him turned to look again, and somehow felt condemned
for being there.

Sometimes a wave of anger would sweep over the young man, and he would
turn to look about him with an impulse to suddenly break away and
attempt to defy them all. But his every movement was anticipated, and he
had the whole football team about him! There was no chance to move. He
must stay it through, much as he disliked it. He must stand it in spite