"STAR" TALES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8092, 18 August 1904, Page 4

"STAR" TALES.

THE RUN ON THE BULL HILL_BANK. (By GEORGE DAULTON.) Hollister threw his bulky Sunday paper on the scoured' whiteness of one of Jimmies deal tables, and taking a painted chair, tilted it back to a comfortable balance and felt at home. Chicago, that had outgrown his recognition, stretched flat as the table for more ihan twenty miles southerly along the lake, and a big, ugly. lake freighter, new and strange to him in design, waa slowly ploughing over a vast pool of sunshine that floated off-shore in Lake Michigan's blue. He had made his money, and had returned home to live, as he had- always Eromised himself, and now he'wa3 feeling omesick for the rough mining camp in the Rockies he had left but Thursday. He wondered, as he glanced out at the fashionable suburb on the opposite side of Devon Avenue, if he would ever again admire snch shaven and clipped greenery, and the accurate alignment that made the macadam, the curb, and the boulevard lamps disappear at the point of a perfect perspective. put here in the little lakeside restaurant' ite felt at home again, for "Jimmies jplace " on the skirt of Edgewater, was merely a sheltering roof reared -on enough posts to support it and enclosed in wire gauze, and Jimmies little lean-to kitchen, hiding no unclean mysteries from the open view of his custom, reminded Hollister of his own tar-paper shack where he .had "bached it" so long on the side of Bull Hill. The queer little resort was deserted, but human interest was in the driftwood fire, that was making audible protest at its confinement behind ,the dampers of Jimmies shining range, and his bright copper kettle that was softly singing to itself. The neighbourhood seemed to be still asleep ; yhile Hollister glanced over his paper it 'jras so quiet he could hear the gritty ttackle of bicycle tyres wheeling down Sheridan Road, the hiss and puff of escaping air from the brakes of a trolley car three blook* away, and the pounding of a gasolene roadster' coming up the shore. Presently, as H by a signal, the vicinity woke, a heavy door gave a muffled bang, and Hollister saw Dunham, in summer attire, strolling in and out of the shade of Kenmore Avenue to breakfast at the little cafe. Jimmie suddenly appeared from bekind the breakwater with a fish basket, and the automobile, having a case of spasmodic •sniffles that bespoke some serious disorder, turned into Devon. "I'm glad you didn't take my laughing invitation to breakfast at Jimmies as a joke," greeted Dunham, hurriedly catering as Jimmie came scuffling in from the sand. "I wasn't sure of you, or I'd have been here sooner. In the unusual quiet of a house just deserted for the summet I am likely to oversleep. Jimmie, 1 was praising ?our breakfasts to Mr Hollister last night. That can you give us this morning?" Jhnmie grinned and raised the lid of his basket. Upon a bed of the grape leaves, with which his arbour was shaded, four shining white fish were lying, fresh from the Jake. "Well, it isn't good, for some folks to go up into the mountains too suddenly," returned Hollister, in answer to Dunham's apology when the breakfast had been ordered. "0b the other hand, I came down too - quickly. I had to seek the open this morri- * ing ; the change from the crate and crack-er-box architecture on the shoulder of Bull Hill to that " Hollister nodded toward the big terra-cotta balls erown^g the stately gables of his srrterV horne — "wag too mdden ; I had to get out." By fits and starts the automobile fussed nearer and nearer, and while Dunham waa nerving the melons out of their bed of crushed ice, the machine broke down, apparently not to be cajoled into making its elephantine -wheels go by Jimmies screen door. The huge vehicle was an interesting novelty to Hollister, and Dunham's witticism against the constant, liability of all its kind to need repair was lost on hun, wihilo he Intently watched the perspiring •$3 irritajting tinkering of the auto driver Upon some part- within ite intricate vitals. The autoi^o&iutt arose with an impatient- jerk antf" sbfrly cursed the machine, while he grabbed for something in the tool box; then he dashed the box-lid shut, »pd yr\i' a red and angry face strode into the jpptjiurant to order a cup of coffee. "a& i r Js h t m g uessin s that y° u neac * a w*s_?i*r asked Hollister, as the man intaatyfßtly glanced at his watch. y«5." replied the other, as he tqrifc * h»s£y draught of coffee and glanced aglfn 'at m watch. "I have lost altogetftr nelrly thirty inimztee from my re- * cord for* jast one little, washer. You haven't such a thing about you?" The question was .Impudently put, but Holli»ter arose- bekm\h'g, and brought up from the depth of- his' trousers pocket a handful of gold, from which he picked three ordinary iron washers. "Then I think I can fit you out," said he. "Here are three sizes. You are welcome to the one you need." The auto-driver stood dumb for an in-" stent with his cup raised in hia hand. "Well, for the love of heaven! The very thing 1" he buret out. " Thank you, *ir,* thank you ! This one is just it 1" H« dashed out to his ccatr t and the machine was soon pounding away as wickedly as at best. "It's all right!" he called. "You've saved my life. Thank you again, and 6orry you're not jogging with me." "If it were expensive enough to be . fashionable they would ride threshing machines, and then I'd buy wheat for all I was worth," remarked " Dunham, gazing after the automobile as it thumped out of eight. . " I never saw your equal, Hollister, in an emergency," he added. "Thrown out of, a three-pair-of-stairs window you would alight on your feet as jcareless as a cato" Hollister laughted, and spun the two remaining washers on the table, " No," he said, " the virtue is in the . washers. There are times, of course, when event* seem to fall in a 6equenoe that is inevitably all one way ; sometimes for good that all perdition can't prevent j sometimes for bad that heaven itself cannot help. „ The Bull Hill Bank had such a run of luck while I was with it— a rim that was nothing but evil, until a few bags of these little iron washers never said a word, but

turned in and put the concern on 'Easy Street.' " "I didn't know," interposed Dunham, "that solid little institution was ever anywhere hut on 'Easy Street."" ''My boy," returned Hollister, "if you had known the bank a matter of twelve years ago you would have thought it was doing businera at No. 13 Thirteenth Street. It was shortly after I went out to the mountains," he continuedi "kid that I was, and, like a yowng goat, jocularly daring' anything. Why, I took up two tr three gross of mining claims, annexing enough of the hills and gulches of the j Spiiog Valley country to cover a congressional district, if tbey could have been flattened out on a prairie State. A bank is the place for marketing and financing mining deals, and it was for that reason, and that the work would still leave me\ ample time for the _ outside care of my property and the development of the Alma : Mater Mine, that I accepted Hadley's offer to make me his assistant. j " The Bull Hill Bank was as good a con- i eem as any of its class in t"he mountains — nearly all of them had done a moro.or less wild-cat busmess. Hadley had the pride j cf a yonng financier; if he had ever jeopardised the depositors by certain little manipulations of securities and accounts, it was only to make a showy balance, for the stockholders, and .that is what many another young and ambitious bank has done and grown into a steady-going institution, with never a dny of precious excitement to enliven the monotony of its eminently respectable money-getting career. Bull Hill had sown its wild oats when I went into it, but it was certainly caught off its base tbat fall. . "I had been with the bank some eight or nine months when the run of bad luck struck us. First there was an utter collapse of some mining stocks in our district, which made slumps in others, all involving the bank and many of its depositors in irritating losses and settlements. It wasn't our fault that the Dial pinche-i out, nor that the water raised in the Olentangy nearly to the grass roots, nor that the manager of the Golden Zone overworked the mine and then lit ont with everything in sight ; but everybody was mad at us for the perfectly legitimate settlements that grew out of them. We lost a few accounts, but it was nofc till we had to withdraw our patronage from two of our depositors, Mosier and Rand, an assayer and a prospector, whose rascality lost us the commission on the sale of a mine, that the malcontents began to get it back at us. " Hadley Had been called to Chicago to promote some of our mining deals, and I was in qharge with old Blasiand, our president, merely a fussy old. figurehead, subject to bad turns with his heart. "Things were running smoothly enough, but our working funds,' which we usually kept in the neighbourhood of forty thousand dollars, had been suddenly checked low Sysone of our ranchers, who were buying stock, and I was just thinking I would have to wins our Denver correspondent for ten thousand by express, when in walked the two glowering gentlemen I have mentioned, and drew out then* measly aocounts, and' before the bank closed two or three others had followed suit. "Things were beginning to look serious, and the old nian nearly had a fit. We sent a cipher despatch to Denver for thirty thousand dollars, and closed the safe with loss than twenty thousand iv it — Blasiand, in his nervous meddling, attending to the time "lock" himself. , "Iwas at the bank bright and early the next morning, but the oid gentleman was there before me, loqking pale and anxious, with a message from the Denver bank, stating that our telegram hod been delivered too late to make the Overland Express, and that they would ship the money the following day. We would haive to run the bank, then, for the next twenty-six hours, on the money we had in the safe. " I was mechanically filling tha telegram in a tumult of thought bf how we should bluff our way through the day, when Robert, our ckrk, rushed out of the vault. ' I can't get the safe open,' he panted' ; ' I've tried my best, but the lock is set!' "We all crowded into the vault, even to Jerry, our watchman and janitor. T threw myself upon the handles of the screw door, but it was as solid as -.though it were welded in its place. I hoped that the little lock setting the screw bar had failed to act, but Robert showed us how freely the tiny key worked, and the pily thuds of the well-fitting steel told that the bolt released the bar which should unscrew the great, round steel door and swing it out on its ponderous crane, y Again and again we.strained at the screw-b^r, each one of us and ail of us together— l, until I saw lightning and my chin dripped sweat ; Blasiand

silly in the' fright of what he had done, and pitiful in his tremulous and childish efforts. We might as well have tried t-o lift. Pike's Peak; we were shut out, and the safe was guaranteed to withstand the skill of expert craoksmen within a very liberal time limit. "A sickening all-goneness struck me, as I realised the very possible results of this culminating misfortune. Blasiand, too, was white as death. Each knew the thought of the other — our recent losses, the soreness of some of our depositors, the enmity of Mosier and Rand, th© intimation of a run they had caused the day before, the absence of Hadley, and now this strange and untimely aocident; who wouldn't believe that the bank had gone to StyxY That meant then, on Bull Hill, nothing short of a fusillade of guns or 4 gallows tree. "Then, Dunham, as if fate would add another damning circumstance against us, poor old Blasiand caught his breath and collapsed on the counting-room floor. "Tb© full weight of affairs was now on my shoulders, and with the sense oi responsibility my brain cleared for action. I must acknowledge my first impulse was to cut and run, but the gaming instinct is too 3trong in me; I'd save the bank or die v trying to win out. " Jerry was sworn to. secrecy, and drove home with Mr Blasiand as quietly as common. Robert was despatched with another cipher to Denver, ordering the shipment increased to fifty thousand, which was more than we had there, but they were to draw on us in New York for the balance. I also asked the Denver bank to send us an expert safe-man; and this I had put in plain English, as the banks code was too meagre for anything more than the ordinary requirements of busiI had opened the bank, making the first transaction myself, a deposit of .all the cash I had in my clothes. The money was lost in the old tin tray where we kept the odds and ends of the business, and you can bet I let it stay in the drawer under the tellers window, along with the six-shooter, and not in its usual place exposed on the counter. " Fortunately, the big le&ther wallet containin*** our discounts was never put m tbe safe, but was on its iron shelf in the vault, and our tickler showed- that I might hope for tha payment of ai number or" good-sized notes that day. Luckily, too, business opened with deposits from some of the regular old stand-bys of the bank, and I issued several drafts for cash. In dribs my working fund crept up to five hundred, eight, twelve, fifteen hundred', and more than two thousand. The morning wore on, while the balance in the drawer sawed up and down among the meagre hundreds ; there were no accounts closed z but, though this somewhat reassured me, somiethiug of uneasiness was in the air ; I oould feel it, partly by intuition, a 8 I knew the money that came from the butcher's or the baker's or the grocer's. " At eleven, o'clock my blotter showed we had a little more than thirteen hundred in the drawer ; I was playing fair, but I was nursing my cash whenever I had the slightest pretext- that would- not be construed in an unkindly way to the bank. Just twen-ty-four hours remained until relief could arrive by the Overland from Denver — twecnty-four hours in which the chance transaction of a friend might break the bank as easily as the stampede of those who were sore. "I knew I could not trust the wire to keep the* sscret of the safe; and sure' enough, at noon Buddie x the station messenger, came in with a telegram from the 'safe-man, who was coming, and two from Denver papers, asking if there was any story for print about the safe. If tlie tale was being guessed at over the wire, how' long would it be getting abroad in Bull Hill? "The slow minutes crept into thß afternoon, and the race to close for the day settled into an exciting finish. A depositor, whom I least expeoted df unfriendliness, checked' out without a> wordy bills receivable, and a few unavoidably payable, deposits and cheques, collections and drafts, passed in and out of the window, raising and lowering my little margin." "It was like a wild day on 'Change," broke in Dunham ; and 1 Jimmie was nervously hovering about the table, making \ preoccupied dabs of unnecessary service. "Once I thought the jig was up," Hollister drove on, " when a- bull-headed contractor wanted cash for a twenty-five-hun-dted-dollar County voucher to take up to Ogden. In the knowledge that a bank is hedged about with a dignity that makes it aratocratic beyond appeal to those not used jto financial forms, I politely but , firmly forced him to accept tbe safety and convenience of exchange on New York. It was a bad scare, but I was rewarded, for at few minutes arfter that I was counting, with the certainty and lightning-like nonchalance of the expert, three thousand dollars in gold, poured from the buckskin belt of a ranchman ! "The clock was nearly on the closing hour ; Robert and I were balancing the books. A few little accounts had 1 beenpaid in full, with no sbow of hard feelings about it, when Prentiss, a kind of cornerdesk banker in tho camp, came in with a handful of our cheques.. He said he needed cafih rather than exchange, and as the cheques I had taken against him were, of course, few, and for small amounts, there was nothing to do but pay him a cash balance of neturly four thousand, and be thankful I could do it. Among ihe lot j there were five or six cheques that .closed J our business with as many depositors, who had, beyond doubt, gone over to him, through the underhand work of Mosier and Rand ;' and I saw the malicious smile with which he received the irregular mass of money — as heterogeneous as a church collection — that I shoved out to him. There were no neat bundles of 'bills, no smooth one-hun-dred dollar notes, nor fifties. I paid bim all my gold, and the balanoe in straggling paper, and- enough fives for the pay-roll of th© Homestakc Mine." "And' he walked off with all your sinews of wai Oh Napoleon of finance?" cried Dunham. "By no means," retorted Hollister. "I bad a hundred and some odd dollars in the drawer! " I let myself sit down at my desk," Hollister chuckled, and ran on, " just to enjoy and talk over with myself the exhilarating game of the day. I -was having such a good time that it seemed to. me Robert had scarcely gone away when he was back again with a scared face. " ' There'll be a run on us in the morning,' he cried in an undertone. 'I overheard it j posting the mail ; someone inside by the letter-drop was talking. Mosier and Rand are at the bottom of it. The wire has just j leaked the story of the safe and they say!

it's some bluff— and Hadky's being gone, and Mr Blasiand sick is making all kinds of talk." .- „ ' *" iVery well,' said I ; we shall be ready for them. Avoid talking outside ; but if you have to say anything, stick to it that we'll show them money to liurn !' "'You are too sure, Mr Hollister,' be blurted out ; ' th !s is a life-and-deat-h matj ter, out here; they'll stop your clock as sure as fate !' " ' Don't you worry, Robert ; we'll make some of these assayers and prospectors feel as cheap as a cancelled cheque for two bite. That reminds me that I shall need you here at eight in the morning— you will bave to take Jerry and go with the guns to meet the express from Ogden.' "I went into the vault and closed the doors, when Robert had gone in religious awe of my gall, and blind trust of whatever I might have up my sleeve. I lit the lamp, and pressing my ear against the cold steel of the safe, I listened with my very heart for the ticking of the time lock; it was still going. Then taking down from a shelf three small canvas bags, such as tho United States Treasury uses for the de- j livery of specie, I put them, with an old j bank seal and a stick of red sealing-wax, j into one of those awfully official-looking little boxes made of heavy pine, that the Government also uses for gold. These were then done up in a slovenly newspaper-cov-ered bundle. "I felt better, and, undisturbed, ate a hearty dinner at the Houp-la Hash House, and chuckled over my cigar, while they put me up a midnight lunch of their rattrap cheese and a bottle of coffee. My chuckle, I fear, was like that of a man who delays his end by killing one of a hundred pursuing wolves. " When I returned Jerry was at the bank with word that poor old Blasiand was too ill to care how things went. So I sent to the livery for my horse — thanking my stars that, as I was still living iv my shack out at the mine, no ono would he suspicious of my riding out of town. '"Now, Jerry,' said I, when he came back, 'there is something you must do fop me with the utmost cantion and without fail.' He shook hands and feet on it that he'd do whatever I wanted-. 'Have three jackscrew.s in the bank 'by three o'clock in the morning ; you will find them in the section boss's tool house. I shall be here myself about that time.' "With the bundle tied to my saddle I was about- to hit the trail when a group of men came up and stopped' to speak with me. I never said a word, bnt let them drag it to the point of a plain declaration that they were a ' committee from the depositors, who wanted to Jcnow . . .' Then I lit in and gave them no chance to talk. I bluffed . them to a standstill, absolutely refusing to jaw-smith over business matters with anybody. If the depositors wanted their money, all they had to do was to be on hand in the morning. They might check to a fare-you-well every dollar they had with us ? and we'd be glad to be rid of a lot of them. With that I bade them goodnight, and without knowing that I was having a fool's luck, I rode away. " ' Sonny,' one of them called saadonioally after me, ' you're surely a tender-foot on Bull Hill, so do be careful to-morrow, or it will be Katy-bar-the-door for you.' "This parting shot had 'hardly winged my : triumph when. Mosder saluted me in front of his offioe in sneering tones : ' Good evening ! good evening, indeed,' says he, and with that swung himself on his horso and took up the trail back of me at a lope that kept no more than thirty yards between us all the way to Rand's shack outside of Bull Hill, and, there being joined by Rand, the surveillance became so impudently matter-of-couree that I knew it waa their intention to keep in touch, with me until the game ca/me to some kind of a show-down. " I want to say that those two hounds, steadily pounding my trail in the dim night, was the most unnerving thing I had to bear. I was scared, but luckily I held myself down to attending to my own initting in as openly a matter-of-fact way as they did. *' It was a fine autumn night with a thin slice of moon to light me, and busy as I was with my excited thoughts, the road

over Bull Hill to the mine seemed short as the clear mountain air makes it appear to the eye. The handful of cabins in the gulch was dark with on© exception ; new machinery was going into the mine, and night work had been shut down. In the boss's shack I was doubtless expected, for there was a light ha the window, and Wilkinson's concertina was moaning away as usual. " Instead of going in I rode up to his door and had Si the talk that I wanted with Wilkinson, just then, from the saddle, at the same time letting Mosier and Kand, who were hanging in the background, see that I was merely attending to my own affairs. When I gave him good-night 1 said that as I intended going to Bull Hill unusually early, I'd go up to the shaft houso to look at things before going to bed, and Td not trouble him to go with me. '..■'■•■'■■ " Now, for the time being, I had fixed up a rude stable in the rocky niche forming the entrance of tho old tunnel of the vein, disused since the sinking of the shaft. Here, if they had only forgotten it, lay my one way of evading my bodyguard : the tunnel, now covered by the shed, ran into ihe hill about seventy-five yard*, where it opened into the shaft sixty feet below the shaft-house. *" Mosier and Rand kept the unvarying measure of their distance, while I put up my horse and walked, ahead of them to the shaft. " For the first time the exciting game of mining gold had no charms for me; the new machinery received only the attention necessary to impress my guards, who were near at hand outside. A keg of washers down in the bottom of the mine was the thing — washers that I had not valued before at the price of a box of cigars, but were now the precious poker chips with which I was gambling for my life. " Did you ever have >to climb to the top i of one of your skyscrapers when there was an elevator strike? Well, that's easy. The washers were in the lowest drift, * where a tram was being laid. What ; would you say to four hundred feet of v * ladders, made in the rough of trees sna down from the hill, with frequent gaps where rungs were out- or ends didn't meet; over beams and braces, now at one angle, - now at another, where the vein had been jso crooked a snake wouldn't crawl it ; i where> a slip would mean that you'd rattle . down to your death and land a shapeless maas in the black^ water four hundred feet below? I was used to it, but I had to d$ it in a hurry, lest I arouse the curiosity oj the men above ; and I carried forty pounds of washers balanced in two bags over my shoulder. „1 was all unnerved when I reached the old tunnel and set my light) down where it would speak for my presence with a dim glimmer into the shaft ; then I staggered on in the darkness to the stable and panted my heart out with' my anna around my horse's neck. "When I got my wind, I slipped out and found that Mosier and Rand were still keeping their vigil above the shaft! "Back in the tunnel again with my bundle, I cut the newspapers into slips the size of a greenback. These I did up in a correct package, so richly decorated with seals that it looked like it came from the; Bank of England. Some of the washers went into the gold-box, and the screwheads in the lid were sealed with the blazing wax and stamped. The canvas bags, also conspicuously sealed, held the remainder of the washers, and their round faces made aa pretty an impression through the canvas as if they'd been gold, fresh from the mint. Dunham, it was pelf ; it was lucre. When I had finished, the tunnel held properties fit for a scene in Monte 'Cristo. M "A counterfeit presentment, as it were, beyond the dreams of avarice," assented Dunham. "My horse and I stole like spirits down the trail from' Bull Hill, while Mosier arid Band still kept their tryst at the head ol the shaft. Shortly after midnight I was at Lovelock, the next station west of Bull Hill— perhaps fifteen milea by rail, bufc not niore thaji eight by trail. I had a. frequent hunting companion in Thoman, the station agent of the plaoe, and' knowing his quality as a sportsman, I had no hesitation in trusting him to do what I wanted. So routing him out, I paralysed himj with my wealth, had jt receipted , and packed in his safe, with instructions to forward to the Bull Hill Bank by the morn, ing express- and waa away again almost before he was fully awake. ■ " Jerry was there with the . jackscrews when I let myself, into the bank. I .was too strained and nervous to make any ex-, planation to . him other than that we must throw "the safe over on its side with the front out and the lock up, and trust to luck. We threw off our coats and went silently to work, behind closed doors, like two safe-crackers. "You may guess how we must have toiled to lift all those tons of steel to the tipping point, and the numberless trips to tiie cellar for blocks and boards, and bricks an 3 stones, to help us in pur labour! Finally. aho-v.t-dsa.wn, we got it jacked up to a balance, and then, with hardly an inch to; spare between walls, it went over witK one thunderous thump that, shook tha , whole Uock-"

"It hadn't more than struck on its side when I had the screw unlocked and Jerry and I were straining at the handles. Holy Mackinac! The* door started! It slowly screwed out, and fell forward upon its crane hinge, almost carrying me under it. The one chance im the hundred I had thought might be, -had proved time; the hook" that should have withdrawn the bolt had, doubtless, through Blasland's bungling, been broken, and the jar of the fall had made the bolt drop back in the lock. "The money, spilled from its racks and trays, lay in confusion in the safe. I plunged half mv body through the yawning door and fairly bathed my hands in the • luscious ruck of the real stuff! "By half-past eight a crowd had begun to collect at the bank, amd as the last halfhour progressed before business opened, the street filled with depositors and onlookers who were hungry to see a fuss. An unusual number of side-arms were in evidence, and I have no doubt they were supplemented- by enough lariats among the ranchers as to haive hung me as high as the Government station on Pike's Peak Mosier and Rand were there, too, feeling no better, I daresay, for their night out. " Promptly at nine o'clock I unlocked 'he door, and the crowd TU<hed in. But Robert had timed his arrivail so nicely that I waa hardly in my place at the window whui ths express waggon dashed! through the throng, and he and, Jerry, with the, messenger, jumped out among the astonished men with , their guns and the sealed treasure. " ' Make way, there. Make way !' I yelled- " The crowd fell back, and our men filed' in, burdened with the grim dignity of their charge. Everyone in sight was visibly impressed by the precious weight of solid' wealth in its official uniform. They placed it in full view, and when piled on the counter, by the side of the well-ordered contents of the safe, it was most becoming to the situation. " ' Come on now. !' I shouted ; ' come, get your dust. There's enough here to keep things interesting, and the Overland is bringing more. Step up lively now ! " ' Here, you, and you," I called ; for not a man moved, and 1 actually singled out a few of the discontents and shook the money ih their faces. "The run ended there, with the crowd! jeering those who had to take their cash and go." "And of course it was as you sar** — 'the virtue was in the washers,' " remarked! Dunhamrt admiringly. " Why, yes," contended Hollister, between, puffs as he lighted one of Dunham's cigarettes and pushed back from the ta;bLe to sit a* his ease ; " they had the best of the bluff. The cash without them would have melted away like a paper collar in a harvest field. Have one of them for a poc-ket-piece? It'll bring you luck. They did . me. There are a lot of them in the AlmaMater."