The gymnasium was brilliantly lighted, and the seats that had been placed under the balconies were well filled, for, despite the inclemency of the weather, the town folks had turned out in force for the indoor meeting. The floor had been cleared of standards and bars, while ropes, rings, and trapezes had been relegated to the dim recesses of the arching roof. A running track had been roped off on the main floor, with inclined platforms at the corners of the hall to aid the runners at the turns, while the regular track above was turned into a temporary gallery from which the fellows who were not going to compete—and there were about a hundred and fifty of them—viewed the fun, leaning far over the railing, laughing, shouting, and singing excitedly. The four classes had gathered each to itself as far as was possible; the seniors on the left, the upper middle class on the right, the lower middle at one end of the hall and the juniors at the other. In front of them long draperies of class colors festooned the railing, and class challenged class with cheers and songs, and the Hillton band struggled bravely with a popular march.
The trial heats in several of the events had already been run off, and in the middle of the floor a number of contestants were putting a canvas-covered twelve-pound shot with varying success when Stewart Earle, accompanied by Trevor Nesbitt, left the dressing-room, and pushing their way through the narrow aisles between the rows of chairs, at last reached the former’s father and mother, who, in company with a tall and slender boy of sixteen, occupied seats next to the improvised barrier that divided audience from running track.
“I want you to know Trevor Nesbitt,” said Stewart. “Nesbitt, my mother and father. And that little boy beyond there is Master Carl Gray.” Trevor shook hands with a small, middle-aged gentleman in sober black, who peered upward at him in a manner that suggested near-sightedness, and with a lady somewhat younger than her husband, whose plain but kind face and sweet voice at once won his heart. As Gray was quite beyond reach of his hand, he merely accorded that youth a smiling nod. Stewart was still talking.
“You remember, mother, I told you that Nesbitt was going to run in the two hundred and twenty yards, don’t you? Well, the funny part of it is that we ran a dead heat in the first trial! I guess I’m a goner already.” He ended with a smile that only partly concealed his uneasiness.
His mother smiled from him to Trevor.
“Then you two boys will run together?” she asked.
[44]
“Yes, ma’am,” answered Trevor. “There’s five of us left for the final.”
“That’s very nice,” she replied, “for if Stewart is beaten he will not feel so badly if you are the winner, will you, dear?”
Trevor muttered something about there being no danger of his winning, while Stewart answered gaily: “But you’re leaving the other three chaps out of the game, mother; perhaps one of them will beat us both.”
“No fear,” said Carl Gray; “Dunlop’s a stiff, Wharton isn’t in your class, Stew, and as for Milkam, well, I think you can beat him out all right at a hop; so it’s between you and Nesbitt, and may the best man win.”
“That’s right,” said Mr. Earle, nodding his head approvingly. “If your friend is a better runner than you, Stewart, he should win, of course. When do you race?” He held a program up to his eyes and scowled in an endeavor to decipher the lines.
“In about twenty minutes, I guess. Let me see, father.” Stewart took the program. “‘Twenty-yard dash, junior; twenty-yard dash, senior; putting twelve-pound shot; running high jump; one-mile run; pole vault; sixty-yard hurdle; eight-hundred-and-eighty-yard run; two-hundred-and-twenty-yard dash; relay race, one mile, lower middle class versus junior class; relay race, one mile, senior class versus upper middle class.’ Well, you can’t tell by this,[45] I guess; they’ll just pull off the events when they feel like it.”
“All out for the eight hundred and eighty yards,” cried a voice across the building.
“There, see?” said Stewart. “That event’s down after the hurdles; you can’t tell much by the program; you never can. I wish they’d call the two hundred and twenty now, though.”
“Getting nervous, Stew?” asked Carl Gray.
“A little, I guess. There they come for the half mile. Look, there’s Keeler of our class; he’s one of our relay team; isn’t he a peach?”
“A what, dear?” asked his mother.
“A—er—well, I mean isn’t he fine?” stammered Stewart, while Carl and Trevor exchanged grins.
“Is he? He looks from here dreadfully thin,” answered Mrs. Earle.
“That’s partly what makes him a good runner,” explained Stewart. “He’s all muscle, scarcely any weight to carry.”
“Well, dear, I do hope you won’t get to looking like that.”
“Humph, I should hope not.” This from Stewart’s father. The bunch of ten runners had left the mark, and had begun their long series of tours about the track, cheered from the gallery by their fellows. “Go it, Keeler!” shouted Stewart as a youth with ludicrously long legs[46] ambled past, almost the last of the group. A quick glance and a fleeting grin from a queer, good-humored, and very freckled face answered Stewart’s cry, and the runners swept by, their feet pounding loudly as they took the inclines at the turns. The shot putting was over and the victor, a dumpy-looking boy with the lower middle class colors across his shirt, had been clamorously hailed as he walked off with superb dignity, and the vaulting standards were being put in place while a group of half a dozen youths trod gingerly about looking very serious and important. Finally the bar was up, with a white handkerchief across it, and one after another of the contestants, with the long pole in their hands, ran lightly forward, rose till their white-clad bodies swung out from the staff like pennants, and dropped across the bar.
“Why, how easily they do it!” cried Mrs. Earle admiringly, and Stewart’s father clapped his hands vigorously.
“Huh,” said Stewart, “that’s nothing; they haven’t begun yet; just wait until they get that bar up to about nine feet.”
“Nine feet! Why, how high is it now, dear?”
“’Bout seven foot eight, I should think; eh, Carl?”
“There it goes to the even eight,” answered Carl, as the judges raised the bar.
“Is—is there any danger of their falling, Carl,” asked Mrs. Earle.
[47]
“Not a bit, and if they do they’ll hit the mattress. I say, Stew, look at Keeler.”
The runners had completed half the distance, and as they again swept by the freckled-faced and long-legged lower middle class boy left his place near the rear of the procession, and with an easy spurt placed himself in the first group. The three boys added their applause to that which thundered down from the far end of the gallery.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he won,” said Trevor. “He’s running easy and has lots more spurt left, to look at him. But, of course, Manning is a pretty tough proposition, I fancy.”
“Manning isn’t what he cracks himself up to be,” said Carl decidedly. “And I’ll just bet you that Keeler wins out easily.”
A bell clanged warningly, and the tumult in the gallery increased. “Last lap, fellows! Last lap!” “Go it, Freckles!” “Brace up, Manning! Come on, come on!” But Manning couldn’t “come on” to any great extent, and the lower middle boys, leaning perilously over the edge of the gallery, fluttered their colors frantically and shouted incoherent advice, entreaty, and triumph as Keeler, his long legs working like a well-lubricated machine, his freckled face overspread with an easy and confident smile, swept superbly by the exhausted Manning and two other runners and crossed the line, as Carl had predicted, an easy winner.
[48]
When the tumult had subsided to some extent the trial heats in the senior twenty-yard dash were begun, the track being diagonally across the floor, and bunch after bunch of white-clad youths raced like the wind toward the tape. The pole vaulting came to an end with a record-breaking accomplishment of nine feet two inches by a member of the upper middle class, and the running high jump began. Then, “All out for the two-twenty, and hurry up!” came the command from somewhere, and Stewart and Trevor struggled through the throng toward the dressing-room to throw aside their wraps.
A minute or two later five boys stood on their marks awaiting the report of the starter’s pistol. Trevor found himself by the side of Dunlop; then came Stewart, Milkam, and Wharton. There was a golden haze of floating dust in the air, and the faces of Stewart’s father and mother and of Carl Gray were indistinct across the building.
“Ready!”
“Get set!”
There was an intense silence about the starting-line, but from above came a deep sound of lowered voices, subdued laughter and the tramping of restless, excited feet.
“Bang!”
And ere the report had wholly died away the five runners were a quarter-way about the track on the first of the three laps constituting the two hundred and twenty yards.
As they passed under the left side of the gallery the[49] seniors leaned over in an endeavor to catch sight of them and urged their two heroes, Wharton and Milkam, with eager cries. Then the turn was made, and Trevor, glancing upward fleetingly, saw a long row of faces peering down with open mouths from which came shouts of “Nesbitt! Nesbitt!” “Dunlop! Dunlop!” A long banner of upper middle class colors writhed serpent-like above him, and then he was under the gallery, running swiftly. Now and then he caught a blare of a merry two-step from the hard-worked band. He glanced aside. Stewart was even with him, his face anxious and somewhat pale. Wharton, Milkam, and Dunlop were strung out behind, but all well in the race.
Up in the gallery, on the left, sat Dick Hope among the seniors. Beside him were Williams and a stout, red-faced youth whose real name was Todd, but who was more generally known as “Toad.” Dick watched the runners circle the end of the building.
“First lap’s done,” he said. “That roommate of mine, Nesbitt, seems to be something of a runner.”
“Sure,” answered Todd, “’Is ’Ighness is all right, if he is a bloody Englishman.”
“I’d rather be English than Dutch, Toad,” grinned Williams.
“Shut up, you; I’m no more Dutch than you are. Here they come! Brace up, Wharton!” and Todd leaned over the railing and waved his cap wildly in air.
“You might as well save your breath, I guess,” said[50] Dick. “Wharton’s out of it, and so’s Milkam. The race’s between Nesbitt and young Earle. And as we can’t win it, I hope Earle will. He’s a decent, plucky youngster; and—well, anything to beat upper middle, you know.”
“You’re not very loyal to your chum,” grinned Williams.
“He has no business being in the upper middle,” responded Dick calmly. “By Jove, look there!”
Across the gymnasium the runners were speeding down the back-stretch, Trevor and Stewart, side by side, leaving the other three farther and farther behind at every step. Wharton and Milkam were practically out of it; Dunlop was ten yards to the bad, but running strongly and apparently still capable of retrieving his lost ground. At the turn Trevor hugged the inside of the track and Stewart, smaller, lither, and speedier-looking, snuggled in close behind him. Dunlop, head back, a look of grim determination on his face, spurted until he had gained a position but a scant two yards behind Stewart.
“Good boy, Dunlop!” shouted Williams, while from across the building came a wild cry of joy from dozens of throats.
“I guess that’s his last spurt,” muttered Dick; “he’s showing the pace.”
And so it proved. The bell rang warningly, and the shouting from excited partisans increased in volume as the last lap commenced. Trevor, still ahead, increased his[51] speed. Stewart accepted the challenge promptly, and Dunlop, after a brave but futile effort to keep his place, was left behind. Milkam and Wharton plodded along easily a full half lap in the rear until the latter, spying Dunlop’s predicament, suddenly spurted, and entered the lists with him in a contest for third place, leaving Milkam, bewildered, hopelessly last.
On the last lap.
At the second turn Trevor had given place to Stewart. When the two entered the back-stretch Trevor drew alongside his rival again, stayed there for an instant, and then drew ahead. The gymnasium was a babel of voices. The last lap was half run, and Trevor had put two yards of track between him and Stewart. Many yards behind Dunlop and Wharton were having a hot race of their own wholly unnoticed, for every eye followed the two youths whose flying feet were now pounding the incline at the third corner.
“’Is ’Ighness wins easily,” said Todd, shouting to make himself heard above the shrieks of his neighbors. Dick nodded. He was sorry to see Stewart beaten, but surprised to find himself suddenly experiencing a sensation of pride in the work of his roommate. After all, he had run a great race and deserved to win; and really, when he came to think about it, Nesbitt was handicapped by greater weight, and——
“Earle’s closing up!” cried Williams.
And so it was. With the contest almost over, the younger boy had forged ahead, and at the last turn secured[52] the inside of the track. Trevor was wobbling! Twice he swerved unsteadily, but as the home-stretch was reached appeared to pull himself together with an effort, and gallantly strove to pass Stewart. But the latter, running steadily and seemingly untired, not only held his own, but tacked another two yards onto his gain and breasted the tape an easy winner! And how lower middle did yell!
Dunlop and Wharton fought it out to the end side by side, the former securing third place by the smallest of margins.
“Well, what do you think of that!” exclaimed Williams in deep disgust as soon as he could make himself heard. “Why, ’Is ’Ighness had the race in his pocket!”
“I think——” Dick hesitated.
“What do you think?” Dick smiled.
“I think Nesbitt was beaten,” he answered.
Williams viewed him in painful disgust.
“I think you’re nutty,” he growled. “Don’t you suppose I can see when a man’s beaten?”
“Not always, I guess,” replied Dick enigmatically.
Whereupon Williams begged Todd to bathe Dick’s head, and in the fracas that followed the amazing result of the two-hundred-and-twenty-yard dash was for the time forgotten.