The midweek Seatonian printed a frantic editorial demanding that more fellows come out to try for the relay team. From the tenor of the article one would suppose that some calamity threatened which could only be averted by the timely arrival of a regiment of candidates. The spirit of the exhortation was worthy of Demosthenes. Ignorant that the new member of the staff who was trying his hand at editorials was substituting vehemence for skill after the manner of tyros, Rob was greatly mystified. He understood neither what a relay team was, nor how it could be so shockingly unpatriotic not to come out and try for it. So he asked Strong, the captain of the track team, for information; and Strong, who treated every inquirer as an over-modest candidate, promptly added his name to the list.

[Pg 87]

Rob fell in obediently with the squad, and presently learned what it was all about. There was to be a team race of one mile with Hillbury six weeks later, at the great invitation winter meet of the Boston Athletic Association. Some other events besides this race were open to Seaton, and a considerable interest in the meeting had been worked up by Strong and Collins the trainer. Salter, a fat, good-natured senior, the butt of many a joke, but at the same time a favorite with the jokers, acted as captain's assistant. It was Salter who undertook to time Owen on his trial run on the wooden outside track that lies in a big, uneven oval in the hollow behind the gymnasium.

When Owen, aglow with warmth despite uncovered ankles and the icy air of February, slowed down a dozen yards beyond the finish line and turned about to learn his time, the fat boy in the big ulster and tweed cap was not to be seen. He had hurried off to find Collins, leaving the runner to take care of himself. This circumstance, taken with the physical reaction which promptly set in, and the frigidity of the wind which whistled past his bare legs and bellied out his thin run[Pg 88]ning trousers with a cold storage blast, did not encourage Rob in his experiment. He trotted back into the gymnasium, in ill humor with himself and the authorities, convinced that running was not his proper athletic forte, and stoutly resolved to have no more of it.

He was still engaged in piling up fresh arguments to this effect, while he hurried his dressing so as to get back to the tricky geometry original which had caught him in its time-consuming labyrinth. As he buttoned his collar, the tweed cap and voluminous ulster hove in sight.

"I stopped to see Collins," said Salter, "and tell him what good time you made. It's the best any new fellow's done this year!"

Owen stared. "I thought it wasn't any good. I was making up my mind to cut the whole business; I'm not made for a runner."

Salter looked shocked. "Oh, come now, you don't mean that! Why, I told Collins that you were just the man he was looking for to make out the team with Strong, Benton, and Rohrer. You'd be a fool to give up a chance like that to win against Hillbury."

[Pg 89]

"Or maybe to lose the race for Seaton," Rob replied with some bitterness. "No, I thank you. On a short dash I might do something,—I used to be pretty good at beating out bunts,—but this quarter-mile business is beyond me."

"Didn't I say your time was better than any other new man has made?" demanded Salter.

"But what about the old ones?" Owen retorted.

"Strong and Rohrer can beat it, and Benton probably, but that was your first attempt. You can improve on that."

"So can a lot of other fellows. Here, let me through! I've got to get home and finish an original."

But Salter still blocked the way. "What is it? Tell me and I'll start you on it."

Owen gaped incredulous. "You couldn't do it offhand!"

"I'll have a try at it," said Salter. "Look here, will you drop this quitter's talk about not running if I do the trick?"

Rob hesitated. He knew little of Salter personally, but on general principles he felt himself[Pg 90] safe. No fellow could know the whole four hundred and fifty originals in the plane geometry, and if Salter was like the average sport he couldn't know a dozen. Besides, Salter's geometry dated from the preceding year. To accept would be the easiest way to get rid of him.

"All right," he rejoined, smiling, "but it's like getting money for nothing." He stated the theorem slowly and distinctly, so as to take no unfair advantage. "Want it repeated?" he asked, leering triumphantly into the serious face of his companion, whose knitted brow and abstracted expression showed that he was thinking hard.

"No, I don't," replied the senior, suddenly breaking into a satisfied grin. "It's too dead easy. Look here!"

He drew forth a block of paper from one pocket, a fountain pen from another, with a single flourish of the pen made an almost perfect circle on the paper, and rapidly threw in chords and tangents and added letters.

"That's what you want to prove, isn't it? Well, this is the way it's done."

[Pg 91]

At the end of a minute Rob stood with the slip of paper in his hand blushing to think that he had made so much of a simple matter, while Salter was calmly replacing his block and pen in his pockets.

"You're in for it, all right. Of course, you know, I don't mean that you're sure of the team, but you've got a mighty good show, unless something unusual happens. There's Strong now."

Strong stopped just long enough to congratulate Owen on his trial, and to tell him he had a good show for a position. The captain was followed by the trainer. When Rob emerged from the gymnasium a few minutes later he carried in his hand Salter's notes, and in his mind certain regular practice appointments with Collins. Startlingly sudden as had been his precipitation into the ranks of the relay men, he felt less elation on this account than amazement at the quickness with which the senior had opened a rift in the obscurity of the geometry. How could a fellow like Salter, who didn't look remarkably clever and certainly hadn't studied geometry for at least six months, give an im[Pg 92]promptu demonstration like that! Was that the way in which originals were to be solved? If so, Rob Owen might as well get accustomed to a back seat; such feats were hopelessly beyond his slow powers!

Unreconciled to the notion that an hour of his time was not equivalent to a minute of another's, he stopped at Lindsay's room to ask for information.

"Salter? Of course I know him,—a good fellow he is, a perfect shark at lessons. You couldn't expect a man of his build to be athletic. What do you want to know about him?"

Rob told his tale, adding rather shamefacedly that he suspected there was some trick about it.

Lindsay laughed. "Not a bit of it. That's just the thing he can do. He's got a kind of X-ray mind for mathematics; he can see in a flash through all sorts of obstacles that we have to take a lot of time to work around. You can imagine what an awfully discouraging fellow he is to be in a class with. Why, he'll short-circuit a solution that a teacher's got out of a key, and find an easier way to do it."

[Pg 93]

Owen felt relieved. He evidently wasn't such a fool after all.

"Salter's best in mathematics, but he's good in ever............