“Did you get it off?” cried several boys, pressing round Strong as he came out of the Principal’s office.

“No, I didn’t,” he replied gloomily, “and I don’t believe I ever shall! You’ll have to count me out this year.”

Exclamations and laments rose from the sympathetic audience.

“But won’t they give you another chance?” demanded Roberts, the track manager, who took the case especially to heart. He couldn’t let a ten-and-a-fifth-second man slip through his fingers like this.

“Oh, yes, they’ll give me another trial in May—if I am here then,” said the runner, sarcastically. “But what good is that? Haven’t I had a tutor for a month, and failed?”

“Well, try him some more,” said Freund, the captain of the team.

“I can’t afford it,” was the dismal answer. “It isn’t any use, either. I don’t believe the man did me any real good. He showed me how to do some problems and helped me along with translations, but he didn’t seem to strike the weak spot. I guess what I need is a new head. I’d swap my legs for one any day.”

In his present state, Strong was unmanageable, and his friends abandoned him to his own unpleasant reflections. With hands plunged in pockets and head sunk between shoulders, the discouraged fellow walked slowly away, viciously kicking an occasional pebble from his path.

Around the corner of Carter Hall, Salter appeared. He glanced bashfully at Strong slouching along moody and ill-humored, and catching the dragging step, loitered along at the runner’s side.

“The track ought to be in fine condition after the rain,” began Salter, in a high-pitched voice that suited well his figure and gait.

“I suppose so,” growled Strong, his tone indicating a decided lack of interest in both questioner and question.

Salter, rebuffed, tried to explain. “Don’t they say a hard rain is great for a track after it has been well smoothed and rolled in the spring?”

“Perhaps they do,” Strong replied wearily. “It don’t matter much to me anyway. They’ve held me up again with their confounded probations.”

“Same subjects?” asked Salter.

“Yes, German and Latin,—two nightmares! I can’t pass ’em if I stay here a hundred years.”

“Of course you can,” returned Salter, in a clumsy effort to console. “You’ve brains enough.”

“Not the kind they want,” retorted Strong, with a sneer, “not book brains.”

For the few steps remaining before they reached the entrance to the dormitory nothing was said by either boy, and they parted as silently. The last words of the disappointed runner’s surly retort followed Salter home, and still echoed with humiliating clearness in his ears long after he had seated himself in his own study chair. Salter possessed “book brains.” He wasn’t good for much else in the opinion of the school, but he could get marks. He was careful, did not think one thing and write another, always recognized clearly the principle involved, and kept ticketed and shelved in some convenient lobe of his brain a store of exceptional forms and expressions, of formulas and important facts, on which he drew for recitation and examination as one might draw on an ever increasing bank balance for the petty expenses of the day.

And yet in spite of these remarkable gifts which his fellows used without hesitation when it suited their needs, poor Salter, as we have seen, was neither popular nor happy. Why was it, he often asked himself, that while he was doing so unquestionably well that which apparently all boys were sent to school to do, he must forever be rated in the school life as a drone and a non-combatant among workers and warriors? It wasn’t just and it ought not to be, but how could he help it?

An hour later Strong stalked into the corridor before recitation room No. 7, where a couple of fellows were holding up poor Salter on sentences in Latin Composition which each was convinced, by inscrutable analysis of chances, that he was to “get” at the forthcoming recitation. Swift looked over Whitely’s shoulder as the latter scribbled down the last words of the corrected Latin. “Bellum gerebat,” said Whitely.

“Gereret,” corrected Salter.

“How’s that?” demanded Whitely.

“Indirect question,” said Salter.

“Oh, yes! And dies, what case is that?”

“Accusative, time how long,” returned the patient Sal.

“Why, of course! I knew that all the time,” declared Whitely, folding his paper with the air of one who had had information forced upon him. “I’m ready for him now.”

The recitation took its usual course. Strong flunked his question with a sullen resignation that drew a sharp look from the instructor. Whitely kept in the background until they had got well on toward the sentences which he had especially prepared, when he suddenly developed an intense interest in the recitation, fixed his eyes on Mr. Lovering’s face and brandished his arm aloft. But Mr. Lovering, who was near-sighted,—his colleagues said he always knew what not to see,—looked directly past the waving arm and challenging face to the silent, moody figure behind. Strong received the sentence which Whitely had so carefully prepared; and Whitely, with a face on which chagrin and disgust were so visibly pictured as to stir the merriment of the soberest, dragged himself to the board with a sentence which he had considered beyond the danger line and so not worth while to study.

“Did you have any assistance on that sentence, Strong?” asked Mr. Lovering, peering a little suspiciously over his spectacles. There had been but one mistake in the work, and that a slight one which Strong himself had recognized as soon as his attention was called to it.

“Not in the class, sir,” replied Strong. “I heard it talked over outside.”

“Explain the mood of gereret.”

“Subjunctive in indirect question,” answered the runner, promptly.

“And the case of dies?”

“Accusative, duration of time.”

Mr. Lovering nodded approvingly. “You seem to understand it, at all events. Now, Whitely, we’ll hear yours.”

And Whitely, flushed and confused, blundered through his poor translation, correcting slight errors by gross ones, and sitting down at last in the dismal consciousness that he had committed two of the particular sins of construction which, in Mr. Lovering’s eyes, were most unpardonable.

After the recitation, while Whitely was defending himself from the jeering congratulations of his friends, Strong found himself again at Salter’s side. This time he was in better humor for conversation.

“Well, Sal, what now?” he called jocosely after the dumpy figure mincing along with the peculiar gait which had suggested one of his nicknames. “Going to improve the shining hour, I suppose.”

“Yes,” replied Salter. “I’ve most of the German to do.” He hesitated a few moments, lifted a cautious glance toward Strong’s face, and added, “Don’t you want to come over?”

For an instant Strong stared in amazement. “Why, yes,” he said with a refreshing cordiality; “just wait till I get my books.”

Salter finished his preparation of the lesson that afternoon sufficiently early to have some minutes to devote to his visitor. It is a fact well known to schoolmasters that a pupil will often perceive the true inwardness of his fellow’s difficulty when the master has failed to discover it. To Salter things were so perfectly evident and clear in the lesson that it was a matter of interest to make out why they were not equally evident and clear to his companion. Before the recitation bell rang he thought he saw the obstacle; by the end of the Latin hour on the following day he was sure of it. Strong had a superficial quickness in learning forms and elements which had prevented his mastering them. What he learned one day was gone two days after. His foundation crumbled away beneath the structure he was striving to build upon it.

Like a good doctor studying a troublesome case, Salter, having located the weakness, set to work to remove it. Without special arrangement, almost without previous appointment, the sessions before the German and Latin recitations became regular. As we have learned, Salter’s room was not a place where boys were likely to gather. The friends who used to lounge in at Strong’s to pass an agreeable half hour now found the door frequently locked and their bird flown. It was weeks before they knew that he was “living at Salter’s.” They did not know, could not know, how much Salter was doing for their unscholarly friend; how he kept poor Strong reviewing, reviewing, reviewing, until certain forms and facts were stamped into his brain in ineradicable lines; how faithfully the list of frequently missed words was kept; how Strong himself at last grew so much interested in the constant struggle to master the elusive, mocking, fugitive vocabulary, that with every new word struck from the black-list he felt a triumph as of a well-won race.

Out of doors also the two began to appear together. When Strong did his work on the track, Salter was likely to be there also, to hold the sprinter’s sweater, or give him practice starts, or try to catch his time with the stop-watch. Collins, the trainer, came at last to expect them to appear together, and having found that Salter was developing skill in timing, not infrequently asked the “second” for other services. To his own surprise, Salter became aware that his society and his stop-watch were both in growing demand.

And so two months slipped by, and the day of the school meet came. Strong could not run, for he was still under the ban of probation. He watched the sports at Salter’s side, and felt the tingle of eagerness for the fray as he saw other fellows take the races which he might have won; and his heart throbbed with an overmastering yearning like that of the hunting-dog held back by a cruel leash when the pack is starting. The more fervently did he hammer away that night at his treacherous old enemies—the Latin constructions and the German vocabulary—while the boys discussed the games, on the dormitory steps.

A few days later the news flashed about the school that Strong had “passed off” his conditions. Wolcott and Poole knew how he had done it; others who had noticed his steady improvement in recitations were not so much amazed. But after all, the feeling uppermost seemed to be that his chances for the Hillbury meet were not what they had once been. At the Hillbury school contests the week before, Howes had done the hundred in ten and two-fifths, while Joslin had won the two-twenty in phenomenally fast time. So of these two races, which in the earlier estimates of the year had been credited to Strong, Seaton could hardly expect to win more than one. The school was discouraged, and so was Strong; but in answer to all the chatter of question and doubt, Salter and the trainer smiled wisely and imitated Brer Rabbit in saying nothing. They had held the watch on their man too many times to fear a newspaper hero.

The Seaton-Hillbury games that year were among the closest ever held by the rival schools. Strong won the hundred yards early in the contest, proving to the doubters that he really could run in ten and a fifth. Joslin of Hillbury won the quarter mile. And then, as the hurdles and distances were run and the field events yielded their slow results, the figures posted on the great announcement board showed as leader now Hillbury, now Seaton, with every patriotic lad guessing from event to event in a delightful thrill of hope and apprehension. When the two-twenty, the last race of the day, was reached, the score stood Hillbury 40½, Seaton 39½, the schools having tied for third place in one event.

Hillbury was jubilant, for was not this Joslin’s own event? The first prize counted five points, the second and third together but three. If Joslin won, Hillbury was victorious; if Joslin lost—but he could not lose! There was his record made but a few days before; no one now in Seaton had come near it. The timid Seatonian hushed his cheering and prepared himself for defeat; the braver cheered the more loudly to keep up his spirits.

“If we only had Dickinson again for just five minutes,” said Poole, as he sat with Lindsay and Planter on the top bench, “I could enjoy every second of this race. As it is, I wish it were over. I’m terribly afraid Strong hasn’t sand enough to keep ahead of that Joslin on a long stretch. It would be horrible to get so near and then lose.” He drew a long breath and passed his hand hurriedly over his eyes to dispel the blur into which the strain of intense watching had plunged the distant figures.

“Oh, pluck up!” returned Planter, whose less impetuous temperament stood better the strain of waiting. “A fellow who could lift himself out of probation as Strong has done has sand enough.”

Wolcott smiled at the idea of Strong’s lifting himself out of probation, but he made no comment, while Poole was too intent on the white-clad figures across the end of the track to heed anything else.

Meanwhile another and more serious conversation was going on at the starting line, where Salter stood with his champion to give him a last encouraging slap on the back and a last word of good cheer.

“It’s yours, Bill; you can beat him,” Salter was saying. “The two-twenty belongs to the hundred yards man, not to the quarter miler, remember that!”

“It’s the last two hundred feet that I’m afraid of,” returned Strong. “He’s used to the longer distance, and may be going his fastest when I’m giving out.”

“Get away from him at first, then, but not too far. Keep something in reserve for a spurt.”

The starter called the men, and Strong settled upon his mark. Joslin had the inside—a great advantage when the course begins with a turn, like the two-twenty stretch on the Hillbury track. At the start the four men rose together, but a second later two were ahead,—number one and number three. The outside man was moving a little faster, just enough to keep his position at the side of number one, as the two on the same radius swept round the circular end of the track, neck and neck, until they reached the straight stretch, where Strong forged two yards ahead and hung. It was this hanging, this apparent inability to increase his lead, that set the Hillbury contingent to yelling like crazy men; for here was being accomplished what the Hillbury coach had promised—that Strong would run himself out in the first two-thirds of the race and let Joslin pass him at the finish.

And Strong sped onward, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, yet feeling and knowing that his rival was gradually creeping up, was even, was a foot,—two feet, ahead. Thirty yards from the finish line, when the race seemed Joslin’s,—as safely as any race can be counted before the yarn is broken,—when Hillbury flags were already waving in the exultant disorder of triumph, the Seaton runner, drawing on his last reserve of strength, dug his spikes into the track, and with a burst of speed like the convulsive spurt of a forty-yards man, overhauled Joslin, passed him, threw up his arms for the line of colored yarn, and fell, limp and gasping, into the arms of waiting friends.

Salter still stood alone at the starting line watching the mob that, wild with joy, poured down tumultuous from the Seaton benches, and with crimson banners flashing in the sunlight swarmed about the panting victor. Why was it that the very event for which he had longed so ardently and labored so faithfully should now, as an accomplished fact, find him so lukewarm in his emotion? Salter knew well the cause, and, heartily ashamed, strove to throw off the feeling of depression stealing over him.

“What are you thinking of, you fool?” he demanded of himself angrily. “Did you expect them to come and carry you off on their shoulders? Of course it’s over, and they’ll forget that you had anything to do with it; but you had, all the same, and some of them know it. So behave yourself and get into the game.”

He went forward bravely to find a place in the triumphal procession that was now streaming toward the station. But envious thoughts still haunted him. The victory was won; he had helped to win it. The period of anxious longing was now at an end; and so, too, were the only really happy days his school life had known—those pleasant weeks when he had been something more to his fellow-students than a dictionary to be consulted and thrown aside.

As he neared the throng two fellows came striding toward him: one big and square-shouldered, with round, smooth face aglow with joyful excitement and straw hat tipped back over light, disordered, hair; the other shorter and more slender, with snapping black eyes, and face burned by exposure on the diamond.

“Here he is!” shouted Wolcott.

“You good-for-nothing Sal, why are you sneaking off by yourself?” cried Poole, almost simultaneously. “Come, you belong in this!”

And the two swept him off in the wake of the crowd. No one at that moment—not Strong the victorious, nor Freund, the captain of the team—was prouder or happier than Sally Salter.