On the Saturday after the Faculty Shield day, Sam ran in the forty-five-yard hurdles again, in the handicap meet which regularly follows the scratch contests. The handicapper thought one yard about the right allowance for the long-legged upper middler; Somers got two and Foote three. Fairmount ran from scratch. It was a hot race, with every contestant hoping to cross the line first, the man in front driving himself that his advantage might not be wrested from him, the pursuers confident of superiority and struggling to secure the positions which belonged to them. Sam felt the presence of Somers and Foote ahead pulling him forward as the magnet attracts steel; his legs followed each other faster than they had ever gone before; the three hurdles were but three exhilarating bounds in his course. Forgetting Fairmount, who was behind, he ran down Somers, pressed on after Foote, and passed him by a convulsive straining effort at the finish. Never before had he felt what it was to fight his way in a race; to mark his adversary and beat him, as one throws his opponent in a wrestling bout, or as the tackier downs his man, surely and hard, on the football field. In his struggle to pass Foote he had kept ahead of Fairmount, who finished two feet behind him.

Collins was pleased, as much with the new spirit of the hurdler as with his success in the event. “He’s slow,” he remarked to Bruce, “but he’ll come in time.”

“This year?” questioned Bruce, closely. It was “this year,” the year of his captaincy, that interested Bruce.

“I can’t say,” answered Collins, thoughtfully. “It may take a long while. He’s a good, steady boy; he’ll come all right sometime.”

Duncan Peck, too, seemed to be influenced by Sam’s modest success in the handicap meeting. He confessed one day in a burst of confidence, after Sam had led him through the maze of a foolish algebra problem about two men who rowed past each other up and down stream—each, apparently, with a stop watch and a log line—that his duel joke with Shirley had proved a boomerang. In return Sam told him of the initials—D. P.—in the back of Mulcahy’s book.

“It’s mine all right,” remarked Duncan, “but I’ve got another now, and it isn’t worth while to make a row about it. I can’t prove anything against him. He’d say he bought it at Moran’s or of one of those fellows who were fired last week. It shows you what he is, though.”

“I know what he is,” said Sam, blushing. “I don’t need any more lessons.”

Another person with whom Sam hoped that he might gain some influence by the prestige of his improvement in the hurdles was his second cousin, Wally Sedgwick. Wally was a lower middler, active-minded and ambitious. Athletics would have given a natural scope to his energy, but he was too small and immature to have any chance in Seaton sports. He had fallen in with a set of idle boys of not the highest standards, who appealed to Wally’s imagination as gay young bloods; they knew things and were up to date. None of these was in the class of John Fish, a reprobate, and callous to the opinion of his associates; nor in that of Mulcahy, whose ambition led him to conceal his wrong-doing, but could not prevent his determined selfishness from pushing to the surface. The wickedness of Wally’s friends lay mainly in talk and swagger, but they had already suggested to him that the code of morals taught in his home was goody-goody, and that the proper way to show his spirit was to do “what everybody did.” Wally was popular with many of the older boys because he was the brother of Margaret Sedgwick. They bestowed attentions on him in the hope of “making themselves solid” with Miss Margaret, caring little whether these attentions were good for the boy or not.

The track team were going to Boston to compete in the schoolboy games of the Boston Athletic Association. For the first time in his school career Sam was to be a member of a Seaton team in contest with other schools. He was to wear the significant red letters on his shirt, was to see his name on the big official programme as a representative of Seaton, was to be trusted to do a part in gaining public honors for the school. He thought of it by day, dreamed of it by night, and longed, as only an inexperienced tyro can long, to do credit to those who trusted him. Mr. Archer, who sympathized with his son in all innocent interests, that he might wield the stronger influence when great questions of conduct came up for settlement, ordered a ticket and promised to be present at the contests. Sam wrote the usual disclaimer of any expectation of getting a place, but his secret hopes ran high. Why shouldn’t Fairmount win first and he second, as they had done at Seaton?

Then came the trip in pleasant but orderly company, the lunch in town, the dressing in confused, cramped quarters, the facing of tier on tier of partisans encircling the huge room, the disorderly jumble about the starting lines, the hurried calling of contestants, the uproar of rival cheers—and at last the all-important summons. Few looked upon that particular heat of the forty-five-yard hurdles with special interest. Occasional friends of runners scattered through the benches, Mr. Archer straining his eyes at the long, lank figure crouching in the outside course, Collins ever calmly observant of his protÉgÉs, the little batch of eager Seatonians watching the red letters, a noisy squad cheering the wearer of a big W—these were the real audience.

The pistol cracked. The line shot forward, over hurdles, through hurdles, stampeding for the tape. Sam stumbled, caught his step again and dashed blindly on. He sprang for the last hurdle as another was leaving it. A blue N was first, the W second, Sam an unplaced third. The starters were calling the sixth heat.

It was all over in ten seconds—the set, the start, the struggle, the finish, Sam’s dream of achievement. He slipped into a corner by his schoolmates and tried to forget his disappointment in watching the efforts of his friends. He saw Kilham of Hillbury beat out Fairmount by a foot in the finals of the hurdles. He cheered vigorously when Gay took the forty. He groaned in dismay as Bruce was pocketed on the curve of the track in the six hundred and forced behind. When Weatherford won the thousand yards and Brewster the mile, and Jones soared a handbreadth above the bar after all rivals had failed, he exulted with pure delight. At such times the sight of the success of his school almost comforted him for his own failure. But when unfamiliar letters were in the van, when the Seaton runners were lost in the field of pursuers, then the fruitlessness of his own effort recurred to him afresh, and the folly of his hopes. Abashed, he glanced up at the indistinct face in the distant gallery and wondered whether his father felt himself the victim of false representations. Exactly what his father did think he had no opportunity to discover. When Sam looked for him after the pole-vault, his place was empty; Mr. Archer, having stayed to the limit of his time, was hurrying for his train.

The next day Sam approached the groups of chattering acquaintances with some dread of sarcastic comment. His fears were needless. Kendrick and Taylor and a few others remarked sympathetically on his “hard luck”; Duncan Peck made a creditable effort to be encouraging; but the majority showed no concern whatever in his failure. This contemptuous indifference on the part of the many, this assumption that he didn’t count or that nothing was expected of him anyway, stirred Sam’s fighting blood. He did not need the consolation which Collins gave when he spoke of the event as “just practice,” nor the inspiration of Bruce’s gay derision of himself for being blocked off on the track. The public disdain was stimulus enough to a proud spirit. Sam’s resolution to brook no discouragement until time had fully proved his incompetency dates from that day.

But there were other interests in Sam’s daily life besides hurdling. His lessons were going, some well, some tolerably, some ill. In French he did not get ahead, and consequently he did not gain in favor with Mr. Alsop. In truth, it is to be feared that Sam did not try his very best for the lord of his entry. The experienced had informed him that if one did well enough with two or three teachers to make himself solid with them, they would defend him against those with whom he did ill. As Sam’s schedule was a full one and some neglect was inevitable, he followed his inclination and neglected Mr. Alsop. That gentleman did not relish neglect; it offended his dignity and cut through the smooth coating of his self-satisfaction. Mr. Alsop would never have struck an enemy whose hands were bound, but he did not hesitate to assail in the classroom with personal flings and stinging sarcasms the luckless boy who incurred his displeasure. Unable to strike back, the boy endured in silence and nursed his sense of unjust treatment with sullen, unforgiving wrath. Mr. Alsop meant well, but he lacked the instinct of fairness.

In the dormitory entry there were troubles for which Sam and Birdie Fowle were generally held responsible by Mr. Alsop,—Sam as the accessory who was too clever to be detected, Birdie as the criminal occasionally caught in the act. Some one, supposed to have been Birdie, had thrown water out of a window in the vain attempt to reach a boy who was hurling taunts from below. Mr. Alsop had called up Fowle and charged him with the offence. Birdie had acknowledged his sin. The teacher, instead of welcoming this frankness as an encouraging symptom, and by tact and kindness inspiring in that careless youth the desire to keep the peace, read him a harsh to the indignant satisfaction of the boy that the fellows were right when they said that honesty was not the best policy in dealing with profs. Injustice being the rule, one might as well be actually bad, as good and always suspected of badness.

Soon after this the day’s collection of waste paper in the wire grate in the basement was set on fire, causing small damage, but much excitement throughout the well and great chagrin to the official regulator thereof. Fortunately for Birdie, his presence at recitation at the time enabled him to prove a complete alibi. Right upon the heels of this act of vandalism some miscreant, in the middle of the evening study hour, set off a cannon cracker in the entry. Mr. Alsop, who was at home, tore open his door and rushed savagely up the stairs. Through a dense cloud of smoke he descried John Fish standing in his doorway.

“What is it, Fish?” Mr. Alsop demanded angrily.

“Some one’s set off a cannon cracker, sir,” answered Fish. “I was just coming out to see if I couldn’t catch the fellow.”

Doors were open now about the stairway, heads peered over from above.

“Could you tell where it came from?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you have anything to do with it, Booth?”

“No, sir.”

“You, Rand?”

“No, sir.”

“You, Moorhead?”

“No, sir.”

“You, Taylor?”

“No, sir.”

“You, Fish?”

“No, sir.”

Mr. Alsop went upstairs, called out every occupant of every room, and put to all the same question. Fowle and Archer he asked twice. Peck was out, and so was Lord’s room-mate. Otherwise the entire well was canvassed. After the cross-examination was concluded, the teacher gathered the whole company into his room.

“Some one has told me a falsehood,” he began solemnly. “I do not know who it is, but I can guess. To that person I want to say that I consider a lie as much worse than setting off crackers, as crackers are worse than an ordinary rough-house. The one who is responsible will do well to come to me and confess the truth. The rest of you who are shielding the guilty one should remember that by keeping silent you assume a share in the guilt. If I can’t have order in this well by any other means, I’ll put the whole well on study hours, and if that doesn’t answer, it will have to be cleaned out altogether. The school has no use for rowdies.”

This last threat Mr. Alsop did not really mean, as it would have involved firing the studious Moorhead, the good John Fish, and the cherub Rand,—the sweetest, most friendly, most diligent little boy that Mr. Alsop had on his list. But instances were known of whole dormitory wells ruthlessly swept clear at an indignation meeting of an offended faculty. Fowle and Archer as the scapegoats of the well foresaw trouble for themselves, at any rate, whatever punishments were inflicted. They got together soon after Mr. Alsop’s audience was dismissed, and held wrathful council. At the end they picked up Taylor and moved down on John Fish, who opened his door a crack to see who was knocking, and then opened it wide because a big foot prevented its being closed.

“I’m getting popular,” he said, smiling feebly at his visitors.

“Not with this gang!” said Taylor, as he shut the door behind him.

“You set off that cracker!” blurted Sam, with suppressed fierceness.

“I didn’t.”

“You lie! You did,” retorted Sam. “You know you did. We want to give you warning that this funny business has got to stop. You know that Fowle and I get the credit if anything happens here, whether we’re in it or not. If we get soaked by Alsop for anything that’s done hereafter, we’ll maul you so that you can’t stand!”

Fish looked at the trio in apprehension. Archer’s fight with Runyon had passed into dormitory history; he was regarded as a dangerous man. Fowle and Taylor were solid fellows, the latter a member of his class football team. Fish himself, though easily superior to the smaller occupants of the well, would have shrunk from single combat with any one of the militant trio. His chance against them all would have been very poor indeed.

“What do you want?” he asked sullenly.

“We want you to cut it out, that’s all,” answered Fowle.

“Cut it out entirely,” added Taylor.

“Well, I will,” answered Fish, in a sour tone, “but I can’t be responsible for everything that happens.”