With the passing of the Hillbury meet, Archer’s career as a school athlete was at an end. He played tennis and scrub ball, but this was play, not work. His training now was for quite another kind of contest—the final wrestling match with the college examinations. He shared as a helpless onlooker in the disaster of the annual ball game, when Noyes’s nine after a hard fight took the Seatonians into camp. The football men were the only victors of the year, since even in tennis honors were divided. Sam smiled to himself somewhat grimly as he considered how fortune had cooperated with Mulcahy in his ambitions for the Yale Cup. Against the background of defeated teams, the football men bulked large as athletes.

Mrs. Archer came up to be present at the festivities of graduation week. With Mrs. Sedgwick and Margaret, she started early for the chapel exercises with which the school year formally closed. As they crossed the yard, the seniors were forming in a long, uneven double line that extended from the steps of the main school building across the lawn toward the outer fence. Late risers were scurrying from the dormitories, struggling, on the run, to work their arms into the sleeves of their gowns and at the same time to keep their mortar-boards safely balanced on their heads. The marshals were zealously and more or less effectually ordering the jeering battalion. Sam, looking like a giant in the ample gown that covered his bony length, raised his cap over a face glowing with satisfaction as the three visitors passed the head of the line, hurrying to reach their places before the procession took the right of way. “He’s a dear boy,” thought the mother with pride, “if he is not a genius. He does the best he can.”

They were given seats on the side aisle, well to the front; the middle section was reserved for the class. Before the platform stood a heavy table. On it were the score of prizes to be assigned, piles of books, impressive envelopes containing the money awarded, and in the midst, towering in cold stateliness above two minor brethren, the shining form of the Yale Cup. Solemn faces of benefactors and famous graduates looked down disapprovingly from the walls; there had been no such lavish display of prizes in the simple old days when they were members of the school, reciting Latin and Greek by candlelight to austere, dignified gentlemen who revered Cicero as the model for all language and ignored French and German as the lingo of dancing-masters and fiddlers. Flanking the platform and facing the audience, ran a long line of chairs—“for the faculty,” whispered Mrs. Sedgwick, who had been present on such occasions before.

Presently the tramp of feet was heard, and the seniors filed in for their last chapel service. They stood, when they reached their places, waiting for the dignitaries, who were not slow to appear. The principal entered with the president of the board of trustees, two clergymen from abroad, others of the trustees who were in town, and a venerable alumnus or two to whom the school would do honor. These took places on the platform, in the alcove behind the reading desk. After them came the faculty, a motley line, in which staid elderly men, of the wisdom which is born of long intercourse with boys, touched shoulders with youths fresh from the university—in whom self-confidence and zeal must still do duty for ripe experience and sound judgment. When all were placed, the visiting clergymen conducted the simple devotional exercises, the hymns rolling with resonant vigor from two hundred masculine throats. Then the president of the board of trustees, encumbered by many typewritten sheets, came forward beside the desk for the formal business of the day.

He began by addressing certain neatly worded compliments to the graduating class. In this task, which was in the line of his daily work as an advocate before important courts, he acquitted himself with dignity and impressiveness. When, however, he came to the reading of the list of those entitled to diplomas, his experience in public speaking availed him little. He waded on, undaunted, through fourscore names, pronounceable and unpronounceable, drawn from all races and all lands. As each name was read or attempted, its claimant rose in response, until every wearer of a gown was on his feet. Then the diplomas were passed out in bunches to chosen delegates, who delivered them to their proper owners.

With a feeling of relief the president laid aside the catalogue of seniors, and took up the short list of honor men. After this he passed to those of the school who had earned “honorable mention,” finding new pitfalls in untried combinations of letters which stood for certain deserving members of lower classes. With the next sheet began the announcement of prize-winners.

Here was the climax of the day. Many were the boys who listened with quick-beating hearts, hoping to hear the sound of their names; and many there were who listened in vain. The president announced the prize and the award; the secretary of the faculty took the prize from the table and handed it to the principal; the principal delivered it into the hands of its owner. As one and another came forward, flushed with happy embarrassment, and received the reward of his labor, the school gave abundant applause, those who had nourished no hopes and those who had hoped in vain uniting in generous congratulation of the victors. So went the Latin prizes, the Greek prizes, the prizes in English composition, in Mathematics, in Bible study, in History; the prize for general excellence in studies and that for physical development. Sam’s interest was keen in the result, for he hoped to see his room-mate honored as a Latinist. He chuckled with delight as Moorhead was called a second time to the gift table, and brought back a sample from the pile of twelve large volumes of Shakespeare as a prize in English.

There were but three or four awards still to be made when Sam, seeing the secretary reach for the big three-handled cup that mounted guard over the remaining envelopes and books, knew that the time for Mulcahy’s prize had come. He glanced backward curiously over his shoulder at the astute strategist who sat a few seats away, and marked with amused interest the artful mask of indifference which the young man wore. So fascinating was this study of Mulcahy the expectant, and Mulcahy the ready-to-be-surprised, that Sam very impolitely kept his eyes on the face in the row behind until the president had finished the long description: “The Yale Cup, given by the Yale Club of Boston to the Senior who best combines proficiency in athletics with good standing in his studies.” As the reader paused, Sam faced front and prepared to applaud the name of John Joseph Mulcahy,—but the name the president read was “Samuel Wadsworth Archer”!

The applause thundered forth sudden and sharp, no perfunctory service of courtesy, but a burst of enthusiastic approval that swept the whole student company. It rose and fell and rose again, vehement and long drawn out. The boys in front twisted their heads around as they strove, still beating their palms, to catch a glimpse of the winner; those in the seats behind craned their necks with the same laudable design. And Sam sat with downcast eyes and glowing cheeks, hearing but not believing, stupidly delaying the exercises, yet hardly daring to answer the summons; until Westbrook, who sat beside him, stopped clapping long enough to dig him in the ribs with a sharp elbow and enjoin him: “Go and get it, you fool. Don’t you see you’re keeping the whole business waiting?” To this exhortation Sam gave heed.

During the remainder of the exercises Sam sat with the precious cup clutched beneath his gown, ecstatically demanding of himself again and again how it could possibly be, and pitying the unfortunate whose deep-laid plans had gone so wholly wrong. When the audience was dismissed, he was at once overwhelmed by boys who insisted on shaking his hand and slapping his shoulder and telling him that the award was “just right,”—and, of course, handling the cup.

Mrs. Archer, on her side, was a general target for congratulations. She received them with the composure of a mother who is never wholly surprised at any honor bestowed upon her son; but in her eyes burned a light of happiness and excitement that belied her quiet manner, and her gaze would wander to the group of gowns that thronged her tall son and hid the white gleam of silver from the sight of the unprivileged curious.

“How did he happen to get it?” she asked Dr. Leighton, as the teacher came to offer his compliments. “I’m sure he hadn’t the slightest expectation of its coming to him.”

“Of course he didn’t expect it,” returned Dr. Leighton. “The boy who deserves such a prize rarely expects it. I can tell you how it came to be awarded to him, because I was on the committee. He won it by good honest work. It was what he accomplished, not what he chanced to do, that turned the scales in his favor.”

Mrs. Archer’s look indicated that she was not quite sure that she understood; but before she could ask further, her son broke through the circle of students, and came, sheepishly dangling the cup by one of its heavy handles, to greet his mother. Sam was not sufficiently experienced in prize-winning to take his honors easily, especially when Margaret Sedgwick roguishly assumed a clean record of A’s as a part of his title to the cup, and insisted on knowing all details. He managed to escape these embarrassing attentions by calling up Moorhead and presenting him as the banner prize-catcher of the class; and presently, on the pretext of helping his room-mate carry home his load of Shakespeares, he succeeded in getting safely away.

The next morning when Sam called at the Sedgwicks’ to see his mother, he found her on the garden piazza, with a Boston paper on her lap.

“There’s a whole column here about the Commencement,” she said, as Sam sat down beside her. “Don’t you want to see it?”

Sam laughed contentedly. “I don’t need to read about it; I was there.”

“And beside it is a report from the Hillbury Commencement, too. Prizes aren’t so plenty in Hillbury. There seem to be hardly half as many as are given here.”

The prizes at Hillbury possessed small interest for Sam. He was satisfied to lounge quietly in the comfortable chair, let his eyes wander over the profusion of gay flowers in the old-fashioned garden, and gloat in silence on the fact that school recitations were, for him, forever finished. All at once he straightened up in his chair and demanded:—

“Who got the Yale Cup down there? I wonder if it’s any one I know?”

“In Hillbury?” answered Mrs. Archer, taking up the paper again. “Let me see—the Orton prize, the Harper prize, the—oh, yes, the Yale Cup: Winthrop Joy Kilham.”

“Kilham!” cried Sam, in a sudden accession of spirit. “Kilham! That’s great! The judges hit the bull’s-eye that time, for sure!”