I

On a cool morning in mid-June two little boys, very dusty and wearing very grimy waists, sat on the turfed mound of an ancient circus ring in the old fair ground enclosure, intently watching the gaunt, half-naked figure of a man in flapping white breeches who, high-stepping, sprinted back and forth along the stretch of the old race track. Their elbows on their knees, their chins in their grimy hands, they gazed fixedly at him whom they had trudged across the lots to see. For in his day he was the small boys' god, their best-loved hero, before whom it was their greatest joy to bend the knee.

"D' you think he kin do it?" Jimmy Thurston finally inquired, as the spare, ridiculous figure of the man brought up behind the tenantless judges' stand and for an instant was lost to sight.

Willie Trigger sneered. He was very superior, was Willie.

"Sure he kin!" he exclaimed. "Sure he kin!"

"I bet he can't," Jimmy replied curtly.

"He kin too—'sides——"

"'Sides what?" the challenging Jimmy asked, contemptuously.

"My father says he kin."

"Aw——"

"He does too."

"Aw, my pa says he can't——"

"I d'care; he kin."

"How d'you know?"

"Well"—Willie Trigger hesitated. "Well, my father says he guesses he kin beat a nengine!"

At that Jimmy Thurston burst into jeering laughter.

"He! he! he!" he cackled—"a nengine! He! He! Why, a nengine goes—a nengine goes a mile in a minnit!"

Willie Trigger had become very red; moreover he was choking, half with rage, half with confusion. He recognized the need of personal support. So he blurted:—

"I know he kin, 'cause I seen him—onct!"

"Aw, yeh didn't neether," Jimmy Thurston flatly contradicted.

Willie wriggled and dug his heel into the soft earth.

"I did——"

"Didn't neether!"

Willie Trigger sprang to his feet, his fists clenched. Tears were rising now.

With his eye Jimmy Thurston measured the distance across the field to the white house at the gate where he knew his mother was. Leaping forward he dashed suddenly away, and as he dodged the gurgling Willie, cried:

"Li-ar! Li-ar! Li-ar!"

It took Willie Trigger three seconds to perceive the situation and to act. Like a hound, then, he was off in the other's wake.

The straining Jimmy, his heart bursting with regret, heard his pursuer panting at his heels.... Nearer! Nearer!

A scream suddenly rent the air, a scream that was carried on by a willing wind to the keen appreciative ears of motherhood. As Willie Trigger was about to close upon the plunging form of Jimmie, Mrs. Thurston flung back the screen door and appeared upon the narrow back porch, wiping her hands on her apron.

"Jim-mee! Jim-mee Thurston!" she screamed.

"Maw!" yelled Jimmy dolorously.

At the maternal screech, Willie Trigger brought up standing. One instant he hesitated and then, showing his heels to the woman on the porch whose arms were outstretched to receive her own, he scurried off in the direction of the judges' stand, as fast as his little legs could carry him. He heard the warning cry from the back porch:—

"Willie Trigger, if you hurt Jimmy, I'll skin you alive!"

And at the corner of the judges' stand he ran full into the long, lank creature in the flapping "shorts"—and brought up, gaping.

"Well, well, who was after you?" asked the towering runner, gazing down at the little grimy boy whose head seemed to come somewhere about his high-set knees.

"Nobody," Willie Trigger mumbled.

"Who was that calling?"

"I dunno." Willie looked up and the runner smiled down at him.

"Where do you live?" he asked.

"On Thayer Street."

"Way down there, eh? What you doing up here, then?"

Willie Trigger again looked up into the gaunt creature's long, thin face, then down at the ground into which he proceeded to bore with the stubbed toe of one small shoe.

"Come to see you run," he mumbled, and grinned sheepishly.

Bunny laughed drily.

"Well, I'll"—he began and stopped. Then he said:—"You wait here, little chap; I'll just get into some clothes and we'll go home together; it's nearly noon. I live down your way——"

The gentleness of his voice gave Willie Trigger a new courage.

"I know it," he exclaimed proudly; "I live 'cross the street."

The runner plunged into the box-like compartment of the disused judges' stand from which he issued in an incredibly short space of time more properly and far more becomingly clad.

"How did you know I was going to practice out here?" he inquired with a show of interest. He made no effort to look down—for it would have meant an effort.

"I follered yeh," was the now prompt reply.

And into Bunny's man-heart that instant there welled a certain pride, but it was nowise to be compared to that which swelled the boy-heart of Willie Trigger, hero-worshipper.

And so, down Washtenaw Avenue they walked together, through College Street and on into the campus and across; Willie Trigger the while attempting vainly to keep step with his ill-matched companion.

At a corner they separated.

"You're going out to Field Day on Saturday, aren't you?" Bunny asked.

Willie Trigger grinned, and nodded.

"Don't buy a ticket," the giant said, "I'll give you one; you remind me; will you?"

The small but agile heart of Willie Trigger leaped into his throat. All he could say was "Whoop!" And saying that he ran, in the very excess, the richness and the wealth, of the joy that was his. A ticket! A ticket whereby he might enter through the gate with the crowd—a part of it—a proud part of it! And all this to be granted him by Bunny himself—Bunny who was to run in the hundred yards for the Western Intercollegiate championship; he, William Watts Trigger whose father was a mere night watchman, and who for a week had been examining the fair ground fence for vulnerable points! Willie Trigger found himself, of a sudden, voiceless, too full, by far, for utterance.

Surely, one day—some day—there would come an opportunity of repaying in kind the beneficence of Bunny, Willie Trigger considered. But the beneficence was very great. Little did he realize that soon, and by the very beneficence itself was he to be put in the way of paying back his benefactor by casting light upon an unforeseen occurrence of great import, that but for him, must forever remain obscure.

As it was, Bunny had made a friend, a champion, though he knew it not.

II

In University Hall that Saturday night a man with steel-blue eyes, a white imperial and a single set of gestures, lectured on "The Reconstruction of the South." Having been an active and successful carpet-bagger twenty-five years before, he had played a part of some importance in the rehabilitation of the Southland and was qualified to speak with authority on the subject.

The immense hall was but partially filled. The lecture was very dry and very uninteresting, save when, now and again a rolling period crowded with platitudes and false metaphors, was delivered by the pompous person on the rostrum. Wilma found herself finally attempting to repeat backward the clause from the Ordinance of '37 which stared down at her from the arch of the stage.

"Religion, morality and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged——"

She tapped her knee with her fan and moved her lips.

"Encouraged be forever shall education of means the and——"

She floundered.

She tried again as so many others have tried and with no more success. She tapped her knee angrily, and nudged the sleepy Bunny at her side.

"Let's get out," she whispered.

He nodded.

They were sitting on the aisle at the back. It was but a step to the door. He followed her, noiselessly.

In the broad, silent corridor she looked up at him with a smile.

"I simply couldn't stand it another minute," she said.

As they issued into the moonlight she drew in a full, long breath and asked: "Why should any one want to sit indoors on such a night? It's—it's a crime!"

She was very tiny beside him; he was very awkward beside her. "The long and the short of it," they were called by those who knew them best. She was wont to defend their friendship by saying she detested little men, whilst he complained that great, tall, awkward women he abhorred.

"Well, if you're both satisfied," Nibs, her brother, said one day after half an hour of teasing; "I guess the public ought to be."

Their friendship had grown from the chance meeting on the day of the State Street race when Nibsey defeated Billy Shaw and then was so ignominiously defeated by the lank creature who now was his, as well as his sister's, closest friend and constant companion. That day their eyes had met—Bunny's and the girl's—across a carriage seat. Only for an instant though it was, each remembered the instant; Wilma with a certain indefinite anger, Bunny with a very definite desire that one day he might meet the owner of the eyes.

They did not meet formally until a month after and then it was Nibsey who named them to each other with many flourishes and mock heroics. In a very short time that glance across the carriage seat had developed into a close, fine companionship; a companionship so close indeed that it was deemed sufficient by divers of their friends to warrant whispers that Bunny and Wilma were engaged. For in Ann Arbor He has but to play two games of tennis with Her, and take Her on the river once, to have it become known that They are "engaged"—whatever that sadly misused term may signify to the non-elect.

Perhaps, however, in this case there was some reason for the smiles of patronizing acceptance and whispered suggestions on the part of their friends, of an unestablished but imagined relationship. Bunny never was seen with any other girl and Wilma, being out of college and therefore having a wider acquaintance among undergraduates than if she were a college girl, was only now and again beheld in the company of another man.

One winter they had attended the Choral Union concerts together, had driven together, and in the spring they had walked together, rowed together. It was doubly hard for their friends to believe they were not engaged, for did they not, as well, attend all the lectures on the course of the S. L. A.? Would a girl demean herself so far, suffer torture so exquisite, it was asked, as to attend sad lectures with one certain man if she were not very much in love with him? And if a man were not willing to make sacrifice of his happiness to be beside her would he take her to a lecture on a night in June, or even so much as suggest such a proceeding?

In commenting and in speculating upon the "affair" their friends asked these questions, and other equally pertinent; and, as there were no replies forthcoming, they were compelled by the very absence of contradictory evidence to nod and smile in that patronizing and agonizing way that the unengaged have ever smiled upon those whose hearts they believe Dan Cupid has been using for a target.

As for Nibsey, her brother, he said nothing. Perhaps he did not care. Or if he did care his certain knowledge that Bunny was what he was wont to call "a ripper" and his sister "a good fellow," may have carried with it a satisfaction that made the relation between them just and proper.

However, that there may be no misunderstanding at the outset, it is quite safe to affirm so far at least as Bunny was concerned, that he was hard hit. It was realization of this, a realization keen, active, that dismayed him. Of course he believed, as was his right, that Wilma liked him. But he more than liked her. He hardly felt it his privilege yet to tell her just how much he liked her, and doubtless could not even though he deemed the time had arrived to-day. Thus he fretted, and procrastinated. Even now as he walked beside her under the stars of a night in June that was full of fragrance, he felt himself floundering in a sea of uncertainty where edged the shores of which he knew not. So he sighed, then pulled himself together before she could seek to know the reason, and said:

"You ought to have seen me this morning—ought to have seen me with a new acquaintance I made on the fair grounds."

And he told her of Willie Trigger and his exploit. She heard him through in silence.

"Do you know Willie?" he asked.

"No," she said. After a moment she added, "Don't you rather hate to be followed about by the small boys as though you were—as though you were a circus parade?"

He laughed.

It was not the first time she had made fun, as he deemed her attitude to be, of his athletic attainments, and the admiration engendered by them among Ann Arbor youth.

"It's great!" he exclaimed. "Simply great! You have no idea how it seems to know the small boys are gaping at you in wonder as you pass. I've watched them lots of times from the tail of my eye and seen them nudge their companions. Oh, I tell you it's satisfying!"

Conscious as she was of the assumed vanity she affected a seriousness when she said:—

"But I should think you would rather grown-ups gaped at you."

"But what can I do to make 'em?" he asked wonderingly. "Just point the way and I'll take it——"

"Oh, there are lots of ways," she went on. "You're in the medical department, why don't you become a great doctor?"

"I shall," he exclaimed, "but that takes time. Meanwhile I am steeling myself, practicing with the little boys, you know, so I shan't be overwhelmed when big people gape at me in wonder a little later——"

"Oh, you can't be serious!" she cried petulantly.

"What's the use?" he asked and laughed. "What's the use on such a night, with the stars overhead, the tree toads scraping, and—and—you here?"

"But I want you to be," she said; and then ran on: "It has always seemed so silly to me when you great men come out in ridiculous clothes and run around and jump and play ball—just like overgrown babies."

"That's what we are," he replied. "Ann Arbor is only a nursery. It's only different from other nurseries in that the nurses don't wear little caps and aprons." He chuckled.

"Well, anyway, I wish you wouldn't," she said plaintively. She lifted her face and looked up at him.

"Really?" He was in earnest now.

"Yes."

"Then I won't—that is not after Saturday."

"Oh, I suppose you'll have to then," she said disconsolately. "You're entered."

"But suppose I break the Western Intercollegiate?" he suggested. "Wouldn't you like that—now, frankly, wouldn't you?"

She did not reply, so he went on.

"I'll tell you what. That race will settle it. If I'm beaten I'll never run again—never. I'll—I'll—give you my running shoes as a souvenir of my Mercurial days!"

She laughed and said:

"But if you win—if you break the record?"

"It shall be just the same—I'll never run again. Under those circumstances I should be afraid to—afraid I couldn't do it a second time. I'll keep my record all to myself that way, don't you see?"

"Oh Bunny!" she cried suddenly as she gave his arm a little squeeze; "I've been more than half teasing you. Run if you want to. Run all the time. But if you don't break the record I'll never speak to you again as long as I live!"

He stopped and looked down at her, into her eyes, and saw the laughter lurking there. That instant he thought nothing in the world would be so much to the purpose—nothing at least that he could do—as to take her in his two big hands and shake her until her bronze hair fell about her shoulders. But he did no such thing.

She said, "Well?"

"You'll see," he answered and they walked on.

They sat on her porch for an hour and talked of other things. They did not hear the bells in the library tower as they rang out quarters, halves, three-quarters of the hour.

In her room, after he had gone, her eyes chanced to fall upon his picture fixed with many others on a tennis-net ingeniously draped between two windows, and she said to the picture:

"You're a great, tall, awkward, foolish old dear! There...."

But Bunny, in the solitude of his own alcove, lay awake half the night floundering in that tossing sea of doubt.

With the morning however, came resolve.

"What's the use," he muttered as he lathered his chin before the little square mirror tilted against the window at the height of his eyes.

He would run once more—only once. And then——

Could she have meant it, he wondered, when she told him she would cut him from her list of friends if he failed to break the record. He smiled at the soaped reflection of his long, thin face in the little mirror.

Ten seconds was a tiny lapse of time but it was the record. A hundred yards in ten seconds. That was ten yards a second. That was.... Well, approximately, ten feet at a stride—no, eight. A rather wide stride, to be sure, but his legs.... Now if he could stride nine feet what would that bring it? Two and two——

Bunny found himself of a sudden involved in so deep a morass of mathematics that he gave up in disgust—and cut himself.

He would make an effort—a mighty effort. Of this he was determined. It was to be his last, he mused, so it must needs be mighty. In any event if he should fail it would not mean so much; that is, so very much. Other men had failed, trying to accomplish that which heaven was determined they should not. And yet——

"If you don't break the record I'll never speak to you again as long as I live!"

The words were insistent. It was as though Wilma were there beside him, as he stood before the little dusty mirror, and sounding them over and over in his ears.

"By George!" he exclaimed aloud, "I've got to smash it; that's all, I've got to!"

As he stepped out upon the broad porch of the low roofed house, the light of determination was in his eyes and the firmness of a set resolve had squared his chin.

III

Thursday evening, after he had had his supper, Willie Trigger's mother dispatched him to the post-office, with a strict injunction to be home by eight o'clock. Primarily as a result of this injunction and secondarily as the result of an inherent love of night, Willie Trigger dawdled on the way. A down-town lad of his acquaintance prevailed upon him to assist in an attack upon a certain cherry-tree, the location of which, on Spring Street, he very well knew. He was not loth to join forces with the down-town youth and forth they fared together, to the end that it was after eight even before Willie turned into Huron Street on his long way home. Full of ox-heart cherries and contentment, he did not hasten. A whipping perhaps, in any event a scolding and a summary dismissal to his bed might await him, but what availed it?

"I d' care," he grumbled, bravely, and scuffed his feet.

As he approached the Cook House loud talk attracted his attention away from a confectioner's window where were displayed all the goodies dearest to the hearts of little boys. He quickened his pace.

Two men were quarreling with a hackman at the hotel door. The hackman proclaimed his right to a dollar fare; his patrons contested.

Willie Trigger, looking up from the walk, noted the appearance of the men. The one was short and squat and gross of features, with a great black mustache like a duster that he pulled persistently as he haggled with the angry hackman. His companion was taller, square of shoulder, with a long, thin face, and a straight, hard mouth above his square, clean-shaven chin. In expectation of a fight, Willie Trigger held his breath.

"There's a half-dollar," he heard the fat man say, "now take it or leave it." He flung the coin to the pavement, turned and entered the hotel behind his friend, while the hackman, grumbling still, stooped, recovered the coin and, clambering upon his ancient vehicle, drove away. Willie Trigger was disappointed; disappointed that there had been no open fight and disappointed that the hackman had found the half-dollar. His nimble eyes had followed it as it rolled half way beneath a trunk that stood on end beside the curb. When the hackman discovered the coin, Willie's heart sunk and he set out upon his way. Presently he commenced to whistle shrilly and it was apparent that the incident had made no more impression upon his plastic mind than it had upon the minds of the men with whom the hackman had exchanged compliments.

As it was, they were shown to a room by a boy in buttons and the loafers in the office saw them together not again that night.

The short, squat creature with the huge mustache locked the door and flung off his coat.

"Well, we're here!" he exclaimed.

His friend made no reply.

"Jack," he went on, "if I don't make a killin' Saturday, my name's Mud—Mud with a big M! This town is jammed full of marks—soft, easy, mushy marks. A guy could come in here with three shells and a pea and clean it up in a day——"

"If the police would let him," his friend put in with a grin.

"Rats!" was the contemptuous retort. "I've been figgerin' it all out," he went on, sinking upon a chair and spreading his short legs to accommodate his capacious portliness. He savagely bit the tip from a black, fat cigar. "I've been figgerin' it all out and it's goin' to be easy. They're muckers; farm-hands; easiest sort o' pickin'!"

"Well, how you going to do it?"

Before the wavy mirror on the imitation mahogany dresser, his companion smoothed his hair with a pair of military brushes taken from his satchel.

The fat man chewed his cigar.

"I'm goin' to get next to-night," he said. "There's always more or less geezers hangin' round the hotel in a college town, and I'll do a little pumpin'. I'll find out just what this phenom's been doin' since he went into trainin'."

"He's the only one I'm fearin'," his friend put in. "If he can do the sprint under ten seconds flat he's got Morrison beat!"

"And you the trainer!" exclaimed the fat man with a deep laugh. "Say, if your man don't lay all over him—say, I won't do a thing——"

"Well, be careful, that's all," the other warned. "Don't try to do anything to-night. Plenty of time to-morrow. You can go out to the track and have a look at him; he'll be tryin' out."

"Won't you go?" the pudgy creature asked.

His friend turned from the stand where he was washing his hands.

"Say Punky!" he exclaimed, "do you take me for a blamed fool? Big business me goin' out there; wouldn't it? Do you suppose some of those wise guys wouldn't know me? I guess not! I'll stay right here under cover till Morrison shows up to-morrow afternoon. You can go out; and when you get back you can tell me how this Bunny strikes you—but if I were you I wouldn't distribute any coin until Saturday. Talk 'Morrison' and wag your head a bit and get 'em going; then cover their cash all you want to——"

"Aw——" the other began.

"That's right!" his friend warned; "I've been up against this game a little oftener 'n what you have and I know 'em; I haven't been doin' the strong arm act for two years at Western College for nothin'—if it wasn't that I'm goin' t' quit I wouldn't go into the game with you; as it is, ain't I got as big an interest in th' killin' as you have, I'd like to know? Don't we break even? It's a fair chance and if they's any show of coppin' out any of the loose change of these mamma's boys, I'm the child to do it—with your valuable and sporty assistance, Punky. D' you see?"

Apparently Punky did, for he muttered, "Aw right," and flecked the ash from his cigar. He puffed quickly twice and then said:

"Giddings, do you s'pose Morrison's next?"

"Naw," Giddings replied contemptuously. "I sent out a feeler—sorter touched him up on a 'sell-out' to see how he'd take it and he got red-headed. Said if it wasn't to be a fair race and the best man win, he'd pull out. I gave him the 'ha-ha' and passed him a con. about just seein' how he felt because I wanted it square and then worked the 'honor-talk' strong. He calmed right down and got interested. He's all right; you needn't worry about him. It's this Bunny; you've got to have a peek at him before Saturday, then let your judgment do the rest."

"Aw yes!" Punky exploded—"Aw yes—— Judgment be blowed! If this Bunny's square, O. K.; if he's square and slow, O. K.; if he's square and too fast for your 'wonder,' why——" He hesitated.

"What?" his friend inquired calmly.

"Oh well; you leave it to me," was the significant reply.

Giddings laughed.

"You can work the game," he said, "only don't let 'em think we're playin' together; some wise guy might have an idea and put the whole push next. You know what would happen then, don't you?" he inquired wisely.

His companion did not reply. He went over to the one window of the room and gazed down into the lighted street. Suddenly he turned back and said: "You go to bed; I'm goin' down to the office and get next." And he vanished.

The public room of the old hotel was filled with students. The events of Saturday formed the one topic of conversation. In the process of "getting next" Punky Williams, sporting man, (with a record not altogether immaculate) by maintaining an open ear and a closed mouth, learned that one name was on the common lips almost as frequently as that of "Bunny." It was "Morrison." Punky Williams was satisfied. He asked simple but significant questions now and again of various youths who lounged near him. He affected a passive, a rather paternal interest in the "meet," the sprinting event in which was conceded by all to be the most important. He learned enough to satisfy him that, so far as he was concerned, but two men would run—Bunny of the U. of M. and Morrison of Western College, trainer Giddings' protÉgÉ; the other entries were unworthy of consideration. He sought his companion in the little room up-stairs with a heart as light as thistle down and a face that glowed with pleasure.

The next morning he walked out to the fair grounds, seeking direction from time to time from the people whom he passed.

There were perhaps a hundred students in the paddock watching the exercises. Punky Williams wriggled his way among them; his little ears receptive, his mouth close shut. Presently the crowd yelled and he craned over the enclosure rail. At the top of the course Bunny paused. With an air of passive interest, Punky Williams took out a stop watch, then fixed his eyes upon the figure up the course. He saw an arm thrust above his head and the sunlight glinted on the metal of the starter's pistol. He caught the time as the report rang out. And as Bunny high-stepped across the tape he shut his watch with a click and wriggled back to the rim of the crowd, observed in the moment's clamor by no one save a single small boy in a very grimy shirt-waist.

As the bells in the tower of the court-house opposite the hotel rang out the hour of noon, he burst in upon the loafing Giddings, who, at his friend's most obvious excitement exclaimed:

"What th' devil's th' matter; you look as though you'd seen a ghost?"

"Well! I have!" the breathless Punky puffed. "Giddings," he cried, "I've seen him! I held the watch on him. It wasn't his real speed,—and he came over the tape grinning; but—he did it in 10 1-5!"

Giddings with an expression of complete disgust upon his smooth, thin face, sat down again.

"Punky, you give me a pain!" he exclaimed. "A pain! Great Scott, man; don't you think there's any difference between 10 1-5 seconds and 9 4-5? Well, you'd better wake up. There's an hour, man; an hour!"

He opened his newspaper, deliberately; found the sporting page and commenced to read.

As for Punky Williams, he lighted another cigar and flinging himself upon the bed, blew copious clouds of light blue smoke to the cracked and grimy ceiling at which, the while, he stared fixedly, thoughtfully.

IV

On Saturday Willie Trigger swallowed his dinner in an incredibly short space of time, and slipped from the house unobserved, while his mother was in the kitchen haggling with a huckster over the Sunday vegetables. When the good woman re-entered the dining-room she cast one glance at Willie's half depleted plate, then rushed through the dark, cool hall and out upon the porch.

"Will-ee! Will-ee!" she called, stridently.

A rustling of the leaves as the breath of June wafted among them, was her answer. She went to the gate and gazed up and down the street. Then with a sigh she returned to the house and closed the door.

Perhaps Willie had not heard the maternal call. At the instant of its issue he was balanced on the top of the back fence across the street, hidden from the maternal eye by the intervening house. At the second call he plumped down upon a soft ash heap on the other side. If he did hear he gave no sign, but, after dusting his pantaloons with little flips and pats of his small brown hands, he ran with all the speed that he could muster, across the wide, uneven lot. Presently he became lost to sight among the gnarled and broken trees of a once prolific apple orchard, beyond. Issuing from the orchard on the farther side, he crossed another lot—first wriggling wormlike beneath a low wire fence—and came out into the dusty road that led to the old fair ground enclosure. To-day that road, as a wide, smooth street disfigured only by the tracks over which the flat-wheeled trolleys bump, marks the northern boundary of Ann Arbor's ultra exclusiveness. Behind hedges or half hidden amid the trees, nestle snug little houses that seem to cry out against all vulgar intrusion and hug themselves in the very joy of their most obvious respectability.

Along this road, thick with dust; now obscured in a cloud of his own raising, now distinct against the background of the high board fence, Willie Trigger trudged. Arriving at the long ticket window he was dismayed to find that the hatch was shut. Bunny had told him there would be a ticket for him at the window—a ticket for him expressly, in an envelope bearing his name, else he would not have deserted his dinner to be the first on hand. Save for a solitary woman whom he saw among the trees in the wood across the way, the region about appeared deserted. It was not yet one o'clock, but Willie Trigger did not realize this. Stoically he sat down at the edge of the long low platform below the ticket-office window and resigned himself to waiting.

After ten minutes a dog bounded from the wood into the road. Motionless, he regarded the lad curiously. As long as he remained in sight Willie amused himself by throwing stones at him.

After half an hour a carriage drew up close to the fence and stopped. He slouched over to the narrow pedestrians' gate at one side of the office. Two young men, carrying a large, black tin box between them, alighted from the vehicle, paid the driver and entered the enclosure, fastening the gate behind them. When they had disappeared Willie pulled at the gate but suddenly desisted in his attempt to force an entrance as the heavy hatch of the ticket-office fell with a bang and the same two young men were revealed at the weather beaten counter. He watched them as they unlocked the box, on the shiny top of which the bright sun gleamed, and saw one of them take out several big bunches of blue tickets. Willie approached the window, then, hesitatingly. His chin barely touched the edge of the shelf so he stood on his toes.

"Say—my ticket here?" he asked, boldly.

The young man who was arranging the bundles on the shelf looked down.

"What do you want?" he inquired, tersely.

"I want my ticket."

"Got a quarter?"

Willie Trigger's toes gave way beneath him, but he bobbed up again almost instantly.

"He said there'd be one here—in a envelope."

"What?" snapped the young man, "who said there would—what you talking about anyway?"

Willie endeavored to explain. He was laughed at for his pains.

"Run along now," the officious young man commanded. "There ain't any ticket for you here. Run along—or—or—I'll call a policeman."

The mouth, then the nose, then the eyes, then the little gray cap of Willie Trigger descended below the window ledge and he commenced to sniffle. A large, jagged stone lay on the grass not ten feet away, and as his eyes fell upon it his sniffling ceased. He picked up the stone. He poised it in the air an instant, then with all the strength at his command he flung it diagonally across the fence. He heard the clatter as it struck the thin boards at the end of the ticket office. He did not linger to observe any further effect of his assault, for when the officious young man who had denied to him the existence of his ticket, crawled upon the ledge and gazed off down the road, there was no little boy in sight.

Chagrined though he was, Willie did not for an instant accuse his hero of any lack of faithlessness. Indeed, as is the wont of small boyhood, he accepted the rebuff unquestioningly. He made no effort at analysis. It was merely a whimsical cavort of that unreliable Fate that not infrequently plays tricks on those who walk in knickerbockers. So Willie, nothing loth, reasoned simply that as a ticket had never been necessary before, he was quite prepared to gain an entrance to the grounds without one, now. Indeed, even as the young man in the office climbed upon the ledge and gazed off down the road, Willie was examining the fence for loose boards, along the familiar stretch behind the ancient grand stand. Many times and oft, when ball games were in progress, had he, with the assistance of Jimmy Thurston, clambered over that tall board fence frequently to the complete demolishment of his shirt waist, which had a nasty habit of catching on the barbs of the wire that an ingenious care-taker had strung along the top, but, in any event, successfully, to the more important issue of an entrance to the field. To-day, however, he was alone, and getting over the fence was quite a different matter. Since Thursday he had not caught a glimpse of Jimmy, but now he was wishing that the fat, familiar figure of the lad would appear around the corner of the fence. There was not a loose board along the whole stretch, so far as he could discover. Not infrequently he had, with half a dozen sturdy jerks, succeeded in ripping off a plank sufficiently wide to permit of squeezing through; but two days before the same far seeing care-taker who, with so much ingenuity, profanity and trouble, had strung the barbed wire at the top, had gone over the entire stockade and nailed securely every board that seemed to him to be deficient in tightness. It is saddening to tell it; for it rather weakens the character of Willie Trigger, but at the end of his second futile patrol along the fence, he flung himself down at the roots of an ancient apple-tree and cried. Were all the Fates of boyhood set against him this day in June?

"Dum it—gosh dum it," he mumbled, gazing through his tears at the forbidding fence, the top of which looked so low yet was so high—too high even when he poised on tiptoe and jumped, clutching. As he stared, his eyes opened wide, the tears were magically whisked away, and he grinned.

"Gosh!" he exclaimed aloud, and got upon his feet.

A branch of the very tree beneath which he had so disconsolately flung himself, pointed out the way he sought. A single limb—not a thick, sturdy limb, but rather a weak, unstable sort of limb—hung directly above the fence at a most favorable point, immediately behind the grand stand.

Willie Trigger climbed the tree. Cautiously he crept out upon the branch, more than half hidden by the foliage. The branch bent beneath his weight, slight though it was, and once he nearly slipped. His heart leaped into his mouth, or if not his heart, at least something, but he swallowed it back and moved along another inch. He wriggled obliquely until he balanced on his stomach like a bag of meal over a pole. Little by little he slipped down, the branch giving more and more with every movement of his agile body. He clung by the crook of his elbows and wriggled his toes. They touched nothing. For a space he danced upon the air. Another slip of scarce an inch, and there ensued a ripping and tear, followed by a sharp crack.

Thug!

Willie Trigger struck the soft earth in a sitting posture. The sudden contact resulted in a private pyrotechnic display of momentary brilliance. Willie gasped twice like a fish. Blinking away the stars and whirling Catherine wheels that glittered before his eyes, he looked about him. "Gosh!" he muttered below his breath, and rolling over rubbed the point of contact vigorously. Beside him lay the branch, but—goody! He had struck inside the fence! Moreover, and what was quite as much to the purpose, he had not been observed.

Sidling along the rear wall of the grand stand, he reached the corner and thrust out his head. The big gate was open—the gate through which he had hoped to pass big with pride, a man among his fellows. A steady current of humanity in summer garb was streaming through. There were carriages by the score, the horses driven by young men, many of whom Willie, from his peculiar point of vantage, recognized. On the seats beside them were girls—"their girls," he speculated mentally with an unvoiced sneer. But mostly the crowd was on foot, scrambling, pushing, jostling. Every individual in the throng seemed bent upon being the first to reach the grand stand and it was a fine sight to the small boy, peering around the corner, to see them run. Two men detached themselves from the crowd and seemed to him to be making directly for where he stood. Willie Trigger wasted no time in idle speculation as to their purpose. Turning heel he ran. He plunged around the upper end of the stand. The door there was open. He disappeared into the long room directly beneath the seats. He was familiar with the floor plan. He knew that the partition on his left was false and that the various little doors on the right opened into tiny dressing rooms. He knew that the one door on the left offered access, if unfastened, to the cramped and crowded space beneath the lower tiers of seats,—a dark hole used these many years as a catch-all for the dÉbris of the grounds, old cans, broken bottles, worn out shoes, and ancient hoop-skirts. He tried the door; it opened and he pulled it shut after him, just as the door at the end was flung back and the two men entered.

"Where's his room?" he heard asked, in an undertone; then the heavy footfalls on the loose boards of the floor.

His eyes became adjusted to the darkness and through the many chinks of the partition he perceived the men. He recognized them as those who had haggled with the hackman at the Cook House two days before. He held his breath, and, as there really was nothing else for him to do, became an eavesdropper.

"Punky, we got t' separate," Giddings said. "They'll be next if you don't; it'll be all right for you to drop in here while they're dressin' but don't be wise. And for heaven's sake, don't get gay; it's a long chance you're takin' and you'll take it I know, with five hundred dollars in the balance."

"Don't you worry," Punky replied significantly. "I'm takin' no chances; that's why I got the dope. You couldn't buy this Bunny for a million; and you say Morrison's as bad. You just leave it to me. I'll be hangin' around, you bet. When you're dishin' up the soft stuff, you just call me and say, 'Here, take this in there.' I'll take it—in she goes—and if it don't mean Morrison'll win this here Intercollegiate, I'm a lobster, good and plenty. They'd never git next in the world."

"Well, for heaven's sake don't put in too much," Giddings muttered.

"Leave it to me,"—was the terse reply and then they went into one of the dressing-rooms and their voices came only in muffled tone to Willie in his hiding-place.

He was not quite certain of the meaning of what he had heard. He was only certain of the name—"Bunny." Who these men were he did not dream. Besides, it was none of his affairs. There was one thing however that he did know, and that definitely; he could not hope to see the sports from where he crouched. Noiselessly he opened the door. It did not creak. He tiptoed down the long room. As he neared the end, the door there was opened suddenly from without and a score of men pressed in. Willie Trigger whistled as loud as he could and walked on. The whistle, born of boyhood's genius, saved him. Ordinarily the presence of a small boy in the dressing-room would perhaps have occasioned surprise, but on this particular occasion the small boy whistled so shrilly and walked so independently with his hands deep in the pockets of his knickerbockers that no one spoke to him; no one seemed even to notice him. He strode out of the building bravely, crept under the fence at the side of the track and strolled into the paddock, scuffing the grass and still whistling.

V

Wilma Morey, exquisitely dainty in a wealth of fluffy muslin flounces and little bows of ribbon as pink as her pretty cheeks, found a particularly excellent seat in the first tier, close to the rail. From where she sat she could sweep with her dancing eyes the entire course, the crowded paddock, and the stretch of open on beyond. The wire was immediately below her and directly opposite was the judges' stand. Perceiving these manifold advantages of her position, she settled herself comfortably and patted, with most apparent content, her wealth of flounces. She was very glad that no acquaintance had slipped into the seat next hers, now occupied by a little fat man in checks. She wished to enjoy the events of the day in her own way and as privately as she might surrounded for the greater part by people with whom she had at least a nodding acquaintance.

She studied her program diligently, noted the order of events from the old fashioned "throwing of the baseball" to the "standing broad jump" in neither of which she was interested. She did not know a man among the broad jumpers and but one name in the list of baseball throwers was familiar—Schmidt, a little German, with a blonde head and blue eyes whom she had met at a sophomore dance in the beginning of the year. So, when the sleeveless-shirted contestants ran up the track and the clean white ball was taken from its red box and tossed among them she reverted to her program nor lifted her eyes again until the loud-voiced person in the judges' stand opposite bellowed through a bright tin megaphone that the event had been won by "Schmidt, distance ——" She did not catch the distance.

"Next event!" she heard roar from the mouth of the megaphone, "the first of three heats in the hundred yards. Entries: Bunette, Michigan; Morrison, Western College; Lacy, Ohio Wesleyan; Cady, Northwestern"—and so on down the list that she followed on her program with her nimble eyes. The megaphone man was still bellowing when the atmosphere was rent by a series of yells from the paddock that would have put a horde of Comanche braves to the copper-tinted blush. The cheering was taken up by the grand stand, and canes were waved, and hats were flung into the air and lungs were split. All this because a dozen gaunt creatures in flapping "shorts" were prancing up the track in the wake of their jogging trainers. The crowd behind bore down upon the girl and she only saved herself from falling headlong over the rail by encircling a stout roof support with one arm and clinging tight.

Up the course the line formed.

"That's Morrison; he's got the post," she heard a full-lunged youngster cry.

"There's Bunny on the end!" another shouted.

"Bunny! Bunny! Bunny!" yelled the crowd and Wilma Morey's face flushed crimson. Her eyes lighted and her lips quivered with the excitement of the moment. Behind her the pressure of the crowd had given away somewhat and she leaned over the rail, eagerly, her fingers curled in the palms of her hands, every muscle tense. She saw an arm suddenly lifted above the runners' heads and caught the glint of the sunlight on the barrel of the pistol.

The report sounded a long way off, or as though her ears were muffled. Down the course they came, all heads low save Bunny's; he had a way of tilting his back, and breathing hard through his nose. In an instant, as she watched, they passed the further end of the grand stand and in another the foremost had crossed the line. Pandemonium broke loose. The crowd in the paddock tore down the fence and rushed into the track surrounding these modern Mercuries. Wrapped in the robes their coaches had held out to them they were led away and the megaphone man in the judges' stand was compelled to clang the deep-throated bell quite three minutes before he was able to convince the throng that he had something very particular to say.

"First heat," he shouted. "Morrison, ten and one fifth; Bunette, ten and two-fifths; Cady, ten and a half." The stand, the crowd in the track, even the ancient circus rings in the distance swam before Wilma Morey's eyes. She lifted her handkerchief to her burning cheek. It was cruel. He had lost; lost after all his patience, all his hope, all his effort. Conscious as she was that the first heat did not mean all, she yet realized that it might mean much. If she might only catch his eye, she thought, and let him know that she among all the others believed in him. What was she thinking, she asked herself, suddenly. Then she smiled. In the buzz of conversation all about, and amid the cries from the track below she caught varying words that seemed to her, in her state of supreme suspense, to offer a modicum of hope. Still—still—— She confessed to herself her disappointment. She wished that she had not come out at all.

The next event was "throwing the hammer"; and then the hurdles would be run. Should she stay? she asked herself. Involuntarily she moved toward the end of the stand where the stairs were.

"What in thunder's the matter; you going?" she heard a voice ask, then felt a strong hand on her arm. She turned and looked up into the face of her brother.

She clutched his wrist. "Oh, Nibsey," she cried, "he was beaten; wasn't he?"

He stared at her quizzically. Then he laughed and led her over to the rail. He glanced back at the crowd that pressed upon them from behind. Bending toward her he whispered: "He's just playing 'em. Great Scott! you didn't think that was his speed, did you? Morrison was doing his best; Bunny was walking; that's all, just walking. You wait; you'll see the fastest hundred yards that was ever run on this old track. You hold your horses. Why, Morrison's trainer knows it's all off. The others—the 'also-rans'—are just waiting for the end. Morrison's trainer's running around down below like a chicken with its head off. You wait if you want to see a record smashed." And he pressed her arm reassuringly, and vanished.

At the bottom of the stairs he collided with a small boy in a soiled and torn shirt waist.

"Cancha see where yer goin'?" the small boy piped after him, then mounted the stairs whistling. He pushed his way through the crowd to the rail, and wriggled to a post. Despite the yells of "Down in front," that were flung at him from the lower tiers, he clung to his position resolutely.

"There's Bunny!" he cried as the runners pranced up the track a second time. Wilma heard the lad's shrill pipe and glancing down caught his eye and smiled. He grinned. He sidled nearer to her and pressed close to the rail.

Willie Trigger decided then and there that he had never before seen such a pretty girl. She was ever so much prettier, he calculated, than the new hired girl in the house next door,—at home. He had fallen desperately in love with her at first sight. Then Wilma spoke to him and his boy heart bounded.

"Do you know him, little man?" she asked, softly.

He wished she had not called him "little man" particularly with so many about, but her voice was so gentle and her eyes were so beautiful that he forgave her in his heart straightway and answered, looking down, "Uh huh; he lives 'cross th' street from our house."

Her eyes took on a greater brilliance then and a smile played about the corners of her pretty mouth.

"So you are Willie Trigger, are you?" she asked so low that he alone might hear. "Oh, I know all about you; he told me."

Willie Trigger never knew what joy it was to live until that instant. To think that He, the great Bunny, had told Her all about Him! It rendered him for the moment speechless. Yet he gave no sign of the swelling of his heart unless a sudden kick at the post to which he clung, and a low, foolish laugh might be taken as a sign. He felt her hand upon his shoulder as the line of entries formed and was superlatively happy.

The pistol cracked. Again the runners came on, swift, straight as arrows. There had been an instant's hush at the start, but now it was forgotten in the uproar. Could it be possible, Wilma wondered, as she leaned far over the rail, hearing above all other sounds the shrill, piercing screech of Willie Trigger, that the great lank figure there at the fore of all the rest, his long legs high lifting, his head thrown back, was the same Bunny who not half an hour before had lagged the second in the race? And yet, as the creature crossed the wire below her and the air became filled with waving canes and hats and handkerchiefs, she knew that such it must have been. Her fingers tightened on the arm of the screaming lad and she drew him close beside her.

"Was that Bunny?" she asked eagerly. "They came so fast I couldn't see. Tell me, was it?"

He looked up at her, joyful that she had called upon him in her distress, but what he said was only: "Sure; who'd yeh think it was?"

She squeezed his arm and he grinned. Something of her great delight was his to know that instant, though he was only a little boy in a soiled and torn shirt waist and she a beautiful girl gay in ribbons and fluffy muslin flounces that made her look for all the world like the fairy in a certain Christmas pantomime, that was one of his fondest memories.

"And now let's see when the last will be," she said, glancing down at her program.

"They's two 'vents 'fore they run," he explained, for he had learned the order by heart long since. "They's th' pole vault and th' drop kick. Then they'll run th' last time."

She looked at him and smiled and he smiled back quite familiarly.

"I guess I'll go down now," he said suddenly, and before she could restrain him, for she had found much amusement in his straightforward boyish admiration for one whom she, as well, admired, he had wriggled away and out of sight.

She leaned over the rail and saw him on the grass below making swiftly along the front of the stand.

For a space he hovered about the edge of the crowd at the door of the dressing-rooms. His chance of entering at last was offered and gliding between divers pairs of legs he sneaked into the long, low room. All was confusion here. Half-clad men ran this way and that, calling for drinks, bath-robes and towels, and among them bustled officiously the man with the big mustache whom he had seen and heard while hidden in the dark hole on the other side of the thin partition. He glimpsed, as well, the other man; his trousers turned up, his coat and waistcoat off, his sleeves rolled to his shoulders. He was busy squeezing lemons into a pail. Presently he poured the contents of another pail into the first, then dumped a bag of sugar into the mixture which he stirred vigorously.

"Here, Morrison; don't drink that rotten water; drink this," he shouted and filled a glass from the pail. Morrison, a curly-headed man with knots of muscle on his legs that looked like coils of rope, gulped greedily.

"Here, gimme some of that; this man in here's thirsty," the familiar black mustached man called out. He took up the glass and moved toward the half-open door of one of the little dressing-rooms. Willie Trigger was by some instinctive force, seemingly, moved to sudden action. He was about to slip past the black mustached man and enter the little room when he was perceived. A kick was aimed at him and he was adjured to "make himself scarce or git his block knocked off." Thoroughly frightened, he slouched away and ran into the open where people were too interested in other things to knock the blocks off little boys and where it didn't smell so stuffy and unpleasant.

He sped across the track where the uprights had been erected for the pole vaulting, and later he became one of the group that formed a crescent behind the football kickers. He watched, with admiration unconcealed, the unerring pedal movements of the heavily shod young men who sent the ball so beautifully skyward.

Meanwhile, Wilma awaited impatiently at the grand stand rail the last heat in the sprint event. She saw the drop-kickers leave the paddock and heard indistinctly the record that was called across from the tower-like judges' stand; but these things were not to her liking. Her eyes upon the track below, she saw a young man in sweater and knee breeches vault the fence beside the stretch and rush across. He shouted a word to the megaphone man who at once lifted the glistening instrument to his lips and shouted:

"Is there a doctor on the grand stand? He's wanted down below. A man has been taken suddenly sick."

The pink fled from her cheeks. Then she smiled. She realized the absurdity of the little spasm of fear that had seized her. She glanced down at her card again.

The runners were jogging up the stretch. She counted them. There was one missing. Another look of fright came into her eyes. She felt some one tugging at her dress. She turned impatiently and gazed down into the now pale face of Willie Trigger.

"It's Bunny!" he muttered almost incoherently, "oh, it's Bunny! A man gave him something to make him sick."

She seized him by the shoulder and held her face close to his.

"What did you say—gave him something!" she exclaimed.

"Yes; come quick," and she felt that the child was drawing her through the thick of the crowd at the rail, to the stairs at the further end. Afterward she could not tell how it was managed or what she did. But she followed the lad around the stand, at the back, to the dressing-room door and then, of a sudden, as though due to the shock induced by the picture she there beheld, her senses returned to her with a rush. The crescent at the door parted and she saw Bunny, his face pale and drawn, stagger forward and lean heavily against the jamb. A man whom she did not recognize clung to one of his arms and beseeched him to lie down.

"No," he mumbled thickly. "Run—run, I tell you—lemme go!" He jerked his arm from the other's clutch.

He passed the back of one hand heavily across his staring eyes and broke away. At the fence he staggered again and fell against it. Wilma came up to him, there.

"Bunny, they've drugged you, you're sick! The little boy told me!"

He turned to her his drawn face. For a tiny instant a look of intelligence came back into his eyes.

"You!" he muttered. "Drug!" And with a plaintive little cry he sank to his knees. Some one brushed by her and seized him. Things, for the second time that afternoon, swam before her eyes and she moved away unsteadily. When next she looked she saw him alone, running up the track and swerving from side to side like a drunken man.

The crowd seemed to understand that a tragedy was being acted there upon the course. There was no cheering. It was as though the throng held its breath—waiting. Wilma steadied herself at the fence. She saw the gaunt figure crouch in the line of the runners. She saw the pistol raised and heard the sharp report. The tension under which the crowd had momentarily lived, was relieved by that and a cry was raised that rang in her ears for hours. She saw the line coming; advancing toward her, swiftly, surely, but more clearly than she saw the others, she saw the tall figure of Bunny at the end. His face, uplifted, was like a demon's face. His lips were tight drawn and showed his teeth and—his eyes were shut! On he came in advance of all the rest, plunging, swerving. Five more strides! She closed her eyes, and when she opened them it was to see him throw up his arms and fall headlong across the line.

He lay there motionless. The other runners passed him, and the crowd broke into the track and she saw no more.

In the judges' stand the megaphone man waited.

How she got there, whether she was carried, walked naturally, or flew, she could never tell, but of a sudden, as it seemed, Wilma discovered that she was in the grand stand again, clinging to a post at the top of the stairs, while beside her hovered Willie Trigger. She heard the bellow of the megaphone man:

"Last heat, one hundred yards! Winning time nine and four-fifths seconds, breaking the Intercollegiate record! Winner——" The crowd knew the winner and did not wait.

Her fingers relaxed in the palms of her hands. A tremor passed over her. She looked down, breathing hard.

"Oh, you darling!" she cried, and Willie Trigger, who had not really understood at all, hung his head in mute embarrassment.

VI

That night, on a low stone horse-block in front of his mother's house sat Willie Trigger gazing at a lighted window in the second story of the house opposite, across the drawn shade of which figures passed and passed again. In that room he knew his hero lay sick. He wondered how sick; perhaps, he speculated, as sick as he once had been after eating many green apples. He would watch and wait. Some one surely would come out of the house before his bedtime. He had followed the hack from the grounds, had seen the long, slim body carried into the house. No one paid the least attention to him so he crossed the street and seated himself on the horse-block. It was not for him to witness the little drama that was being played behind the window shade....

Before he opened his eyes Bunny heard, like high running surf, a low and rythmic rumble. It was very soothing.

"What's the matter?" he exclaimed, suddenly, staring at Nibsey Morey who stood, like a wooden Indian, at the foot of the bed.

Then he felt something very cool against his forehead and closed his eyes again. It was no matter, he thought.

Nibsey withdrew with a nod.

"He seems to be going to sleep," Wilma said.

He heard the voice and opened his eyes again with a start.

"You here!" he muttered.

And he knew it was she by the touch of her hand upon his cheek.

She told him then what had happened. He smiled feebly, patiently, as though he realized she was only trying to comfort him.

She slipped down upon her knees beside the bed.

"Don't you understand," she whispered, and her voice sounded far away to him, "you ran so fast the others were away behind, and you broke the record, and—oh—oh—Bunny."

She hid her face on the pillow beside his.

Then it all became clear to him, her love, and the depth and meaning of it. He forgave her for what he was pleased to call, in his mind, the white lie of her comfort.

"Dearest," he murmured, dreamily, "it's all right; it's all right." He stroked her hair, feebly. Then, after a moment, he muttered, quite to himself: "What happened, anyway; why was it they wouldn't let me run?"

THE DAY OF THE GAME