I

"You can't do it, Nibs,—you can't do it—you may have the spurt speed, but you haven't got the wind."

"Rot—why, you don't know what you're talking about, Jimmy; I can beat him forty ways. Look at those legs!"

And the lank creature thrust them into view and patted them affectionately between the knee and the hip.

"Oh, I know you've got the legs, Nibs," was the indifferent reply, "it's the wind you're shy of."

"What does wind amount to in a hundred yards, I'd like to know? All a fellow needs is a good breath at the pistol. A good one will carry him over the string." The speaker leaned across the table; "Now, on the square, Jimmy, don't you think I can beat Billy Shaw?" he asked eagerly.

The young man opposite, tilting back his chair, eyed his companion critically from under half-dropped lids. He flecked the ash from his cigarette, scrupulous that it should not dust his clothes, and said slowly, and more as though by way of encouragement than expressive of an opinion—"Well, of course, there's a chance."

Nibs smiled broadly, at that, and settled back, apparently quite satisfied.

"I knew you were joking," he said.

It was a Saturday evening. Had the dial of the Court House clock been illuminated, it would have shown the hour to be half-past seven. On the corner, a gasolene lamp was burning at the top of a weather-stained post. In front of the Opera House an Uncle Tom's Cabin band was straining at the melancholy air, "Massa's In de Col', Col' Ground," played in circus tempo. Now and then was heard the scuffle of hurrying feet on the tar walk outside.

Nibs Morey and Jimmy Hulburt sat in silence for a space.

No one had ever been able—if, indeed, any one had sought—to fathom the friendship that for two years had been maintained unbroken between these two. Perhaps it was due to the counter effect of Hulburt's derision of Morey's abundant conceit, for had Nibs Morey been asked to cite an instance of Jimmy's championing him, he, positively, would have failed. It was the one's lack, or expressed lack, of confidence in the other, that evenly balanced the other's really splendid confidence in himself.

When first Nibs had expressed his intention of posting a challenge to Billy Shaw on the Bulletin Board in the Main Hall, Jimmy had sniffed and sneered derisively.

"What's the use making a Jack of yourself?" he asked.

"Who's going to?" Nibs replied, tartly.

"You are. He'll beat you by a rod," was the cool retort.

"Don't you believe it."

"Well, I do."

"You needn't."

"All right; we'll see."

And Jimmy did see, and it was a glorious sight—a splendid picture of a righteous triumph in which the best man won; to revel in the joy of victory a space, and then to meet, and join in combat, with a foeman vastly worthier of his steel. For, in spite of Jimmy's discouragement—which could not have been that, really, and perhaps was not even meant for that—Nibs posted the challenge.

It was written in huge letters, that all who ran might read, and was made doubly conspicuous, by its poster style, among the score or more announcements of class-meetings, conferences, and graduate-events that fluttered with it on the Board.

Nibs hung up the challenge one evening while the janitor's back was turned. He carried it into the corridor folded beneath his coat. Satisfied that they were not observed, he drew it out and spread it upon the long, marble-topped radiator, and invited the criticism of Jimmy, the which Jimmy was not loth to utter.

"Big as a barn, eh?" he said, sniffing.

"But I want him surely to see it," the author of the broadside replied, tilting his head and viewing his work admiringly in the dim light of the slim chandelier above.

"Well, I'm still thinking you're a fool,—a blamed big fool."

"Don't you think he'll accept?" Nibs asked eagerly, passing lightly over Jimmy's expression of what appeared at least superficially to be a definite opinion.

"Of course he will, that's just it; he'll see it and he'll accept it, and he'll beat the life out of you," was the discouraging rejoinder. "Hurry, hang it up," he added, "I don't want to wait here all night." And Jimmy slouched away in the direction of the great door.

So the document challenging Billy Shaw to run against Nibs Morey in State Street, on the evening of October nineteenth, at seven o'clock, was forthwith tacked upon the Board to the complete concealment of one bill announcing the publication of the Palladium, and another displayed to notify the scornful that the Dramatic Club would—at an early date—repeat its marvelously successful and delicately artistic performance of "Among the Breakers."

"There! I guess he'll take notice, now!" exclaimed the joyous Nibs, stepping back from the board, and gazing at the poster proudly.

"And so will all the University," replied Jimmy, not, however, without a secret pride in the valor of his friend, after all; for Billy Shaw, the prospective opponent, had brought with him to Ann Arbor a country record for swift running that was not to be considered lightly, even by a sprinter of the attainments of Nibs Morey.

All efforts to match the two had thus far failed. It was Nibs' zeal, purely, though tempered, of course, by his fine conceit, that prompted the posting of the challenge now—a zeal to prove—perhaps to Jimmy, more than to the others—his wisdom, and the justification of his own abundant confidence. And the challenge thus publicly offered achieved the end that Nibs had hoped it might.

There is record in undergraduate history of the excitement that prevailed upon the campus the day after its publication. No one seemed to doubt Billy Shaw's acceptance of it. He would have to run now, or ever after hold his peace,—they said—an alternative not to the relish of a youth of his temperament. And he did accept the challenge, and he did run; and bets were made, and money was won and lost, all to the undying credit of Alma Mater, who looked on, smiling, proud of her sons in their glorious youth, their honor and their prowess.

II

For a week, now, the Gown had been speculating; placing its bets with the Town eagerly, enthusiastically, and many of those bets—sad to relate—were on the wrong side of the book, so far as Nibs Morey was concerned. When Jimmy, learning the way of the wind, informed his friend of the odds against him, with all the coldness of a perfect enmity, Nibs experienced his first twinge of uneasiness. For the Gown, loyal to its foreign upholder, Billy—in the excess of its patriotism and without regard to possible consequences such as unpaid laundry bills, and staved-off tailor accounts—had wagered against poor Nibs, who, though he was of the Gown, cannot be said to have been with it. He suffered the misfortune of having been born and reared within a scant stone's throw of the main building, the which, it may be noted in passing, he had, for half a dozen years, held as a grudge against his parents, to the perplexity of his sister Wilma, who found only a keen enjoyment in her college home and in the shifting aspects of the college life around her.

The event that Nibs longed for was only a week away, and his friend seemed to take rare delight in deriding the hardihood that had prompted the posting of the challenge.

"Well," Nibs said, at last, breaking his long legs at the knee, and rising from the table, laboriously, "maybe he will beat me,—but he won't do it hands down—he won't do it in a walk, anyway."

"Oh, I don't know," was the cool retort of Jimmy, and stepping down into the street he added, "you can't always tell."

Nibs had not once chided his friend for his seeming lack of confidence; he bore it simply, and gave no sign that it produced an effect, unless an occasional weak smile, as when the other became too atrociously insulting, might be taken for such a sign. For there were things that even Jimmy had no knowledge of. He did not dream for instance that, on many a night after Nibs had, with a plea of study, begged off from going "down town," he had dressed himself in a thin undershirt, loose, full breeches and spiked shoes, and wrapped in a bath-robe and crouching in the shadow, had sought the solemn, ghostly cemetery, there to run among the white stones, glistening in the pale light, to his full heart's content. Later, on those same nights, tired out, he had sneaked back to his room unobserved in the silent streets. No, Jimmy did not know of this strenuous course of Nibs' training. He knew his legs were wiry, elastic, to be sure; but how wiry, how elastic, he did not dream. And though deride him he did, in his cheerful confidence and self-assurance, when, on the Monday following their meeting in Nat's low-ceiled bar-room, a particularly venturesome sophomore laid him a wager of five to three on Billy, Jimmy took the shorter end of the bet with amazing alacrity.

During the week immediately preceding the day for which the race was set, interest in the event increased with the passage of the hours. Posey's billiard-room on Main Street became the betting-green, where Town met Gown, and Gown flung its challenges into the teeth of Town, which Town at first snarled at, but eventually bit into and clung to tenaciously.

Once, during the tempestuous seven days, Nibs encountered Billy face to face. The latter was leaving the president's office; Nibs was approaching the door.

As their eyes met, a spark flashed between them, and their faces became hard and set. There were several loiterers in the corridor who witnessed the meeting, and one of these, "Pinkey" Bush—a lawyer in Chicago now,—never tires of recalling the incident. You have but to mention it to him to hear him say, with a brilliant twinkle in his eye:

"Gad! It was great! Simply great! There they stood, face to face; Nibsey, long, thin as a lath, glaring down at Billy, who was shorter, but just as gaunt. Their eyes gleamed like new shoe buttons, and their hands were clenched tight at their sides. A second? It seemed an age! They didn't speak; just drilled little wells in each other's eyes with their own—and it was over. The door of the president's office closed upon Nibsey; the big west door rattled shut after Billy. It was like a dissolving view—great, while it lasted, but soon ended. I thought every instant—and held my breath—that one of 'em would shoot out his fist and land it on the other's jaw. No reason, of course; but it wouldn't have surprised any of us who saw the meeting, if one or the other had."

Two days before the race, the entire student body became divided in its sympathy; wordy quarrels were hourly occurrences on the campus; nor were bodily assaults infrequent.

The next day the excitement was as tense as the air before a cyclone. A million pounds of young animal spirits, the highest explosive known to science, were encased in delicate human bottles, needing but a jar to touch them off.

At six o'clock, men passing in the streets gazed mad-eyed at one another, their jaws set square, their lips drawn tight across their teeth.

III

Friday came, eventually, as Fridays have a way of doing, and it came like a breath from the Northland where ice and snow and cold are. The air set one's teeth on edge and one's flesh a-tingling, but there was no frost. That was destined to come a week later, and, over night, convert the summer into the pageant of autumn, the scarlet king at its head, his crimson, gold and purple banners flaunting gaily.

When Nibs appeared on the campus in the morning, he was besieged by a horde of the faithful, who wanted to know if the weather was "going to make any difference."

"You bet it won't; not to me," he replied, with a sort of vocal swagger, and with a marked enunciatory underlining of the pronoun.

"You don't mean to say you're going to prance up and down State Street in those dinky flapping white pants of yours, bare-legged, in such weather as this, do you?" inquired Jimmy, with a most perceptible sneer in his voice.

"Yes, I am. I shan't think of the cold," was the brave reply.

"Rah! Rah! Rah! Nibsey!" yelled a little pug-nosed freshman on the edge of the crowd, and the cry was taken up lustily.

"Oh, shut up, you fellows," said Nibs, blushing; "leave your yelling till after the race, can't you?" But he sensed an expansion of his chest, just the same, an expansion that, for the moment, made his waistcoat feel uncomfortably tight.

Meanwhile, Billy Shaw was being besieged in precisely the same manner at another point on the campus. With considerable less than Nibs' braggadocio he informed his followers and backers that so far at least as he was concerned, there would be no postponement of the race. And he, too, was cheered forthwith.

Thurston Hubert, a Law, large with importance,—he had been chosen to fire the pistol for the start—was in the little crowd that surged around Billy. He gave it as his opinion that the weather was "great for a running event—simply great." But by six o'clock the mischievous mercury had dropped another five degrees.

They were a muffled, overcoated lot of young men, who, an hour later, began to gather in State Street.

From all directions they came, and they formed in double line from the Psi Upsilon House to the end of the course, precisely one-quarter of a mile. Waiting, they shouted, jeered one another, spoke disrespectfully of a whimsical Nature that had given them without warning so keen a touch of winter, and otherwise disported as college men have a way of doing, when they are waiting for something to occur.

Along the outer edge of the street's double course were many vehicles, for the Town's interest in the extensively advertised event was almost as great as the Gown's; and in that day the lines between the two were not so closely drawn as they are now. Girls, there were, waiting in several of the carriages; young women of the institution; serious-faced girls, but still girls, and being such, interested in deeds of prowess, and devoted, with a sort of holy devotion, to the doers, as were the women of Greece in the olden time.

It was quarter-past seven when the familiar figure of the president was seen to issue from his house and come down the South Walk. Knowledge of his approach was passed along the double lines. The jeering ceased; the disrespectful allusions to the weather ended, and at the top of the course a sophomore, in a tall-collared sweater—then a novelty—who was bolder than his fellows, shouted, "Rah! Rah! Rah! The President!" The good man stopped, and, turning his head slowly, surveyed the ranks seriously. Then he smiled such a smile as fifteen thousand men and women in this country, and far countries, remember with a little tightening of the throat that comes with the memory. Removing his hat, he bowed, acknowledging the cheer, the sign of genuine, deep affection, that had greeted him. And while he stood there on the walk, smiling, a louder cheer ripped the atmosphere, a cheer that rose and rose, higher and higher until it seemed the heavens above must crack from the detonation. For THEY had appeared; and the president turned to glance up the course, and what he saw caused the smile upon his kindly face to broaden, and he laughed, but the laugh was low, and not heard in the turmoil.

They approached the starting point from opposite directions. Billy Shaw was accompanied by Thurston Hubert, he whose function it was to fire the pistol, his hat cocked over one ear, a cigarette between his lips, the smoke of which he artistically exhaled through his nostrils without removing the tube—a feat that none but an upperclassman is known ever to have accomplished.

Billy was wrapped in a blue and green bath-robe, the hem of which was not deep enough to hide his bare, big-boned ankles. He wore his spiked, soft shoes, and had walked from his room—not without some little triumph—in the middle of the street. He was bareheaded, as was Nibs.

The latter's lank form was enveloped in a great mackintosh with a deep cape. He carried his running shoes in his hand.

As the two came face to face at the starting point their eyes met a second time, and again a challenge leaped between them.

In the excitement attendant upon their arrival the crowd did not take notice of the little things, and the significance of that meeting and the look was lost. That is, lost to all but one man—whom no one knew; a stranger, who thus far had looked on smiling. He had crossed the street some ten minutes before and joined the crowd unobserved. He had spoken only once. When the throng cheered the president he had touched on the arm a youth who stood beside him, and asked, "Who's that?" Informed, he had continued to smile saying, "I thought so;" at the same time taking a cigar from his waistcoat pocket and lighting it. He was tall, this stranger, and his face was long and thin, but not unhandsome, for his eyes were brown and gentle. His little, flat hat sat close upon his head. Of unusual height, his lengthy legs were concealed by the long light overcoat he wore. From his shoulder, by a strap, after the manner of the day, dangled a fat hand-bag. He had not cheered thus far. He had only smiled and pulled at his cigar, sending up huge feathery clouds of opalescent smoke.

Leaning forward now, he glanced along the line to the starting point. The moment had arrived. The contestants had flung off their wrappings and stood forth in their trappings. It made one shiver to see them; clothed only in their gauze, sleeveless shirts, and the white flapping breeches of the sport.

Hubert and Jimmy conferred aside, while the bare-legged Mercurys stood, now on one foot, now on the other, blowing in their hands, and flinging their arms transversely across their breasts to counteract the cold.

The crowd cried its impatience. The stranger craned forward again.

"Back up!" called Hubert. "Keep back down there, you fellows!" and the crowd obeyed, forming a splendid gantlet of spirited youth.

The contestants took their places side by side.

Hubert's arm rose, and seeing the pistol pointed heavenward several of the young women in the carriages screwed their fingers into their ears.

"Ready!"

There was a dead silence. The arms of the champions shot forward and back, rigid.

"Sett!"

Like perfect machines, they crouched at the word with one accord.

At the crack of the pistol there was a swift in-taking of breath along the lines.

As they shot forward the double ranks of the gantlet fell together like a house of cards and the crowd surged upon the heels of the runners.

The president had proceeded to the end of the course. Looking back he saw them coming. He saw them straining, neck and neck, the nerves and cords below their ears standing out round, like ropes. He saw their lips drawn back, thin and livid over gritted teeth. He saw their bulging eyes, eyes that in turn saw nothing; and he heard the crowd at the rear.

Closer and closer—they seemed abreast—and then—and then——

A scant fifteen feet from the string, Nibs Morey leaped and plunged forward. Such a spurt had never before been seen on State Street. Even the president, flinging aside his well-worn dignity, cheered on the long, lank figure, which hurled itself that instant across the string, and fell limp and panting into his open arms!

"Well done, my boy," he cried,—"and you, too!" This to Billy, who was upon him a fine fraction of a second later. "You are both champions,—I am proud of you."

And as they relaxed, weak and faint, he seized a hand of each in his own and shook them strongly. Then he threaded his way back through the seething crowd that had come up. Cheer upon cheer rent the atmosphere—cheers for Nibs, and cheers for Billy, who had done his best and failed, with greater honor to him, than if he had won without effort.

IV

At the bottom of the course, with the long-heralded event slipping with the moments into history, and surrounded by their cheering fellow-collegians, the eyes of the contestants met again, nor did they waver, nor did a challenge leap between them. They smiled; their hands shot forth with one accord, met and clutched, and it was then that another cheer arose unlike those that had gone before—a cheer that was a cheer. As it ended, Jimmy Hulburt, in a moment of fine frenzy, for him, cried:

"I'm willing to bet ten dollars at two to one that Nibsey Morey can beat anybody runnin' that walks!"

Even that brave if paradoxical cry was cheered, and the sportive Jimmy looked about him valiantly. He felt a hand upon his arm in another instant and heard a voice above him. Lifting his eyes, he looked up into the stranger's face.

"What was your bet?" the soft voice inquired. Jimmy repeated it, none the less vigorously, at the same time pushing back to survey the uncouth figure of the man in the long coat, with a satchel dangling from his shoulder.

"I'll take it," the stranger said, simply.

Some one laughed, another called: "Shut up." As for Jimmy, he only stared at the absurd person before him, who had with such aggravating nonchalance picked up the glove that he had so bravely flung down.

"Are you a student here?" he asked.

"I entered to-day," was the reply, spoken in the same calm tones.

"Where you from?"

"Niles."

"So you want to take that bet?"

"I'm willing." He smiled most exasperatingly.

"When do you want to run?"

"Suit yourself."

"Say," Jimmy exclaimed, perhaps a shade angrily, "are you fooling? To hear you talk anybody'd think you wanted to run now."

"That would be all right. I will run now."

The laughter became general. The stranger only pulled at his cigar more quickly.

"Where are your togs?" Jimmy inquired scornfully.

"I've got them on." So saying he flung back his overcoat. He was ordinarily dressed.

The laughter broke out afresh.

Jimmy hesitated just one instant.

"Wait a moment, may be we can fix up a race," he cried, and pushing through the crowd he ran across the street to a confectionery store, where Nibs had gone with Billy for a soda. He burst in upon them out of breath. He told them of the wise fool over the way who needed a tuck taken in him.

"Will you run, Nibsey? Come on," he cried.

Nibs looked at Billy.

"Do it, do it," the latter urged.

"All right," Nibs agreed, and arm in arm with his backer he issued into the street, clutching his mackintosh about him.

The stranger had, meanwhile, walked back along the course followed by a great throng, anxious to witness what to them promised to be a fiasco of immense proportions. Only three carriages had waited. The occupants perceiving the crowd at the lower end of the street had lingered for developments. In one of the carriages was Nibs Morey's sister Wilma. She called a youth to the wheel and questioned him concerning the throng which still surged in the street. The freshman explained gaily.

"And will Nibs run that great tall thing?" the girl inquired anxiously.

"Oh, don't you worry, Miss Morey," the little freshman replied consolingly. "He'll beat him so far he won't know he's running."

"But he's all tired out," she expostulated.

"Oh, no, he isn't. Only a little over a hundred yards."

A cry rang out just then, down the course, and Wilma, turning, caught a glimpse of her brother, surrounded by his supporters—and all the crowd supported him now—approaching the start.

She was moved to call him, to demand his instant withdrawal from this silly, useless race; but her voice—this she realized—would not have been heard above the shouting. She sank back upon the seat, her face flushed, her forehead furrowed with little lines, her fingers locking and unlocking.

Some one had stopped just behind the carriage. Afterward she was wont to say she had "felt" the presence; for, looking around and down, her eyes met those of the stranger. His were the first to drop before her unflinching, flashing gaze. Why he had stopped just there, the centre of a little group of the curious, he could never explain. It was only an instant, merely for the exchange of that glance perhaps, for he moved on again almost immediately, up the course, half running, stepping high, gracefully.

The double lines of spectators now were not so long nor so thick as they had been; nor did they manifest those signs of interest that had marked the earlier event.

At the start, the tall stranger removed neither his long overcoat nor his satchel. His cigar had gone out, but he still held it, cold, between his teeth.

Little Thurston, who was to fire the pistol a second time, exclaimed, amazedly: "Aren't you goin' to take off those things?"

"No, guess not," was the cool reply. "What's the use!"

Nibsey Morey, Billy Shaw and Jimmy exchanged glances; Billy smiled outright.

"Say," Jimmy snapped somewhat angrily. "Let's get a hustle on and end this—you willing?" He nodded toward the stranger.

"Quite."

"Then—ready!" cried the starter.

Again two figures, sadly matched, crouched at the start.

Another second and the pistol cracked.

Following the report, there was a little instant of dead silence in the street, then there broke forth pandemonium, for half way down the course, his coat tails flying, his satchel standing out behind, the cold cigar gripped tight between his teeth, the stranger led Nibs Morey by a rod. Twenty-five feet from the string, he turned, and running backward, beckoned with a crooked forefinger to the straining Mercury that he faced.

Not in all undergraduate history is there recorded an event which created more excitement on the campus after its occurrence than this.

Nibs Morey had defeated Billy Shaw; and a stranger who had sprung from the earth had defeated Nibs as no man before had ever been defeated.

They shook hands, honorably, after the event, but those who witnessed the incident forgot it immediately in the overwhelming curiosity regarding the newest risen champion among them.

"Who is he?" was the question on the lips of every youth and every maid—"Who is he?"

His name was Bunette, they said. His home? A tiny town on a west Michigan sand hill.

"What is he, then?" the voice of the campus cried. And it became known that he had entered the department of Medicine and Surgery.

And thus was a new god raised among men at whose shrine none worshiped with devotion more intense than Billy Shaw, and the erstwhile idol, Nibsey Morey, and to them and their brethren for all time he was given a name, and the name was "Bunny of '85."

THE CASE OF CATHERWOOD