d, and they get
an awful hold on one. It won't be easy for me to give them up; but I
am going to do it. If you catch me smoking another of the things, you
may kick me till there isn't a breath left in my body! That's
business, and I will stick to it!"

"Good!" laughed Frank. "You have been smoking a good many of them
lately, and I have noticed that you complained of your lungs. How can
your lungs be in any condition when you are constantly inhaling so much
of that smoke! I know of a young fellow with weak lungs who went into
quick consumption, and the doctors said cigarettes were entirely
responsible. He smoked a number of packages a day. When he started he
simply smoked now and then, but the habit grew on him, and at last he
was unable to break it."

"I believe any fellow can break off smoking them if he has any
will-power of his own."

"I think a fellow should, but you may not find it as easy as you fancy."

"Oh, it will be easy enough for me. When I make up my mind to a thing,
I never give up."

"Well, I sincerely trust it will prove so. Every one knows cigarettes
are harmful. Yesterday I read in a paper about a boy in a New York
hospital who was said to have a 'tobacco heart' from smoking
cigarettes. By a tobacco heart it was meant that his heart was so
badly affected that it did not perform its action regularly and
properly. Sometimes he is convulsed with terrible pains, and gasps for
breath. Nearly all the time he moans and begs for cigarettes; but the
doctors say he must never smoke another one if he cares to live. As it
is, if he should get up, his heart is so weakened that it may go on a
strike any time and cause his death."

"Oh, say!" laughed Bart; "that settles it. Now, I never will smoke
again. I mean it--you see if I don't."

"I sincerely hope you do. You may become one of the best athletes in
this school. Your only trouble has been shortness of breath when you
exercise heavily, and that came entirely from smoking. If you give it
up, you will soon cease to be troubled that way."

"Well, here's my hand on it, and it is as good as settled. No matter
how much I may desire a smoke now, I'll not monkey with the deadly
cigarette."

Their hands met again.

CHAPTER XXX.

FRANK AND THE PROFESSOR.

Frank Merriwell was right in thinking he had not seen the last of the
man in black. On the third day after his first meeting with the
mysterious stranger he was astonished, whi