riousness ... perhaps all the gods really were....

The gun cracked. Off I leapt, in the lead ... in the first lap the field
fell behind.

"Steady, Gregory, steady!" advised Dunn, in a low voice, as I flashed
into the second....

I thought I had distanced everybody ... but it chilled me to hear the
soft swish, swish of another runner ... glancing rapidly behind, I saw a
swarthy lad, a fellow with a mop of wiry, black hair, whom we called
"The Hick" (for he had never been anywhere but on a farm)--going stride
for stride, right in my steps, just avoiding my heels....

Run as I might, I couldn't shake him off....

Every time I swept by, the crowd would set up a shout ... but now they
were encouraging "The hick" more than me. This made me furious, hurt my
egotism. My lungs were burning with effort ... I threw out into a longer
stride. I glanced back again. Still the chap was lumbering along ... but
easily, so easily ... almost without an effort....

"Good God, am I going to be beaten?" I sensed a terrific sprinting-power
in the following, chunky body of my antagonist.

There were only two more laps ... the rest of the field were a lap and a
half behind, fighting for third place amongst themselves ... jeered at
by the instinctive cruelty of the onlookers....

My ears perceived a cessation of the following swish, the tread.
Simultaneously I heard a great shout go up. I dared not look back,
however, to see what was happening--I threw myself forward at that
shout, fearing the worst, and ran myself blind....

* * * * *

"Take it easy, you have it!"

"Shut up! he's after the record."

* * * * *

The shrill screaming of the girls who had come over, in a white,
linen-starched wagon load, from Fairfield, gave me my last spurt.
Expecting every moment to hear my antagonist grind past me, on the
cinders, I sped up the home-stretch.

The air was swimming in a gold mist. I felt arms under mine, and I was
carried off to the senior tent, by my class-mates....

Yet I am convinced that I would have been beaten, if my rival had not
had the string that held his trunks up, break. He had sunk down on the
track, when they had fallen, not to show his nakedness ... and, pulling
them up, and holding them, amid great laughter, he had still won second
ribbon.

* * * * *

I won the second race--the half-mile, without the humour of such a
f