that, old man," remarked another of the group; "seems like you might be getting all ready for a funeral. I don't like it. Better do some boasting, and give us a chance to feel we're going to carry Mechanicsburg right off her feet."

"Oh! I'm only taking out a little extra insurance, that's all," remarked Bristles. "They all do it, you know. Never knew a feller to get licked but he began to explain how it happened; and tell how if his foot had been all right, or that stitch in his side hadn't caught him, he'd have swept up the ground with all his rivals. I'm wondering what I'd better mention right now as troubling me."

"But you just said you felt as fit as a fiddle?" protested Semi-Colon.

"So I do," answered Bristles; "but that don't matter. A feller may feel fit, and yet have a sore toe; can't he? But, boys, if I get beaten you're not going to hear me put up a whine. It'll only be because the other feller is the better man."

"Bully for you, Bristles;" remarked a tall student, vigorously; "I always knew you'd stand up and be counted. And just you make up your mind you're going to bring home the bacon. We want every point we can get, to beat Mechanicsburg out."

"Nobody seems to take poor old Paulding seriously," remarked Fred, who was one of the noisy, enthusiastic group on the way to the recreation field for a spell of warming up exercise; for school had been dismissed on Thursday afternoon, giving this Friday preceding the meet as a holiday for the scholars, owing to the great interest taken in the affair, the trustees said, and also the fact that the other towns had decided upon the same thing.

"Well, you never can tell," declared Dick Hendricks, who had come up just in time to catch the last remark. "I've got private information from below, and let me warn every fellow not to be cocksure about Paulding. That fellow they've got coaching them is no slouch. He was a college grad. just the same as our Mr. Shays; and they say he coached Princeton for several years, away back."

"Oh! he's an old man, and a back number," observed Bristles, contemptuously. "I heard he hasn't kept up with the procession, and that his methods are altogether slow compared with the more modern ones."

"Well, I believe in never underestimating an enemy," Fred went on; "and if all of us feel that we've got to do our level best in order to win, even against Paulding, that ends the matter."

"Who's seen Colon this morning?" asked Dick Hendricks.

"Not me," replied Bristles, "and it's kind of queer too, because he said he'd drop in for me at eight this morning, and now it's half-past. Reckon he forgot, and went on with another bunch. There's always a lot of boys trailing after Colon nowadays, you know. They just hang around his door, his mother told mine only yesterday, like a pack of hounds, calling for him to show himself."

"Well, I guess Colon is the best card in our pack," declared Fred, stoutly. "You see, he's slated to run in all the shorter sprints, and we expect him to leave the other fellows at the post, for he's as fleet as a deer—Bristles says kangaroo, because of that queer jump he has. They haven't got a ghost of a show in any race Colon takes part in; and I guess they know it up at Mechanicsburg."

"I was talking with a boy from there the other day," spoke up the tall student. "I think he was sent down here as a sort of spy, to see just what we were doing, and get tabs on our men. He owned up to me that if Colon could do that well in a regular race it would be a procession, because nobody could head him. They'd just run on in the hope he might be taken with cramps, or something."

"Who's that hollering back there; looks like Corney Shays?" remarked Semi-Colon just then, so sharply that the entire group paused to look back.

"It is Corney, late as usual, and with his nerve along; because he wants us all to stop and wait for him," declared Dick Hendricks. "Come along boys, and let him catch up if he can."