Cinder Path Tales

162 CINDER-PATH TALES would have given a month's salary tohave been able to send her the telegram she hoped for. One afteranother, tall and short, stout and slender, goodand bad, had their threetrials, and Dick was in the finals by an inch and a half. Poor old Seever was out of it, and Dick was theonly string we had left. All of our people were perfectly satisfied at this, and Tomwas smiling as a Cheshire cat. I had absolutely no hope that Dick would do better than third, forafter his first attempt, although theapplause had been louder than ever, hehad taken no notice of it, and had apparently lost all interest in the sport. Being accustomed to his surroundings, he went through his performances in a per­ functory fashion, showing a fraction over twenty feet, and then a fraction under. In­ deed, hehad become his old listless, careless self again. In the finals he did first nineteen-nine, and then, despite the desperate effort I made to stir him up with sharpwords, hefell back to his old maddening distance of nineteen -six and one-half. The other two competitors, a little fellow with light hair, anda big chap with not much hair ofany color, had respectively twenty -two one and one-half, andtwenty-one and three-