Frank turned pale.
"If you say I can't row, that settles it," he said, huskily; "but I think you are making a mistake. I can row, and I'll prove it, if you will give me the chance. You shall have no cause to complain of me."
"But I know you are not fit to pull an oar. You have tried to conceal it from me, but I know you have a felon on your hand. Am I right?"
"You are right," calmly admitted Frank; "but give me a chance, and I will row for all there is in me, even if it takes my arm off at the shoulder."
Collingwood looked into Merriwell's eyes, and what he saw there caused him to say: "All right, my boy, you shall row if we lose by it."
"If we lose the race it will not be my fault," returned Merriwell.
The Harvard cheer broke from a thousand throats as the Harvard crew came down the stream and arrived first at the start. Yale followed almost immediately, and two students who were on a trim little
yacht craned their necks and glared at the men in the boat.
Something like a groan escaped the lips of Tom Thornton, and Willis Paulding declared:
"I don't see Flemming, but Merriwell is there!"