"Time—twenty-six and one-fifth seconds," cried the shrill voice of Dennis de Brian de Boru. "Equalizing the world's unchallenged professional, amateur and scholastic record made by the late Hickey Hicks! The champion's belt is now the Tennessee Shad's to have and to hold. According to the program the champion and Doc Macnooder, second-best score, will now run another heat for the mysterious sealed prize, guaranteed to be worth over three dollars and fifty cents!"
Macnooder, adopting the Shad's theories of preparation, made an extraordinary effort and brought his record down to twenty-six and four-fifths seconds. The Tennessee Shad then, according to the plan agreed upon with Stover, purposely broke a shoe-lace and lost the match.
Dink, in a speech full of malice, awarded the mysterious sealed prize to Doc Macnooder, with a request to open it at once.
Now, Macnooder, who had been busy thinking the matter over, had sniffed the pollution in the air and, perceiving a wicked twinkle in the eye of Stover, shifted the ground by carrying off the box despite a storm of protests to his room in the Dickinson, where strategically proving his title to Captain of Industry, he charged ten cents admission to all who clamored to see the clearing up of the mystery.
Having thus provided a substantial consolation against discomfiture and joined twenty other curiosity-seekers to his own fortunes, he opened the box and beheld the prodigal souvenir set. At the same moment Dink stepped forward and presented him with his own former bill for three dollars and seventy-five cents.
That night, after Stover had returned much puffed up with the congratulations of his schoolmates on the outwitting of Macnooder, the Tennessee Shad took him to task from a philosophical point of view.
"Lay on."
"You must come down to earth."