“Oh, he probably looks like someone else,” said Gerald soothingly. “Although, to be strictly truthful, Harry, I never saw anyone who looked just like him!”
“He knew to-night that I recognized him,” mused Harry, “and he wouldn’t look at me once. Well!” He moved toward the door. “I mean to find out. Good night, fellows!”
[CHAPTER X]
THE SPY
However, Harry did not at once borrow The Duke’s red mustache and go sleuthing. As curious as he was about Cotton, he was much too busy these days to play detective, for, although he was pretty certain of winning the cross-country race from Broadwood, Gerald wasn’t taking any chances, and the way he and Andy Ryan kept the team on the go was a caution.
The race was to be held, as usual, on the morning of the day of the football game between the rivals, and over a course which might be called neutral, lying as it did practically halfway between the two schools. Broadwood Academy was situated some four miles from Yardley on the other side of Greenburg and so far inland that at Yardley they spoke of it humorously as a “freshwater college.” Broadwood was slightly smaller than Yardley in point of enrollment, but for all of that was an ideal rival, since she fought hard in every competition and obligingly went down in defeat oftener than she triumphed. There was no student now in Yardley who could recall a Broadwood victory on the gridiron, although there had been some heart-breaking struggles and alarmingly close scores. In baseball Broadwood was not so obliging, although since John Payson’s advent at Yardley she had experienced more defeats than victories. The rivalry between the two preparatory institutions, both good ones, was healthy. Yardley fellows simulated a contempt for the wearers of the Green that they really didn’t feel, and Broadwood pretended similar sentiments toward the Blue. In reality, however, each school entertained a deep-seated respect for the other. While Yardley graduates were likely to go up to Yale to complete their education, Broadwood traditions favored Princeton.
But while Broadwood usually excelled at hockey, garnered a full share of the track and field honors, proved herself as good as her rival at baseball, and accepted defeat on the gridiron only after the gamest battles, she was weak at cross-country running and had been beaten each of the few times that she had met Yardley. Gerald, who would have liked to complete his hill-and-dale career and celebrate his year as captain with a hard-fought victory, lamented Broadwood’s weakness this year.
“I wish we might give them a handicap,” he confided to Harry that Saturday morning as they went back to the gymnasium after a two-mile jaunt. It was the day of the Forest Hill game, and partly because it seemed fair to let the cross-country runners witness the afternoon contest and partly because it was advisable to accustom the team to morning work, since the race was to be run in the forenoon, to-day’s work had started at ten-thirty. Gerald seemed as fresh as when he had started out, and save for the disks of red which had not yet faded from his cheeks, one would never have suspected that he had led nine others over approximately two miles of the hardest sort of going. Harry Merrow, however, showed the pace. He had managed to finish fourth and was rather proud of himself, although when Gerald had clapped him on the back at the finish and congratulated him he had only smiled depreciatingly.
“We might give them a quarter-mile start,” proposed Harry, with a laugh, in response to Gerald’s remark. “But I don’t see why you’re so anxious to get beaten, Gerald.”