Gymnasium work was much the same as it had been since Don and Wayne went into training; there was always the chest weights and the dumb-bells, and Wayne knew every splinter and crack in the running track by this time. But he had dropped two or three pounds of weight, and felt better for it; he had made the acquaintance of a number of the candidates who were the sort of chaps that it was well to know; he had secured a new interest in school life, and he was able to talk more or less intelligently with Don upon subjects that occupied full half of that youth’s thought—namely, the approaching spring handicap meet and the more distant interscholastic contest. Don had thrown himself heart and soul into the task of turning out a winning track team, and, being a youth who was willing and eager to back his mental efforts with the hardest sort of physical labor, he was in a fair way to succeed. For two weeks past he had been in correspondence with a number of Hillton graduates, and now he was able to announce that he had secured promises of active assistance from almost all of them, and that the track men would not want for coaching.
“Barret is coming in April,” he told Wayne one day. “He was a star hurdler at college a couple of years ago. Then Kenyon, who holds the intercollegiate two-hundred-and-twenty-yard record, and Burns, who won the one hundred yards last spring, are both coming to coach the sprinters. Remsen, the old football coach, is coming, and I think he’ll be willing to teach Dave and Hardy and Kendall a few tricks with the weights. We need a middle-distance man and some one who knows something about pole vaulting. Johnstone may come; he’s half promised. As for you and Chase and Treadway and the rest, why, Beck will look after you; he’s a dandy coach for the distances; he used to be a fine runner in the mile, and held the intercollegiate championship for a couple of seasons. We’ll be well fixed for coaches this spring.”
“Seems to me with all those men to help,” said Wayne, “we can’t help winning.”
“It doesn’t follow. You see, St. Eustace and the other schools will have just as many good grads coaching them. St. Eustace generally has a whole army of them. That’s one bully thing about that school: you never hear of it begging for aid of any sort from the alumni; the alumni’s always on hand and waiting to help. Of course, I don’t mean that Hillton graduates aren’t like that, only—well, sometimes they seem a bit backward in coming forward.”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Wayne; “perhaps if the truth was known we’d find that St. Eustace captains have just as much trouble getting the old fellows to go there and coach as you have had. I know from what Dave told me once that Hillton fellows always help the school all they know how.”
“Good for you!” answered Don, with a grin. “’Rah for Hillton!”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing much; only that you are coming on. I think I can detect symptoms of patriotism, Wayne.”
“Pshaw! Of course a fellow always stands up for his school; he’d be mighty poor trash if he didn’t.”
“Glad to hear you say so,” responded Don dryly. “You didn’t seem to be impressed with that fact when you first arrived in our midst with your two trunks and an air of supreme importance.”