Two days before the race, the entire student body became divided in its sympathy; wordy quarrels were hourly occurrences on the campus; nor were bodily assaults infrequent. The next day the excitement was as tense as the air before a cyclone. A million pounds of young animal spirits, the highest explosive known to science, were encased in delicate human bottles, needing but a jar to touch them off. At six o'clock, men passing in the streets gazed mad-eyed at one another, their jaws set square, their lips drawn tight across their teeth. III Friday came, eventually, as Fridays have a way of doing, and it came like a breath from the Northland where ice and snow and cold are. The air set one's teeth on edge and one's flesh a-tingling, but there was no frost. That was destined to come a week later, and, over night, convert the summer into the pageant of autumn, the scarlet king at its head, his crimson, gold and purple banners flaunting gaily. When Nibs appeared on the campus in the morning, he was besieged by a horde of the faithful, who wanted to know if the weather was "going to make any difference." "You bet it won't; not to me," he replied, with a sort of vocal swagger, and with a marked enunciatory underlining of the pronoun. "You don't mean to say you're going to prance up and down State Street in those dinky flapping white pants of yours, bare-legged, in such weather as this, do you?" inquired Jimmy, with a most perceptible sneer in his voice. "Yes, I am. I shan't think of the cold," was the brave reply. "Rah! Rah! Rah! Nibsey!" yelled a little pug-nosed freshman on the edge of the crowd, and the cry was taken up lustily. "Oh, shut up, you fellows," said Nibs, blushing; "leave your yelling till after the race, can't you?" But he sensed an expansion of his chest, just the same, an expansion that, for the moment, made his waistcoat feel uncomfortably tight. Meanwhile, Billy Shaw was being besieged in precisely the same manner at another point on the campus. With considerable less than Nibs' braggadocio he informed his followers and backers that so far at least as he was concerned, there would be no postponement of the race. And he, too, was cheered forthwith. Thurston Hubert, a Law, large with importance,--he had been chosen to fire the pistol for the start--was in the little crowd that surged around Billy. He gave it as his opinion that the weather was "great for a running event--simply great." But by six o'clock the mischievous mercury had dropped another five degrees. They were a muffled, overcoated lot of young men, who, an hour later, began to gather in State Street.