Indeed, I honestly believe that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the best man wins because he is the best man, and the rest of the field lose simply because they have not the legs, lungs, heart, or courage necessary to bring them in first. There is mighty little "hocus-pocus" business in amateur athletics, and the atmosphere of the cinder-path is, after all is said, as pure as any on earth, not excepting that of politics and the legal profession. I know a very few events where men were drugged to put them out of contests, but they are, in the main, uninteresting tales which I do not care to tell. In the little crack I mean to have with you, although no drugs were used, there is about the clearest case of "fix" I know, and, what is more to the point, I'll bet a fiver you will read it to the end. I became acquainted with Kitty Murray when I was putting the finishing touches to the athletic team of a large New England academy, just what and where I cannot say, for very obvious reasons. They had on their list an annual contest in field sports with a rival academy, and called in outside training talent only six or eight weeks before the games. Kitty, with whom I struck up a friendship a day or two after my arrival, was a little English girl, as fresh and fragrant as an "Old-Country" rose such as I used to find long ago in a distant Lancashire garden. She was only five years over, and it seemed like going back again just to hear her talk. We became great friends during my stay in the little town, and I shall never quite forget her. I hope the story I am about to tell will not be thought to reflect on her, and it will not, unless I bungle badly in the telling of it. Now, I do not, of course, defend the "queering" of a race, and Kitty as surely put a contestant out of winning place as if she had used a drug, yet it was not done for money. The man did not deserve to win, and I confess I like her all the better for the deed. Kitty's father had come from an Oldham factory, thinking, like many another, that in America he would own his mill within a five year. The five years had passed, and he was still running his eight looms in the big weave-shed by the river, where he first went to work. Kitty had tended her five looms by his side for a year or so, and then found more congenial as well as more remunerative surroundings in a little store near the academy grounds. This store occupied the lower story of a dwelling-house, which had been built out toward the street, until its wooden porch infringed on the sidewalk, and its flight of long steps rose from the edge of the gutter. Whether it fractured any of the town ordinances by preëmpting the sidewalk in this way I do not know, but it had a particularly inviting appearance, like a host coming half way to meet you, and the porch, sheltering from sun and shower, was a perfect drag-net for customers.