Round the track they swing again, two men dropping out at the lower turn, already run off their feet, and one of them the stout fellow, as I expected. Indeed, as they pass the posts the second time all have come back a bit to Jack but Black, and Kitty's face is touched by grim despair, for that dreadful twenty yards still stretches between the one she wishes to win and the one she tried to put out of the race. On the third quarter Jack lets out a link, picking up one after another, until only Black leads him, and when they start on the last lap he is running strong and fairly fresh, only ten yards behind, and the rest trailed badly. Kitty's face is the queerest mixture of hope and fear I ever saw. Black runs with the confidence of repeated victories in trials, and attempts to open up the gap again; but Jack has a bit up his sleeve still, answers with a little spurt of his own, will not be denied, and is only a bare five yards to the bad as they straighten out for the last hundred yards. Here Black glances over his shoulder, and I can see his look of surprise. Jack has never been so close up at this stage of the game. It is evident that both the boys are approaching "Queer Street," "Queer Street" with its pounding heart and panting lungs, its parched mouth, singing ears, and leaden feet. Both are game to the core, and it is now only a question of endurance. Here is the runner's purgatory, where the sins of the past are settled, and here it is that Kitty's ice-cream sodas take a hand in the sport. What would Black give if he had not imbibed their awful sweetness? Inch by inch Jack draws up on him, his jaw set, his eyes aflame, his stride shortening, but still quick and straight. Black's face is leaden, his eyes glassy, his long legs giving at the knees at every stride. Down the stretch they come, the crowd on its feet, but too excited to yell, Kitty with her hand over one eye, and her handkerchief tight between her white teeth. For twenty yards they run almost side by side, and then Jack pumps ahead and breaks the tape, a winner by a scant yard. Black follows over in a heap, staggers a step or two, and falls before any one can catch him. Sick, was he? Well, rather! He had a touch of colic that doubled him up like a grasshopper. He groaned and coughed, he writhed and twisted, like a lobster on the coals. I knew it was not a dangerous matter, and gave him little sympathy, extracting a half confession concerning his training escapade of the previous evening. Kitty, the little Jezebel, blushed like a rose when Jack waved his hand at her, as he was carried off on the shoulders of some enthusiastic friends. Little did he know how he came to win over a faster man; little did Black understand there had been a plot for his undoing; and unless she reads this story, Kitty will always think her secret is a secret to all the world. [Illustration: Atherton's Last Half]