he was frequently discouraged by his own ineptitude and certain that he wouldn’t survive the final cut in the squad, he had always believed in finishing what he started. Not a bad belief to hold, that, for persistence has often won where courage has failed. Clif’s father made one of his frequent visits to school the following Sunday. Clif’s mother was dead, and he was the only child. In consequence he and his father had been pretty close for many years, and, until weather conditions had prevented during late January and early February, Mr. Bingham had averaged two trips a month from Providence by automobile. The present visit was the first for over three weeks, and Clif forgot the self-consciousness that was likely to assail him at such times and squeezed his father’s hand so hard that Mr. Bingham flinched perceptibly. He rolled up to the Inn shortly before church time, the blue car well spattered with mud, and Clif didn’t have much time for conversation then. A few questions and replies, an appointment for dinner at one――to be kept, however, as soon as church was over, and accompanied by Tom――and Clif had to hurry back to school. As the Freeburg Inn was only a block from the school entrance he was able to make the journey in three minutes flat. Usually Clif made up a quartet for dinner at the Inn by inviting two of his friends, generally Tom and Walter Treat. Walter was Clif’s roommate in Number 17 West Hall, a quiet, studious, rather self-contained youth of seventeen. Clif liked him thoroughly, although not so well as Tom, and Clif’s father had long since fallen victim to his attractions, the greatest of which, in Mr. Bingham’s judgment, being an ability to converse intelligently on subjects other than school athletics. To-day, however, as frequently happened, Walter’s own folks were visiting school, and while Clif would have liked to have had Loring to dinner in Walter’s place, Loring wouldn’t be persuaded. Not generally sensitive about his condition, Loring disliked displaying his infirmity in public dining rooms. So when at a few minutes past one Mr. Bingham’s party seated itself at table it consisted only of the host, Tom and Clif. Whatever was to be said of the Inn’s Sunday dinners――and much that was complimentary might have been said――they could not be criticized on the score of astounding originality. You always knew just what to expect. To-day’s dish of olives and pickles looked exactly like last Sunday’s, the cream of tomato with rice tasted exactly like the soup of a week ago, and so it went right down the menu, through the fish and the broiled milk-fed chicken and the three vegetables and the combination salad and the harlequin ice-cream to the demi-tasse and the far too pliable crackers, which, aided by a square of yellow cheese, ended the banquet. But it was good, that dinner, and especially toothsome to fellows who for nearly a month had subsisted on a possibly more appropriate but far plainer diet. Tom, as always, lost no time