"Your form is bad," Black told him. "In jumping, form is everything. You may get to twenty-one or twenty-two feet the way you are going, but that will be the end of it. You must get higher in the air at the take-off." Frank worked hard to master the new style. In school he had jumped naturally and without much coaching, but felt himself that he was not getting his greatest distance. He redoubled his efforts but could not lengthen out beyond nineteen feet or a little better. Then he began to fall below that even. "You're jumping like an old brindle cow," said Black one day. "Are your legs sore?" "My shins feel as if they would crack every time I land in the pit," said Frank, feeling the offending legs gingerly. "Why in thunder didn't you tell me that before? You can't work at the broad jump the same as you do at football or baseball. Lay off for a day or two and keep off your feet." The rest did Frank a world of good for when he returned to the jumping pit he cleared over twenty feet in his first trial, much to the trainer's delight. Thereafter he was watched with the closest attention by Black. In the spring games which came the last week in April he won third place in the handicap broad jump; and after a hard fight succeeded in beating out Warrington, the Freshman jumper who had done the best work up to that time. Two weeks later at the Princeton Freshman meet Frank won second place with a jump of 21 feet 5 inches, and first place in the Harvard Freshman games a week later, bettering his mark by three inches. Armstrong was ineligible, of course, for the 'Varsity meets with Princeton and Harvard, but kept at work perfecting his form and watching closely the work of Hotchkiss, the Junior, who was a consistent performer around 22 feet 6 inches, and who occasionally approached 23 feet. But as Frank daily increased his marks, the interest of Hotchkiss waned. The Intercollegiates came and went, and Hotchkiss maintained his position as Intercollegiate champion by winning the broad jump for Yale at 22 feet 10 inches. But Armstrong never ceased his efforts. A trip to Cambridge for the finals in the Intercollegiates showed him the styles used by the greatest collegiate jumpers, and after returning to New Haven he put his observations to such good effect that he cleared 22 feet 4 inches. "What's the use of keeping up that old grind at the track," said the Codfish one night. "Why don't you go over to the Freshman baseball squad? You may get a chance there yet." "I'm after something," returned Frank, "and it's coming so fast that I don't want to let go." "And that something?" "Don't laugh, it's Hotchkiss. He's been so blamed cocky that I'd give my shoes to lick his mark in the Intercollegiates just for personal satisfaction. I'm too late to do anything with the baseball squad now anyway." "Noble ambition," said the Codfish, "but what's the use? There's nothing more for the track men this spring." "Just the same I'm going to keep at it."