"He did," laughed Frank, looking at Diamond, who showed a little confusion. "You remember that Jack, Rattleton and myself went on to Springfield to meet him a few days ago?" "And got arrested for kidnaping a baby!" chuckled Griswold. "That was a corker. We didn't do a thing to you fellows when you got back here!" "That's right," admitted Jack, dolefully. "Not a thing! You simply marched us through the streets and onto the campus with a band and banners and made a stunning show of us!" "Well," said Frank, "Professor Scotch, my guardian, was so glad to get out of the scrape when the judge discharged us that he gave up the thousand without a flutter. That's how I got the money." "Well," yawned Browning, "now you have the horse, you'll find him an expensive piece of furniture. It takes money to take care of 'em and feed 'em." Diamond had been inspecting the gelding from all sides, surveying him with the air of one who knows something about horses, and he now asked: "Has the creature a pedigree, old man?" "Sure," nodded Frank. "Its pedigree is all right. I have it somewhere, but I don't care so much for that." "Oh, I don't know! It may prove of value to you some day." "How?" "Well, you may take a fancy to enter Nemo in a race or two." "What then?" "If he should win, you'll want his pedigree." "I suppose that is right, but I am no sportsman of the turf; that is professional. Amateur sports are good enough for me." "Honest horse racing is one of the grandest sports in the world!" cried Jack, with flashing eyes. "Honest horse racing!" laughed Griswold. "What's that? Where do you find anything like that?" "Oh, there is such a thing." "There may be, but people are not used to it." "That's why I do not think much of horse racing," declared Frank. "There are too many tricks to it to suit me." "Oh, there are tricks to any sort of sport." "Very few to college sports. If a man is caught at anything crooked it means ruin for his college career, and he is sure to carry the stigma through life. I tell you college sports are honest, and that is why they are so favored by people of taste and refinement--people who care little or nothing for professional sports. The public sees the earnestness, the honesty, and the manhood in college sports and contests, and the patrons of such sports know they are not being done out of their money by a fake. Prize fighting in itself is not so bad, but the class of men who follow it have brought disgrace and disrepute upon it. Fights are 'fixed' in advance by these dishonest scoundrels, and the man who backs his judgment with his money is likely to be done out of his coin by the dirtiest kind of a deal." "What makes me sore," said Diamond, "is that some sensational newspapers should send professional bruisers to witness our college football games and denounce them as more brutal than prize fights."