"That is a great deal of the matter with him," answered Holworthy, glad to see the tack on which Jack was steering. "You needn't apologize for asking about it. I wish to thunder we could find him a job. He is worrying all the time about what he is going to do after leaving college." That night Rattleton wrote a letter to his father, who was president of a big corporation. From this time on Rivers seemed to brace up in his mental, and consequently in his physical condition. This apparent improvement, however, did not deceive Holworthy, who saw that it was, in a way, unhealthy. Rivers had kept at his rowing and training patiently and doggedly before; but he now threw himself into it heart and soul as a distraction. He dreamed of the coming race night and day. He tried his best to seem cheerful and encourage the other men, and his plucky efforts succeeded very well. Bender was delighted, declared there was nothing like faithful training to keep a man in proper shape, body and mind, unless he was fool enough to fall in love, and concluded that he had suspected Rivers unjustly on that score. The latter showed every now and then to his chum the intensity, almost fierceness, that lay under this apparently happy enthusiasm. One day he said that he must make a success of at least one thing before leaving college, and if that race were lost he should feel as though he were going to fail in everything he undertook all through life. Then Mentor Holworthy opened on him with all his batteries. He told him that he ought to be ashamed to make such a mere sport the test of his life; he descanted hotly on the subject of the athletic fever, and laughed scornfully at the fancied importance of such intercollegiate contests.