To-day, with the exhilaration of the public performance, the lithe, strong body seemed alive with nervous elasticity. A quick snap brought him waist to the bar; a hard fling with his feet backward lifted him into position for the downward swing, which in turn was to furnish the momentum necessary for the rise on the other side. Downward he swept at full length, rigid yet mobile, keeping his feet well behind; up he floated on the other side of the circle until nearly at the zenith, when a quick shift of hands on the bar and a cunning snap of the body carried the dragging feet suddenly forward and left the gracefully curving figure for an instant poised on the hands aloft in perfect balance. Then slowly the athlete gathered headway again for the new descent and the new rise to another balance. It was no less the accuracy in calculating the momentum to be gained in the downward rush and spent in the upward rise than the grace and strength and deliberateness of the motions that gave the performance its perfect finish. “That was just right!” Tompkins was saying, as the applause died away. “And how dead easy it looked! You’d never think it took him two years to learn it, would you?” “I don’t know,” Poole answered thoughtfully. “As far as I can make out, it takes a lot of hard work and practice to do anything in athletics, anyway. That’s why so few really try. Most of them are too lazy to do the plugging.” “How that little Eddy has come on!” said Tompkins, taking up another subject with the usual boy abruptness. “You’d never think he was the same fellow that used to dope around Bosworth’s room last year. You’ve had a hand in that change, I guess.” Poole smiled and shook his head. “It’s no work of mine. All I’ve done is to encourage him occasionally.” “Well, he hangs to you like a Man Friday, anyway,” answered Tompkins.