On the tenth circuit--or perhaps it was the eleventh!--disaster overtook the pursued. Bob slipped coming into the backstretch and went down, and Martin hurled himself on him. Over and over they went, grunting, gasping, gurgling. Willard rescued the lamp just before the table went over on top of the battlers, showering them with books and papers. Had Bob been in his best form that contest would have been brief, for he was bigger and stronger than his antagonist, but laughter drugged him and before he could cry for mercy Martin had thumped his head many times on the rug and jounced merrily up and down on his ribs. When, at last, Martin drew off and Bob climbed weakly to his feet the room was a wreck and over the scene hung, like a horrible miasma, the sickening concentrated odor of onions! Martin sniffed and would have flung himself on Bob again if the latter had not pointed beseechingly to the floor. Martin looked and picked up the stoppered remains of a broken bottle. To it clung a paper label. “Onion Extract,” he read. When peace, if not complete order, had been restored Bob confessed. “I gave you fair warning, Mart,” he said. “I told you I’d get even. Trouble with you is you think you invented joking and that no one else can get away with it. I got the idea that night when you turned up your nose at the onions in the lunch-cart. I paid the cook a quarter for that bottle of onion extract and the rest was easy. All I had to do was get to table long enough ahead of you to drop a little of the stuff around: on your napkin, in your porridge, in your salt-cellar and so on. I was clever enough not to be too generous with it, you know. Once, when you were looking the other way, I got some on your meat, and another time in your coffee. Yesterday I sprinkled a good big lot on your football togs. Maybe you noticed it?” Martin said: “Hm!” grimly. “I tried to get Brand to put some on your toothbrush and your pillow, but he was too tender-hearted,” added Bob. Martin turned a sorrowfully accusing look on Willard. “And that’s that,” Bob ended, smilingly. “Huh,” said Martin this time, scornfully. “I knew all along it was just some silly joke!” “Oh, no, you didn’t, pettie! Anyhow, we’ll call it quits now if you like. I’m satisfied if you are. Only, Mart, no more ‘tse-tse flies’ and ‘sleeping sickness’ stuff. My health is very good, thank you, and if you want a place on the team, son, you get out and earn it!” “Oh, that’s all right, Bob,” answered Martin, grinning. “Johnny told me today I was to play left tackle after this. So I don’t care whether you have sleeping sickness or not!” Then, after a perceptible pause, he added: “Much!” CHAPTER XVI DIPLOMACY