“Me, too,” said Tommy. “I went back to the room and dreamed of Pete floating in my bath-tub, with his old smelly pipe in his mouth and his face all white and horrid. Every time he puffed on the pipe he winked his eye at me, and I woke up yelling like a good one.” Tommy arose from his seat and stood gazing into the flames. “It was a beast of a dream.” “Must have been,” Hal responded, sympathetically. Pete puffed silently at the afore-mentioned pipe and grinned heartlessly. Tommy glanced over at him and commenced an aimless ramble about the room. “I said then,” he went on, “that if Pete-- Say, it’s getting beastly hot in here. Let’s have the door open.” In spite of the protests, he opened the portal into the narrow hallway, and continued his rambling and his talk. “I made up my mind then that if Pete wasn’t drowned, that if I ever saw his dear, foolish, homely face again, I’d--I’d----” “Be a better man,” Hal suggested. “Learn to write English,” offered Allan. “Pay your debts,” muttered Pete over his pipe-stem. “_I’d take a fall out of him!_” concluded Tommy, savagely. At the same instant he put a hand under Pete’s chin, tipped him heels over head backward onto the floor, smothered his outcries by banging the saddle down over his face, punched him twice in the ribs--and flew! His forethought in opening the door saved him. As he dived through he slammed it behind him in Pete’s face, and the others heard four wild leaps on the staircase. Then all was still save for Pete’s chuckles. But stay! What sound was that from beneath the window; what doleful wailings broke upon the night air? They hearkened. “Cowardy, cowardy, cowardy cat!” shrilled Tommy. “Dare you to come down, Pete Burley!” Pete threw up a front window. There was a sound of hasty footfalls and an exclamation as Tommy collided with an ash-barrel. Then from far up the street came a last defiant challenge: “_O Fresh!_” CHAPTER XVI THE INDOOR MEETING Mechanics’ Hall, Boston, was filled from floor to gallery, from doors to stage. The hum of voices, the fluttering of programs, the slow bellow of the announcer as, with megaphone at mouth, he gave the result of the events, made a strange medley of sound. From one corner of the floor to another there ran diagonally a lime-marked lane. Since half past seven white-trunked figures had rushed, half a dozen at a time, down this lane at top speed, had flung themselves panting, with outstretched arms, against the mattresses at the end, and had turned and trotted back to the dressing-rooms. The supply had seemed inexhaustible. Heat after heat had been run in the Forty Yards Novice, heat after heat in the Forty Yards Invitation, heat after heat in the Forty Yards Handicap, and now the hurdles were in place, the pistol was cracking forth, and white-clad forms were flying breathlessly over the bars and breasting the red string at the finish.