Half-way over the turn, and twenty yards from the finish, Jones swayed, tripped, and rolled over to the edge of the track, and Poor, less than two yards behind him, plunged blindly over him, sprawled and rolled along for three yards, and then, in some strange manner, found his feet and took up the running again. So, too, did Jones, but the larger man had fallen more heavily, and for an instant remained dazed upon the floor. That instant decided the race, for although he was up again almost before the audience had sensed the catastrophe, yet he had lost the lead. For the last few yards the two men, giddy, swaying, their heads fallen almost onto their breasts, strove weakly for the line. The next moment Poor threw out his arms and sprawled forward on his face across the chalk-mark and Jones, stumbling past him, fell, sliding on hands and knees to the edge of the track. Down by the dressing-room door Allan and the others were whooping it up joyfully, for Erskine had turned defeat into victory and won the relay by a scant three yards! CHAPTER XVII ALLAN LEAVES THE CLUB TABLE March winds are freakish, prankish things, and the wind in the face of which Allan crossed the yard one morning a fortnight or so after the indoor meeting was no exception. He was on his way from Grace Hall to the Chemical Laboratory for a ten o’clock, and at the corner of the chapel he passed a couple of fellows whom a casual glance showed him he did not know. But that he was not a stranger to one of them was soon proven. The wind, scurrying around the corner of the chapel, tossed him the following fragment of conversation with startling distinctness: “Who’s that fellow, Steve?” “Ware, a freshie; he runs, or tries to. He was in the mile and two miles at Boston week before last and didn’t do a thing in either of them. Guess the Athletic Association will take his job away now. They just employed him to keep him in college, I guess. This thing of giving fellows work just because----” The words ended as suddenly as they had begun, so far as Allan was concerned, and he strode on to the laboratory. But his cheeks were burning and his heart was filled with wrath. For the first time he realized that his employment by the E. A. A. had a suspicious look, to say the least, while it was even probable that what the fellow he had overheard thought was really true. He was angry at the unknown youth for saying what he had, angry with Stearns for placing him in such a questionable position, and angry at Professor Nast for countenancing it. He wondered whether all the fellows he knew or who knew him believed as did the fellow he had passed, that he was knowingly allowing the Athletic Association to present him with money he was not earning.