This last impertinence suggested an idea to White. He arranged that Cully, Johnson, he, and I should have a private race, "in camera," as he put. The event came off the following day, and I won it with some yards to spare. My three defeated opponents were generous in their praise. "Golly!" said Johnson. "I thought we'd be last for the Swimming Cup. But snakes alive! we'll get in the semi-final." "Why, man," declared Cully. "I see us in the final with Erasmus." "Final be damned!" said White. "Train like navvies and we'll lift the Cup!" Sec.3 Never did human boy have three more sporting associates in a swimming four than I had in White, Cully, and Johnson. Because I was a year younger than they it was their pleasure to call me the "Baby of the Team," and to take a pride in my successes. They would, in order to pace me, take half-a-length's start in a two-lengths' practice race, and make me strain every nerve to beat them. Or they would time me with their watches over the sixty yards, and, all arriving at different conclusions as to my figures, agree only in the fact that I was establishing records. Once, when according to a stop-watch I really did set up a record, Cully, forgetting his dignity as a prefect in his enthusiasm as a Bramhallite, cried "Alleluia! alleluia!" and hurled Johnson's hat into the air, so that it fell into the water. The members of Erasmus' Four were at first incredulous. "Heard of Bramhall's find?" said they. "They've discovered a young torpedo in Ray. He's quite good and they'll probably get into the final. But we needn't be afraid. They've a weak string in Johnson, while we haven't a weakness anywhere. However, we'll take no risks." And so they started a savagely severe system of training. Meantime White constituted himself my medical adviser, and some such dialogue as this would take place every morning: "Now, Ray, got any pain under the heart?" "No." "Do you feel anything like a stomach-ache?" "Only when I see your face." "Look here, I'd knock your face through your head, if I didn't want your services so badly. Are you at all stiff?" "Yes, bored stiff with your conversation." It was true that there had been no trace of the faintness which had attacked me a year before. Had there been, I should have kept quiet about it, for, in that time of excitement, I would willingly have shortened my life by ten years, if I could have made certain of securing the Cup for Bramhall. Only one thing marred this period of my great ascendency; Radley, Bramhall's junior house-master, never gave me a word of praise or flattery.