“How did it happen, anyway?” Blake asked, quite innocently. “Oh, don’t ask _me_,” said Westby. Three or four of the boys who did know glanced slyly at Irving, and Irving, though he had meant to say nothing, spoke up; there was electricity in the air. “Westby was unfortunate enough to foul Flack at the start; that was all there was to it,” he said. “I saw it and set him back a yard. I was under the impression that in case of foul a penalty had to be imposed—and I made the penalty as light as possible.” He felt that this statement ought to appease any reasonable boy. But Westby was not in a reasonable mood. He paid no attention to Irving; he addressed the table. “I told Scarborough he might have known things would be botched somehow.” “Why?” asked Blake. “Oh, you’ve got to have officials who know their business.” There was an interval of silence at the table; Westby, having fired his shot, sat straight, with cheeks flushed, looking across at Blake. “Westby feels that he has had provocation and therefore may be rude.” Irving spoke at last with calmness. “It’s true that I never officiated before at any races. At the same time, I don’t believe I did anything which some experienced officials would not have done. There are probably a good many who believe in penalizing a runner for clumsy and stupid interference as well as for deliberate intent to foul.” He had spoken mildly; he did not even emphasize the words “clumsy and stupid.” But the retort went home; the Pythians at the table,—of whom Blake was one,—chuckled; and Westby, with a deeper shade of crimson on his face and a sudden compression of his lips, lowered his eyes. Irving had triumphed, but after the first moment he felt surprisingly little satisfaction in his triumph. He could not help being sorry for Westby; the boy was after all right in feeling that he had been deprived of a victory to which he had been entitled. And as Irving looked at his downcast face, he softened still further; Westby had so often delighted in humiliating him, and he had longed for the opportunity of reprisal. Now it had come, and Westby was humiliated, and the audience were not unsympathetic with Irving for the achievement; yet Irving felt already the sting of remorse. Westby was only a boy, and he was a master; it was not well for a master to mortify a boy in the presence of other boys—a boy whose disappointment was already keen. The letters were distributed; there was one for Irving from his brother. It contained news that made the world a different place from what it had been an hour ago. Lawrence was playing left end on the Harvard Freshman football eleven; not only that, but in the first game of the season, played against a Boston preparatory school, he had made the only touchdown. He added that that didn’t mean much, for he had got the ball on a fluke; still, the tone of the letter was excited and elated.