Learoyd was a smallish, golden-faced, downy-headed boy ... almost an albino.... I had seen him run ... he ran low to the ground, in flashes, like some sort of shore-bird. * * * * * In the class-tent, alone. Dunn had driven my class out, where they had been massaging and kneading my legs ... which trembled and tottered under me, from the excessive use they had already undergone. I sat down and put my head between my knees, and groaned. Then I straightened out my right leg and rubbed it, because a cramp was knotting it. "Hello, Gregory!" The tent-flap opened. The athletic director poked his head in. "Come on, Gregory, we're waiting for you." "Wait a minute, Smythe ... I want to pray," I replied simply. Reverently he withdrew ... impressed ... awed.... I flung myself on my face. "Look here, God, I'll really believe in you, if you give me this last race ... it will be a miracle, God, if you do this for me, and I will believe in your Bible, despite my common sense ... despite history ... despite Huxley and Voltaire," then, going as far as I could--"yes, and despite Shelley ... dear God, dear Christ, please do what I have asked." My hand struck on a bottle of witch hazel as I rose. Impulsively, I drank off half the contents. It sent a warmth through me. I straightened up, invigorated. "Come on, Gregory ... what's the matter?" it was Dunn, protesting, "we'll have to run off the mile without you, if you don't come." "I'm ready ... I'm coming." * * * * * All that I had in my head, when the pistol cracked, was to _run!_ ... all I felt about me was only a pair of mad legs. I licked out, neither seeing nor caring ... almost feeling my way along the rim of the track with my toes, as I ran--as if I had racing eyes in them. There was a continuous roar that rose and fell like the sea. But I neither saw nor heeded. I just ran and ran. On the home-stretch a fellow came breast to breast with me. It was Learoyd ... running low like a swallow skimming the ground. But it didn't worry me. I was calm, just floating along, it seemed to me. I saw Dunn throwing his camera into the air, in the forefront of the seething crowd. He was crying for me to come on. The camera fell in a smashed heap, unregarded. Barely, with my chest flung out, I took the tape ... trailing off ... I ran half a lap more, with my class leaping grotesquely and shouting, streaming across field after me--before I had my senses back again, and realised that the race was over. "Did I win? Did I win? Did I win?" I asked again and again. "Yes, you won!" I was being carried about on their shoulders. "A little more, and we'd have to take you over to the hospital," commented Smythe, as he looked at me, while I lay prone on my back, resting, under shelter of the tent. "Who--who used up all this witch-hazel?" he asked of the rubbers....