The air was swimming in a gold mist.  I felt arms under mine, and I was carried off to the senior tent, by my class-mates....

Yet I am convinced that I would have been beaten, if my rival had not had the string that held his trunks up, break.  He had sunk down on the track, when they had fallen, not to show his nakedness ... and, pulling them up, and holding them, amid great laughter, he had still won second ribbon.

* * * * *

I won the second race—­the half-mile, without the humour of such a fateful intervention.  It was my winning of the first that won me the second.  I had just equalled the two-mile record, in the first....

I ran that half, blindly, like a mad man.  I was drunk with joy over my popularity ... for when I had gone into the big dining room for lunch, all the boys had shouted and cheered and roared, and pounded the dishes with their knives.

* * * * *

“Now, Gregory, you’ve just got to take the mile away from Learoyd ... he’s a junior ... you’ve just got to!... besides, if you don’t ... there’s Flammer has lost the broad jump ... and we won’t win the class banner after all.”

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.