The Tri-State Interscholastic League, which encouraged the practice of all imaginable digressions from school-books, had arranged for a series of chess games between teams selected from the different academies.  The winners of these preliminary heats, if one can use so calm a word for so exciting a game, were to meet at Troy and play for the championship of the League.

If I should describe the hair-raising excitement of that chess tournament, I am afraid that this book would be put down as entirely too lively for young readers.  So I will simply say once for all that, owing to History’s ability to look wiser than any one could possibly be, and to spend so much time thinking of each move that his deliberation affected his opponents’ nerves, and owing to the fact that he could so thoroughly map out future moves on the inside of his large skull, and that there was something awe-inspiring about his general look of being a wizard in boys’ clothes, he won the tournament—­almost more by his looks than by his skill as a tactician.  The whole Academy, and especially the Lakerimmers, overwhelmed this second Paul Morphy with congratulations, and felt proud of him; but when he attempted to explain how he had won his magnificent battle, and started off with such words as these:  “You will observe that I used the Zukertort opening”; and when he began to tell of his moves from VX to QZ, or some such place, even his best friends took to tall timber.

The Kingston visitors found that the Troy Latin School was in possession of a finer and much larger gymnasium than their own.  But, much as they envied their luckier neighbors, they determined that they would prove that fine feathers do not make fine birds, nor a fine gymnasium fine athletes.  A large crowd had gathered, and was put in a good humor with a beautiful exhibition of team-work by the Troy men on the triple and horizontal bars and the double trapeze.  The Trojans also gave a kaleidoscopic exhibition of tumbling and pyramid-building, none of which sports had been practised much by the Kingstonians.  After this the regular athletic contests of the evening began.

In almost every event at least one of the Lakerim men represented Kingston.  Some of the Dozen made a poor showing; but the majority, owing to their long devotion to the theory and the practice of athletics, stood out strongly, and were recognized by the strange audience, in their Lakerim sweaters, as distinguished heroes of the occasion.

The first event was a contest in horse-vaulting, in which no Lakerim men were entered.  Kingston suffered a defeat.

“Ill begun is half done up,” sighed Jumbo.

But in the next event the old reliable Tug was entered, among others; and in the Rope-Climb he ran up the cord like a monkey on a stick, and touched the tambourine that hung twenty-five feet in the air before any of his rivals reached their goal, and in better form than any of them.