The other runners came gasping in—­and Price was still toiling away in the rear.  He had been half a lap behind; he came now into the home-stretch; the crowd began to laugh, and then more kindly, as he drew nearer, to applaud.  They clapped and called, “Good work, Price!” Westby met him about fifty yards from the finish and ran with him, saying, “You’ve got to stick it out now, Tom; you can’t drop out now; you’re all right, old boy—­lots of steam in your boiler—­you’ll break a record yet.”  Irving caught some of the speeches.  And so Westby was there when Price crossed the line and collapsed in a heap on the track.

It was not for long; they brought him to with water, and Westby knelt by him fanning his face with the skirt of his dressing gown.  Barclay picked the boy up.  “Oh, I’m all right, sir,” said Price, and he insisted on being allowed to walk to the athletic house alone,—­which he did rather shakily.

Westby flirted the cinders from the skirt of his dressing gown.  “Blamed little fool,” he remarked to Carroll and to Allison, who stood by.  “Wouldn’t his mother give me the dickens, though, for letting him do that!” But Irving, who heard, knew there was a ring of pride in Westby’s voice—­as if Westby felt that his cousin was a credit to the family.  And Irving thought he was.

The sports went on; not many of the runs were as exciting as that with which the afternoon had opened.  Irving passed back and forth across the field, helped measure distances for the handicaps, and tried to be useful.  His interest had certainly been awakened.  Twice in college he had sat on the “bleachers” and viewed indifferently the track contests between Yale and Harvard; he had had a patriotic desire to see his own college win, but he had been indifferent to the performance of the individuals.  They had not been individuals to him—­merely strange figures performing in an arena.  But here, where he knew the boys and walked about among them, and saw the different manifestations of nervousness and excitement, and watched the muscles in their slim legs and arms, he became himself eager and sympathetic.  He stood by when Scarborough went on putting the shot after beating all the other competitors—­went on putting it in an attempt to break the School record.  Unconsciously Irving pressed forward to see him as he prepared for the third and last try; unconsciously he stood with lips parted and eyes shining, fascinated by the huge muscles that rose in Scarborough’s brown arm as he poised the weight at his shoulder and heaved it tentatively.  And when it was announced that the effort had fallen short by only a few inches, Irving’s sigh of disappointment went up with that of the boys.