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THE PLASTIC AGE

was not encfcigh; he had to do something that would win back his own respect and the respect of his fellows, which he thought, quite absurdly, that he had forfeited. So far as he could see, there was only one way that he could justify his existence at Sanford; that was to win one of the dashes in the Sanford-Raleigh meet. He clung to that idea with the tenacity of a fanatic.

He had nearly a month in which to train, and train he did as he never had before. His diet be¬ came a matter of the utmost importance; a rubdown was a holy rite, and the words of Jansen, the coach, divine gospel. He placed in 'both of the preliminary meets, but he knew that he could do better; he was n’t yet in condition.

When the day for the Raleigh-Sanford meet finally came, he did not feel any of the nervousness that had spelled defeat for him in his freshman year. He was stonily calm, silently deter¬ mined. He was going to place in the hundred and will the two-twenty or die in the attempt. No golden dreams of breaking records excited him. Calvert of Raleigh was running the hundred con¬ sistently in ten seconds and had been credited with better time. Hugh had no hopes of defeating him in the hundred, but there was a chance in the twotwenty. Calvert was a short-distance man, the shorter the better. Two hundred and twenty yards was a little too far for him.