“I wish we might give them a handicap,” he confided to Harry that Saturday morning as they went back to the gymnasium after a two-mile jaunt. It was the day of the Forest Hill game, and partly because it seemed fair to let the cross-country runners witness the afternoon contest and partly because it was advisable to accustom the team to morning work, since the race was to be run in the forenoon, to-day’s work had started at ten-thirty. Gerald seemed as fresh as when he had started out, and save for the disks of red which had not yet faded from his cheeks, one would never have suspected that he had led nine others over approximately two miles of the hardest sort of going. Harry Merrow, however, showed the pace. He had managed to finish fourth and was rather proud of himself, although when Gerald had clapped him on the back at the finish and congratulated him he had only smiled depreciatingly.