s eyes watched the approaching figures of the three
contestants. It was still an open question who would come in ahead. The
Wonder was evidently at almost his last gasp, while Badger, the Paulding
runner, could hardly be said to show much better form, for he too wobbled
constantly from side to side, as though kept going only by sheer grit.

Fred, coming strong from the rear, was speedily overtaking them both.
When Badger, looking over his shoulder, saw this, he started a feeble
little spurt, but it excited only derisive whoops from the frenzied
crowd.

"No use, Badger, you've shot your bolt! Give way to a better man!"
shouted the captain of the Riverport cheer squad through his megaphone.

"And look at the poor old riddled Wonder wobble, would you? There, if he
hasn't taken a header in the bargain! It's all up, boys, all over but
the shouting!"

"Oh! the poor fellow has gone down in a heap!" gasped Flo Temple, as
Ackers after stumbling fell to his knees in his weakness.

"Look at him trying to get up, but he can't do it!" cried Cornelius
Shays. "The tape is only thirty feet away, and Ackers is trying to crawl
there on his hands and knees. Now Fred is on him, and has passed to the
front, with poor Ackers rolling over like a log in a dead faint!"

Such a tumult of wild shouting as broke out when Fred Fenton, pale of
face, and bearing the marks of his hard run in the agonized expression of
his face, staggered past the judges, and fell into the arms of several
friends who were anticipating some such collapse at the end of the
fiercely contested Marathon.

Nor were the plucky Ackers and Badger forgotten by either friends or
rivals in the many wild cheers that followed.

"Where's Colon?" a dozen people were asking anxiously, for a strange
rumor had flashed around through the great crowd, to the effect that
because the second favorite had not shown up at all, he had fallen and
broken his ankle.

Fred quickly set these stories at rest by telling just what did detain
Colon, and how having been injured by running a thorn in his foot, he had
decided to stay there by the two children to watch the man who had been
caught beating the boy.

Later on, of course, all of those who had been left up in the woods
arrived in town, having been met on the way by Chief Sutton in a car, and
given a lift. Colon saw to it that the three woodchoppers were well paid
for their part in the affair.

Fred walked home with Flo Temple