Scranton was one of the few places where the boys still yearned after
a goodly supply of freshly gathered nuts to carry them through a long
and severe winter. Somehow they vied with one another in the
gathering of the harvest of the woods, and often these outings
yielded considerable sport, besides being profitable to the nutters.
On one momentous occasion the boys had even discovered the hive of a
colony of wild bees, cut the tree down, fought the enraged denizens
by means of smoke and fire, and eventually carried home a wonderful
stock of dearly earned honey that would make the buckwheat cakes
taste all the sweeter that winter because of the multitude of
swellings it cost the proud possessors.

Hugh had been coaxed to join the party; not that he did not fully
enjoy such enterprises, but he had laid out another programme for
that afternoon. All through the morning these same lads had been
hard at work on the open field where Scranton played her baseball
games, and had such other gatherings as high-school fellows are
addicted. Here a fine new cinder path had been laid around the
grounds, forming an oval that measured just an eighth of a mile, to a
fraction.

All through the livelong day on Saturdays, and in the afternoons
during weekdays, boys in strange-looking running costumes of various
designs could be seen diligently practicing at all manner of stunts,
from sprinting, leaping hurdles, engaging in the high jump, with the
aid of poles; throwing the hammer; and, in fact, every conceivable
exercise that would be apt to come under the head of a genuine
athletic tournament.

For, to tell the secret without any evasion, that was just what