Page:The purple pennant (IA purplepennant00barb).pdf/344

Rh sturdy young body set suddenly, his hands opened and off shot the flying weight, arching through the air, to come to earth at last far across the sunlit field.

The crowd broke and hurried to cluster about the ring, excited voices speculating eagerly on the distance. Out where the hammer had plowed into the sod the measurer was stooping with the tape. Then:

"All right here!" he called.

A breathless moment followed. Heads bent close above the official as he tautened his end of the tape over the wooden rim.

"One hundred," announced the judge, "and . . . twenty . . . five feet and . . ."

But what the inches were Perry didn't hear. A wild shout of rejoicing arose from the friends of Clearfield. Fudge had won second place and Clearfield had captured the meet!

After that all was confusion and noise. Perry suddenly found himself shaking hands laughingly with Mr. Addicks, although what the latter said he couldn't hear. Then his attention was attracted to a commotion nearby as the crowd pushed and swayed. On the shoulders of excited, triumphant schoolmates, Fudge, half in and half out of his crimson robe, was being borne past. He espied