for “hazing,” in all its forms.

Jack Ready started it by offering to bet Dick Starbright ten dollars that he could not ride a bicycle from New Haven to Guilford and back, a round-trip of thirty-two miles, in three hours. Starbright snapped him up quicker than a wink, for though there were many things he could do better than bicycling, Dick knew that he could do this, and the trip to Guilford, along the pleasant shores for a great part of the way, was an attractive one.

The bet was made one Wednesday evening, and Dick was to do the riding the next Saturday afternoon. Starbright told his friend Dashleigh about it.

“Of course you can do it!” Bert declared.

“Dead easy! Why, I could do that trip in two hours, even if the roads are sandy. But three! I don’t know what Ready is thinking about. He must fancy that I can’t ride a wheel. Perhaps it is because I started in to take part in the relay race and Merriwell pulled me out of it and put me at other work. But that was only because you are a faster rider than I am, and my size and strength made me a promising candidate for the shot-putting and hammer-throwing.”

“And you did your part well, old man. You covered yourself with glory!”

“And I’ll show these duffers that I can ride a wheel. I’ll see how quickly I can do the trip, and I’ll make their eyes bulge out when they see me back.”

Dick did not get an opportunity to see Merriwell, but he told Browning; and Browning, who had been “let in on the ground floor,” assured Dick that he could make it “dead easy,” and that Jack Ready was a fool for offering such a bet.

“It will be a good way to open up Merriwell’s entertainments,” said Ralph Bingham, when Starbright chanced to speak to him about it. “I’d do it, if I were you.”

Bingham was a sophomore, but Dick did not think of that.

Carker, alone of the sophomores, objected, urging that he disliked to see so good a fellow as Starbright toyed with in that way.

“Well, you aren’t going to chip into the thing and spoil the fun, just because it doesn’t suit you, are you?” demanded Bingham. “We sophomores must hang together. Ready is an especial friend of yours, and he is managing the thing. Don’t you think it would be rather a scaly trick to give the snap away?”

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