street like a streak of lightning. The boys yelled and whooped, and he could not help hearing one citizen remark that “Jimmy Michael ain’t in it with that feller!”

“Here comes the bikeist!” a boy was shouting to another group at the lower corner. “Come quick, Sammy, ’er ye’ll be too late!”

“Geewhiskers! ain’t he a snorter?” another boy yelled.

The group broke into a wild cheer as Dick swept past, pedaling as if he were racing for life. When he had escaped from these innocent tormentors, he began to think over the situation and to ask himself if he should go on to Guilford or stop where he was and retrace his way to New Haven by another route. To do that would be to lose his bet. Not that he cared so much for the money or for the mere winning, but that would give Ready and the sophomores a perhaps coveted opportunity to guy him for cowardice.

No, he was in it, and there seemed to be no way out but to make the ride according to plans and schedule and win out, so far as that part was concerned. So he rode on, wondering if there were no means by which he could yet defeat the sophomores.

“Yes, this is the beginning of Frank Merriwell’s entertainments!” he rather grimly thought. “I didn’t know that I would be chosen to open the show in this way, though! Merry doesn’t know anything about it, I’m sure.”

Merriwell was planning some festivities of an athletic character with which he and his friends and other students were to celebrate the many victories won by Yale that season. The college had been wonderfully fortunate and triumphant on the gridiron, not having lost a single game during the entire season. Never had a Yale team equaled the performance of the football eleven of that year under the leadership of the redoubtable senior. And not only in football, but in many other ways had Yale won honor with the victorious teams Merriwell had trained and led.

There was a grim humor in Starbright which made him appreciate the situation in which he found himself, even though he was the victim. At first he had paid no heed to anything placarded on the walls, but now, looking out for those glaring signs, he soon found one stuck against the side of a barn. It was on the side of the barn that was invisible to him as he came toward it.

So this had been Ready’s plan! These glittering advertisements of the performance of the “Giant of the Wheel,” produced, no doubt, by some New Haven 

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