STORY OF TOM DARE AT THE MARBLE TOURNEY

By HOWARD STEPHENSON

The Fruits of Triumph

SHAMED before the entire city. Willie Alvord slunk away from the championship finals which he had lost to Tom Dare. The other defeated district champions were more sportsmanlike. They crowded around Tom, cheering and yelling, and taking his hand and clapping him none too gently on the back.

Nor were the boys alone in this. Dignified public officers, who ordinarily never would have thought of unbending in such public place, rushed up to Tom, hugged him, roughed up his hair, grabbed him tightly by the shoulders and joined in such an excited and boisterous congratulation that the poor boy was a little bit dazed by it all.

The band began to play "Hall the Conquering Hero Comes." Tom did not know the tune, but its military music stirred him and made his heart thump. Now in quick succession he was posing for more pictures both for the leading newspapers and for the movies. This was a real thrill. The news reel motion picture concern had dispatched a director and a cameraman to the scene of the city finals.

"Smile!" the director ordered, and Tom stood while the mayor of the city pinned on his coat a gold medal. Tom did his best to smile. But to tell the truth his knees were getting a little wobbly by this time. He glanced about for Skinny Noble. That happy lad, who had been everywhere at once when needed, now hung back at the edge of the crowd.

"Hey, Skinny! " Tom called. "Come on."

* * *

BLUSHING as if he had been called on to speak a piece is school. Skinny slowly edged his way thru the crowd.

"Who's this?" the movie man asked a little impatiently.

"He's the runner-up at Lincoln School and the best sport in the marble tournament," Tom answered. He had found it impossible to speak while everybody was congratulating him. But now his voice carne back when he had to come to the defense of his friend.

"Aw, I'm his coach, that's all," Skinny said, trying to be modest in his, reflected gibry.

"All right. Camera!" called the director. And thus it was that Skinny Noble's picture appeared side by side on the movie screens of the city, with that of the champion.

A champion, too, has certain rights that ordinary marble players have not. So Tom had but to speak a word to Mr Earl, the newspaperman, to assure Skinny a place beside him at the banquet which was held a half hour later for all district champs.

"Gee whillikers. Tom," Skinny whispered, as they sat at a beautifully laden table in the biggest hotel in town. "If Willie Alvord had been here, there wouldn't have been room for me. I got to eat his dinner."

"An' if it wasn't for you. I guess I wouldn't have won," Tom said. "Oh, boy! but that hot water felt good on my wrist."

In the midst of the dinner a waiter, bearing a huge package came to Tom's place. It was a five-pound box of candy. When Tom opened it a note tell out. It said simply:

"From two Loftie School boys that admire a sport." Tom knew that it was from the lads who had been with Willie Alvord on the day he tried to pick a fight with Tom.

* * *

ONE more thrill awaited him before the day was over. As they left the hotel they were escorted to a waiting taxicab. It seemed to Tom, as they whirled rapidly thru the streets in his own neighborhood, that they passed everybody he knew. And whenever they saw a boy or girl from Lincoln School; Skinny would stick his head out of the taxicab window and shout: "Hey, look out, you might get run over."

Altho Tom had left Mr. Earl at the hotel, that gentleman was already waiting in the parlor of the Dare home when the two boys arrived. He had many important details of their coming trip to Atlantic City to arrange.

Tom's mother and father and his sister Doris were there, too. They had preferred to let the lad they were so proud of go thru the honors of the day alone, altho they had been among the most interested of the spectators. Tom's father grasped his son's hand in his and looked him straight in the eye.

"That's the stuff, my boy," he said. "Keep on shooting straight and you'll come thru a winner." And Tom knew that he did not mean only in marble games.

It was arranged that on the morning of June 22 Tom and Mr. Earl should board a train which would land them in Philadelphia, the birthplace of American liberty, the next day. The three weeks that Tom had to wait seemed to him the longest he had ever spent. But examination time was on in school and he knew that he must not neglect his studies.

* * *

SO HE turned to his class -work with renewed interest. Outside of school, he was the hero of the hour. But at Lincoln he was simply, one of a thousand or more pupils, and he knew that to succeed in school and graduate so that the next year he might enter high school, he would have to work and work hard.

"Say, Skinny," he said to his pal one day, "if you catch me getting a swell head I give you lief to give me a punch in the nose."

"Huh !" Skinny snorted, "I guess I don't need your lief when I want to give you a licking. Take that!" And he gave his chum a mighty thwack in the chest. Tom chased him into the building and up the stairs, and was able to give him "last tag," just as the bell rang and they had to take their places in line and march into the classroom.

(To Be Continued)