"That's right, come and take my men away from me," grumbled Thomas. "But I can spare him just now as he is a pitcher and I've got three pretty good ones. Send him back here if he doesn't make good."
"All the work I'll ask him to do in training for the jump, if he has the goods, won't prevent him from working with you if he wants to, but I want him first."
"All right," said Thomas. "Armstrong, report to Black to-morrow afternoon, and when you have shown him how far you can't jump, come back here for what practice you can get."
"Two o'clock to-morrow at the track house. Bring a track suit with you and jumping shoes if you have them."
"All right, I'll be there," said Frank but he did not relish the change. His heart was set on baseball, and it was a great disappointment to him to be pulled into the track work. But his motto was to do the best that was in him without question, which is the starting point for success in most things.
The coming of the Freshman jumper did not create much interest on the track squad. His jumping did not please the trainer.
"Your form is bad," Black told him. "In jumping, form is everything. You may get to twenty-one or twenty-two feet the way you are going, but that will be the end of it. You must get higher in the air at the take-off."
Frank worked hard to master the new style. In school he had jumped naturally and without much coaching, but felt himself that he was not getting his greatest distance. He redoubled his efforts but could not lengthen out beyond nineteen feet or a little better. Then he began to fall below that even.
"You're jumping like an old brindle cow," said Black one day. "Are your legs sore?"
"My shins feel as if they would crack every time I land in the pit," said Frank, feeling the offending legs gingerly.
"Why in thunder didn't you tell me that before? You can't work at the broad jump the same as you do at football or baseball. Lay off for a day or two and keep off your feet."
The rest did Frank a world of good for when he returned to the jumping pit he cleared over twenty feet in his first trial, much to the trainer's delight. Thereafter he was watched with the closest attention by Black. In the spring games which came the last week in April he won third place in the handicap broad jump; and after a hard fight succeeded in beating out Warrington, the Freshman jumper who had done the best work up to that time.