DANFORTH PLAYS
THE GAME

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY = Publishers = New York

“Tommy hit the ball smartly with his instep ... and said, ‘Og!’”

DANFORTH
PLAYS THE GAME

STORIES FOR BOYS
LITTLE AND BIG

BY

RALPH HENRY BARBOUR

AUTHOR OF “THE HALF-BACK,” “FOR
THE HONOR OF THE SCHOOL,”
“DOUBLE PLAY,” ETC.

ILLUSTRATED BY
JOHN A. COUGHLIN

NEW YORK AND LONDON
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1915

“Oh, see the pretty little boy! Is the pretty little boy going to play football? The pretty little boy is going to play football—per-haps!”

The speaker, one of four youths seated on the grass near the side line, chuckled as the subject of his humor turned inquiringly.

“What will happen to the pretty little boy and his nice clean trousers and his beautiful red jersey?” continued another of the quartette, adopting the first speaker’s sing-song style. “Oh, please, teacher, I’d rather not say! It will be a perfect shame, will it not?”

“It will not!” responded a third youth promptly and emphatically. The boys laughed enjoyably, unaffected by the fact that the “pretty little boy” was viewing them doubtfully, uncomfortably from the distance of a dozen yards away.

It was hardly fair to call him pretty, although[4] his fresh complexion, yellow-brown hair and rather finely cut features made him strikingly good-looking. He was fairly tall for his age, which was fifteen, well made and carried himself with a lithe grace emphasized by the new suit of football togs he wore. The khaki trousers were quite immaculate, and so were the red stockings, and so was the red jersey. Even his shoes were unscuffed, and altogether he looked very much as though he had but a moment before stepped from the pictured advertisement of some dealer in athletic supplies. Possibly it was the fashion-plate suggestion that had prompted the group near by to ridicule.

At first Harry Danforth had not associated the remarks with himself and had looked around out of sheer curiosity. When he understood that he was the butt of their humor the blood flooded into his cheeks and he faced hurriedly away. Like many boys with fair complexions, he blushed on slight provocation, and he was always ashamed of it. He walked slowly away in an effort to evade his tormentors, but their voices still reached him.

[5]

“Oh, see the blush of modesty upon the face of the pretty little boy! How beautiful is modesty!”

There was more, but Harry didn’t hear it. Taking refuge at the edge of a group of waiting candidates, he sought to forget his burning cheeks. But as, at his advent, many of the fellows turned to observe him, his embarrassment continued.

“See the study in red,” whispered one youth laughingly to his companion, and although he had not meant the strange boy to hear him, the latter did hear, and felt the blood surging harder than before into his face. He was heartily glad when, at that instant, the coach summoned them on to the field.

There were fully sixty candidates on hand that first afternoon of football practice at Barnstead Academy. Some few of them were members of the last season’s eleven, more were second-string players of the year before, and the balance were, like Harry, new candidates. Mr. Worden, the head coach, a finely built, pleasant-faced man of about thirty, took the names of all who had reported. In this task he was assisted[6] by a boy of eighteen or so whose name Harry later learned was Phillips. Phillips was manager of the team. Harry gave his name, age, class, weight and details of former football experience to Phillips and was promptly sent to the awkward squad, or Squad Z, as the school facetiously termed it. There he was one of a group of some twenty youths whose ages ranged from thirteen to sixteen and who, in the course of the hour’s instruction that followed, exhibited every phase of football inexperience. The awkward squad was in charge of a large boy whom the coach addressed as Barrett. Barrett looked to be about seventeen and wore a vastly bored expression all the time that he labored with the beginners. If his features lighted at all during that period it was when Harry showed by his handling of the pigskin that he at least might possibly have the makings of a player. Barrett watched him speculatively, almost interestedly, at intervals, and once even vouchsafed a grunt of satisfaction as Harry fell neatly on a wabbling ball and snuggled it under his chest.

Meanwhile the more advanced candidates[7] were punting and catching or trotting about the field behind a shrill-voiced quarterback. Harry, in the intervals between his own duties, had time to watch, and what he saw he found a little bit discouraging. Where he had come from, quite a ways beyond the New England hills that closed this pleasant valley at the west, he had been looked on as something of a player. On his high school team he had made a reputation for himself that was quite remarkable considering his age, and when, in the Spring, he had announced his impending departure for preparatory school his schoolmates had set up a veritable howl of despair. Once reconciled, however, they had pictured in gorgeous colors Harry’s football future. Of course he would make the school team at Barnstead at once, would do wonderful things there and then go up to college far-famed and glorious. Pete Wilkinson, avid reader of romance, had drawn Harry aside and begged him not to accept the first offer he received from college scouts.

“Just hold back on them and they’ll give you anything you want, Harry. Wait till you get all the offers and then choose the best. Why,[8] the big colleges will do most anything for fellows who can play the game the way you can!”

Harry had gravely promised to be discreet in the matter, not considering it worth while to point out to the sanguine Pete that even if the colleges clamored and fought for him, which he didn’t in the least consider likely, he had already made up his mind where to go and that all the bribes in the world would not change his mind. But while he was a person of some note at Hillston High School, he felt himself a very small and unimportant atom here at Barnstead. He had come quite unheralded and his fame had not preceded him. Here he was just one more kid to be hammered into shape or, found wanting, to be tossed aside with the other discards in the yearly game of making a football team. And watching the play of the experienced fellows, Harry saw that there was quite a difference between Hillston standards and Barnstead! The team here was evidently made up of fellows much older than he, for one thing. His roommate, a chap named Colgan, whose athletic interests stopped at an occasional set of tennis, had told him that Coach Worden[9] showed a partiality for the younger candidates and that Harry’s youthfulness would not be a disadvantage if he could play the game. But this afternoon, with so many older fellows in sight, Harry felt that if he made the school team inside the next two years he would be lucky. But in spite of discouraging thoughts he paid flattering attention to Barrett’s instructions, performed as well as he knew how and proved a shining example to the other members of Squad Z.

After an hour of rather wearisome instruction in the a, b, c’s of the game the awkward squad was dismissed. Harry imagined he could hear Barrett’s sigh of relief! Donning his sweater, Harry trotted in the wake of the others across the end of the field, through the gate and up the hill to the gymnasium. As he knew none of his companions, and as the work had left them too tired to want to be sociable, he spoke to no one until, having had his shower and dressed himself, he was walking across the campus toward his room in Temple Hall. And even then the conversation was none of his choosing!

[10]

“Why, if it isn’t our friend the football hero!” exclaimed a voice. Harry was passing a group of half a dozen boys on the main path across the campus. Resisting the impulse to turn, he kept on his way until a second youth called to him.

“Hi, kid! Why so haughty?”

“I beg pardon?” Harry paused and faced them then. They were all rather older than he, one, a dark-complexioned fellow of seventeen or eighteen, evidently being the leader of the party.

“Don’t apologize,” he begged. “You don’t mind our speaking to you, do you?”

“No,” replied Harry quietly, feeling the blood creeping into his cheeks and hating himself for it. “What did you want, please?”

“Why—er—suspecting that you were a stranger to our—to these classic shades we wouldst make thee welcome,” replied the dark chap with a grin. “Wouldst impart to us thy cognomen?”

“My name’s Danforth,” answered Harry shortly, facing the smiling faces about him with a frown.

[11]

“’Tis a fair name, my boy. Why blush for it?”

“I’m not.”

“You’re not!” gibed another boy. “What do you call it? Say, kid, you’re as red as a beet. What are you ashamed of?”

“Nothing. Is that all you want?”

“Leave us not in anger,” begged the first speaker. “Tell us, rather, of your doughty deeds upon yon trampled field of battle. Didst lay about thee mightily? Didst slay the first team with thine own good right hand?”

“No,” replied Harry, biting his lip to keep down the anger that was beginning to boil inside him.

“No? And what didst thou do, O Ensanguined Knight?”

“I minded my own business, for one thing,” answered the other shortly, turning to go on.

But some one seized his arm and spun him around again.

“Is that so?” asked the dark-complexioned youth threateningly. “Say, you’re a sort of a fresh kid, aren’t you?”

“Not when I’m left alone.”

[12]

“Well, suppose I don’t choose to let you alone?” The bully stepped close to Harry and stuck his face down with an ugly leer on it. “What would you do then, Fresh?”

“Let him be, Perry,” said one of the group. “He’s only a kid.”

“He’s a pretty fresh kid, though,” replied Perry. “You are, aren’t you?” He laid a hand on Harry’s shoulder and gripped it hard.

“If you don’t like my—my ways, let me alone,” answered Harry between set teeth.

“Sure I’ll let you alone!” Perry thrust his right foot forward, and with a sudden push sent the other stumbling backward. When Harry brought up he was seated under a bush at the side of the path and Perry and several of the others were laughing heartily. But one of the group had sprung forward, and now he was helping Harry to his feet.

“Don’t mind him, kid,” he said in a low voice. “Run along now. No harm done.” He brushed some leaves from the boy’s back and gave him a good-natured shove in the direction of the dormitory. But Harry, his face white now and[13] his body trembling, strode across to the group and faced the chief tormentor.

“You’re a big bully, that’s what you are!” he declared hotly. “Leave your crowd and come over here with me! I dare you to!”

Perry growled something and lifted his hand, but the others intervened.

“Cut it, Perry! Let the kid alone.”

“That’s right; no scrapping, Perry. He’s too small for you.”

“I—I’ll punch his pretty little face for him!” snarled Perry, striving to push by his friends.

“You touch me and I’ll show you something you won’t like,” said Harry, standing his ground.

“You shut up, kid, and run along home,” advised one of the crowd. “There’s going to be no scrapping to-day. So cut it out.”

The boy who had helped Harry to his feet laid a hand on his arm and pulled him away. “That’ll be about all, kid. Come along.”

“All right,” answered Harry, resisting for a moment. “But he can’t do that sort of thing and get away with it. I’ll get even with him[14] before I’m through. And I’ll fight him whenever he likes.”

“You’d put up a grand little fight, wouldn’t you?” sneered Perry across the shoulder of one of his crowd. “Say, Fresh, you just keep away from me or you’ll get hurt, and hurt badly. Do you hear?”

“I hear you talk,” scoffed Harry. “That’s all bullies can do!”

Then his rescuer dragged him away just as a second group of boys came up demanding to know what the row was about. Harry accompanied his new friend for some distance in silence. Finally, moved to defense by the other’s unspoken censure, “Well,” he muttered, “you wouldn’t like it yourself, I guess.” His companion smiled. Then,

“Kid,” he said gravely, “you’ll find a lot of things you won’t like before you get through here.”

A week later the awkward squad ceased to exist. Some few of the members, discouraged by the sheer irksomeness of the labor, voluntarily resigned; others, who showed no football possibilities, were dismissed, and the rest, perhaps ten in all, went to Squad C. Among the latter was Harry. Hugh Barrett, the big left guard, who had reigned over the awkward ones, had taken a sort of professional interest in Harry, an interest evinced by muttered words or grunts of commendation at first and by sharp criticisms later. Once he asked the younger boy:

“You fellow in the red shirt! Where’d you learn to catch a ball that way?”

“At home. I played on my high school team three years,” answered Harry. Barrett grunted.

“Three years, eh? How old are you now?”

“Fifteen.”

[16]

“Must have started young,” muttered Barrett. “What’s your name?”

“Danforth.”

“Well, take charge here, Danforth, till I get back. Keep ’em passing.”

Meanwhile Harry had settled down into his groove at school. Lessons were proving a bit harder than expected, but, thanks to a summer of coaching at the hands of one of the high school instructors, he was keeping up his end. Tracey Colgan, with whom Harry roomed in Number 16 Temple Hall, was turning out to be a much more companionable and likable fellow than Harry had at first hoped for. Tracey came from some small town in the vicinity of Boston and possessed all the frigidity of manner popularly associated with New Englanders. But underneath the icy coating was a warm heart and a liveliness of temperament quite unsuspected. After Harry got to know him better—and you can’t room with a chap very long without getting to know him—he liked him very much. He was rather tall and thin, good-looking in a way—nice-looking would be a better word for it—and excruciatingly clean and neat.[17] It seemed to Harry that Tracey was forever bathing or scrubbing, while as for his attire a badly tied scarf made him positively wretched and he consumed more time in dressing than Harry took for his entire morning preparations! Tracey was rather a grind, which, perhaps, was fortunate, since just at this time Harry needed some one to set him an example in studiousness. Not that Harry didn’t want to study, for he did. He had no mistaken notions of what he was at Barnstead for. But football is a hard taskmaster, he was an enthusiastic lover of it, and previous success had made him ambitious to win further honors. In short, during those first two months of school he was inclined to spend a little too much time and energy on football and not enough on his lessons.

Perry Vose, for Tracey had easily supplied the name of the boy when Harry had recounted his adventure, had so far not troubled Harry again. Once or twice, on the field or in School Hall, they had passed, but there had been no display of hostility other than a scowl. After he had cooled off Harry had been a little[18] ashamed and regretful of his loss of temper. As Tracey had pointed out, a new fellow was liable to a good deal of kidding and even some roughing-up at the hands of the older boys. It was all a part of getting settled down. Tracey thought his chum had escaped rather easily, and to prove it narrated some fairly hair-raising hazing exploits that he knew of. As for the chap who had befriended him that day, Harry had only glimpsed him once or twice from a distance, not a surprising fact when it is considered that Barnstead Academy boasted of some two hundred and forty pupils.

Of course life wasn’t quite all football for Harry. Recitations averaged four hours a day for the Lower Middle Class, of which he was a member, and the evenings were largely given over to study. And several times he and Tracey met on the tennis court in the morning after a hurried breakfast and played a set or more before the bell summoned them to first recitation. And Sundays were in the nature of holidays. There was church in the forenoon in the school chapel, but after that the rest of the day was theirs for whatever orderly recreation they[19] chose. Tracey was fond of walking and he and Harry and Joe Phillips, the football manager, often took long, wandering trips about the autumn country. The discovery of chestnut trees was one of their delights. The burs had not yet begun to open, but the boys set down the location of the trees in their minds and bided their time. As the days went by Harry’s circle of acquaintances increased in a haphazard and natural way. You sat next to a fellow in class and spoke to him about some trivial matter. Then you nodded to him when you passed him on the campus. And finally you dropped into his room by invitation, or he dropped into yours. And in dining-hall, of course, it took but one or two days to get on speaking terms, at least, with the fellows at your table. At the end of his first fortnight Harry was surprised to discover how large a circle of speaking acquaintances he had. Of real friends he had so far but one, Tracey. Friendships aren’t made in a day even at preparatory school. Next to Tracey, Joe Phillips was the fellow he knew best. Joe, however, was several years older than Harry and, while[20] he was a fine chap in every way, Harry experienced no affection for him. Perhaps Harry made acquaintances more easily than the average boy. He was eminently attractive to look at, had a winning smile, could listen as well as talk, and was, in short, thoroughly companionable.

On Squad C Harry performed creditably for a week. Work at the dummy had begun and a provisional eleven had been made up. The first game was but a few days away. Harry had been placed with the halfbacks, a position for which his experience recommended him. Squad C began to thin out as the first contest drew near. Some of the fellows went to the first team as third substitutes, others went to Squad B, which had now developed into the second team, in like capacities, and a few fell out of the race. Just before the Belton game Harry was taken on to the second and a few days later Squad C, like Squad Z, ceased to exist. By that time the number of candidates had dwindled from sixty-odd to about forty, and most of those who remained were certain to last the season out either on the school team or the second, barring[21] accidents. Harry was glad to get into the second team fold, but he had no intention of remaining there.

The Belton game, looked on beforehand as not much more than a good practice, proved a tough contest and Barnstead won out eventually by the slim margin of a kicked goal, the final score being 7–6. That was on a Saturday, the last Saturday but one in September, and on the following Monday Coach Worden made a number of changes in the line-up of the first team. Several substitutes were given opportunities to show what they could do, while Jones, who had exhibited remarkably poor generalship as quarter in Saturday’s game, gave place to Bob Peel, a small, freckle-faced youth with red hair and any amount of vim. Unfortunately, however, Peel, while a good director, was only a mediocre player in the backfield, and that Monday afternoon a fumble by him of a long punt paved the way for a touchdown by the second and a subsequent victory. Harry got in that day at left halfback for a full ten-minute period, and after the scrimmage was over the school was relishing the knowledge of[22] a discovery. For in ten minutes Harry, using every bit of the daring, reckless courage that had brought him fame at Hillston, and all the knowledge he had gained since, dashed through the first team’s defense or around its drawn-in ends for long gains time after time and opened Coach Worden’s eyes to the fact that here was a youngster worth watching and cultivating. Hugh Barrett, even when a play with Harry hugging the ball went through his position, grunted commendation and nodded his head knowingly. He had, he told himself, seen from the first that Danforth had something in him. So Barnstead Academy took a sensation with it up the hill and back to the dormitories, and the sensation was the sudden appearance on the football horizon of a new star whose name was Danforth!

Barnstead met Cruger’s School and Thurston Polytechnic on succeeding Saturdays—there were no mid-week games—and scored one victory and met one defeat. The victory was overwhelming and the defeat, at the hands of Thurston, a heavier and far more experienced team, was honorable. Barnstead reached the middle[23] of the season hopeful and determined. Harry was still on the second team and was still making good. Of course he had much to learn, but he was learning it fast. And the school at large, having enjoyed its sensation, settled down to a hearty admiration of “the kid halfback,” as they called him and looked for great things from him. Some criticism was aired because Worden did not at once move Harry from the second to the first. There were plenty of critics who declared that “young Danforth could play rings around Norman.” Norman was the present first choice for left half, a hard-working but not especially brilliant youth who had already had two seasons on the team. But Worden, if he heard the criticisms, paid them no heed. Harry needed training and experience in fast company before he was ready for the School Team, and the coach meant that he should have it. The second eleven worked prodigiously those days and the first had all it could do to register anything like a decisive victory. To be sure, the second had its slumps, as when, the Tuesday after the Thurston game, it allowed the first to tally four touchdowns[24] and only saved itself from a shut-out by lifting the ball over the cross-bar for a field goal. To even matters, however, the first team itself was only human and sometimes let down in its play and allowed the second to tie or, infrequently, to win.

Four games remained on the schedule when October was half gone: Carver Academy, Pleasanton High, Norwich Academy and St. Matthew’s. St. Matthew’s was Barnstead’s dearly hated rival in every sport and the victor in most. The Blue triumphed almost yearly on the track and won more than her share of the baseball contests. It was only in hockey and football that the records of the two schools came anywhere near balancing. At hockey Barnstead, aided by better ice facilities, was the master, while at football the Brown had almost, if not quite, as many wins to her credit as the Blue. This year, having met defeat last November, the Brown considered it her turn to triumph and meant to do so. And to this end the school worked as one.

And yet there was an exception after all, and that exception was Perry Vose. Perry was[25] eighteen years of age, strongly built, good-looking in a dark and somewhat surly way and what the fellows who had seen him perform called a corking player. But in spite of his ability Perry was not on the team this year. Why this was so Harry learned from Tracey.

“He played in the line two years,” said Tracey. “Left guard, I think. Maybe he was right. Anyhow, he has a beast of a temper and can’t hold on to it. In almost every game he was cautioned for slugging or rough work of some sort, and several times he was put off. Worden stood a lot from him because he was such a dandy player. But last year in the Pleasanton game he mixed it up with the chap who played opposite him, the umpire or the referee caught him, the other chap got a cut lip and Perry was put off. After the game Worden told him he needn’t report again until he could play decently and like a gentleman. Perry ‘sassed’ him for fair, they say; I didn’t hear it; and Worden told him then that he needn’t report again for football as long as he was coaching because he wouldn’t have him. Faculty heard about it and Perry came mighty[26] near being expelled. He had to apologize to Worden and went on probation for two months. That didn’t make him care any more for the coach, and he still hates him like anything. Mention Worden to Perry and he will foam at the mouth!”

And Tracey smiled reminiscently.

“He seems to have a good many friends, though,” said Harry.

“Oh, he isn’t such a bad sort when he behaves. Lots of fellows like him, or pretend to, because his folks are pretty well fixed and Perry always has a lot of money to spend. And he spends it. Still, maybe it isn’t only that. I dare say lots of fellows like him just for—for himself. He can be very decent if he wants to. It’s his old temper that plays hob with him. You and he had any more trouble?”

“No, he’s let me alone and I’ve let him alone.”

“Good scheme, chum. He’s a bad man in a mix-up.”

“I’m not afraid of him,” replied Harry stoutly. “But I don’t see that there’s any use in having a fuss. I said I’d get even with him[27] some day, and I intend to, but I don’t want to lose my place on the second on his account. And it might come to that if we had a row and faculty heard of it.”

“You’re wise. Keep away from him. And if he tries to start anything, run. It would be like him to get you into a rumpus just so faculty would hear of it and, maybe, put you on pro. He’d like that because it would lose Worden a good player.”

“You don’t mean Vose would want to see us beaten just because he dislikes Mr. Worden!”

“Hm; not exactly, perhaps. Still, I wouldn’t wager much on it! If he could get even with Worden I dare say he wouldn’t care a continental whether we won or lost at football!”

“He’s a dandy!” said Harry indignantly. “If that’s the way it is you can bet I’ll keep away from him. I’ll even run if necessary! But if ever I do run from him I’ll run back again when the football’s over! And then he will learn something!”

“Easy!” laughed Tracey. “Perry Vose is three inches taller than you are and three years older—almost.”

[28]

“He’s a bully, and I never saw a bully yet who wasn’t a coward at heart.”

“I wouldn’t count too much on that, Harry. He may be a bully, but you’ll find he’s no coward. And he’s a mean chap in a fight. Take my advice and let him alone.”

“I mean to—at present,” replied Harry. “I can’t afford to take any chances. I want to make the first before the season’s over. Think I will, Tracey?”

“Don’t see how you can help it. I’m not much of a football fan, but I hear what the fellows say, and they all seem to think that you are some wonder. Guess I’ll have to wander down to the field and see you in action some day.”

“It’s quite a sight,” laughed Harry.

“I suppose so.” Tracey was silent a moment. Then, with a smile, “Funny how my stock’s gone up lately,” he added.

“How do you mean?”

“Why, since the fellows discovered that you were a star football player I am treated with much more respect. You see, I happen to be your roommate. Case of reflected glory.”

[29]

“Oh, shut up,” said Harry.

“Fact, though. Wouldn’t be surprised if I went down to posterity as the fellow who roomed with Harry Danforth at prep school! Say, don’t turn me out next year, will you? Think how I’d feel!”

“You make me sick,” grumbled Harry. “You’re twice as popular and—and important as I am.”

“I used to be,” sighed Tracey, “but now I’m just Danforth’s roommate. Still, fame is fame, and——”

But just there Harry shied a book at him, and in the scuffle that followed fame was forgotten.

In the Carver game Harry had his first try on the School Eleven. Worden put him in at the beginning of the third quarter at left half, displacing Norman. Harry did good work against a team that averaged several pounds lighter and established himself more firmly than ever in the affection and admiration of his fellows. And yet when the fourth period began it was Norman who went in at the left of quarter and Harry retired to a blanket and the bench. Just why this was he couldn’t see, since[30] he was conscious of having played well, better, he honestly believed, than Norman. But facts were facts, and he saw the last ten minutes of a rather listless combat from the substitutes’ bench. Barnstead had no trouble rolling up twenty-seven points and was only scored on when Jones, who took Bob Peel’s place in the last period, fumbled the ball on Barnstead’s thirty yards and a quick-witted and long-legged Carver forward got it and tumbled through a broken field for a touchdown. Poor Jones, whose fortunes were trembling in the balance before, was a sad-faced youth as the players trotted back to the gymnasium after the game, and Harry pitied him. From thence on Jones was frankly a second-string quarter and Bob Peel ruled the roost. Football, like life, is a case of the survival of the fittest, and the boy who makes good in the first more often than not makes good in the latter. And the lessons learned on the gridiron, lessons of obedience to authority, confidence, unselfishness and self-control, are lessons that stand one in good stead in the bigger game to follow. Harry, with some dim notion of this in his mind, mentally[31] compared Jones’ conduct under discipline to Perry Vose’s. Jones probably had a bad hour or two with himself, but the next Monday he turned up smiling and cheerful, and all the rest of the season he worked hard when work was given him, served patiently with the waiters on the bench and never once gave voice to a disgruntled expression. Jones was a good loser, which is scarcer than a good winner. And Harry, looking on, learned a lesson from Jones.

The team had its troubles that week. Plaisted, the best guard the school had, and, with the possible exception of Captain Ted Corson, at fullback, the best player of all, wrenched his knee in practice on Tuesday and went off for what the doctor predicted would be a full week. Parrett, first substitute, took his place at the right of center and filled it fairly satisfactorily, but Plaisted was missed. I think that if ever Worden was tempted to retract his words and offer Perry Vose his old position it was then. But he didn’t. Nor did he show any sign of yielding when, a week later, Plaisted returned to work, hobbled around rather uselessly and was finally retired for good with a bad case of[32] water on the knee. By that time Pleasanton High had come and gone with trailing banners and Barnstead had scored another victory. But the Pleasanton game, although it had been won decisively, 15 to 3, proved to Coach Worden that Parrett was not another Plaisted and that the right of the line was now its weak place. Several experiments were tried during the first of the week, but it was not until Captain Corson was changed from fullback to right guard that the difficulty seemed to be solved. Ted Corson had played guard two years before and so was no novice in the line. To fill Corson’s place, Carstairs, right half, was pulled back to full, and Harry Danforth at last became a member of the School Team. Norman was moved across to the other side and Harry went in at left half. And the school applauded.

As the Norwich Academy game drew near the school rose rapidly toward the zenith of football enthusiasm. Studies suffered, as they always do at such times, and the faculty, made wise by experience, was as lenient as possible. It was less the players and substitutes themselves who made sorry showings in the classrooms than the school at large. It was the non-combatants whose minds refused to mix football with study, to the detriment of study. They not only had to watch and speculate upon the local football situation, but must keep close tab on the progress of the college teams as well. Nearly every preparatory schoolboy is for one reason or another an enthusiastic partisan of one or other of the universities. Usually he has selected his college by the end of his first year at school and from then on, or until he changes his inclination, he follows the fortunes of the football heroes representing[34] his future alma mater with breathless interest. So it can readily be seen that the months of October and November constitute a busy season for the schoolboy, with the interest and excitement drawing to a breathless crisis about the middle of November. Barnstead Academy talked football, read football and dreamed football. It had football for breakfast, dinner and supper, and nibbled on it between meals! City newspapers with accounts of the college and big school gridiron doings were at a premium, while illustrated weeklies, picturing and describing recent contests, were passed around from room to room and read and re-read until torn and tattered.

Tracey Colgan, who had heretofore been as little enthusiastic about football as anyone in school, became so deeply interested that he journeyed day after day to the field to watch the play of Harry and, incidentally, the rest of the team. One can’t room with a football player and listen to his talk without eventually becoming at least mildly enthusiastic. Harry was very glad of his chum’s new-found interest, since it gave him someone to talk things over[35] with, someone sympathetic. And Harry was grateful for sympathy just then, for things weren’t going any too well and there were many hours of discouragement. But while sympathetic, Tracey was also sane.

“Look here,” he would say, “what’s the use of getting yourself all stirred up about it? Supposing you don’t keep your place until the St. Matthew’s game. What’s it going to matter a year or two from now? There’s no use getting white hairs and wrinkles over it as far as I can see.”

“That’s because you’ve never played,” replied Harry mournfully. “If you had you’d—you’d understand.”

“I understand that you football chaps are a lot of crazy idiots for two months every year,” answered Tracey. “Great Scott, anyone would think that your blessed lives depended on your making the first team! Suppose you just stop a bit and consider the fact that there are about two hundred fellows here who never looked a football in the lacings!”

“There aren’t; there are only two hundred and forty fellows in school and I guess half[36] of them have played football at some time or other.”

“Well, I was speaking—er—approximately,” replied Tracey, undisturbed. “What I’m trying to make you see is that you and the rest of your tribe are taking the whole thing much too seriously and that the world’s going to keep right on humming around whether you get a black eye in the St. Matthew’s game or look on from the grandstand.”

“That’s all well enough for you,” objected Harry, “but you don’t see it the way we do. If you——”

“Or you don’t see it the way the rest of us do,” laughed Tracey. “All right. Go ahead and have your conniption fits. But if you keep on worrying the way you’re worrying nowadays you’ll not only lose your place on the team, but you’ll fill an early grave. And flowers are expensive this time of year.”

“I’m not worrying,” replied Harry a trifle resentfully.

“Oh, no, not at all! You’ve been sitting there with that book in front of you for forty-five minutes and you haven’t looked into it once.[37] Bet you don’t even know whether it’s an algebra or a French dictionary!”

“I do, too! It’s”—Harry stole a glance at it—“it’s Cicero.”

“Good stuff! Emulate our old friend then. Bet you Cicero never lost his head over football.”

“He never lost his head over anything,” grumbled Harry, “except his silly old orations.”

“He was a wise old party,” returned Tracey, who had taken a volume of Shakespeare’s Works and was hunting through the pages. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if he knew something about football, either. Here it is. Listen to this. Mr. Cicero is speaking to Casca. ‘Indeed, it is a strange-disposed time; but men may construe things after their fashion, clean from the purpose of the things themselves.’ Yes, sir, I guess they played football where Cicero went to school!”

“That’s nonsense. Besides, Cicero didn’t say that; Shakespeare said it.”

“Makes it more probable, then, that the remark refers to football,” replied Tracey untroubledly.[38] “For, if I remember right, they played football in William’s time.”

“You ought to join the Debating Society,” grunted Harry. “Shut up now, will you, and let me study.”

Harry’s uneasiness was due to the fact that a youth named Dyker, familiarly known as Dutch, was pressing him closely for the position of left halfback. Dyker had played two years on the second and had won promotion that Fall to the first team as substitute. Just at present Harry and Dyker were alternating in the coveted position and Harry’s heart was filled with fear. Dyker had the advantage of years, being seventeen, and, besides, was a rather clever punter, something which Harry made no claim to be. Harry used to dream about this time that he had sprained an ankle or broken an arm and that Dyker had ousted him for the rest of the season, and groan so loudly in his sleep that Tracey would shy a pillow across at him and beg him to turn over.

For my part I think that many of Harry’s fears were groundless and that in pitting the two boys against each other Worden was only[39] trying to develop each to the utmost. Harry’s dashing brilliancy in a broken field kept him head and shoulders above his rival, who, even if he could punt well and might be needed in the big game for that accomplishment, was only a fair ground-gainer after all. But Harry didn’t realize that and there were moments, when, as it seemed to him, Dyker was pressing him closely for his place, that Harry could almost find it in his heart to wish that Dutch would bust something and retire from the struggle.

Work grew very strenuous that last fortnight. The dummy was resurrected and hung again on his twenty-foot railway, and for three days the first team fellows went back to first principles, throwing themselves upon the stuffed and headless figure at the end of the chain, falling on wabbling, elusive balls and chasing them across the turf to catch them on their erratic bounds. And with this primary instruction went final polishing in signal work and the development of the attack. And almost before anyone realized it, it was Saturday and the day of the Norwich contest, beyond which[40] lay but four days of practice before the final struggle of the football season.

Barnstead turned out to a boy that afternoon, in spite of a drizzling rain, and practiced the songs that were to be sung at the St. Matthew’s game and cheered on the slightest provocation at the behest of eight tireless, merciless cheer leaders who, armed with brown megaphones, waved their arms and shook their fists and demanded “A regular cheer, fellows, and make it good!” on the slightest provocation. Norwich sent over a small but determinedly noisy group of youths, who answered every vocal challenge from across the wet field.

Harry started the game at left half, and provided the first sensation when, two minutes after the kick-off, he stole a forward pass and dodged and squirmed his way through the ruck of players and sped across seven white lines for the first score of the game. When, having placed the pigskin squarely back of the posts with practically no opposition, he scrambled to his feet, eight discarded brown megaphones were tumbling about the turf in front of the[41] stand and eight red-faced cheer leaders were leaping and gesticulating, while from some two hundred eager throats a vast and deafening roar of sound was sweeping across the field.

Later, in the second twelve-minute period, Harry again brought the stand to its feet when, from a double pass behind the line, he got safely away around his own right end and reeled off almost thirty yards before he was pulled down into a puddle. But the most encouraging feature of that game was the work of Captain Corson at right guard and of Carstairs at fullback. Corson was as steady as a wall against the strong attack of Norwich, while Carstairs, in a position he had played but a few days, shone brilliantly. The first half ended with the score 7 to 6, Norwich having failed to kick goal after her touchdown in the second period.

Worden made several changes in the line-up when the second half began. A new left tackle went in, a substitute center was tried, Jones took Peel’s place at quarter and both halfbacks were fresh men. Harry viewed Dyker’s substitution with misgiving as he drew a blanket about him and settled down to watch the contest[42] from the bench. He was a little bit angry with the coach and looked so glum that Bob Peel, squeezing himself into a seat between Harry and a substitute end, ventured consolation.

“Cheer up, Danforth,” said the quarter, kicking him good-naturedly on the ankle. “You don’t know when you’re well off. All we have to do is sit here and see those poor chaps work. It’s fine!”

Harry smiled faintly. “That’s all right for you, Peel. You’re sure of your place. I’m not. Just when I get going fairly well Worden yanks me out and puts in Dyker.”

“Oh, I guess he wants Dyker to help with the punting. It’s up to Carstairs, and it won’t do to work him too hard to-day. As for being sure of your place”—Peel shrugged his shoulders—“there’s no such thing, Danforth. Any of us may wrench a knee or an ankle or something, and then where are we? Why, it’s the uncertainty that makes half the fun!”

“Is it?” muttered Harry without enthusiasm.

“Sure. What the dickens is Carstairs doing[43] off there? He’s way out of position if that’s a delayed pass. Thought so! Lost a yard! I suppose I ought to be sort of pleased when Jones slips up like that, but I’m not. He’s a good old sort, Jones. That’s better! Right through left guard for three! If Dyker would put his head down and forget to slow up every time he strikes the line he’d do a heap better. Let’s see how he boots this. Not bad. Nearly forty yards, I guess. Seems to me if Worden took him in hand he could make a real punter out of Dutch. He’s got another year, hasn’t he?”

“I think so,” answered Harry. “He does punt well, doesn’t he? Gets them off quickly, too.”

“Yes, if he could plunge as well as he can kick he’d get a place. As it is I guess you’re pretty certain to start the game next week. Here comes that delayed pass again. That’s a lot better. We ought to have a score coming to us pretty soon.”

Barnstead was down on Norwich’s thirty-three yards, and it was first down again. Carstairs swept around the left of the Norwich[44] line for six yards or so, made two through center and then fell back as though to try a drop-kick. But the ball went to Simmons, who was playing right half, and Simmons wormed past left tackle for the necessary gain. From the twenty-two-yard line the home team carried the pigskin to the threshold of a score, only to lose it a yard from the last line. Norwich held beautifully. After kicking from behind its goal line the visiting eleven got the ball on a fumble near mid-field and started toward Barnstead’s goal. The Brown’s defense was pretty thoroughly tested during the ensuing five or six minutes and Norwich made the thirty yards without losing possession of the pigskin once. There, however, the Brown stiffened and, after two tries that netted but five yards, Norwich made a forward pass that worked finely and took the ball half the distance to the goal. But the Brown line was pretty tight now, and after being thrice repulsed Norwich tried a desperate place kick from a difficult angle and missed. With the ball back in mid-field the quarter ended.

“I wonder,” mused Bob Peel, “if Worden’s[45] going to be satisfied with what we’ve got. It’s taking chances, I say.”

Apparently the coach had determined to play on the defensive for the remainder of the game and made no change in the line-up. Harry, who had hoped to get in again, scowled at Coach Worden’s back as the latter strolled past the bench. Peel, seeing, laughed.

“Isn’t he the mean old thing, Danforth?” he asked. “Good thing, though, he didn’t turn around just then and see your expression. He might have sacked you for calling him names!”

“I wasn’t,” answered Harry, grinning in spite of himself.

“Thinking names, then. It’s the same thing.”

“Well, I do think he might let me play,” said the other. “You, too.”

“Me? Oh, I don’t mind. You see, Danforth, he’s keeping us out of it because we’re too precious to take chances with. Looking at it in that way, you see, it’s a fine old compliment to our worth and abilities.”

“I don’t look at it that way,” murmured Harry.

[46]

“Might as well. Hello! Look at that!”

A Norwich back, the ball tucked into the corner of his left arm, was streaking down the field, evading player after player of the opposing team and crossing one white line after another, while the stands broke into wild, unintelligible tumult! Only Jones, playing well back, stood between the Norwich runner and the goal, and hundreds of voices died into silence as the two forms, one speeding desperately and one advancing alertly and cautiously, drew near. Then a great shout of triumph and relief from the supporters of the home team broke forth, and Peel murmured: “Good old Jonesy! Tackled like a man!”

For Jones had brought down the runner on the twenty-four-yard line with as pretty a tackle as had been seen all season, and Norwich’s hope of winning the game died a sudden death. Coach Worden hurried a new end into the field in place of Shallcross, and the teams lined up on the twenty-four yards. But Norwich’s bolt had been sped. Three attempts at the tackles gained but six yards, and when the left half fell back to kicking position and held[47] his hands for the ball nearly half the Barnstead forwards came rushing through upon him and the ball, striking a leaping figure, went bounding back up the field. The substitute end fell on it near the forty yards, and Dyker punted down the field and out of bounds at Norwich’s thirty-yard line. Three minutes later the game was over, and Barnstead had won by the narrow margin of one point. Harry, trotting back to the gymnasium in the wake of the players, forgot his enmity against the coach in the satisfaction of victory.

Barnstead celebrated that evening. Not that the school was unduly elated because of the victory over Norwich, nor that the score was anything to be especially proud of, but merely because football enthusiasm was rampant and the afternoon’s success, slight as it was, provided an excuse. As soon as supper was over the fellows congregated in front of School Hall and began cheering. Songs followed the cheers, and then a voice cried: “We want to march!” The suggestion won immediate favor, and in almost less time than it takes to tell it the fellows were falling into line four abreast, two hundred throats were singing the school anthem and the march had begun. Shouting, cheering, singing, pushing and jostling, the long column swung around the corner and began the circuit of the campus.

Harry found himself between Tracey, who had been with him when the celebration began,[49] and a substitute tackle named Cummings. Linking arms, they followed on, adding their quota to the noise and hilarity. The procession paused at each dormitory to cheer the resident instructor, and wound four blocks out of bounds to reach Mr. Worden’s rooms in a little white clapboarded cottage. The noise soon brought the coach to the doorway and, when the throng had quieted down, he made a short speech that rekindled the waning enthusiasm. After that the procession headed back to the campus, paid a visit to the principal’s residence and finally disbanded in front of School Hall. As it was a Saturday night there was no imperative need of studying, and so Harry and Tracey followed a discordant group of revelers across to Hutchins Hall and spent an hour with Joe Phillips and his roommate, Bert Means, talking football and predicting an overwhelming victory over St. Matthew’s.

The Sunday morning mail—one called for it at the office between breakfast and chapel—brought a letter to Harry from Pete Wilkinson, back home. Pete had written once before during the Fall, and as his letters, while rambling,[50] held a deal of home news, Harry was always glad to get them. The present epistle, four full pages in length, detailed the doings of mutual acquaintances since his last report and brought the chronicles of the Hillston High School Football Team down to date. Toward the end Pete wrote:

Harry replied that afternoon and answered Pete’s numerous questions to the best of his[51] ability. The effect of writing this letter and a less lengthy one to his father and mother was to make Harry a little bit homesick, and, after he had mailed the two epistles, he went off alone for a long walk through a gray mist that added very little to his spirits.

But Monday dawned fair and crisp, and the qualm of homesickness was gone and forgotten. Practice that afternoon was as hard as any during the year. Coach Worden was not satisfied with the team’s defense, and so for the better part of an hour the second was given the ball time and time again, on the first team’s thirty yards, on its twenty and, finally, on its five, and told to put it over. It did so at last, from the five-yard line, but not until the first team forwards were battered and tired out. There was signal work on the floor of the gymnasium that evening and on the two evenings following, but the final hard practice out of doors came on Tuesday. After that the team were given only enough work to keep them in shape. There was a fifteen-minute scrimmage on Wednesday and a good deal of punting and catching and some signal practice. All the week it was Harry who[52] had the call for left half and Dyker got into the play but once, for a brief ten minutes or so on Tuesday. Thursday it rained hard all day, and the short work at signals planned to take place on the field was held in the basement of the gymnasium. In the evening there was a chalk talk upstairs, during which the players underwent a pretty stiff examination as to their familiarity with the plays to be used against St. Matthew’s. The second team disbanded Thursday afternoon and had its annual feast in the visitors’ dining-room. Afterward it moved in a body to the auditorium at the top of School Hall and helped make the mass meeting a howling success. Most of the first team fellows joined the assemblage after Coach Worden released them, arriving late, but receiving each one a deafening cheer as he tried to slip unostentatiously into a seat at the back of the hall. All the songs which had ever been sung at previous games and many new ones were rehearsed, with the aid of the school Musical Club, and every player got his share of applause. There were speeches, too, and it was well toward ten o’clock when, after singing the school anthem,[53] the crowd, still joyously noisy, made its way down the stairs.

Harry, who had arrived at the mass meeting late and had done his best to reach a seat undetected and had failed, met Joe Phillips on the way downstairs and paused at the entrance to talk to him. Joe had made a speech and was feeling exhilarated and communicative. Consequently when Harry started off alone across the campus for his room most of the fellows had disappeared. Overhead there were still a good many heavy, dark clouds floating, but here and there a frosty star twinkled, and over the top of Noyes Hall the moon was trying bravely to make a showing. As Harry reached the corner of his dormitory he became aware of three boys ahead of him on the flag walk. They had almost reached the entrance when he saw them and the dim light above the doorway threw their forms into relief without revealing their faces. They had stopped just short of the entrance, and as Harry approached, his rubber-soled shoes making almost no sound on the flags, one of the three raised an arm and appeared to throw something at a window.[54] Startledly, Harry listened for the resultant crash of breaking glass. But there was no sound save the scrape of feet as the trio dashed up the steps and disappeared through the entrance. Then Harry saw that the window, which was one of those in Mr. Adams’ bedroom, was raised at the bottom. The room was dark. Wondering what mischief the three boys had been up to, Harry reached the entrance almost on their heels, just in time to see the last of the trio, apparently one of the older boys and rather heavily built, disappear around the turn of the stairs. There was only time to note the general build of the youth and the fact that he wore a dark-brown sweater, at the back of which, an inch or two above the hem, gleamed a small white tag. Then they were gone and a faint snicker of laughter floated down from above through the empty hall. At that moment the door of Number 2 opened quickly and Harry, one foot on the first step, turned to find Mr. Adams confronting him, Mr. Adams pulling a faded red dressing-gown about his gaunt form and scowling angrily.

“You, Danforth?”

[55]

The resident instructor’s voice held both surprise and wrath and Harry, equally surprised and a trifle disconcerted, replied a bit uncertainly:

“Yes, sir?”

Mr. Adams held out a thin arm, from which the sleeve of his sleeping garment fell away, and opened his outstretched hand. In it lay a squashy brown mass. Harry viewed it doubtfully.

“What—what is it, sir?” he asked.

“You know perfectly what it is,” replied the instructor, his voice shaking with anger. “It is an apple, a rotten apple! Your aim was so good, sir, that it landed against my face! A rotten apple! Outrageous, Danforth, outrageous, I say!”

“But—but, Mr. Adams——”

“If that is your idea of a joke, Danforth, I fear we shall have to tame your humor, sir. It’s insulting, sir, insulting!”

“But I didn’t, sir!”

“You didn’t! Oh, certainly not!”

“I was just coming in when you opened your door and——”

[56]

“But I asked you and you confessed!” replied Mr. Adams triumphantly. He was growing calmer, but the crimson spots on his thin cheeks told plainly that his anger still held. “Don’t make matters worse by lying, Danforth.”

“I’m not, sir. I didn’t throw it, word of honor, Mr. Adams!”

“A likely story! Who did, then? This—this unspeakable abomination”—the instructor’s long nose seemed to quiver with disgust as he viewed the object in his hand—“was thrown into my room, right on to my pillow as I lay in bed, against my very cheek, sir! Faugh!” He made as if to hurl the apple through the doorway, but thought better of it. “I jump from bed, Danforth, open my door and find you here, guilt stamped eloquently upon your face! And now you have the—the brazen effrontery to tell me you didn’t do it! I shall see that you are severely punished, sir, and the fact that you have added lying to your—your gutter-snipe act will make me no more lenient, sir!”

“But I tell you, sir,” protested Harry, flushing resentfully, “that I did not do it! You’ve[57] got to believe me, sir! I know that appearances seem against me, but I was halfway between your window and the corner of the building when the apple was thrown, sir.”

“Indeed?” sneered Mr. Adams. “Then you saw it done, did you?”

“Yes, sir—that is——”

“Well? Well? Did you or did you not? Go on with your story. Let’s see how fertile your imagination is, Danforth. You didn’t do it yourself, but you saw it done. Very well; pray proceed!”

“I—I saw someone in front of the window, sir, as I came along. They—he ran away and I came in here and you opened your door and called my name, and I said, ‘Yes, sir.’ That’s all I know about it.”

“Really?” Mr. Adams smiled sourly. “And the boy you saw in front of the window? What became of him, Danforth?”

“He—he ran away,” faltered Harry; “quickly.”

“Very quickly indeed! So quickly that, although I fairly bounded to the window, there was no one in sight when I reached it; no one,[58] I should say, but you. Sounds a likely story, Danforth, doesn’t it?”

“I can’t help it, sir,” replied Harry doggedly. “It’s the truth.”

“Which way did this—this figment of your imagination run, sir?”

Harry glanced toward the stairs. Not a sound came from the upper floors. Mr. Adams tapped impatiently on the floor with one slippered foot.

“I—I can’t say, sir,” answered Harry finally.

“You can’t say! You don’t know whether he entered this dormitory or not?”

“I——” Again Harry hesitated. Even if he told what he knew it was unlikely that the boys could be detected now. “I think they came in here, sir.”

“You think! Don’t you know whether they—— Look here, you said before that there was but one boy! Now how many were there? Careful, Danforth! You’re getting mixed!”

“There was more than one; I think three. They came in here, sir. That’s all I can say.”

“You saw them enter this dormitory?” pursued Mr. Adams relentlessly.

[59]

“Yes, sir.”

“Did they turn to the right or to the left? Or did they go upstairs?”

“I can’t tell you, sir. They—they came in ahead of me.”

“That will do, my boy. Go on to your room. You’ll hear more of this—this pleasant little escapade, this gentlemanly trick—in the morning.”

“Don’t—don’t you believe me, sir?” asked Harry desperately.

Mr. Adams smiled sarcastically. “Oh, perfectly, Danforth, perfectly! You tell a most convincing story, I assure you. Dear me, yes, most convincing. Let us hope, Danforth, that you’ll be able to do as well before the Principal in the morning. But don’t try to embroider it any more, Danforth. It’s quite elaborate enough as it is.” The instructor smiled broadly but disagreeably. “I shall—ah—preserve this odoriferous memento of my pleasant experience, this slight token of your respect and regard, Danforth, as Exhibit A. I’ve no doubt your Principal will view it with interest. Good night!”

[60]

Mr. Adams’ door closed with dignity, but as it had shut upon a corner of the dressing-gown and had to be reopened, the effect was somewhat marred. Harry, smarting with the injustice of the instructor’s conviction, apprehensive of what would follow and generally discouraged, sought his room. The light was turned low and Tracey was sleeping audibly. After a moment of indecision, for he wanted very much to tell his story and get sympathy, Harry undressed as noiselessly as possible and tumbled into bed without arousing his chum. But sleep didn’t come easily that night. Disturbing thoughts of what might lie in store for him kept him wakeful, and when, long after eleven had struck, he fell into slumber, equally disturbing visions haunted his sleep.

“You haven’t much to go on,” said Tracey the next morning. “You don’t know whether the fellows stopped on this floor or went on to the third. And as for the brown sweater, why, there are at least a hundred in school. You might look for a sweater with a white tag on it, I suppose. I don’t understand the tag business. Sweaters don’t have tags on them except when you buy them, do they? Did it look like a new one?”

“I couldn’t tell,” replied Harry. “It was dark on the stairs and I only saw the chap for a second.”

“Adams is a pig-headed old codger, anyway,” said Tracey disgustedly. “You couldn’t convince him that you didn’t do it unless you had the fellow who did do it and go and make an affidavit before a notary! You’re up against it, chum, I guess. Perhaps, though, Dobs”—the Principal was called Dobs for short—“will[62] believe you. He isn’t a bad sort, Dobs. Neither is Adams, for that matter, except that he’s as stubborn as a mule and as full of dignity as a—a camel!” At any other time Harry might have protested at the simile, but this morning he was too down in the mouth to care. “I suppose,” went on Tracey, “that Adams didn’t mind being hit with the apple much, but the fact that it was rotten offended his blessed dignity. If you’d only chucked a green apple——”

“I tell you I didn’t!” cried Harry exasperatedly. “I don’t know anything about it! I——”

“I know! I meant to say it was a pity the fellow who did it didn’t throw a green one,” answered Tracey soothingly. Harry grunted. After a moment’s thought: “I suppose that even if you found out who the fellow was,” continued Tracey, “it wouldn’t do you much good. I don’t suppose he’d ’fess up to it.”

“He’d have to if I knew him,” replied the other grimly. “Why, confound it, Tracey, if Dobs thinks I’m lying he will—will——” Harry choked. Tracey nodded sympathetically.

“Pro,” he answered. “I know. Off goes[63] your head! No more football. It’s—it’s a shame, old man!”

“And Adams will tell his story and I won’t have a show at all,” mourned Harry. “If—if he says I can’t play any more I won’t stay here, Tracey! I—I’ll leave!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that, chum. After all, you know, things like this are likely to happen to a fellow occasionally. And as for football, why, there’s another year coming, and——”

“You make me tired! Another year coming! Just when I’ve beaten Dyker out for my position, and the St. Matthew’s game comes to-morrow! No, sir, if he says I can’t play to-morrow I’ll quit, Tracey! It isn’t fair! I didn’t do anything and they’ve no right to punish me for something I didn’t do! You—you just wait and see!”

“You’ll think differently later, I guess,” said Tracey sympathetically. He put an arm through Harry’s. “Come on and have some breakfast. You’ll feel better after that.”

“I don’t want any breakfast,” sighed Harry. But he allowed the other to draw him to the door and down the stairs and across to the[64] dining-room. And afterward, had he thought about it, he would have had to confess that Tracey’s prediction had been a true one. For he did feel better, a whole lot better, and even began to look forward to his visit to the office with more assurance. After all, he had done nothing, and Dobs would just have to believe him!

But, sad to state, Dobs didn’t, although I really think he wanted to and tried his best to. Circumstantial evidence was overwhelmingly against Harry and Mr. Adams had told his side of the story convincingly. Moreover, Harry’s desire to shield the real perpetrators led to complications. He owned to having seen three boys at the instructor’s window and the Principal wanted to know directly why he had not stated that number to Mr. Adams last night. Harry had difficulty in explaining that satisfactorily, and, while it was a small matter, it caused the Principal to entertain doubts of Harry’s candidness. In the end the Principal, regretfully, as even Harry could see, gave the only verdict possible: Guilty! Harry was sentenced to a month’s probation, which meant[65] many hardships of which but one affected him seriously. Boys on probation were not allowed to represent the school on any athletic team.

“I’m very sorry, Danforth,” said the Principal gently. “Let this be a lesson to you, my boy. Take your punishment like a man, and play the game! Remember that it is adversity that is the real test of us all!”

Harry made no audible reply, but walked out of the office mutinous and defiant. He would not stay there a single hour longer, he told himself hotly. Everyone was unjust and unfair. He hated the whole school and everyone and everything connected with it! He would go back to his room, pack his bag and leave immediately! But the next moment recollection of the folks at home, of what they would think of his conduct, came to him. His parents wouldn’t understand, of course. They might even—yes, he greatly feared they’d insist on his coming back! Plainly, home was not the place to go to if—if he did shake the dust of Barnstead from his shoes. And if he didn’t go home where was he to go? He had a little money, about eight dollars, but that wouldn’t last long; in fact,[66] when he stopped to think about it, it wouldn’t much more than take him home! And home—Harry shook his head and sighed—home didn’t look very good to him. He could imagine just the way his father would frown and click his lips impatiently. Mr. Danforth had never played football, had hardly, in fact, even seen a game, and Harry was pretty certain that he would never understand the motives prompting his son to give up a school career in the middle of the first term! And besides, he had, he reflected, grown rather fond of the school and—and some of the fellows. And, after all, Dobs wasn’t really a bad sort; and Dobs had told him to “play the game.” Running away wouldn’t be playing the game, and so—so—well, he guessed he’d stay!

The Principal rendered his verdict just before ten o’clock. By eleven, so quickly does news circulate at school, it was very generally known that young Danforth was on probation for something he had done to offend Old Adams. School sentiment was divided. Some fellows condemned Harry unheard for risking his place on the team and thereby putting the[67] morrow’s game in jeopardy. Others, and these were mostly fellows who had at some time or other run foul of Mr. Adams in study hall, declared that the instructor was always looking for trouble and that it was a fair wager that whatever Danforth had done he did not deserve the punishment meted out to him. But of course it was to Coach Worden and Captain Corson that the tidings brought the most dismay. To lose a first-string halfback on the very eve of the Big Game was a misfortune to try their patience and fortitude. But as there was no help for it Mr. Worden promptly drew a line through Danforth and wrote Dyker after it. And presently, having discussed and mourned the loss of the left half to its heart’s content, the school at large accepted the situation, perked up and again set its gaze confidently on the morrow.

The mass meeting that night was the biggest and most enthusiastic of any. Coach Worden addressed the fellows, as did Captain Corson and several members of the faculty. Neither Harry nor Tracey attended. Harry for the reason that probation confined him to his room after supper, and Tracey because he didn’t[68] want to leave his chum to moon there alone. But I fancy that these two boys were the only absent ones that evening, and they were probably not greatly missed. Certainly the two hundred and odd occupants of the hall managed to make plenty of noise without them! After they had cheered and sung to their heart’s content indoors they piled downstairs and out on to the campus and began all over again. Tracey went to the window and watched them massed in front of School Hall, but Harry remained at the table where, for an hour past, he had been making a weak pretense of studying. It had not been a very cheerful evening for Tracey, for Harry was far too downhearted to be good company and conversation had languished early.

“There goes Mr. Warren after them,” announced Tracey with a chuckle. “He will break that up quick time.”

“Hope he does,” grunted Harry. “How’s a fellow going to study with that beastly noise going on?”

Tracey’s prediction proved correct. The cheers died suddenly away at the instructor’s[69] advent across the yard and the crowd broke into small fragments and dissolved quietly. Yet not altogether quietly, either. For presently, from the upper end of the campus, came one shrill and defiant cheer:

“Rah, rah, rah! Warren!”

The day of the St. Matthew’s game dawned fair and crisp. There was a little breeze blowing out of the northwest, but it was not of sufficient strength to have any influence on the play, unless, as seemed improbable, it increased by afternoon. The team piled into a coach and were driven over to the neighboring village of Turner, where they were to have their luncheon at the little hotel, returning afterward just in time to warm up before the contest. St. Matthew’s began to put in an appearance about eleven, with the arrival of the first eastbound express. The village, bedecked with brown flags and bunting, began to show specks of blue. The game was to start at two o’clock, and by one the first of the invaders appeared in the persons of two small and enthusiastic youths, who carried blue flags, wore blue arm bands and who marched the length of the campus before proceeding to[71] the field, critically viewing the buildings and being greeted with loud and ironic cheers from various windows. After that the stream from the village set in in earnest and the blue flags fluttered into the field by the dozens. But for every blue one there were at least twenty brown, and later, when St. Matthew’s started the cheering, the heroic efforts of her supports were drowned by the deafening response that swept across the field.

Harry and Tracey reached the field early and were lucky enough to find seats at the end of the third row in the stand. There were plenty of empty seats toward the top, but the boys wanted to be as near the play as possible. At twenty minutes to two the St. Matthew’s players, first-string men and substitutes, some thirty in all, trotted through the end gate to the cheers of the blue contingent across the white-streaked turf. Five minutes later the brown-clad warriors appeared, Corson in the lead, and eight earnest, imploring cheer leaders seized their megaphones and summoned such an outburst that the players, doffing their blankets on the side line, viewed the sloping, brown-flecked[72] bank in surprise. Then came a cheer for St. Matthew’s, and then St. Matthew’s answered it with one for Barnstead. The local band struck up a march, flags fluttered and waved, late comers crowded the aisles and the rival teams went through their warming-up practice. Brown ovals arched against a cloudless blue November sky and the thud of leather against leather punctuated the shrill cries of the quarterbacks as they trotted their squads over the field.

In the midst of it all Harry glanced up to see a group of three fellows pushing their way up the aisle past his seat. They were laughing merrily and paying not too much attention to the comfort of those in front of them, being evidently determined to get seats at any cost of politeness. One of the boys, daring the conventions, wore only a brown woolen sweater over his vest, and as on such an occasion, when parents and friends attended who could, Barnstead was very particular to look her best, Harry looked again and a trifle disapprovingly at the big youth. The latter turned just then to make a laughing remark to one of his companions[73] and Harry saw his face. He was Perry Vose. That in a measure explained the costume, for Perry was known to take delight in defying school conventions. As Harry’s gaze left Perry’s countenance there was a momentary rift in the ascending file, and the younger boy’s eyes fell on a tiny square of white just above the bottom of the brown sweater at the back. Instantly he was on his feet, Tracey viewing him curiously. One by one the throng in the aisle found accommodations at left or right, but the three boys kept on, doubtless seeking places together. Harry watched, his heart thumping against his ribs, and ascended two or three steps in order to see better. Tracey was anxiously demanding what was up, but Harry paid no heed to him. Then suddenly he had a clear, unobstructed view of Perry Vose climbing the stand above him. There was the brown sweater with the white tag just as he had glimpsed it the other night at the turn of the dormitory stairs. And there was the rather heavy, thick-set body he had seen. The last doubt fled and Harry started impetuously after Perry. But a few tiers beyond[74] he stopped and reconsidered. Then, descending again to his place, he spoke softly to Tracey.

“You know Perry Vose, don’t you?” he asked.

“Yes, pretty well. Why?” Tracey viewed his chum’s excited face uneasily.

“I want you to go up there—I’ll show you where he is—and tell him someone wants to speak to him at the gate. Don’t say who it is. Tell him you don’t know. Tell him any old thing, only get him down to the gate, and do it quick!”

“Well, but what——”

“Don’t ask questions, Tracey; just do what I say, like a good pal, won’t you?”

“Why—why, yes, I suppose so. But look here, Harry, don’t get into any fuss with Perry. What do you want to see him about?”

“I’ll tell you later. Go on, please. I’ll wait down at the gate. Hurry up; there goes the whistle!”

Doubtfully Tracey left his seat and Harry pointed out where Perry Vose sat near the top of the grandstand between his two companions.[75] Then Tracey climbed the aisle and Harry sought the gate.

On the gridiron St. Matthew’s was just kicking off to the Brown. Harry heard the thud of the blue-jerseyed youth’s shoe against the pigskin and saw the ball arch into low flight down the field. Then the crowd about the entrance hid the rest from him. Minutes sped and Vose didn’t appear. Thrice the whistle shrilled beyond the barrier of spectators and Harry incuriously wondered what was happening. Then a brown sweater came into sight around the corner and Perry Vose, an impatient frown on his face, was searching for the person who had sent for him. Back of Perry, hovering anxiously about the corner of the stand, Harry spied Tracey.

“Vose!”

Perry found the voice and stared doubtfully as Harry strode up to him.

“Hello,” he said. “What do you want, kid?”

“I want to speak to you a minute. Come outside here, will you?”

“Haven’t time. I’m looking for someone.”

[76]

“That’s all right,” answered Harry. “You’re looking for me.”

“The dickens I am!” Perry stared blackly. “Do you mean you had the cheek to send and get me down here?”

“Yes. I’ve got a few words for you, Vose. Will you come outside, please?”

“If I do I’ll give you what for!” declared Perry angrily. But he followed the younger boy through the gate and around to the back of the stand. “Now, what is it?” he demanded shortly.

“I guess,” began Harry, “that you heard I was put on probation and so lost my place on the team.”

Perry nodded, a gleam of understanding in his eyes.

“Well, I worked hard for that place, Vose, and I want to play. And what’s more, I mean to.”

“Fine! Go ahead, kid. I don’t object,” laughed Perry.

“I can’t unless you go with me to Mr. Adams or the Principal and tell the truth.”

“Tell the truth? Say, what the dickens are[77] you talking about? I haven’t got time to stay here and hear your silly troubles. I want to see the game, kid.” And Perry moved away.

“Hold on, Vose!” Perry stopped uncertainly. “Either you do what I say or—or you fight!”

Perry stared in amazement. The other boy’s eyes, however, stared back just as hard and unfalteringly. Perry tried bluster.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, kid. You must be plumb crazy! What have I got to do with your playing on the team? Say, you make me tired. I ought to punch your silly head for you, that’s what I ought to do! And I’ll do it, too, if you bother me any more!”

“That’s all right. You may have a chance to try. But what you’ve got to do is go with me to Mr. Adams——”

“Oh, forget it! What would I do that for?”

“To tell him you shied that apple at him,” replied Harry quietly. “I’m being punished for what you did and it isn’t fair, Vose.”

“Shied—— Say, what are you talking about?”

[78]

“You know very well. You threw that rotten apple into his room the other night. I saw you do it. He thought it was me and told Dobs. Now——”

“Poppycock! I never saw your old apple!”

“Yes, you did. And either you own up and let me out or you fight.”

“Fight, eh?” Perry scowled fiercely down at Harry. “Then I guess I’ll fight, kid. And if I do you’ll be an awful messy-looking youngster when I get through.”

“Oh, you may be able to lick me——”

“I’ll half kill you,” growled Perry.

“And then again you may not,” continued Harry. “Anyway, I’ll make a bargain with you. If you lick me I’ll keep still and won’t tell. If I lick you you’ll go with me to Mr. Adams and own up. What do you say?”

Perry laughed ironically, but his gaze swept the lithe, clean-cut figure before him, and there was a hint of grudging admiration in his tones when he answered.

“Sure, that’s a bargain! You meet me here right after the game, kid, and I’ll give you what’s coming to you!”

[79]

“After the game won’t do,” replied Harry firmly. “It’s got to be right now.”

“Nonsense, kid! I want to see what’s going on, and——”

“You’ll fight right now, behind the gym, Vose; that is, if you’re not afraid to!”

“Afraid! Afraid of you!” Perry flushed angrily. “Why, you—you——” He paused, cast a longing look toward the gate, from beyond which a thunderous cheer broke onto the air at the moment, and then turned curtly on his heel. “Come on,” he said.

Confidence is a fine thing. The only danger of it is that it is likely to get too ripe; in which case it becomes overconfidence and loses battles. And in spite of the late-season loss of Parrett and the eleventh-hour loss of Danforth, Barnstead went on to the field that Saturday afternoon overconfident. Why, it would be difficult to say. There seemed no really good reason for it, for it was well known that St. Matthew’s had more than an average team this year, with, besides, the prestige of more victories than defeats to her credit. Facts are facts, however, explainable or not, and the fact in this case is that the Brown faced its opponent at the kick-off with far too good an idea of its own ability. And when the awakening came it left Barnstead for the moment dismayed and disorganized.

Perhaps it was lucky that the awakening arrived early, in short at the end of the third minute[81] of the play. Bob Peel had taken the kick-off and had run it in fifteen yards. Then two plunges at the Blue line and a dash around the left end had netted but seven yards and Carstairs had punted well into St. Matthew’s territory. Treat, the Brown’s left end, was on the back the moment the ball fell into the latter’s arm and tackled so hard that a fumble resulted. Norman picked up the pigskin on the run and was not stopped until the Blue’s quarterback brought him to earth near the twenty-yard line.

There was great rejoicing on the Barnstead stand and Bob Peel hurried his men into place and threw Carstairs at the middle of the Blue line. But although the fullback gained three yards then and two more on left tackle, it was plain that the St. Matthew’s line was stronger on defense than it had been credited with being. A forward pass failed and Peel chose to kick from the seventeen yards. What happened then was one of those sudden reversals of fortune that make football the uncertain and exciting game it is.

Surber passed low, Carstairs was consequently slow in getting the ball away and half[82] the Blue line came charging through. The ball struck someone and bounded back up the field. A blue-legged forward took it on the bound, eluded the frantic tackle of Dyker, and tore off up the gridiron. For the first twenty or thirty yards it seemed certain that he would be pulled down from behind, for at least four Barnstead players were hot upon his heels. But when he had passed the middle of the field he was virtually alone, and although friend and foe alike trailed after him over one white line after another, he was never headed and so went stumbling, breathless and tuckered, between the Brown’s goal posts for a touchdown.

It had all happened so quickly, so unexpectedly that for a moment Barnstead supporters merely stared at each other, while from across the field came wild pæans of joy from where blue flags waved and tossed ecstatically. St. Matthew’s could hardly fail of kicking the goal and in another minute the scoreboard proclaimed: Barnstead, 0; Visitor, 7.

If the effect on the Brown’s supporters was numbing the effect on the home team itself was, for a few minutes, paralyzing. Surber[83] messed the kick-off and the ball went to the Blue on her thirty-eight yards, from where, playing like streaks of lightning, and using a quick shift that left Barnstead hopelessly at a loss how to meet it, she tore off gain after gain until suddenly the Brown was well back in her own territory, literally digging her toes in the turf in a vain endeavor to stop the triumphant rush of the oncoming adversary. Down near the twenty-five-yard line Barnstead did finally find herself long enough to momentarily stay the Blue. But, finding the opposing line strengthening, St. Matthew’s swept past Shallcross’s end and made its first down on the twenty yards. Three plunges netted short gains and then a long forward pass across the field gave the Blue the rest of her distance. Barnstead made her final stand on her twelve-yard line. The fight she put up then brought back hope to the breasts of her friends. Thrice the Blue was hurled back for less than two yards of total gain and St. Matthew’s was forced to try a field goal. Her kicker went back to the twenty-five yards and dropped the ball easily over the cross-bar for another three[84] points. And the scoreboard changed its legend to Barnstead, 0; Visitor, 10.

On the kick-off Surber sent a long one that let the Brown’s ends down the field, and when St. Matthew’s lined up it was on her twenty-two yards. The stand she had made almost under the shadow of her goal had given the Brown courage again, and now the Blue’s efforts were less availing. But nevertheless the battle swayed back up the field, even if slowly. It was taking St. Matthew’s the full four downs now to make her distance, and she was using every play she had, every ounce of strength and every bit of cunning in the endeavor to strike again while her adversary was weak, arguing, no doubt, that with a sixteen or seventeen point lead she would not have to do much later but play on the defensive. But the quarter ended with the ball near the middle of the field and gave the demoralized Brown warriors a few moments in which to confer and get their bearings. Coach Worden sped in a substitute for Shallcross, who was having very much of an off-day, and the substitute doubtless bore instructions from the general on the side line,[85] for the blanketed team crowded around him when he came on.

The second quarter showed a vast improvement in the Brown. She had apparently found herself again. The line played lower and closer and, although bunching the backs up to the line gave St. Matthew’s a better opportunity for forward passes, that opportunity was taken advantage of but once. Two minutes after the whistle piped Barnstead had gained the ball on downs and the brown flags waved triumphantly. Five minutes later still Barnstead was knocking importunately at St. Matthew’s portal. But the door didn’t open, and so, to continue the metaphor, the Brown entered by way of the window, Norman dropping a pretty field goal from a difficult angle and placing a 3 on the scoreboard where a moment before an obnoxious 0 had been. But that ended the scoring in that half for either team. The battle raged fiercely from one thirty-five yards to another, each team showing the strain, St. Matthew’s punting on the slightest provocation and Barnstead hurling her backs at the line in an effort to wear down her adversary. The whistle put[86] an end to her hopes, however, with the ball in the Brown’s possession on St. Matthew’s thirty-eight yards. Had the period lasted five minutes longer the wearied Blue line must have given way. With fifteen minutes in which to recuperate, however, there was no telling what the final outcome would be.

It was almost at the instant that the whistle terminated the first half that the door bell tinkled at the Principal’s house. The Principal, kept away from the first part of the game by a press of business, was drawing on his coat in the hallway when the maid opened the door, revealing two boys.

“Is the Doctor at home, please?” asked a voice.

The maid turned inquiringly and the Principal nodded. “Tell them to come in,” he said. Discarding his coat, he led the way to his study, the callers following.

“Sit down, please,” said the Principal. “Now, then—— Hello, young gentlemen; what’s this? Has there been an accident?”

“No, sir,” answered the younger, who was by far the more self-possessed of the two. “I—we—that[87] is, sir, we had—had a slight misunderstanding and——” His voice trailed into silence while the Principal gazed from one disfigured countenance to the other. I think the Principal’s sense of humor—a sense popularly supposed not to belong to a Principal—saved the day for the boys. A slight smile trembled about the Principal’s mouth and he said dryly:

“A slight misunderstanding, eh? How fortunate it was not a serious one! What is your name, my boy? Vose I have the honor of knowing.”

“Danforth, sir. Could I—would you please let me tell you about it? We tried to find Mr. Adams, but he was not in, and so we came to you.”

“Explain by all means,” replied the Principal, settling himself in the big leather chair with a sigh of resignation. “But please be as brief as possible, Danforth.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. This is the way it all came about, sir. You see——”

“Really, my boy, I’m afraid I haven’t time to hear any family histories. Suppose you come and see me this evening after supper.”

[88]

“But that will be too late, sir! I want to get to the field and——”

“That’s just what I want,” replied the Principal with a smile. “So——”

“There isn’t much to tell, sir,” interrupted Perry doggedly. “I threw that rotten apple at Old—at Mr. Adams, and he thought Danforth did it, and you put him on pro and he lost his place on the team——”

“Succinct, indeed, Vose!” said the Principal approvingly. “And now you come to tell me so I’ll let Danforth get into the game, I presume? But what about this—this slight misunderstanding? I presume that you are both of you aware that fighting is not countenanced here?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Harry eagerly, “but there wasn’t anything else to do! And we thought you’d understand it if we came to you and told you all about it, sir. He—he didn’t want to own up to it, and so I—we decided we’d have a—just a small, harmless sort of a scrap, sir, and if I won it he was to come with me and put me right, sir.”

“Hm; and I presume, although your appearances[89] might leave me in doubt, that you—er—won, Danforth?”

“Why—why, yes, sir. But he put up a dandy—I mean it was very close.”

“He’s too quick for me,” growled Vose. “He won all right.” And he felt gingerly of his nose, which had a reddened and swollen look.

The Principal glanced at the clock on his desk. “Well, one thing is certain, boys. None of us will see that game if we stay here much longer.” He pressed a button and a bell tinkled somewhere at the back of the house. “Minnie will take you to the bathroom. I’d advise you to bathe your faces before returning to society. Here she is. Run along now.”

“And—and may I play, sir?” asked Harry anxiously.

“I suppose so. You’d both better come back Monday morning and we’ll look into this a little more closely. For the present the matter stands. Go ahead and play, Danforth, if they need you. We’ll thresh all this out another time.”

The scoreboard still told the same tale, and the third period was half gone. Down near the St. Matthew’s thirty-yard line the Brown was charging desperately, and one white streak after another was passing slowly, but, as it seemed, surely, under the grinding feet of the two teams. St. Matthew’s was on the defensive indeed, for the intermission had failed to bring back more than a little of the power and snap of their early performance. It was with them now only a question of keeping the Brown at bay, but the Brown was becoming more difficult every minute. What Coach Worden had said to them in the gymnasium between the halves will probably always remain a secret, but the result was plain to all. At last Barnstead was playing as she could play, as she might have played from the first. But the Fates were still against her. Over-eagerness had thrice brought penalties for off-side,[91] and once she had lost a down by the merest fraction of an inch on the tape measure. But, undismayed, she was fighting royally, pressing the Blue before her, determined on crossing that last white line. Bob Peel, disdaining the points a field goal might bring, continued to hurl his backs against the Blue line, which gave way grudgingly, fighting over every foot of yielded territory. Carstairs piled through left guard for four, Dyker made a scant yard off tackle, Norman hurled himself past left guard for two, Peel got four more around his own right end. The pigskin was over the twenty-yard line now and the Barnstead cohorts were shouting themselves hoarse, the cheer leaders waving and leaping, purple-faced, perspiring, almost voiceless. Coach Worden, squatting near the thirty yards, felt a hand on his arm and looked around. The boy beside him had already addressed him twice without result.

“Hello, Danforth! What is it?”

“I’m off probation, Mr. Worden. Please may I play, sir?”

“Eh? Off probation? Why—I don’t know,[92] Danforth. Yes, I guess we can use you pretty soon. You’re sure you’re all right with the Office?” Mr. Worden observed him sharply. There had been trouble one year when a player had allowed his desire to play to get the better of veracity.

“Yes, sir, I’ve just come from Dobs, sir. He said I might.”

“It looks to me as though you’d been playing already. What under the sun have you been doing to your face? You ought to have something on that eye, my boy, or it will be a sight by suppertime.” His glance fell to the hand which rested on the canvas knee beside him. “Hm; I see; been mixing it up with someone, eh? Think you can do anything if I let you go in?”

“Yes, sir! I’m all right. Just give me a chance, Mr. Worden.”

The coach nodded. “All right. Warm up a bit. I guess Dyker’s about all in.”

Mr. Worden turned again to the game, and Harry, shedding his sweater even more quickly than he had wormed into it at the gymnasium five minutes before, began to limber up.

[93]

Barnstead had thrust her way onward to the Blue’s eight yards in three plays and a touchdown was imminent. The St. Matthew’s captain entreated his men to hold, to throw them back. But the Blue was weary and sore and when, on the next play, Carstairs hit the center of the line it bent inward like cardboard, and he went sprawling through it and over the last line for a touchdown. How Barnstead shouted! The players turned and went leaping back up the field, patting and thumping each other, turning handsprings in their delight. But two minutes later, when the blue-stockinged players had ranged themselves along their goal line and Norman’s toe had sent the ball away from under Peel’s finger, the joy sensibly diminished, for the pigskin floated yards from its course and passed to the left of the further upright. St. Matthew’s was still a point to the good and the blue flags across the field waved valiantly.

The quarter ended after the kick-off had been received and Norman had bounded back up the field some twenty yards. Behind the further stand the sun had dipped long since, and a mellow[94] glow held the world. The ball was taken to its new location at the other end of the field, the teams, blanketed, panting, slowly following. Captain Corson was looking inquiringly, anxiously toward the side line. Then his unspoken question was answered. Three figures scuttled on to the gridiron; Shallcross was coming back at left end, Jones was succeeding Bob Peel at quarter and Danforth was relieving Dyker. Harry’s appearance caused only mild surprise. Corson and his players had other things to interest them than the vagaries of the faculty. All Corson said was:

“Good work, Danforth! Who’s out? Dyker? All right. Show us how you do it, kid! Any instructions?”

“Jones has them,” replied Harry, running on to report to the officials. The whistle summoned the teams again. Jones, his face alight with the inspiration given him by the coach the moment before, sang out his signals cheerily.

“Now, then, Barnstead! Every fellow into it hard! We’ve got the game for the asking! Second formation! Get up there, Jimmy!”

[95]

“Ready, St. Matthew’s? Ready, Barnstead?”

“All right, sir!” The whistle shrilled. “Second formation! 21—54—76—98! 21—54——”

Carstairs had the ball and was sliding off right tackle.

“Second down! Six to go!” called the referee.

Past the center of the field Barnstead worked her way, Carstairs, Norman and Harry hitting the line or slanting off the tackles for short and certain gains, and Jones twice making his way on wide end runs. It seemed that St. Matthew’s was always on the point of going to pieces, and yet time and again she responded to the hoarse commands and implorations of her quarter or captain and held her adversary to short gains. But that march down the field took time. St. Matthew’s used up the moments as best she could with injuries and substitutions. She had almost a new team in the field when the last period was half gone, but the new men, if fresher, were less skillful.

On the forty yards Norman fumbled on the third down and Carstairs was forced to punt.[96] St. Matthew’s made a fair catch, taking no risks now, tried an end run and failed, gained a few yards on a forward pass and then kicked to the middle of the field. There Harry, playing back, caught the punt and wormed his way along past three white marks before he was thrown. Then the advance began again. Only seven minutes remained now and the ball was a long ways from the Blue’s goal. On the forty yards an off-side penalty set Barnstead back again, and a groan went up from the stand. Then a wide end run from a fake forward pass regained the penalty distance and four yards besides. Norman was hurt and went off, and Belding took his place. A new center went in at the same time, Surber, who had played a wonderful game, being relieved by White.

Belding’s first try at the line resulted in a fumble, and although Jones fell on the ball Barnstead had lost seven yards. Carstairs, who was weakening noticeably now, failed at a skin-tackle play, and it was fourth down with six to go. Corson looked discouraged, and went back to confer with Jones, while the panting St. Matthew’s players gibed. Whatever it was that[97] Corson suggested Jones shook his head at. It was the quarter himself who made the required distance, running twenty yards across the field to do it and only finding his opening at the last moment, when Harry, forming his interference, bowled over an opposing end.

Then the line-smashing began again. Past the thirty yards went the Brown, past the twenty-five, past the twenty. There were three minutes left. Corson wanted to try a field goal, but Jones again resisted. Harry got through between left guard and tackle and made three yards before he was smothered. Belding redeemed himself by making four outside of right tackle. Carstairs gained a scant yard at center. With two to go on the fourth down, the ball close to the ten-yard line, Jones himself cut through for the distance. They had to use the tape again, but the verdict went to the Brown. Two minutes, said the timekeeper. St. Matthew’s called for time. A guard had his hand rebandaged and a new fullback, primed with advice from the St. Matthew’s coach, loped on. Then the teams lined up again for the final effort.

[98]

Carstairs was called on to get past left tackle, but he was caught back of the line for a yard’s loss. Then Jones noticed something. With the advent of the new fullback the Blue was drawing her line closer and the fullback and the two halves were playing up behind it. Jones did some quick thinking then. The ball was almost on the ten-yard line, it was second down and there was eleven to gain. And less than a minute and a half of playing time remained. He might hammer his way through as before for a touchdown, he might try a field goal, he might attempt a forward pass. Any of these would be looked for by the enemy. Of the three the forward pass promised to succeed best since the Blue was playing her backfield up close to the line. But there was one play that had not been used during the game. It had been devised for use around the middle of the field, but Jones, scanning its possibilities, couldn’t see why it should not do as well here under the shadow of the goal. At least it had the merit of unexpectedness, and the enemy’s present formation on defense promised success. At all events, he decided, he would try the line once[99] more. So, calling for Third Formation, which put both tackles at the left of the line and placed the left halfback at the end of the rush line on the right, the end falling in and back, he sent Carstairs plunging at right tackle. The play netted three yards. The timekeeper was slowly walking nearer, watch in hand and eyes on the dial. Then:

“Same formation!” called Jones. “37—39—164—28!” A puzzled glance from Captain Corson rewarded him, and Belding cried “Signals!” in a panicky voice. Jones whispered to him, shot a reassuring look at Corson and repeated:

“37—39—164—28! 37—39—164——”

Carstairs dropped back a good twelve yards behind center, Jones stepped back mid-way between him and the line and the ball shot to Carstairs. As it settled into his hands he poised it as though to throw it forward and to the left. The St. Matthew’s line had concentrated on its right, and now it struggled to break through, while the backfield started around to intercept the pass. The Blue’s left end plunged straight across, dodging the opposing end, and made for[100] the fullback. Just as he leaped forward, however, Carstairs sidestepped, passed the ball at a quick toss to Jones, who had run back to take it, and threw himself in front of the Blue’s end. They went down together. Jones, the ball tucked under his arm, wheeled across the field for a dozen yards, and then, pausing suddenly, raised the ball and sent it hurtling further out to where, some fifteen feet from the side line, Harry awaited it. Too late the St. Matthew’s players saw the trick. Yards separated their nearest player from Harry as the latter, catching the well-aimed pass coolly, romped unmolested over the line in three strides and, dodging a blue-legged enemy, placed it fairly between the posts!

“Harry ... catching the well-aimed pass coolly, romped unmolested over the line.”

Two minutes later, after Corson had attempted the goal and failed and after the scoreboard had changed its figures to 15 to 10, and after the final whistle had shrilled, a delirious mob took possession of Barnstead Field. Brown flags snapped and waved, caps flew into air and rained earthward and hundreds of hoarse throats cheered and shouted. And Harry, swaying rather dizzily about on the[101] shoulders of two enthusiastic admirers, following the confused line that wound its way around the gridiron, caught sight of a grinning face in the throng beside him and waved a hand.

Perry Vose’s grin broadened.

“Who gave you the black eye, kid?” he called.

“Oh, a friend of mine,” laughed Harry. “Who spoiled your nose for you?”

“A friend of mine!” chuckled Perry. Then, thrusting his way forward, “Here,” he said to one of Harry’s bearers, “let me get there. You’re too small for this job. Why, you’ve got the biggest fellow in school there! Didn’t you know that? Vamoose, I tell you!”

And the youth, looking doubtfully into Perry’s grinning countenance, with its battered nose and swollen lip, finally yielded his place. It didn’t do to make Perry Vose angry!

[102]

“Willard!”

Mrs. Morris’s rebuke sounded only half-hearted, and she shot an apologetic glance at Willard’s father. But for once Mr. Morris, the sternest of disciplinarians, chose to be deaf. After all, the boy’s disappointment was keen, and so his criticism of Grandma Pierson elicited only the perfunctory warning from his mother. The boy’s disappointment was shared to a scarcely lesser extent by his parents, but they had learned to bear disappointment in silence. Willard, waiting for his father’s reprimand, sat with downcast eyes fixed on his untasted breakfast. Finally, however, as the storm did not break, Willard took courage and went on, but with more caution.

“Well, I can’t help it,” he insisted, with a gulp. “She’d ought never to have promised if she didn’t mean to keep it!”

“I’m certain, Will,” responded Mrs. Morris[106] soothingly, “that your Grandma Pierson fully meant to keep it. Mother was never the sort to say a thing and not mean it.”

“If she hadn’t died, she’d have done just as she said she’d do,” said Mr. Morris. “I guess she expected to live a good many years yet. Eighty-one isn’t very old; leastways, it wasn’t for her; she was such an active old lady. When were we out there before this time, mother?”

“Three years ago Christmas. That was when she made the promise. I sort of wish she hadn’t, seeing it’s turned out as it has.”

“She might have known she’d have to die sometime,” said Willard rebelliously. “Seems as though she might have made a new will after she promised what she did.”

“Maybe she put it off, thinking there’d be more money later,” replied Mr. Morris. “Cousin Joe writes that the whole estate won’t amount to much more than five thousand dollars; and some of that’s in a mortgage that’ll take a lot of handling to realize on. Fact is, mother, I don’t just see where she expected to get the money for Will, anyway, do you?”

Mrs. Morris shook her head thoughtfully.[107] “Perhaps she thought that by the time Will was ready for college she’d have the money. She certainly meant to do something for him, George. She’d always been especially fond of Will.”

“Oh, she meant it, I’m sure. She asked me how much it would take to see him through college, and I told her two thousand. It was her own idea. There wasn’t anything actually said to that effect, mother, but I think it was sort of understood that Will was to have that money and that we weren’t to expect anything more. And there wasn’t any reason why we should. She’d have done quite enough for us if—if she’d done that. As it is, Clara and Alice get it all.”

“I suppose that’s my fault, George. You see, I always wanted her to think we had—had plenty. Mother was always pretty hard on folks that couldn’t get along. And then Clara and Alice both marrying men that couldn’t support them——”

“I know. I’m glad you did. And I’m not begrudging the money to your sisters. They need it more’n we do, even if—— Anyway, we’ve[108] always managed to get along pretty fair so far, haven’t we? Maybe we haven’t had many luxuries, Jenny, but we’ve managed, eh?”

“Of course we have. You and I don’t need luxuries. I’ve always had everything I really wanted, George. I’d have liked Will to go to college, seeing he’s set his heart on it, but maybe this is for the best, too. Maybe he will be more help to you in the shop.”

Willard, staring distastefully at his plate, frowned impatiently. “That’s fine, isn’t it?” he demanded. “Here I’ve been telling all the fellows that I was going to college in the fall; and I’ve gone and taken the college course, too; and Mr. Chase has been helping me with my Greek! And now—now I can’t go after all! I think it’s”—he gulped—“too bad!”

“Maybe you’ll get there, son, although I don’t see much chance of it next fall. Maybe, though, if business picks up——”

He stopped with a hopeless shake of his head. Willard scowled.

“I’ve heard that before,” he muttered, “about business picking up. It never has, and I guess it never will.”

[109]

“Son, you’ve said about enough,” replied his father sternly. “If I can find the money to send you to college, you’ll go. If I can’t, you’ll have to buckle down at the shop. There’s plenty of men doing well who never went to college. I wanted you should go, but maybe it wasn’t intended so.”

“Well, I’m going, sir! When I get through high school next Spring I’m going to find some work and make enough money to start, anyway! If I can make good on the football team this year maybe I’ll get an offer and college won’t cost me anything.”

“You let me hear of you doing anything like that,” said Mr. Morris grimly, “and I’ll take you out in the shed as I used to and just about take the hide off you. You ain’t too big yet, my boy!”

“He wouldn’t do a thing like that, father. He was just fooling, weren’t you, Will?”

“Lots of fellows do it,” muttered Willard.

“But you’re not to be one of them,” returned his father decisively. “Here, let me see those envelopes.”

Willard passed the packet across to him and[110] watched glumly while his father slid off the faded blue ribbon that held the envelopes together. One by one Mr. Morris held them up and peered into them for the third or fourth time.

“Unless she meant to put some money or a check in one of these,” he murmured, “I can’t understand it.” He laid the six envelopes in a row on the cloth and shook his head over them. Then he took up the papers which, with the strange and disappointing legacy, had arrived from the West by the morning’s mail, but they told him nothing new. Grandmother Pierson’s will, a copy of which Cousin Joe had sent, was short and definite. There was a legacy of some personal trinkets and a small sum of money to an old family servant, and “To my grandson, Willard Morris, the contents of the packet inscribed with his name, which will be found in the mahogany workbox on the table in my bedchamber.” The rest of the estate, real and personal, was bequeathed in equal shares to Mrs. Morris’s two sisters. Cousin Joe’s letter was brief. In pursuance of his duties as executor of the estate, he was forwarding the legacy mentioned[111] in the will; also a copy of the instrument in case they had forgotten its provisions. Willard was to sign the accompanying receipt; and Cousin Joe hoped they were all well.

The package had been done up in a piece of brown paper and tied with a white string—what Grandma Pierson would have called “tie yarn.” On the outside, in the old lady’s shaky writing, was the legend, “For my Grandson, Willard Morris.” Inside they had found six envelopes which, once white, had yellowed with age. The inscription on each was the same: “Miss Ellen Hilliard, Fayle’s Court House, Virginia,” and the postmarks showed various dates in the years 1850 and 1851. In the upper right-hand corner of each envelope was a stamp quite unlike any Mr. Morris had ever seen. Five were buff and one was blue. Each was round and about the size of a silver half dollar. They were printed in faded black. A circlet of stars ran around the outer edge and inside was the inscription, “Postoffice, Alexandria.” In the center was the word “Paid,” and under it a figure “5.”

[112]

“You say these were your father’s love letters, Jenny?” asked Mr. Morris.

“Yes. I have seen them many times. Mother read me parts of them, too, sometimes. He wrote beautifully, father did. Mother always kept those letters in that old workbox with the green velvet lining; the one the will speaks about. It was her treasure box, and it was always kept locked. I remember there were three or four daguerreotypes there, and some clippings from newspapers and such things.”

“She was careful to take the letters out,” mused Mr. Morris.

“Maybe she had a feeling that she wouldn’t get well. I suppose she destroyed the letters. She wouldn’t want anyone reading them afterward, you see, mother wouldn’t. Of course, it might be that her mind wandered a little toward the end and she thought she was really doing something for Will when she put his name on the package.”

“But Cousin Joe says the will was made almost a year before she died,” objected Mr. Morris. “I guess her mind was all right then. Well, it’s plumb funny.” He arose from the[113] table with a sigh. “That’s what it is, plumb funny.” He pulled out a big silver watch and looked at it. “Son, I guess it’s time we were hiking along.”

Willard pushed his chair back disconsolately and arose. He was seventeen, rather tall for his age, and had strong, broad shoulders like his father’s, or as his father’s had been before constant bending over desk and bench had stooped them. The boy had a good-looking, frank face and nice eyes, but just at present the brown eyes were gloomy and the face expressed discontent.

“Better take those envelopes before they get lost, Will,” counseled his mother. He regarded them with a scowl of contempt.

“I don’t want the old things,” he muttered as he left the room. Mr. Morris, looking after him, frowned and then sighed. Mrs. Morris echoed the sigh.

“I guess this settles it, Jenny,” said Mr. Morris, tucking the Audelsville Morning Times in his pocket. “If I could get hold of the money any way, he should have it, but I don’t know where to turn for it, and that’s a fact.”

[114]

“Never mind, dear,” said Mrs. Morris as her husband stooped over her chair to kiss her. “There’s almost a year yet and something may turn up. You never can tell.”

“Well, might as well look on the bright side, I suppose,” returned Mr. Morris, “although things haven’t been turning up my way much of late, Jenny.”

His gaze encountered the envelopes again, and he stared at them a moment. Then, with a puzzled shake of his head, he passed out.

It was a fortnight later that Willard, returning from practice with the high school football team, and passing in front of Mrs. Parson’s boarding-house, heard his name called and looked up to see Mr. Chase at the open window of his room.

“Come up and pay me a visit, Will,” said the Assistant Principal.

Willard hesitated a moment. He had been rather avoiding Mr. Chase for the last two weeks. Now, however, he waved his hand and, turning in at the gate, entered the house and climbed the stairs to the teacher’s room. Mr. Chase was seated at a small table by the window.

“Pardon me if I don’t get up, Will,” he said. “I’ve only got two more of these things to paste, and I want to get them in before the light goes. Well, how are you getting on at football?”

[116]

“Pretty fair, sir.”

“Find it more interesting than our old friend Homer, eh? You know we haven’t had a Greek lesson for a long time, Will.”

“No, sir, and I—I guess there isn’t any use having any more.”

“Why, how’s that? Think you know enough to get by those exams, do you?”

“I’m not going to take them, sir. I—I’m not going to college, after all.”

Mr. Chase looked up in surprise. “Not going!” he exclaimed. “Why, Will, I thought that was all settled. What’s changed your mind?”

Willard very nearly replied that Grandma Pierson had changed his mind, but he didn’t. Instead, “Father can’t afford it, sir,” he answered.

“Dear, dear, I’m sorry! Is it—quite settled? Isn’t there any hope, Will?”

“No, sir, I don’t think so. Not unless I earn the money somehow, and I guess I couldn’t do that!”

“It would take some time,” Mr. Chase agreed dubiously. “You’d need pretty nearly three[117] hundred a year, Will, although you might scale that down a little. I’m sorry, awfully sorry.”

“Yes, sir, so’m I.”

There was silence for a moment. Then Mr. Chase asked: “And you don’t think you want to go on with the Greek, eh? Suppose you found next Fall that you could go after all, my boy. You’d have hard work passing, I’m afraid.”

“I don’t believe there’s any hope of it, sir.”

“Still, the unexpected sometimes happens, doesn’t it? You wouldn’t want to lose your chance for the want of a little Greek, now, would you?”

“No, sir, but——”

“Then don’t you think we’d better go on with our Friday evenings, Will? I do. Even if you shouldn’t get to college, my boy, a working knowledge of Greek isn’t going to be a bad thing to have. Now suppose you drop in on Friday after supper?”

“Very well, sir, I guess I might as well. I—I haven’t studied much lately, though.”

[118]

“Better look it over a bit before Friday then. There, that’s done! Now we’ll light up and have a chat.”

“I didn’t know you collected stamps, Mr. Chase,” said Willard as the teacher closed the window and lighted the study lamp on the big table.

“Haven’t I ever shown you my books?” asked Mr. Chase. “Yes, I’m a ‘stamp fiend,’ Will. It’s not a bad hobby. Expensive, though. I couldn’t afford it if I was married. I suppose,” he added ruefully, “I oughtn’t to afford it now.”

“I started to collect stamps when I was a little kid,” confided Willard as he took the chair Mr. Chase pushed forward, “but I didn’t get very far. I don’t know what ever became of my stamps. I guess they’re in the attic, though.”

“Yes? Did you have many?” asked Mr. Chase as he washed the mucilage from his fingers at the stand.

“Only about a hundred, I guess. I had a Cape of Good Hope, though.”

“Did you?” Mr. Chase inquired. “Which one was it?”

[119]

“I don’t remember. Is there more than one!”

“Quite a few,” Mr. Chase laughed. “And they differ considerably in value. You must show me your collection sometime.”

“I guess it isn’t worth showing,” murmured Willard. “I guess all my stamps are just common ones. There was one, though, I paid a dollar for. I forget what it was. I suppose you have an awful lot?”

“About twelve hundred only, I believe, but some of them are rather good. When I stop to consider what those stamps have cost me, though, I have to shudder. Still, stamps—rare ones, I mean, aren’t a bad investment. You know the good ones increase in value right along.”

“Twelve hundred!” exclaimed Willard. “Why, I didn’t know there were so many stamps in the world!”

“There are a good many more than twelve hundred,” replied the teacher with a smile. “And I don’t go in for ‘freaks’ much, either; nor revenues. Revenues in themselves would keep a man busy.”

[120]

“What do you mean by freaks?” asked Willard.

“Oh, ‘splits’ and ‘blanks’ and surcharges and such. Of course, though, I have a few surcharges.”

“And what is a split, Mr. Chase?”

“A split is a stamp of, say, two-cent denomination cut diagonally across. Each half equals in value a one-cent stamp. Some time ago when an office ran out of one-cent stamps it would cut up a lot of twos. Sometimes a ten-cent stamp was split to make two fives, and in one case three-cent stamps were cut in such a way that two-thirds of them did duty for a two-cent stamp. Later, when the government ran out of a certain issue they merely took a stamp of a lower denomination and surcharged it, that is, printed over it the larger denomination. I have a friend who makes a specialty of provisional stamps, such as ‘splits’ and ‘postmasters.’ He pays no attention to anything else, and has two full books already, I believe.”

“Some stamps cost a lot, don’t they?” Willard asked.

“Unfortunately, a good many of them do,”[121] Mr. Chase chuckled. “There’s a rumor that someone paid seventeen thousand dollars not so long ago for a pair of Mauritius postoffice stamps, one-penny and two-penny. Those are mighty rare and I’ve never seen them. Then there’s the British Guiana one-cent and the Niger Coast Protectorate; one of the latter—I forget its list number—is perhaps the rarest stamp in the world, since only one of its kind was ever printed.”

“My!” said Willard. “That must be worth a lot!”

“So much that it’s never had a price put on it, I guess. Some of our own stamps are worth quite a lot, too. Take some of the Postmasters’ Provisionals, for instance. Only one copy is known of an issue from Boscawen, New Hampshire, and whoever has that surely has a prize.”

“What is a Postmasters’ Pro—what you said?”

“Provisional?” laughed Mr. Chase. “I’ll show you.” He reached under the table and pulled out a big square album, and Willard moved his chair nearer. “Provisional stamps were made and issued by postmasters in the[122] days before we had a national postage stamp system. Here’s one issued in Trenton, New Jersey, and here’s one from Portland, Maine. See? Some of them are pretty simple; just the name of the office and the words ‘Paid—5.’ They’re interesting, though, and, as I say, some of them bring a lot of money.”

“How—how much did those cost?” asked Willard eagerly.

“These? Oh, not much. This one was twelve and—let me see—that was eight, I think, and——”

“Eight cents!”

“Hardly! Eight dollars, my boy.”

“Well—well, if they came from some other place would they be worth that much?” stammered Willard.

“Depends on how many there are; how rare they happen to be. It’s scarcity that fixes the prices on stamps—and most other things.”

“Supposing they were from Alexandria, Virginia,” Willard pursued rather breathlessly.

Mr. Chase closed the book and replaced it under the table.

“If they came from Alexandria and were genuine,[123] they’d be worth quite as much as these, perhaps more. Why do you ask? You don’t happen to have one in your collection, do you?”

“Yes, sir! That is, not in my collection, but I’ve got some that—that my grandmother sent me.”

“What! Postmaster Provisionals of Alexandria, Virginia? Are you certain? What are they like? What are they?”

Mr. Chase was plainly interested.

“I don’t know whether they’re Postmaster Provisionals,” replied Willard, “but they’re a good deal like those in your book. They’re round and sort of yellowish-brown——”

“Yes, buff; go on!”

“And they have some stars around the edge and the name and ‘Paid—5’ in the middle, just like those of yours.”

“You say your grandmother gave them to you?”

“Yes, sir.” And thereupon Willard told about the legacy and Mr. Chase learned the real reason why the college career had been abandoned. And when he had finished Mr. Chase strode to a bookshelf and returned with a catalogue.[124] After some excited turning of pages he paused and read silently. “That’s right,” he said finally. “Your description tallies with Scott’s. Where are those envelopes, Will? Can you let me see them?”

“I guess they’re at home. I haven’t seen them since that day. I—I hope mother didn’t throw them away!”

“Throw them away!” Mr. Chase slammed the book shut, tossed it aside and seized Willard’s cap from the couch. “Put this on,” he exclaimed, “and scoot home! Find those envelopes and bring them over here! If your mother has thrown them away you’re out sixty or seventy dollars at least!”

“Where are those envelopes, mother?” asked Willard five minutes later, bursting into the kitchen where Mrs. Morris was in the act of sliding a pan of hot biscuits from the oven. The pan almost fell to the floor and Mrs. Morris straightened up to remonstrate against “scaring a body to death,” but the words died away when she saw Willard’s face.

“What envelopes do you mean, Will?” she gasped.

[125]

“The ones Grandma Pierson sent! Mr. Chase says those stamps may be worth seventy dollars!”

“Sakes alive, Willard Morris! You don’t mean it? Why—why—what did I do with them? Haven’t you seen them around?”

“No, I haven’t seen them since the day they came. Don’t you know what you did with them, mother?”

“Why—why,” faltered Mrs. Morris, “it doesn’t seem as if I did anything with them, Will! I don’t recollect seeing them after you and your father went off. Will, you don’t suppose”—her voice became scarcely more than a whisper—“you don’t suppose I threw them away, do you?”

“You wouldn’t be likely to, would you?” he asked anxiously. “Won’t you please try and think?”

“I am trying, Will, but—but I can’t remember seeing them again.” She hurried to the dining-room, which was also the sitting-room, and began a feverish search. Willard followed behind her and looked wherever she did, and in two minutes the room had the appearance[126] of having been devastated by a cyclone. And in the midst of the confusion Mr. Morris entered. Being excitedly informed of what was going on, he, too, took a hand in the hunt. But ten minutes later they all had to acknowledge that the envelopes were not in the room.

“I don’t see what I could have done with them,” reiterated Willard’s mother for the twentieth time.

“Maybe you shook ’em out the door when you shook the cloth,” suggested Mr. Morris. And his wife had to own that such a thing was quite possible, adding, however, “Only I’d been almost certain to have seen them when I cleared the dishes off. Are you sure you didn’t take them, Will?”

“I know he didn’t,” said Mr. Morris. “I remember seeing them lying right here when I left the room.”

“Well, then I did something with them, that’s certain,” murmured Mrs. Morris, looking dazedly about, “but I don’t see what!”

“I guess we’d better have supper,” said Willard’s father. “We can have another look afterward.”

[127]

So Mrs. Morris returned to her duties, while Willard, preparing hastily for the meal, returned to the room and continued the search. At the table he ate very little, and as soon as supper was over he began rummaging again. The search ultimately led from the dining-room to the parlor, from the parlor to the kitchen, from the kitchen to the hall closet and from there to the bedrooms upstairs. And at eight o’clock Mrs. Morris, lamp in hand, was peering about in the attic! At half past eight Willard went to the telephone and, calling Mr. Chase up, acknowledged defeat.

“You can’t find them?” came the teacher’s voice. “That’s too bad. Are you—er—are you quite sure you had them, Will?”

“Yes, sir, I am,” replied Willard a trifle shortly. “If you don’t believe me you can ask father.”

“Have you looked in the waste baskets and the ash can and—and those places?”

“We’ve looked everywhere. I guess what happened was that my mother shook the tablecloth at the back door and they were in it and fell out.”

[128]

“Well, I’d have another look to-morrow by daylight,” advised Mr. Chase in disappointed tones. “Don’t give up yet, Will. You may find them tucked away where you least expect to. I’m awfully sorry. Good-night.”

Willard hung up the receiver. “Of course he doesn’t care,” he muttered resentfully. “Gee, if I could find those envelopes and get seventy dollars for the stamps, I’d have to earn only about a hundred and eighty to have enough for the first year. He says it’ll take ’most three hundred, but I’m sure I could do it on two hundred and fifty. And if I could get through the first year they’d have a whole lot of trouble keeping me away the second!”

In the morning, after a sleep badly disturbed by dreams, Willard was up early and, after the kitchen fire was started, was out in the back yard searching around the kitchen doorway, amongst the currant bushes and along the picket fence. But he found no trace of the envelopes. That was Tuesday and hope didn’t actually fail him until Thursday. On that day Mr. Morris put his foot down.

“They’re gone for good, mother, and there[129] isn’t any use fretting about ’em. So you just stop pulling the house to pieces and settle down again. When a thing’s so, it’s so, and you can’t make it any other way, no matter how much you worry about it. You haven’t taken time to eat a decent meal since the pesky things were lost. Now I say let ’em go and have an end of it!”

That evening Willard found his old stamp book in the attic and took it over to Mr. Chase. But although the latter went through it carefully, he found no prizes there. The entire contents wouldn’t have brought a dollar at a stamp dealer’s. When he was leaving Mr. Chase reminded him that they were to begin the Greek lessons again the next evening. Willard hesitated and then promised half-heartedly to come. What was the good of knowing Greek if he couldn’t get to college?

But at seventeen no disappointment is big enough to last forever, and Friday was a wonderful Autumn day with just the right amount of tingle in the air, and at football practice Willard played so well that the coach promised to let him start the game against Shrevesport[130] High the next afternoon, and—well, after a good supper eaten with a healthy appetite, Willard had quite forgotten about Grandma Pierson’s legacy! And at half past seven he found his Iliad—it wasn’t an easy task, either, because since the search for the lost envelopes scarcely anything was where it used to be!—and set out for Mrs. Parson’s with a light heart.

“I didn’t have a chance to study this any,” said Willard as he seated himself across the table from Mr. Chase. “I’ve been too busy looking for those envelopes, you see. So you’ll have to excuse me if it comes slow.”

“All right, Will, I’ll forgive you this time. Do you remember where we left off? Wasn’t it where Ulysses and Diomede are setting out to spy on the enemy’s camp?”

“No, sir, we were way past that. I’ve got the place marked. I think——”

“Hello, what’s wrong?” exclaimed Mr. Chase.

“Why—why—here they are! They were in this book!”

“Eh? What were in——”

“Those envelopes, sir! Look!”

[131]

And there they were, sure enough; all together and with the bit of faded blue ribbon about them! Mr. Chase, beaming, held out his hand for them. Willard, still exclaiming, hazarding theories as to how they got into his Iliad, followed around the table while Mr. Chase carefully slid off the band of ribbon and looked them over.

“‘Alexandria,’” he muttered, “‘Paid—5,’ They’re the real thing, Will! By Jove, what a find! Perfect condition, too! Not a tear on one of them! And no—hello, what’s this?”

“What, sir?” asked Willard.

Mr. Chase was staring at the last envelope as though he couldn’t believe his eyes. “Why—why, it’s blue!” he almost shouted.

“Yes, sir, I—I forgot that one was blue. There were five of them brown and one blue. Isn’t—isn’t it any good?”

“Any good!” exclaimed Mr. Chase. “Any good? It—it’s——”

Over went his chair and he had seized the catalogue from the shelf. “Any good!” he muttered as he turned the pages quickly. “Any good! Any——” His voice died out and Willard,[132] wondering, watched his lips move as he read silently. Then the teacher studied the envelope again. “‘Ditto,’ he murmured, ‘on blue.’” Then he closed the catalogue slowly and decisively and laid it on the table. Willard watched him fascinatedly. He had never seen Mr. Chase look so excited, so wild-eyed as this! Was it possible that the Assistant Principal had suddenly lost his mind?

“Will,” said Mr. Chase slowly and solemnly, “I—I can’t be sure—I’m afraid to be sure—but if this stamp is genuine it’s worth——” He stopped and shook his head. When he continued it was to himself rather than to Willard. “There may be a mistake. Perhaps the catalogue’s wrong. We’ll wait and see.”

“Do you mean,” asked Willard eagerly, “that the blue one is worth more than the others?”

Mr. Chase laid the envelope on the table and was silent a moment. When he answered he was quite himself again.

“It looks so, Will. Yes, I think I may safely say that the blue stamp is worth quite a little money. You see, there are two or three dozen[133] of the buff ones known of, but so far only one or two blues have ever shown up. But I may be mistaken; don’t get your hopes up until we’ve had it examined, my boy.”

“How much is it worth if—if it is—what you think?” asked Willard.

Mr. Chase shook his head. “Let’s not talk about that now. I—there’s the possibility that I may be mistaken. Will you let me have these for a week or so? I’d like to send them to the city and get expert advice.”

“Of course. You do anything you like with them, sir. Only if you care for it I’d like you to have one of them, Mr. Chase.”

“That’s nice of you, Will, but I couldn’t take one as a gift. I’ll gladly buy one if I can afford it. Or—wait a bit! If this blue one is worth what I think it is, I’ll accept one of the buff stamps as a present. How will that do?”

“I’d like you to have one anyhow, sir. Do you think the blue stamp is worth—worth a hundred dollars?” asked Willard.

“Will, I don’t dare to say. Yes, perhaps a hundred; perhaps more, much more—unless I’m making a bad mistake somehow. I’ll mail[134] these to-morrow and we ought to hear inside a week. Now—now let’s get back to the lesson.”

But Willard didn’t make much progress that evening.

Of course Mrs. Morris remembered when Willard told her.

“Isn’t it funny?” she asked beamingly. “It all comes back to me now. When I went to clear off the table those envelopes were there and I thought to myself, ‘Those are Will’s and he may want them after all, and I’ll just tuck them in his Greek book.’ It was lying on the side table there. And then I forgot all about it! I’m so sorry, Will!”

“It doesn’t matter a bit now,” Willard declared. “How much do you suppose that blue stamp will be worth, mother?”

But Mrs. Morris shook her head. “Goodness knows, Will! But maybe it’ll bring enough to buy you a nice suit of clothes and——”

“Clothes!” scoffed Willard. “That money is going to put me in college. If there isn’t enough of it I’ll get a job somewhere next summer and earn the difference. I heard of a fellow[136] who made nearly three hundred dollars one summer just selling books!”

“It’s my opinion,” declared Mr. Morris, “that that stamp is worth a whole lot of money and that your grandma knew it.”

“I don’t see how she could, sir,” Willard objected. “Why, even Mr. Chase isn’t certain about it yet.”

“Mother was a great one to read the papers,” said Mrs. Morris, “and I wouldn’t be surprised if she saw sometime that stamps like that were valuable. She was forever cutting things out of newspapers and saving them.”

“We’ll wait and see,” said Mr. Morris. “You’ll find I’m right, son. And if I am I’ll be mighty pleased!”

Waiting, though, was hard work for Willard. For a week he managed to be fairly patient, but at the end of that period he began to be uneasy. “You don’t think they got lost in the mail, do you?” he asked Mr. Chase.

“They couldn’t because I didn’t send them by mail. I was afraid to. I sent them by express and put—well, a good big valuation on them. So, even if they should be lost, Will,[137] you’ll have a lot of money coming to you from the express company.”

That was comforting, anyhow, and there were times when Willard hoped devoutly that the express company had mislaid the package. But it hadn’t. Four days later Willard was called to the telephone at suppertime.

“Will, can you come over here after supper?” It was Mr. Chase’s voice.

“Yes, sir! Have you heard——”

“Yes, I’ve got a letter. You come over——”

“Is it all right, sir? About the blue stamp, I mean.”

“Hm; well, you come over and I’ll tell you.” Something that sounded like a chuckle reached Willard. “Good-by!”

“I’m going over to Mr. Chase’s,” he announced. “He’s heard about the stamp. I don’t want any more supper!”

“What about it, Will?” his father asked eagerly. “How much’s it worth?”

“I don’t know yet. He wouldn’t tell me. Where’s my cap? Anyone seen—— Here it is! I’ll come back right away—if it’s all right!”

[138]

“Hello, Will!” greeted Mr. Chase. “Nice evening, isn’t it?” There was a perceptible twinkle in his eye and Willard grinned.

“Yes, sir, it’s a fine evening,” he answered with a gulp.

“Yes, we’re having wonderful weather for the time of year. I got a reply from that fellow in New York. What did I do with it?” Mr. Chase pretended to have mislaid it and dipped into one pocket after another. Willard squirmed in his chair. “Ah, here it is,” said the teacher finally, drawing the letter from his inside pocket. “Now, let’s see.” He opened it with tantalizing deliberation. “I asked him to examine those envelopes and give me an estimate of their value. I didn’t tell him we had four more of them, by the way.”

“No, sir,” murmured Willard.

“Well, he says he will buy the buff one for twelve dollars. That’s less than I hoped to get for them and maybe we might do a little better somewhere else. What do you think?”

“Yes, sir; I mean—I don’t know!” blurted Willard.

[139]

“Now in regard to the blue one——” Mr. Chase paused and looked across at the boy. What he saw seemed to please him, for he smiled. “I’ll read you what Watkins says about the blue one, Will. Let—me—see; here we are! ‘Of course you know you’ve got the prize of the year in the “black-on-blue.” I’ll take it off your hands if you want me to, but you’d probably do better at auction. The stamp is in perfect condition and, being on the original envelope, ought to fetch top price. There’s a big auction in December and you’d better let me list it for that if you want to sell it. Your letter doesn’t state whether you do or don’t. I’m keeping the stamps until I hear further. The last Alexandria Postmaster black-on-blue sold two years ago in this city to John Thayer Williams of Philadelphia. It was without envelope and slightly soiled. The price paid was twenty-six hundred. Your stamp ought to bring a couple of hundred more at least. Awaiting your instructions, respectfully yours, W. L. Watkins.’”

Mr. Chase folded the letter and smiled across at the boy.

[140]

“Well, what do you think of that, Will?” he asked.

Willard returned the smile rather tremulously.

“I think,” he began. Then he stopped, cleared his throat and began over again. “I think,” he said huskily, “that Grandma Pierson is going to send me to college after all, just as she promised!”

Daniel Webster Jones, Jr., sauntered along the aisle, his trim young body accommodating itself gracefully to the erratic swaying of the day coach. I speak of Daniel Webster Jones, Jr., as being trim, but you are not to picture him as slender. On the contrary, without being fat, he had in his fourteen years and some months of existence managed to cushion his frame with enough flesh to give him a comfortably well-rounded appearance. It seemed probable that later on the cushion would increase in depth and that the term trim would no longer be applicable. In fact, Daniel Webster Jones’s father—you saw his likeness on the cartoons holding his justly celebrated Creamette Biscuits—was quite abundantly upholstered. But at present, what with an easy and graceful carriage and a careful attention to the niceties of attire, Daniel Webster Jones, Jr., presented a most pleasing[144] appearance. Under a straw hat which was absolutely the latest cry in masculine fashions, the boy’s copper-brown hair was brushed sleekly back from a well-shaped forehead. Grayish blue eyes, a nose rather too button-like to be called classical, a cherubic mouth, a nice, firm chin with a dimple in it, all these features set in a round, healthy, rosy-cheeked face combined to make Daniel Webster Jones, Jr., thoroughly attractive. Yet it was, I think, the qualities of mind and character illumining the ingenuous countenance that won folks to him. The gray-blue eyes seemed veritable pools of truthfulness, the button-like nose proclaimed uncompromising integrity, the cherub lips appeared formed for the utterance of pure and beautiful thoughts, and when Daniel Webster Jones, Jr., smiled, one felt oh, so glad that such innocence and candor existed in a deceitful world!

The boy’s progress through the car was neither unnoticed nor unheralded. Small and admiring juniors looked appealingly upward and sought recognition with a wistful “How d’ye do, Jones,” while upper-class fellows,[145] rousing from the lethargy induced by a two-hour journey on a hot September afternoon, observed his advent with something of the same relief with which a traveler on the desert might catch sight of an oasis and hailed him hopefully with a “Hi, Jonesie!” But Daniel Webster Jones, Jr., merely nodded with just the correct amount of superciliousness to the juniors—one had to keep the kids in their place—and returned the greetings of the others with preoccupied gravity. Oddly enough this had the effect of causing smirks and winks and nudges amongst the older fellows and one felt glad that Daniel Webster Jones, Jr., was unconscious of the levity. One felt certain that it would have wounded him.

The car was filled almost to its capacity, yet here and there a seat held but one occupant. At such a seat, near the front of the coach, Jonesie—for after all why should we accord him the dignity of his full title when no one else did?—Jonesie, then, paused indecisively and caught the shy upward glance of the seat’s only occupant, a boy of perhaps thirteen years of age.

[146]

“Mind if I sit here?” asked Jonesie most politely. “Sorry to bother you, but everything’s pretty well filled up.”

“Not—not at all!” stammered the other boy. He tugged frantically at a fat suitcase bearing the inscription “J. A. W.” on the end and squeezed toward the window. Jonesie murmured his thanks and seated himself with a sigh, folding his arms and staring ahead of him with a thoughtful frown. The train swayed onward in a cloud of gray dust. After a moment the original occupant of the seat took courage and studied his neighbor out of the corners of his eyes. He liked what he saw and wondered sympathetically what weighty care was clouding the brow under the stunning straw. At that moment Jonesie unclasped his arms and began to study a purple blister at the base of the second finger on his right palm. The other boy, interested, looked, too. It was a most promising blister. He speculated as to the cause of it and considered its future treatment rather enviously. And at that moment the proud possessor of the blister looked up and caught his glance embarrassingly.

[147]

“Played thirty-six holes yesterday,” said Jonesie. “Hadn’t golfed before all summer.” He frowned at the blister, wiggling his finger experimentally. “Beastly bother,” he added disgustedly.

“Yes,” agreed the other, almost with enthusiasm. The sympathy seemed to draw Jonesie’s attention to his companion for the first time and he turned and shot a brief and speculative glance at him. Then,

“Randall’s?” he inquired.

“Yes, I—I’m just entering.”

“Ah!” Jonesie beamed with a sudden friendly interest. “That’s fine. Lower Middle, I suppose?”

“N-no, just Junior,” returned the other apologetically.

Jonesie nodded. “Should have thought you’d enter Lower Middle. You look it.” The new boy flushed with pleasure at the implied tribute to his age, wisdom and experience. “I’m in the Lower Middle myself,” continued Jonesie, crossing one smartly clad leg over the other and assuming an attitude promising confidential discourse. “Hope you will like the school.”

[148]

“I—I think so, thank you,” murmured the other. “I don’t know much about boarding schools, though. I suppose it will be—be sort of strange at first.”

“Probably,” replied Jonesie sympathetically. “Of course a new boy has quite a lot to learn, but you’ll get on to things after a bit. It isn’t a bad school, Randall’s. I dare say you know some of the fellows?”

“No.” The other shook his head a trifle dejectedly. “I guess I don’t know a soul there.”

Jonesie frowned. “That makes it harder,” he acknowledged. “But you’ll find friends after a bit,” he added hopefully. “Sooner the better, too, for there’s nothing like having an older fellow to—er—sort of give you a hand over the rough places.” Jonesie regulated carefully the expanse of violet and gray cuff showing beyond his coat sleeve. “At least, that was my experience. Take the matter of athletics, for instance—— But perhaps you don’t go in for that sort of thing?”

“Oh, yes!” replied the other eagerly, “that is, I hope to. I—I’m very fond of football.”

“Fine game, football,” commended Jonesie.[149] “And that’s a—er—a case in point. Of course you’ll want to make the School Team; every fellow does.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t expect to do that! Not the—the first year!”

“Why not? Fellows have done it. Don’t know why you shouldn’t if you buckle down to it. I dare say I had a close shave from getting on the School myself the first year. Unfortunately illness—er”—Jonesie’s gaze wandered along the bell rope—“illness prevented. Quite a blow to the Coach.”

“You—you are on the Team now?” asked the other eagerly.

Jonesie shook his head regretfully. “No, I never got into football after that. Doctor’s orders. Perhaps next year—I’m so much better——” He sighed and then smiled brightly, bravely. “Well, it doesn’t matter, I guess.”

“Oh, but if you’re really fond of the game,” exclaimed the other boy feelingly, “it must be—be an awful disappointment! I—I’m sorry!”

“Thanks. Yes, of course it is a disappointment, but”—Jonesie shrugged his shoulders—“life is full of disappointments and one soon[150] learns to—er—accept them philosophically. Now take your case—er—— You didn’t tell me your name, did you?”

“No. It’s Wigman.”

“Mine’s Jones, D. W. Jones. Well, as I was saying, Wigman, take your case. You may have to—to accept disappointment, too. You see, there’ll be piles of fellows trying for the Team, and some of them may show up as well as you will, although I will say”—and here Jonesie turned to scrutinize Wigman carefully and approvingly—“that from your looks you ought to have the making of a dandy player.” Wigman flushed under the compliment. “But there you are! Merit isn’t everything. You might play as well as another chap and yet he’d get the call just because he had—er—friends to speak for him. Do you see?”

“But—but that’s hardly fair, is it?” asked Wigman. “I thought Randall’s was a school where you—where every fellow had the same chance as every other fellow. I—I’ve heard so.”

“Sure! That’s so, to a certain extent. Still, you know yourself, Wigman, that if you were[151] captain of the Team—as you will be some day, or I miss my guess!—you couldn’t help favoring the fellow you knew, supposing he played as well as the other fellow, whom you didn’t know. It’s human nature, isn’t it?”

Wigman allowed that it was.

“Of course! There you are, then! So what you want to do is to make friends, Wigman; get acquainted right away and, if you can do it, find a fellow who’s close to Bing.”

“Bing?” faltered Wigman.

“Yes, Carey Bingham. He’s captain this year. His chums call him Bing for short. Nice chap, Bing. I’ve just been having a chat with him in the smoker. Bing has a queer idea that I’m a judge of football material. Maybe he isn’t so far wrong, either; I’ve picked more than one green player and seen him develop into a wonder. And I don’t believe I’ve picked a bad ’un yet. We were talking over this year’s prospects. Bing’s inclined to be a bit discouraged and—er—pessimistic, but I told him that to my mind we had as good an outlook as ever we’d had. Quite cheered up, he was, when I left him. Wanted me to stay and go over the[152] schedule with him, but I couldn’t stand the smoke any longer. Well, here’s the bridge. We’ll be at Chester Hill in five minutes. I must get my things together. Awfully glad to have met you, Wigman, and if there’s anything I can do for you just let me know, will you?”

“Th—thank you,” said the other boy gratefully. “But I wouldn’t think of bothering you.”

“No bother at all. Tell you what I’ll do, Wigman.” Jonesie drew forth a silver card case, abstracted an oblong slip of thin cardboard bearing his name and home address in ornate Old English letters and scrawled a line on it with a silver pencil. “There’s where I hang out—18 Hawthorne. Look me up as soon as you get settled or let me know where to find you and I’ll drop in. Maybe I can put you on to the ropes a bit, eh? Very glad to do anything I can for a new fellow. Know what it means to be dumped down here with a couple of hundred strangers. Makes you feel sort of lost and all that for a bit. I know! Glad to have met you, Wigman. See you again soon, I hope.”

[153]

Jonesie smiled his best and sweetest smile, shook hands and sauntered off, leaving James Andrew Wigman filled with gratitude and admiration. Halfway along the aisle an imperious hand shot out and seized on Jonesie. Jonesie, after a vain attempt to elude his captor, faced him innocently.

“Hello, Carpenter,” he said sweetly. “How’s the boy?”

“What have you been up to, Jonesie?” inquired Carpenter, a big Senior, sternly.

“Me?” Jonesie’s candid countenance expressed surprise. “Why, nothing!”

“What kind of a yarn have you been stringing to that poor Fresh down there?” persisted Carpenter.

“You make me tired! Can’t a fellow be decent to a new boy, I’d like to know? I’ve been cheering him up a bit, that’s all. Found him terribly down in the dumps, poor chap. You Upper Class fellows never think of trying to make things a bit easier for new boys.” Jonesie mingled regret with indignation. Carpenter blinked. “Seems to me you fellows ought to remember how you felt yourselves when you[154] struck school and didn’t know anyone! It—it’s mighty lonesome business, Carpenter!”

“Is that so, Jonesie? Well, you’d better write to the Weekly about it. A fat lot of comforting you were doing, I’ll bet!” But after Jonesie had gone on, Carpenter glanced inquiringly at Gus Peasley, who occupied the seat with him. “Maybe Jonesie is right about it, too,” said Carpenter. “I dare say it would be a decent thing if some of us Upper Classmen sort of looked after the new boys a little. I remember myself——”

“Piffle!” This was Peasley, grinning. “Jonesie doesn’t care a hang whether a new boy is homesick! Bet you a dollar, Billy, he’s been up to some more of his deviltry!”

“Think so?” asked Carpenter doubtfully. “Maybe. I wouldn’t trust him. Just the same, Gus, there’s something in what he said.”

Peasley yawned as he got up to rescue his suitcase from the rack above.

“Jonesie could talk tears out of a brick, Billy,” he replied. “He’s the biggest little faker in school. Some day, if he doesn’t get hung first, he’ll be President!”

The Fall Term was three days old when James Andrew Wigman availed himself of Jonesie’s invitation. Jonesie returned to his room that afternoon in a condition of utter boredom. It had rained all day, there was no promise of clearing, and Jonesie, unfortunately susceptible to weather conditions, was as near having a case of the blues as is possible for a healthy boy of fourteen. After slamming the door and skimming his wet cap across the study in the general direction of the window seat he thrust his hands into his trousers pockets and stared disgustedly at his roommate. “Sparrow” Bowles, deep in the pages of a paper-covered romance, never even turned his head. Sparrow was fifteen, long, lank, dark-complexioned and lazy. Fate had thrown them together at the commencement of their Junior Year and Jonesie had never yet quite forgiven Fate. Finally, discovering that his scowling[156] regard was having no impression, he observed challengingly:

“Crazy old bookworm!”

Sparrow looked up and blinked.

“What’s eating you?” he inquired.

Jonesie grunted and sank into a chair. “Find out,” he said affably. Sparrow shrugged his narrow shoulders and turned back to his book. Jonesie continued to glower upon him. At length:

“You’ll turn into a book some day,” he sneered.

“You’ll turn into a jug of vinegar some day,” replied the other, without looking up. But the cleverness of the retort brought a smirk to his face. Seeing it, Jonesie reached a foot forward and dexterously sent the paper-covered volume hurtling across the room.

“Fresh!” he muttered.

Sparrow viewed him angrily through the round lenses of his rubber-rimmed spectacles.

“You pick that up!” he demanded.

Jonesie smiled cheerfully. “Yes, I will!” he responded. But the tone of voice rather contradicted the statement. Sparrow glared indecisively[157] from his companion to the book. Sparrow was not afraid of Jonesie, but he was far too lazy to engage in combat unless absolutely driven to it. Finally, with a shrug:

“It’ll stay there, then,” he said.

“For all of me,” agreed Jonesie.

Followed a silence. Sparrow blinked at the falling rain and the dripping trees on the campus. Jonesie gazed speculatively at Sparrow. But the scrap, as brief as it had been, had in a measure relieved his feelings, and at the end of five minutes he asked:

“What do you know?”

Sparrow scowled and shrugged his shoulders again.

“I know you make me sick,” he answered ungraciously.

“You make me a heap sicker,” responded Jonesie. “Anyone been in?”

“No—yes, there was a fellow in here half an hour ago asking for you.”

“Who was he?”

“Search me.”

“What did he say?”

[158]

“Nothing much. Left a note on the table, I think.”

“You think! Don’t you ever know anything?” Jonesie got up and found the note. “It wouldn’t have hurt you a whole lot to have said something about this when I came in, you lazy chump!” He glanced at it and thrust it into a pocket. “It’s important, too,” he added severely. “You’re a wonder, Sparrow!”

“I forgot it,” said Sparrow untroubledly. “What’s it about?”

“None of your business.” Jonesie rescued his cap from the floor, borrowed Sparrow’s umbrella from the closet and hurried out.

“Come back with that brulla!” shouted Sparrow.

As this produced no result, he shrugged his shoulders, picked up his book and started reading again.

The note was signed “James A. Wigman,” and informed Jonesie that he was rooming at Mrs. Sproule’s on Center Street, adding that if Jonesie had time to drop around he’d take it as a great favor. Now Jonesie was not the least bit in the world interested in young Mr.[159] Wigman. He had scraped acquaintance with him on the train for no other reason than he had exhausted all other means of entertainment. It had amused him to impose upon the new boy with an assumption of influence which he by no means possessed, and, once started, it was Jonesie’s artistic temperament which had led him to round off the incident with the presentation of a visiting card and an avowal of friendly interest. To-day, had there been anything else to occupy Jonesie’s talents, young Mr. Wigman’s appeal would probably have gone forever unanswered. But Jonesie was bored and a call on the new boy offered at least some slight variation of the monotony of life.

Wigman had a room to himself at Sproule’s, a dormer-windowed cell on the third floor. Pictures, rugs, pillows and knick-knacks had, however, lent an air of comfort to the white-walled apartment, and Jonesie, having been gratefully welcomed by Wigman and escorted to the only comfortable chair, affably commended the quarters.

“It isn’t bad, is it?” asked Wigman. “I brought quite a lot of truck from home.”

[160]

“One has to,” replied Jonesie. “Well, how’s it going, Wigman?”

“Very well so far, thank you. I haven’t got my courses quite straightened out yet. I find I’ve got to take French or German, and I didn’t expect that.”

“Yes, one of ’em’s required. You won’t mind ’em, though. Better take French. I did. It’s more use to you. I discovered that abroad. If you know French you can get around anywhere, even in Germany. How are you getting on with football?”

“Why—why, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” said Wigman. “I went out Wednesday, of course. I suppose I got along all right. They put me in D Squad. But I heard to-day that Mr. Cutler is going to let some of the fellows go Monday.”

Jonesie nodded. “He would, you know.”

“Yes, and—I wondered——” Wigman hesitated and sought for the right words. “I thought that perhaps, after what you said on the train the other day, Jones, that perhaps you wouldn’t mind—that is—wouldn’t mind—saying a word for me!”

[161]

“Hm,” mused Jonesie.

“Of course,” Wigman hastened to add, “I don’t want any favors, you understand! And—and I don’t want you to do it if you’d rather not, Jones. Only I thought—that if you just said a word to the Captain he might give me a chance, you see; let me stay on a little longer. I’m pretty sure I can make good, but I’m stale and I’m afraid they’ll let me go Monday.”

“I see.” Jonesie considered thoughtfully. “Of course,” he went on presently, “there’s always the Class Team to fall back on. You’d make that, I guess, without much trouble.”

Wigman’s face fell. “Y-yes, but—but after what you said the other day, Jones, I—I sort of want to make the School Team—or the Second, anyway! You know you said first-year fellows had done it.”

“Did I? Yes, of course I did! Quite right, too. By the way, what position are you trying for?”

“Quarter.”

“Gee!” murmured Jonesie. “That—er—complicates it, doesn’t it?” In response to Wigman’s unspoken question he went on. “I[162] mean that there’s only one quarterback position to fill and so, of course, it’s harder. You see that, eh? Now, if you were trying for end or tackle or guard or half you’d stand just twice the chance. Still——”

“I’ve always played quarter,” said Wigman. “I suppose I might try for half, though.”

“Well, there’s no hurry about that,” replied Jonesie. “I’ll speak to Bing about you. Of course I can’t promise anything. Bing’s a most conscientious chap and, while, of course, he’d do anything in reason for me, he might—er—there might be some reason why he couldn’t do this. There’s Cutler, for instance. Awfully opinionated cuss, that Coach. Hard to work with. Bing says so himself. Still, you sit tight, Wigman, and I’ll see what can be done.”

“Oh, thank you a thousand times, Jones!”

“Better not thank me until we see how it turns out,” warned Jonesie. “I may fall down, you see.”

“Even if you do I—I’ll feel mighty grateful to you, just the same. And—and I hope you don’t mind my asking you?”

“Not a bit! Glad to do anything I can, Wigman.[163] What’s the good of having influence if you don’t make use of it for your friends? I say, that’s a peach of a racket you have!”

“Yes, it isn’t bad. I have another one over there.” Wigman took down the Smith Special and handed it across for Jonesie’s examination. “I haven’t used it but once or twice. It’s a little too heavy for me, I find. I do better with the other one. Do you play?”

“Not very much. I’m fond of the game, though. Used to do fairly well before the doctors butted in.”

“I forgot about that,” murmured Wigman sympathetically.

Jonesie weighed the racket in his hand, felt the grip of it, swung it experimentally to and fro and tapped the mesh approvingly.

“Some racket that, Wigman. Don’t know when I’ve run across one I liked as well. Thanks.” He handed it back. Wigman accepted it, but did not return it to its place over the narrow mantel. Instead, he swung it nervously back and forth behind him, opened his mouth, closed it and exhibited all the signs of embarrassment. If Jonesie saw he pretended[164] not to. He picked his cap up and lounged across to the bureau, bending over the row of photographs displayed.

“This your father, Wigman? Fine-looking chap, by Jove! You take after him a lot, don’t you?”

“Do you think so?” asked Wigman in permissible surprise. “Folks usually think I look a good deal more like my mother. That’s her picture at the end there.”

Jonesie observed it critically, shot a look at Wigman and shook his head.

“N-no, I don’t think so. Of course there’s a strong likeness there, too, but it’s your dad you resemble most, I’d say. Well, I must be getting along. Sorry I wasn’t in when you called, Wigman. Try again, will you? I’d like you to meet my chum, Bowles. Fine fellow, Bowles. A bit studious for a lazy duffer like me”—Jonesie’s smile made a joke of that!—“but we get on first chop. Come over soon, Wigman. I wish you would.”

“Thanks, I—I’d like to. And I’m ever so much obliged about this—this other business. It’s frightfully decent of you, Jones!”

[165]

“Piffle,” answered Jonesie deprecatingly.

“It is, though,” Wigman went on earnestly. “And—and about this thing.” He brought the racket back into view. “I never use it, Jones, and I have another one, anyway; and it’s a lot too heavy for me, besides. And so—so”—Wigman was making hard work of it, stammering and blushing—“so I wish you’d take it, Jones!”

“Take it?” echoed Jonesie uncomprehendingly.

“As a gift, you know. I suppose it’s cheeky on my part, but——”

“My dear fellow!” Jonesie smiled sweetly, protestingly. “It’s certainly fine and dandy of you, but I couldn’t think of it! Positively I couldn’t, Wigman!”

“Well—of course——” The hand holding the racket fell limply. “I wish you might, though.”

“It’s fine of you, but—er—hang it, Wigman, it looks almost like a bribe!”

Wigman colored furiously. “Oh, I didn’t mean it that way. Honest I didn’t, Jones! You—you believe me, don’t you?”

[166]

“Of course I do! I know better, but others might think—well, you know what fellows are!”

“Yes, but they needn’t know, need they? I wouldn’t tell. You—you’ve been so awfully kind to me, Jones, and I don’t know any fellows yet, and—and I’d just like you to have it! It would be awfully good of you if you would!”

Jonesie was affected by this appeal. He hesitated on the very verge of another refusal. Wigman, seeing it, renewed his appeal.

“It isn’t as though I didn’t have another perfectly good one, Jones, because I have. I do wish you would!”

“Why—why, if you put it that way,” murmured Jonesie, vacillating. “But, I say, Wigman, it’s worth five or six dollars, you know!”

“Seven,” answered Wigman, “but that’s got nothing to do with it. I—I’d just like you to have it. Won’t you, please?”

“Well, if you really want me to——” Jonesie hesitated still, but Wigman thrust the racket into his hand. Jonesie, discovering it there, viewed it with surprise. Then, “Thanks, Wigman, it’s awfully decent of you, old man. I really haven’t done anything to deserve this,[167] you know, but I’ll accept it in—er—the spirit it is offered in. And, I say, let’s have a set some day, will you?”

“I’d love to!” exclaimed Wigman.

“Good!” Jonesie changed the racket to the other hand and offered the first to Wigman. “We’ll do it. Good luck, Wigman. Sit tight and leave everything to me! So long!”

Swinging the racket appreciatively as he entered the campus, Jonesie almost collided with a tall, broad-shouldered Upper Classman.

“Hi, kid, look where you’re going,” ejaculated the latter good-naturedly. Jonesie stepped out of the way into a puddle.

“Beg pardon, Bingham,” he said humbly.

All that happened on Friday. Saturday was a wonderful sunny day, and Jonesie, who had no recitation after half past ten in the morning, was very, very busy. There was nine holes of golf with “Pinky” Trainor before dinner, a visit to the village with Pinky in the afternoon and a lovely rough-house evening of it in Steve Cook’s room. Steve lived at Mrs. Sharp’s in Walnut Place, and as Walnut Place was a good half mile from the nearest dormitory and Mrs. Sharp good-naturedly lenient it was, in Pinky’s words, some party! Jonesie, Pinky and two other campus dwellers left at a quarter past ten by way of a window and a shed roof, skulking back to school by dark and devious ways. Consequently it was not until Sunday morning, always a sober period to Jonesie, that recollection of Wigman returned to him. The Smith Special reposed on the mantel and ever and anon as Jonesie[169] wandered about the study donning one garment after another, his glance fell upon it troubledly. Naturally Sparrow had been curious about the tennis racket and Jonesie’s easy statement that he had “bought it off a fellow” only aroused Sparrow’s incredulity.

“Bought it! Yes, you did! Bet you stole it!” jeered Sparrow. Which unjust charge so outraged Jonesie that he refused further enlightenment.

All during church, or more especially during the sermon—for Jonesie solved some of his most momentous problems while the preacher’s drone filled the quiet church—he considered Wigman. Something would have to be done, but he couldn’t see what. He sincerely wished he had never encountered Wigman. The whole thing was a nuisance! Of course he had hedged enough so that if Wigman was dropped from the football squad to-morrow Wigman couldn’t hold him to blame. Still, there was that racket. Jonesie loved that racket and didn’t want to give it up, which, he supposed, he’d have—well, ought—to do in case Wigman suffered in the morrow’s cut. Jonesie frowned and scowled[170] and cudgeled his brain, but discovered no solution. During the rest of the day—especially what time Jonesie sat and suffered in the composition of his weekly home letter—the Smith Special looked down upon him accusingly, reproachfully, until finally the boy arose and wrathfully cast it into the closet.

By Monday morning he had forgotten the Wigman problem. Nor did it occur to him again until, returning at dusk from an afternoon on the river in a canoe with Pinky, Sparrow growlingly indicated a note on the table. Jonesie’s first glance was at the signature, and when he read Wigman his heart sank uncomfortably. Then, taking a long breath, he moved his gaze to the top of the sheet and read:

Jonesie folded the note up with a broad smile. Then, whistling softly, he went to the closet and rescued the tennis racket. When it was once more on the mantel he had a sudden thought and his gaze darted across to where Sparrow sat under the drop light, reading. There was something far too good to be true in Sparrow’s preoccupation and Jonesie scowled. At length:

“Anything about this note you’d like to have explained?” he asked sarcastically.

Sparrow looked up, blinking. Then he shook his head slowly.

“N-no, I guess not. It’s none of my business, Jonesie.”

“Then what did you open it for?” Jonesie exploded.

“Why, it was sort of dark in here and I thought it was for me,” explained Sparrow calmly. “Of course, when I saw it wasn’t——”

[172]

“You read it through! After this you leave my notes alone. Do you hear?”

“Sure! I don’t want to read your old notes.”

“Then don’t do it,” growled Jonesie.

“All right. That fellow Wigman must be an awful fool, though.”

“Why?” challenged the other.

“Why, to give you that racket! I don’t know what he thinks you did for him, Jonesie, but I’m mighty sure you didn’t do it!”

A fortnight later all Randall’s was talking about the new football find. His name was Wigman, he was a Junior, he was only thirteen years old and he was turning out to be the finest little quarterback in years! Why, only the other day he had taken Rice’s place in the last two periods against Mercer High and driven the team like a veteran! To say nothing of having himself scored on one of the most daring and brilliant end runs ever seen on Randall’s Field!

When Jonesie heard this he smiled superiorly. “I knew that a month ago,” he said. “Wigman and I are old friends. In fact, it was largely due to my—my encouragement that he held on and made good. Had an idea when he got here that things went by favoritism and was all for giving up right at the start. ‘Don’t you do it,’ I said to him. ‘You peg along, old man, and show ’em what you can do. If you’ve[174] got the stuff in you Bingham and Cutler will pull you right along. Why,’ said I, ‘a fellow who can play the way you can ought to be Captain some day!’ My very words. You ask Wigman if you don’t believe me.”

“But how did you know he could play?” inquired an incredulous hearer. “Did you know him before he came up?”

“Never set eyes on him,” declared Jonesie truthfully, “but you can’t fool me on football players. I can size ’em up just by looking at ’em. And one little glance at Wigman was enough for yours truly. He hasn’t surprised me any. I knew!”

Wigman had fulfilled his promise to call on Jonesie, but the latter had been out. And as Jonesie had never returned the visit the acquaintanceship had not flourished. Jonesie considered himself well out of his difficulty and was fearful that Wigman might again request him to use his influence with Captain Bingham. But, as it happened, the new quarterback needed no one’s assistance. He was making good on his own account, and by the time the Big Game was a fortnight away it had become[175] a question whether Rice, the last year’s general, could retain his position. And that question was solved a week later. In the game with Lakeshore School Wigman started at quarter, and it was not until the game was safely “on ice” in the fourth period that the disgruntled Rice succeeded to the position. That, of course, was on the Saturday succeeding the final contest of the year, and the next afternoon, while Jonesie was chewing the end of his penholder and scowling at the Smith Special for inspiration in the composition of his weekly missive, there was an apologetic knock and in walked James Andrew Wigman.

Even Jonesie could not help but notice the change in the boy. He seemed to have grown taller and broader and a lot more certain of himself. Shaking hands, Jonesie was thankful that Sparrow was out of the way, for Wigman’s countenance proclaimed that he had come on weighty matters. “If,” said Jonesie to himself, “he wants me to ask any more favors of Bingham I’ll just have to refuse. This thing’s gone far enough!”

Wigman took a chair.

[176]

“I’m sorry to bother you, Jones,” he began soberly.

“Not at all,” murmured his host uneasily.

“I suppose you’ve heard that they’ve given me Rice’s place on the School Team?”

Jonesie nodded. “Glad to hear it,” he said.

“Well, of course it’s mighty hard on Rice. He’s an awfully fine fellow and he had the place cinched until I—I butted in.”

“Fortunes of war,” said Jonesie.

“Maybe, and I wouldn’t care if—if I wasn’t afraid that I—well, had sort of come by my good luck unfairly.”

“Eh?” ejaculated Jonesie.

“You know what I mean.”

“Can’t say I do, Wigman.”

“Well, you can’t deny, I suppose, that if it hadn’t been for you I wouldn’t have got the chance to show what I could do. Because it’s dollars to doughnuts, Jones, that Cutler meant to drop me the second week of practice. You remember?”

“Yes, oh, yes,” answered the other hurriedly. “Still——”

“Well, that’s what’s bothering me. Sometimes[177] I think I ought to drop out and give Rice a fair show. I don’t mean that I got my place by favoritism, exactly, but I guess there’s no use pretending that if it wasn’t for your interceding for me with Bingham, Rice would still be first-string quarter.”

“Hm,” said Jonesie judicially.

“And—and that brings me to another thing. Yesterday after the game I got to thinking about all this and I thought I’d go to Bingham and have a frank talk with him. So——”

“Good Lord!” groaned Jonesie.

“Pardon? I thought you spoke. So I did. I told him that I was afraid it was scarcely fair to Rice and—and suggested that maybe I ought to—to sort of drop out for this season.”

“What—what did he say?” asked Jonesie faintly.

“Why, that’s the funny part of it. He said he didn’t know anything about it! At first he even pretended he didn’t know who you were!”

“Good Old Bing!” exclaimed Jonesie, slapping his leg and grinning. “If that isn’t just like the boy!”

Wigman looked puzzled. “But he said——”

[178]

“Wait!” Jonesie held up a hand. “I’ll tell you just what he said, Wigman. First off he pretended he didn’t know what you were talking about. Didn’t he?” Wigman nodded. “Then he made believe he didn’t know who I was. When you explained he said, ‘Oh, Jonesie, you mean. Ha, ha!’ Just like that. Then he probably told you straight out that I’d had nothing to do with the thing, that I’d never mentioned your name to him and that, even if I had, it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference. Didn’t he? Isn’t that about what happened, Wigman?”

“Yes, pretty nearly exactly. And he said that the reason they’d put me in place of Rice was because I was playing a better all-around game and that nothing else had anything to do with it.”

“And there you are!” exclaimed Jonesie triumphantly.

“But—but why should he say he didn’t know you, Jones? He does, of course, and you have spoken to him for me, haven’t you?”

Jonesie smiled wisely. “He says not, doesn’t he?”

[179]

“Yes, but——”

“And he ought to know.” Jonesie winked meaningly. Vague comprehension illumined Wigman’s countenance.

“Oh!” he said doubtfully. “You mean he doesn’t want to acknowledge even to me——”

“Wigman, there’s a whole lot more politics in a school like this than you dream of,” responded Jonesie gravely. “Bing has his reason. Let it go at that. Don’t inquire too—er—closely.”

“Oh! Then you think——”

“Sure!”

“What?”

“Why, that you ought to take what you’ve got and ask no questions,” said Jonesie promptly. “Get me?”

“But if they have—have been easier with me than with other fellows——”

“It’s because you deserved it. Wigman, Cutler and Bing and I have—er—done what was wisest and best for you and the School. Remember, Wigman, there’s the School to think of, too. The greatest good to the greatest number, you know. Got to think of that, Wigman.[180] It may seem a bit tough on Rice, but don’t let that worry you. Just tell yourself that we have our reasons, Wigman, reasons which neither Bing nor I are ashamed of. If it was necessary we’d tell ’em to the School right out. But it isn’t. You go ahead and keep your mouth shut, Wigman, that’s all you need do.”

“And—and,” asked Wigman, visibly impressed, “you don’t think I’m taking any unfair advantage of Rice?”

“Not a bit. Take my word for it. Besides, Bing told you the same thing, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“There you are then! Don’t you trouble. If there’s any worrying to be done”—Jonesie arose and patted Wigman reassuringly on the shoulder—“if there’s any of that to be done you just leave it to me and Bing!”

“I wish,” murmured Tommy Piper, “they’d let me play!”

It was a chill, cloudy November afternoon, and Tommy, sprawled in the big armchair in front of the library fire, was very unhappy. Things hadn’t gone well to-day at school, where the teachers had been horribly unjust to him, nor at home, where he had been scolded for arriving late for dinner; Billy Blue, his most particular chum, was confined to the house with double mumps, and, to add to the burden of his woes, or to remind him of the principal one, half a dozen fellows, togged and sweatered, carrying a battle-scarred football and dangling their head guards, had just passed the window on their way to the field to practice for the final and all-important game of the year, that with Meadowville.

Usually Tommy went along, envious but interested, to watch the luckier boys at work, but[184] to-day he was at outs with the world. What was most awfully wrong was that George Marquis, captain of the Hillside eleven, refused to perceive in Tommy the qualities desired in a member of that gallant band of gridiron warriors. George said that Tommy was much too light for either line or backfield, while grudgingly acknowledging that he could kick and was fast on his toes. Consequently, Tommy, who all summer long had looked forward almost breathlessly to securing a position at the end of the line or as a back, had been—and still was—horribly disappointed. Of course he realized that he was pretty light—he was only thirteen, you see, and by no means large for his age—but he was quite convinced that he was clever enough at punting and drop-kicking and carrying the ball to atone for his lack of weight. But Captain Marquis didn’t think so, and Tommy was out of it for another year at least.

He had been trying to read a story that was all about school life and football, but he didn’t want his fun at second-hand to-day. He wanted to make history himself! The book toppled unnoticed[185] to the hearth rug and Tommy went off into a wonderful daydream, his round eyes fixed entrancedly on the glowing coals in the grate. He saw himself playing right halfback for Hillside in the Thanksgiving Day game with Meadowville, making sensational rushes, kicking marvelous goals from the field, cheered and applauded, a veritable football hero if ever there was one! When, after an hour of desperate battle, Hillside had conquered, and Tommy, on the shoulders of admiring comrades, was being carried from the field, he woke from his daydream with a sigh.

“I wish,” he said longingly, addressing no one in particular, since there was no one there, but gazing very intently at the gloomy corner of the room where lounge and bookcase met and formed a cavern of shadow, “I wish I could do all that! Gee, but I do wish I could!”

“Well,” said a small, gruff voice that made Tommy sit up suddenly very straight and surprised in his chair, “you were long enough about it!”

From the dark corner there emerged into the fire light the most astonishing person Tommy[186] had ever seen or dreamed of. He was scarcely higher than the boy’s knee and he was lamentably thin; and his head was quite out of proportion to any other part of him. But the queerest thing of all was his face, which was just as round as—as, well, as a basket ball and very much the same color. From the middle of it protruded a long and very pointed nose. His eyes were small and sharp and bright and his mouth was thin and reached almost from one perfectly huge ear to the other. He was dressed in rusty black, with pointed shoes that were ridiculously like his nose, and a sugar-loaf cap, from which dangled dejectedly a long green feather. And under one pipestem of an arm, clutched with long brown fingers, was a football almost as large as he was!

Tommy stared and stared and thought he must be dreaming. But the strange visitor quickly put that notion out of his head.

“Well! Well!” he said crossly. “Can’t you speak?”

“Y-yes, sir,” stammered Tommy. “But—I—I don’t think I heard wh-what you said!”

“Yes, you did! You didn’t understand.[187] Boys are all stupid. I said you were long enough about it.”

The visitor advanced to the hearth and took up his position on the rug, his back to the fire and his beady eyes blinking sharply at the boy.

“About—about what?” asked Tommy apologetically.

“About wishing, of course! Don’t you know fairies can’t grant a wish until it has been made three times? You wished once and then you kept me waiting. I don’t like to be kept waiting. I’m a very busy person. Nowadays, with everyone wishing for all sorts of silly things that they don’t need and oughtn’t to have, a fairy’s life isn’t worth living.”

“I’m very sorry,” murmured Tommy apologetically. “I—I didn’t know you were there.”

“‘Didn’t know! Didn’t know!’ That’s what every stupid person says. You should have known. If you didn’t expect me why did you wish three times?”

“Why, I—I don’t know,” said Tommy. “I was just—just wishing.”

“Oh, then maybe you don’t want your wish?” asked the other eagerly. “If that’s it, just say[188] so. Don’t waste my time. I’ve an appointment in Meadowville in—in——” He took off his funny sugar-loaf hat, rested the end of the feather on the bridge of his long nose and spun the cap around. “One—two—three—four——” The cap stopped spinning and he replaced it on his head. “In four minutes,” he ended sternly.

“Th-that’s a funny way to tell time,” said Tommy.

“I never tell time,” replied the stranger shortly. “Time tells me. Now, then, what do you say?”

“Th-thank you,” said Tommy hurriedly, remembering his manners.

“No, no, no, no, no, no!” exclaimed the other exasperatedly. “What about your wish? Do you or isn’t it?”

“Why—why, if it isn’t too much trouble,” stammered Tommy, “I’d like to have it very, very much.”

“Of course it’s trouble,” said the fairy sharply. “Don’t be any stupider than you have to be. But everything’s trouble; my life is full of trouble; that’s what comes of being a D. A.”

[189]

“If you please,” asked Tommy politely, “what does D. A. mean?”

“Director of Athletics, of course. It couldn’t mean anything else, could it? Really, you do ask more silly questions! Now then, now then, look alive!”

“Yes, sir, but—but how?” asked Tommy anxiously.

“Repeat the incan., of course.”

“The—the incan——?”

“Tation! Don’t tell me you don’t know it!” The fairy was almost tearful and Tommy naturally felt awfully ashamed of his ignorance. But he had to acknowledge that he didn’t, and, casting his eyes toward the ceiling in protest, the fairy rattled off the following so rapidly that it was all Tommy could do to follow him:

“Repeat, if you please!” said the fairy. Tommy did so, stumblingly.

The fairy grunted. “Stupid!” he muttered. “Didn’t know the incan. What are we coming[190] to? What are we coming to? In the old days boys didn’t have to be told such things. Modern education—puh!” And the fairy fairly glared at Tommy.

“I’m awfully sorry, Mr. Fairy,” he said.

“Hm, at least you have manners,” said the fairy, his ill temper vanishing. “Well, here it is.” He tapped the football he held with the claw-like fingers of his other hand.

“But—but I didn’t wish for a football,” faltered Tommy disappointedly.

“Of course you didn’t! Who said you did? You wished you might play in Thursday’s football game and be a hero and win the game for your team, didn’t you? Or, if you didn’t, how much? Or, other things being as stated, when?”

“Yes, sir, I did! And could I—could you really give me my wish?”

“Drat the boy! What am I here for? Wasting my time! Wasting my time! Fiddledunk!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said fiddledunk. I always say fiddledunk when angry. What do you say?”

[191]

“I say—I say——” Tommy had the grace to blush.

“I know!” exclaimed the fairy triumphantly. “You say jerriwhizzum! You shouldn’t! It’s almost swearing! You’re a very bad boy, and I don’t know that you ought to have your wish!”

“But I don’t!” gasped Tommy. “I never said jerriwhizzum in my life.”

“You just said it! Don’t tell me! Don’t tell me! Guilty or not guilty? Guilty! Remove the prisoner!” And the fairy grinned gleefully and maliciously at Tommy.

“But—but I meant I never said it before, sir!”

“Why don’t you say what you mean?” demanded the other evidently disappointed. “Are you or for what purpose did you not? Answer yes or no immediately. No answer. Discharged! Now then, what do you say?”

“Thank you very much,” said Tommy promptly. The fairy smiled.

“Not at all! Not at all! Glad to be of service. You have excellent manners—for a boy. Perhaps in time you’ll get over being so stupid.[192] I did. I used to be awfully stupid. You wouldn’t believe it now, would you?”

“Oh, no, indeed,” cried Tommy. The fairy actually beamed.

“I took a correspondence course, you see.”

“A correspondence course?” murmured Tommy questioningly.

“In Non-Stupidity. Try it.”

“Thank you, I—I might some time.”

“Time!” exclaimed the fairy, twirling his hat again on the tip of the feather and counting the spins; “dear me! Dear me! I’m—seven—eight—nine—nine minutes late! Did you ever? I really must go, I really must. Here is the Magic Football——”

“Oh, is it a magic football?” exclaimed Tommy in surprise.

“Of course it is! There you go again with your silly questions! Taking up my time! Didn’t I just tell you that I was—— How many minutes late did I say?”

“Nine, I think.”

“‘You think’! You ought to know. Now I’ll have to do it again.” He spun the hat and it stopped at six. “I thought you were wrong,”[193] he said in triumph. “You said it was nine! Stupid!”

Tommy thought it best not to argue with him. “What—what do I do with the football?” he asked.

“Play with it, of course. Didn’t think it was to eat, did you?”

“N-no, but——”

“This football will do everything you want it to. If you want it to come to you, you say, ‘Come’; if you want it to go, you say——”

“Go!” murmured Tommy.

“Not at all!” exclaimed the fairy testily. “I wish you wouldn’t jump to conclusions. If you want it to go you say ‘Og!’”

“Og?” faltered Tommy.

“Of course. When the ball comes to you it comes forward. When it goes away from you it must go backward. And ‘go,’ backward, is ‘og.’ I never saw anyone so stupid!”

“Oh,” murmured the boy. “But suppose I kick the ball?”

“Say ‘Og.’ But you’d better not kick it very hard, because if you do it might not like it. Magic footballs have very tender feelings.”

[194]

“But suppose I wanted to kick it a long, long distance?”

“Then say ‘Og’ several times. You’ll have to try it for yourself and learn the ography of it. Now call it.”

“Come,” said Tommy doubtfully.

The next instant the football was rolling into the fireplace, having jumped from the fairy’s arms, collided violently with Tommy’s nose and bounced to the floor again.

“Save it!” shrieked the fairy, jumping excitedly about on the rug.

But Tommy’s eyes were full of tears, produced by the blow on his nose, and by the time he had leaped to the rescue the ball was lodged between grate and chimney and the fairy, still jumping and shrieking, was quite beside himself with alarm. Tommy pulled the football out before it had begun to scorch, however, and the fairy’s excitement subsided as suddenly as it had begun.

“Stupid!” he said severely. “You almost made me ill. The odor of burning leather always upsets me. It was most unfeeling of you.”

[195]

“But I didn’t know,” replied Tommy with spirit, rubbing his nose gingerly, “it was going to come so hard!”

“You should have known. Seems to me, for a boy who goes to school, you are very deficient in ography and comeology.”

“I never studied them. We don’t have them.”

The fairy sighed painfully. “What are we coming to? What are we coming to? Never studied ography or comeology or non-stupidity! Oh dear! Oh my!” His long, thin, pointed nose twitched up and down and sideways under the stress of his emotion. “Well, well, there isn’t time to give you a lesson now. You’ll have to do the best you can. I’m very late. By the way, when you’re through with the football just say ‘Og!’ seven times and it will come back to me. But be careful not to say it seven times if you don’t want to lose it. Thank you for a very pleasant evening.” The fairy made a ridiculous bow, hat in hand, and backed away toward the dark corner of the room. Tommy started to remind him that it wasn’t evening, but concluded that it would only offend him, and so he didn’t. Instead,

[196]

“Thank you very much for the football,” he said. “Would you mind telling me who it is you are going to call on in Meadowville?”

“The name is—the name is——” The fairy lifted one foot and peered at the sole of a pointed shoe. “The name is Frank Lester. Do you know him?”

“N-no, but I know who he is,” answered Tommy anxiously. “He’s captain of the Meadowville Grammar School Football Team, and I’ll just bet he’s going to wish they’ll win the game!”

The fairy frowned with annoyance. “I can’t have that,” he said, shaking his head rapidly. “Besides, all the magic footballs are out. He will have to wish for something else.”

“But—but suppose he doesn’t?”

“‘Suppose!’ ‘Suppose!’ I’d just like to know,” exclaimed the fairy, “how many supposes you’ve supposed! You’re the most suppositionary boy I ever did see!”

“But if he did wish that,” pursued Tommy, “you’d have to give him his wish, wouldn’t you?”

The fairy grinned slyly and put a long finger[197] beside his nose. “If wishes were fishes,” he said, “beggars would ride.”

“I—I don’t think that’s just the way it goes,” said Tommy.

“Then don’t ask me,” replied the other indignantly. “Besides, you have kept me here until I am awfully late for my appointment. I must be—I must be——”

The fairy caught off his hat and began twirling it about on the tip of the feather.

“One—two—three——!” he began to count.

The hat twirled like a top and Tommy, watching it, felt his head swim and his eyes grow heavy.

“Twelve—thirteen—fourteen—twenty-eight——” came the voice of the fairy as though from a long ways off. Tommy wanted to tell him that twenty-eight didn’t follow fourteen, but he was too sleepy to speak.

“Thirty-three—thirty-six—thirty-two—fifteen——”

It was just a whisper now, away off in the hazy distance....

Tommy sat up suddenly and stared. The fairy was gone. He rubbed his eyes. After all,[198] then, it was just a dream! But as he stirred something rolled from his lap to the floor and went bouncing away under the couch. It was the magic football.

All that happened on Saturday afternoon. Monday morning Tommy sought George Marquis at recess and asked him to let him play on the football team. “If you do,” he said earnestly, “I’ll win the game for you.”

George laughed amusedly. “How’ll you do it, kid?” he asked, with a wink at Harold Newman, the quarterback.

Tommy flushed. “I—I can’t tell you that,” he stammered. “It—it’s a secret. But I can do it, George; honest and truly, black and bluely! Just let me show you, won’t you?”

“Oh, shucks,” said the captain, “if you know how to win the game you can tell me about it, can’t you? Anyway, I guess we can win it without you and your secrets, Tommy.”

But Tommy looked so disappointed that George, who was kind-hearted after all, said soothingly: “I tell you what I will do, Tommy.[200] If we’re ahead at the end of the third period, I’ll let you go in at half. How’s that?”

“You won’t be,” replied Tommy glumly. “If you really want to lick Meadowville, George, you’d better let me play. If you don’t you’ll be sorry for it. I can win that game for you, and I don’t believe anyone else can.”

George’s good nature took flight. “Oh, you run away, kid!” he said impatiently. “Anyone to hear you talk would think you were a regular wonder! You’re too fresh!”

“That’s all right,” said Tommy to himself as George went off scowling, “but you’ll have to let me play whether you want to or not! Unless,” he added doubtfully, “that fairy is just a—a fakir after all!”

But that didn’t seem probable, for there was the magic football, and the magic football did just as the fairy had said it would. That afternoon when he was let out of school half an hour late—Tommy’s head was so filled with football these days that there was almost no room in it for lessons and he was kept after school as a result—he hurried home, unlocked the closet door in his bedroom and took the[201] magic football down from the shelf. It looked just like any other football. There was the name of a well-known maker stamped on the clean leather and no one would have ever suspected that there was anything unusual about it. But there certainly was, as Tommy proceeded to prove when, the ball under his arm, he reached the vacant lot behind the dye works in the next street. The dye works had no windows on the back, there was a tumble-down board fence around the other three sides of the lot and Tommy was safe from observation.

When he had crawled through a hole in the fence he placed the football on the ground, swung his leg gently and said, “Og!” softly as his foot struck the ball. He hardly more than touched it with the toe of his scuffed shoe, but the ball flew up and away as straight as an arrow and bounced away from the fence at the further end of the lot. Tommy looked carefully about him. No one was within sight, and so he said, “Come!” very softly, and the ball began rolling toward him along the ground. That was too slow, and so Tommy said, “Come!” once more and a little louder. Whereupon the[202] ball left the ground and arched itself toward him. Tommy held out his hands, and the ball settled into them.

That day and every afternoon until Thursday Tommy continued his practice with the magic football until finally he was able to judge just how to address it to get the results he wanted. For a short kick or pass one “Og,” not very loud, was enough. For a longer kick a single “Og” spoken loudly accomplished the purpose. For a very long kick, say thirty or thirty-five yards, beyond which Tommy had never tried to kick a ball, three “Og’s” were sufficient. And the same rule worked when he wanted the ball to come to him. He could make it just trickle toward him slowly across the turf or he could make it come slam-banging to him so hard that as often as not he jumped out of its way so it would not knock him down. When he did that the ball, instead of going past, stopped short in the air and dropped to the ground. In fact, Tommy learned what the fairy had called “ography” and “comeology.”

A funny thing happened the next day. When he got home after school—he wasn’t kept in[203] that afternoon, for there was a teacher’s council in the Superintendent’s office—it occurred to him that perhaps it wasn’t necessary for him to go up and get the ball, even though it was in the closet with the door locked. At all events, he thought, there was no harm in trying it. So he said “Come!” very loudly and waited halfway up the front path. But nothing happened; not even when he said “Come!” again, very much louder. But when, for the third time, he said “Come! Come!” almost at the top of his lungs, something did happen. There was a frightful noise at the top of the house, a scream from Tilda, the maid, and a grunt from Tommy himself! When Tommy picked himself up, gasping for breath, he was six feet nearer the front gate and the football was bobbing up and down in front of him. It had taken him squarely in the stomach!

When he went into the house Tilda was sitting halfway up the stairs having hysterics, an overturned pail beside her and a flood of soapy water trickling down the steps. Something, declared Tilda, when she had been calmed by the use of smelling salts and other restoratives,[204] something had flown at her as she was going upstairs and clean knocked the feet from under her! Just what the something was Tilda couldn’t say, but she was sure that it had been “as big as a washtub, mum, and kind of yellow, with two big glaring eyes!” Tommy, hiding the magic football behind him, crept up to his room. In the top of the closet door was a big jagged hole and the floor was littered with splinters!

Tommy looked and gasped. Then he stared at the magic football. “I guess,” he muttered, “I won’t try that again!”

On Wednesday he went out to see practice. What he saw didn’t impress him greatly. Hillside didn’t play like a team that was going to win on the morrow. The scrub eleven held the School Team to one touchdown and a very lucky field goal, and, when practice was over, the supporters of the home team came back looking very dejected. Tommy waited for George Marquis at the gate.

“George,” he said, twitching the captain’s sleeve, “don’t forget what I told you!”

Captain Marquis pulled his arm away and[205] scowled angrily at the youngster. “Oh, dry up, Tommy,” he muttered. “You make me tired! I’ve got enough troubles without having to listen to your nonsense!”

Tommy went home and wondered for the hundredth time whether that fairy was putting up a game on him. Suppose, after all, the fairy had just been poking fun at him! If George didn’t let him play how was he ever going to win the game for Hillside? It was all well enough to have a magic football that would come or go just as you wanted it to and that would break its way through closet doors and scare folks into hysterics, but if you didn’t get into the game what good were a dozen such things? Tommy was sad and doubtful and pessimistic that evening.

But the next morning he felt more hopeful. To reassure himself he went over to the vacant lot with the football and put it through its paces to his entire satisfaction. And then, since it was Thanksgiving Day and the big game was to start at half past ten, he tucked the magic football in the hollow of his arm and joined the crowd that was wending its way to[206] the field. He passed Billy Blue’s house on the way, and, in answer to his whistle, Billy appeared at an upstairs window with his face swathed in cotton batting and linen and waved to him sadly.

“Where’d you get the football?” mumbled Billy enviously.

“A fair—a fellow gave it to me,” answered Tommy. “Or maybe he just loaned it to me. It—it’s a wonder!”

“Going to the game?”

“Yep. Wish you were, Billy.”

“So do I! We’ll get licked, though.”

“Bet you we don’t! Bet you we win!”

Billy tried to say “Yah!” but it hurt too much and so he contented himself with shaking his head and looking sarcastic. “Yes, we will!” he mumbled. “Like fun!”

“We will, though, and, Billy——” Tommy sank his voice so the passers wouldn’t hear. “Want me to tell you something nobody else knows?”

Billy nodded.

“I’m going to win it for ’em!” confided Tommy in a stage whisper. Then, with a magnificent[207] wave of his hand, he went on, pursued by Billy’s cruel and incredulous, if much smothered, laughter.

We needn’t dwell on that first thirty minutes of the game. From the point of view of Hillside it was a sad affair. Meadowville outrushed, outpunted, outgeneraled her opponent. The Hillside line couldn’t hold against the swift, hard attack of the visitors, and the Hillside ends were no match for the fast backs of the Meadowville team. When the first fifteen-minute period was at an end the score was 6 to 0. When the half was over and the rival teams trotted off the gridiron, the score stood Meadowville, 17; Hillside, 0!

Tommy, hunched up on a seat in the grandstand, the magic football clasped to his breast, watched and worried and almost wept. The fairy’s promise wasn’t coming true after all! He wasn’t to have his wish! All his lessons in “ography” and “comeology” were to be wasted! The magic football might just as well be back on the closet shelf, or, for that matter, back in Fairyland! Tommy felt very sorry for himself, very disappointed.

[208]

But he made one last, final appeal before yielding to the inevitable. He left his seat and squirmed through the crowd to the home team’s bench when Captain Marquis and his players came back, blankets and spirits both trailing. He got George’s attention for a minute finally, and reminded him of his promise. George was cross and impatient. “You again?” he exclaimed. “Promise? What promise? Oh, that? Well, I said if we were ahead, didn’t I? We aren’t ahead, so that settles that. Now get off the field, Tommy.”

Tommy didn’t, though. He carried his football to the bench and seated himself on it, unchallenged, among the substitutes. They were all too discouraged to care what Tommy did. Then the whistle sounded again and the game went on. The pigskin floated in air, was caught by a fleet-footed Meadowville player and brought back for many yards, the Hillside ends failing lamentably to stop the runner. A plunge at the line and another five-yard mark was passed. A wide end run and two more were traversed. Meadowville was literally eating up the ground, while from across the field came[209] the triumphant shouting of her supporters. And then, not three minutes after the third quarter began, a strange thing happened.

The football in use, a perfectly good, brand-new football, supplied by the home team at a vast expense, began to become deflated. A halt was called and the lacings were undone and they tried to blow it up again. But the air wouldn’t stay in it! It was most perplexing and most annoying. No one had ever seen a football act so before. But there was only one thing to do, and that was to find another ball. Of course, Hillside ought to have had another one, but she didn’t; at least, not at the field. There was an old football at George’s house, but George’s house was a good mile and a half away. So it devolved on Meadowville to loan her practice ball and the Meadowville captain, after sarcastically stating what he thought of the stinginess of Hillside, consented to have the ball used. But when they went to look for it, it couldn’t be found! It had been there a half hour before; they were all quite certain of that; but it wasn’t there now. Boys searched everywhere, even behind the stand, but to no[210] avail. And then, just when Captain Marquis concluded that he would have to dispatch a messenger to his house for the old football, someone brought word that Tommy Piper had a football and that he was sitting on the bench at that moment. Over hurried George.

“Let’s take your ball, Tommy,” he said genially. “Ours is busted.”

Tommy smiled and shook his head. George blustered.

“Come on! We’ll pay you for it, if you won’t lend it! Don’t be a meany!”

“I’ll lend it to you for nothing if you’ll let me play left halfback,” said Tommy. A howl of derision went up from the players and substitutes. George scowled angrily.

“What’s the use of being a hog?” he demanded. “Come on, let’s have it!”

But Tommy shook his head. George grabbed the ball and tried to tug it away. Tommy said “Come!” very softly under his breath and, although Harold Newman and Bert Jones and Gus Neely all helped their captain, not an inch would that ball budge! They had to give it up.

“Oh, let him play,” said Harold, very much[211] out of breath. “It won’t matter, George. We’re beaten anyway.”

George, very angry, hesitated and finally yielded. “All right,” he said gruffly. “You can play. Give us the ball. Gus, you’re off.”

Tommy, the recipient of a look of deadly hatred from the deposed Gus, trotted joyfully into the field and took his place. Harold whispered the signal code into his ear. “You won’t be able to remember it,” he added, “but you won’t get the ball, so that doesn’t matter!”

Then the game began again. Meadowville was on her second down, with four yards to go. The quarterback called his signals, the two lines heaved together and——

“Ball! Ball!” shouted half the players. The Meadowville quarter had fumbled and, strange to say, it was Tommy who dropped to the turf and snuggled the ball to him. For almost the first time the Hillside supports had something to cheer about and they made good use of the chance. And half the Hillside team patted Tommy on the back as he was pulled to his feet. Of course, it was only an accident, but Tommy deserved credit just the same!

[212]

Hillside was on her forty-yard line when she got the pigskin and Harold Newman elected to have Bert Jones, the big fullback, take it for a try through right tackle. And so he called the signals, and the players crouched in their places and the ball was snapped. And then, as Bert leaped forward to take the pass from quarter, Tommy whispered, “Come!”

Such a befuddled-looking backfield as that was for an instant! Bert, expecting the pigskin, clasped empty air to his stomach and hove himself at the line. The other backs stood and stared; all, that is, save Tommy. Tommy was very busy. Already, with the ball snuggled in the bend of his arm, he had crossed two white lines and he was very intent on crossing the rest of them. That he didn’t was only because the opposing quarterback outguessed him and brought him to earth.

But twenty-five yards was not to be sneezed at, especially when theretofore the most that Hillside had made in one try was a scant six! George Marquis stopped scolding Harold and hugged Tommy instead. Harold, too, thumped him delightedly on the back, but the quarter[213] had a dazed look on his face. He could have sworn that he had tossed the ball toward Bert Jones!

Slightly demoralized, Meadowville lined up again in front of her foe. This time she watched Tommy as a cat watches a mouse, but when Tommy, disregarding the play, scuttled yards across the field, the rival backs decided that he was faking an end run and paid scant attention to him. A moment after they saw their mistake, for the ball went to Tommy on one of the prettiest passes ever seen, and Tommy, almost unopposed, streaked straight for the Meadowville goal line! Only an end came near him and Tommy eluded the end deftly. Tommy was really a clever runner, say what you like. The opposing quarter tried desperately to intercept Tommy before he reached the goal line, but he failed and the best he could do was to tackle him behind and prevent him from centering the ball.

You can imagine how Hillside cheered then! It was deafening, terrific! Even staid and serious-minded elderly gentlemen shouted and thumped the stand with their gold-headed[214] sticks. Girls screamed their pretty throats hoarse and boys—well, boys threw their hats in air and behaved like joyous lunatics! As for the Hillside players, they turned handsprings and tripped each other up and behaved quite ridiculously. All save Tommy. Tommy, a little breathless, but wearing his honors modestly, yielded the ball and trotted back up the field amid a shower of congratulations. And not until Bert Jones was directing the pointing of the pigskin did it occur to George Marquis to demand of Harold why he had signaled one thing and done another! And poor Harold, looking very white and worried, could only shake his head and gaze fascinatedly at Tommy!

But why go into further details of that last half? At the end of the third quarter Hillside was two points ahead of Meadowville, and Tommy Piper had only to turn his head or lift his hand to have the Hillside stand rise to its feet and cheer itself hoarse! Such runs as Tommy made! Ten yards, twenty, even once a full thirty-five! Never was such brilliant running and dodging seen before! Tommy could have played that whole game alone had he[215] wished it, but he didn’t. With the assurance that his team would emerge victor in the end, Tommy let the other backs have their chances. And when they were stopped in their tracks or pushed back for a loss, then the ball went to the infallible Thomas Piper and said Thomas reeled off a dozen yards, or two dozen, perchance; and everything was lovely.

When the last quarter began Meadowville was showing the strain. So was the Hillside quarterback! Poor Harold was beginning to think that he had gone crazy. Time after time when he tried to pass the ball to one of the other backs or even carry it himself, he found that, for some strange reason, without wanting to do it, he had thrown it to Tommy. Of course, Tommy always gained and that made it all right. Only—well, Harold was certainly worried!

A run the entire length of the field, barring ten yards, was Tommy’s heart-stirring contribution at the beginning of the final period, and from that time on until, within only a minute to spare and the ball on Hillside’s thirty-two yards, he ended the game in a final blaze of[216] glory, Tommy performed like a—well, like a magician. I can think of no better word!

But the last feat of all was the most astounding. It went down in history, I can tell you! Even yet no other player has ever come within at the least twenty yards of duplicating Tommy’s performance. The score was 36 to 17 when the final sixty seconds began to tick themselves away. Hillside had the game safe, and it didn’t matter very much what happened then. So when Tommy said to Harold: “Let me try a field goal from here, Harold,” the quarterback only stared and didn’t tell him he was crazy. He only grinned. And then, since they all owed the victory to Tommy, he consented. What did it matter how the contest ended? As well one way as another. And he’d be pleasing the redoubtable Tommy. So Tommy walked back to near the twenty-five-yard line and held out his hands, and everyone stared in surprise. For why, with everything her own way, should Hillside punt and lose possession of the ball?

Tommy was ambitious to outdo all his previous feats, and he could think of but one way to gain that end, and that was to make a wonderful[217] field goal. But when, with poised arms, he awaited the ball and looked far down the field at the distant goal posts he began to have doubts. Perhaps the magic football couldn’t go so far. It was an appalling distance. But just then the ball was snapped and Tommy said, “Come!” Straight and true it sped into his hands. Tommy measured distance and direction again, dropped the ball and, as it bounded, hit it smartly with his instep. And as he did so he said, “Og!” very loudly, and then, to make very certain, he said, “Og!” again and again and many times, and kept on saying it until the enemy came swarming down on him and sent him sprawling on his back.

But he was up again in a second, watching the flight of the ball, and, lest it might falter on its journey, he said, “Og!” once more, or, perhaps, the fifteenth time.

Friend and foe alike turned and watched the football. Everyone held his breath. Surely it would never travel so far! And yet it kept on going, getting higher and higher until, by the time it reached the end of the field, it was yards and yards and yards above the goal posts. A[218] great awe hushed the field. You could have heard a pin drop. And then a great cry of amazement started and spread, for the magic football kept on going up and up and up and getting smaller and smaller and smaller until, at last, it was just a speck against the blue and then—why, then it wasn’t anything at all! It had just floated out of sight like a runaway toy balloon!

But everyone agreed that it had passed exactly over the center of the Meadowville goal, and so what did it matter if the ball was lost?

Tommy, being borne off the field on the shoulders of enthusiastic admirers, cheered and waved at, smiled modestly. But under that smile was a sorrow. The magic football was lost to him!

“I guess,” said Tommy, sadly, to himself, “I must have said ‘Og!’ seven times!”

“Want to buy him?” asked the stableman, including both boys in his glance, but appealing more particularly to Jonesie, a healthy, rosy-cheeked youth of fourteen with a countenance that fairly radiated candor and innocence. Jonesie viewed the man with polite indifference.

“What for?” he asked. The stableman, tipped back in his chair by the door marked “Office,” shrugged his shoulders and gave the straw between his teeth a new tilt.

“Thought maybe you’d like a good sporting animal,” he responded. “In my time it was considered very swell for young gentlemen to keep dogs.”

“What do you mean ‘sporting animal’?” inquired Jonesie coldly. “Can he hunt?”

“Can he! Say, son, that dog’s the finest pup on—on rabbits and coons and—and——”

“Bears,” suggested Pinky helpfully. He[222] was a slim youth with a freckled face and carroty hair.

“Huh!” Jonesie refused to be impressed. “Any old dog can hunt. Question is, can he catch anything except fleas.”

“What are you talking about?” asked the man with a show of anger. “Have a look at that coat on him, son. If you can find a flea——”

At that moment the dog, who had been sitting in the doorway interestedly following the conversation, turned his head suddenly and began a hurried and very earnest search along the inch and a half of tail that the dictates of fashion had left to him. Jonesie chuckled.

“No use my looking,” he said. “He’ll catch ’em.”

The stableman refused to notice the dog’s occupation. He also passed over Jonesie’s remark. “He’s got a skin just like a baby’s, that dog has. Three months old, and a few days over, gentlemen, and a ten-spot takes him! What do you say, now? There ain’t a finer-bred fox terrier in town. He’s got a pedigree as long as his tail!”

[223]

“I guess that’s right,” replied Jonesie.

“What’s the good of a rabbit dog when there aren’t any rabbits?” asked Pinky. “Nor coons, neither. If you’ve got a dog that can kill rats——”

“Rats? Rats!” The stableman almost choked in his excitement. “Now you’re talking, son! You wouldn’t believe it, I guess, if I told you how many rats that dog killed yesterday afternoon inside of an hour and a half, right here in this stable.”

“Right-O!” said Jonesie. “We wouldn’t. So go ahead.”

The stableman fixed him with a glittering eye. “Fourteen,” he said impressively. “And one got away.”

Pinky brightened. Jonesie looked coldly incredulous. The terrier, having failed in his hunt, sighed and returned to his rôle of interested audience. He was really a nice little dog. Clean him up, thought Jonesie, and he’d look fine. He was all white except for a dark-brown patch over his left eye and ear, which gave him a peculiarly philosophical expression. His yellow-brown eyes were bright and intelligent, and[224] the occasional wag of that pathetic button that had once been a perfectly good tail showed friendliness. Jonesie was melting, but you’d never have suspected it. Pinky stooped and snapped his fingers and said, “Here, pup,” in a coaxing voice. The dog wagged the remains of his tail frantically, but moved not an inch. Jonesie frowned.

“Shucks, he don’t even come when he’s called!” he said.

“Not to strangers, he don’t,” replied the stableman triumphantly. “He’s got to know you first. Sign of a good dog, that is. He won’t never know but one master.” Then, with a quick glance at Pinky, “Leastway, two,” he added hurriedly.

“Let’s buy him,” urged Pinky, sotto voce.

“What’s the use? They won’t let you have dogs in dormitories. Besides, he isn’t worth any ten dollars.”

“We could keep him here at the stable,” said Pinky eagerly. “You’d board him for us, wouldn’t you?” he asked the stableman. The latter nodded hesitantly.

“I guess so. I’ve got a stall he could have.”

[225]

The boys went over and patted the dog, and the dog licked their hands and strove to reach their faces with his eager pink tongue. “Nice dogums,” said Pinky. “Didums want to belong to us?”

The dog replied to the best of his ability that he did, becoming quite wrought up about it.

“What’s his name?” asked Jonesie.

“Well, I call him Teddy. He ain’t rightly got a name yet.”

“How much would you keep him for if we took him?”

“Well, feed’s high nowadays,” replied the man thoughtfully. “But—say a dollar and a half a week.”

Pinky whistled and looked doubtfully at his friend. Jonesie smiled compassionately on the owner of the dog.

“We weren’t thinking of having him fed on steak and mushrooms,” he explained patiently. “Just dog biscuit and a bone now and then would do, I guess.”

“Well, say a dollar, then.”

“Say four dollars a month,” returned Jonesie, “and we pay the end of the month.”

[226]

“All right, son. What might your name happen to be?”

“Jones.”

“That so? Thought likely it was Isaacs.”

“You’re a punk thinker, then. How much will you take for the flea-trap?”

“Meaning the dog? Not a cent less’n ten dollars, son.”

“Oh, I thought you wanted to sell him.” Jonesie, hands in pockets, lounged back to the sidewalk. Pinky regretfully followed. “If I had ten dollars for a dog,” continued Jonesie sarcastically, “I’d buy a good one.”

“You couldn’t find a better in this town,” drawled the man indifferently, keeping, however, a watchful eye on the countenance of the boy.

“Bet I could buy as good a one as that for two and a half,” replied Jonesie contemptuously. The dog watched the boys anxiously from the doorway. Pinky, observing, felt his heart melting within him. He tugged at Jonesie’s sleeve.

“Offer him five,” he whispered. Jonesie shrugged his shoulders.

[227]

“Offer it to him yourself,” he said aloud, moving away, “I don’t want him for any five dollars.”

“Tell you what I will do,” announced the stableman, “I’ll split the difference and call it seven-fifty. There, that’s a fair offer, ain’t it?”

Pinky looked undecided. Jonesie, having apparently lost all interest in the matter, was gazing off up the village street and whistling softly.

“Would you?” whispered Pinky.

“No,” replied Jonesie from the corner of his mouth. “He’ll take five in a minute. Don’t let on you want him.” Then, aloud and impatiently: “Oh, come on, Pinky! He doesn’t want to sell; he just wants to talk!”

“Sure I want to sell,” answered the stableman indignantly. “But I don’t want to make any presents! Talk sense now. What’ll you give me?”

“Five dollars,” exploded Pinky. Jonesie stared at him incredulously.

“Don’t count me in at that price, Pinky,” he warned. “You come with me and I’ll find you a dog for half the money.”

[228]

“Five dollars!” ejaculated the man. “Well, what do you know about that! Five dollars for a three months’ old fox terrier as can trace his pedigree back to two champions!” Words appeared to fail him there and Pinky was beginning to look utterly ashamed of himself when the stableman found his voice again and inquired: “Cash down?”

“Why—why, not—not all of it!” stammered Pinky. He looked appealingly at Jonesie. “How much you got?” he asked in a hoarse aside. Jonesie nonchalantly pulled out a pigskin coin purse and studied its depths.

“I can lend you a dollar and a quarter,” he replied. Pinky brightened again.

“And I’ve got two,” he said. “Three and a quarter down now and the rest next week.” He watched the stableman anxiously. The latter nodded.

“All right, son. But the dog stays here until you pay the rest of it.”

“But we don’t pay board for him until he belongs to us,” responded Jonesie firmly.

“Ho!” The stableman looked at him sourly. “Thought you was out o’ this.”

[229]

“No, I’ll go halves with my friend,” replied Jonesie generously. “We’ll come down and see the dog every day, and if he ain’t a lot fatter than he is now, we’ll take him away.” The stableman viewed Jonesie resentfully but said nothing until the money was in hand. Then,

“If you expect an active dog like that to get fat on a dollar a week you’d better take him right along with you,” he said with deep sarcasm. “I’ve raised a lot of dogs but I ain’t never seen no miracles!”

After seeing the dog conducted to the empty stall that was to be his quarters while he remained at the stable, and after petting him awhile, the boys hurried off to school. On the way up Main Street Pinky said:

“I wonder if he really can catch rats, Jonesie.”

“Search me! I guess so, though. If he can we’d ought to charge Perkins something for the use of him!”

Pinky laughed. “We got him cheap, though, didn’t we?”

“You mean I did,” corrected Jonesie.[230] “You’d have gone and taken him at ten dollars if you’d had your way.”

“That’s right,” agreed Pinky humbly. “When he looked at me that way——”

“Perkins?”

“No, the dog, you silly chump! Say, what’ll we call him?”

“Spot?” asked Jonesie doubtfully. Pinky shook his head.

“Every dog is named Spot—or Teddy. He’s too good a dog to have a name like that. Let’s think up something decent.”

For the rest of the way there was silence.

A quarter of an hour later Mr. Broadley interrupted Sparrow Bowles with upraised hand.

“That’s fairly correct, Bowles,” he said. “But pardon me a moment. Trainor!”

“Yes, sir?”

“You may hand that to me, if you please.”

“What, sir?” asked Pinky innocently from the back of the room.

“That note that Jones just passed you. Hurry, please.”

Pinky dragged himself from his seat, spilling a Latin book on the floor, and, under the amused[231] regard of the rest of the class, walked to the platform.

“You are both aware,” went on the instructor as he accepted the piece of paper, “that passing notes is strictly prohibited at recitations. You will each do a page of Latin and bring it to me this evening.”

Thereupon Mr. Broadley unfolded the paper and read:

“Ace, you old fool. He’s got only one spot.”

“We might have it here,” said Jonesie, “only it would make a beast of a noise and The Terror would be sure to hear it.”

“There’ll be no rat-killings in this study,” said Sparrow decisively. “You fellows can jolly well go somewhere else.”

Sparrow Bowles was Jonesie’s roommate and naturally had some rights.

“It wouldn’t do, anyway,” responded Jonesie, addressing Pinky, who was perched in dangerous proximity to the ink-well on the study table. “If we let the rats out here Sparrow’d eat ’em himself.”

“Is that so?” demanded Sparrow angrily. “Anyway, I’ll bet I’d catch more of them than that mongrel pup of yours!”

“Mongrel nothing!” exclaimed Pinky indignantly, up in arms at once. “You haven’t seen Ace.”

“Besides,” said Jonesie sweetly, “the mere[233] fact—if it is a fact, Sparrow,—that you’re better bred than the other dog doesn’t mean that you can catch more rats. Now, does it?”

“Oh, chase yourself!” growled Sparrow inelegantly.

“Anyway, we’d better have it somewhere else,” said Jonesie, winking at Pinky as he returned to the original subject. “I tell you what! Let’s have it at Steve’s!”

“Sure thing!” agreed Pinky. “Steve’ll be tickled to death. And Mrs. Sharp doesn’t mind how much rough-house her fellows make. Let’s go and tell him about it.”

“Where you going to get your rats?” asked Sparrow, who was deeply interested in the project in spite of his attitude.

“Catch ’em,” answered Jonesie. “Perkins has four traps set under his stable now. And we tied Ace up so he wouldn’t butt in. Oh, we’ll have rats enough in a day or two! Don’t you say anything about it, Sparrow. If you do you won’t be there! Also, we’ll knock your block off!”

“Like to see you do it,” growled Sparrow. “Or a dozen fellows like you! Domineering[234] kid!” he added as the door closed behind the others. He picked up the paper-covered novel he had been reading, replaced his feet on the radiator and scowled darkly. “Good mind to put faculty on,” he muttered resentfully. A grin overspread his thin face. “My word,” he chuckled, “that would be a lark!”

Dear Reader, have you ever personally conducted five active and anxious rats across a campus inhabited by hostile faculties at nine o’clock at night? If so, you will properly appreciate the difficulties that beset Jonesie, Pinky and Tubby Bumstead. Unfortunately Perkins’s stable lay to the west of the school and Steve Cook was domiciled directly to the east and the campus lay between. To have made a detour would have added some eight or nine blocks to the journey. Hence it was decided that in this case a straight line between two points was not only the shortest but wisest course. With the rats confined in two wire cages, which were in turn wrapped in oat bags, and Ace wriggling excitedly in Jonesie’s arms, only partly hidden by another sack, the three conspirators crossed the campus, keeping to the darker paths and avoiding buildings as far as possible. They walked hurriedly but yet cautiously,[236] and as they proceeded strange sounds escaped from beneath the enfolding bags, sounds that, had they been heard by a faculty member, would undoubtedly have occasioned curiosity. Now it is a well-known fact that faculties are the most curious persons in the wide, wide world; always introducing their noses into other people’s affairs, always athirst for knowledge that can profit them but little. Consequently the three boys were extremely desirous, not to say anxious, that their progress should go unnoticed. So much so, in fact, that more than once the sight of a suspicious figure across the yard caused them to pause in the shadow of a tree or building and, in a silence broken only by the agitated squeals of the rats and the excited and stertorous breathing of Ace, await the disappearance of the dim and uncertain form. There were many anxious moments during that passage of the enemy’s country, but in the end sheer audacity won and they climbed the further fence—there were obvious reasons why gateways were to be avoided—and hurried across into the gloom of a side street. From there on it was plainer sailing.[237] One or two townsfolk, having passed the trio, turned to peer suspiciously after them, but no one challenged. At Mrs. Sharp’s luck again befriended them. When they opened the front door the hall was empty and six leaps took them up the stairs, from the summit of which they gained Steve’s room without detection.

The apartment presented a strangely altered appearance. The furniture had been moved against the walls, leaving the center of the room carpeted with a worn and stained straw-matting, clear and unobstructed. Occupying points of vantage atop the desk and the bureau and strung out along the window-seat, was the audience. The audience, representative patrons of sport from the Upper and Lower Middle classes of Randall’s School, greeted the arrival of the trio with unrestrained delight, so unrestrained that Jonesie harshly instructed them to “cut it out!”

“Let’s see ’em,” begged Steve and Chick Allen, and the audience climbed down from their reserved seats and clustered about while Pinky and Tubby proudly removed the wrappings and exhibited five badly frightened rats.

[238]

“Gee,” said Pill Farnham dubiously, “they aren’t very big, are they? I thought——”

“You thought they were racoons,” interrupted Jonesie scathingly. “They’re big enough; don’t you worry. Look at that old gray fellow. Bet you he will put up a peach of a fight!”

“Your dog doesn’t seem awfully interested in ’em,” remarked Pigeon Brown. Which was a fact, since Ace, having been liberated, was dodging in and out of the displaced furniture, sniffing and wagging the stump of his tail, but apparently quite unaware of the presence of the rats. Jonesie scowled upon him and demanded his attention, but the terrier was too much interested in the contents of the waste-basket to heed the summons. After a brief but interesting chase, Pinky dragged Ace from under the bureau, to which place he had retired with a banana peel. Ace, confronted with the rats, put his head on one side, pricked up his ears when the rodents squealed at sight of him and wagged his tail amiably. After that he gazed trustingly and inquiringly at Jonesie and seemed to be asking permission to continue his[239] interesting investigation of the premises. Pinky’s firm grip on his collar denied him, however, and Pill Farnham chuckled.

“Bet you he never saw a rat before in his life, fellows!” said Pill.

Jonesie faced him indignantly. “Didn’t he?” he inquired with deep irony. “He’s killed more rats than you ever dreamed of.” Pill tried to state that he was not accustomed to dreaming of rats, but Jonesie went on with growing indignation. “You don’t expect a dog that’s seen as many rats as he has to throw a fit, do you? You wait till we let ’em out! Then you’ll see whether he can kill rats or not! Only thing I’m bothering about is whether we oughtn’t to let ’em all out at once. I dare say one or two at a time won’t be any fun for him.”

“It’ll be more fun for us, though,” responded Steve, climbing back to the top of the table and carefully removing his feet from proximity to the floor. “Let her go, Jonesie!”

“Are we all here?” asked Jonesie, looking about. “Where’s Sparrow?”

“Isn’t coming,” answered young Fletcher.[240] “Said he had a headache. Told me to tell you.”

“Headache!” jeered Jonesie. “Too lazy to walk, I guess! All right, fellows. Get out of the way now. Which trap shall we open first, Pinky?”

“This one,” replied Pinky, pushing forward the cage which held two rats.

“We-ell.” Jonesie studied the scene of combat. “Now when I open the thing you let Ace loose. Where are you going?”

“Just—just over here,” murmured Pinky, reaching behind him for the bureau.

“Oh, don’t be such a coward! A rat won’t hurt you. Now, then, all ready? Say, for the love of Mike, turn him toward the cage, can’t you? Here, Ace? Sick ’em, sick ’em, sir!”

“How many are you going to let out?” asked Chick from the safe altitude of the window seat.

“Just one this time,” replied Jonesie, struggling with the door of the cage. “All ready now, Pinky!”

But Jonesie was mistaken. With the door open the rats showed a strange disinclination to leave their prison and face the enemy, even[241] though the enemy was showing not the slightest degree of animosity—or even animation!

“Get ’em out!” commanded Jonesie.

“Sick ’em!” cried the patrons of sport in unison.

Ace looked inquiringly at Jonesie and then about the room. Pinky shoved him forward. This Ace took to be an invitation to play, and immediately dashed at Pinky and licked his nose, thereby upsetting Pinky’s balance. At the moment when Pinky’s feet were furthest from the floor and Ace was dancing about his struggling form, the rats agreed on a sortie and dashed from the cage together.

“There they go!” shrieked the excited audience. “Sick ’em, pup! Go after ’em, you fool dog!”

“‘There they go! Sick ’em, pup! Go after ’em, you fool dog!’”

But Ace was having such a fine time jumping upon Pinky, who was vainly trying to get his feet under him again, that he neither saw the rats nor heard the commands. It was only when Jonesie reached down and delivered a sounding slap on his brown spot that Ace awoke to the fact that possibly he had made a mistake. By that time the rats were gone from[242] sight. Jeers and laughter emanated from the audience. Pinky, arising, red of face and annoyed, was confronted by an indignant Jonesie.

“You old fool, you!” cried Jonesie. “Why didn’t you pay attention? Didn’t I tell you they were coming?”

“Well, didn’t you see your fool dog knocked me over?” inquired Pinky wrathfully. “Why didn’t you keep them in for a second?”

“How could I keep them in when I’d opened the door? If you can’t do your share of this decently, why, say so!”

“Quit your jawing,” advised Steve, “and catch the rats. It won’t be any fun now, though, because we won’t be able to see him kill ’em.”

“Kill ’em!” jeered Pill. “That pup couldn’t kill a straw hat! If I was you, Jonesie, I’d put him in the closet. If a rat got at him he might get hurt.”

“Is that so?” responded Jonesie heatedly. “You’ll get hurt if you give me any more of your lip! Which—which way did they go, fellows?”

The replies were confusing. Every member of the audience insisted on a different locality[243] as harboring the rats. Jonesie looked disgusted.

“Seems to me you fellows might have watched them and seen which way they went,” he said. “Got an umbrella, Steve?”

By moving the table slightly young Fletcher, who was the smallest there, was able to slide through into the closet. After that the hunt began. Jonesie used the umbrella, and the rest of the audience armed themselves with whatever they could find: tennis rackets, hockey sticks, even a ruler. Under chairs, table, bureau the weapons were poked and flourished. Ace, recovering from the shock of chastisement, lent eager assistance. The noise became deafening. Once one of the rats appeared for a brief moment on top the bureau, left it just ahead of a racket hurriedly aimed by Pigeon, landed on the mantelpiece and disappeared again behind the Morris chair. The only fatality was a photograph frame. Out came the Morris chair, there was a squeal and the rat whisked behind the bureau. Out came the bureau then, Ace barking frantically and wagging his stumpy tail in a veritable paroxysm of[244] delight. This was a real game! Confusion reigned supreme. All thought of secrecy had flown. The excitement of the chase gripped them all. Shouts and cheers rent the air, Ace yelped and barked shrilly, sticks banged at chair legs, furniture was whisked about on grumbling casters and ten excited patrons of sport pursued the prey with relentless vigor and enthusiasm. The waste basket spread its varied contents across the floor, and even the pictures on the walls became imbued with the contagion and danced themselves askew.

At this moment there was a shrill and resentful expression of grief from Ace, who, all but the stump of his tail hidden from sight beneath the Morris chair, had encountered one of the rats behind the radiator. A cornered rat will fight, and it was this discovery that brought the yelp of pain from the terrier. The alacrity with which he backed out from under the chair was remarkable. Doubtless his sole desire was to remove himself from the vicinity of the painful indignity and consider his wounded nose. It is not presumable that he entertained any designs on Tubby Bumstead.[245] What followed must be laid to Chance. In retreating from beneath the chair Ace unfortunately obtruded his hind quarters in the path of Tubby, who, armed with a hockey stick, was in full cry. Tubby, being, as his nickname suggests, somewhat obese, was not able to recover from the collision with the grace and celerity of a lither youth. To save himself Tubby dropped his weapon and grabbed at the arm of the Morris chair. Now it so happened that a few moments before someone had thoughtfully transferred the unopened cage containing the three rats in reserve from the floor to that particular arm of the chair. It would be, perhaps, interesting to pause here and speculate as to the thoughts and emotions which possessed those three rats as, elevated to a position of unrestricted view, they watched the scene before them. But there is no time. Tubby’s frantic reach for the support of the chair dislodged the cage. The cage, in falling, struck the already nervous Ace on top of the head. Ace, now thoroughly undone, yielded to blind, unreasoning terror, a terror which became absolute panic when the cage, rebounding[246] from head to floor, threw open its door and delivered into the confusion its three prisoners. That was too much for Ace. With one wild and piercing howl he fled. As it was not possible for him to flee in a straight line, he fled in a circle. For one brief but highly colored moment life became a kaleidoscopic nightmare of flying rats, dogs and boys. To be sure, there was but one dog, but he rotated so rapidly that it was difficult to believe that he was not in reality a revolving procession of dogs. And ever as he went he howled. And ever as he howled he collided with someone’s legs, and the owner of the legs toppled ungracefully to earth. A Futurist could have won immortal fame by transferring that scene to canvas! And then, at the zenith of the glorious orgy of movement and sound, the room door opened and The Terror stood revealed in all his majesty and severity!

Now Ace, as it happened, had reached a position in his orbit about midway between window seat and door when the latter opened. There was no hesitation on the part of the revolving body. Leaving its path at a tangent it hurled[247] itself at the doorway. It was not Ace’s fault that Mr. Williams, Instructor in Modern Languages, was stationed midway between lintel and lintel. Doubtless Ace tried his best to pass to one side of The Terror’s none too sturdy legs. That he did not succeed is not surprising when we consider the speed at which he was going and the fact that he had been deprived of all save a scant two inches of his rudder. Mr. Williams crumpled against the banisters across the narrow hall with a loud and expressive grunt and Ace, rounding the post, hurled himself down the stairs. Mrs. Sharp, nervously eavesdropping halfway up the flight, had a momentary vision of a white streak plunging down upon her, shrieked hysterically and rolled slowly and, because of her well-padded condition, not uncomfortably to the bottom. Ace disappeared into the night.

The Terror recovered his feet and his dignity and regained his position in the doorway. Before him ten boys and five rats maintained silence and frozen attitudes. The five rats were not in sight. Nor was one of the ten boys. A long moment of portentous stillness reigned.[248] Then The Terror, somewhat pale as yet, pronounced the names of the nine visible patrons of sport in a voice which, while still a trifle shaky, was as icy cold as a blast from the Pole.

“You will all,” concluded The Terror, “report at the Office to-morrow morning. And now return to your rooms at once.”

One by one they recovered their caps from the confusion and filed past him and down the stairs and into the night. Only Steve remained in view. Then, with a final glare, Mr. Williams followed. Simultaneously from behind the bureau appeared a cautious head.

“Gone?” asked Jonesie hoarsely.

Steve nodded gloomily.

Jonesie extracted himself from concealment and crawled out of the débris. In one hand he held by the tail a large gray rat, quite dead.

“Where’d you get it?” asked Steve with a brief flash of interest.

“Back there.” Jonesie nodded toward the bureau. “I fell on him when I dived in.”

“Somewhere,” responded Steve bitterly, “there are four more of the things, and I’ve got to sleep here with ’em!”

A week has passed. It is a Saturday morning and Jonesie, immaculately clad and whistling blithely, is on his way to the village to make purchases. He has quite a number of commissions to fill, for nine of his particular friends and cronies are suffering probation, a condition which prevents them from leaving the confines of the school, while another is recovering slowly from bodily injuries inflicted by Jonesie with the whole-hearted, enthusiastic assistance of the nine. Jonesie is in very good spirits. The sun is warm and the sky is blue, before him lie the marts of trade stocked with delectables that appeal to hungry boyhood, and, while others languish in durance vile, liberty is his! He is sorry for those others—when he thinks of them—but his grief is not deep enough to darken his life.

As he approaches Perkins’s Livery and Sales Stable a rotund man whittling a stick and chewing[250] a straw in front of the office door observes him with interest. The whittling ceases and the chair, which has been tilted back against the stable, comes down on all four legs.

“Hello,” greets the liveryman. “Haven’t forgot about that dog of yours, have you? You ain’t been around to see him lately.”

“Dog?” asks Jonesie, wrinkling his innocent young brow. “What dog?”

The liveryman stares.

“What dog! Why, the dog you bought off me ’most two weeks ago! Ain’t forgotten him, have you?”

Jonesie shakes his head helplessly. “I fancy,” he responds distantly, “you’ve made a mistake. I don’t own any dog.”

“Don’t own any—— Say, didn’t you and that friend of yours buy my fox terrier a while back and pay me five dollars for him and agree to pay me four dollars a month for boarding of him? Didn’t you and he——”

Jonesie shakes his head gently and passes by.

“I don’t know anything about any dog,” he says. “Must have been someone else.”

“Ain’t your name Jones?”

[251]

“Oh, yes, but it’s quite a common name.”

“But—but didn’t you buy my dog? You and that other feller?”

“Certainly not!” replied Jonesie in pained protest. “We are not allowed to keep dogs at Randall’s. I wouldn’t think of transgressing the rules of the school, you know.”

The liveryman studies Jonesie’s guileless countenance for a moment, and his mouth slowly falls open. Jonesie looks dreamily up the street.

“Of course if you have a dog, though, I’d advise you to keep him away from rats,” he says kindly. “They might bite him.”

Then, whistling blithely, Jonesie passes on.

[252]

We had beaten Yale hands-down the year before, and this year, when we started practice, we had eight out of eleven of last season’s men, and in spite of the fact that they had instituted a new system over in New Haven, had a new coach at the helm and were reported to have the best material in years, we couldn’t see how the Elis had even a show-in. There was nothing to it, any way you figured it. We weren’t even going to miss the three we had lost, for we had at least two good candidates for each of them. There wasn’t anything could stop us from winning the Eastern Championship again. That’s the way it was right up to the first week in October. Then things began to happen.

I guess we established the hard-luck record that Fall. Kendall went first. He was left tackle, and a corker. He fell down in exams. Then Penniwell, first-string quarter, got hurt in the Bates game and developed water on the[256] knee. Next Hanson, fullback, pulled a tendon in practice. Of course, he would be out only a couple of weeks, but on top of everything else it made us feel a bit sick. It reminded one of the nursery rhyme of the Ten Little Indians. “One got charley-horse and then there were nine.” Only it didn’t stop at nine, not by a long shot. Stearns, our best halfback, fell down three dinky steps coming out of a recitation hall and broke an arm. Joe Leverett said he hoped it would be a warning to him and teach him to keep away from recitations. You’d think we’d about reached the limit then, wouldn’t you? We thought so, anyway. We tackled Amherst with just four of last year’s team in the line-up and barely escaped a licking. The Amherst game was the third on the schedule, and after that we had the big teams to meet. Of course by that time some of the earlier invalids were getting back into shape, and we figured that if we could stall through the next two games we’d be in pretty good shape for Princeton and Yale. But Fate wasn’t through with us. On the Tuesday following the Amherst scare they hurried Tom Shawl off to the Infirmary at eleven in the[257] morning and operated on him for appendicitis at four P. M. Good-night!

Of course you remember Shawl, all-America halfback two years running, the hardest line plunger in the country and a wizard at kicking. One of the New York papers the year before said that “yesterday, at New Haven, Tom Shawl, assisted by the Harvard eleven, defeated Yale 17 to 0.” The paper wasn’t so far off, either. Anyway, you can imagine what it meant to us to lose Shawl. There was some vague talk of his getting around in time to play against Yale, but no one believed in it. We just about threw up our hands then. I’ll never forget the conference we had in Pete Haskell’s room that evening. I was manager that year. There were five of us there: the Head Coach, Porter; Jewell, who had the linemen in charge; the trainer; Pete and myself. We were a sick and sober lot, I can tell you. We talked and talked and snarled at each other for two solid hours and nothing much came of it. The only thing we decided was that Hackett, right end, would have to go into the backfield. He had played half before they’d made an end of him,[258] and he was a good one. But that meant we’d have to find a corking good man for right end, and there wasn’t one in sight. There were plenty of candidates, but not one showed the real stuff. We talked them all over. Finally Jewell said:

“Where’s that chap Perrin, who played left end on the Freshman team last Fall? Isn’t he back this year?”

Porter sat up. “He’s our man!” he cried. “He will have to come out!”

“What’s the matter with him?” asked Jewell.

“Folks won’t let him play,” said Pete. “He got hurt in the Yale Freshman game last year. It wasn’t anything serious, but his folks got scared, I guess.”

“Piffle!” said Jewell. “Get him out. We need him.”

“I’ll see him to-morrow,” said Porter. “Glad you thought of him, Walt.”

We talked some more, and about ten o’clock life looked a bit brighter. With Perrin at right end and Hackett at left half, we might get by. Of course, losing Shawl’s goal-kicking meant[259] that we’d have to reorganize the whole campaign against Yale, and that there was just about three months of hard work to do in six weeks, but we were all a bit more hopeful when we said good-night. I stayed behind after the others went. Billy Sawyer, who roomed with Pete and played fullback on the Second, came in just then and we three chewed it all over again. Billy shook his head over Perrin, though.

“You won’t get him,” he said. “I know him pretty well. We were at Milton together. He’s that sort.”

“What sort?” I asked.

“Well, the sort who keeps a promise.”

“You mean he promised his folks not to play?”

“Yep. He broke a bone in his hand last year in the game with the Yale freshies and his parents got cold feet. He told me about it. Said he’d promised to keep out of it. Sort of broke up, too, he was. Too bad, for you know the sort of a game he put up last Fall.”

We nodded gloomily.

[260]

“Still,” said I, “he might get his folks to let him off.”

Billy screwed his mouth up and shook his head.

“Don’t think so. He’s that sort, you see.”

“Bother your ‘sorts’! When Porter tells him we need him like everything and reads the riot act to him I’ll bet he will squirm out of it somehow. You’ll see. Besides, a fellow’s parents haven’t any right to keep a chap off the team when—when the college simply has to have him!”

“Oh, rot!” said Billy. “Parents aren’t bothering about who wins the Yale game, Gus. Besides, they have got some rights, say what you want. My dad’s paying a good stiff price to get me an education and if he told me I must quit playing football I’d do it. So would you. So would any fellow.”

“Maybe, Billy, but any sensible parent wouldn’t do it!”

“Why not? What’s the sense of spending a pile of money on a chap if he’s going to break his neck or come out of college with two or three important bones missing just where[261] they’ll show the most? No, Bob, Perrin’s folks have got the right idea. Merely as an investment——”

“Money isn’t everything,” I said. “There’s such a thing as loyalty and duty to your college, Billy.”

“You’re talking about Bob; I’m talking about his folks. They don’t owe any duty to your old college, do they?”

“Just the same——”

“Oh, forget it,” said Pete. “Get out of here, Gus. I’m going to bed. It’s up to Porter, anyway. I hope he gets him, that’s all.”

“So do I,” said Billy, “but he won’t.”

And he didn’t. Perrin was awfully sorry about it, but he had made a promise to his parents and he meant to keep it. Porter told him he’d have to get his parents to let him off. Perrin said he wouldn’t ask it; said it wouldn’t be fair. Porter raved at him and pleaded, but Perrin just kept on saying how badly he felt about it and how much he would like to play, but——

Porter was sore that afternoon. “He’s a mule,” he said. “A stubborn mule.”

[262]

“So we don’t get him?” asked the trainer.

Porter closed his eyes in a way he had and set his mouth. “We get him, all right,” he answered grimly. “We’ve simply got to have him. Someone’s got to go and read the riot act to those folks of his. They live in Mearsville. Who knows him? Do you, Pete?”

Pete shook his head. “Only to speak to. Billy Sawyer does, though. He went to prep with him.”

“Sawyer of the Second?” asked the coach. “He’ll do. You take Sawyer and Gus to-morrow and go out to Mearsville and see them, Pete. I’d go myself, but with all this mix-up on my hands I can’t miss practice. I’ll see Wynant and get him to let Sawyer off. You have a car, haven’t you?”

“Yes. How far is Mearsville, and where is it?”

“Oh, about a hundred miles; out beyond Worcester somewhere. Look it up on the map. It’s a small place, and you’ll have no trouble finding them, I guess. Come around to-night, the three of you, and we’ll dope out a line of[263] talk. Don’t let Perrin hear about it, though. He might try to queer us. He’s a mule.”

We left the Square the next day right after lunch in Pete’s car. It had only one seat, and Billy Sawyer sat on the floor with his feet on the running-board and his knees hunched up under his chin. We made good time, for Pete’s boat is some goer, and we got to Mearsville about four o’clock. On the way we went over our argument. Porter had told us what we were to say and Billy was to do most of the talking. He was a peach at talking, Billy was. He’d been on three debating teams and knew all the tricks. Funny about him, too. You’d think with his gift for that sort of stuff that he’d have turned into a lawyer or a statesman or something, but he didn’t. Billy’s adding up figures in his father’s factory to-day. Just shows that you never can tell, doesn’t it?

It was a pretty country around Mearsville, and we made the trip on one of those peachy Indian summer days that sometimes happen along in October. We had a pretty good time, too. We almost ran through Mearsville without knowing it, because there wasn’t much in[264] sight except a post-office and a store. We asked at the post-office where Mr. Perrin lived, and the postmaster came out and showed us how to go.

“Wonder,” said Billy, as we went on, “what sort his father is. If we knew that it might help us.”

“What’s his business?” I asked.

“Don’t know. Don’t know a thing except that Bob’s an only child. He seems to have plenty of money, so I suppose his old man’s fairly well fixed. If he’s one of the crabbed kind we might as well turn around right now and go back.”

“Buck up,” said Pete. “When you turn that line of talk on him, Billy, he’ll just wilt before our eyes.”

“Huh,” said Billy. “Wish you had it to do. Don’t see what I let them rope me into this for, anyway. It’s not my funeral.”

“It’s what you get for knowing the chap,” said I. “Bet you that’s the place now, the stone gate ahead of us.”

It had solid comfort written all over it. There was an old-style white house that rambled[265] around behind a lot of trees and some lawn and nearly fooled you into thinking it was a genuine antique. When you got near it, though, you saw it was a reproduction. It looked like a compromise between a gentleman’s estate and a nice little place out of town. Everything was neat and well groomed, and we felt like vandals for mussing up the newly dusted gravel drive with the automobile tracks. Pete was whistling “This is the Life” softly as we drew up to the door. A trim-looking maid showed us into a living-room with about a million long French windows and a thousand dollars’ worth of white and yellow chrysanthemums standing around in tall vases. Billy cleared his throat and Pete sneaked away to the further side of the room, pretending he wanted to see the view from a window. I started to follow, but Billy grabbed me.

Mr. Perrin came in the next instant. I don’t know what sort of a man the others had pictured, but I know he didn’t look at all like what I’d expected. If I’d seen him, say, in a club without knowing who he was, and anyone had asked me to guess, I wouldn’t have thought[266] twice. “Noted explorer just back from successful rummage in Peru,” I’d have answered. As Billy would say, he was that sort. He had a rather long, lean face with a lot of lines, a wide mouth, a thin nose and a pair of faded blue eyes that were deep set and looked lighter than they were because his skin was as brown as a saddle. He was tall and straight and lean and looked about as fit as any man I ever saw. I warmed up to him right away. Couldn’t help it. There was something about that mouth and those pale blue eyes that was awfully friendly. And when he shook hands he did it quick and hard, and you could feel that his muscles were like little steel wires. It was up to me to introduce myself and the others, which I did, and as soon as I said “football” I saw by a little gleam in his eyes that he was dead on to our game. But he told us in a nice deep voice that he was glad to see us, got us seated in big comfortable chairs, offered cigars and made us feel right at home. Then he waited, smiling, for us to shoot. So Billy stuck his hands in his pockets and opened up.

Billy did himself proud. I wish I could remember[267] just what he said, but, then, it was more the way he put it over than anything else. Porter had tipped us to be dead sober. “Make him understand that the situation is big and serious. Don’t smile except to be polite, and then do it as if it hurt your face.” So Billy started out as grave as a minister. He began by outlining the condition the team was in because of injuries and such, dwelt on the hopeless position in which the coaches found themselves and predicted ruin and disaster unless new material could be found to prop the tottering structure, or words to that effect. And all the time he spoke in low, fateful tones like a doctor breaking the news to the family after a consultation. If he had kept it up two minutes longer I’d have been in tears.

“I gathered from the papers,” said Mr. Perrin just as gravely, “that things were in pretty bad shape at Cambridge. I’m very sorry, Mr. Sawyer.”

Then he waited again, looking appropriately funereal. But there was a little flicker in those blue eyes of his that told me he wasn’t as concerned as he pretended.

[268]

Billy took a fresh start and began on Bob Perrin. He allowed you to understand by the tone of his voice that there was a ray of hope, after all, but that you weren’t by any means to think the patient out of danger. He told about the fine work done by Bob last year on the Freshman team and how if he would spring into the breach all might yet be well. Billy said so many nice things about Bob that I couldn’t see how his father could help looking a bit proud. He didn’t, though. He just kept his eyes on Billy and waited. It seemed as if his watchful waiting game was getting on Billy’s nerves, for Billy stumbled once or twice and his voice began to flatten out a little. He took the ground that in such a stupendous crisis as then confronted the college—the college we all loved—Billy’s voice sort of took on a tremolo effect there—all selfish thoughts and desires should be brushed aside. At such a time it was the duty of all loyal sons of Harvard to—to put their shoulders to the wheel, to banish prejudices, to forget self and—er—strive as one man to avert the disaster that threatened to engulf their glorious Alma Mater.

[269]

Said Mr. Perrin: “Did Bob send you out here?”

“No, Mr. Perrin, your son does not know of our visit. Mr. Porter, our Head Coach, tried to persuade him to play, but he replied that he was bound by a promise to you and that it would not be fair for him to ask to be released from it. It was then that Mr. Porter decided to see you himself, feeling certain, as he said, that when you once realized the gravity of the situation you would eagerly and gladly give your consent to Bob’s playing.”

“Ah.” Mr. Perrin glanced at Pete and then at me. “But neither of these gentlemen is Mr. Porter, I believe?”

“No, sir. Mr. Haskell is Captain of the Varsity and Mr. Kirke is Manager. Mr. Porter was unable to come since his presence at practice is indispensable just now. We represent him, sir, and I have tried to bring you his message just as he delivered it to me. Were he here he could undoubtedly speak more convincingly, sir, but——”

“No, no,” said Mr. Perrin. “You do yourself an injustice. He could not, I am certain,[270] have dispatched a more capable and eloquent emissary.” He paused and looked toward the windows. “Gentlemen, I am going to suggest that we go outdoors. This is much too fine a day to be inside. You will, I hope, stay to dinner with us.”

We all said we wouldn’t think of it, but he didn’t pay much attention to that.

“Let me have my way, please,” he went on. “Both Mrs. Perrin and I shall be most pleased to have you. We don’t have many opportunities to entertain, and you really must humor us. Besides, I want you to meet her, and just now she is unable to appear. Now let us take a walk. I want to show you my place. You know we folks who live in the country always drag our visitors around the grounds the first thing.”

We went out on the porch. Mr. Perrin dropped behind to get his cap and stick, and the three of us looked at each other questioningly. Billy was frowning and Pete looked blank. I remember I shook my head. Mr. Perrin joined us then, and we set out around the house. He showed us his stable and barn and greenhouses and piggery and a cellar where he[271] raised mushrooms, and a lot of things like that. Pete got full of enthusiasm right away and asked a lot of questions. Pete subscribes to Country Life and draws plans of model farms at lectures. Somehow, out of doors we all forgot to be gloomy, and the first thing we knew we were laughing at the colts in the paddock and chatting away just as if there wasn’t any Stupendous Crisis. After we’d seen everything Mr. Perrin led the way across a meadow to a little hill that had pine trees clumped on top of it and brown needles underneath. It was when we were climbing the hill that Mr. Perrin said:

“You must forgive me for being a bit slow. This leg of mine isn’t as spry on the grades.”

I noticed then for the first time that he limped a little and bore pretty heavily on his stick. I slowed down with him and asked: “Accident, sir?”

“Yes,” he said. “I broke it in football.”

“Oh!” said I. I couldn’t think of anything else to say just then.

“It was in a game with Pennsylvania a good[272] many years ago now,” he went on. “We used to play on Jarvis Field in those days.”

“Where the tennis courts are now?” I asked. “Were you—were you on the Varsity, sir?”

“Yes. I was captain that year. This break kept me out of the Yale game, and I remember that I felt pretty badly about it.”

“It was pretty tough luck,” I muttered. I did a whole lot of thinking the rest of the way up the hill.

When we got to the top we sat down on the pine needles in the sunlight, and Mr. Perrin filled a pipe. “Perhaps,” he said as he started to light it, “I shouldn’t do this, as you chaps are in training.” Billy and Pete told him it didn’t matter any to them. It didn’t to me because I didn’t smoke. I’d promised my folks not to until I was twenty-one. There was a fine view from where we sat, and the country was as pretty as a picture, with the sun getting low and sending long shafts of golden light across the fields. It was quiet, too, so quiet you could hear a cowbell tinkling half a mile away. Billy put his hands under his head and stretched himself out on his back with a sigh. Pete[273] hugged his knees and looked blissful. I suppose he was thinking of the place he meant to have when he was through college. There was a rock near me with moss growing all over it, and I settled my back against it and blinked at the sun. After a minute Mr. Perrin said:

“It always seems easier to me to think and talk out of doors. I suppose it’s because I’ve spent a good deal of my life there.” And then, speaking quietly and sort of lazily, he told us some things he’d seen and that had happened to him. He wasn’t an explorer, after all. He was an engineer and he had spent most of his life in the West and Southwest building irrigating dams and canals and things. I’ll bet they were good ones. He was that sort, as Billy would say. Some of the yarns he told were corkers, and he told them in such a smiling, matter-of-fact way that they sounded bully and made you want to pack up and hike out there where such things happened. He had had adventures, all right! And he had us laughing one minute and sitting still and gripping our hands the next and hardly daring to breathe![274] Gee, if I could tell a story the way he could, I’d never do another thing!

“It’s a big country out there,” he said finally, “with lots of things to be done.”

“I should think,” said Pete, “you’d find it rather tame back here, Mr. Perrin.”

“Tame? Not at all. I like this best. But then, I’m getting along toward where the quiet life begins to look pretty good, boys. I find now when I go back out there that saddles are harder than they used to be and ponchos aren’t as soft to sleep on as hair mattresses. But I’m always glad to get there again—and always glad to come back. In two or three years more I won’t have to make the trip very often, I guess. Bob will do that for me. He’s going to have a man’s job on his hands when he’s ready for it.”

“Is he going to take up engineering too, sir?” I asked.

“No, that won’t be necessary. That part of it is done. Of course it’s best for him to know something of it, and so he and I go out there in the summers and I show him the why and the how. I dare say he learns as well that way[275] as he would if he took a course at the Scientific School. Bob’s work will be to manage what I’ve built. It will be his after a while, you see. Bob’s the only one we have and there won’t be any others now. It’s a good deal like putting all your eggs in one basket, you see. When you do that you’re liable to be mighty careful of the basket.”

He filled his pipe again, looking off across the field toward where the smoke was going up straight from the chimneys of the house. We didn’t say anything. After a minute:

“It’s a fine, comforting thing to know that there’s someone coming after you to carry things along,” he said thoughtfully. “It makes what’s ahead of you look pretty trifling. I always feel a deep pity for men who haven’t sons. It seems to me that they’ve failed in what God sent ’em here to do. I guess your fathers know what I mean, and you will know it, too, some day—I hope. I hate to think what it must be like for men who haven’t any children when the shadows begin to deepen. Maybe all fathers don’t feel the way I do about it, but I guess they must. Four of the finest words I know of are[276] these: ‘From father to son.’ Well, well, I’m boring you with all this stuff. And it’s getting a little chilly now. We’ll walk back and get ready for dinner. We dine early out here. I hope you won’t mind.”

When we got back he took us upstairs to a fine big room, and it took just a glance to show that it was Bob’s. There were all sorts of photographs stuck around: school nines and elevens and track teams, you know, with Bob’s face peering out from some of them. There was a bookcase in one corner with all Bob’s old school books and story books on the shelves. And there were some pewter cups on the mantel and some pennants on the walls and a split baseball bat and a canoe paddle with things written on it and a plaited hair bridle and a pair of wicked-looking Mexican spurs. It was just a regular boy’s room with all the things a fellow accumulates and hates to throw away even as he grows older. Mr. Perrin took up some of the photographs and pointed out Bob in them; Bob, a little kid in knickerbockers; Bob in track togs, with his fingers tight over his grips; Bob holding a football in the center of a group; Bob[277] wearing chaps and a big sombrero and seated on a cow pony. Then he went out and left us, and we washed up. No one said very much, and we all hurried.

Downstairs we met Mrs. Perrin. I guess you’d call her homely, but she was the sort of homely that looks good to a fellow. She was small and looked not very strong, but she was all right. You knew she could do one thing to the King’s taste, and that was to be a mother. We had a bully dinner. Nothing fluffy, but regular food that went right to the spot and stuck. We were all of us hungry, too, all of us except, maybe, Mrs. Perrin. I don’t think she ate much, but she surely saw to it that we did. Billy made a great hit with her because he had been at Milton with Bob. She didn’t talk a whole lot about Bob, but you could see that she was pretty proud of him just the same. There wasn’t a word said about why we were there. We were just friends or college mates of Bob’s, and that was enough. Mrs. Perrin was full of fun in a quiet way, and it was dandy to see how she and Mr. Perrin played up to each other. She prompted him to tell this story or that, and[278] he came back at her the same way. About the middle of dinner we felt as if we’d known those folks for years! We sure had a dandy time.

We didn’t stay at the table after Mrs. Perrin went because we weren’t smoking, and Mr. Perrin pretended he didn’t want to. So we went back to the library, and the first thing I knew Pete was over at the piano with Mrs. Perrin pulling the music about for him. Pete’s a wonder at the ivories, and he played and we all sang; Mr. Perrin, too, when he knew the song; and had a regular merry-merry for about an hour. Then we had to mosey back to Cambridge, and Mr. Perrin sent out and had Pete’s car brought around from the stable. They made us take sweaters and coats, for we hadn’t brought any, and it was getting chilly. We were to leave them with Bob. We said good-night to Mrs. Perrin in the library, and she made us all promise to come again, which wasn’t hard to do, for we were dead eager to. Mr. Perrin went out to the car with us and stood around while we lighted up and packed ourselves in. Pete started the engine the first[279] time and tried not to look surprised, and we all shook hands and Mr. Perrin said we mustn’t forget our promise to come again, and we said he wasn’t to worry about that! But then he didn’t move away, and we saw he had something to say and Pete throttled down his engine.

“There’s one thing I’d like to know,” he said earnestly, “and it’s this. I want Harvard to win this year, boys, perhaps every bit as much as you do. I’m afraid I haven’t appeared very sympathetic this evening, but I do sympathize with you in your trouble. I’ve been through with something of the same sort myself, and I haven’t forgotten. And I’m not going to tell you that whether we win or lose the world’s going to keep on whirling. I know it didn’t seem so to me in the old days, and it doesn’t seem so to you. I don’t believe there’s an old player who follows the fortunes of the Team any more closely than I do, boys. I’ve ridden eighty miles at night to learn the result of a Yale game. I’m telling you this because I don’t want you to think that I’ve outgrown my devotion to the college, my loyalty to the Team.”

[280]

He paused and Pete pretended to tinker with the switch.

“And now one thing more,” said Mr. Perrin. “Two things, rather; for I want to tell you that I appreciate the fine way in which you have refrained from showing impatience or criticism of my attitude in regard to Bob. It may be that you secretly look on me as a selfish, pig-headed old codger——”

Billy started to say something, but Mr. Perrin continued:

“And perhaps I am. But partly because you have acted like three of God’s gentlemen and partly because—well, because an old player can never quite forget, I’m going to leave it in your hands. If you think the Team needs Bob more than I do, you tell him that he is to go in there and play his level best! Good-night, boys!”

Mearsville was ten miles behind before anyone said anything. Then it was Billy, and, since we had a hard road and the engine purred no louder than a kitten, we heard him even though he only muttered. “Fellows do get hurt,” he growled. “You can’t deny that. Look at the[281] list of them just in our own time: Choate and Riley and ‘Fan’ Tanner and a whole bunch, to say nothing of this year’s list.”

A mile further on, I said: “I suppose a fellow with a busted leg wouldn’t be much use out there on that job.”

Going into Worcester, Pete said: “There’s that chap Nelson.”

“Did well at Exeter,” said Billy.

“With six weeks to work on him,” I murmured, “seems to me——”

Later Pete broke out with: “Hang him, he had no business saying that we thought him selfish and pig-headed!”

“Still, we did, you know,” I reminded, “before.”

“Before, yes, but not after! Anyway, I didn’t.”

“Mean to say I did?” demanded Billy somewhat hotly.

“Shut up! What we’ve got to decide is this,” I said. “What are we going to tell Porter to-morrow?”

“Tell him?” grunted Pete, taking a corner on two wheels. “Tell him nothing doing!”

[282]

I showed this to Pete, who went in heavy for English Composition and can talk you deaf, dumb and blind about characterization, climax, crisis, suspense and dénouement, and he says I finished my story at the last paragraph and that if I write any more I’ll be pulling an anti-climax. Maybe he’s right, but I know that if I was reading this yarn I’d want to know who won the Yale game. And so I’m going to tell you. And if you think the way Pete does, why, you can stop up there where it says “nothing doing.” That’s all right, isn’t it?

Well, Bob Perrin didn’t come out for the team. Porter fumed and kicked for a while, and then yanked Nelson off the bench and sicked half a dozen assistant coaches on him. He had a pretty tough time of it for about five weeks. No matter which way he turned there was always one or more coaches waiting to grab him. I’m not sure they didn’t read him to sleep out of the rules book and camp outside his door at night. But they did what they set out to do, believe me! They made an All-America end of him, even if they almost killed him in the operation. And, although we lost to[283] Brown, and although Princeton swamped us, we came right back on the twenty-fourth of November and put it over the Elis, 7 to 3.

As Billy would say, we were that sort!

[284]

Joe Tyson, playing third on the Randall’s School first team, pegged the ball across in the general direction of first base. Steve Cook stabbed the air with a gloved hand and the ball continued blithely on its way, disappearing behind the grandstand. Four blue-stockinged youths raced home, the fourth registering the tenth tally for Popham Academy.

Daniel Webster Jones, Jr., seated cross-legged in front of the bench on the home side of the field, score book on knees, credited the enemy with four runs and added a black dot under the “E” column and opposite the name of Tyson.

“Of course,” murmured Jonesie reflectively, “in order to throw to first you’ve got to know more than the ball.”

Of the three occupants of the bench, weary and disgruntled with waiting, none replied to the sagacious observation. Jonesie, however,[288] hadn’t expected any reply. He didn’t care. When there was no one to talk to, Jonesie talked to himself. That was much better than keeping still. Jonesie had a horror of being bored, and nothing bored him quicker than inactivity, either of body or tongue. That was the reason why, on a perfectly glorious afternoon in early June, he was to be found seated Turk-fashion here keeping score for the Team.

Art Simpson, the manager, whose duty it was to preside over the official score book, was in the infirmary with a delightful case of double mumps, and Billy Carpenter, baseball captain, had, so to speak, drafted Jonesie from a comfortable seat in the stand, thrust a black-covered book and a leaky fountain pen upon him and bade him keep the score. Jonesie knew how to do that after a fashion, but his fashion was not Art Simpson’s, and he soon found the intricacies too many for him. After Jimmy Buell had been caught flat-footed off second and chased down between that station and third by exactly six-ninths of the opposing team, Jonesie gave it up in despair. The only redeeming feature of his task was the fact that it allowed him[289] to square accounts to some extent with one or two fellows he had grudges against. Thus Carpenter himself, for imposing such a task on Jonesie, had been credited with two errors when, as a matter of fact, Billy had so far played his position faultlessly. Jimmy Buell, too, had erred, according to the book, not once, but three times, and even Steve Cook, who was a particular friend of Jonesie’s, had a neat period set opposite his name in the error column. Jonesie had chuckled when he set that down. It was always fun getting a rise out of Steve!

Daniel Webster Jones, Jr., was a cherub-faced youth of fifteen with coppery brown hair brushed sleekly back, gray-blue eyes that were pools of truth and innocence, a somewhat button-like nose that attested to good nature, and a general appearance of physical and mental well-being. Folks generally, and nice elderly ladies in particular, fell in love with Jonesie at first sight. They simply couldn’t help it. Such candor and truthfulness and innocence shone from his countenance it did one good merely to look upon it. For the rest, he was comfortably[290] rounded as to figure, a fact which perhaps increased his likeness to a cherub, dressed very carefully—Jonesie was always a little in advance of the fashions—and carried himself with an air.

After much searching the ball was back in the pitcher’s hands. (For no especial reason Jonesie credited Gordon, who had thrown it in, with an assist!) Carey Bingham, football captain, who was umpiring, was evidently getting tired of standing out there in the sun, for he called three strikes on the Popham batsman in succession—Proudfoot, the Randall’s slab artist, had never been known to pitch three good ones in succession before!—and then ruled the next man out at first in spite of the fact that Steve Cook had quite failed to tag him. But Popham had a comfortable lead of eight runs, it was getting late and Carey wanted to get on the river before suppertime. Popham objected only half-heartedly to the decision, being doubtless quite willing to hurry the battle through.

The bench filled as the perspiring players trotted in from the field. Billy Carpenter,[291] squeezing in behind Jonesie, glanced at the score.

“Ten to two, isn’t it?” he asked wearily.

“Yes,” replied Jonesie. “Gordon up! Proudfoot on deck! Billings in the hold!”

“What’s the inning, Jonesie?” inquired Joe Tyson from further along the bench.

“Last of the ninth,” answered Jonesie promptly.

“Get out! It’s the eighth!” declared Billy Carpenter. “Let’s see. Of course it’s the eighth, you idiot!”

“Is it?” murmured the non-official scorer. “All right. I just said ninth so as you fellows would get off easier.”

“Is that so?” said Billy unamiably. “Never you mind about us. Just you—— Here, what the dickens are those things over there in my column?”

“Those?” asked Jonesie innocently. “Oh, those are errors.”

“Errors! When did I make an error, you lunkhead?”

“I forget; third, I guess; maybe it was the fourth.”

[292]

“You’re dippy! I haven’t made an error to-day! You rub those out, Jonesie, or I’ll kick you back to school!”

“My mistake,” replied Jonesie untroubledly, canceling the dots. “Say, Billy, why don’t you have a good team?”

“The team’s all right,” answered the captain, mollified as the untruthful periods disappeared. “We’ve had perfectly rotten luck to-day.”

“Oh, sure!” Jonesie’s tone was maddeningly sarcastic. “Blame it on the luck, Billy. Say, honest, Billy——”

“Don’t you be so fresh with your ‘Billys,’ kid,” advised the other, prodding Jonesie’s spine with the toe of his shoe. Billy was a senior, and at Randall’s seniors exacted proper respect from lower-class fellows.

“My mistake, Mr. Carpenter,” corrected Jonesie sweetly. “I was going to say—Proudfoot up! Billings on deck!—going to say that I could make up a team of lower-class fellows that would beat you all around the block, Bil—er—Carpenter.”

“You could do wonders,” responded the captain[293] derisively. “Suppose, though, you credit that Popham first base with a put-out if you’re not too busy talking nonsense.”

“No trouble at all,” murmured Jonesie, placing a period in the wrong space and so adding to the glory of the Popham left-fielder. “The trouble with this bunch of yours is that they can’t bat, can’t field and can’t handle the ball. Aside from that, though, Billy, they’re certainly a fine lot. Who threw that to first?”

“Why don’t you watch the game and find out?” snarled Billy.

“Call this a game? It—it’s a farce, that’s what it is, a blooming farce!” Jonesie gave the assist to the shortstop on a chance and chattered on. “You see, Bil—that is, Mr. Carpenter—in order to play baseball you’ve got to know more than the ball.”

“Oh, cut it out,” growled Billy. “A fat lot you know about it!”

“If you mean baseball, I know a great deal. I don’t pretend that I invented the game, Billy, but I certainly organized the Nile Valley League and——”

“Say, you bum scorer, who’s up?”

[294]

“You are, you talented right-fielder!”

“What on earth is the Nile Valley League?” inquired Billy, who had never heard of that mythical aggregation. Jonesie glanced around with a look of pitying surprise.

“And you’re captain of a ball team!” he exclaimed. He shook his head gently. “Honest, Billy, I look at you in wonder! You’re on deck, by the way.”

Billy got up and selected a bat with much care. Jonesie watched him pessimistically.

“Say, Cap, in order to use that you’ve got to know more than the bat,” he volunteered helpfully. Billy scowled.

Randall’s failed to add to her score and Popham came in. With a man on first the second batsman lined a hot one at Billy, and Billy watched it travel into center field while he wrung a bunch of aching fingers. Jonesie smiled and restored one of the canceled errors opposite the captain’s name.

“Prophetic,” he murmured. “That’s what it was, prophetic!”

Popham added another run to her tally in that first of the ninth, but Jonesie didn’t trouble[295] to score it. He was too busy drawing a picture of Steve Cook at first on the margin of the page. It wasn’t a good likeness, but it showed a lot of action, and it pleased Jonesie. So enthralled was he with his artistic endeavors that the teams had changed sides before he realized it, and he hurriedly set down several assists, put-outs and errors wherever they looked best.

Billy was disgruntled when he got back to the bench, and he was rather rude in the way in which he thrust Jonesie aside to get his seat.

“Ah,” observed Jonesie, looking about with a gratified air, “the heroes are back again! In order to catch a ball, Billy, you’ve got to know——” But a muscular hand closed about Jonesie’s throat from behind and the remark was not concluded. Instead, “Buell at bat!” he announced huskily. “Gordon on deck! Proudfoot in the hold!”

Jonesie remained silent while Jimmy Buell fell victim to the puzzling slants of the Popham pitcher. But he felt communicative to-day, and after Buell had disconsolately reseated himself Jonesie went on brightly.

[296]

“Honest, Carpenter,” he said, “I wasn’t joshing about that.”

“About what?” growled Billy, working the fingers of his right hand experimentally to see if they were broken or merely dislocated.

“About making up a team from the lower-class fellows and showing your bunch a few of the rudiments of baseball. You see, Billy, it isn’t so much that your fellows can’t play; I think they could if they knew how; but no one has ever shown them, do you see? Now, I think—what? yes, you’re on deck, Billings!—I think that if you could only play a game or two with a team that knew a little about it, do you see——?”

“I’ll wring your neck for you in a minute,” returned Billy angrily. Jonesie silently considered the chances of Billy’s carrying out the threat. It was Billy himself who made the next remark.

“I’d like to see the bunch of players you’d get together, Jonesie,” he said. “They’d be wonders.” He laughed most disagreeably. “Bring ’em along some day and give us some sport, Jonesie. We need practice——”

[297]

“You sure do! You need more than that, though, old top; you need to learn what to do on a ball field. For instance, now, if someone explained to Proudfoot that a bat is made to swat the ball with and not to hang over his right shoulder, he might do something besides posing like one of those Roman gladiators at the circus. Yes, sir, Billy, you fellows certainly ought to have a little instruction.”

Captain Carpenter opened his mouth to reply hastily and angrily. But he closed it again. After all, it was only Jonesie talking! Jonesie indicated on the score book that Proudfoot had been hit by a pitched ball and had taken his base and then credited the Popham pitcher with a put-out on the ground that anyone who inflicted pain on Proudfoot was a public benefactor and deserving of reward! Then, after another moment, Jonesie spoke again.

“What day will it be convenient to play us, Billy?” he asked.

“Play who?” inquired Billy, wondering whether it was worth while to relieve Steve Cook in the coacher’s box and try to get Proudfoot around for a run.

[298]

“This team I’m going to get up,” answered Jonesie. “Any day next week will suit us.”

Billy laughed derisively. “Cut out the comedy, Jonesie,” he begged.

“Well, I don’t much blame you,” was the reply. “It would look bad to be beaten by a lot of lower-class fellows. I guess you’re right to back down, Billy.”

“Oh, dry up, Jonesie! And credit Billings with a two-bagger, why don’t you? Say, what sort of a score is that you’re keeping, anyway?”

“This? This is the finest little score you ever saw. What did you say Billings made?”

“I said—— Good work, Charlie! Guess I’d better go out and take a hand.” The bases were filled and Billy’s good nature was restored by the prospect of adding a few runs to their meager score.

“Then you mean you won’t play us?” insisted Jonesie as the older boy pushed by him.

“Play you? Yes, we’ll play you, Jonesie.” Billy laughed. “Bring on your team!”

“Next—next Thursday?” yelled Jonesie.

“Sure thing!”

[299]

Jonesie whistled softly to himself, not at all melodiously, and scrawled strange forms on the margins of the score sheet. He was thinking. When Jonesie thought it was safe to assume that sooner or later, and probably at no very distant time, something of interest would happen at Randall’s!

His preoccupation was rudely dispelled by the sound of a bat striking a ball and the frenzied shouts of the few onlookers who had survived eight wearisome innings. Jonesie looked up to see Steve Cook legging it to first, the Popham center-fielder racing back toward the distant fence and the bases emptying. Behind first base Billy Carpenter was waving and shouting. Behind third Jimmy Buell was doing likewise. Jonesie sighed. More work for the scorer!

And then a flat silence fell. Away out in center field a blue-stockinged youth had, after a desperate race, put up a hand and pulled down the ball. Steve had flied out! The game was over! Popham had won, 11 to 2! or was it 10 to 2?

Jonesie added an error to Billy’s column on general principles and closed the book with a vindictive slam.

“Sparrow,” asked Jonesie that evening, “did you ever play ball?”

It was Saturday and so, of course, Sparrow Bowles, who was a tall and lanky youth and, in spite of being Jonesie’s roommate, was much disliked by that young gentleman, had a perfect right to spend his time over one of Dumas’ most exciting romances. It might be added, however, that Sparrow would have done just what he was doing had it been Monday or Friday or any other day of the week. I refuse to even insinuate a virtue that Sparrow didn’t possess. Sparrow looked up regretfully from the book.

“No,” he muttered. “What for?”

“Then you’re the chap I want,” replied Jonesie cheerfully. “I’ll put you down——” He frowned intently for a moment at the list before him and poised a pencil above it—“I’ll put you down for third base.”

[301]

“You can put me down for—for batter, if you like,” jeered Sparrow, thus showing the depths of his ignorance of the National Game, “but you don’t get me to break my fingers!”

Jonesie didn’t even glance up. “That just about finishes it,” he murmured. “I think, though, I’ll put Pinky at first instead of Wigman. Pinky says if he doesn’t play there he won’t play at all.”

“Say, what are you talking about?” demanded Sparrow, curiosity getting the better of an inherent contempt for any of Jonesie’s plans.

“I’m talking,” answered Jonesie with dignity, folding his list and returning it to a pocket, “about the All-Stars Baseball Team. You see, I’m getting up a team to give Billy Carpenter’s bunch of amateurs a little practice. We play them Thursday.”

“Play the School Team!” Sparrow turned Dumas’ face down on his knees and stared blankly at his roommate. “Say, are you funny in your head? Why—why, they’d lick the stuffing out of any team you could make up!”

[302]

“That’s what Billy thinks,” chuckled Jonesie.

“Should think he might!”

“But this team I’m getting up, Sparrow, is something a little bit out of the ordinary. Listen to this.” Jonesie found his list again and read it for Sparrow’s benefit. “Bumstead, pitcher; Jones, catcher; Trainor, first base; Hoyt, second base; Bowles, third base; Wigman, shortstop; Clint Wrenn, right field; George Wrenn, center field; Nash, left field. What do you think of that, Sparrow?”

“I think you’re crazy,” replied Sparrow with enthusiasm. “I’ll bet there isn’t a fellow in the lot ever played baseball!”

“Yes, there is,” rejoined Jonesie with a grin. “Both those Wrenns have played a lot. I thought first I wouldn’t have them, but I couldn’t get anyone else. You see, I told Billy I’d make up the team from the lower classes. But I put the Wrenns in the outfield where they won’t be able to do much harm.”

“If they can play why don’t you let them?” asked Sparrow puzzledly.

“‘A little learning is a dangerous thing,’”[303] quoted Jonesie. “I’ve tried to get fellows who never have played, because I can teach them. You can’t teach a fellow who thinks he knows the whole thing to start with. Do you see?”

“No, I don’t see,” said Sparrow bluntly. “I suppose it’s another of your silly jokes, but you don’t get me into it!”

“Joke!” exclaimed Jonesie indignantly. “There’s no joke about this. It’s a perfectly—er—sincere attempt to help the School Team. Didn’t you hear what happened to them to-day? Got licked by Popham! Ten to two—or eleven to two; there’s some doubt about the exact figures, I think! And what’s Popham? A little old one-horse school up back there in the woods! Don’t you see that the Team needs to go up against a bunch that can give them a few pointers on how the game ought to be played? Why, Billy was almost tearful when I agreed to get a nine up, and——”

“Aw, piffle!” interrupted Sparrow inelegantly. Sparrow was somewhat addicted to inelegant speech. I trust he did not learn it from Dumas. “Why, there isn’t a fellow on[304] that list who knows what a ball looks like! Maybe the Wrenns do, but the rest——”

“You forget that we have three days to practice,” answered Jonesie patiently. “I shall teach them——”

Sparrow laughed immoderately. “You! Bet you never played baseball in your life!”

“Right-o; at least, not much. But I’ve watched a lot of it and I’ve got a pretty good notion of the way it ought to be played, old Sparrow Hawk.” Jonesie found his cap, settled it on the extreme back of his head and moved toward the door. “First practice is at three on Monday, Sparrow.”

“Me! You won’t get me into it,” declared Sparrow warmly. “I won’t have anything to do with your old team!”

Jonesie observed him in a pained way. “I’m afraid I’ll have to insist, Sparrow,” he said gently but firmly. “You wouldn’t like it generally known how Faculty found out about that little party at Steve Cook’s. You know, Sparrow, I’ve never told anyone about that—yet. But if you don’t play on the All-Stars I’ll be so dreadfully disappointed that I may get sort of[305] loose-tongued. Disappointment affects me that way. Queer, isn’t it? Three o’clock, Sparrow. Ta-ta!”

Jonesie closed the door behind him, and Sparrow could hear him tramping down the corridor, whistling blithely; Sparrow frowned darkly at the book on his knees.

“And I never caught a ball in my life!” he groaned.

This notice appeared on the bulletin board on Monday morning and provided a deal of amusement and much speculation at Randall’s. Jonesie was overwhelmed with requests for further particulars and offers of skilled assistance. In every case Jonesie referred the inquirer to the notice and informed him that the team was already made up. Billy Carpenter cornered him in the corridor between recitations and demanded[307] to know what he meant by such tomfoolery. Jonesie was surprised and pained.

“Didn’t you agree to play my team on Thursday?” he demanded.

“I was only in fun, you little idiot! A fine lot of ball players you’ll get! You take that notice down, Jonesie. If you don’t, I will!”

“Seems to me it’s a funny thing to back down now,” replied Jonesie, more in sorrow than in anger, “after I’ve made the team up and we’re to begin practice this afternoon. Still, of course, if you are really afraid to play us——”

“Who’s on your team?” asked Billy.

Jonesie enumerated the members of the All-Stars and Billy grinned.

“Who’s going to pitch?” he asked.

“Tubby Bumstead.”

Billy’s grin broadened and he clapped Jonesie on the shoulder. “All right,” he said gaily, “we’ll play you four innings, Jonesie, if you last that long. It’ll be funny, anyhow, eh?”

“Funny!” said Jonesie indignantly, even a little bitterly. “You think it’s funny when I go to all this trouble to help you fellows out! I’ve[308] a good mind not to do it! I’ve a good mind to just let you fellows go on the way you’re going and get licked by every little whippersnapper team that comes along, Billy! Funny! Huh! You won’t think it’s so funny when we lick you!”

“All right, Jonesie,” Billy laughed. “We’ll play you. Who do you want for an umpire?”

Jonesie shrugged his shoulders. “Any fellow you like. How about Gus Peasley?”

“Has he ever umpired a game?” asked Billy doubtfully.

“I’ll find out. If you don’t want Gus, though——”

“Sure, Gus will do. Let’s make it as funny as we can, eh?”

And Billy went off chuckling, leaving Jonesie apparently silent with indignation.

At noon he sought out Gus Peasley. Gus was an Upper Middler and so, in a way, might be considered impartial. “Ever umpire a ball game, Gus?” asked Jonesie.

Gus shook his head. “I was kicked by a mule once, though,” he said with apparent irrelevancy.

[309]

“You’re the fellow we want, then,” said Jonesie with deep conviction, “to umpire the game on Thursday.”

“Say, are you really going to play the School Team?” asked the other eagerly. “Why didn’t you give me a show, Jonesie?”

“I agreed to play only lower-classers, Gus. But Billy and I both want you to umpire.”

“Shucks, I never umpired a game in my life! I’d look fine, wouldn’t I?”

“I’ll lend you a book of rules, Gus, and you can study it a bit. The game’s on Thursday at three. Don’t forget.”

“But—— Here! Hold on, you silly idiot! I’m not going to umpire for you! Don’t be a chump, Jonesie!”

“Why not, when we both want you to? It isn’t anything to do and it’ll be heaps of fun, Gus.”

“Heaps of fun!” muttered Gus. “Someone’ll bump me on the head with a bat, I suppose! Well, all right. If you can stand it I can. Don’t forget those rules, though. Does that book tell when a foul ball is a strike and all that sort of thing?”

[310]

“Surest thing you know! You’ll have it all down pat by Thursday, Gus. Thanks awfully.”

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons the All-Stars were supposed to hold practice, and about three-fourths of the school went down to the field to enjoy the spectacle. But the All-Stars were not to be found on any of the afternoons mentioned. That Jonesie and Pinky Trainor and Tubby Bumstead and all the other members of the team were busy somewhere seemed probable since none of them was visible around the school, but they certainly were not on the playing field, and some six score youths were correspondingly disappointed.

But had any of them penetrated to the Games Room situated on the upper floor of the Recitation Hall they would have been at once surprised and interested. There, behind locked doors, the All-Stars were practicing. The practice was novel, however. Instead of batting and fielding and sliding to bases, the All-Stars sat in chairs or along the edge of the billiard table and not a bat nor a ball was to be seen. But Jonesie was coaching.

[311]

“Now, then, take Jimmy Buell. He will play left field for them, I suppose. Who knows anything about Jimmy?”

No one did, apparently, until young George Wrenn hazarded: “He’s sort of crazy about golf, isn’t he?”

“That’s so,” agreed Tubby Bumstead. “He’s trying for the team, or he was in the Fall.”

“That may do,” said Jonesie thoughtfully, making a note on the sheet of paper beside him. “We may be able to work that up. Anything else?”

Evidently that exhausted Buell and after a moment Jonesie went on.

“The next fellow is Gordon,” he announced.

Several of the All-Stars chuckled, and Jonesie smiled demurely himself.

“Onions!” said Pinky explosively, and the room rang with laughter.

“Onions,” agreed Jonesie. “That’ll do for Gordon, I guess! And that leaves only Proudfoot, and——”

“‘Quentin Durward,’” proclaimed Ernest Hoyt, “‘is probably the most popular work of[312] the great novelist, William Makepeace Thackeray.’”

The All-Stars chuckled and giggled.

“‘A lambkin,’” contributed Sparrow Bowles, “‘is a fleece-bearing quadruped closely related to the domestic lamb or sheep.’”

“Don’t believe he ever wrote that one,” laughed Tubby.

“Yes, he did, too. Sumner Hayes heard Old Fury read it in class last year.”

“It’s great, anyway,” applauded Jonesie, scribbling feverishly on his paper. “Lambkin for Proudfoot’s! There, that’s the lot of ’em. I’ll have copies of this ready for you fellows to-morrow and then, next day, we’ll have a quiz. Practice is over!”

“Bumstead at bat, Trainor on deck!” proclaimed Arthur Simpson, who, released from the infirmary, was once more on hand. Not, however, that Simpson was according this contest with the All-Stars the honor of a score.

“Now then, Tubby,” called Captain Jonesie from the visitors’ bench, “remember the lesson!”

Tubby, a little embarrassed because of the fact that he had never played ball before so large an audience, grinned as he stepped into the box. The audience cheered madly. Tubby dared a glance at the crowded stand and Proudfoot sent over a perfectly good strike. Gus Peasley, however, more ill at ease than anyone else there, proclaimed it a ball. Rufe Brown, the School Team’s catcher, howled dismally.

“Say, Peasley, do you know a strike when you see it?” he demanded.

[314]

“A strike,” replied Gus, half closing his eyes as an aid to memory, “is a ball passing over any part of the plate and between the batter’s shoulder and knees.”

“Well, didn’t that?” asked Rufe menacingly.

“I dare say, but the batsman wasn’t ready for it,” replied Gus quite calmly. He might be frightened, but he didn’t intend anyone should know it! “Play ball!”

Grumblingly the catcher threw the sphere back to pitcher and said uncomplimentary things about Gus as he knelt to give his signal. Proudfoot’s next attempt was so palpably poor that Gus merely grunted. Then came a second strike, which Gus called by its right name, thereby slightly mollifying the disgusted Rufe. But Proudfoot was unable to add a third and eventually Tubby Bumstead, after some urging on the part of his teammates and the audience, trotted to first, and Jonesie promptly stationed himself near by to coach. The stand howled and laughed and whistled, Pinky Trainor picked up a borrowed bat and faced the pitcher, and Jonesie began to coach the runner.

[315]

“Now then, Tubby, don’t forget the lesson! Take a lead; that’s it! Oh, let him throw if he wants to. Take another yard. Whoa! Why, Steve, you really caught it! Fellows, did you see Steve Cook catch the ball? Do it again, Steve, will you please? They didn’t see it. All right, Tubby! On your toes again! Ready to steal on the second ball, you know! Don’t forget the lesson!”

Pinky, following instructions, declined to offer at any of the balls offered him, and was finally called out. Clint Wrenn, however, actually had the effrontery to wallop one of Proudfoot’s best out-shoots and send it safely between second and third, while Tubby romped to the next station.

“Well done, Clint!” applauded Jonesie as he strode to the plate. “Oh, very nicely managed, sir. Ah, Mr. Proudfoot, salutations to you! And how is your throwing arm to-day?”

Proudfoot smiled and whipped a quick one over to first. Unfortunately Steve Cook was so busy listening to Jonesie that the ball went past him and Tubby legged it home, while Clint went on to second, sliding to the bag, not because[316] there was any actual danger of being thrown out, but because he wanted to do the thing thoroughly. The spectators applauded generously this gratuitous performance, and then gleefully welcomed Tubby across the plate. Billy Carpenter, looking both puzzled and disgusted, viewed Jonesie with suspicion.

“Strike him out, Proud,” he directed. “He can’t hit!”

“Ay, so do!” chanted Jonesie, circling his bat wildly about his head and dancing a sort of Highland fling at the plate. “Be neither pitiful nor kind, Mr. Proudfoot! Dispose of me quickly, I pray! Who am I to stand here and dare your Jove-like bolts? Ah, Mr. Proudfoot——”

“Ball!” quoth Gus.

“Get off the plate, Jonesie,” directed Rufe Brown. “Want to get one in the ribs?”

“Not I, forsooth! See, I retreat. Mr. Umpire, I request you to observe that most promptly I retreat! With all my heart——”

“Str—— Ball two,” said the umpire.

“What? Say, you cross-eyed chump, what do you think you’re doing here? Are you umpiring[317] or—or——” Rufe choked with emotion. Proudfoot rolled his eyes to heaven and crossed his arms to express his contempt for the decision. Whereupon Clint Wrenn started abruptly for third base and——

“Look out!” bawled the pitcher.

“Third! Third!” shouted Billy Carpenter frantically.

“Out of my way!” yelled Rufe, stepping forward with the ball.

“Where are you coming?” inquired Jonesie anxiously, stepping in front of him.

“Throw it!” implored the third baseman. Rufe pushed Jonesie ungently aside and threw it. But the ball struck in front of the base and, although Joe Tyson made a heroic effort to stop it, went rolling on into left field, while Clint romped home into the outstretched arms of Jonesie. Up hurried Pitcher Proudfoot and Captain Carpenter and First Baseman Cook, each sputtering with wrath.

“Say, you—you——?” began Proudfoot, indicating Gus Peasley with a clenched fist.

“Put him back on third,” demanded Billy irately. “Jonesie got in Rufe’s way deliberately![318] If you can’t umpire decently——”

“This isn’t baseball, anyway,” declared Steve bitterly, still smarting from the incident of the throw that went by first. “It’s a farce!”

“Did you see what he did to me?” asked Jonesie in hurt tones. “He pushed me aside—violently! He said to me, ‘Look out!’ and I said, ‘Where are you coming?’ and then he distinctly pushed me! The umpire saw it, didn’t you, Gus? And you’re perfectly disgusted, aren’t you? Considering, Billy, that we are your—er—guests here to-day, I don’t think we should be pushed and shoved about! I really don’t! Anyway, not with violence, Billy!”

“Oh, cut it out! If you fellows want to play ball, why, play ball, but don’t try any baby tricks. This isn’t a—a circus!” And Billy eyed Jonesie and Umpire Peasley with distinct displeasure.

“Of course we want to play ball!” responded Jonesie indignantly. “That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it? That’s what we practiced for all these days! Go on and play; we’re ready. We[319] didn’t stop the game, did we? Honest, Billy, you surprise me, you do really!”

“Do they get that last run?” demanded Proudfoot truculently.

“Sure,” answered Gus. “The runner scored, didn’t he?”

“Jones got in Rufe’s way, though, and the ball went into the outfield——”

“In order to throw to third, Mr. Proudfoot,” declared Jonesie authoritatively, “you’ve got to know more than the ball.”

“Oh, give them the run,” said Steve. “We’ll lick ’em to a standstill. Come on, fellows.”

They went, lingeringly, filled to the brim with remarks they wanted to offer, but didn’t. After all, as Steve Cook said, it was only a farce, a parody. Only—and Billy Carpenter picked up a pebble and hurled it away with unnecessary violence—Jonesie did make a fellow so mad!

Jonesie struck out miserably, and Hoyt, rolling a slow one to Proudfoot, followed him to the bench. Then the School Team came in and the All-Stars distributed themselves about the field, many in really original locations. For instance, Nash, playing in left, took up a position some[320] twenty yards behind third base and Wigman seemed unable to tear himself away from close proximity to the second bag. Tubby Bumstead, who had once pitched two games for a grammar school team, strode to the box with all the nonchalance of a Mathewson, picked up the ball and promptly threw it over Jonesie’s head.

“That’s the stuff, Tubby!” cried Jonesie, trotting after the sphere. “That’s pitching, old top! You got it with you to-day! Now, then, first man, Tubby! Don’t forget the lesson! Bingham likes ’em high. Give him one, Tubby.”

Tubby’s attempt was not successful, and Gus droned, “One ball!”

“That’s the way, Tubby! Now another one a little bit higher. Bingham doesn’t like to reach for ’em, do you, Bing?”

“Don’t you be so fresh!” growled Bingham, who was a senior and properly mindful of the respect due him from lower-class fellows.

“A thousand pardons, Bing! Here it comes now! Bang it, Bing! Bing it, Bang! Bang——”

Bingham swung at a wide one and missed,[321] and Jonesie, who had never before tried to catch behind a swinging bat, turned his back and dexterously stopped the ball. The audience approved wildly. Bingham scowled. Tubby, recovering some of his lost science, sent a nice straight ball across, and Bingham, trying to shut his ears to Jonesie’s artless prattle and not succeeding, struck too late. Jonesie stepped nimbly aside and ducked, and the ball collided with Gus Peasley. Gus said “Ugh!” in disgusted tones and doubled up. However, as he was properly guarded by a body protector, no harm was done, and Jonesie sent back the ball and followed it with a flood of conversation.

“That was a dandy, Tubby! Sort of a fade-away, what? Say, you’ve got it with you to-day, all right! That’s pitching ’em, Tubby! He couldn’t even see it. His sight isn’t what it was since he blew up the laboratory!”

“Say!” Bingham turned threateningly upon Jonesie. “You cut that out or I’ll beat you, you fresh kid!”

“No offense, Bing——”

“And don’t call me ‘Bing’!”

“Just as you say, old top! I only mentioned[322] that laboratory experiment of yours because——”

“You say that again and——”

“How was it?” demanded Jonesie as the ball settled into his mitt.

“Strike three!” replied Gus promptly.

“What? You—you robber!” shrieked Bingham. “I’ve a good mind to—to——” He started toward Gus, but Jonesie interposed.

“Don’t lose your temper,” he pleaded. “It was a strike, Bing, honest it was! Right over the middle——”

“You, too,” interrupted Bingham angrily. “You tried to queer me! I wasn’t looking at the ball——”

“What’s the row?” demanded Carpenter, pushing his way in to the agitated group. Bingham explained a trifle incoherently. Billy listened and took him by the arm.

“All right. Come on,” he said wearily. “You got caught, Bing. No use kicking. Hit it out, Rieger.”

And Rieger did hit it out. He sent a fine long fly into left field. Young Nash, hands in pockets, turned and watched it descend to earth[323] some two hundred feet beyond him while the spectators laughed and howled with glee. It was George Wrenn who fielded the ball to second in time to hold Rieger at that bag. Jonesie, mask in hand, stepped authoritatively in front of the plate.

“Nash,” he called, “play back another foot or two!”

Joe Tyson went to first to coach and Buell lolled over behind third. On second Rieger seemed strangely inattentive to his duties as a base runner. Hoyt and Wigman stood close by, and from all indications the trio were engaged in conversation. In fact, it was possible to catch snatches of it even in the stand:

“I’m not saying you did, am I? Every fellow knows, though——”

“... Again and I’ll....”

“Don’t rile him, Wigman! Let bygones be bygones——”

“Come on!” bawled Tyson exasperatedly. “Get off that base!”

“Hey! Rieger! What’s the matter with you? Are you glued there? Come on!” And Jimmy Buell, back of third, waved frantically.

[324]

“... Just once more,” threatened Rieger wildly, “and I’ll come over there and——”

“... Sore subject,” piped Hoyt. “As far as I’m concerned ... as long as he owns up to a thing....”

Steve Cook let one delivery go by and then landed on the next. By some miracle Pinky Trainor, at first, managed to get in front of the ball and, although it bounded away from him, he picked it up and raced across the bag the fraction of a second ahead of Steve. The stand applauded warmly and hilariously and Rieger went on to third. Joe Tyson, grinning, tapped the plate with a bat and winked at Tubby.

“A low one for Joseph,” called Jonesie. “He eats ’em alive, Tubby. Now then, one right down here! That suit you, Joe?”

Joe shook his head. The umpire called “Ball!” doubtfully, and Jonesie rewarded him with a grieved look.

“He didn’t like that one, Tubby. Try again. Here, Joe, show him where you want it.” And Joe obligingly indicated the locality with his bat. “Get that, Tubby?” asked Jonesie anxiously. “Now try and give him one like that.[325] We strive to please, Joe. That’s our motto. Right over, Tubby, and just where the gentleman wants it! Here she comes, Joe! Whack it! Whack it! Whack——”

“Strike!” proclaimed Gus.

Joe grinned at Jonesie. “Say, that was all right,” he said.

“Glad you liked it. If you don’t get what you want, ask for it, Joseph. Send him another of those, Tubby. He likes ’em. Here we go! Here we go! Don’t hit him, Tubby! One more now!”

“Two balls!” said the umpire.

“That’s pitching, Tubby, that’s pitching! But don’t make him reach for ’em. He’s a friend of mine. What’s the matter with your neck, Joe?”

“Nothing.”

“You ought to have it looked at. All right, Tubby! I knew a fellow who had one of those things on his neck and—— Make it good, Tubby! Sort of low, you know!—and didn’t look after it, Joe——”

“Strike two!” announced Gus.

“Say!” bawled Joe, turning wrathfully.[326] “Keep your mouth closed for a minute, will you? You’re worse than a phonograph! There’s nothing the matter with my neck!”

“Oh, all right!” Jonesie tossed the ball back. “Better hit at this one, Joe. Tubby always makes the fourth one good. I don’t want to alarm you about your neck, but if I had it I’d certainly have it attended to before it got any worse. If you let it go very long they’ll have to operate and——”

Against his better judgment Joe put a hand tentatively to the back of his neck. Tubby wound up quickly and pitched. Joe’s hand came down suddenly and grabbed at his bat, and the bat swung wildly.

“You’re out!” cried Gus.

Joe leaned on his bat and looked disgustedly at Jonesie.

“You wait until this game’s over,” he said dispassionately. “I’ll see you later, Jonesie!”

Jonesie smiled sweetly and sorrowfully.

The School Team took the field and the All-Stars came to bat in the first of the second inning. But although George Wrenn found Proudfoot for a hit that landed him on first,[327] and although Jonesie coached him superbly and incessantly, the next three batters went out ignobly.

Billy Carpenter started things going for the School Team with a long hit into center and reached second. Jimmy Buell swaggered to the plate, tapped it knowingly and waited.

“What does he want?” asked Tubby.

“Ah, to be sure! What sort of a ball would you like, James?” Jonesie inquired solicitously. Jimmy laughed.

“Any old thing, Jonesie, as long as I can reach it.”

“The gentleman is not particular, Tubby. Try a few of those ‘floaters’ right over the tee. James is using a niblick this shot.”

Jimmy stirred and muttered.

“One ball,” said Gus.

“Try again, Tubby! Careful of this one, James, and keep your eye on the ball. Don’t forget the carry-through, old top. Going to try a full swing?”

“Aw, cut it out!” growled Jimmy.

“Let’s see, James, you didn’t make the team last Fall, did you? It’s simply awful the way[328] favoritism rules in athletics here! Keep your eye on the ball, James! Careful now!”

“Strike one!”

“Maybe you’d better try a brassie, old man. You want distance this time, you know. If you get bunkered——”

“Keep it up! You’re not bothering me a bit, Jonesie.”

“I’ll bet you’ll make the Golf Team yet, James. Any fellow with an eye like yours and a—er—physical development——”

Jimmy let the next one pass, and Gus promptly announced another strike. Jimmy wanted to argue about it, but Jonesie returned the ball without delay, and Jimmy had to content himself with a few well-chosen remarks which, owing to the fact that he umpired from a place well removed from danger, Gus probably never heard.

“I suppose,” continued Jonesie, “it’s awfully hard to hit a golf ball, James. They’re so small, aren’t they? Regular little pills! Did you ever hit one, James?”

“I’ll hit you if you don’t close your mouth!”

“Fie, James! You’re losing your temper![329] If you do that you’ll never make the Golf Team, I know. Now then, James! Hit behind the ball; you topped that last one, you know; and follow through, James, follow——”

Jimmy followed through all right, but the ball whacked against Jonesie’s protector—Jonesie didn’t pretend to catch them when struck at—and Gus crooned, “Striker’s out!” Tubby, running up, got the ball in time to hold Billy Carpenter at second. Jimmy Buell retired to the bench with dragging bat, talking all the way. Gordon, the next batsman, played his position in right field better than he batted. But on this occasion he found what he wanted in the first ball pitched, and swung hard. Unfortunately the ball started straight down the third-base line, and although Billy Carpenter bounded frantically to the left to get out of its way, it bounded off him and rolled toward second. Billy walked disgustedly to the bench, rubbing his leg, and Gordon proudly perched himself on first.

“Jonesie didn’t pretend to catch them.”

“Two gone!” called Jonesie cheerfully. “Play for the batter, fellows! And don’t forget the lesson!”

[330]

“Say, what’s this old lesson you’re always talking about?” asked Proudfoot as he squared himself to the plate.

“Never you mind, Horace Erasmus,” replied Jonesie. Proudfoot, who was not at all proud of his name as set down in the school catalogue, frowned.

“And never you mind about my name,” he rejoined shortly.

“Well, it is your name, isn’t it?”

“That’s none of your business. You’re too fresh. You——” Proudfoot’s further remarks were halted by the strange behavior of the All-Stars. One by one they were edging toward the left of the field. As they went they held their noses and looked accusingly toward first base, where Pinky Trainor was elaborately binding a handkerchief about his face. Even Tubby showed signs of uneasiness. Jonesie’s voice rang out sharply.

“What’s the matter with you fellows?” he asked irately. “What are you all doing?”

“We can’t stand it, Cap,” called Hoyt from out in short left field.

“Stand it! Stand what?”

[331]

“The—the odor!”

“What odor?”

“Onions!”

There was a brief moment of silence, and then the fellows in the stand behaved most remarkably. They rocked to and fro in their seats, clung to each other desperately and even rolled into the aisles, all the while emitting choking, gurgling sounds that might later evolve into laughter, but which at present more closely resembled the painful gasps of a person lately rescued from drowning! And the same or similar effects might be noted on the field and on the School Team’s bench. In fact, everyone appeared to be on the verge of apoplexy save only Mr. Gordon. Gordon, with clenched fists and crimson cheeks, faced the world desperately. Then, while the stand still choked and sputtered, his eyes fell on Pinky Trainor beside him, Pinky swaying dizzily as one about to pass into unconsciousness, Pinky with his nose tightly bound with a none too clean handkerchief. With a roar of rage Gordon sprang and Pinky went down. But Billy Carpenter, red of face and making odd gurgling[332] noises in his throat, leaped weakly to the rescue and the writhing forms were torn apart. And then—and only a few witnessed it—Tubby, who had apparently run to the aid of his fallen teammate, suddenly dug a hand holding a baseball into Gordon’s ribs and Gus Peasley, with a feeble wave of his hand, gasped:

“Out—at—first! Oh, help!”

The latter part of the remark seemed addressed to no one in particular, and Gus sat down on the turf and held his sides very tightly, rocking to and fro, which, you must acknowledge, was a most undignified proceeding for an umpire.

The All-Stars met in Jonesie’s room that evening and disbanded. But first Jonesie addressed them from the study table most eloquently.

“As long,” declared Jonesie magnificently, “as the annals of Randall’s School survive the fame and glory of the All-Stars will—er—illuminate the pages of history! We have to-day performed a deathless, imperishable deed. Summoned from—er—the humble walks of life, like the Minute Men of old or What’s-his-name from the plow, we sprang into the breach and—er—battled nobly and valiantly. Victory was ours! For two hard-fought innings we held the School Team at bay and finally triumphed by valor and science!”

Young Nash snickered. Jonesie shot a reproving glance at him and went on.

“Handicapped by ignorance, by lack of practice, by youthfulness and want of experience,[334] we stood shoulder to shoulder upon the trampled field and——”

“Joe Tyson says we didn’t win,” interrupted Tubby. “Says the game didn’t go four and a half innings.”

“Who cares what he says? Who cares what any of them say? They refused to continue. They forfeited the game. The umpire said so. We won a noble victory with the aid of courage, science and——”

“Onions,” murmured Pinky.

THE END

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