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Stover at Yale

by Owen Johnson · English · Gutenberg #46674 · 581,289 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Stover at Yale

Author: Owen Johnson

Illustrator: Frederic Rodrigo Gruger


        
Release date: August 24, 2014 [eBook #46674]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STOVER AT YALE ***

STOVER AT YALE




By Owen Johnson

_Lawrenceville Stories_

THE PRODIGIOUS HICKEY
THE VARMINT
THE TENNESSEE SHAD
SKIPPY BEDELLE

STOVER AT YALE
THE WASTED GENERATION
BLUE BLOOD
CHILDREN OF DIVORCE


[Illustration: "TOGETHER THEY WENT CHOKING THROUGH THE CROWD"--_Page
137._]




STOVER AT YALE

BY

OWEN JOHNSON

AUTHOR OF "THE VARMINT," "THE TENNESSEE SHAD," ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY

F. R. GRUGER

[Illustration: Logo]

BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1931


_Copyright, 1911, by_
THE S. S. MCCLURE CO.

_Copyright, 1911, 1912, by_
THE MCCLURE PUBLICATIONS, INC.

_Copyright, 1912,_
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.


_All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian_


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




ILLUSTRATIONS


"Together they went choking through the crowd"
                                            _Frontispiece_

                                                    FACING
                                                      PAGE

"'Hello,' said Rogers' quiet voice. 'Well, what do
_you_ want?'"                                           20

"'I come not to stultify myself in the fumes of liquor,
but to do you good'"                                    90

"The period of duns set in, and the house became a
place of mystery and signals"                          202

"Oh, father and mother pay all the bills, and we have
all the fun"                                           230

"'Life's real to those fellows; they're fighting for
something'"                                            254

"Regan was his one friend"                             286

"'Curse the man who invented fish-house punch'"        292




STOVER AT YALE




CHAPTER I


Dink Stover, freshman, chose his seat in the afternoon express that
would soon be rushing him to New Haven and his first glimpse of Yale
University. He leisurely divested himself of his trim overcoat, folding
it in exact creases and laying it gingerly across the back of his seat;
stowed his traveling-bag; smoothed his hair with a masked movement of
his gloved hand; pulled down a buckskin vest, opening the lower button;
removed his gloves and folded them in his breast pocket, while with the
same gesture a careful forefinger, unperceived, assured itself that his
lilac silk necktie was in snug contact with the high collar whose
points, painfully but in perfect style, attacked his chin. Then,
settling, not flopping, down, he completed his preparations for the
journey by raising the sharp crease of the trousers one inch over each
knee--a legendary precaution which in youth is believed to prevent
vulgar bagging. Each movement was executed without haste or
embarrassment, but leisurely, with the deliberate _savoir-faire_ of the
complete man of the world he had become at the terrific age of eighteen.

In front of him spasmodic freshmen arrived, struggling from their
overcoats in embarrassed plunges that threatened to leave them publicly
in their shirt sleeves. That they imputed to him the superior dignity
of an upper classman was pleasurably evident to Stover from their covert
respectful glances. He himself felt conscious of a dividing-line. He,
too, was a freshman, and yet not of them.

He had just ended three years at Lawrenceville, where from a ridiculous
beginning he had fought his way to the captaincy of the football eleven
and the vice-presidency of the school. He had been the big man in a big
school, and the sovereign responsibilities of that anointed position had
been, of course, such that he no longer felt himself a free agent. He
had been of the chosen, and not all at once could he divest himself of
the idea that his slightest action had a certain public importance. His
walk had been studiously imitated by twenty shuffling striplings. His
hair, parted on the side, had caused a revolution among the brushes and
stirred up innumerable indignant cowlicks. His tricks of speech, his
favorite exclamations, had become at once lip-currency. At that time
golf and golf-trousers were things of unthinkable daring. He had given
his approval, appeared in the baggy breeches, and at once the ban on
bloomers had been lifted and the Circle had swarmed with the
grotesqueries of variegated legs for the first time boldly revealed. He
had stood between the school and its tyrants. He had arrayed himself in
circumstantial attire--boiled shirt, high collar, and carefully dusted
derby--and appeared before the faculty with solemn, responsible face no
less than three separate times, to voice the protest of four hundred
future American citizens: first, at the insidious and alarming
repetition of an abhorrent article of winter food known as scrag-birds
and sinkers; second, to urge the overwhelming necessity of a second
sleighing holiday; and, third and most important, firmly to assure the
powers that be that the school viewed with indignation and would resist
to despair the sudden increase of the already staggering burden of the
curriculum.

The middle-aged faculty had listened gravely to the grave expounder of
such grave demands, had promised reform and regulation in the matter of
the sinkers, granted the holiday, and insufficiently modified the brutal
attempt at injecting into the uneager youthful mind a little more of the
inconsequential customs of the Greeks and Romans.

The Doctor had honored him with his confidence, consulted him on several
intimate matters of school discipline--in fact, most undoubtedly had
rather leaned upon him. As he looked back upon the last year at
Lawrenceville, he could not help feeling a certain wholesome, pleasant
satisfaction. He had held up an honest standard, he had played hard but
square, disdained petty offenses, seen to the rigorous bringing up of
the younger boys, and, as men of property must lend their support to the
church, he had even publicly advised a moderate attention to the long
classic route which leads to college. He had been the big man in the big
school; what new opportunity lay before him?

In the seat ahead two of his class were exchanging delighted
conjectures, and their conversation, coming to his ears clearly through
the entangled murmur of the car, began to interest him.

"I say, Schley, you were Hotchkiss, weren't you?"

"Eight mortal years."

"Got a good crowd?"

"No wonder-workers, but a couple of good men for the line. What's your
Andover crowd like?"

"We had a daisy bunch, but some of the pearls have been side-tracked to
Princeton and Harvard."

"Bought up, eh?"

"Sure," said the speaker, with the profoundest conviction.

"Big chance, McNab, for the eleven this year," said Schley, in a thin,
anemic, authoritative sort of way. "Play football yourself?"

"Sure--if any one will kick me," said McNab, who in fact had a sort of
roly-poly resemblance to the necessary pigskin. "Lord, I'm no
strength-breaker. I'm a funny man, side-splitting joker, regular
cut-up--didos and all that sort of thing. What are you out for?"

"A good time first, last, and always."

"Am I? Just ask me!" said McNab explosively; and in a justly aggrieved
tone he added: "Lord, haven't I slaved like a mule ten years to get
there! I don't know how long it'll last, but while it does it will be a
lulu!"

"My old dad gave me a moral lecture."

"Sure. Opportunity--character--beauty of the classics--hope to be proud
of my son--you're a man now--"

"That's it."

"Sure thing. Lord, we'll be doing the same twenty-five years from now,"
said McNab, who thus logically and to his own satisfaction disposed of
this fallacy. He added generously, however, with a wave of his hand: "A
father ought to talk that way--the right thing--wouldn't care a flip of
a mule's tail for my dad if he didn't. And say, by gravy, he sort of got
me, too--damned impressive!"

"Really?"

"Honor bright." A flicker of reminiscent convictions passed over McNab's
frolicking face. "Yes, and I made a lot of resolutions, too--good
resolutions."

"Come off!"

"Well, that was day before yesterday."

The train started with a sudden crunching. A curious, excited thrill
possessed Stover. He had embarked, and the quick plunge into the
darkness of the long tunnel had, to his keenly sentimental imagination,
something of the dark transition from one world into another. Behind was
the known and the accomplished; ahead the coming of man's estate and
man's freedom. He was his own master at last, free to go and to come,
free to venture and to experience, free to know that strange, guarded
mystery--life--and free, knowing it, to choose from among it many ways.

And yet, he felt no lack of preparation. Looking back, he could honestly
say to himself that where a year ago he had seen darkly now all was
clear. He had found himself. He had gambled. He had consumed
surreptitiously at midnight a sufficient quantity of sickening beer. He
had consorted with men of uncontrollable passions and gone his steady
path. He had loved, hopelessly, madly, with all the intensity and
honesty of which he was capable, a woman--a slightly older woman--who
had played with the fragile wings of his boy's illusion and left them
wounded; he had fought down that weakness and learned to look on a soft
cheek and challenging eye with the calm, amused control of a man, who
invincibly henceforth would cast his life among men. There was not much
knowledge of life, if any, that could come to him. He did not proclaim
it, but quietly, as a great conviction, heritage of sorrow and smashing
disillusionments, he knew it was so. He knew it all--he was a man; and
this would give him an advantage among his younger fellows in the free
struggle for leadership that was now opening to his joyful combative
nature.

"It'll be a good fight, and I'll win," he said to himself, and his
crossed arms tightened with a quick, savage contraction, as if the idea
were something that could be pursued, tackled, and thrown headlong to
the ground.

"There's a couple of fellows from Lawrenceville coming up," said a voice
from a seat behind him. "McCarthy and Stover, they say, are quite
wonders."

"I've heard of Stover; end, wasn't he?"

"Yes; and the team's going to need ends badly."

It was the first time he had heard his name published abroad. He sat
erect, drawing up one knee and locking his hands over it in a strained
clasp. Suddenly the swimming vista of the smoky cars disappeared,
rolling up into the tense, crowded, banked arena, with white splotches
of human faces, climbing like daisy fields that moved restlessly,
nervously stirred by the same expectant tensity with which he stood on
the open field waiting for his chance to come.

"I like a fight--a good fight," he said to himself, drawing in his
breath; and the wish seemed but a simple one, the call for the joyful
shock of bodies in fair combat. And life was nothing else--a battle in
the open where courage and a thinking mind must win.

"I'll bet we get a lot of fruits," said Schley's rather calculating
voice.

"Oh, some of them aren't half bad."

"Think so?"

"I say, what do you know about this society game?"

"Look out."

"What's matter?"

"You chump, you never know who's around you." As he spoke, Schley sent
an uneasy glance back toward Stover, and, dropping his voice, continued:
"You don't talk about such things."

"Well, I'm not shouting it out," said McNab, who looked at his more
sophisticated companion with a little growing antagonism. "What are you
scared about?"

"It's the class ahead of you that counts," said Schley hurriedly, "the
sophomore and senior societies; the junior fraternities don't count; if
you're in a sophomore you always go into them."

"Never heard of the sophomore societies," said McNab, in a maliciously
higher tone. "Elucidate somewhat."

"There are three: Hé Boulé, Eta Phi, and Kappa Psi," said Schley, with
another uneasy, squirming glance back at Stover. "They're secret as the
deuce; seventeen men in each--make one and you're in line for a senior."

"How the deuce did you get on to all this?"

"Oh, I've been coached up."

Something in the nascent sophistication of Schley displeased Stover. He
ceased to listen, occupying himself with an interested examination of
the figures who passed from time to time in the aisle, in search of
returning friends. The type was clearly defined; alert, clean-cut,
self-confident, dressed on certain general divisions, affecting the same
style of correct hat and collar, with, as distinguishing features, a
certain boyish exuberance and a distinct nervous energy.

At this moment an abrupt resonant voice said at his side:

"Got a bit of room left beside you?"

Stover shifted his coat, saying:

"Certainly; come on in."

He saw a man of twenty-two or -three, with the head and shoulders of a
bison, sandy hair, with a clear, blue, steady glance, heavy hands, and a
face already set in the mold of stern purpose. He stood a moment,
holding a decrepit handbag stuffed to the danger point, hesitating
whether to stow it in the rack above, and then said:

"Guess I won't risk it. That's my trunk. I'll tuck it in here." He
settled in the vacant seat, saying: "What are you--an upper classman?"

Something like a spasm passed over the well-ironed shoulders of Schley
in front.

"No, I'm not," said Stover, and, extending his hand, he said: "I guess
we're classmates. My name's Stover."

"My name's Regan--Tom Regan. Glad to know you. I'm sorry you're not an
upper classman, though."

"Why so?" said Stover.

"I wanted to get a few pointers," said Regan, in a matter-of-fact way.
"I'm working my way through and I want to know the ropes."

"I wish I knew," said Stover, with instinctive liking for the blunt
elemental force beside him. "What are you going to try?"

"Anything--waiting, to start in with." He gave him a quick glance.
"That's not your trouble, is it?"

"No."

"It's a glorious feeling, to be going up, I tell you," said Regan, with
a sudden lighting up of his rugged features. "Can hardly believe it.
I've been up against those infernal examinations six times, and I'd have
gone up against them six more but I'd down them."

"Where did you come from?"

"Pretty much everywhere. Des Moines, Iowa, at the last."

"It's a pretty fine college," said Stover, with a new thrill.

"It's a college where you stand on your own feet, all square to the
wind," said Regan, with conviction.

"That's what got me. It's worth everything to get here."

"You're right."

"I wonder if I could get hold of some upper classman," said Regan
uneasily.

That this natural desire should be the most unnatural in the world was
already clear to Stover; only, somehow, he did not like to look into
Regan's eyes and make him understand.

"How are you, Stover? Glad to see you."

Dink, looking up, beheld the erect figure and well-mannered carriage of
Le Baron, a sophomore, already a leader of his class, whom he had met
during the summer. In the clean-cut features and naturally modulated
voice there was a certain finely aristocratic quality that won rather
than provoked.

Stover was on his feet at once, a little embarrassed despite himself,
answering hurriedly the questions addressed to him.

"Get your room over in York Street? Good. You're in a good crowd. You
look a little heavier. In good shape? Your class will have to help us
out on the eleven this year."

Stover introduced Regan. Le Baron at once was sympathetic, gave many
hints, recommended certain people to see, and smilingly offered his
services.

"Come around any time; I'll put you in touch with several men that will
be of use to you. Get out for the team right off--that'll make you
friends." Then, turning to Stover, he added, with just a shade of
difference in his tone: "I was looking for you particularly. I want you
to dine with me to-night. I'll be around about seven. Awfully glad
you're here. At seven."

He passed on, giving his hand to the right and left. Stover felt as if
he had received the accolade. Schley ahead was squirmingly impressed;
one or two heads across the aisle turned in his direction, wondering who
could be the freshman whom Le Baron so particularly took under his
protection.

"Isn't he a king?" he said enthusiastically to Regan, with just a
pardonable pleasure in his exuberance. "He made the crew last
year--probably be captain; subtackle on the eleven. I played against him
two years ago when he was at Andover. Isn't he a king, though!"

"I don't know," said Regan, with a drawing of his lips.

Stover was astounded.

"Why not?"

"Don't know."

"What's wrong?"

"Hard to tell. He sizes up for a man all right, but I don't think we'd
agree on some things."

The incident momentarily halted the conversation. Stover was a little
irritated at what seemed to him his companion's over-sensitiveness. Le
Baron had been more than kind in his proffer of help. He was at a loss
to understand why Regan should not see him through his eyes.

"You think I'm finicky," said Regan, breaking the silence.

"Yes, I do," said Stover frankly.

"I guess you and I'll understand each other," said Regan, approving of
his directness. "Perhaps I am wrong. But, boy, this place means a great
deal to me, and the men that are in it and lead it."

"It's the one place where money makes no difference," said Stover, with
a flash--"where you stand for what you are."

Regan turned to him.

"I've fought to get here, and I'll have a fight to stay. It means
something to me."

The train began to slacken in the New Haven station. They swarmed out on
to the platform amid the returning gleeful crowd, crossing and
intercrossing, caught up in the hubbub of shouted recognition.

"Hello, Stuffy!"

"There's Stuffy Davis!"

"Hello, boys."

"Oh, Jim Thompson, have we your eye?"

"Come on."

"Get the crowd together."

"All into a hack."

"Back again, Bill!"

"Join you later. I've got a freshman."

"Where you rooming?"

"See you at Mory's."

Buffeted by the crowd they made their way across the depot to the
street.

"I'm going to hoof it," said Regan, extending his hand. "Glad to have
met you. I'll drop in on you soon."

Stover watched him go stalwartly through the crowd, his bag under one
arm, his soft hat set a little at defiance, looking neither to the right
nor left.

"Why the deuce did he say that about Le Baron?" he thought, with a
feeling of irritation.

Then, obeying an impulse, he signaled an expressman, consigned his bag,
and made his way on foot, dodging in and out of the rapidly filled
hacks, where upper classmen sat four on the seat, hugging one another
with bearlike hugs.

"Eh, freshman, take off that hat!"

He removed his derby immediately, bowing to a hilarious crowd, who
rocked ahead shouting back unintelligible gibes at him.

Others were clinging to car steps and straps.

"Hello, Dink!"

Some one had called him but he could not discover who. He swung down the
crowded street to the heart of the city in the rapid dropping of the
twilight. There was a dampness underfoot that sent to him long, wavering
reflections from early street-lamps. The jumble of the city was in his
ears, the hazy, crowded panorama in his eyes, at his side the passing
contact of strangers. Everything was multiplied, complex, submerging his
individuality.

But this feeling of multitude did not depress him. He had come to
conquer, and zest was in his step and alertness in his glance. Out of
the churning of the crowd he passed into the clear sweep of the city
Common, and, looking up through the mist, for the first time beheld the
battlements of the college awaiting him ahead, lost in the hazy elms.

Across the quiet reaches of the Common he went slowly, incredibly,
toward these strange shapes in brick and stone. The evening mist had
settled. They were things undefined and mysterious, things as real as
the things of his dreams. He passed on through the portals of Phelps
Hall, hearing above his head for the first time the echoes of his own
footsteps against the resounding vault.

Behind him remained the city, suddenly hushed. He was on the campus, the
Brick Row at his left; in the distance the crowded line of the fence,
the fence where he later should sit in joyful conclave. Somewhere there
in the great protecting embrace of these walls were the friends that
should be his, that should pass with him through those wonderful years
of happiness and good fellowship that were coming.

"And this is it--this is Yale," he said reverently, with a little
tightening of the breath.

They had begun at last--the happy, care-free years that every one
proclaimed. Four glorious years, good times, good fellows, and a free
and open fight to be among the leaders and leave a name on the roll of
fame. Only four years, and then the world with its perplexities and
grinding trials.

"Four years," he said softly. "The best, the happiest I'll ever know!
Nothing will ever be like them--nothing!"

And, carried away with the confident joy of it, he went toward his
house, shoulders squared, with the step of a d'Artagnan and a song
sounding in his ears.




CHAPTER II


He found the house in York Street, a low, white-washed frame building,
luminous under the black canopy of the overtowering elms. At the door
there was a little resistance and a guarded voice cried:

"What do you want?"

"I want to get in."

"What for?"

"Because I want to."

"Very sorry," said McNab's rather squeaky voice--"most particular sorry;
but this house is infected with yellow fever and the rickets, and we
wouldn't for the world share it with the sophomore class--oh, no!"

A light began to dawn over Stover.

"I'm rooming here," he said.

"What's your name and general style of beauty?"

"Stover, and I've got a twitching foot."

"Why didn't you say so?" said McNab, who then admitted him. "Pardon me.
The sophomores are getting so fidgety, you know, hopping all up and
down. My name's McNab--German extraction. Came up on the train, ahead of
you--thought you were a sophomore, you put on such a beautiful side.
Here, put on that chain."

"Hazing?"

"Oh, no, indeed. Just a few members of the weakling class above us might
get too fond of us; just must see us--welcome to Yale and all that sort
of thing. I hate sentimental exhibitions, don't you?"

"Is McCarthy here?" said Stover, laughing.

"Your wife is waiting for you most anxiously."

"Hello, is that Dink?" called down McCarthy's exuberant voice at this
moment.

Stover went up the stairs like a terrier, answering the joyful whoop
with a war-cry of his own. The next moment he and McCarthy were
pummeling each other, wrestling about the room, to the dire danger of
furniture and crockery. When this sentimental moment had exhausted
itself physically, McCarthy bore him to the back of the house, saying:

"We don't want to show our light in front just yet. We've got a corking
lot in the house--best of the Andover crowd. Come on; I'll introduce
you. You remember Hunter, who played against me at tackle? He's here."

There were half a dozen loitering on the window-seat and beds in the
pipe-ridden room.

Hunter, in shirt sleeves, sorting the contents of his trunk, came
forward at once.

"Hello, Stover, how are you?"

"How are you?"

No sooner did their hands clasp than a change came to Dink. He was face
to face with the big man of the Andover crowd, measuring him and being
measured. The sudden burst of boyish affection that had sent him into
McCarthy's arms was gone. This man could not help but be a leader in the
class. He was older than the rest, but how much it would have been hard
to say. He examined, analyzed, and deliberated. He knew what lay before
him. He would make no mistakes. He was carried away by no sentimental
enthusiasm. Everything about him was reserved--his cordiality, the quiet
grip of his hand, the smile of welcome, and the undecipherable estimate
in his eyes.

"Will you follow me or shall I follow you?" each seemed to say in the
first contact, which was a challenge.

"How are you?" said Stover, shaking hands with some one else; and the
tone was the tone of Hunter.

There were three others in the room: Hunter's room-mate, Stone, a
smiling, tall, good-looking fellow who shook his hand an extra period;
Saunders, silent, retired behind his spectacles; and Logan, who roomed
with McNab, who sunk his shoulders as he shook hands and looked into
Stover's eyes intensely as he said, "Awful glad; awful glad to know
you."

"Have a pipe--cigarette--anything?" said Hunter over his shoulder, from
the trunk to which he had returned.

"No, thanks."

"Started training?"

"Sort of."

"Take a chair and make yourself at home," said Hunter warmly, but
without turning.

The talk was immediately of what each was going to do. Stone was out for
the glee club, already planning to take singing lessons in the contest
for the leadership, three years off. Saunders was to start for the
_News_. Logan had made drawings during the summer and was out for the
_Record_. Hunter was trying for his class team and the crew. Only McNab
was defiant.

"None of that for me," he said, on his back, legs in the air, blowing
rings against the ceiling. "I'm for a good time, the best in life. It
may be a short one, but it'll be a lulu!"

"You'll be out heeling the _Record_, Dopey, inside of a month," said
Hunter quietly.

"Never, by the Great Horned Spoon--never!"

"And you'll get a tutor, Dopey, and stay with us."

"Never! I came to love and to be loved. I'm a lovely thing; that's
sufficient," said McNab, with a grimace to his elfish face. "I will not
be harnessed up. I will not heel."

"Yes, you will."

Hunter's tone had not varied. Stover, studying him, wondered if he had
marked out the route of Stone, Saunders, and Logan, just as he felt that
McNab would sooner or later conform to the will of the man who had
determined to succeed himself and make his own crowd succeed.

Reynolds, a sophomore, an old Andover man, dropped in. Again it was but
question of the same challenge, addressed to each:

"What are you trying for?"

The arrival of the sophomore, who installed himself in easy majesty in
the arm-chair and addressed his questions with a quick, analytical
staccato, produced somewhat the effect of a suddenly opened window. Even
McNab was unwillingly impressed, and Hunter, closing the trunk, allowed
the conversation to be guided by Reynolds' initiative.

He was a fiery, alert, rather undersized fellow, who had been the first
in his class to make the _News_, and was supposed to be in line for that
all-important chairmanship.

Inside of five minutes he had gone through the possibilities of each
man, advising briefly in a quick, businesslike manner. To Stover he
seemed symbolic of the rarefied contending nervousness of the place, a
personality that suddenly threw open to him all the nervous panorama of
the struggle for position which had already begun.

On top of which there arrived Rogers, a junior, good-natured, popular,
important. At once, to Stover's amused surprise, the rôle was reversed.
Reynolds, from the enthroned autocrat, became the respectful audience,
answered a few questions, and found a quick opportunity to leave.

"Let's go in front and have a little fun," said Rogers.

Somewhat perplexed, Stover led the way to their room.

"Light up," said Rogers, with a chuckle. "There's a sophomore bunch
outside just ready to tumble."

Rogers' presence brought back a certain ease; they were no longer on
inspection, and even in his manner was a more open cordiality than he
had showed toward Reynolds. That under all this was some graduated
system of authority Stover was slowly perceiving, when all at once from
the street there rose a shout:

"Turn down that light!"

"Freshmen, turn down that light!"

"Turn it down slowly," said Rogers, with a gesture to McNab.

"Faster!"

"All the way down!"

"Turn it up suddenly," said Rogers.

An angry swelling protest arose:

"Turn that down!"

"You freshmen!"

"Turn it down!"

"The freshest of the fresh!"

"Here, let me work 'em up," said Rogers, going to the gas-jet.

Under his tantalizing manipulation the noise outside grew to the
proportions of a riot.

"Come on and get the bloody freshmen!"

"Ride 'em on a rail!"

"Say, are we going to stand for this?"

"Down with that light!"

"Let's run 'em out!"

"Break in the door!"

"Out with the freshman!"

Below came a sudden rush of feet. Rogers, abandoning the gas-jet, draped
himself nonchalantly on the couch that faced the door.

"Well, here comes the shindy," thought Stover, with a joyful tensity in
every muscle.

The hubbub stormed up the hall, shot open the door, and choked the
passage with the suddenly revealed fury of angry faces.

"Hello," said Rogers' quiet voice. "Well, what do _you_ want?"

[Illustration: "'HELLO,' SAID ROGERS' QUIET VOICE, 'WELL, WHAT DO YOU
WANT?'"--_Page 19._]

No sooner had the barbaric front ranks beheld the languid, slightly
annoyed junior than the fury of battle vanished like a flurry of wind
across the water. From behind the more concealed began to murmur:

"Oh, beans!"

"A lemon!"

"Rubber!"

"Sold!"

"Well, what is it?" said Rogers sharply, sending a terrific frown at the
sheepish leaders.

At this curt reminder there was a shifting movement in the rear, which
rapidly communicated itself to the stammering, apologetic front ranks;
the door was closed in ludicrous haste, and down the stairs resounded
the stampede of the baffled host.

"My, they are a fierce lot, these man-eating sophomores, aren't they?"
said Rogers, giving way to his laughter. And then, a little
apologetically, but with a certain twinkle of humor, he added: "Don't
worry, boys; there was no one in that crowd who'll do you any harm.
However, I might just as well chaperon you to your eating-joint."

"Le Baron is going to take me out with him," said Stover, as they rose
to go.

"Hugh Le Baron?" said Rogers, with a new interest.

"Yes, sir."

"I didn't get your name."

"Stover."

"Oh! Captain down at Lawrenceville, weren't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, wish you good luck," said Rogers, with a more appraising eye.
"You've got an opening this year. Drop in and see me sometime, will you?
I mean it."

"See you later, Stover," said Hunter, resting his hand on his shoulder
with a little friendly touch.

"Bully you're with us," said Stone.

"Come in and chin a little later," said Logan.

Saunders gave him a duck of the head, with unconcealed admiration in his
embarrassed manner.

McCarthy went with them. Stover, left alone, measured the length of the
room, smiling to himself. It was all quite amusing, especially when his
was the fixed point of view.

In a few moments Le Baron arrived. Together they went across the campus,
now swarming like ant runs. At every step Le Baron was halted by a
greeting. Recognition was in the air, turbulent, boyish, exaggerated,
rising to the pitch of a scream or accomplished in a bear dance; and
through it all was the same vibrant, minor note of the ceaseless
activity.

It was the air Stover loved. He waited respectfully, while Le Baron
shook a score of hands, impatient for the moment to begin and the
opportunity to have his name told from lip to lip.

"I'm going to be captain at Yale," he said to himself, with a sudden
fantastic, grandiloquent fury. "I will if it's in me."

"We'll run down to Heub's," said Le Baron, free at last, "get a good
last meal before going into training. You look in pretty fit shape."

"I've kept so all summer."

"Who's over in your house?"

Stover named them.

"They weren't my crowd at Andover, but they're good fellows," said Le
Baron, listening critically. "Hunter especially. Here we are."

A minute later they had found a table in the restaurant crowded with
upper classmen, and Le Baron was glancing down the menu.

"An oyster cocktail, a planked steak--rare; order the rest later." He
turned to Stover. "Guess we'd better cut out the drinks. We'll stand the
gaff better to-morrow."

There was in his voice a quiet possession, as if he had already assumed
the reins of Stover's career.

"Are you out for the eleven again?" said Stover respectfully.

"Yes. I'll never do any better than a sub, but that's what counts. We're
up against an awfully stiff proposition this year. The team's got to be
built out of nothing. There's Dana, the captain, now, over at the table
in the corner."

"Where?" said Stover, fired at the thought.

Le Baron pointed out the table, detailing to him the names of some of
the coaches who were grouped there.

When Stover had dared to gaze for the first time on the face of the
majestic leader, he experienced a certain shock. The group of past
heroes about him were laughing, exchanging reminiscences of past
combats; but the face of Dana was set in seriousness, too sensitive to
the responsibility that lay heavier than the honor on his young
shoulders. Stover had not thought of his leader so.

"I guess it's going to be a bad season," he said.

"Yes; we may have to take our medicine this year."

Several friends of Le Baron's stopped to shake hands, greeting Stover
always with that appraising glance which had amused him in Reynolds who
had first sat in inquisition.

He began to be conscious of an ever-widening gulf separating him and Le
Baron, imposed by all the subtle, still uncomprehended incidents of the
night, which gradually made him see that he had found, not a friend, but
a protector. A certain natural impulsiveness left him; he answered in
short sentences, resenting a little this sudden, not yet defined sense
of subjection.

But the hum of diners was about him, the unknown intoxication of lights,
the prevailing note of joy, the free concourse of men, the vibrant note
of good fellowship, good cheer, and the eager seizing of the zest of the
hour. The men he saw were the men who had succeeded--a success which
unmistakably surrounded them. He, too, wished for success acutely,
almost with a throbbing, gluttonous feeling, sitting there unknown.

All at once Dana, passing across the room, stopped for a handshake and a
word of greeting to Le Baron. Stover was introduced, rising
precipitately, to the imminent danger of his plate.

"Stover from Lawrenceville?" said Dana.

"Yes, sir."

The captain's eye measured him carefully, taking in the wiry, spare
frame, the heavy shoulders, and the nervous hands, and then stayed on
the clean-cut jaw, the direct blue glance, and the rebellious rise of
sandy hair.

"End, of course," he said at last.

"Yes, sir."

"About a hundred and fifty-four?"

"One hundred and fifty, sir, stripped."

"Ever played in the back field?"

"No, sir."

"Report with the varsity squad to-morrow."

"Yes, sir."

"There's a type of man we're proud of," said Le Baron. "Came here from
Exeter, waited at Commons first two years; every one likes him. He has a
tough proposition here this year, though--supposing we dig out."

In the room the laughter was rising, and all the little nervous noises
of the clash of plate and cutlery. Stover would have liked to stay, to
yield to the contagion, to watch with eager eyes the opposite types, all
under the careless spell of the beginning year.

The city was black about them as they stepped forth, the giant elms
flattened overhead against the blurred mists of the night, like curious
water weeds seen from below.

They went in silence directly toward the campus. Once or twice Le Baron
started to speak and then stopped. At length he said:

"Come this way."

They passed by Osborne Hall, and the Brick Row with the choked display
of the Coöp below, and, crossing to the dark mass of the Old Library,
sat down on the steps.

Before Stover stretched all the lighted panorama of the college and the
multiplied strewn lights against the mysteries of stone and
brick--lights that drew him to the quiet places of a hundred growing
existencies--affected him like the lights of the crowded restaurant and
the misty reflections of the glassy streets. It was the night, the
mysterious night that suddenly had come into his boyish knowledge.

It was immense, unfathomable--this spectacle of a massed multitude. It
was all confounded, stirring, ceaseless, feverish in its brilliant
gaiety, fleeting, transitory, mocking. It was of the stage, theatric. It
brought theatric emotions, too keenly sensitized, too sharply
overwhelming. He wished to flee from it in despair of ever conquering,
as he wished to conquer, this world of stirring ambitions and shadowy
and fleeting years.

"I'm going to do for you," said Le Baron's voice, breaking the
charm--"I'm going to do what some one did for me when I came here last
year."

He paused a moment, a little, too, under the spell of the night,
perhaps, seeking how best to choose his words.

"It is a queer place you're coming into, and many men fail for not
understanding it in time. I'm going to tell you a few things."

Again he stopped. Stover, waiting, heard across from the blazing sides
of Farnam a piano's thin, rushing notes. Nearer, from some window
unseen, a mandolin was quavering. Voices, calling, mingled in softened
confusion.

"Oh, Charley Bangs--stick out your head."

"We want Billy Brown."

"Hello, there!"

"Tubby, this way!"

Then this community of faint sounds was lost as, from the fence, a
shapeless mass beyond began to send its song towards him.


     "_When freshmen first we came to Yale_
     _Fol-de-rol-de-rol-rol-rol._
     _Examinations made us pale_
     _Fol-de-rol-de-rol-rol-rol._"


"What do you know about the society system here?" said Le Baron
abruptly.

"Why, I know--there are three senior societies: Skull and Bones, Keys,
Wolf's-Head--but I guess that's all I do know."

"You'll hear a good deal of talk inside the college, and out of it, too,
about the system. It has its faults. But it's the best system there is,
and it makes Yale what it is to-day. It makes fellows get out and work;
it gives them ambitions, stops loafing and going to seed, and keeps a
pretty good, clean, temperate atmosphere about the place."

"I know nothing at all about it," said Stover, perplexed.

"The seniors have fifteen in each; they give out their elections end of
junior year, end of May. That's what we're all working for."

"Already?" said Stover involuntarily.

"There are fellows in your class," said Le Baron, "who've been working
all summer, so as to get ahead in the competition for the _Lit_ or the
_Record_, or to make the leader of the glee club--fellows, of course,
who know."

"But that's three years off."

"Yes, it's three years off," said Le Baron quietly. "Then there are the
junior fraternities; but they're large, and at present don't count much,
except you have to make them. Then there are what are called sophomore
societies." He hesitated a moment. "They are very important."

"Do you belong?" asked Stover innocently.

"Yes," said Le Baron, after another hesitation. "Of course, we don't
discuss our societies here. Others will tell you about them. But here's
where your first test will come in."

Then came another lull. Stover, troubled, frowning, sat staring at the
brilliant windows across which passed, from time to time, a sudden
shadow. The groups at the fence were singing a football song, with a
marching swing to it, that had so often caught up his loyal soul as he
had sat shivering in the grand-stand for the game to begin. It was not
all so simple--no, not at all simple. It wasn't as he had thought. It
was complex, a little disturbing.

"This college is made up of all sorts of elements," said Le Baron, at
last. "And it is not easy to run it. Now, in every class there are just
a small number of fellows who are able to do it and who will do it. They
form the real crowd. All the rest don't count. Now, Stover, you're going
to have a chance at something big on the football side; but that is not
all. You might make captain of the eleven and miss out on a senior
election. You're going to be judged by your friends, and it is just as
easy to know the right crowd as the wrong."

"What do you mean by the right crowd?" said Stover, conscious of just a
little antagonism.

"The right crowd?" said Le Baron, a little perplexed to define so
simple a thing. "Why, the crowd that is doing things, working for Yale;
the crowd--"

"That the class ahead picks out to lead us," said Stover abruptly.

"Yes," said Le Baron frankly; "and it won't be a bad judgment. Money
alone won't land a man in it, and there'll be some in it who work their
way through college. On the whole, it's about the crowd you'll want to
know all through life."

"I see," said Stover. His clasp tightened over his knees, and he was
conscious of a certain growing uncomfortable sensation. He liked Le
Baron--he had looked up to him, in a way. Of course, it was all said in
kindness, and yet--

"I'm frankly aristocratic in my point of view"--he heard the
well-modulated voice continue--"and what I say others think. I'm older
than most of my class, and I've seen a good deal of the world at home
and abroad. You may think the world begins outside of college. It
doesn't; it begins right here. You want to make the friends that will
help you along, here and outside. Don't lose sight of your
opportunities, and be careful how you choose.

"Now, by that I mean don't make your friends too quickly. Get to know
the different crowds, but don't fasten to individuals until you see how
things work out. This rather surprises you, doesn't it? Perhaps you
don't like it."

"It does sort of surprise me," said Stover, who did not answer what he
meant.

"Stover," said Le Baron, resting a hand on his knee, "I like you. I
liked you from the first time we lined up in that Andover-Lawrenceville
game. You've got the stuff in you to make the sort of leader we need at
Yale. That's why I'm trying to make you see this thing as it is. You
come from a school that doesn't send many fellows here. You haven't the
fellows ahead pulling for you, the way the other crowds have. I don't
want you to make any mistake. Remember, you're going to be watched from
now on."

"Watched?" said Stover, frowning.

"Yes; everything you do, everything you say--that's how you'll be
judged. That's why I'm telling you these things."

"I appreciate it," said Stover, but without enthusiasm.

"Now, you've got a chance to make good on the eleven this year. If you
do, you stand in line for the captaincy senior year. It lies with you to
be one of the big men in the class. And this is the way to do it: get to
know every one in the class right off."

"What!" said Stover, genuinely surprised.

"I mean, bow to every one; call them by name: but hold yourself apart,"
said Le Baron. "Make fellows come to you. Don't talk too much. Hold
yourself in. Keep out of the crowd that is out booze-fighting--or, when
you're with them, keep your head. There are a lot of fellows here, with
friends ahead of them, who can cut loose a certain amount; but it's
dangerous. If you want to make what you ought to make of yourself,
Stover, you've got to prove yourself; you've got to keep yourself well
in hand."

Stover suddenly comprehended that Le Baron was exposing his own theory,
that he, prospective captain of the crew, was imposing on himself.

"Don't ticket yourself for drinking."

"I won't."

"Or get known for gambling--oh, I'm not preaching a moral lesson; only,
what you do, do quietly."

"I understand."

"And another thing: no fooling around women; that isn't done
here--that'll queer you absolutely."

"Of course."

"Now, you've got to do a certain amount of studying here. Better do it
the first year and get in with the faculty."

"I will."

"There it is," said Le Baron, suddenly extending his hand toward the
lighted college. "Isn't it worth working for--to win out in the end?
And, Stover, it's easy enough when you know how. Play the game as others
are playing it. It's a big game, and it'll follow you all through life.
There it is; it's up to you. Keep your head clear and see straight."

The gesture of Le Baron, half seen in the darkness, brought a strange
trouble to Stover. It was as if, at the height of the eager confidence
of his youth, some one had whispered in his ear and a shadowy hand had
held before his eyes a gigantic temptation.

"Are there any questions you want to ask me?" said Le Baron, with a new
feeling of affection toward the unprotected freshman whom he had so
generously advised.

"No."

They sat silently. And all at once, as Stover gazed, from the high,
misty walls and the elm-tops confounded in the night, a monstrous hand
seemed to stretch down, impending over him, and the care-free windows
suddenly to be transformed into myriad eyes, set on him in
inquisition--eyes that henceforth indefatigably, remorselessly would
follow him.

And with it something snapped, something fragile--the unconscious,
simple democracy of boyhood. And, as it went, it went forever. This was
the world rushing in, dividing the hosts. This was the parting of the
ways. The standards of judgment were the world's. It was not what he had
thought. It was no longer the simple struggle. It was complex,
disturbing, incomprehensible. To win he would have to change.

"It's been good of you to tell me all this," he said, giving his hand to
Le Baron, and the words sounded hollow.

"Think over what I've said to you."

"I will."

"A man is known by his friends; remember that, Stover, if you don't
anything else!"

"It's awfully good of you."

"I like you, Dink," said Le Baron, shaking hands warmly; "now you know
the game, go in and win."

"It's awfully good of you," said Stover aimlessly. He stood watching Le
Baron's strong, aristocratic figure go swinging across the dim campus in
a straight, undeviating, well-calculated path.

"It's awfully good of him," he said mechanically, "awfully good. What a
wonder he is!"

And yet, and yet, he could not define the new feeling--he was but barely
conscious of it; was it rebellion or was it a lurking disappointment?

He stood alone, looking at the new world. It was no longer the world of
the honest day. It was brilliant, fascinating, alluring, awakening
strange, poignant emotions--but it was another world, and the way to it
had just been shown him.

He turned abruptly and went toward his room, troubled, wondering why he
was so troubled, vainly seeking the reason, knowing not that it lay in
the destruction of a fragile thing--his first illusion.




CHAPTER III


Tough McCarthy was in the communal rooms, busily delving into the
recesses of a circus trunk, from which, from time to time, he emerged
with the loot of the combined McCarthy family.

"Dink, my boy, cast your eye over my burglaries. Look at them. Aren't
they lovely, aren't they fluffy and sweet? I don't know what half of 'em
are, but won't they decorate the room? And every one, 'pon my honor, the
gift of a peach who loves me! The whole family was watching, but I got
'em out right under their noses. Well, why not cheer me!"

He deposited on the floor a fragrant pile of assorted embroideries,
table-covers, lace pincushions, and filmy mysteries purloined from
feminine dressing-tables, which he rapidly proceeded to distribute about
the room according to his advanced theories on decoration, which
consisted in crowding the corners, draping the gas-jets, and clothing
the picture-frames.

Stover sat silently, out of the mood.

"Here's three new scalps," continued McCarthy, producing some cushions.
"Had to vow eternal love, and keep the dear girls separated--a blonde
and two brunettes--but I got the pillows, my boy, I got 'em. And now sit
back and hold on."

He made a third trip to the trunk, unaware of Stover's distracted mood,
and came back chuckling, his arms heaped with photographs to his chin.

"One thousand and one Caucasian beauties, the pride of every State, the
only girls who ever loved me. Look at 'em!"

He distributed a score of photographs, mustering them on the
mantelpiece, pinning them to the already suspended flags, massing them
in circles, ranging them in crosses and ascending files, and announced:

"Finest I could gather in. Only know a third of 'em, but the sisters
know the rest. Isn't it a beauty parlor? Why, it'll make that blond
warbler Stone, downstairs, feel like an amateur canary." Suddenly aware
of Stover's opposite mood, he stopped. "What the deuce is the matter?"

"Nothing."

"You look solemn as an owl."

"I didn't know it."

"Well, how did you like Le Baron?"

"He's a corker!" said Stover militantly.

"I've been arranging about an eating-joint."

"You have?"

"We're in with a whole bunch of fellows. Gimbel, an Andover chap, is
running it. Five dollars a week. We can see if we can stand it."

"Tough, go slow."

"Why so?"

Stover hesitated, looking at McCarthy's puzzled expression, and,
looking, there seemed to be ten years' experience dividing them.

"Oh, I only mean we want to pick our friends carefully," he said at
length.

"What difference does it make where we eat?"

"Well, it does."

"Oh, of course we want to enjoy ourselves."

Stover saw he did not understand and somehow, feeling all the exuberant
enthusiasm that actuated him, he hesitated to continue the explanation.

"By George, Dink," continued McCarthy comically solicitous of his scheme
of decoration, "is there anything like the air of this place? You can't
resist it, can you? Every one's out working for something. By George, I
hope I can make good!"

"You will," said Stover. And in his mind was already something of the
paternal protection that he had surprised in Hunter, the big man of the
Andover crowd.

"If I'm to do anything at football I've got to put on a deuce of a lot
of weight," said McCarthy a little disconsolately. "Guess my best chance
is at baseball."

"The main thing, Tough, is to get out and try for everything," said
Stover wisely. "Show you're a worker and it's going to count."

"That's good advice--who put it into your head?"

"Le Baron talked over a good many things with me," said Stover slowly.
"He gave me a great many pointers. That's why I said go slow--we want to
get with the right crowd."

"The right crowd?" said McCarthy, wheeling about and staring at his
room-mate. "What the deuce are you talking about, Dink? Do you mean to
say any one cares who in the blankety-blank we eat with?"

"Yes."

"What! Who the deuce's business is it to meddle in my affairs? Right
crowd and wrong crowd--there's only one crowd, and each man's as good as
the other. That's the way I look at it." He stopped, amazed, looking
over at Stover. "Why, Dink, I never expected you to stand for the right
and wrong crowd idea."

"I don't mean it the way you do," said Stover lamely--for he was trying
to argue with himself. "We're trying to do something here, aren't
we--not just loaf through? Well, we want to be with the crowd that's
doing things."

"Oh, if you mean it that way," said McCarthy dubiously, "that's
different. I've been filled up for the last hour with nothing but
society piffle by a measly-faced runt just out of the nursery called
Schley. Skull and Bones--Locks and Keys--Wolf's-Head--gold bugs,
hobgoblins, toe the line, heel the right crowd, mind your _p's_ and
_q's_, don't call your soul your own, don't look at a society house,
don't for heaven's sake look at a pin in a necktie, never say 'bones' or
'fee-fie-fo-fum' out loud--never--oh, rats, what bosh!"

"Schley is an odious little toad," said Stover evasively. A little vain
of his new knowledge and the destiny before him, he looked at the
budding McCarthy with somewhat the anxiety of a mother hen, and said
with great solemnity: "Don't go off half cock, old fellow."

"What! Have you fallen for the bugaboo?"

"My dear Tough," said Stover, with a little gorgeousness, "don't commit
yourself until you know the whole business. You like the feeling here,
don't you--the way every one is out working for something?"

"You bet I do."

"Well, it's the society system that does it."

"Come off."

"Wait and see."

"But what in the name of my aunt's cat's pants," said McCarthy,
unwilling to relinquish the red rag, "what in the name of common sense
is the holy sacred secret, that it can't be looked at, talked about, or
touched?"

"Don't be a galoot, Tough," said Stover, in a superior way; "don't be a
frantic ass. All that's exaggerated; only little jack-asses like Schley
are frightened by it. The real side, the serious side, is that the
system is built up for the fellows who are going to do something for
Yale. Now, just wait until you get your eyes open before you go shooting
up the place."

But, as he stood in his own bedroom, with no Tough McCarthy to instruct
and patronize, alone at his window, looking out at the sputtering arc
lights with their splotchy regions of light and the busy windows of
Pierson Hall across the way, listening to the chapel sending forth its
quarter hour over the half-divined campus--he was not quite so confident
of all he had proclaimed.

"It's different--different from school," he said to himself half
apologetically. "It can't be the same as school. It's got to be
organized differently. It's the same everywhere."

He went to bed, to sleep badly, restless and unconvinced, a stranger in
strange places, staring at the flickering glare of the arc light against
the window-panes, that light as unreal in comparison with the frank
sunlight as the sudden bewildering introduction to the new, complex life
was different from the direct and rugged simplicity of the unconscious
democracy of school that had gone.

He awoke with a start, to find McCarthy and Dopey McNab, in striped
pajamas, solicitously occupied in applying a lather to his bare feet. He
sprang up with all the old zest, and, a free scrimmage taking place,
wreaked satisfactory vengeance on the intruders.

"Hang you, Stover," said McNab weakly, "if you'd snored another minute
I'd have won my dollar from McCarthy. If you want to be friends, nothing
like being friendly, is there? Come on down to my rooms, we've got eggs
and coffee right on tap. It's a bore going down to the joint. To-morrow
we'll all be slaves of the alarm clock again. Hang compulsory chapel."

They breakfasted hilariously under McNab's irresistible good humor. When
at last Stover sauntered out to reconnoiter in company with McCarthy, a
great change had come. The emotions of the night, the restless
rebelliousness, had lost all their acuteness and seemed only a blurred
memory. The college of the day was a different thing.

The late arrivals were swarming in carriages, or on top of heaped
express-wagons, just as the school used to surge hilariously back. The
windows were open, crowded with eager heads; the street corners
clustered with swiftly assembling groups, sophomores almost entirely,
past whom isolated, self-conscious freshmen went with averted gaze, to
the occasional accompaniment of a whistled freshman march. Despite
himself, Stover began to feel a little tightening in the shoulders, a
little uncertainty in the swing of his walk, and something in his back
seemed uneasily conscious of the concentrated attack of superior eyes.

They entered the campus, now the campus of the busy day. Across by the
chapel, the fence was hidden under continually arriving groups of upper
classmen, streaming to it in threes and fours in muscular enthusiasm.
There was no division there. Gradually the troubled perceptions of the
night before faded from Stover's consciousness. The light he saw was the
clear noon of the day, and the air that filled his lungs the atmosphere
of life and ambition.

At every step, runners for eating-houses, steam laundries, and tailors
thrust cards in their hands, coaxing for orders. Every tree seemed
plastered with notices of the awakening year, summons to trials for the
musical organizations and the glee club, offers to tutor, announcements
of coming competitions, calls for candidates to a dozen activities.

"Hello, Dink, old boy!"

They looked up to behold Charley De Soto, junior over in the Sheffield
Scientific School, bearing down upon them.

"Hello, Tough, glad to see you up here!"

De Soto had been at Lawrenceville with them, a comrade of the eleven,
now prospective quarter-back for the coming season.

"You've put on weight, Dink," he said with critical approval. "You've
got a bully chance this year. Are you reporting this afternoon?"

"Captain Dana asked me to come out for the varsity."

"I talked to him about you."

He asked a dozen questions, invited them over to see him, and was off.

They elbowed their way into the Coöp to make their purchases. The first
issue of the _News_ was already on sale, with its notices and its
appeals.

They went out and past Vanderbilt toward their eating-joint. Off the
campus, directly at the end of their path, a shape more like a monstrous
shadow than a building rose up, solid, ivy-covered, blind, with great,
prison-like doors, heavily padlocked.

"Fee-fi-fo-fum," said McCarthy.

"Which is it?" said Stover, in a different tone.

"Skull and Bones, of course," said McCarthy defiantly. "Look at it under
your eyelids, quick; don't let any one see you."

Stover, without hearing him, gazed ahead, impressed despite himself.
There it was, the symbol and the embodiment of all the subtle forces
that had been disclosed to him, the force that had stood amid the
passing classes, imposing its authority unquestioned, waiting at the end
of the long journey to give or withhold the final coveted success.

"Will I make it--will I ever make it?" he said to himself, drawing a
long breath. "To be one of fifteen--only fifteen!"

"It is a scary sort of looking old place," said McCarthy. "They
certainly have dressed it up for the part."

Still Stover did not reply. The dark, weighty, massive silhouette had
somehow entered his imagination, never to be shaken off, to range itself
wherever he went in the shadowy background of his dreams.

"It stands for democracy, Tough," he said, as they turned toward Chapel
Street, and there was in his voice a certain emotion he couldn't
control. "And I guess the mistakes it makes are pretty honest ones."

"Perhaps," said McCarthy stubbornly. "But why all this mumbo-jumbo
business?"

"It doesn't affect you, does it?"

"The trouble is, it does," said McCarthy, with a laugh. "Do you know
what I ought to do?"

"What?"

"Go right up and sit on the steps of the bloomin' old thing and eat a
bag of cream-puffs."

Stover exploded with laughter.

"What the deuce would be the sense in that, you old anarchist?"

"To prove to my own satisfaction that I'm a man."

"Do you mean it?" said Stover, half laughing.

McCarthy scratched his head with one of the old boyish, comical gestures
Stover knew so well.

"Well, perhaps I mean more than I think," he said, grinning. "In
another month I may get it as bad as that little uselessness Schley. By
the way, he wants us over at his eating-joint."

"He does?"

"He's a horsefly sort of a cuss. You'll see, he'll fasten on to you just
as soon as he thinks it worth while. Here we are."

They pressed their way, saluted with the imperious rattle of knives and
plates, through three or four rooms, blue-gray with smoke, and found a
vacant table in a far corner. A certain reserve was still prevalent in
the noisy throng, which had not yet been welded together. Immediately a
thin, wiry fellow, neatly dressed, hair plastered, affable and brimming
over with energy, rose and pumped McCarthy's hand, slapping him
effusively on the back.

"Bully! Glad to see you. This is Stover, of course. I'm Gimbel--Ray
Gimbel; you don't know me, but I know you. Seen entirely too much of you
on the wrong side of the field in the Andover-Lawrenceville game."

"How are you, Gimbel?" said Stover, not disliking the flattery, though
perceiving it.

"We were greatly worried about you," said Gimbel directly, and with a
sudden important seriousness. "There was a rumor around you had switched
to Princeton."

"Oh, no."

"Well, we're certainly glad you didn't." Looking him straight in the
face, he said with conviction: "You'll be captain here."

"I'm not worrying about that just at present," said Stover, amused.

"All right; that's my prophecy. I'll be back in a second."

He departed hastily, to welcome new arrivals with convulsive grip and
rolling urbanity, passing like a doctor on his hospital rounds.

"Who's Gimbel?" said Stover, wondering, as he watched him, what new
force he represented.

"Hurdler up at Andover, I believe."

In a moment Gimbel was back, engaging them in eager conclave.

"See here, there's a combination being gotten up," he said impersonally,
"a sort of slate for our class football managers, and I want to get you
fellows interested. Hotchkiss and St. Paul are going in together, and we
want to organize the other schools. How many fellows are up from
Lawrenceville?"

"About fifteen."

"We've got a corking good man from Andover not in any of the crowds up
there, and a lot of us want to give him a good start. I'll have you meet
him to-night at supper. If you fellows weren't out for football, we'd
put one of you up for secretary and treasurer. You can name him if you
want. I've got a hundred votes already, and we're putting through a deal
with a Sheff crowd for vice-president that will give us thirty or forty
more. Our man's Hicks--Frank Hicks--the best in the world. Say a good
word for him, will you, wherever you can. See you to-night."

He was off to another table, where he was soon in animated conversation.

"Don't mix up in it," said Stover quietly.

"Why not?" said McCarthy. "A good old political shindig's lots of fun."

"Wait until we understand the game," said Stover, remembering Le Baron's
advice not to commit himself to any crowd.

"But it would be such a lark."

Dink did not reply. Instead he was carefully studying the many types
that crowded before his eyes. They ranged from the New Yorker, extra
spick-and-span for his arrival, lost and ill at ease, speaking to no
one; to older men in jerseys and sweaters, unshaven often, lolling back
in their chairs, concerned with no one, talking with all.

The waiters were of his own class, who presently brought their plates to
the tables they served and sat down without embarrassment. It was a
heterogeneous assembly, with a preponderance of quiet, serious types,
men to whom the financial problem was serious and college an opportunity
to fit themselves for the grinding combat of life. Others were raw,
decidedly without experience, opinionated, carrying on their shoulders a
chip of somewhat bumptious pride. The talk was all of the doings of the
night before, when several had fallen into the hands of mischief-bent
sophomores.

"They caught Flanders down York Street and made him roll a peanut up to
Billy's."

"Yes, and the darned fool hadn't sense enough to grin and bear it."

"So they gave him a beer shampoo."

"A what?"

"A beer shampoo."

"Did you hear about Regan?"

"Who's Regan?"

"He's a thundering big coal-heaver from out the woolly West."

"Oh, the fellow that started to scrap."

"That's the man."

"Give us the story, Buck."

"They had me up, doing some of my foolish stunts," said a fellow with a
great moon of a face, little twinkling eyes, and a grotesque nose that
sprang forth like a jagged promontory, "when, all at once, this elephant
of a Regan saunters in coolly to see what's doing."

"Didn't know any better, eh?"

"Didn't know a thing. Well, no sooner did the sophs spot him than they
set up a yell:

"'Who are you?'

"'Tom Regan.'

"'What's your class?'

"'Freshman.'

"'What in the blankety-blank are you doing here?'

"'Lookin' on.'

"With that, of course, they began just leaping up and down for joy,
hugging one another; and a couple of them started in to tackle the old
locomotive. The fellow, who's as strong as an ox, just gives a cough and
a sneeze, scatters a few little sophs on the floor, and in a twinkling
is in the corner, barricaded behind a table, looking as big as a house.

"'Tom, look out; they're going to shampoo you,' says I.

"'Is it all right?' he says, with a grin.

"'It's etiquette,' says I.

"'Come on, then,' says he very affably, and he strips off his coat and
tosses it across the room, saying, 'It's my only one; look out for it.'

"Well, when the sophs saw him standing there, licking his chops, arms as
big as hams, they sort of stopped and scratched their heads."

"I bet they did!" cried a couple.

"They didn't particularly like the prospect; but they were game,
especially a little bantam of a rooster called Waring, who'd been
putting us through our stunts.

"'I'm going in after that bug myself,' said he, with a yelp. 'Come
on!'"

"Well, what happened, Buck?"

"Did they give it to him?"

"About fifteen minutes after the bouncers had swept us into the street
with the rest of the _débris_, as the French say," said the speaker,
with a far-off, reflective look, "one dozen of the happiest-looking
sophs you ever saw went reeling back to the campus. They were torn and
scratched, pummeled, bruised and bleeding, soaked from head to foot,
shot to pieces, smeared with paint, not a button left or a necktie--but
they were happy!"

"Why happy?"

"They had given _Regan_ the shampoo."

Stover and McCarthy rose and made their way out past the group where
Buck Waters, enthroned already as a natural leader, was tuning up the
crowd.

"I came up in the train with Regan," said Stover, thrilling a little at
the recital. "Cracky! I wish I'd seen the scrap."

"We'll call him out to-night for the wrestling," said McCarthy.

"He's a queer, plunging sort of animal," said Stover reflectively. "I
wonder if he'll ever do anything up here?"

Saunders, riding past on a bicycle, pad protruding from his pocket,
slowed up with a cordial hail:

"Howdy! I'm heeling the _News_. If you get any stories, pass them on to
me. Thought you fellows were down at our joint. Where the deuce are you
fellows grubbing?"

"We dropped into a place one of your Andover crowd's runnin'."

"Who's that?"

"Fellow called Gimbel."

Saunders rode on a bit, wheeled, came slowly back, resting his hand on
Stover's shoulder.

"Look here," he said, frowning a little. "Gimbel's a good sort, clever
and all that; but look here--you're not decided, are you?"

"No."

"Because we've been counting you fellows in with us. We've got a corking
crowd, about twenty, and a nice, quiet place." He hesitated, choosing
his words carefully: "I think you'll find the crowd congenial."

"When do you start in?" said Stover.

"To-morrow. Are you with us?"

"Glad to come."

"Bully!" He made a movement to start, and then added suddenly: "I say,
fellows, of course you're not on to a good many games here, but don't
get roped into any politics. It'll queer you quicker than anything else.
You don't mind my giving you a tip?"

"Not at all," said Stover, smiling a little as he wondered what
distinction Saunders made to himself between politics and politics.

"Ta-ta, then--perfectly bully you're with us. I'm off on this infernal
_News_ game--half a year's grind from twelve to ten at night--lovely,
eh, when the snow and slush come?"

He sped on, and they went up to the rooms.

"I thought we'd better change," said Stover.

"This place is loaded up with wires--live wires," said McCarthy,
scratching his head. "Well, go ahead, if you want to."

"Well, you see--we're all in the same house; it's more sociable."

"Oh, of course."

"And then, it'll be quieter."

"Yes, it'll be quieter."

A little constraint came to them. They went to their rooms silently,
each aware that something had come into their comradeship which sooner
or later would have to be met with frankness.




CHAPTER IV


Stover had never been on the Yale field except through the multitudinous
paths of his imagination. Huddled in the car crowded with candidates, he
waited the first glimpse as Columbus questioned the sky or De Soto
sought the sea. Three cars, filled with veterans and upper classmen,
were ahead of him. He was among a score of sophomores, members of third
and fourth squads, and a few of his own class with prep school
reputations who sat silently, nervously overhauling their suits,
adjusting buckles and shoe-laces, swollen to grotesque proportions under
knotted sweaters and padded jerseys.

The trolley swung over a short bridge, and, climbing a hill, came to a
slow stop. In an instant he was out, sweeping on at a dog-trot in the
midst of the undulating, brawny pack. In front--a thing of air and
wood--rose the climbing network of empty stands. Then, as they swept
underneath, the field lay waiting, and at the end two thin, straight
lines and a cross-bar. No longer were the stands empty or the breeze
devoid of song and cheers. The goal was his--the goal of Yale--and,
underfoot at last, the field more real to him than Waterloo or
Gettysburg!

He camped down, one among a hundred, oblivious of his companions, hands
locked over his knees, his glance strained down the field to where,
against the blue sweater of a veteran, a magic Y was shining white. For
a moment he felt a plunging despair--he was but one among so many. The
whole country seemed congregated there in competition. Others seemed to
overtop him, to be built of bone and muscle beyond his strength. He felt
a desire to shrink back and steal away unperceived, as he had that awful
moment when, on his first test at school, he had been told that he must
stand up and fill the place of a better man.

Then he was on his feet, in obedience to a shouted command, journeying
up the field to where beyond the stands a tackling dummy on loose
pulleys swung like a great scarecrow.

"Here, now, get some action into this," said a fiery little coach,
Tompkins, quarter-back a dozen seasons before. "Line up. Get some snap
to it. First man. Hard--hit it hard!"

The first three--heavy linesmen, still soft and short of breath--made
lumbering, slipping attempts.

Tompkins was in a blaze of fury.

"Hold up! What do you think this is? I didn't ask you to hug your
grandmother; I told you to tackle that dummy! Hit it hard--break it in
two! If you can't tackle, we don't want you around. Tackle to throw your
man back! Tackle as if the whole game depended on it. Come on, now. Next
man. Jump at it! Rotten! Rotten! Oh, squeeze it. Don't try to butt it
over--you're not a goat! Half the game's the tackling! Next man. Oh,
girls--girls! What is this bunch, anyhow--a young ladies' seminary?
Here! Stop--stop! You're up at Yale now. I'll show you how we tackle!"

Heedless of his street clothes, of the grotesqueness of the thing, of
all else but the savage spark he was trying to communicate, he went
rushing into the dummy with a headlong plunge that shook the ropes.

He was up in a moment, forgetting the dust that clung to him, shouting
in his shrill voice:

"Come on, now, bang into it! Yes, but hold on to it! Squeeze it.
Better--more snap there! Get out the way! Come on! Rotten! Take that
again--on the jump!"

Stover suddenly felt the inflaming seriousness of Yale, the spirit that
animated the field. Everything was in deadly earnest; the thing of rags
swinging grotesquely was as important as the tackle that on a
championship field stood between defeat and victory.

His turn came. He shot forward, left the turf in a clean dive, caught
the dummy at the knees, and shook the ground with the savageness of his
tackle.

"Out of the way, quick--next man!" cried the driving voice.

There was not a word of praise for what he knew had been a perfect
tackle. A second and a third time he flung himself heedlessly at the
swinging figure, in a desperate attempt to win the withheld word of
approbation.

"He might at least have grunted," he said to himself, tumbling to his
feet, "the little tyrant."

In a moment Tompkins, without relaxing a jot of his nervous driving, had
them spread over the field, flinging themselves on a dozen elusive
footballs, while always his voice, unsatisfied, propelling, drove them:

"Faster, faster! Get into it--let go yourselves. Throw yourself at it.
Oh, hard, harder!"

Ten minutes of practise starts under his leash, and they ended,
enveloped in steam, lungs shaken with quick, convulsive breaths.

"Enough for to-day. Back to the gymnasium on the trot; run off some of
that fatty degeneration. Here, youngster, a word with you."

Stover stepped forward.

"What's your name?"

"Stover."

To his profound disappointment, Tompkins did not recognize that
illustrious name.

"Where from?"

"Lawrenceville. Played end."

Tompkins looked him over, a little grimly. "Oh, yes; I've heard
something about you. Look here, ever do any punting?"

"Some, but only because I had to. I'm no good at it."

"Let's see what you can do."

Stover caught the ball tossed and put all his strength into a kick that
went high but short.

"Try another."

The second and third attempts were no better.

"Well, that's pretty punk," said Tompkins. "Dana wants to give you a try
on the second. Run over now and report. Oh, Stover!"

Dink halted, to see Tompkins' caustic scrutiny fixed on him.

"Yes, sir."

"Stover, just one word for your good. You come up with a big prep school
reputation. Don't make an ass of yourself. Understand; don't get a
swelled head. That's all."

"Precious little danger of that here," said Dink a little rebelliously
to himself, as he jogged over to the benches where the varsity subs were
camped. Le Baron waved him a recognition, but no more. It was as if the
gesture meant:

"I've started you. Now stand on your own feet. Don't look to me for
help."

For the rest of the practise he sat huddled in his sweater, waiting
expectantly as each time Captain Dana passed down the line, calling out
the candidates for trials in the brief scrimmages that took place. The
afternoon ended without an opportunity coming to him, and he jogged
home, in the midst of the puffing crowd, with a sudden feeling of his
own unimportance.

He had barely time to get his shower, and run into the almost deserted
eating club for a quick supper, when Gimbel appeared, crying:

"I say, Stover, bolt the grub and hoof it. We assemble over by Osborne."

"Where's the wrestling?"

"Don't know. Some vacant lot. Ever do any?"

"Don't know a thing about it."

"We're going to call out a chap called Robinson from St. Paul's, Garden
City, for the lightweight, and Regan for the heavy," said Gimbel, who,
of course, had been busy during the afternoon. "Thought of you for the
middleweight."

"Lord! get some one who knows the game," said Stover, following him out.

"Have you thought of any one you'd like to run for secretary and
treasurer?" said Gimbel, locking arms in a cordial way.

"No."

"I've got the whole thing organized sure as a steel trap."

"You haven't lost any time," said Stover, smiling.

"That's right--heaps of fun."

"What are _you_ going to run for?" said Stover, looking at him.

"I? Nothing now. Fence orator, perhaps, later," said Gimbel frankly.
"It's the fun of the game interests me--the organizing, pulling wires,
all that sort of thing. I'm going to have a lot of fun here."

"Look here, Gimbel," said Stover, yielding to a sudden appreciation of
the other's openness. "Isn't this sort of thing going to get a lot of
fellows down on you?"

"Queer me?" said Gimbel, laughing.

The word was still new to Stover, who showed his perplexity.

"That's a great word," added his companion. "You'll hear a lot of it
before you get through. It's a sort of college bug that multiplies
rapidly. Will politics 'queer' me--keep me out of societies? Probably;
but then, I couldn't make 'em anyway. So I'm going to have my fun. And
I'll tell you now, Stover, I'm going to get a good deal more out of my
college career than a lot of you fellows."

"Why include me?"

"Well, Stover, you're going to make a sophomore society, and go sailing
along."

"Oh, I don't know."

"Yes, you do. We don't object to such men as you, who have the right.
It's the lame ducks we object to."

"Lame ducks?" said Stover, puzzled as well as surprised at this
spokesman of an unsuspected proletariat opposition.

"'Lame ducks' is the word: the fellows who would never make a society if
it weren't for pulls, for the men ahead--the cripples that all you big
men will be trying to bolster up and carry along with you into a senior
society."

"I'm not on to a good deal of this," said Stover, puzzled.

"I know you're not. Look here." Gimbel, releasing his arm, faced him
suddenly. "You think I'm a politician out to get something for myself."

"Yes, I do."

"Well, I am--I'm frank about it. There's a whole mass of us here who
are going to fight the sophomore society system tooth and nail, and I'm
with them. When you're in the soph crowd you mightn't like what I'm
saying, and then again you may come around to our way of thinking.
However, I want you to know that I'm hiding nothing--that I'm fighting
in the open. We may be on opposite sides, but I guess we can shake
hands. How about it?"

"I guess we can always do that," said Stover, giving his hand. The man
puzzled him. Was his frankness deep or a diplomatic assumption?

"And now let's have no pretenses," continued Gimbel, on the same line,
with a quick analytical glance. "You're going with your crowd; better
join one of their eating-joints."

Stover was genuinely surprised.

"Have you already arranged it?" said Gimbel, laughing.

"Gimbel," said Stover directly, "I'm not quite sure about you."

"You don't know whether I'm a faker or not."

"Exactly."

"Stover, I'm a politician," said Gimbel frankly. "I'm out for a big
fight. I know the game here. I wouldn't talk to every one as I talk to
you. I want you to understand me--more, I want you to like me. And I
feel with you that the only way is to be absolutely honest. You see, I'm
a politician," he said, with a laugh. "I've learned how to meet
different men. Sometime I'm going to talk over things with
you--seriously. Here we are now. I've got a bunch of fellows to see.
McCarthy's probably looking for you. Don't make up your mind in a hurry
about me--or about a good many things here. Ta-ta!"

Stover watched him go gaily into the crowd, distributing bluff,
vociferous welcomes, hilariously acclaimed. The man was new, represented
a new element, a strange, dimly perceived, rebellious mass, with ideas
that intruded themselves ungratefully on his waking vision.

"Is he sincere?" he said to himself--a question that he was to apply a
hundred times in the life that was beginning.




CHAPTER V


"Hello, there, Stover!"

"Stover, over here!"

"Oh, Dink Stover, this way!"

Over the bared heads of the bobbing, shifting crowd he saw Hunter and
McCarthy waving to him. He made his way through the strange assorted
mass of freshmen to his friends, where already, instinctively, a certain
picked element had coalesced. A dozen fellows, clean-cut, steady of head
and eye, carrying a certain unmistakable, quiet assurance, came about
him, gripping him warmly, welcoming him into the little knot with
cordial acknowledgment. He felt the tribute, and he liked it. They were
of his own kind, his friends to be, now and in the long reaches of life.

"Fall in, fall in!"

Ahead of them, the upper classes were already in rank. Behind, the
freshmen, unorganized, distrustful, were being driven into lines of
eight and ten by seniors, pipe in mouth, authoritative, quiet, fearfully
enveloped in dignity. Cheers began to sound ahead, the familiar
_brek-e-kek-kex_ with the class numeral at the end. A cry went up:

"Here, we must have a cheer."

"Give us a cheer."

"Start her up."

"Lead a cheer, some one."

"Lead a cheer, Hunter."

"Lead the cheer, Gimbel."

"Lead the cheer, Stover."

"Come on, Stover!"

A dozen voices took up his name. He caught the infection. Without
hesitating, he stepped by Hunter, who was hesitating, and cried:

"Now, fellows, all together--the first cheer for the class! Are you
ready? Let her rip!"

The cheer, gathering momentum, went crashing above the noises of the
street. The college burst into a mighty shout of acclaim--another class
was born!

Suddenly ahead the dancing lights of the senior torches began to
undulate. Through the mass a hoarse roar went rushing, and a sudden
muscular tension.

"Grab hold of me."

"Catch my arm."

"Grip tight."

"Get in line."

"Move up."

"Get the swing."

Stover found himself, arms locked over one another's shoulders, between
Schley, who had somehow kept persistently near him, and a powerful,
smiling, blond-haired fellow who shouted to him:

"My name's Hungerford--Joe Hungerford. Glad to know you. Down from
Groton."

It was a name known across the world for power in finance, and the arm
about Stover's shoulder was taut with the same sentimental rush of
emotion.

Down the moving line suddenly came surging the chant:


     "_Chi Rho Omega Lambda Chi!_
     _We meet to-night to celebrate_
     _The Omega Lambda Chi!_"


Grotesquely, lumberingly, tripping and confused, they tried to imitate
the forward classes, who were surging in the billowy rhythm of the
elusive serpentine dance.

"How the deuce do they do it?"

"Get a skip to it, you ice-wagons."

"All to the left, now."

"No, to the right."

Gradually they found themselves; hoarse, laughing, struggling, sweeping
inconsequentially on behind the singing, cheering college.

Before Dink knew it, the line had broken with a rush, and he was
carried, struggling and pushing, into a vacant lot, where all at once,
out of the tumult and the riot, a circle opened and spread under his
eyes.

Seniors in varsity sweaters, with brief authoritative gestures, forced
back the crowd, stationed the fretful lights, commanding and directing:

"First row, sit down."

"Down in front, there."

"Kneel behind."

"Freshmen over here."

"Get a move on!"

"Stop that shoving."

"How's the space, Cap?"

In the center, Captain Dana waited with an appraising eye.

"All right. Call out the lightweights."

Almost immediately, from the opposite sophomores, came a unanimous
shout:

"Farquahar! Dick Farquahar!"

"Come on, Dick!"

"Get in the ring!"

Out into the ring stepped an agile, nervous figure, acclaimed by all his
class.

"A cheer for Farquahar, fellows!"

"One, two, three!"

"_Farquahar!_"

"Candidate from the freshman class!"

"Candidate!"

"Robinson!"

"Teddy Robinson!"

"Harris!"

"No, Robinson--Robinson!"

Gimbel's voice dominated the outcry. There was a surging, and then a
splitting of the crowd, and Robinson was slung into the ring.

In the midst of contending cheers, the antagonists stripped to the belt
and stood forth to shake hands, their bared torsos shining in high
lights against the mingled shadows of the audience.

The two, equally matched in skill, went tumbling and whirling over the
matted sod, twisting and flopping, until by a sudden hold Robinson
caught his adversary in a half nelson and for the brief part of a second
had the two shoulders touching the ground. The second round likewise
went to the freshman, who was triumphant after a struggle of twenty
minutes.

"Middleweights!"

"Candidate from the sophomore class!"

"Candidate from the freshman!"

"Fisher!"

"Denny Fisher!"

The sophomore stepped forth, tall, angular, well knit. Among the
freshmen a division of opinion arose:

"Say, Andover, who've you got?"

"Any one from Hotchkiss?"

"What's the matter with French?"

"He doesn't know a thing about wrestling."

"How about Doc White?"

"Not heavy enough."

The seniors began to be impatient.

"Hurry up, now, freshmen, hurry up!"

"Produce something!"

Still a hopeless indecision prevailed.

"I don't know any one."

"Jack's too heavy."

"Say, you Hill School fellows, haven't you got some one?"

"Some one's got to go out."

The sophomores, seizing the advantage, began to gibe at them:

"Don't be afraid, freshmen!"

"We won't hurt you."

"We'll let you down easy."

"Take it by default."

"Call time on them."

"I don't know a thing about it," said Stover, between his teeth, to
Hungerford, his hands twitching impatiently, his glance fixed hungrily
on the provokingly amused face of the sophomore champion.

"I'm too heavy or I'd go."

"I've a mind to go, all the same."

McCarthy, who knew his impulses of old, seized him by the arm.

"Don't get excited, Dink, old boy; you don't know anything about
wrestling."

"No, but I can _scrap_!"

The outcry became an uproar:

"Quitters!"

"'Fraid cats!"

"Poor little freshmen!"

"They're in a funk."

"By George, I can't stand that," said Stover, setting his teeth, the
old love of combat sweeping over him. "I'm going to have a chance at
that duck myself!"

He thrust his way forward, shaking off McCarthy's hold, stepped over the
reclining front ranks, and, springing into the ring, faced Dana.

"I'm no wrestler, sir, but if there's no one else I'll have a try at
it."

There was a sudden hush, and then a chorus:

"Who is it?"

"Who's that fellow?"

"What's his name?"

"Oh, freshmen, who's your candidate?"

"Stover!"

"Stover, a football man!"

"Fellow from Lawrenceville!"

The seniors had him over in a corner, stripping him, talking excitedly.

"Say, Stover, what do you know about it?"

"Not a thing."

"Then go in and attack."

"All right."

"Don't wait for him."

"No."

"He's a clever wrestler, but you can get his nerve."

"His nerve?"

"Keep off the ground."

"Off the ground, yes."

"Go right in; right at him; tackle him hard; shake him up."

"All right," he said, for the tenth time. He had heard nothing that had
been said. He was standing erect, looking in a dazed way at the hundreds
of eyes that were dancing about him in the living, breathing pit in
which he stood. He heard a jumble of roars and cheers, and one clear
cry, McCarthy crying:

"Good old Dink!"

Some one was rolling up his trousers to the knee; some one was flinging
a sweater over his bared back; some one was whispering in his ear:

"Get right to him. Go for him--don't wait!"

"Already, there," said Captain Dana's quiet, matter-of-fact voice.

"Already, here."

"Shake hands!"

The night air swept over him with a sudden chill as the sweaters were
pulled away. He went forth while Dana ran over the rules and
regulations, which he did not understand at all. He stood then about
five feet ten, in perfect condition, every muscle clearly outlined
against the wiry, spare Yankee frame, shoulders and the sinews of his
arms extraordinarily developed. From the moment he had stepped out, his
eyes had never left Fisher's. Combat transformed his features, sending
all the color from his face, narrowing the eyes, and drawing tense the
lips. Combat was with him always an overmastering rage in the leash of a
cold, nervous, pulsating logic, which by the very force of its passion
gave to his expression an almost dispassionate cruelty--a look not easy
to meet, that somehow, on the instant, impressed itself on the crowd
with the terrific seriousness of the will behind.

"Wiry devil."

"Good shoulders."

"Great fighting face, eh?"

"Scrapper, all right."

"I'll bet he is."

"Shake hands!"

Stover caught the other's hand, looked into his eyes, read something
there that told him, science aside, that he was the other's master; and
suddenly, rushing forward, he caught him about the knees and, lifting
him bodily in the air, hurled him through the circle in a terrific
tackle.

The onslaught was so sudden that Fisher, unable to guard himself, went
down with a crash, the fall broken by the bodies of the spectators.

A roar, half laughter, half hysteria, went up.

"Go for him!"

"Good boy, Stover!"

"Chew him up!"

"Is he a scrapper!"

"Say, this _is_ a fight!"

"Wow!"

Dana, clapping them on the shoulders, brought them back to the center of
the ring and restored them to the position in which they had fallen.
Fisher, plainly shaken up, immediately worked himself into a defensive
position, recovering his breath, while Stover frantically sought some
instinctive hold with which to turn him over.

Suddenly an arm shot out, caught his head in chancery, and before he
knew it he was underneath and the weight of Fisher's body was above,
pressing him down. He staggered to his feet in a fury, maddened,
unreasoning, and went down again, always with the dead weight above him.

"Here, that won't do," he said to himself savagely, recovering his
clarity of vision; "I mustn't lose strength."

All at once, before he knew how it had been done, Fisher's arm was under
his, cutting over his neck, and slowly but irresistibly his shoulders
were turning toward the fatal touch. Every one was up, shouting:

"Turn him over!"

"Finish him up!"

"Hold out, freshman!"

"Hold out!"

"Flop over!"

"Don't give in!"

"Stick it out!"

With a sudden expenditure of strength, he checked the turning movement,
desperately striving against the cruel hold.

"Good boy, Stover!"

"That's the stuff!"

"Show your grit!"

"Hold out!"

"Show your nerve!"

In a second he had reasoned it out. He was caught--he knew it. He could
resist three minutes, five minutes, slowly sinking against his ebbing
strength, frantically cheered for a spectacular resistance--and then
what? If he had a chance, it was in preserving every ounce of his
strength for the coming rounds.

"All right; you've got me this time," he said coldly, and, relaxing, let
his shoulders drop.

Dana's hand fell stingingly on him, announcing the fall. He rose amid an
angry chorus:

"What the deuce!"

"Say, I don't stand for that!"

"Thought he was game."

"Game nothing!"

"Lost his nerve."

"Sure he did."

"Well, I'll be damned."

"A quitter--a rank quitter!"

He walked to his seconds, angry at the misunderstanding.

"Here, I know what I'm doing," he said in short, quick breaths,
forgetting that he, a freshman, was addressing the lords of creation. He
was a captain again, his own captain, conducting his own battle. "I'll
get him yet. Rub up this shoulder, quick."

"Keep off the ground," said one mentor.

"You bet I will."

"Why the deuce did you give in so easily?"

"Because there are two more rounds, and I'm going to use my head--hang
it!"

"He's right, too," said the first senior, rubbing him fiercely with the
towel. "Now, sport, don't monkey with him until you've jarred him up a
couple of times!"

"That's what I'm going to do!"

"Time!" cried the voice of Dana.

This time he retreated slowly, drawing Fisher unwarily toward his edge
of the ring, and then suddenly, as the sophomore lunged at him, shot
forward again, in a tackle just below the waist, raised him clear off
the ground, spun him around, and, putting all his force into his back as
a wood-chopper swings an ax, brought him down crashing, clear across the
ring. It was a fearful tackle, executed with every savage ounce of rage
within him, the force of which momentarily stunned him. Fisher, groggy
under the bruising impact, barely had time to turn on his stomach before
Stover was upon him.

Dink immediately sprang up and back, waiting in the center of the ring.
The sophomore, too dazed to reason clearly, yielding only to his anger
at the sudden reversal, foolishly struggled to his feet and came
staggering toward him. A second time Stover threw all his dynamic
strength into another crashing tackle. This time Fisher went over on his
back with a thump, and, though he turned instinctively, both shoulders
had landed squarely on the turf, and, despite his frantic protests, a
roar went up as Dana allotted the fall to Stover.

This time, as he went to his corner, it was amid pandemonium:

"You're a corker, freshman!"

"Oh, you bulldog!"

"Tear him up!"

"You're the stuff!"

"Good head, freshman!"

"Good brain-work!"

Several upper classmen came hurriedly over to his corner, slapping him
on the back, volunteering advice.

"Clear out," said his mentor proudly. "This rooster can take care of
himself."

Fisher came up for the third round, visibly groggy and shaken by the
force of the tackles he had received, but game. Twice Stover, watching
his chance, dove under the groping hands and flung him savagely to the
ground. Once Fisher caught him, as they lay on the ground, in a hold
that might have been decisive earlier in the match. As it was, Stover
felt with a swift horror the arm slipping under his arm, half gripping
his neck. The wet heat of the antagonistic body over his inflamed all
the brute in him. The strength was now his. He tore himself free,
scrambled to his feet, and hurled Fisher a last time clean through into
the scattering crowd, where he lay stunned, too weak to resist the
viselike hands that forced his shoulders to the ground.

Dana hauled Stover to his feet, a little groggy.

"Some tackling, freshman! Bout's yours! Call out the heavyweights!"

Scarcely realizing that it was his captain who had spoken, Dink stood
staring down at Fisher, white and conquered, struggling to his feet in
the grip of friends.

"I say, Fisher," he said impulsively, "I hope I didn't shake you up too
much. I saw red; I didn't know what I was doing."

"You did me all right," said the sophomore, giving his hand. "That
tackle of yours would break a horse in two. Shake!"

"Thank you," said Stover, flustered and almost ashamed before the
other's perfect sportsmanship. "Thank you very much, sir!"

He went to his corner, smothered under frantic slaps and embraces,
hearing his name resounding again and again on the thunders of his
classmates. The bout had been spectacular; every one was asking who he
was.

"Stover, eh, of Lawrenceville!"

"Gee, what a fierce tackler!"

"Ridiculous for Fisher to be beaten!"

"Oh, is it? How'd you like to get a fall like that?"

"Played end."

"Captain at Lawrenceville."

"He ought to be a wonder."

"Say, did you see the face he got on him?"

"Enough to scare you to death."

"It got Fisher, all right."

While he was being rubbed down and having his clothes thrust upon him,
shivering in every tense muscle, which, now the issue was decided,
seemed to have broken from his control, suddenly a hand gripped his,
and, looking up, he saw the face of Tompkins, ablaze with the fire of
the professional spectator.

"I'm not shaking hands on your brutal old tackling," he said, with a
look that belied his words. "It's the other thing--the losing the first
fall. Good brain-work, boy; that's what'll count in football."

The grip of the veteran cut into his hand; in Tompkins's face also was
a reminiscent flash of the fighting face that somehow, in any test, wins
half the battle.


The third bout went to the sophomores, Regan, the choice of the class,
being nowhere to be found. But the victory was with the freshmen, who,
knit suddenly together by the consciousness of a power to rise to
emergencies, carried home the candidates in triumph.

McCarthy, with his arms around Stover as he had done in the old school
days after a grueling football contest, bore Dink up to their rooms with
joyful, bearlike hugs. Other hands were on him, wafting him up the
stairs as though riding a gale.

"Here, let me down will you, you galoots!" he cried vainly from time to
time.

Hilariously they carried him into the room and dumped him down. Other
freshmen, following, came to him, shaking his hand, pounding him on the
back.

"Good boy, Stover!"

"What's the use of wrestling, anyhow?"

"You're it!"

"We're all for you!"

"The old sophomores thought they had it cinched."

"Three cheers for Dink Stover!"

"One more!"

"And again!"

"Yippi!"

McCarthy, doubled up with laughter, stood in front of him, gazing
hilariously, proudly down.

"You old Dink, you, what right had you to go out for it?"

"None at all."

"How the deuce did you have the nerve?"

"How?" For the first time the question impressed itself on him. He
scratched his head and said simply, unconscious of the wide application
of what he said: "Gee! guess I didn't stop to think how rotten I was."

He went to bed, gorgeously happy with the first throbbing, satisfying
intoxication of success. The whole world must be concerned with him now.
He was no longer unknown; he had emerged, freed himself from the
thralling oblivion of the mass.




CHAPTER VI


Stover fondly dreamed, that night, of his triumphal appearance on the
field the following day, greeted by admiring glances and cordial
handshakes, placed at once on the second eleven, watched with new
interest by curious coaches, earning an approving word from the captain
himself.

When he did come on the field, embarrassed and reluctantly conscious of
his sudden leap to world-wide fame, no one took the slightest notice of
him. Tompkins did not vouchsafe a word of greeting. To his amazement,
Dana again passed him over and left him restless on the bench, chafing
for the opportunity that did not come. The second and the third
afternoon it was the same--the same indifference, the same
forgetfulness. And then he suddenly realized the stern discipline of it
all--unnecessary and stamping out individuality, it seemed to him at
first, but subordinating everything to the one purpose, eliminating the
individual factor, demanding absolute subordination to the whole,
submerging everything into the machine--that was not a machine only,
when once accomplished, but an immense idea of sacrifice and
self-abnegation. Directly, clearly visualized, he perceived, for the
first time, what he was to perceive in every side of his college career,
that a standard had been fashioned to which, irresistibly, subtly, he
would have to conform; only here, in the free domain of combat, the
standard that imposed itself upon him was something bigger than his own.

Meanwhile the college in all its activities opened before him,
absorbing him in its routine. The great mass of his comrades to be
gradually emerged from the blurred mists of the first day. He began to
perceive hundreds of faces, faces that fixed themselves in his memory,
ranging themselves, dividing according to his first impression into
sharply defined groups. Fellows sought him out, joined him when he
crossed the campus, asked him to drop in.

In chapel he found himself between Bob Story, a quiet, self-contained,
likable fellow, popular from the first from a certain genuine sweetness
and charity in his character, son of Judge Story of New Haven, one of
the most influential of the older graduates; and on the other side
Swazey, a man of twenty-five or six, of a type that frankly amazed
him--rough, uncouth, with thick head and neck, rather flat in the face,
intrusive, yellowish eyes, under lip overshot, one ear maimed by a scar,
badly dressed, badly combed, and badly shod. Belying this cloutish
exterior was a quietness of manner and the dreamy vision of a passionate
student. Where he came from Stover could not guess, nor by what strange
chance of life he had been thrown there. In front of him was the great
bulk of Regan, always bent over a book for the last precious moments,
coming and going always with the same irresistible steadiness of
purpose. He had not been at the wrestling the opening night, he had not
been out for football, because his own affairs, his search for work,
were to him more important; and, looking at him, Stover felt that he
would never allow anything to divert him from his main purpose in
college--first, to earn his way, and, second, to educate himself.
Stover, with others, had urged him to report for practise, knowing,
though not proclaiming it, that there lay the way to friendships that,
once gained, would make easy his problem.

"Not yet, Stover," said Regan, always with the same finality in his
tone. "I've got to see my way clear; I've got to know if I can down that
infernal Greek and Latin first. If I can, I'm coming out."

"Where do you room?" said Stover.

"Oh, out about a mile--a sort of rat-hole."

"I want to drop in on you."

"Come out sometime."

"Drop in on me."

"I'm going to."

"I say, Regan, why don't you see Le Baron?"

"What for?"

"Why, he might--might give you some good tips," said Stover, a little
embarrassed.

"Exactly. Well, I prefer to help myself."

Stover broke out laughing.

"You're a fierce old growler!"

"I am."

"I wish you'd come around a little and let the fellows know you."

"That can wait."

"I say, Regan," said Stover suddenly, "would you mind doing the waiting
over at our joint?"

"Why should I?"

"Why, I thought," said Stover, not saying what he had thought, "I
thought perhaps you'd find it more convenient at Commons."

"Is that what you really thought?" said Regan, with a quizzical smile.

The man's perfect simplicity and unconsciousness impressed Stover more
than all the fetish of enthroned upper classmen; he was always a little
embarrassed before Regan.

"No," he said frankly, "but, Regan, I would like to have you with us,
and I think you'd like it."

"We'll talk it over," said Regan deliberately. "I'll think it over
myself. Good-by."

Stover put out his hand instinctively. Their hands held each other a
moment, and their eyes met in open, direct friendship.

He stood a moment thoughtfully, after they had parted. What he had
offered had been offered impulsively. He began to wonder if it would
work out without embarrassment in the intimacy of the eating-joint.

The crowd that they had joined--as Gimbel had predicted--had taken a
long dining-room cheerily lighted, holding one table, around which
sixteen ravenous freshmen managed to squeeze in turbulent, impatient
clamor.

Bob Story, Hunter and his crowd, Hungerford and several men from Groton
and St. Mark's, Schley and his room-mate Troutman made up a coterie that
already had in it the elements of the leadership of the class.

As he was deliberating, he perceived Joe Hungerford rolling along, with
his free and easy slouch, immersed in the faded blue sweater into which
he had lazily bolted to make chapel, a cap riding on the exuberant
wealth of blond hair. He broached the subject at once:

"Say, Hungerford, you're the man I want."

"Fire away."

Stover detailed his invitation to Regan, concluding:

"Now, tell me frankly what you think."

"Have him with us, by all means," said Hungerford impulsively.

"Might it not be a little embarrassing? How do you think the other
fellows would like it?"

"Why, there's only one way to take it," said Hungerford directly. "Our
crowd's too damned select now to suit me. We need him a darn sight more
than he needs us."

"I knew you'd feel that way."

"By George, that's why I came to Yale. If there are any little squirts
in the crowd think differently, a swift kick where it'll do the most
good will clear the atmosphere."

Stover looked at him with impulsive attraction. He was boyish,
unspoiled, eager.

"Now, look here, Dink--you don't mind me calling you that, do you?"
continued Hungerford, with a little hesitation.

"Go ahead."

"I want you to understand how I feel about things. I've got about
everything in the world to make a conceited, pompous, useless little ass
out of me, and about two hundred people who want to do it. I wish to
blazes I was starting where Regan is--where my old dad did; I might do
something worth while. Now, I don't want any hungry, boot-licking little
pups around me whose bills I am to pay. I want to come in on your scale,
and I'm mighty glad to get the chance. That's why my allowance isn't
going to be one cent more than yours; and I want you to know it. Now, as
for this fellow Regan--he sounds like a man. I tell you what I'll do.
I'll fix it up in a shake of a lamb's tail."

"Question is whether Regan will come," said Stover doubtfully.

"By George, I'll make him. We'll go right out together and put it to
him."

Which they did; and Regan, yielding to the open cordiality of
Hungerford, accepted and promised to change at the end of his week.

In the second week, having satisfactorily arranged his affairs--by what
slender margin no one ever knew--Regan reported for practise. He had
played a little football in the Middle West and, though his knowledge
was crude, he learned slowly, and what he learned he never lost. His
great strength, and a certain quality which was moral as well as
physical, very shortly won him the place of right guard, where with each
week he strengthened his hold.

Regan's introduction at the eating-joint had been achieved without the
embarrassment Stover had feared. He came and went with a certain natural
dignity that was not assumed, but was inherent in the simplicity of his
character. He entered occasionally into the conversation and always,
when the others were finished and tarrying over the tobacco, brought his
plate to a vacant place and ate his supper; but, that through, though
often urged, went his purposeful way, with always that certain solitary
quality about him that made approach difficult and had left him
friendless.


On the fourth afternoon of practise, as Stover, restraining the raging
impatience within him, resolved that at all costs he would not show the
chafing, went to his place on the imprisoning bench, watching with
famished eyes the contending lines, Dana, without warning, called from
the open field:

"Stover! Stover! Out here!"

He jumped up, oblivious of everything but the sudden thumping of his
heart and the curious stir in the ranks of the candidates.

"Here, leave your sweater," shouted Tompkins, who had repeated the
summons.

"Oh, yes."

Clumsily entangled in the folds of his sweater, he struggled to emerge.
Tompkins, amid a roar of laughter, caught the arms and freed him,
grinning at the impetuousness with which Stover went scudding out.

On the way he passed the man he was replacing, returning rebelliously
with a half antagonistic, half apprehensive glance at him.

"Take left end on the scrub," said Dana, who was not in the line of
scrimmage. "Farley, give him the signals."

The scrub quarter hastily poured into his ears the simple code. He took
up his position. The play was momentarily halted by one of the coaches,
who was hauling the center men over the coals. Opposite Stover, Bangs,
senior, was standing, legs spread, hands on his hips, looking at him
with a look Stover never forgot. For three years he had plugged along
his way, doggedly holding his place in the scrubs, patiently waiting for
the one opportunity to come. Now, at last, after the years of servitude,
standing on the coveted side of the line, suddenly here was a freshman
with a big reputation come in the challenge that might destroy all the
years of patience and send him back into the oblivion of the scrubs.

Stover understood the appealing fury of the look, even in all the
pitilessness of his ambition. Something sharp went through him at the
thought of the man for whose position, ruthlessly, fiercely, he was
beginning to fight.

Five or six coaches, always under the direction of Case, head coach,
were moving restlessly about the field, watching for the first
rudimentary faults. One or two gave him quick appraising looks. Stover,
moving restlessly back and forth, his eyes on the ground, too conscious
of the general curiosity, awaited the moment of action. The discussion
around the center ended.

"Varsity take the ball," called out Dana; "get into it, every one!"

The two lines sprang quickly into position, the coaches, nervous and
vociferous, jumping behind the unfortunate objects of their wrath, while
the air was filled with shrieked advice and exhortation.

"On the jump, there, Biggs!"

"Charge low!"

"Oh, get down, get down!"

"Break up this play!"

"Wake up!"

"Smash into it!"

"Charge!"

"Now!"

"Block that man!"

"Throw him back!"

"Get behind!"

"Push him on!"

"Shove him on!"

"Get behind and shove!"

"Shove!"

"Shove! Oh, shove!"

Attack and defense were still crude. The play had gone surging around
the opposite end, but in a halting way, the runner impeded by his own
interference. Stover, sweeping around at full speed, was able to down
the half from behind, just as the interference succeeded in clearing
the way. At once it was a chorus of angry shouts, each coach descending
on the particular object of his wrath.

"Beautiful!"

"You're a wonder!"

"What are you doing,--growing to the ground?"

"What did I tell you?"

"Say, interference, is this a walking match?"

"Wonderful speed--almost got away from the opposite end."

"Say, Charley, a fast lot of backs we've got."

"Line 'em up!"

Two or three plays through the center, struggling and squirming in the
old fashion of football, were succeeded by several tries at his side.
Stover, besides three years' hard drilling, had a natural gift of
diagnosis, which, with the savagery of his tackling, made him, even at
this period, an unusual end, easily the best of the candidates on the
field. He stood on guard, turning inside the attack, or running along
with it and gradually forcing his man out of bounds. At other times he
went through the loose interference and caught his man with a solid
lunge that was not to be denied.

The varsity being forced at last to kick, Bangs came out opposite him
for that running scrimmage to cover a punt that is the final test of an
end.

Stover, dropping a little behind, confident in his measure of the man,
caught him with his shoulder on the start, throwing him off balance for
a precious moment, and then followed him down the field, worrying him
like a sheep-dog pursuing a rebellious member of his flock, and caught
him at the last with a quick lunge at the knees that sent him sprawling
out of the play. Up on his feet in a minute, Stover went racing after
his fullback, in time to give the impetus of his weight that sent him
over his tackle, falling forward.

"How in blazes did that scrub end get back here?" shouted out Harden, a
coach, a famous end himself. He came up the field with Bangs, grabbing
him by the shoulder, gesticulating furiously, his fist flourishing,
crying:

"Here, Dana, give us that play over again!"

A second time Bangs sought to elude Stover, goaded on by the taunts of
Harden, who accompanied them. Quicker in speed and with a power of
instinctive application of his strength, Stover hung to his man, putting
him out of the play despite his frantic efforts.

Harden, furious, railed at him.

"What! You let a freshman put you out of the play? Where's your pride?
In the name of Heaven do something! Why, they're laughing at you,
Ben,--they're giving you the laugh!"

Bangs, senior society man, manager of the crew, took the driving and the
leash without a protest, knowing though he did that the trouble was
beyond him--that he was up against a better man.

Suddenly Harden turned on Stover, who, a little apart, was moving
uneasily, feeling profoundly sorry for the tanning Bangs was receiving
on his account.

"Look here, young fellow, you're not playing that right."

Stover was amazed.

"What's the first thing you've got to think about when you follow down
your end?"

"Keep him out of the play," said Stover.

"Never!" Harden seized him by the jersey, attacking with his long
expostulating forefinger, just as he had laid down the law to Bangs.
"Never! That's grand-stand playing, my boy; good for you, rotten for the
team. The one thing you've got to do first, last, and always, is to
know where the ball is and what's happening to it. Understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Now you didn't do that. You went down with your eyes on your man only,
didn't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"You never looked at your back to see if he fumbled, did you?"

"No, sir."

"And if he had, where'd you have been? If he holds it all right, knock
over your end, but if he fumbles you've got to beat every one to it and
recover it. You're one of eleven men, not a newspaper phenomenon--get
that in your head. You didn't know I was trying you out as well as
Bangs. Now let it sink into you. Do you get it?"

"Yes, sir, thank you," said Stover, furious at himself, for if there was
one thing that was instinctive in him it was this cardinal quality of
following the ball and being in every play.

It was a day of the hardest, trying alike to the nerves of coaches and
men, when the teams were driven without a rest, when tempers were
strained to the snapping point, in the effort to instil not so much the
details of the game as the inflaming spirit of combat.

It was dusk before the coaches called a halt to the practise and sent
them, steaming and panting, aching in every joint, back to the gymnasium
for a rub-down.

Climbing wearily into the car to sink gratefully into a seat, Dink
suddenly, to his confusion, found himself by the side of Bangs.

"Hello," said the senior, looking up with a grin, "I hope every muscle
in your body's aching."

"It certainly is," said Stover, relieved.

Bangs looked at him a long moment, shook his head, and said:

"I wish I could drop a ton of brick on you."

"Why?"

"I've plugged away for years, slaved like a nigger at this criminal
game, thought I was going to get my chance at last, and now you come
along."

"Oh, I say," said Stover in real confusion.

"Oh, I'll make you fight for it," said the other, with a snap of his
jaws. "But, boy, there's one thing I liked. When that old rhinoceros of
a Harden was putting the hooks into me, you never eased up for a
second."

"I knew you'd feel that way."

"If you'd done differently I'd slaughtered you," said Bangs. "Well, good
luck to you!"

He smiled, but back of the smile Stover saw the cruel cut of
disappointment.

And this feeling was stronger in him than any feeling of elation as he
returned to his rooms, after the late supper. He had never known
anything like the fierceness of that first practise. It was not play
with the zest he loved, it was a struggle of ambitions with all the
heartache that lay underneath. He had gone out to play, and suddenly
found himself in a school for character, enchained to the discipline of
the Cæsars, where the test lay in stoicism and the victory was built on
the broken hopes of a comrade.

For the first time, a little appalled, he felt the weight of the
seriousness, the deadly seriousness of the American spirit, which seizes
on everything that is competition and transforms it, with the savage
fanaticism of its race, for success.




CHAPTER VII


After a week of grueling practise, the first game of the season came
like a holiday. Stover was called out after the first few minutes,
replacing Bangs, and remained until the close. He played well, aided by
several fortunate opportunities, earning at the last a pat on the back
from Dana which sent him home rejoicing. The showing of the team was
disappointing, even for that early season. The material was plainly
lacking in the line, and at full-back the kicking was lamentably weak.
The coaches went off with serious faces; throughout the college
assembled on the stands was a spreading premonition of disaster.

Saturday night was privileged, with the long, grateful Sunday morning
sleep ahead.

"Dink, ahoy!" shouted McNab's cheerful voice over the banister, as he
entered the house.

"Hello, there!"

"How's the boy wonder, the only man-eating Dink in captivity?"

"Tired as the deuce."

"Fine. First rate," said McNab, skipping down. "Forget the past, think
only of the bright furniture. We've got a block of tickets for Poli's
Daring-Dazzling-Delightful Vaudeville to-night. You're elected. We'll
end up with a game at Reynolds'. Seen the _Evening Register_?"

"No."

"My boy, you are famous," said McNab, brandishing a paper. "I'm
lovelier, but you get the space. Never mind, I'll be arrested
soon--anything to get in the papers!"

While McNab's busy tongue ran on, Stover was gazing at the account of
the game, where, among the secondary headlines, there stared out at him
the caption:


     STOVER, A FRESHMAN, PLAYS
         SENSATIONAL GAME.


The thing was too incredible. He stood stupidly looking at it.

"How do you feel?" said McNab, taking his pulse professionally.

There was no answer Stover could give to that first throbbing sensation
at seeing his name--his own name--in print. It left him confused, almost
a little frightened.

"Why, Dink, you're modest," said the irrepressible McNab; and, throwing
open the door, he shouted at the top of his voice: "I say, fellows, come
down and see Dink blush."

A magnificent scrimmage, popularly known as a "rough house," ensued, in
which McNab was properly chastised, though not a whit subdued.

McCarthy arrived late, with the freshman eleven, back from a close
contest with a school team. They took a hurried supper, and went down a
dozen strong, in jovial marching order.

The sensations of the theater were still new to Stover, nor had his
fortunate eye seen under the make-up or his imagination gone below the
laughter. To parade down the aisle, straight as a barber's pole, chin
carefully balanced on the sharp edge of his collar, on the night of his
first day as end on the Yale varsity, delightfully conscious of his own
startling importance, feeling as if he over-topped every one in the most
public fashion, to be absolutely blushingly conscious that every one in
the theater must, too, be grasping a copy of that night's _Evening
Register_, that every glance had started at his arrival and was
following in set admiration, was a memory he was never to forget. His
shoulders thrown up a little, just a little in accentuation, as behooved
an end with a reputation for tackling, he found his seat and, dropping
down quickly to escape observation, buried himself in his program to
appear modest before the burning concentration of attention which he was
quite sure must now be focused on him.

"Dobbs and Benzigger, the fellows who smash the dishes--by George,
that's great!" cried McNab, joyfully running over the program. "They're
wonders--a perfect scream!"

"Any good dancing?" said Hungerford, and a dozen answers came:

"You bet there is!"

"Fanny Lamonte--a dream, Joe!"

"Daintiest thing you ever saw."

"Sweetest little ankles!"

"Who's this coming--the Six Templeton Sisters?"

"Don't know."

"Well, here they come."

"They've got to be pretty fine for me!"

Enthroned as lords of the drama, they pronounced their infallible
judgments. Every joke was new, every vaudeville turn an occasion for a
gale of applause. The appearance of the "Six Templetons" was the
occasion of a violent discussion between the adherents of the blondes
and the admirers of the brunettes, led by the impressionable McNab.

"I'm all for the peach in the middle!"

"Ah, rats! She's got piano legs. Look at the fighting brunette at this
end."

"Why, she's got a squint."

"Squint nothing; she's winking at me."

"Yes, she is!"

"Watch me get her eye!"

Stover, of course, preserved an attitude of necessary dignity, gently
tolerant of the rakish sentimentalities of the younger members of the
flock. Moreover, he was supremely aware that the sparkling eyes under
the black curls (were they real?) were not looking at McNab, but
intensely directed at his own person--all of which, as she could not
have read the _Register_, was a tribute to his own personal and not
public charms.

The lights, the stir of the audience, the boxes filled with the upper
classmen, the gorgeous costumes, the sleepy pianist pounding out the
accompaniments while accomplishing the marvelous feat of reading a
newspaper, were all things to him of fascination. But his eye went not
to the roguish professional glances, but lost itself somewhere above
amid the ragged drops and borders. He was transported into the wonders
of Dink-land, where one figure ran a hundred adventures, where a hundred
cheers rose to volley forth one name, where a dozen games were passed in
a second, triumphant, dazzling, filled with spectacular conflicts,
blurred with frantic crowds of blue, ending always in surging
black-hatted rushes that tossed him victoriously toward the stars!

"Let's cut out," said McNab's distinct voice. "There's nothing but
xylophones and coons left."

"Come on over to Reynolds's."

"Start up the game."

Reluctantly, fallen to earth again, Stover rose and followed them out.
In a moment they had passed through the fragrant casks and bottles that
thronged the passage, saluting the statesmanly bulk of Hugh Reynolds,
and found themselves in a back room, already floating in smoke. White,
accusing lights of bracketed lamps picked out the gray features of a
dozen men vociferously rolling forth a drinking chorus, while the magic
arms of Buck Waters, his falcon's nose and little muzzle eyes, dominated
the whole. A shout acclaimed them:

"Yea, fellows!"

"Shove in here!"

"Get into the game."

"Bartender, a little more of that brutalizing beer!"

"Cheese and pretzels!"

"Hello, Tough McCarthy!"

"Over here, Dopey McNab."

"Get into the orchestra."

"Good boy, Stover!"

"Congratulations!"

"Oh, Dink Stover, have we your eye?"

The last call, caught up by every voice, went swelling in volume,
accompanied by a general uplifting of mugs and glasses. It was the
traditional call to a health.

"I'd like to oblige," said Dink, a little embarrassed, "but I'm in
training."

"That's all right--hand him a soft one."

For the first time he perceived that there was a perfect freedom in the
choice of beverage. He bowed, drained his glass, and sat down.

"Oh, Dopey McNab, have we your eye?"

"You certainly have, boys, and I'm no one-eyed man at that," said
McNab, jovially disappearing down a mug, while the room in chorus
trolled out:


     "_Drink the wine divine_
     _As long as you can stand it._
     _Hand the bowl around_
     _As long as you can hand it._
     _Drink your glass,_
     _Drink your glass,_
     _Dri-i-i-i-ink--he's drunk it down._"


"Oh, Jim Hunter, have we your eye?"

Each new arrival in turn, called to his feet, rose and drained his glass
to a hilarious accompaniment, while Stover, to his surprise, noted that
fully a third of the crowd were ordering soft drinks.

"Oh, Dink Stover, here's to _you_!"

From across the table Tommy Bain, lifting his glass of ginger ale,
smiled a gracious smile.

"Same to you, Tommy Bain."

The fellow who had addressed him was a leader among the Hotchkiss crowd,
out for coxswain, already spoken of for one of the class managerships.
He was a diminutive type, immaculately neat, black hair exactly parted
and unflurried, well jacketed, turn-down collar embellished with a
red-and-yellow four-in-hand, a rather large, bulbous nose, and thin eyes
that were never quiet--shrewd, direct, inquisitive, always estimating.
He was smiling again, raising his glass to some one else down the table,
and the smile that passed easily over his lips had the quality of
seeming to come from the heart.

McNab and Buck Waters, natural leaders of the revels, arms locked, were
giving a muscular exhibition of joint conducting, while the room in
chorus sang:


     "_Should fortune prove unkind,_
     _Should fortune prove unfair,_
     _A cure I have in mind_
     _To drive away all care._"


"By George!" said Hungerford, at his side, laughing, "it's good to be in
the game at last, isn't it, Dink?"

"It certainly is."

"We've got a great crowd; it's going to be a great class."

"Who's Bain?" said Dink, under his breath.

"Bain--oh, he's a clever chap, probably be a class deacon. That's
another good thing about this place: we can all get together and drink
what we want."

"Chorus!" cried McNab and Waters, with a twin flourish of their arms.

"Chorus!" shouted Hungerford and Bain, raising their glasses in
accompaniment.


     "_For to-night we will be merry_
     _As the rosy wine we drink--_
     _The rosy wine we drink!_"


"Yea!"

"A little more close harmony!"

A great shout acclaimed the chorus and another song was started.

Hunter and Bain were opposite each other, surrounded as it were by
adherents, each already aware of the other, measuring glances, serious,
unrelaxing, never unbending, never departing a moment from the careful
attitude of critical aloofness. In the midst of the rising hilarity and
the rebellious joy of newly gained liberty, the two rival leaders sat
singing, but not of the song, the same placid, maliciously superior
smile floating over the perfectly controlled lips of Bain, while in the
anointed gaze of Hunter was a ponderous seriousness which at that age is
ascribed to a predestined Napoleonic melancholy.

"Solo from Buck Waters!"

"Solo!"

"On the chair!"

"Yea, Buck Waters!"

Yielding to the outcry Waters was thrust upward.

"The cowboy orchestra!"

"Give us the cowboy orchestra!"

"The cowboy orchestra, ladies and gentlemen."

With a wave of his hand he organized the room into drums, bugles, and
trombones, announcing:

"The orchestra will tune up and play this little tune,


     "'_Ta-de-dee-ra-ta-ra-ta-rata,_
     _Ta-de-dee-ra-ta-ra-ta-rata-ta!_'


"All ready? Lots of action there--a little more cyclonic from the
trombones. Fine! Whenever I give the signal the orchestra will burst
forth into that melodious refrain. I will now give an imitation of a
professional announcer at Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and Congress of
Rough Riders. Orchestra:


     "_Ta-de-dee-rata-rata-rata_
     _Ta-de-dee-rata-rata-rata-ta!_"


While Waters, with his great comical face shining above the gleeful
crowd like a harvest moon rising from the lake, continued endlessly
drawling out his nasal imitations, the crowd, for the first time welded
together, rocked and shouted out the farcical chorus. When he had ended,
Buck Waters sat down, enthroned forever afterward master of song and
revels.

Bain began to cast estimating glances, calculating on the moment to
leave. At the other end Waters was fairly smothered under the rush of
delighted comrades, patting him on the back, acclaiming his rise to
fame. The tables settled down into a sentimental refrain led by Stone's
clear tenor.

Dink's glance, traveling down the table, was suddenly attracted by the
figure of a young fellow with a certain defiant yet shy individuality in
its pose.

"Who's the rather dark chap just beyond Dopey?" he asked Hungerford.

"Don't know; ask Schley."

"Brockhurst--Sidney Brockhurst," said Schley, not lowering his voice,
"from Hill School. Trying for the _Lit_. Clever chap, they say, but a
little long-haired."

Stover studied him, his curiosity awakened. Brockhurst, of all present,
seemed the most solitary and the most self-conscious. He had a long
head, high, thin cheeks, and a nervous little habit, when intent or
conscious of being watched, of drawing his fingers over his lips. His
head was thrown back a little proudly, but the eyes contradicted this
attitude, with the acute shyness in them that clouded a certain keen
imaginative scrutiny.

At this moment his eyes met Stover's. Dink, yielding to an instinct,
raised his glass and smiled. Brockhurst hastily seized his mug in
response, spilling a little of it and dropping his glance quickly. Once
or twice, as if unpleasantly conscious of the examination, he turned
uneasily.

"He looks rather interesting," said Stover thoughtfully.

"Think so?" said Schley. "Rather freaky to me."

Suddenly a shout went up:

"Come in!"

"Yea, Sheff!"

"Yea, Tom Kelly!"

The narrow doorway was suddenly alive with a boisterous, rollicking
crowd of Sheff freshmen, led by Tom Kelly, a short, roly-poly, alert
little fellow with a sharp pointing nose and a great half-moon of a
mouth.

"Come in, Kelly!"

"Crowd in, fellows!"

"Oh, Tom, join us!"

"I will _not_ come in," said Kelly, with a certain painful beery
assumption of dignity. He balanced himself a moment, steadied by his
neighbors; and then, to the delight of the room, began, with the utmost
gravity, one of his inimitable imitations of the lords that sit
enthroned in the faculty.

"I come, not to stultify myself in the fumes of liquor, but to do you
good. Beer is brutalizing. With your kind permission, I will whistle you
a few verses of a noble poem on same subject."

[Illustration: "'I COME NOT TO STULTIFY MYSELF IN THE FUMES OF LIQUOR,
BUT TO DO YOU GOOD'"--_Page 89._]

"Whistle, Tom?"

"The word was whistle," said Kelly sternly. Extending his arm for
silence, he proceeded, with great intensity and concentrated facial
expression, to whistle a sort of improvisation. Then, suddenly ceasing,
he continued:

"And what does this beautiful, ennobling little thing teach us, written
by a great mind, one of the greatest, greatest minds--what does it teach
us?"

"Well, what does it teach?" said one or two voices, after Kelly had
preserved a statuesque pose beyond the limits of their curiosity.

"Ask me," said Kelly, with dignity.

"Mr. Kelly," said McNab rising seriously, "what does this little gem of
intellectuality, this as it were psycho-therapeutical cirrhosis of a
paleontological state,--you get my meaning, of course,--that is, from
the point of view of modern introspective excavations, with due regard
to whatever the sixth dimension, considered as such, may have of
influence, and allowing that a certain amount of error is inherent in
Spanish cooking if eggs are boiled in a chafing-dish--admitting all
this, I ask you a simple question. Do you understand me?"

"Perfectly," said Kelly, who had followed this serious harangue with
strained attention. "And, moreover, I agree with you."

"You agree?" said McNab, feigning surprise.

"I do."

"Sir, you are a congenial soul. Shake hands."

But, in the act of stealing this sudden friendship, Kelly brought forth
his hand, when it was perceived that he was tightly clutching a
pool-ball, and, moreover, that his pockets were bulging like a sort of
universal mumps with a dozen inexplicable companions. A shout went up:

"Why, he's swallowed a frame of pool-balls!"

"He certainly has."

"He's swiped them."

"He's wrecked a pool-room."

"How the deuce did he do it?"

"Why, Tom, where did you get 'em?"

"Testimonial--testimonial of affection," replied Kelly, "literally
showered on me."

"Tom, you stole them."

"I did not steal them!"

"Tom, you stole them!"

"Tom, O Tom!"

Kelly, who had proceeded to empty his pockets for an exhibition,
becoming abruptly offended at the universal shouted accusation,
repocketed the pool-balls and departed, despite a storm of protest and
entreaties, carrying with him McNab.

A number of the crowd were passing beyond control; others, inflexible,
smiling, continued in their attitude of spectators, Brockhurst because
he could not forget himself, Hunter and Bain because they would not.

"Time for us to be cutting out," said Hunter, with a glance at his
watch. "What about it, Stover?"

Dink was annoyed that he had not made the move himself. McCarthy,
Hungerford, and one or two of the freshman candidates arose. A shout
went up from the noisy end of the table.

"Here! no quitting!"

"Cowards!"

"Come back!"

"Shut up; it's the football crowd!"

"Oh, football, eh?"

"Right."

"Splendid!"

Stover with a serious face, shook hands with Troutman, a red-haired
fellow with sharp advancing features who said impressively:

"Mr. Stover, I wish to express for my friends the gratification, the
extreme gratification, the extreme moral gratification we feel at seeing
a football--a football candidate showing such moral courage--moral--it's
wonderful--it moves me. Mr. Stover, I'd like to shake your hand."

Dink laughed and escaped, seeing, in a last glance at the vaporous
fitful room, Troutman solemnly giving his hand to Waters, whom he was
congratulating on his extreme moral courage in remaining.

Tommy Bain, in the confusion, slipped out unnoticed and joined them.
The last swollen burst of the song was shut from them. They went back
toward the campus in twos and threes, over the quiet, moist pavement,
past the noisy windows of Mory's--where no freshmen need apply--to the
Common, where suddenly, in the moonlit shadow of a great elm, they found
a vociferous group with Tom Kelly and McNab in the midst.

At this moment something fell from the skies within perilous distance.

"What the deuce is that?" said Hungerford, jumping back.

"Why, it's a pool-ball," said Stone, stooping down.

Another fell, just missing Hunter's shoulders.

"It's Kelly," said Bain, "and he's firing at us."

With a rush they joined the group, to find Kelly, determined and
enthusiastic, solemnly discharging his ammunition at the great bulbous
moon that was set lumberingly above them. They joined the group that
surrounded him, expostulating, sober or fuddled:

"Don't be an ass, Tom."

"The cops are coming."

"I say, come on home."

"How many more has he got?"

"Get him home, you fellows."

"Stop him."

Meanwhile, abetted by the admiring, delighted McNab, Tom Kelly, taking
the most solicitous aim, was continuing his serious efforts to hit the
moon with the pool-balls which he had procured no one knew how.

"I say, McNab," said Stover, drawing him aside, "better get him to stop
now. Too many cops around. Use your influence--he'll listen to you."

McNab's sense of responsibility having thus become violently agitated,
he wabbled up to the laboring Kelly, and the following historic dialogue
took place:

"I say, Tom, old fellow, you know me, don't you? You know I'm a good
sort, don't you--one of the finest?"

"I know you, Dopey McNab; I'm proud to know you."

"I want to speak a word with you seriously."

"What?"

"Seriously."

"Say on."

"Now, seriously, Tom, do you think you can hit it?"

"Don't know; going to try's much as in me. Biff!"

"Hold up," said McNab, staying his hand. "Tom, I'm going to appeal to
you as man to man."

"Appeal."

"You understand--as man to man."

"Sure."

"You're a man; I'm a man."

"The finest."

"Now as man to man, I'm going to tell you the truth."

"The whole truth?"

"Solemn truth."

"Tell on."

"You can't hit it."

"Why not?"

"Tom, it's too--too far away!"

The two shook hands solemnly and impressively.

"Can't hit it--too far away," said Kelly, with the pool-ball clutched
tight. "Too far away, eh?"

"My dear Tom," said McNab, tearfully breaking the news, "it's too
far--entirely too far away. You can't reach it, Tom; believe me, as man
to man--you can't, you can never, never hit it."

"I know I can't, Dopey," said Kelly, in an equally mournful tone, "I
know all that. All that you say is true. But, Dopey, suppose I _should_
hit it, suppose I _should_, just think--think--how my name would go
reeling and rocking down to fushure generations! Biff!"

They left McNab overcome by the impressiveness of this argument, busily
gathering up the pool-balls, resolved that every opportunity should be
given Kelly to rank among the immortals.

Stover would have liked to stay. For the moment, almost a rebellion
swept over him at the drudgery to which he had condemned himself in his
ambition. He saw again the low table, through the smoke, and Buck
Waters's jovial pagan face leading the crowd in lazy, care-free abandon.
He felt that liberty, that zest of life, that wild spirit of youth for
which he yearned and of which he had been defrauded by Le Baron's hand,
that hand which had ruthlessly torn away the veil. Something leaped up
within him--a longing to break the harness, to jump the gate and go
heels in the air, cavorting across unfenced meadows. He rebelled against
the way that had been marked out for him. He rebelled against the
self-imposed discipline, and, most of all, he rebelled against the
hundred eyes under whose inspection he must now inevitably walk.

Ahead of them to the left, across by Osborne, came the gay, defiant
singing of a group of upper classmen returning to the campus:


     "_For it's always fair weather_
     _When good fellows stand together,_
     _With a stein on the table_
     _And a good song ringing clear._"


The echo came to him with a certain grim mockery. There would be very
little of that for him. It was to be four years, not of pleasure and
inclination, but of seriousness and restraint, if he continued in his
decision. For a moment the pagan in him prevailed, and he doubted. Then
they passed across High Street, and at their sides the dead shadow of
the society tomb suddenly intruded upon them. Which of the group at the
end of the long three years would be of the chosen? Which would lead?

"Well, fellows, we go this way," said Bain's methodical voice. "Drop
around at the rooms soon. Good night."

Stover, Hunter, and Bain for the moment found themselves together, each
striving for the same social honor, each conscious that, whatever an
established system might bring to them, with its enforced comradeship,
among them would always be the underlying contending spirit of variant
ambitions.

Stover felt it keenly, almost with a sharp antagonism that drove from
him finally the slumbering rebellion he had felt all that night--the
tugging at the bridle of consciousness which had been imposed upon him.
This was a bigger thing, a thing that wakened in him the great instincts
of combat. He would be a leader among leaders. He would succeed as
success was reckoned.

He gave a little laugh and held out his hand to Hunter.

"Good night, Jim," he said.

"Why--good night," said Hunter, surprised at the laugh and the
unnecessary handshake.

But the hand had been offered in challenge, and the laugh marked the
final deliberate acceptance of all that Le Baron had logically exposed
to him.

"I'll play the game, and I'll play it better than they will," he said,
setting his lips. "I've got my eyes open, and I'm not going to throw
away a single chance. We'll see who'll lead!"




CHAPTER VIII


The intensity and seriousness of the football season abetted Stover in
his new attitude of Napoleonic seclusion by leaving him little time for
the lighter side of college pleasures. Every hour was taken up with the
effort of mastering his lessons, which he then regarded, in common with
the majority of his class, as a laborious task, a sort of necessary
evil, the price to be paid for the privilege of passing four years in
pleasant places with congenial companions.

After supper he returned immediately to his rooms, where presently a
succession of visiting sophomores, members of the society campaign
committees, took up the first hours. These inquisitorial delegations,
formal, stiff, and conducted on a basis of superior investigation,
embarrassed him at first. But this feeling soon wore off with the
consciousness that he was a subject of dispute; and, secure in the
opportunity that would come to him with the opening of the winter-term
period of elections, his interest was directed only to the probable
selection among his classmates.

By the middle of October the situation at Yale field had become
critical. The earlier games had demonstrated what had been foreseen--the
weakness and inexperience of the raw material in hand. Serious errors in
policy were committed by Captain Dana, who, in the effort to find some
combination which would bolster up the weak backfield, began a constant
shifting of the positions in order to experiment with heavier men
behind the line. A succession of minor injuries arrived to further the
disorganization. The nervousness of the captain communicated itself to
the team, harassed and driven in the effort for accomplishment. That
there was serious opposition among the coaches to these new groping
policies every man saw plainly; yet, to Stover's amazement, the
knowledge remained within the team, impregnated with the spirit of
loyalty and discipline.

After three weeks of brilliancy at his natural position of end, buoyed
up by the zest of confidence and success, he was abruptly called to one
side.

"Stover, you've played behind the line, haven't you?" said Dana.

"A couple of games at school, sir," he answered hastily, "just as a
makeshift."

"I'm going to try you at fullback."

"At fullback?"

"Get into it and see if you can make good."

"Yes, sir."

He went without spirit, sure of the impossibility of the thing, feeling
only the humiliation and failure that all at once flung itself like a
storm-cloud across his ambition. A coach took charge of him, running
over with him the elementary principles of blocking and plunging.

When he lined up, it was with half of the coaching force at his back.

"Come on, Stover; get into it!"

"Wake up!"

"Get your head down!"

"Keep a-going!"

"Ram into it!"

"Knock that man over!"

"Knock him _over_!"

He went into the line blindly, frantically, feeling for the first time
that last exhausting, lunging expenditure of strength that is called
forth with the effort to fall forward when tackled. Nothing he did
satisfied. It was a constant storm of criticism, behind his back, in his
ears, shrieked to his face:

"Keep your feet--oh, keep your feet!"

"Smash open that line!"

"Rip open that line!"

"Hit it--hit it!"

"Hard--harder!"

"Go on--don't stop!"

A dozen times he flung his meager weight against the ponderous bodies of
the center men, crushed by the impact in front, smothered by the surging
support of his own line behind, helpless in the grinding contention,
turned and twisted, going down in a heap amid the shock of bodies,
thinking always:

"Well, the darn fools will find out just about how much use I am here!"

When the practise ended, at last, Dana called on Tompkins.

"Joe, take Stover and give him a line on the punting, will you?"

"I say, he's been worked pretty hard," said the coach with a glance.

"How about it?" said Dana quickly.

"All right," said Stover, lying gloriously. At that moment, aching in
every joint, he would have given everything to have spoken his mind.
Instead he brought forth a smile distinguished for its eagerness, and
said, "I'd like to get right at it, sir."

"Fullback's the big problem," said Tompkins, as they started across the
field. "Bangs can fill in at end, but we've got to get a fullback that
can catch punts, and with nerve enough to get off his kicks in the face
of that Princeton line."

"I'll do my best, sir," said Stover, with a sinking feeling.

For twenty minutes, against the rebellion of his body, he went through a
rigorous lesson, improving a little in the length of his punts, and
succeeding fairly well in holding the ball, which came spinning end over
end to him from the region of the clouds.

"That'll do," said Tompkins, at last.

"That's all?" said Stover stoically, picking up his sweater.

"That's all." Tompkins, watching him for a moment, said suddenly:
"Stover, I don't know whether Dana'll keep you at full or not, but I
guess you'll have to get ready to fill in. Come over to the gym lot
every morning for about half an hour, and we'll see if we can't work up
those punts."

"Yes, sir."

They walked out together.

"Stover, look here," said Tompkins abruptly, "I'm going to speak
straight to you, because I think you'll keep your mouth shut. We're in a
desperate condition here, and you know it. There's only one man in
charge at Yale, now and always, and that's the captain. That's our
system, and we stand or fall by it; and in order that we can follow him
four times out of five to victory, we've got sometimes to shut our eyes
and follow him down to defeat. Do you get me?"

"I think I do."

"No matter what happens, no criticism of the captain--no talking
outside. You may think he's wrong, you may know he's wrong, but you've
got to grin and bear it. That's all. Remember it--a close mouth!"

But it required all Stover's newly learned stoicism to maintain this
attitude in the weeks that arrived. After a week he was suddenly
returned to his old position, and as suddenly redrafted to fullback when
another game had displayed the inadequacy of the regular. From a
position where he was familiar with all the craft of the game, Stover
suddenly found himself a novice whom a handful of coaches sought
desperately to develop by dint of hammering and driving. His name no
longer figured in the newspaper accounts as the find of the season, but
as Stover the weak spot on the eleven. It was a rude discipline, and
more than once he was on the point of crying out at what seemed to him
the useless sacrifice. But he held his tongue as he saw others, seniors,
put to the same test and giving obedience without a word of criticism
for the captain, who, as every one realized, face to face with a
hopeless outcome, was gradually going to pieces.

Meanwhile Dopey McNab was just as zealously concerned in the pursuit of
his classic ideal, which, however, was imagined more along the lines of
such historic scholars as Verdant Green, Harry Foker, and certain heroes
of his favorite author, Charles Lever.

The annoyance of recitations by an economical imagination he converted
into periods of repose and refreshing slumber behind the broad back of
McMasters, who, for a certain fixed portion of tobacco a week, agreed to
act as a wall in moments of calm and to awake him with a kick on the
shins when the summons to refuse to recite arrived.

Having discovered Buck Waters as a companionable soul, congenially
inclined to the pagan view of life, it was not long before the two
discovered the third completing genius in the person of Tom Kelly, who,
though a member of the Sheff freshman class, immediately agreed not to
let either time, place, or conflicting recitations stand in the way of
that superior mental education which must result from the friction of
three such active imaginations.

The triumvirate was established on a firm foundation on the day after
Kelly's ambitious but unsuccessful attempt to hit the moon with a
pool-ball, and immediately began a series of practical jokes and larks
which threatened to terminate abruptly the partnership or remove it
bodily to an unimaginative outer world.

McNab, like most gentlemen of determined leisure, worked indefatigably
every minute of the day. Having slept through chapel and first
recitation, with an occasional interruption to rise and say with great
dignity "Not prepared," he would suddenly, about ten o'clock in the
morning, awake with a start, and drifting into Stover's room plaster his
nose to the window and restlessly ask himself what mischief he could
invent for the day.

After a moment of dissatisfied introspection, he would say fretfully:

"I say, Dink?"

"Hello!"

"Studying?"

"Yes."

"Almost finished?"

"No."

"What are you doing, McCarthy?"

"Boning out an infernal problem in spherical geometry."

"I gave that up."

"Oh, you did!"

"Sure, it's too hard--what's the use of wasting time over it, then?
What do you say to a game of pool?"

"Get out!"

"Let's go for a row up on Lake Whitney."

"Shut up!"

"Come over to Sheffield and get up a game of poker with Tom Kelly."

At this juncture, Stover and McCarthy rising in wrath, McNab would beat
a hurried retreat, dodging whatever came sailing after him. Much
aggrieved, he would go down the hall, trying the different doors, which
had been locked against his approach.

About this time Buck Waters, moved by similar impulses, would appear and
the two would camp down on the top step and practise duets, until a
furious uprising in the house would drive them ignominiously on to the
street.

Left to their own resources, they would wander aimlessly about the city,
inventing a hundred methods to accomplish the most difficult of all
feats, killing time.

On one particular morning in early November, McNab and Buck Waters,
being refused admission to three houses on York Street, and the affront
being aggravated by jeers and epithets of the coarsest kind, went arm in
arm on mischief bent.

"I say, what let's do?" said McNab disconsolately.

"We must do something new," said Buck Waters.

"We certainly must."

"Well, let's try the old clothes gag," said McNab; "that always amuses a
little."

Reaching the thoroughfare of Chapel Street, McNab stationed himself at
the corner while Waters proceeded to a point about half-way down the
block.

Assuming a lounging position against a lamp-post, McNab waited until
chance delivered up to him a superhumanly dignified citizen in top hat
and boutonnière, moving through the crowd with an air of solid
importance.

Darting out, he approached with the sweep of an eagle, saying in a
hoarse whisper:

"Old clothes, any old clothes, sir?"

His victim, frowning, accelerated his pace.

"Buy your old clothes, sir, buy 'em now."

Several onlookers stopped and looked. The gentleman, who had not turned
to see who was addressing him, said hurriedly in an undertone:

"No, no, nothing to-day."

"Buy 'em to-morrow--pay good price," said McNab peevishly.

"No, no, nothing to sell."

"Call around at the house--give good prices."

"Nothing to sell, nothing, I tell you!"

"Buy what you got on," said McNab at the psychological moment, "give you
five dollars or toss you ten or nothinks!"

"Be off!" said the now thoroughly infuriated victim, turning and
brandishing his cane. "I'll have you arrested."

McNab, having accomplished his preliminary rôle, retreated to a safe
distance, exclaiming:

"Toss you ten dollars or nothinks!"

The now supremely self-conscious and furious gentleman, having rid
himself of McNab, immediately found himself in the hands of Buck Waters,
who pursued him for the remainder of the block, with a mild obsequious
persistency that would not be shaken off. By this time the occupants of
the shop windows and the loiterers, perceiving the game, were in roars
of laughter, which made the passage of the second and third victims a
procession of hilarious triumph for McNab and Waters.

Tiring of this, they locked arms again and, taking by hazard a side
street, continued their quest for adventure.

"Mornings are a dreadful bore," said McNab, pulling down his hat.

"They certainly are."

"Who was the old duck we tackled first?"

"Don't know--familiar whiskers."

"Seemed to me I've seen him somewhere."

"Say, look at the ki-yi."

"It's a Shetland poodle."

"It's a pen-wiper."

Directly in front of them a shaggy French poodle, bearing indeed a
certain resemblance to both a Shetland pony and a discarded pen-wiper,
was gleefully engaged in the process of shaking to pieces a rubber which
it had stolen.

"If it sees itself in a mirror it will die of mortification," said Buck
Waters.

"And yet, Buck, he's happier than we are," said McNab, who had been
unjustifiably forced to flunk twice in one morning's recitation.

"I say, Dopey," said Waters in alarm, "quit that!"

"I will."

"Look at the fireworks," said Waters, stopping suddenly at a window,
"pin-wheels, rockets, Roman candles."

"What are they doing there this time of the year?" said McNab angrily.

"Election parade, perhaps."

"That's an idea to work on, Buck."

"It certainly is."

"We must tell Tom Kelly about that."

"We will."

"Why, there's that ridiculous ki-yi again!"

"He seems to like us."

"I'm not complimented."

At this moment, with the poodle sporting the rubber about fifteen feet
ahead of them, they beheld an Italian barber lolling in the doorway of
his shop, as profoundly bored by himself as they affected to be in
conjunction.

"Fine dog," said the barber with a critical glance.

"Sure," said McNab, halting at once.

The poodle, for whatever reason, likewise halted and looked around.

"Looka better, cutta da hair."

"You're right there, Columbus," assented Buck Waters. "His fur coat
looks as though it came from a fire sale."

"He ought to be trim up nice, good style."

"Right, very, very right!"

"Give him nice collar, nice tuft on da tail, nice tuft on da feet."

"Right the second time!"

"I clip him up, eh?" said the barber hopefully.

"Why not?" said McNab, looking into the depth of Buck Waters's eyes.

"Why not, Beecher?" said Waters, giving him the name of the President of
the College Y. M. C. A.

"I think it an excellent suggestion, Jonathan Edwards," said McNab
instantly.

With considerable strategic coaxing, the dog was enticed into the shop,
where to their surprise he became immediately docile.

"You see he lika da clip," said the barber enthusiastically, preparing a
table.

"He's a very intelligent dog," said McNab.

"You've done much of this, Columbus?" said Waters with a business-like
air.

"Sure. Ten, twenta dog a day, down in da city."

"Edwards, we shall learn something."

The dog was induced to come on the table, and Waters delegated to hold
him in position.

"Something pretty slick now, Christopher," said McNab, taking the
attitude a connoisseur should take. "Explain the fine points to us, as
you go along."

"Sure."

"I like the way he handles the scissors, Beecher--strong, powerful
stroke."

"He's got a good batting eye, too, Edwards."

"My, what a nice clean boulevard!"

"Just see the hair fly."

"It'll certainly improve the tail."

"Clip a little anchor in the middle of the back."

"Did you see that?"

"I did."

"He's a wonder."

"He is."

"Columbus, a little more off here--oh, just a trifle!"

"First rate; shave up the nose and part the whiskers!"

"Look at the legs, with the dinky pantalets--aren't they dreams?"

"I love the tail best."

"Why, Columbus is an artist. Never saw any one like him."

"Would you know the dog?"

"Why, mother wouldn't know him," said McNab solemnly.

"All in forty-three minutes, too."

"It's beautifully done, beautifully."

"Exquisite!"

The barber, perspiring with his ambitious efforts, withdrew for a final
inspection, clipped a little on the top and to the side, and signified
by a nod that art could go no further.

"Pretta fine, eh?"

"Mr. Columbus, permit me," said Waters, shaking hands.

McNab gravely followed suit. The dog, released, gave a howl and began
circling madly about the room.

"Open the door," shouted McNab. "See how happy he is!"

The three stationed themselves thoughtfully on the doorstep, watching
the liberated poodle disappear down the street in frantic spirals, loops
and figure-eights.

"He lika da feel," said the barber, pleased.

"Oh, he's much improved," said Waters, edging a little away.

"He fine lookin' a dog!"

"He'll certainly surprise the girls and mother," said McNab, shifting
his feet. "Well, Garibaldi, ta-ta!"

"Hold up," said the barber, "one plunk."

"One dollar, Raphael?" said Buck Waters in innocent surprise. "What for,
oh, what for?"

"One plunk, clippa da dog."

"Yes, but Garibaldi," said McNab gently, "that wasn't our dog."

"Shall we run for it?" said Waters, as they went hurriedly up the block.

"Wait until Garibaldi gives chase--we must be dignified," said McNab,
with an eye to the rear.

"Dagos have no sense of humor. Here he comes with a razor--scud for it!"

They dashed madly for the corner, doubled a couple of times, joined by
the rejuvenated friendly poodle, and suddenly, wheeling around a corner,
ran straight into the dean, who as fate would have it, was accompanied
by the very dignified citizen who had been the first victim of their old
clothes act and upon whom the frantic poodle, with canine expressions of
relief and delight, immediately cast himself.


"Buck," said McNab, half an hour later, as they went limply back,
"Napoleon would have whipped the British to an omelet at Waterloo if
he'd known about that sunken road."

"We are but mortals."

"How the deuce were we to know the pup belonged to Professor Borgle, the
eminent rootitologist?"

"Well, we paid the dago, didn't we?"

"That was outrageous."

"I say, Dopey, what'll you do if they fire us?"

"Don't joke on such subjects."

"Dopey," said Waters solemnly, "while the dean has the case under
consideration, just to aid his deliberations, I think we had
better--well, study a little."

"I suppose we must flirt with the text-books," said McNab, "but let's do
it together, so no one'll suspect."




CHAPTER IX


The last week of the football season broke over them before Stover could
realize that the final test was almost at hand. The full weight of the
responsibility that was on him oppressed him day and night. He forgot
what he had been at end; he remembered only his present inadequacy. It
had been definitely decided to keep him at fullback, for three things
were imperative in the weak backfield: some one who could catch punts,
with nerve enough to get off his kicks quickly in the face of a stronger
line, and above all some one on the last defense who would never miss
the tackle that meant a touchdown.

In the last week a great change took place in the sentiment of the
university--the hoping against hope that often arrives with the
intensity of combat. At this time Harvard and Yale were still
reluctantly estranged, due to a purely hypothetical question as to which
side had begun a certain historic slaughter, and the big game of the
season was with Princeton, which, under the leadership of Garry
Cockerell, Dink's first captain at Lawrenceville, had established a
record of unusual power and brilliancy.

Up to Monday of the last week, the opinion around the campus was
unanimous that the day of defeat had arrived; but, with the opening of
the week and the flocking in of the old players, a new spirit was
noticeable, and (among the freshmen) a tentative loosening of the
purse-strings on news of extra-insulting challenges from the South.

At the practise, the season's marked division among the coaches was
forgotten, and the field was alive with frantic assistants. The
scrimmage between the varsity and the scrub took on a savageness that
was sometimes difficult to control. The team, facing the impossible,
with eagerness to respond, had clearly overworked itself. Stover himself
weighed a bare one hundred and forty, an unspeakable depravity which he
carefully concealed.

Still, the team began to feel a new impulse and a new unity, inspired by
the confidence of the returned heroes. The grim silence of the past
began to be broken by hopeful comments.

"By George, I believe there's something in those boys."

"We've come up smiling before."

"We may do it again."

"Shouldn't be surprised if they gave those Princeton Tigers the fight of
their lives."

"Oh, they'll fight it out all right."

One or two trick plays were perpetrated behind closed gates, and a
thorough drill in a new method of breaking up the Princeton formation
for a kick, under the instruction of returning scouts. The team itself
began to question and wonder.

"That fellow Rivers certainly has stiffened us up in the center of the
line," said Regan, between plays, in one of his rare moments of
loquacity. "I've learned more in three days than in the whole darn
season."

"You've got to hold for my kicks," said Stover, submitting to the sponge
which Clancy, the trainer, was daubing over his face.

"We'll hold."

"What do you really think, Tom?" said Stover as they stood a little
apart, waiting for the scrimmage to be resumed. "Do you think there's a
chance?"

"I'm not thinking," said Regan, in his direct way. "Haven't any business
to think. But we're getting together, there's no doubt of that. If we
can't win, why, we'll lose as we ought to, and that's something."

Others were not so unruffled as Regan. The last days brought out all the
divergent ways in which fierce, combative natures approach a crisis.
Dana, the captain, was plainly on the edge of his self-control, his
forehead drawn in a constant frown, his glance shooting nervously back
and forth, speaking to no one except in the routine of the day. Dudley,
at the other half, had adopted the same attitude. De Soto at quarter, on
the contrary, radiated a fierce joy, joking and laughing, his nervous
little voice piping out:

"A little more murder, fellows! Send them back on stretchers. That's the
stuff. What the deuce is the matter, Bill, do you want to live forever?
Use your hands, use your feet, use your teeth, anything! Whoop her up!"

Others in the line were more stolid, yet each in his way contributing to
the nervous electricity that sent the team tirelessly, frantically, like
mad dervishes, into the breach, while behind them, at their sides,
everywhere, the coaches goaded them on.

"Oh, get together!"

"Shove the man in front of you!"

"Get your shoulder into it!"

"Fight for that last inch there!"

"Knock him off his feet!"

"Put your man out o' the play!"

"Break him up!"

No one paid any attention to the scrubs, fighting desperately with the
same loyalty against the odds of weight and organization, without hope
of distinction, giving every last ounce of their strength in futile,
frantic effort, rejoicing when flung aside and crushed under the
victorious rush of the varsity, who alone counted.

Against the scrubs Stover felt a sort of rage. Time after time he went
crashing into the line, seeing the blurred faces of his own comrades
with an instinctive hatred, striking them with his shoulder, hurling
them from the path of attack with a wild, uncontrollable fury at their
resistance, almost unable to keep his temper in leash. The first feeling
of sympathy he had felt so acutely for those who bore all the brunt of
the punishment, unrewarded, was gone. He no longer felt any pity, but a
brutal joy at the incessant smarting, grinding shock of the attack of
which he was part and the touch of prostrate bodies under his rushing
feet.

Thursday and Friday the practise was lightened for all except for the
backs. For an hour he was kept at his punting in the open and behind the
lines, while the scrubs, reënforced by every available veteran, swarmed
through the line, seeking to block his kicks.

To one side a little knot of coaches watched the result with critical
anxiety, following the length of the punts in grim silence.

Tompkins, behind him, from time to time, spoke quietly, knowing that his
was a nature to be restrained rather than goaded on.

"Watch your opposing backs, Stover. Keep your punts low and away from
them so as to gain as much on the ground as you can. That's it! Here,
you center men, you've got to hold longer than that! You're hurrying the
kick too much. Get it off clean, Stover. Not so good. Remember what I
say about placing your punt. You're going to be out-kicked fifteen
yards; make up for it in brain work. All right, Dana?"

"That'll do," said Dana, after a moment's hesitation.

"All over?" said Dink, dazed.

"All over!"

The scrubs, with a yell, broke up, cheering the varsity, and being
cheered in turn. Stover, with a sinking, realized that the week of
preparation had gone and that as he was he must come up to the final
test--the final test before the thousands that would blacken the arena
on the morrow.

The squad went rather silently, each oppressed by the same thought.

"We'll go out to the country club for the night," said Tompkins's shrill
voice. "Get your valises ready. And now stop talking football until we
tell you. Go out on the trot now!"

From the gymnasium he went back to the house. As he came up the hall he
heard a hum of voices from his room.

"Dink's got the nerve, but what the deuce can he do against that
Princeton line? Do you know how much he weighs? One hundred and fifty."

Stover listened, smiled grimly. If they only knew his real weight!

"Do you think he'll last it through?"

"What, Dink?" said McCarthy's loyal voice. "You bet he'll last!"

"Blamed shame he isn't at end!"

"By ginger! he'd make the All-American if he was."

"Yes, and now every one will jump on him for being a rotten fullback."

"Dana be hanged!"

Stover went back to the stairs and returned noisily At his entrance the
crowd sprang up instinctively. He felt the sudden focus of anxious,
critical glances.

"Hello, fellows," he said gruffly. "Tough, help me to stow a few duds in
my valise."

"Sure I will!"

Two or three hurried to help McCarthy, in grotesque, unconsciously
humorous eagerness; others patted him on the back with exaggerated good
spirits.

"Dink, you look fine!"

"All to the good."

"Right on edge."

"Dink, we're all rooting for you."

"Every one of us."

"You'll tear 'em up."

"We're betting on you, old gazebo!"

"Thanks!"

He took the bag which McCarthy thrust upon him. Each solemnly shook his
hand, thrilling at the touch, and Hungerford said:

"Whatever happens, old boy, we're going to be proud of you."

Stover stopped a moment, curiously moved, and obeying an instinct, said
brusquely:

"Yes, I'll take care of that."

Then he went hurriedly out.

That night, after supper--a meal full of nervous laughter and assumed
spirits--two or three of the older coaches came in, and their spirit of
hopefulness somehow communicated itself to the team. Other Yale elevens
had risen at the last moment and snatched a victory--why not theirs? It
lay with them, and during the week they certainly had forged ahead. Dink
felt the infection and became almost convinced. Then Tompkins, moving
around as the spirit of confidence, signaled him.

"Come out here; I want a little pow-wow with you."

They left the others and went out on the dim lawns with the lighted
club-house at their backs, and Tompkins, drawing his arm through
Stover's, began to speak:

"Dink, we're in for a licking."

"Oh, I say!" said Stover, overwhelmed. "But we have come on; we've come
fast."

"Stover, that's a great Princeton team," said Tompkins quietly, "and
we're a weak Yale one. We're going to get well licked. Now, boy, I'm
telling you this because I think you're the stuff to stand it; because
you'll play better for knowing what's up to you."

"I see."

"It's going to depend a whole lot on you--how you hold up your end--how
badly we're licked."

"I know I'm the weak spot," said Stover, biting his lips.

"You're a darn good player," said Tompkins, "and you're going to leave a
great name for yourself; but this year you've had to be sacrificed.
You've been put where you are because you've got nerve and a head. Now
this is what I want from you. Know what you're up against and make your
brain control that nerve--understand?"

"Yes, I do."

"You've got to do the kicking in the second half as well as in the
first. You've got to keep your strength and not break it against a wall.
You won't be called on for much rushing in the first half; you'll get a
chance later. The line may go to pieces, the secondary defense may go to
pieces; but, boy, if _you_ go to pieces, we'll be beaten thirty to
nothing."

"As bad as that!"

"Every bit."

"That's awful--a Yale team." He drew a long breath and then said: "What
do you want me to do?"

"I want you to get off every punt without having it blocked; and that's
a good deal, with what you're up against."

"Yes, sir."

"And hold on to every punt that comes to you--no fumbling."

"No fumbling--yes, sir."

"And kick as you've never kicked before--every kick better as you go on.
Put your whole soul into it."

"I will."

"You won't miss a tackle--I know that; but you'll have some pretty rum
ones to make, and when you tackle, make them remember it."

"Yes, sir."

"But, Stover, above all, hold steadfast. Keep cool and remember the
game's a long one. Boy, you don't know what it'll mean for some of us
old fellows to see Yale go down, but out of it all we want to remember
something that'll make us proud of you." He stopped, controlled the
emotion that was in his voice, and said a little anxiously: "I tell you
this because a first game is a terrible thing, and I didn't want you to
be caught in a panic when you found what you were up against. And I tell
you, Stover, because you're the sort of fighting stuff that'll fight
harder when you know all there is to it is the fighting. Am I right?"

"I hope so, sir."

"And now, do a more difficult thing. Get right hold of yourself. Put
everything out of your mind; go to bed and sleep."

This last injunction, though he tried his best to obey it, was beyond
Stover's power. He passed the night in fitful flashes of sleep. At
times he awoke, full of a fever of eagerness from a dream of success.
Then he would lie staring, it seemed for hours, at the thin path across
the ceiling made by a street lamp, feeling all at once a weakness in the
pit of his stomach, a physical horror of what the day would bring forth.
The words of the coach framed themselves in a sort of rhythmic chant
which went endlessly knocking through his brain:

"Catch every punt--get off every kick--make every tackle."

In the morning it was the same refrain, which never left him. He rose
tired, with a limpness in every muscle, his head heavy as if bound
across with biting bonds. He stood stupidly holding his wash-pitcher,
looking out of the window, saying:

"Good heavens! it's only a few hours off now."

Then he began feebly to wash, repeating:

"Get off every kick--every kick."

Breakfast passed like a nightmare. He put something tasteless into his
mouth, his jaws moved, but that was all. The brisk walk to chapel
restored him somewhat, and the consciousness of holding himself before
the gaze of the crowd. After first recitation, Regan joined him, and
together they went across the campus, no longer the campus of the
University, but beginning to swarm with strangers, and strange colors
amid the blue.

"How are you feeling?" said Regan in a fatherly sort of way, as they
went through Phelps and out on to the Common.

"Tom, my shoes stick to the ground, my knees are made of paper, and I'm
hollow from one end to the other."

"Fine!"

"Oh, _is_ it?"

"You'll be a bundle of fire on the field."

"Let's not walk too far. We want to keep fresh," said Stover, feeling
indeed as though every step was draining his energy.

"Rats! let's saunter down Chapel Street and see the crowds come in."

"You old rhinoceros, have you any nerves?"

"Lots, but they're a different sort. By George, isn't it a wonderful
sight?"

Side by side with Regan, a certain shame steadied Stover. They went
silently through the surging, arriving multitude, all intoxicated with
the joy and zest of the great game. In and out, newsboys howling papers
with headlines and pictures of the team thrust their wares before their
eyes, while a pestiferous swarm of strange pedlers shrieked:

"Get your colors here!"

"Get your winnin' color."

Suddenly Stover saw a headline--his name and the caption:


     STOVER THE WEAK SPOT


"Let's get a paper," he said, nervously drawn to it.

"No you don't," said Regan, who had seen it. "Come on, now, get out of
here, some one might walk on your foot or stick a hatpin in your eye."

"What time is it?"

"Time to be getting back."

"Tom, do you know how much I weigh?" said Stover irrelevantly.

"What the deuce?"

"I weigh one hundred and forty-one pounds," said Stover solemnly, as
though imparting a State secret.

"Go on, be loony if you want," said Regan. "I've seen bruisers before a
fight act like high school girls. If you've got something on your mind,
why talk it out, it'll do you good."

"It's awful--it's awful," said Stover, shaking his head.

"What's awful?"

"It's awful to think I'm the weak spot, that if they only had a decent
fullback there would be a chance. I've no right there--every one knows
it, and every one's groaning about it."

"Go on."

"That's all," said Stover, a little angry.

"Well, then come on, I'm getting hungry."

"Hungry! Tom, I'd like to knock the spots out of you," said Dink,
laughing despite himself.

"Dink, old bantam," said Regan, resting his huge paw on Stover's
shoulder in rough affection, "you're all right. I say so and I know it.
Now shut up and come on."




CHAPTER X


Almost before he knew it Stover was in the car and the wheels were
moving at last irresistibly toward the field. There was no longer any
pretense in those last awful moments that had in them all the
concentrated hopes and fears of the weeks that had rushed away. The
faces of his own team-mates were only gray faces without identity. He
saw some one's lips moving incessantly, but he did not remember whose
they were. Opposite him, another man was bending over, his head hidden
in his hands. Some one else at his side was nervously locking and
unlocking his fingers, breathing short, hard breaths. He remembered only
the stillness of it all, the forgetfulness of others, the set stares,
and Charlie de Soto fidgeting on the seat and nervously humming
something irrelevant.

Caught up in this unreasoning intensity of a young nation, filled, too,
with this exaggerated passion of combat, Stover leaned back limply.
Outside, the street was choked with hilarious parties packed in rushing
carriages, blue or orange-and-black. Horns and rattles sounded like tiny
sounds in his ears, and his eyes saw only grotesque blurred shapes that
swept across them.

"I'll get 'em off--they won't block any on me--they mustn't," he said to
himself, closing his eyes.

Then, on top of the draining weakness that had him in its grip, came a
sudden feeling of nausea, and he knew suddenly what the man opposite him
with his head in his hands was fighting. He put his arms over the ledge
of the door, and rested his head on them, too weak to care that every
one saw him, gulping in the stinging air in desperation.

All at once there came a grinding jerk and the car stopped. From the
inside came Tompkins' angry, rasping voice:

"Every one up! Get out there! Quick! On the jump!"

Instinctively obedient, the vertigo left him, his mind cleared. He was
out in the midst of the bobbing mass of blue sweaters, moving as in a
nightmare through the black spectators, seeing ahead the mammoth stands,
hearing the dull, engulfing roars as one hears at night the approaching
surf.

Then they were struggling through the human barriers, and he saw
something green at the bottom of a stormy pit, and a great growing roar
of welcome smote him as of a descending gale, the hysterical cry of the
American multitude, a roar acclaiming Yale.

"All ready!" said Dana's unrecognizable voice somewhere ahead. "On the
trot, now!"

Instantly he was sweeping on to the field and up along the frantic
stands of suddenly released blue. All indecision, all weakness, went
with the first hoarse cry from his own. Something hot and alive seemed
to flow back into his veins, and with every stride the spongy turf
underneath seemed to send its strength and vitality into his legs.

From the other end of the field, through the somber crowd, an
orange-and-black group was trickling, flowing into a band and sweeping
out on the field, while the Princeton stands were surging to their feet,
adding the mounting fury of their welcome to the deafening uproar that
suddenly bound the arena in the gripping hollow of a whirlwind.

"Line up, you blue devils," came Charlie de Soto's raucous cry. "On your
toes. Get your teeth into it. Hard, now. Ha-a-ard!"

He was in action immediately, thinking only of the signals, sweeping
down the field, now to the right, now to the left, stumbling in his
eagerness.

"Enough," said the captain's voice, at last. "Get under your sweaters,
fellows. Brown and Stover, start up some punts."

Dana and Dudley went back to practise catching. Brown, the center,
pigskin under hand, set himself for the pass, while Stover, blowing on
his hands, measured his distance. Opposite, Bannerman, the Princeton
fullback, was setting himself for a similar attempt.

In the stands was a sudden craning hush as the great audience waited to
see with its own eyes the disparity between the rival fullbacks.

Stover, standing out, felt it all instinctively, with a little nervous
tremor--the quick stir in the stands, the muttered comments, the tense
turning of even the cheer leaders.

Then the ball came shooting back to him. He caught it, turned it in his
hands, and drove forward his leg with all his might. At the same moment,
as if maliciously calculated, the great booming punt of Bannerman
brought the Princeton stands, rollicking and gleeful, to their feet in a
burst of triumph.

In his own stands there was no answering shout Stover felt on his
cheeks, under his eyes, two hot spots of anger. What did they know, who
condemned him, of the sacrifice he had made, of the far more difficult
thing he was doing? He remembered Tompkins' advice; he could not
compete with Bannerman in the air. Deliberately he sent his next punt
low, swift, striking the ground about thirty yards away and rolling
treacherously another fifteen feet before Dudley, who had swerved out,
could stop it. This time from the mass almost a groan went up.

A sudden cold contempt for them, for everything, seized possession of
Stover. He hated them all. He stooped, plucked a blade of grass, and
stuck it defiantly between his teeth.

"Shoot that back a little lower, Brown," he said with a sudden quick
authority, and again and again he sent off his fast, low-rolling punts.

"That's the stuff, Dink," said Tompkins, with a pat on the shoulder,
"but you've got to get 'em off on the instant--remember that. Here,
throw this sweater over you."

"All right."

He did not sit down, but walked back and forth with short steps, waiting
for the interminable conference of the captains to be over. And again
that same sinking, hollow feeling came over him in the suspense before
the question that would be answered in the first shock of bodies.

The feeling he felt ran through the thousands gathered only to a
spectacle. The cheers grew faint, lacking vitality, and the stir of feet
was a nerve-racked stir. Dink gazed up at the high benches, trying to
forget the interval of seconds that must be endured. It did not seem
possible that he was to go out before them all. It seemed rather that in
a far-off consciousness he was the same loyal little shaver who had
squirmed so often on the top line of the benches, clinging to his knees,
biting his lips, and looking weakly on the ground.

"All ready--get out, boys!"

Dana came running back. Yale had won the toss and had chosen to kick
off.

Some one pulled his sweater from him, struck him a stinging slap between
the shoulders, and propelled him on the field.

"Yale this way!"

They formed in a circle, heads down, arms locked over one another's
shoulders, disputing the same air; and Dana, the captain, who believed
in a victory, spoke:

"Now, fellows, one word. It's up to us. Do you understand what that
means? It's up to us to win, the way Yale has won in the past--and win
we're going to, no matter how long it takes or what's against us. Now,
get mad, every one of you. Run 'em right off their feet. That's all."

The shoulders under Stover's left him. He went hazily to the place, a
little behind the rest, where he knew he should go, waiting while Brown
poised the football, waiting while the orange-and-black jerseys
indistinctly scattered before him to their formation, waiting for the
whistle for which he had waited all his life to release him.

And for a third time his legs seemed to crumble, and the whole blurred
scheme of stands and field to reel away from him, and his heart to be
lying before him on the ground where he could lean over and pick it up.

Then like a pistol shot the whistle went throbbing through his brain. He
sprang forward as if out of the shell of himself, keen, alert, filled
with a savage longing.

Down the field a Princeton halfback had caught the ball and was
squirming back. Then a sudden upheaval, and a mass was spread on the
ground.

"Guess he gained about fifteen on that," he said to himself. "They'll
kick right off."

Dana came running back to support him. Out of the sky like a monstrous
bird something round, yellow, and squirming came floating toward him. He
was forced to run back, misjudged it a little, reached out, half fumbled
it, and recovered it with a plunging dive just as Cockerell landed upon
him.

"Get you next time, Dink," said the voice of his old school captain in
his ear.

Stover, struggling to his feet, looked him coolly in the eye.

"No, you won't, Garry, and you know it. The next time I'm going back ten
yards."

"Well, boy, we'll see."

They shook hands with a grim smile, while the field straggled up. He was
lined up, flanked by Dana and Dudley, bending over, waiting for the
signal. Three times De Soto, trying out the Princeton line, sent Dana
plunging against the right tackle, barely gaining the distance. A fourth
attempt being stopped for a loss, Stover dropped back for a kick on the
second down.

The ball came a little low, and with it the whole line seemed torn
asunder and the field filled with the rush of converging bodies. To have
kicked would have been fatal. He dropped quickly on the ball, covering
it, under the shock of his opponents.

Again he was back, waiting for the trial that was coming. He forgot that
he was a freshman--forgot everything but his own utter responsibility.

"You center men, hold that line!" he cried. "You give me a chance! Give
me time!"

Then the ball was in his hands, and, still a little hurried, he sent it
too high over the frantic leaping rush, hurled to the ground the instant
after.

The exchange had netted Princeton twenty yards. A second time Bannerman
lifted his punt, high, long, twisting and turning over itself in tricky
spirals. It was a perfect kick, giving the ends exact time to cover it.

Stover, with arms outstretched, straining upward, cool as a Yankee,
knew, from the rushing bodies he did not dare to look at, what was
coming. The ball landed in his convulsive arms, and almost exactly with
it Garry Cockerell's body shot into him and tumbled him clear off the
ground, crashing down; but the ball was locked in his arms in one of
those catches of which the marvel of the game is, not that they are not
made oftener, but that they are made at all.

"Come on now, Yale," shouted Charlie De Soto's inflaming voice. "We've
got to rip this line. Signal!"

Two masses on center, two futile straining, crushing attempts, and again
he was called on to kick. The tackles he had received had steadied him,
driving from his too imaginative mind all consideration but the direct
present need.

He began to enjoy with a fierce delight this kicking in the very teeth
of the frantic Princeton rushes, as he had stood on the beach waiting
for great breakers to form above his head before diving through.

On the fourth exchange of kicks he stood on his own goal-line. The test
had come at last. Dana, furious at being driven back without a Princeton
rush, came to him wildly.

"Dink, you've got to make it good!"

"Take that long-legged Princeton tackle when he comes through," he said
quietly. "Don't worry about me."

Luckily, they were over to the left side of the field. He chose his
opening, and, kicking low, as Tompkins had coached him, had the joy of
seeing the ball go flying over the ground and out of bounds at the
forty-yard line.

The Princeton team, springing into position, at last opened its attack.

"Now we'll see," said Stover, chafing in the backfield.

Using apparently but one formation, a circular mass, which, when
directly checked, began to revolve out toward end, always pushing ahead,
always concealing the runner, the Princeton attack surely, deliberately,
and confidently rolled down the field like a juggernaut.

From the forty-yard line to the thirty it came in two rushes, from the
thirty to the twenty in three; and then suddenly some one was tricked,
drawn in from the vital attack, and the runner, guarded by one
interferer, swept past the unprotected end and set out for a touchdown.

Stover went forward to meet them like a shot, frantic to save the
precious yards. How he did it he never quite knew, but somehow he
managed to fling himself just in front of the interferer and go down
with a death grip on one leg of the runner.

A cold sponge was being spattered over him, he was on his back fighting
hard for his breath, when he again realized where he was. He tried to
rise, remembering all at once.

"Did I stop him?"

"You bet you did."

Regan and Dudley had their arms about him, lifting him and walking him
up and down.

"Get your breath back, old boy."

"I'm all right."

"Take your time; that Princeton duck hasn't come to yet!"

He perceived in the opposite group something prone on the ground, and
the sight was like a tonic.

The ball lay inside the ten-yard line, within the sacred zone. In a
moment, no longer eliminated, but close to the breathing mass, he was
at the back of his own men, shrieking and imploring:

"Get the jump, Yale!"

"Throw them back, Yale!"

"Fight 'em back!"

"You've got to, Yale--you've got to!"

Then, again and again, the same perfected grinding surge of the complete
machine: three yards, two yards, two yards, and he was underneath the
last mass, desperately blocking off some one who held the vital ball,
hoping against hope, blind with the struggle, saying to himself:

"It isn't a touchdown! It can't be! We've stopped them! It's Yale's
ball!"

Some one was squirming down through the gradually lightening mass. A
great weight went from his back, and suddenly he saw the face of the
referee seeking the exact location of the ball.

"What is it?" he asked wildly.

"Touchdown."

Some one dragged him to his feet, and, unnoticing, he leaned against
him, gazing at the ball that lay just over the goal-line, seeing with
almost a bull-like rage the Princeton substitutes frantically capering
up and down the line, hugging one another, agitating their blankets,
turning somersaults.

"Line up, Yale," said the captain's unyielding voice, "this is only the
beginning. We'll get 'em."

But Stover knew better. The burst of anger past, his head cleared. That
Princeton team was going to score again, by the same process, playing on
his weakness, exchanging punts, hoping to block one of his until within
striking distance, and the size of the score would depend on how long he
could stand it off.

"Goal," came the referee's verdict, and with it another roar from
somewhere. He went up the field looking straight ahead, hearing, like a
sound in a memory, a song of jubilation and the brassy accompaniment of
a band.

Again the same story: ten, fifteen yards gained on every exchange of
kicks, and a slow retrogression toward their own goal. Time and again
they flung themselves against a stronger line, in a vain effort to win
back the last yards. Once, in a plunge through center, he found an
opening, and went plunging along for ten yards; but at the last the ball
was Princeton's on the thirty-five-yard line, and a second irresistible
march bore Yale back, fighting and frantic over the line for the second
score.

Playing became an instinct with him. He no longer feared the soaring
punts that came tumbling to him from the clouds. His arms closed around
them like tentacles, and he was off for the meager yards he could gain
before he went down with a crash. He no longer felt the shock of the
desperate tackles he was called on to make, nor the stifling pressure
above him when he flung himself under the serried legs of the mass.

He had but one duty--to be true to what he had promised Tompkins: not to
fumble, not to miss a tackle, to get each punt off clean.

All at once, as he was setting in position, a body rushed in, seizing
the ball.

"Time!"

The first half was over, and the score was: Princeton, 18; Yale, 0.

Then all at once he felt his weariness. He went slowly, grimly with the
rest back to the dressing-room. A group of urchins clustering to a tree
shrieked at them:

"O you Yaleses!"

He heard that, and that was all he heard. A sort of rebellion was in
him. He had done all that he could do, and now they would haul him over
the coals, thinking that was what he needed.

"Oh, I know what'll be said," he thought grimly. "We'll be told we can
win out in the second, and all that rot."

Then he was in the hands of the rubbers, having his wet, clinging suit
stripped from him, being rubbed and massaged. He did not want to look at
his comrades, least of all Dana. He only wanted to get back, to have it
over with.

"Yale, I want you to listen to me."

He looked up. In the center stood Tompkins, preternaturally grave,
trembling a little with nervous, uncontrollable twitches of his body.

"You're up against a great Princeton team--the greatest I remember. You
can't win. You never had a chance to win. But, Yale, you're going to do
something to make us proud of you. You're going to hold that score where
it is! Do you hear me? All you've got left is your nerve and the chance
to show that you can die game. That's all you're going to do; but, by
heaven, you're going to do that! You're going to die game, Yale! Every
mother's son of you! And when the game's over we're going to be prouder
of your second half than the whole blooming Princeton bunch over their
first. There's your chance. Make us rise up and yell for you. Will you,
Yale?"

He passed from man to man, advising, exhorting, or storming, until he
came to Stover.

"Dink," he said, putting out his hand and changing his tone suddenly, "I
haven't a word to say to you. Play the game as you've been doing--only
play it out."

Stover felt a sudden rush of shame; all the fatigue left him as if by
magic.

"If Charlie'll only give me a few chances at the center. I know I could
gain there," he said eagerly.

"You'll get a chance later on, perhaps, but you've quite enough to do
now."

The second view of the arena was clear to him, even to insignificant
details. He thought the cheer leaders, laboring muscularly with their
long megaphones, strangely out of place--especially a short, fat little
fellow in a white voluminous sweater. He saw in the crowd a face or two
that he recognized--Bob Story in a group of pretty girls, all
superhumanly glum and cast down. Then he had shed his sweater and was
out on the field, back under the goal-posts, ready for the bruising
second half to begin.

"All ready, Yale!"

"All ready."

Again the whistle and the rush of bodies. Dana caught the ball, and,
shifting and dodging, shaking off the first tacklers, carried it back
twenty yards. Two short, jamming plunges by Dudley, through Regan, who
alone was outplaying his man, yielded first down. Then an attempt at
Cockerell's end brought a loss and the inevitable kick.

Instead of a return punt, the Princeton eleven prepared to rush the
ball.

"Why the deuce do they do that?" he thought, biting his fingers
nervously.

Opening up their play, Princeton swept out toward Bangs's end, forcing
it back for four yards, and immediately made first down with a long,
sweeping lunge at the other end.

Suddenly Stover, in the backfield, watching like a cat, started forward
with a cry. Far off to one side, a Princeton back, unperceived, was
bending down, pretending to be fastening one of his shoe-laces.

"Look out--look out to the left!"

His cry came too late. The Princeton quarter made a long toss straight
across, twenty yards, to the loitering half, who caught it and started
down field clear of the line of scrimmage.

A Princeton forward tried to intercept him, but Stover flung him aside,
and, without waiting, went forward at top speed to meet the man who came
without flinching to his tackle. It was almost head on, and the shock,
which left Stover stunned, instinctively clinging to his man, sent the
ball free, where Dana pounced upon it.

"Holy Mike, what a tackle!" said Regan's voice. "Any bones broken?"

"Of course not," he said gruffly.

Some one insisted on sponging his face, much to his disgust.

"How's the other fellow?" he said grimly.

"He's a tough nut; he's up, too!"

"He must be."

The recovery of the ball gave them a short respite, but it served also
to enrage the other line, which rose up and absolutely smothered the
next plays. Again his kick seemed to graze the outstretched fingers of
the Princeton forwards, and he laughed a strange laugh which he
remembered long after.

This time the punting duel was resumed until, well within Yale
territory, Cockerell looked around and gave the signal for attack.

"Now, Yale, stop it, stop it!" Dink said, talking to himself.

But there was no stopping that attack. Powerless, not daring to
approach, he saw the blue line bend back again and again, and the
steady, machine-like rolling up of the orange and black. Over the
twenty-five-yard line it came, and on past the twenty.

"Oh, Yale, will you let 'em score again?" De Soto was shrieking.

"You're on your ten-yard line, Yale."

"Hold them!"

"Hold them!"

Two yards at a time, they were rolled back with a mathematical,
unfeeling precision.

"Third down; two yards to go!"

"Yale, stop it!"

"Yale!"

And stop it they did, by a bare six inches. Behind the goal-line,
Charlie De Soto came up, as he stood measuring his distance for a kick.

"How are you, Dink? Want a bit of a rest--sponge-off?"

"Rest be hanged!" he said fiercely. "Come on with that ball."

Suddenly, instead of kicking low and off to the right, he sent the ball
straight down the field with every ounce of strength he could put in it.
The punt, the best he had made, catching the back by surprise, went over
his head, rolling up the field before he could recover it. A great roar
went up from the Yale stands, fired by the spirit of resistance.

Thereafter it had all a grim sameness, except, in a strange way, it
seemed to him that nothing that had gone before counted--that everything
they were fighting for was to keep their goal-line inviolate. Nothing
new seemed to happen. When he went fiercely into a mêlée, finding his
man somehow, or felt the rush of bodies about him as he managed each
time to get clear his punt, he had the same feeling:

"Why, I've done this before."

A dozen times they stopped the Princeton advance, sometimes far away and
sometimes near, once within the five-yard line. Every moment, now, some
one cried wearily:

"What's the time?"

The gray of November twilights, the haze that settles over the struggles
of the gridiron like the smoke of a battle-field, began to close in. And
then a sudden fumble, a blocked kick, and by a swift turn of luck it was
Yale's ball for the first time in Princeton's territory. One or two subs
came rushing in eagerly from the side lines. Every one was talking at
once:

"What's the time?"

"Five minutes more."

"Get together, Yale!"

"Show 'em how!"

"Ram it through them!"

"Here's our chance!"

Stover, beside himself, ran up to De Soto and flung his arms about his
neck, whispering in his ear:

"Give me a chance--you must give me a chance! Send me through Regan!"

He got his signal, and went into the breach with every nerve set,
fighting his way behind the great bulk of Regan for a good eight yards.
A second time he was called on, and broke the line for another first
down.

Regan was transformed. All his calm had gone. He loomed in the line like
a Colossus, flinging out his arms, shouting:

"We're rotten, are we? Carry it right down the field, boys!"

Every one caught the infection. De Soto, with his hand to his mouth,
was shouting hoarsely, through the bedlam of cheers, his gleeful slogan:

"We don't want to live forever, boys! What do we care? We've got to face
Yale after this. Never mind your necks. We've got the doctors! A little
more murder, now! Shove that ball down that field, Yale! Send them back
on stretchers! Nineteen--eight--six--four--Ha-a-ard!"

Again and again Stover was called on, and again and again, with his
whole team behind him or Regan's great arm about him, struggling to keep
his feet, crawling on his knees, fighting for every last inch, he
carried the ball down the field twenty, thirty yards on.

He forgot where he was, standing there with blazing eyes and colorless
face. He forgot that he was only the freshman, as he had that night in
the wrestling bout. He gave orders, shouted advice, spurred them on. He
felt no weariness; nothing could tire him. His chance had come at last.
He went into the line each time blubbering, laughing with the fierce joy
of it, shouting to himself:

"I'm the weak spot, am I? I'll show them!"

And the certainty of it all overwhelmed him. Nothing could stop him now.
He knew it. He was going to score. He was going to cross that line only
fifteen yards away.

"Give me that ball again!" he cried to De Soto.

Then something seemed to go wrong. De Soto and Dudley were shrieking out
something, protesting wildly.

"What's wrong?" he cried.

"They're calling time on us!"

"No, no, it's not possible! It's not time!"

He turned hysterically, beseechingly, catching hold of the referee's
arm, not knowing what he did.

"Mr. Referee, it isn't time. Mr. Referee--"

"Game's over," said Captain Dana's still voice. "Get together, Yale.
Cheer for Princeton now. Make it a good one!"

But no one heard them in the uproar that suddenly went up. Nature could
not hold out; the disappointment had been too severe. Stover stood with
his arms on Regan's shoulders, and together they bowed their heads and
went choking through the crowd. Others rushed around him--he thought he
heard Tompkins saying something. He seemed lost in the crowd that stared
at him, struggling to hold back his grief. Only one figure stood out
distinctly--the figure of a white-haired man, who took off his hat to
him as he went through the barrier, and shouted something
unintelligible--a strangely excited white-haired man.

All the way back to the gymnasium, through the jubilant street, Dink sat
staring out unseeing, his eyes blurred, a great lump in his throat,
possessed by a fatigue such as he had never known before. No one spoke.
Through his own brain ceaselessly the score, strangely jumbled, went its
tiring way:

"Eighteen to nothing--to nothing! Eighteen to six--it should have been
eighteen to six. Eighteen to nothing. It's awful--awful! If I only could
punt!"

His ideal, his dream of a Yale team, had always been of victory, not
like this, to go down powerless, swept aside, routed--to such a defeat!

Then he shut his eyes, fighting over again those last desperate rushes
against defeat, against hope, against time, unable to believe it was
over.

"How many times did I take that ball?" he thought wearily. "Was it seven
or eight? If I'd only got free that last time--kept my feet!"

He remembered flashes of that last frenzy--the face of a Princeton
rusher who reached for him and missed, the teeth savage as a wolf's and
the strained mouth. He saw again Regan turning around to pull him
through, Regan, the brute, raging like a fury. He remembered the quick,
strange white looks that Charlie De Soto had given him, wondering each
time if he had the strength to go on. Why had they stopped them? They
had a right to that last rally!

"Eighteen to nothing. Poor Dana--I wonder what he'll do?"

He remembered, in a far-off way, tales he had heard of other captains,
disgraced by defeat, breaking down, leaving college, disappearing. He
dreaded the moment when they should break silence, when the awful thing
must be talked over, there in the gymnasium, feeling acutely all the
misery and ache Dana must be feeling.

"All right there, Stover? Let yourself go, if you want to."

The voice was Tompkins', who was looking up at him anxiously, the
gymnasium at his back.

"All right," he said gruffly, raising himself with an effort and half
slipping to the ground.

"Sure? How's Dudley?"

He realized in a curious way that others, too, had gone through the
game. Then Regan's arm was around him. He did not put it from him,
grateful for any support in his weakness. Together they went through the
crowd of ragamuffins staring open-mouthed at a defeated team.

"What's the matter with Dudley?"

"Played through all the last with a couple of broken ribs."

"Dudley?"

"Yes. Go as slow as you want, old bantam."

"If we only could have had another minute, Tom--" He stopped, unable to
go on, shaking his head.

"I know, I know."

"It was tough."

"Darned tough."

"I thought we were going to do it."

"Now, you shut up, young rooster. Don't think of it any more. You played
like a fiend. We're proud of you."

"Poor Dana!"

Upstairs a couple of rubbers took charge of him, stripping him and
rubbing him rigorously. Two or three coaches came up to him, gripping
him with silent grips, patting him on the back. The cold bite of the
shower brought back some of his vitality, and he dressed mechanically
with the squad, who had nothing to say to one another.

"Yal

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