The First Team came back hard that afternoon, rolling up a total of 25 points against Carrel’s and holding the opponent to a single touchdown. Yardley scored in each period, starting in the first with a field-goal shortly after play began, adding a touchdown and goal in the second, a touchdown in the third and another field-goal and touchdown in the last. Carrel’s did her scoring in the third period, following a fumble in the back-field by Quarterback Noyes. Securing the ball on Yardley’s twenty-two yards, the visitor worked a double pass that sent her full-back romping over the line without much opposition. She failed at an easy goal, however, and had to be content with six points.

Of course Toby heard all this and much more from Arnold that evening, for Arnold was as full of the game’s details as a plum-pudding is full of raisins—or ought to be! But it was after Toby had sketched the Second Team’s fracas with the mill hands, for Toby’s face demanded an explanation. Besides a contused nose, honestly earned in combat, he had a large lump on his left cheek bone. “Some day, maybe,” he said wistfully, “I’m going to meet up with the fellow who handed me that. When I do, if it isn’t in church, I’m going to hand it back to him.”

“Think you’d know him?” asked Arnold. “Thought you said it was a mob, and that——”

“It was a mob, but I saw the chap that walloped me. Yes, I’ll know him all right if only by his hair.”

“What about his hair?”

“It was——” Toby hesitated—“it was red!”

Arnold whooped delightedly. “What do you know? Honest, Toby? Say, I’d like to have seen that! Red against—hm——”

“Say it,” said Toby, grinning. “His was redder than mine, too, and that’s going some! And he had freckles all over his nose and looked like one of those tough boys in the movies. Yes, I’ll know him. Don’t you worry.”

“Well, you’d better bathe that lump he gave you. It makes you look sort of lopsided. In fact, T. Tucker, that and your nose give you a positively villainous appearance! Frank’s got a hard-looking phiz to-night, too. Some one put a foot on it, he says. I told him he should be more careful and not leave his face lying around on the ground, but it didn’t seem to make a hit with him. Some folks are like that; can’t take advice for a cent. Say, Toby, old thing, it was some game. Listen! They won the toss and gave us the kick-off and Larry——”

Arnold had started, and Toby laid back on the window-seat and hugged his knees and said “Uh-huh” at intervals and listened as attentively as he could. But presently he got to thinking about his morrow’s letter home, and then about that scholarship after the mid-year, and was yanked back to the present by Arnold’s: “Isn’t that the very dickens, Toby?”

“Huh? Oh, yes, mighty tough! Who did you say did it?”

“I don’t know who did it! What do you mean, did it? It was the hurt he got in the Brown and Young’s game, I tell you. They thought it was all right, and they took the bandage off and everything, and then to-day he just gave it a twist or something!”

“Who did?”

“Why, Curran! Say, haven’t you heard anything I’ve been saying?”

“Of course! But you talk so fast! As I understand it, Curran got hurt in last Saturday’s game and to-day he twisted his ankle——”

“It’s his knee, you idiot!”

“I meant knee; and had to quit playing. Who went in for him?”

“Errol Noyes. He did well enough except for a fumble that gave them their score. If it hadn’t been for that we’d have——”

“Fumbles will happen in the best regulated back-fields,” murmured Toby. “I think Noyes is pretty good, myself.”

“I’m not saying he isn’t,” answered Arnold impatiently, “but, man-alive, he isn’t in Will’s class! And if Will doesn’t get back——”

“Doesn’t get back! Who says he won’t get back?”

“That’s what Fanning thinks. He’s all cut-up about it. They’re going to take an X-ray to-morrow. The doc thinks he will have to keep off it for a month.”

“Gee, that is tough! I didn’t realize what you meant! Of course, Noyes isn’t the player that Curran is, but he’s pretty good. Who else have you got?”

“Winfield, but he’s no earthly use.” Arnold was gloomily silent for a moment. Then he gave vent to an explosive: “By jingo, Toby!”

“What?” Toby brought a startled gaze back from the darkening world outside the window. Arnold was staring at him fixedly.

“Nothing,” answered Arnold slowly. But he kept on staring in a curious, rapt way until Toby said in a patient, kindly voice: “It’s all right, Arn. It’s me, Toby. I room here with you, you know. That’s my bed over there. Don’t you remember me? Try to think, Arn!”

“Shut up,” laughed the other. “I—I just thought of something.”

“Try to forget it then,” Toby advised. “You looked like a sick cow. Say, you—you didn’t get a blow on the head this afternoon, did you? Sometimes an injury of that sort—But no, it wouldn’t affect you that way. That dome of yours would just give forth a hollow sound——”

“Listen,” interrupted Arnold earnestly. “If Curran is out of the game for the rest of the season, why, don’t you see what might happen?”

“Yes, we might get licked by Broadwood. Still, we may anyhow, so what’s the good of——”

“Oh, use your bean! We’ll have to find a substitute for Noyes, of course! Maybe Mr. Lyle will try Clarke. Sim’s not much of an end, and he played quarter some last year. But then again he might go to the Second for what he needs.”

“Who, Clarke?”

“No, Mr. Lyle, you ninny. And if he did he might pick you, T. Tucker!”

“Yes, and he might not,” jeered Toby. “Frick’s got first call, you poor old dummy.”

“I’m not so sure! I’ve heard that you were doing just as good work as Frick, Toby.”

“Oh, you hear a lot of things if you let your ears flap,” answered Toby rudely.

“The idea doesn’t interest you, then?” asked Arnold sarcastically.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Toby replied, getting a new grip on his knees. “I have a comprehensive intellect, Arn, and all sorts of things that wouldn’t appeal to ordinary minds——”

“Oh, go to thunder! I hope Frick does get it, you poor fish!”

“May the best man win,” said Toby cheerfully. “Them’s my sentiments. Come on. Let’s eat.”

By Monday it was pretty generally known that Will Curran was lost to the football team for the rest of the season. The injury to his knee sustained in the Brown and Young’s game had proved far more serious than at first supposed and an X-ray examination had shown that a cast was necessary. To be sure, the Greenburg surgeon, called into consultation by the school doctor, spoke vaguely of “benefits reasonably to be expected from a fortnight’s care,” but no one was fooled, least of all Curran. By the middle of the week he was out on crutches, but he was there to help in the coaching of the backs and not to play. The blow was a sore one to the school, and for several days gloom a foot thick hung over it. Then, since Coach Lyle went on about his business of developing a winning football team quite as cheerfully and whole-heartedly as ever, and since Errol Noyes buckled down and worked like a Trojan to fill Curran’s shoes, the gloom thinned out and vanished altogether. After all, the reports from Broadwood were far from disheartening: not the newspaper stuff written by the Broadwood correspondents, but the underground rumors that percolated somehow from the rival school through Greenburg and thence up the hill to Yardley. Broadwood was but three miles beyond Greenburg, and since her students came to that town for purchases and amusement, just as Yardley fellows did, stories were bound to leak out. The local rumors just now had it that Broadwood was having much difficulty in filling her back-field with the right material. In fact, the rumors were borne out by the evidence of the last two contests in which the Green had taken part. For Broadwood to be defeated by Franklin was something unheard of and unthought of, but that had happened two weeks since. And last Saturday, in the Nordham game, she had managed to squeeze through to victory by a mere seven points. So, as the more optimistic of the Yardley enthusiasts pointed out, even the loss of Curran was not sufficient cause for conceding a Broadwood victory.

Coach Lyle did as Arnold had surmised he might do. He took Sim Clarke from the ranks of the end substitutes and turned him back into a quarter, and it was generally allowed that, with Curran coaching him, Sim might develop into a valuable player. Meanwhile, Noyes worked fairly satisfactorily. Indeed, in the Nordham game the next Saturday he ran the team so well that even Tom Fanning took heart and stopped predicting to a few close friends—comprising most of the team!—a victory for the rival school. Toby heard from Sid Creel that Roy Frick was so certain of being taken to the First that he had tried to persuade Phil Stone to give him the First Team signal code! That, Frick had explained, was so he could take hold without loss of time. Toby had not put much value on Arnold’s suggestion that one T. Tucker might be elevated to the varsity ranks and consequently was not at all disappointed.

The Second took a beating every time it went against the First nowadays, for the latter was fast rounding into late season form. Now and again it managed to throw a scare into Coach Lyle’s bunch, but that is the best it could do. Ordinarily, if it kept the First to two scores, or managed to score itself, it swaggered quite sickeningly. Toby and Frick still struggled for supremacy, with little to choose between them, it seemed. Frick undoubtedly excelled Toby in individual work, being surer in tackling and in running with the ball. On the other hand, Toby was rather more steady when it came to catching punts and could get more out of the team. Perhaps the latter ability was due to the fact that he was far better liked than Frick.

The Yardley-Nordham game was uninteresting save as it gave the Blue a chance to study comparative scores. Nordham played a listless game, partly owing to the absence of three players who had been hurt in the Broadwood contest, and, although she twice managed to hold Yardley under her goal-posts, she proved an easy victim, the home team winning by a score of 19 to 0. Compared to Broadwood’s 7 to 0 victory, this looked pretty good until one recalled that Nordham was lacking three regulars and was evidently still feeling the effects of last week’s contest. Coach Lyle worked in most of his second-string and third-string players in the last period. If he hadn’t, there might have been another score to Yardley’s credit. The cheering section kept very busy that afternoon, trying out several new songs and rehearsing all the old ones in preparation for the big game, in spite of the fact that a mean, dispiriting drizzle fell all during the last half. Clarke got a chance to show what he had for a few minutes in the fourth period and gave the impression of having very little. But as he had been at it less than a week it was hardly fair to judge him harshly.

So, with only one minor game remaining, Yardley set her face hopefully toward the supreme test two weeks hence.