Toby set himself earnestly to learn hockey. I’m not going to tell you that after a week of sliding and whanging around with the third or fourth squad he displayed such a marvelous ability that Yardley Hall was amazed and delighted at the advent of a new star, or that Orson Crowell, bowing his head in surrender, offered him the captaincy. Such a thing may happen sometimes, although it is usually in stories, but it didn’t happen in Toby’s case. No, sir, not by a lot! Toby began by being just about as awkward and useless as any one could be. For the first day or two he evidently believed that a hockey stick was meant to trip over, and when he did use it for other purposes, he wielded it like a baseball bat. However, after he had cut Fanning’s forehead open with one of his wild swings, and been sternly reminded for the tenth time that the rules forbade lifting the stick above the shoulder, he handled it more discreetly. Loring Casement, who was slated for the second team captaincy, had charge of the third and fourth squads, and Loring made the mistake of sizing up Toby as a possible forward, and for the better part of a week, in fact until the Monday following the game with St. John’s School, he was allowed to dash wildly and more or less confusedly about the ice to his own vast enjoyment and the entertainment of the spectators. Toby’s method of advancing the puck was to get a good start, stumble over his stick, slide a few yards, scramble to his feet again and hurl himself on the nearest adversary, whether said adversary happened to have possession of the puck at the moment or not. We are told that a rhinoceros, being wounded, will charge at the first object he sees, whether it is a man or a tree or an ant-hill. These were Toby’s tactics. The first person who met his eyes was his prey. It took Toby several experiences to connect his thunderbolt charges with the blowing of the referee’s whistle and the cessation of play. But eventually, after Casement had almost tearfully reiterated that the rules prohibited the checking of a player not in possession of the puck, Toby saw his error. Possibly he would have developed after awhile into a fair sort of center or wing, although all indications were against that supposition, but he wasn’t given the chance. On that Monday before mentioned Captain Crowell advised Casement to try Toby at defense, and so Toby suddenly found himself at point.

Playing point is vastly different from scurrying up and down as a forward, as Toby discovered. When you played point you did a lot of waiting and watching, and when you did have anything to do you had a whole lot! It was rather a breathless moment for him when, for the first time, he set himself in the path of the invaders. It almost made him dizzy trying to keep his eyes on the puck, which was slipping from one onrushing forward to another, and when he did check he got the wrong man and the puck was in the net by the time he had scrambled to his feet again. The goal-tend viewed Toby disgustedly and muttered uncomplimentary things. But Toby showed up better on defense than attack, soon got a glimmering of what was expected of him and, whatever his faults may have been, never exhibited any lack of enthusiasm. The heel-plates had so far failed to arrive—they did come eventually, but not yet—and so Toby had to wear his old skates. They were forever coming loose and causing him trouble and delaying the game. His team-mates begged him to “scrap ’em, Tucker, and buy some skates.”

Toby discovered very early in his experience that hockey required mental as well as physical abilities. Quick thinking and cool thinking were, he decided, prime requisites. Watching Orson Crowell or Arnold or Jim Rose, all seasoned players, zig-zag in and out between eager opponents, feinting, dodging, but keeping the puck all the while, was quite a wonderful sight. He had thought so before he had tried it himself. After he had tried it he was just about ten times as sure of it. Where Toby made his error at first was in mistaking calculating science for headlong recklessness. When Crowell, as an example, skated into a mÊlÉe and brought the puck out, Crowell knew beforehand what he was going to do and how he was going to do it. When Toby tried it he merely flung himself into the maelstrom without having any distinct idea of what was going to happen; except, of course, that he knew he was going to get his shins cracked or dent the ice with some prominent angle of his anatomy. After awhile Toby decided that there was a difference between daring and mere recklessness, and he concluded that he would skate more with his head and less with his feet!

Several things came hard to him. For a long time he could not learn to use both hands on his stick, and the exhortation from Casement: “Both hands, Tucker, both hands!” followed him everywhere. When he did get the hang of it, though, he found that he was far better off, if only for the reason that the stick was always in front of him and never getting mixed up with his skates. But besides that he discovered that it aided him a lot in keeping his balance and when dodging. And it was always ready for use, something that couldn’t be said for a trailing stick. Another thing that was difficult for him to master was dribbling instead of hitting the puck. Toby’s ball playing had left him with a natural inclination to use anything in the nature of a stick or club with a swing, and merely pushing the little hard-rubber disk along the ice seemed too slow. But after he had lost the puck innumerable times by striking it he understood the philosophy of dribbling. If Toby was slow to learn, at least, having learned, he remembered.

The ambition to own his own stick took possession of him before long, and one afternoon he and Arnold and Homer Wilkins walked over to Greenburg and had a regular splurge of spending. To be sure, it was Arnold and Homer who left the most money behind, but Toby spent a whole half-dollar for the best hockey stick he could find and fifteen cents more for hot sodas. Selecting that stick was a long and serious matter. Toby left it largely to Arnold, and Arnold, sensible of the honor done him, was not to be hurried.

“You want a Canadian rock elm stick,” he declared gravely. “Rock elm won’t fray on the edge the way other sticks will. Take rough ice and your stick will have whiskers all along the bottom of the blade if it isn’t made of the right stuff. And you want to choose one that’s got a close, straight grain, too. The grain ought to run perfectly straight with the haft and turn with the blade. Here’s one—No, it’s got a knot in it. See it? A good whack with another stick would break that there as sure as shooting.”

“How’s this one?” asked Toby.

“Too heavy, son. It isn’t seasoned, I guess. If you get one that isn’t dried and seasoned perfectly it’ll warp on you, and—”

“I’d hate to have a hockey stick warp on me,” murmured Homer distastefully. “Still, I suppose I could take it off, eh?”

“I guess this is the best of the lot,” continued Arnold, too much absorbed to heed levity. “It’s got a medium wide blade, with a knife edge; not too sharp, though, either. How do you like it? Feel good?”

Toby hefted it doubtfully. “I think so. Only I thought maybe I’d rather have one with a narrower thingamabob.”

“Narrower blade? But that’s a forward stick, T. Tucker. You want a stick for defense, don’t you? You can use this one at point or goal, either one. Those narrow blades won’t stop a puck the way the wide ones will. And it’s light, too, and has a peachy grain. I’ve got some tape you can have, so you needn’t buy any.”

So the matter was eventually settled, and the salesman, who had long since wearied of standing by, returned and accepted Toby’s fifty-cent piece and offered to wrap the stick up. But Toby preferred to carry it unwrapped so that he could examine the grain and swing it speculatively and admire it to his heart’s content. After that Arnold bought a bottle of glue, half a dozen pencils, a pair of garters and three bananas, and Homer purchased a red-and-green necktie which attracted his attention away across the street and a book with a splashy cover entitled “Dick Dareall in the Frozen Seas.”

“That doesn’t sound like sense,” objected Arnold when they were outside again. “If he was in the frozen seas he’d be stuck tight, wouldn’t he?”

“Maybe he was,” said Homer. “Or maybe I’m the one who’s stuck.”

“That sounds fair,” agreed Arnold. “Say, he must have had a fine time playing hockey, eh? I guess those frozen seas would make a dandy rink?”

They induced Homer to unwrap his necktie for their re-examination, and Arnold pretended to be frightened and dashed wildly into the street and was almost run over by an express truck. Toby secretly admired that vivid tie very much and wanted one just like it, but it was more fun pretending that it made him feel squirmy and faint. Homer wasn’t in the least disturbed by their criticisms, however.

“It’s just envy,” he said tranquilly. “You’d both mighty well like to have it. Besides, it has the green of old Broadwood, and you know how I love the dear old school.”

As usual, they found a sprinkling of Broadwood boys in the drug store when Toby stood his modest treat. They were really quite nice looking chaps, but Homer insisted that they showed every indication of degeneracy. “Observe the sloping foreheads,” he whispered, “and the weak chins. Also the vacant expression of the eyes. Still, these aren’t so bad, really. They only let the best looking ones out.”

“I know,” replied Arnold gravely. “They tell me,” he went on, raising his voice, “that they’re starting post-graduate courses at Broadwood.”

“That so?” inquired Homer, in the encouraging tone of an interlocutor in a minstrel show.

“Yes,” drawled Arnold. “They’re going to teach reading and writing to the advanced students, I understand. And I believe there is even some talk of a course in elementary arithmetic, but that may be an exaggeration.”

“My word! Well, Broadwood’s an awful up-and-coming place! I have heard that they were going to introduce football—”

“Aw, cut it!” interrupted a disgusted voice from behind Toby. “That’s old stuff!”

“Is it?” asked Arnold, innocently regarding the scowling countenance showing around Toby’s shoulder. “We just heard of it. Much obliged.”

“Fresh snips,” growled another Broadwood youth. “I didn’t know they let their juniors come to town.”

“What’s yours, gentlemen?” inquired the attendant behind the counter.

“Three hot sodas, please,” began Toby. But Homer interrupted, with a wink.

“We’ll take three Broadwood punches, please.”

“I don’t know those,” said the clerk, smiling doubtfully. “Spring it.”

“There ain’t no such thing,” answered Homer.

“Give him the regular Yardley drink,” advised a hostile voice from further along the counter. “Just fill a glass with hot air.”

Toby was beginning to wonder when the trouble would start, but at the sound of the last voice Arnold leaned forward with a grin and, “Hello, Tony!” he called. “How’s the boy?”

“Hello, Arn! That you shooting your silly mouth off? Come down here and have something.”

“Can’t, thanks. How’s everything back in the hills?” But Tony was making his way to them and an instant later Toby and Homer were being introduced to “Mr. Spaulding, the world-famous athlete.” Tony Spaulding proved to be a fine-looking fellow of seventeen or eighteen with a remarkable breadth of shoulders and a pair of snapping black eyes. Four other Broadwood boys were haled forward and introduced, and presently, armed with glasses, they crowded around a diminutive table in the rear of the store and hobnobbed very socially. Toby gathered during the course of the ensuing conversation that Tony Spaulding was the identical left tackle who had caused so much trouble to Yardley last November, although Toby would never have recognized him in his present apparel. It also appeared that Mr. Spaulding was a prominent member of the Broadwood hockey squad and that he was looking forward with much glee to meeting Arnold on the ice a month or so later. Another member of the Broadwood contingent was dragged into the limelight with the remark: “Towle, here, is going to play goal for us this year, Arn. Johnny, you want to watch out for this shark, Deering, when we play ’em. If you see him coming, spread yourself, boy, spread yourself! And maybe you’d better yell for help, too!”

It was almost dark when they tore themselves away from their friends, the enemy, and set out for home, and quite dark by the time they climbed the hill and reached the radiance of the lighted windows, Toby bearing his new hockey stick with tender solicitude lest its immaculate surface be scratched and Homer regretting the fact that he had intended buying some peanut taffy and had forgotten it.

That was the afternoon preceding the game with St. John’s, and it wasn’t until the next morning that it became certain that the game could be played. But a sharp fall in temperature during the early hours set the ice again and by three o’clock it was in fairly good shape. That game wasn’t very exciting, for St. John’s showed a woeful lack of practice and Yardley ran away with the event in the first half and only supplied a spice of interest in the last period by throwing an entire team of substitutes in. Toby, with many a better player, watched the contest from the bench outside the barrier, sweatered and coated against the cold of the afternoon but ready at any moment to throw wraps aside and leap, like Mr. Homer’s Achilles, full-panoplied into the fray. Still Toby didn’t really expect to be called on to save the day, and he wasn’t. Flagg and Framer played point and played it quite well enough. Frank Lamson took Henry’s place at goal in the second period and it was against Frank that St. John’s was able to make its only two tallies. The first team forwards, Crowell, Crumbie, Rose and Deering, showed some fine team work that afternoon and won frequent applause, but, as Sid Creel said to Toby, most any one could have got past those St. John’s fellows. Halliday showed himself a really remarkable cover point, and he and Flagg worked together like two cog-wheels. The final score was 12 to 2, and it was very generally agreed that Captain Crowell had material for a fine team and that Yardley had made a good start on her way to the championship.

After the contest was over, willing hands swept the ice surface and the third and fourth squads staged a battle which, if not quite so skillful, had it all over the big show for excitement and suspense. As Sim Warren, who had been playing goal for the fourth squad, was not on hand, Stillwell, presiding in the absence of Loring Casement, looked about for some one to take his place. Stillwell had little data to work on and so solved the problem by moving the cover point to point and the point back to the net, and filling the vacant defense position with a substitute forward. Toby’s emotion at finding himself in charge of the fourth squad’s goal was principally that of alarm. Ever since Crowell’s remark to the effect that in his estimation Toby might make a good goal-tend, Toby had secretly longed to play that position, but this was so—well, so sort of sudden! He had watched Henry preside at the net time and time again, watched admiringly and enviously, and theoretically at least knew the duties of the office, but he was possessed by grave doubts of his ability to profit by his observations. However, he had no choice in the matter. Some one helped him strap on a pair of pads, some one else thrust a wide-bladed goal-tender’s stick into his hands and thirteen youths awaited his pleasure with ill-concealed impatience. Then Stillwell blew his whistle, dropped the puck and skated aside, and the battle was on.

There was nothing especially momentous about that half-hour’s practice of the scrubs. They hustled around and banged away and got very excited and were off-side every two minutes. And now and then they managed to give a fair imitation of team-work. Stillwell, who would have much preferred being up in the gymnasium talking over the afternoon’s game, went through with his task conscientiously enough, but he was chary with the whistle and many a foul went unpenalized. Of course, Toby let several shots get past him, especially in the first fifteen-minute half, when he was decidedly nervous every time the play approached his end of the rink. Later, he settled down and made one or two clever stops, one with his wrist. The latter was unintentional and deprived him of the use of that member for several minutes. But his team-mates applauded and so Toby didn’t mind. And after awhile the wrist stopped hurting some. On the whole, Toby put up a pretty fair game at goal that afternoon, doing better than the opposing goal-keeper by four tallies, a fact which Stillwell noted and later mentioned casually to Crowell.

“Young Tucker played goal down there this afternoon,” he remarked. “Warren was off and I didn’t know who else to put in. He wasn’t half bad, Orson.”

“Tucker? Oh, is that so? That reminds me that I meant to have Loring try him out at that very position. Glad you mentioned it. I’ll have a look at him. Lamson let two mighty easy ones get by to-day, and we could use another goal-tend if we had him.”

Which conversation would have been remarkably cheering to Toby could he have overheard it at the moment. But he didn’t. What he did hear just then was Arnold telling him to “Hold still, you chump! I know it hurts, but this is good for it.” Whereupon Arnold rubbed the injured wrist harder and Toby grinned stoically.