Whether the comedy was good or not, it at least evoked much laughter, and was followed by a thrilling “big picture” that worked Willard to a pitch of excitement that lasted until he was out on State Street again. They ran into Mr. Cade in front of the theater and he fell into step with them as they walked back toward the Green. He and Joe and Bob talked about the show, while Martin and Willard followed behind and listened. At West Street Bob proposed drinks, and they crossed to The Mirror and sat about a tiny table and drank colorful concoctions through paper straws. The coach rather surprised Willard by displaying positive enthusiasm for his tipple, which, as near as Willard could determine, contained a little of everything that could come out of the glistening taps! Willard was a little bit too much in awe of the coach to feel quite at ease, and his contributions to the conversation were few and brief. Not that the talk was very erudite, however, for Bob talked a good deal of nonsense and Mr. Cade certainly didn’t oppress them with a flow of wisdom. On the contrary, he laughed at Bob a good deal and said one or two funny things himself, things at which Willard laughed a bit constrainedly, not being certain that it was right to greet anything a head football coach said with levity. At Schuyler High School the coach had been a most dignified and unapproachable martinet of whom everyone stood in admiring awe!

When they went out Bob leaned carelessly across the counter and instructed the young lady with the enormous puffs over her ears to “put that down to me, please.” Willard, following the others out, reflected that, while trading on a cash basis might be wiser, one missed many fine moments by not having a charge account! (This, perhaps, is a good place to explain that the expression “fine moments” was widely current at Alton that term. Like many other expressions, its origin was a mystery, and, like them, its vogue grew by leaps and bounds until even the freshmen were having their “fine moments” and Mr. Fowler, in English 7, prohibited its use in themes.)

Near the end of State Street, with the lights on the Green gleaming through the trees ahead, Mr. Cade proposed that the boys pay him a visit, and Willard found himself turning in at a little white gate. The old green-shuttered Colonial mansion on the corner was one of several houses standing across from the Green that had at one time or another, sometimes as a gift, sometimes by purchase, become Academy property. This particular mansion was occupied by three of the married faculty members and, in turn, by the football and baseball coaches. Mr. Cade’s apartment was on the lower floor, at the right, two huge, high-ceilinged rooms separated by what had once been a pantry but was now a dressing and bathroom. The furnishings were comfortable but plain, and in the front room a generous grate eked out the efforts of a discouraged furnace. Tonight, however, the sight of the fireplace brought no pleasurable thrill. Instead, it was the four big, wide-open windows that attracted the visitors. Those in front opened on a narrow veranda set with tall white pillars, those on the side shed the light of the room onto a maze of shrubbery and trees beyond which the illumined windows of the dormitories twinkled. There was a big table in the center of the living-room littered with books and writing materials, smoking paraphernalia, gloves, a riding crop, a camera, a blue sweater and many other things, a fine and interesting hodgepodge that Willard, pausing beside it, viewed curiously. The object that engaged his closest attention, though, was a board about thirty inches square. It was covered with green felt on which at intervals of an inch white lines crossed. On the margins were figures: “5,” “10,” “15,” and so on up to “50.” Stuck at random into the board were queer little colored thumb-tacks, twenty-two in all. Half of them were gray and half of them were red, and each held letters: “L. H.,” “R. G.,” “L. E.,” and so on. Willard was still studying the board, its purpose slowly dawning on him, when Mr. Cade spoke.

“Looking at my ‘parlor gridiron,’ Harmon?” he asked. “Nice little plaything, isn’t it?” He came to Willard’s side and lifted the board from the table. “I made it myself, and I’m sort of proud of it, for I’m all thumbs when it comes to doing anything with my hands. Each of the inch lines represents five yards, do you see? And I use these thumb-tacks for the players. It’s rather a help when it comes to studying out a play; although I acknowledge that I can get on faster with the back of an envelope and a pencil stub!”

“I think it’s awfully clever,” said Willard admiringly. “It’s just half a field, though, isn’t it, sir?”

“That’s all; from the goal-line to the fifty-yard-line. That’s all that’s needed, you see. Want to play with it?” The coach laughed and wheeled a deep-seated rep-covered armchair to the table. “Sit down and be comfortable,” he added. Willard subsided embarrassedly into the chair, still holding the miniature gridiron. Joe and Bob were seated by one of the side windows—what breeze there was came from the west this evening—and Martin and the coach shared an old-fashioned sofa nearby. Willard, listening to the talk, began to set the thumb-tacks in place along the thirty-yard-line. Presently he had become so interested in arranging a forward-pass defense for the gray tacks that he had forgotten all about the others. He wasn’t quite certain that the Gray’s ends should play all the way up into the line, and he set them back half the distance to the next white mark. Then he concluded that the pass would be made by that suspicious-looking red tack labeled “L. H.” and that it would go to one of the red ends. Consequently, he advanced the gray ends up to the line once more, but a trifle further out, so that they might cut in quickly and spoil the throw. After that he pulled the Gray’s quarter-back in another yard or two, chancing that the ball would not go more than fifteen yards. Then there was nothing to do but wait for the play, and, since it didn’t materialize, he set the board back on the table and gave his attention again to the others.

“Two years ago,” Mr. Cade was saying, “there were five of us in here for almost a week: Levington and Sproule and Jack Tanner— Who was the chap helped coach the tackles that year, Myers? Do you remember? Tall fellow who wore spectacles and—”

“Clarke, sir? No, I know! Salters!”

“That’s right! Salters! He was a good hand and I’d like to get him back again this fall. Well, there were five of us, I remember, and we were bunked all over the place; three of us in the bedroom and two of us in here. We had rather a good time, but no one got much sleep. I remember the night before the Kenly game we sat up until nearly three o’clock. Our left tackle, Gadsden, had sprained his ankle that day; someone pushed him coming out of Academy; and we had to make over the whole plan of battle. Gadsden, you’ll remember, was our long punter and we’d mapped out a kicking game. To make things worse, it began to rain and sleet that evening, and we’d looked for a dry field. We certainly had our hands full that night. It was Levington who suggested pulling the guards out and using them on end runs, and we won on those plays. You see our backfield was pretty light and the wet field slowed them up. You played awhile in that game, didn’t you, Myers, toward the end?”

“Yes, for three or four minutes. I was in when we made our second score. We dumped their end and Morgan shot around for four yards and the touchdown.”

“That’s right. It looked like a tie game until near the end. Kenly had a man who could boot a wet ball forty yards every time and we had no one to meet him with. But we certainly wore her ends to a frazzle. She used three pairs before she got through! It was nothing but fight and determination that won that game, fellows. On paper we figured about seventy per cent to their one hundred before the start. They had us licked, but they didn’t know it, and we never told them!”

“What about this year, sir?” asked Martin.

“How many snowstorms are we going to have in January?” asked the coach laughingly. “It’s rather too early for predictions, Proctor. But for all I can see now we’ve got a better show than we had two years ago, and we licked her then. We’re certainly going to be in better shape than last year.”

“We’ve got to find a full-back,” said Joe dubiously.

“Yes, and a new tackle and maybe an end. But we’ll do it. There’s a lot of good material to pick from this year.”

“I suppose you’ve heard, sir, that Kenly’s got that fellow Timmons who played left end on Millwood High last season,” said Bob.

“No, is that so? Is he good?”

“They say so. Funny thing we don’t seem to catch any of the stars, Mr. Cade.”

“We don’t want them, Newhall. Stars are uncertain things. They have a mean way of going out unexpectedly! I’d rather have a bunch of satellites to work with and turn out my own stars!”

The others laughed, but Bob shook his head, not altogether convinced. “That’s all right, sir, but you’d think we’d get more good players here. It isn’t as if Alton was a small school or a punk one. Of course those fellows with big reputations don’t always pan out when you get them, but, just the same, I’d like to see some of them head this way now and then!”

“I dare say it wouldn’t hurt,” agreed the coach. “But, fellows, the longer I stick at this coaching game the more convinced I am that when it comes to the last analysis it isn’t plays or players that win games; it’s spirit! Take eleven corking men, each one a master of his position, and get them so that they play together like a well-oiled machine, and then run them up against a team of ordinary players without much team-work or anything else except a great, big, overwhelming desire to win, and what happens three times out of four? Why, that inferior team wins! She may make mistakes, she may play ragged ball, but grim determination and fight and spirit get her there! You see it happen all the time. I can tell you of twenty games where the best team was beaten just because, while she wanted to win, she didn’t want to win hard enough!”

“Yes, sir, I guess that’s so,” agreed Joe. “And I guess it’s a lot easier to teach a team to play good football than it is to put the right spirit in them.”

“Of course it is! You’ve got to begin with the School, Myers, and work down to the team. If the School hasn’t got the right spirit, the team won’t have it. And that’s why I try to get as many fellows out for football at the beginning of the year as I can. Or, at least, it’s one reason. Interest a fellow, no matter how little, in the team, and he’ll believe in it and work for it. Even if a fellow comes out only to be dropped three or four days later, he’s ‘smelled leather’ and he never quite forgets it. He thinks well of his more successful companion who has made good, even though he may be secretly envious of him, and the team and its success means a lot more to him than it does to the chap who has never had anything to do with it. The team that feels the School behind it works hard and loyally and, when the big test comes, fights like the very dickens! And it’s fight that wins football games, just as it’s fight that wins battles. And that’s that!”

Mr. Cade ended with a little laugh that seemed to apologize for his vehemence, but none of his listeners joined in it. After a moment Martin said: “There’s a little school they call Upton Academy near my home, Mr. Cade. It has only about a hundred and twenty students, I suppose, and more than half of ’em are girls. But they meet teams from bigger schools and beat them right along. One of the teachers coaches them and the girls go with them and cheer like mad and they wipe up the whole county!”

“I guess it’s spirit in that case,” said the coach. “And maybe the girls have a lot to do with it. Ever notice what a deal of fighting spirit girls show? First thing we know—or our children know—the girls will be playing real football. And when they do, fellows, look out!” Mr. Cade chuckled at his direful prediction.

A little later the boys arose to go and Mr. Cade, moving to the table, took up the felt-covered board and looked at it curiously. “Defense for forward-pass, eh, Harmon?” he said. “Which of these red fellows is making the toss?”

“I don’t know, sir,” answered Willard. “I was playing the Gray’s end of it. But I figured that left half-back was throwing to an end.”

The others gathered around to see and Mr. Cade looked speculatively at Willard for a moment before he smiled and laid the board back on the table. “I’d pull my ends in further in that case,” he said, “and bring them nearer the play. What position are you after?”

“Half-back, sir.”

“I see. Well, it’s an interesting job, half-back’s. Lots of chance for initiative there. Quick thinking, too. Well, good night, fellows. Drop in again some evening. I’m generally home.”