Although the store had reopened for business only that morning several customers had already been in and out, and when the doorway was again darkened momentarily Russell Emerson looked up from his task of marking football trousers with merely perfunctory interest. Then, however, since the advancing figure, silhouetted flatly against the hot September sunlight of the wide-open door, looked familiar, he eased his long legs over the edge of the counter and strode to meet it.

“Hello, Cap!” greeted the visitor. The voice was unmistakable, and, now that the speaker had left the sunlight glare behind him, so too was the perspiring countenance.

“Mr. Cade!” exclaimed Russell. “Mighty glad to see you, sir. When did you get in?”

Coach Cade lifted himself to the counter and fanned himself with a faded straw hat. “About two hours ago. Unpacked, had a bath and here I am. By jove, Emerson, but it’s hot!”

“Is it?”

“‘Is it?’” mimicked the other. “Don’t you know it is?” Then he laughed. “Guess I was a fool to get out of that bath tub, but I wanted to have a chat with you, and I’m due at Doctor McPherson’s this evening.” He stopped fanning his reddened face and tossed his hat atop a pile of brown canvas trousers beside him. “Johnny” Cade was short of stature, large-faced and broad in a compact way. In age he was still under thirty. He had a pleasantly mild voice that was at startling variance with his square, fighting chin, his sharp eyes and the mop of very black and bristle-like hair that always reminded Russell of a shoe brush. The mild voice continued after a moment, while the sharp eyes roamed up and down the premises. “Got things fixed up here pretty nicely,” he observed commendingly. “Looks as businesslike as any sporting goods store I know. Branched out, too, haven’t you?” He nodded across to where three bicycles, brave in blue-and-tan and red-and-white enamel, leaned.

“Yes,” answered Russell. “We thought we might try those. They’re just samples. ‘Stick’ hasn’t recovered from the shock of my daring yet.” Russell laughed softly. “Stick’s nothing if not conservative, you know.”

“Stick? Oh, yes, that’s Patterson, your partner here.” Mr. Cade’s glance swept the spaces back of the counters.

“He’s over at the express office trying to trace some goods that ought to have shown up three days ago,” explained Russell. “How have you been this summer, sir?”

“Me? Oh, fine. Been working pretty hard, though.” The coach’s mind seemed not to be on his words, however, and he added: “Say, that blue-and-yellow wheel over there is certainly a corker. We didn’t have them as fine as that when I was a kid.” He got down and walked across to examine the bicycle. Russell followed.

“It is good-looking, isn’t it? Better let me sell you one of those, sir. Ought to come in mighty handy following the squads around the field!”

Coach Cade grinned as he leaned the wheel back in its place with evident regret. “Gee, I suppose I’d break my silly neck if I tried to ride one of those things now. I haven’t been on one of them for ten years. Sort of wish I were that much younger, though, and could run around on that, Cap!”

“You’d pick it up quickly enough,” said Russell as he again perched himself on the counter. “Riding a bicycle’s like skating, Mr. Cade: it comes back to you.”

“Yes, I dare say,” replied the other dryly. “Much the same way, I guess. Last time I tried to skate I nearly killed myself. What are you trying to do? Get a new football coach here?”

Russell laughed. “Nothing like that, sir. What we need isn’t a new coach, I guess, but a new team.”

“H’m, yes, that’s pretty near so. I was looking over the list this morning on the train and, well—” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Looks like building from the ground up, eh?”

“Only three left who played against Kenly.”

“Three or four. Still, we have got some good material in sight, Cap. I wouldn’t wonder if we had a team before the season’s over.” The coach’s eyes twinkled, and Russell smiled in response. He had a very nice smile, a smile that lighted the quiet brown eyes and deepened the two creases leading from the corners of a firm mouth to the sides of a short nose. Russell Emerson was eighteen, a senior at Alton Academy this year and, as may have been surmised, captain of the football team.

“Seen any of the crowd lately?” asked the coach.

“No. I ran across ‘Slim’ once in August. He was on a sailboat trying to get up the Hudson; he and three other chaps. I don’t think they ever made it.”

“Just loafing, I suppose,” sighed the coach. “I dare say not one of them has seen a football since spring practice ended.”

“Well, I don’t believe Slim had one with him,” chuckled Russell. “I guess I ought to confess that I haven’t done very much practicing myself, sir. I was working most of the time. Dad has a store, and he rather looks to me to give him a hand in summer.”

“You don’t need practice the way some of the others do,” said Mr. Cade. “Well, we’ll see. By the way, we’re getting that fellow Renneker, from Castle City High.”

“Renneker? Gordon Renneker you mean?” asked Russell in surprise.

Mr. Cade nodded. “That’s the fellow. A corking good lineman, Cap. Made the Eastern All-Scholastic last year and the year before that. Played guard last season. If he’s half the papers say he is he ought to fill in mighty well in Stimson’s place.”

“How did we happen to get him?” asked Russell interestedly.

“Oh, it’s all straight, if that’s what you’re hinting at,” was the answer. “You know I don’t like ‘jumpers.’ They’re too plaguy hard to handle, generally. Besides, there’s the ethics of the thing. No, we’re getting Renneker honestly. Seems that he and Cravath are acquainted, and Cravath went after him. Landed him, too, it seems. Cravath wrote me in July that Renneker would be along this fall, and just to make sure I dropped a line to Wharton, and Wharton wrote back that Renneker had registered. So I guess it’s certain enough.”

“Well, that’s great,” said Russell. “I remember reading about Gordon Renneker lots of times. If we have him on one side of Jim Newton and Smedley on the other, sir, we’ll have a pretty good center trio for a start.”

“Newton? Well, yes, perhaps. There’s Garrick, too, you know, Cap.”

“Of course, but I thought Jim—”

“He looks good, but I never like to place them until I’ve seen them work, Emerson. Place them seriously I mean. Of course, you have to make up a team on paper just to amuse yourself. Here’s one I set down this morning. I’ll bet you, though, that there won’t be half of them where I’ve got them now when the season’s three weeks old!”

Russell took the list and read it: “Gurley, Butler, Smedley, Garrick, Renneker, Wilde, Emerson, Carpenter, Goodwin, Kendall, Greenwood.” He smiled. “I see you’ve got me down, sir. You’re dead wrong in two places, though.”

“Only two? Which two? Oh, yes, center. What other?”

“Well, I like ‘Red’ Reilly instead of, say, Kendall. And I’ll bet you’ll see Slim playing one end or the other before long.”

Mr. Cade accepted the paper and tucked it away in a pocket again. “Well, I said this was just for amusement,” he observed, untroubled. “There may be some good material coming in that we haven’t heard of, too. You never know where you’ll find a prize. Were any of last year’s freshmen promising?”

“I don’t know, sir. I didn’t see much of the youngsters.”

“Seen Tenney yet?”

“Yes, he blew in this morning. He’s going to make a good manager, I think.”

“Hope so. Did he say anything about the schedule?”

“Yes, he said it was all fixed. Hillsport came around all right. I don’t see what their kick was, anyway.”

“Wanted a later date because they held us to a tie last season,” said the coach, smiling.

“Gee, any one could have tied us about the time we played Hillsport! That was during that grand and glorious slump.”

“Grand and glorious indeed!” murmured the coach. “Let’s hope there’ll never be another half so grand! Well, I’ll get along, I guess. By the way—” Mr. Cade hesitated. Then: “I hope this store isn’t going to interfere too much with football, Emerson. Mustn’t let it, eh? Good captains are scarce, son, and I’d hate to see one spoiled by—er—outside interests, so to speak. Don’t mind my mentioning it, do you?”

“Not a mite, sir. You needn’t worry. I’m putting things in shape here so that Stick can take the whole thing on his own shoulders. I’m not going to have anything to do with this shop until we’ve licked Kenly Hall.”

“Good stuff! See you to-morrow, then. Practice at three, Cap, no matter what the weather’s like. I guess a lot of those summer loafers will be the better for losing five or six pounds of fat! And about this Renneker, Cap. If you run across him it might be a good idea to sort of make yourself acquainted and—er—look after him a bit. You know what I mean. Start him off with a good impression of us, and all that.”

Russell chuckled. “It’s a great thing to bring a reputation with you, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Eh?” The coach smiled a trifle sheepishly. “Oh, well, I don’t care what you do with him,” he declared. “Chuck him down the well if you like. No reason why we should toady to him, and that’s a fact. I only thought that—”

“Right-o!” laughed Russell. “Leave him to me, sir. Can’t sell you a bicycle then?”

“Huh,” answered Mr. Cade, moving toward the door, “if you supply the team with its outfits and stuff this fall I guess you won’t need to sell me a bicycle to show a profit! See you to-morrow, Cap!”

In front of the store, under the gayly-hued escutcheon bearing the legend: Sign of the Football, Mr. Cade paused to shake hands with a tall, thin youth with curly brown hair above gray eyes, a rather large nose and a broad mouth who, subsequent to the football coach’s departure, entered the store hurriedly, announcing as he did so: “They can’t find it, Rus! The blamed thing’s just plain vanished. What’ll we do? Telegraph or what?”

“I’ll write them a letter,” replied Russell calmly. “I dare say the stuff will show up to-morrow.”

“Sure,” agreed Stick Patterson sarcastically. “It’s been turning up to-morrow for three days and it might as well go on turning— What was Johnny after?”

“Just wanted to talk over a few things. Give me a hand with this truck, will you? I want to get in an hour’s practice before supper. Bring some more tags along. Where’s the invoice? Can you see it?”

“Yes, and so could you if you weren’t sitting on it. My, but it’s hot over in that office! I suppose Johnny wasn’t awfully enthused over the outlook, eh?”

“No-o, but he brought some good news, Stick. Ever hear of Gordon Renneker?”

“No, who’s he?”

“He’s a gentleman who played football last year down on Long Island with the Castle City High School team. Won everything in sight, I think.”

“Who did? Runniger?”

“The team did. Renneker played guard; right guard, I guess; and got himself talked about like a moving picture hero. Some player, they say. Anyway, he’s coming here this fall.”

“Oh, joy! I’ll bet you anything you like he’ll turn out a lemon, like that chap Means, or whatever his name was, two years ago. Remember? The school got all het up about him. He was the finest thing that ever happened—until he’d been around here a couple of weeks. After that no one ever heard of him. He didn’t even hold a job with the second!”

“I guess Renneker’s in a different class,” responded Russell. “They put him down on the All-Scholastic last fall, anyway, Stick.”

“All right. Hope he turns out big. But I never saw one of these stars yet that didn’t have something wrong with him. If he really could play, why, he was feeble-minded. Or if he had all his brains working smooth he had something else wrong with him. No stars in mine, thanks! Shove the ink over here. How about dressing the windows? Want me to do it?”

“Sure. Want you to do everything there is to be done, beginning with twelve o’clock midnight to-night. That’s the last. Pile them up and let’s get out of here. It’s after five. If you’ll come over to the field with me for an hour I’ll buy your supper, Stick. And the exercise will do you good!”