That incident seemed to bring about a subtle difference in Leonard’s relations with the other players. He received no particular praise for what, indeed, was only a part of the day’s work; probably none besides Appel and Slim referred to it; but the next day he noticed that many more of the fellows spoke to him or nodded to him in the gymnasium, on the way to the field or during practice. Jim Newton even hailed him as “General,” having probably heard Slim use that nickname. But Wednesday’s performance appeared to have made no difference in Leonard’s standing on the squad. To-day he relieved Lawrence for the last five minutes of the last scrimmage period, and that was all the attention he received from Johnny. Billy Wells nodded to him, but had nothing to say. That was Leonard’s last appearance in the line-up that week, for on Friday only the first- and second-string players got into the brief practice. On Saturday the eleven went to Hillsport and played Hillsport School, winning an easy contest by a score of 14 to 0. Leonard didn’t go along, although some half-hundred of the fellows did. Instead, he and a half-dozen others whose presence at Hillsport had not been considered necessary by the coach spent an hour or more on the field with a ball and they went across to the second team gridiron and saw the last half of a ragged game between the scrubs and a team of substitutes from the Alton High School. Slim showed up just before supper time with two broad strips of plaster over his right cheekbone.

It was on Sunday that Leonard first heard reference to the Sophomore Dinner. “By the way,” said Slim, looking up from the book he was reading—it was raining, and the usual Sunday afternoon walk was out of the question—“have you come across for the dinner yet, General?”

“Eh?” asked Leonard. “What dinner?”

“The class dinner. You’re going, of course.”

“Do you mean our class? I hadn’t heard about it!”

“Oh, that’s so; the notices aren’t out yet, are they? Well, it’s to be the seventh of next month. I forgot this was your first year with us, old son. It’s always the first Saturday in November.”

“First I’ve heard of it. How much does it cost?”

“A dollar and a half this year. It used to be a dollar, but they put up the price on us. You’ll get your money’s worth, though.”

“Why, I suppose I’ll go. Does every one? All the fellows in the class, I mean.”

“Pretty much. A few pikers stay away. Same with all the class feeds, I guess.”

“Do you mean that all the classes have these dinners?”

“Sure. We have ours in November, the freshies have theirs in February, the juniors in April and the seniors in June, just before Class Day.”

“Where do we have it?” asked Leonard.

“Kingman’s this year. There are only about two places, Kingman’s restaurant and the Alton House. Last year we had the freshman feed at the Alton House, and it wasn’t very good.”

“Is it fun?”

“Sure it is. Especially when the freshies try to break it up! Last year the sophs had their shindig at Kingman’s and we smuggled Billy Wells into the basement in the afternoon and he hid behind a pile of boxes until about seven o’clock and then unscrewed the electric light switch. We came rather near getting into trouble over that. The sophs were upstairs, on the second floor, and of course we didn’t want to put the lights out all over the building, but we had to do it. Mr. Kingman was tearing mad and made a holler to faculty. It ended with an apology from the freshman class, though, for Kingman thought it over, I suppose, and realized that if he made too much of a fuss we’d stop going to his place. Billy almost got caught getting out that night. He was sneaking out the back way when he ran into one of the cooks. Billy swears the man had a cleaver in his hand. Anyway, Billy got behind a door or into a corner and they didn’t see him.” Slim chuckled. “The sophs didn’t get on with their banquet for nearly an hour.”

“But what’s the idea?” asked Leonard. “Why did you want to bust up their party?”

Slim pondered a moment. Then he shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s just a custom. It’s always been done, I guess.”

“And do the sophs do the same thing when the freshmen have their blow-out?”

“Oh, no, that would be beneath our dignity. But we try to make things a little difficult for the juniors.”

“I see.” Leonard smiled. “Then, after I’ve paid my dollar and a half, I can’t be quite certain that I’ll get my dinner, eh?”

“Oh, you’ll get it,” answered Slim confidently. “No silly bunch of freshies is going to bust up this party, son! We’ll see to that. And that reminds me. Keep your ears open from now on and if you hear anything let me know.”

“Hear anything?”

“Yes. You might, you know. Freshies like to talk big, and one of them might let drop some information that would be of interest to us. Of course, they’ll try something, you know, and it would make it easier for us if we got an inkling beforehand so we’d know what to look for.”

“I see,” said Leonard. “I suppose you, as Class President, are sort of responsible for the success of the affair, Slim.”

“Well, I’m chairman of the dinner committee, and about half of our duty is to see that the freshies don’t hurl a monkey-wrench into the machinery, so to speak. Know any freshmen?”

“Two or three, but only to speak to.”

“Well, it would be a good plan to get better acquainted,” said Slim. “It’s an older fellow’s duty to be friendly with the freshies and make life pleasant for them, you know.”

Leonard grinned. “And keep his ears open? Sort of like playing the spy, isn’t it?”

“Of course. There’ll be a lot of spying done on both sides during the next fortnight. They’ll be trying to find out where we’re going to feed, and when, and we’ll be trying to find out what they’re going to do about it.”

“But if we get out notices, as you said we did, what’s to keep the freshmen from knowing all about it?”

“The notices don’t give the date and place, General. They’re just reminders to the members of the class. Of course, the freshmen do find out easy enough, but it makes them work harder if we don’t tell ’em. There’s one thing they won’t do, anyway, and that’s cut off the light. Mr. Kingman will take mighty good care that no one gets into the cellar this year!”

“What will they do, do you suppose?” asked Leonard.

“Search me! Maybe they’ll try to rush the hall. They did that three or four years ago, they say, and ate most of the dinner before the sophs could get them out again!”

“Gee,” murmured Leonard, “I can’t imagine this year’s bunch of freshies trying anything like that!”

“Well, you can’t tell. They get pretty cocky after they’ve been here a month or so. Besides, they had their election last week, and that always sort of starts them going. There’s a lot of them this year; nearly a hundred and thirty, I hear; and if they want to make trouble they can do it.”

“How many of us are there, Slim?”

“Ninety—something; ninety-six, I think. Oh, we can look after ourselves. The most they can do, in any case, is hold things up for awhile.”

“Sounds exciting,” mused Leonard. “Do they ever get to scrapping?”

“Oh, no, not what you’d really call scrapping. Sometimes there’s a rush and a few fellows get mussed up a little. There’s no hard-feeling, you understand. It’s just the freshmen’s bounden duty to break up the sophomore party if they can do it. They never do, but they keep right on trying. It’s rather fun, you know.”

“Yes, but I guess I’ll have a good feed before I go,” laughed Leonard. “Then I’ll be sure of not starving!”

He paid his dollar and a half to the class treasurer the next day and received the strictly confidential information that the dinner would take place on the evening of November 7th at Kingman’s Restaurant at seven o’clock. “You understand, I guess,” added Wilfred Cash, “that you’re not to mention the place or the date to any one.”

“Oh, quite,” Leonard assured him gravely.

That Monday afternoon the second team, which for unavoidable reasons, one of which was the inability to find a coach, was nearly a fortnight late in getting under way, came over and faced the first. Many familiar faces were to be seen amongst the scrub aggregation, for fully half of the second team’s line-up had tried for the big team and been rejected. Leonard, looking on at the scrimmage from the bench, still marveled that he was not taking orders from Mr. Fadden instead of from Mr. Cade.

The second’s coach was an old Alton graduate and a resident of the town who, at the earnest solicitation of the Athletic Committee, had consented to give up several hours a day to the task of providing something for the school team to whet their claws on. He was in the real estate business and was a busy man, and that he had listened to the call of the committee was greatly to his credit; the more so that, although he had played football well at Alton and, afterwards, at Yale, he had grown out of touch with the game and was forced to make a study of its modern developments before he dared face his charges. That year’s second team never quite reached the average of Alton second teams, but it was for no lack of hard work on the part of Mr. Fadden. He was quite a stout man, and the scrub was soon calling him “Tub,” though never to his face; but when the second team was dissolved a month later the nickname was no longer deserved, since, however the players had fared, Mr. Fadden had lost some thirty pounds from a portion of his anatomy where it had been extremely noticeable.

Leonard had a few minutes of play at tackle and found himself opposed to a very tall and rather awkward youth named Lansing. Lansing wasn’t difficult and Leonard had little trouble with him. In fact, the whole second team showed up pretty poorly that afternoon and the first scored three times in twenty minutes of scrimmage. The first might have done even better had she used her best line-up. As it was, most of those who had played against Hillsport on Saturday were not used.

With the advent of the scrub team Leonard’s chance of getting into action was much diminished, as he speedily realized. There were, naturally, but two tackle positions on the first, and for those positions there were exactly six applicants, including Leonard Grant. Billy Wells was mortally certain of the right tackle position, and Butler or Wilde would get the other. That left Lawrence, Cash and Leonard himself. Probably Lawrence would be chosen for second substitute. It looked to Leonard as if he and Cash would be out of jobs in a very short time!

Theoretically, of course, those tackle positions were still open, but Leonard knew very well that, although he might conceivably give Lawrence and Cash—possibly even Wilde—a run for his money, he had no more chance of equalling Billy Wells or Sam Butler as a tackle than he had of displacing Johnny Cade as coach! It didn’t seem to him that Slim’s advice to become an applicant for a tackle position had been very good. Tackles were a drug on the market. Still, to be fair to Slim, so were guards! Well, he would just do the best he could and be satisfied with what he got. Perhaps he might manage to hang on by the skin of his teeth; and it would help him considerably next fall, he concluded, to finish this season out on the first team, even if he never got off the bench again.

With the Hillsport game out of the way, the season was half over and Alton metaphorically took a deep breath, cinched its belt up another hole and set its gaze on the Mt. Millard contest. Last year the neighboring institution, situated at Warren, some eighteen miles distant, had beaten Alton by the score of 10 to 0. Of course that was at the height—or perhaps bottom would be better—of Alton’s historic slump, but the defeat had rankled. It rankled yet. Until two years ago Mt. Millard had been an adversary of no consequence. Then she had taken unto herself a new coach and won two games running, the first 19 to 0, the second 10 to 0. The fact that Alton hadn’t been able to score against Mt. Millard in two years made it even worse. There was a very general sentiment at Alton this fall in favor of defeating Mt. Millard, and defeating her conclusively. In fact, Alton wanted Revenge, Revenge with a capital R! To that end, therefore, on Tuesday Johnny Cade set to work to strengthen his defense against the kicking and passing game, which was Mt. Millard’s long suit. The offense was not neglected, but it was given second place in the week’s program. By Thursday two changes, each of which looked to be permanent, had been made. Reilly had succeeded Kendall at right half and Appel had taken Carpenter’s position at quarter. Several changes in the line were also tried, but none appeared more than tentative. Jim Newton was running Garrick very close for center and, strange to tell, Coach Cade on two occasions relegated Gordon Renneker to the subs and placed Raleigh at right guard. To an unbiased observer there seemed little choice between them, although they were notably different in build and style of playing. When practice ended Thursday afternoon, which it didn’t do until it had become almost too dark to see the ball, it would have required a prophet of more than usual ability to predict the line-up that would face Mt. Millard.

That evening Slim took Leonard over to Lykes to see Rus Emerson. Leonard went none too eagerly, in spite of Emerson’s invitation of some time ago, but he went. Afterwards he was very glad he had.