From the moment the whistle blew the two teams went at each other like tigers, Warwick endeavoring to overcome the lighter boys of Queen's by sheer force, a thing that was made possible by the superior weight of their team. Taking the ball from the kick-off, the Warwickers began a slashing attack which resulted in long gains. Biglow, the right half-back on Warwick, slipped through, time and time again, between the Queen's tackle and the end, and when the end drew in he went outside. Five minutes after the ball was put in play, Warwick was inside the Queen's 25-yard line. The latter was fighting desperately, but the forwards did not seem to be able to solve the play which was being sent at them, and the Queen's secondary defense had to take the punishment. Jimmy was at the bottom of every pile and repeatedly was the only player of Queen's who stood between Warwick and a touchdown.

"Touchdown, touchdown, touchdown!" howled the Maroon stands. "You've got 'em going! No hope for Queen's!"

The Queen's followers cried valiantly and incessantly: "Hold them! hold them!" But even the most enthusiastic and hopeful of the boys who wore the Blue and Gold could not fail to see the impending disaster. Down on the side-line the substitutes crouched, gritting their teeth and thrusting an imaginary shoulder against the Warwick invaders as the two lines met.

"There they go again!" yelled a Queen's boy. "It's a touchdown—no, it isn't—Turner has him!" And Turner did indeed have him. Biglow had sliced in between the tackle and end and was getting up speed, when the fiery Jimmy set sail for him. Biglow, in his endeavor to elude him, cut across the field. Jimmy forced him farther and farther out, until, the side-line being near at hand, Biglow endeavored to side-step the tackler. He failed dismally, and the next moment Jimmy's arms encircled his legs and Jimmy's sturdy shoulder struck his thigh, carrying Biglow with the ball clear off his feet and backward toward his own goal. Biglow's head struck the ground with a resounding thump. The ball flew from his arms and bounced crazily around. Half a dozen forms shot for it, and instantly there was a pile which was quickly dug apart by the referee. Big Wheeler lay with the ball tucked securely under his body.

You might have thought it a Queen's touchdown the way the followers of the Blue and Gold leaped into the air, shouted, danced and hugged each other.

"Turner, Turner, Turner!" shouted the crowd. "Oh, what a tackle!"

"Good boy, Turner! Good boy, Wheeler!" yelled Queen's; and then the leaders got to work and gave a regular cheer for each of the boys who had saved, for a time at least, the Queen's goal line. The Warwick stand was as still as death. A touchdown had been snatched away from them by the red-head!

Wheeler immediately kicked out of danger, sending the ball spinning far down the field, from which position Warwick again took up the march. The Queen's forwards did better this time. They had learned a little more about their opponent's attack and checked the advances a little, but could not stop them. More slowly but just as surely the ball went back. Biglow bored through and went around the end, making up the difficult yards that had been lost by his previous fumble. He ran low and hard and scarcely ever failed to make his distance. Once with five yards to go on the last down, the Warwick quarter worked a pretty forward pass and made the necessary distance.

Across the center of the field came the Warwick football machine, irresistible and deadly. Chip shouted from the back field instructions to the line to get low and charge fast and hard. They tried to follow orders, but were bowled over by the fierce onslaught of the bigger line they were facing. Jimmy slapped the linemen on the back and encouraged them after each scrimmage, and endeavored with Wheeler to work the team up to desperate heights of defense. But all seemed useless. On came the Warwick team, and now they were at the 20-yard line.

With the necessity for a close guarding of the back field territory diminishing, the Queen's backs crept in closer and made the Warwick players work even harder for what they earned. But even then the big Maroon team made its distance, and, with a first down, the ball lay just inside the 10-yard line.

Again Queen's was fighting hard to stave off a touchdown. The boys in the stand called almost despairingly to "hold them," while pandemonium reigned on the opposite side of the field. The Warwick players looked smiling and confident as they settled themselves for a scrimmage, while Queen's was tense and anxious.

"Put it over this time!" yelled Warwick. "Make it sure!"

The Warwick quarter stood up straight, looked over the backs of his crouching forwards, sized up the positions of the defensive backs and then gave his signal rapidly. The lines met with a crash! But there was a mistake in signals, and the back that was to take the pass from the quarter wasn't where he should have been. The quarter, borne off his feet by the fierce charge of the Queen's line, cried "Down!" from the bottom of a squirming mass. It was second down and 12 yards to gain, which somewhat dimmed the jubilation on the Warwick side.

"They'll try a forward pass now," said Frank to one of the other substitutes. Together they had been crawling down the side-lines on their hands and knees, watching with intense eagerness the great fight their comrades had been making against heavy odds. "Why doesn't Jimmy move out a little? There he goes; he's on to it, I guess. No, he's going back again. What are they going to try?"—for the quarter had called his men together after giving part of the signal and was instructing them probably in the play that was to come off. Suddenly the team sprang back into position, crouching low with finger-tips on the ground.

"Sixteen—sixty-two—forty," shrieked the Warwick quarter. The ball flew straight back to Biglow, who took half a dozen steps to the right to draw the defense in that direction. Then he stopped and shot it far out to the left in the direction of the Warwick end, who had edged out without apparently attracting any attention.

But while the ruse had fooled nearly every one, it had not fooled Jimmy or his Captain. They had guessed the play and even before Biglow had stopped, were already in motion toward the waiting Warwick end.

The ball flew straight, but just as it was about to settle into the arms of the Warwick end, big Wheeler made a leap into the air and succeeded in touching the ball with the tips of his fingers. It was enough to deflect it from its course, and Jimmy, racing behind, was under it like a flash before it touched the ground. He tucked it under his arm and was off down the field like lightning, while Wheeler, his speed unchecked by the leap, tore along at his side!

As it happened, the pass had carried the ball well to the left side of the field, and most of the players of both teams were out of the possibility of either helping or hindering the runner. There were two of the Warwick players besides Biglow, the back who had thrown the ball—the left tackle and the outwitted end—who were within reaching distance, and they went after Jimmy full tilt. Wheeler turned aside and put the end, the most dangerous man for the moment, out of the play by slowing up suddenly in front of him. Then he threw himself headlong in front of Biglow, who went sprawling head first on the ground.

This left the tackle, a boy named Robinson, the only hope of Warwick to prevent a touchdown, for Jimmy had a clear field to the Warwick goal.

And what a race it was! Jimmy, short and stocky, ran as if his life depended on it. He fairly flew over the ground, but the long-legged Robinson gained on him. The stands forgot to cheer in watching that race. Despite Jimmy's best efforts, the tackle still gained on him. He had crossed the center of the field and was bearing directly for the goal posts, with every energy bent on reaching them.

Forty-five, forty, thirty-five, thirty—the lines flew by, and still he kept ahead. At the 25-yard line Robinson was a stride behind, but a few yards farther Jimmy felt Robinson's hand touch his shoulder, as the tackle reached for him. The touch was like an electric shock and Jimmy fairly leaped away, but the big tackle was not shaken off. In two strides more he had again reached Jimmy, and he launched himself with all his might against the Queen's half-back, gripping his legs as he fell. Jimmy felt those steel-like fingers grappling him and gave a last despairing effort. He twisted out of the other's hold, spun completely around, and, staggering blindly, fell over the goal line with the ball gripped in both hands and with knees curled, drawn up to defend it from any attack! But there was no attack, for the two runners had outdistanced all the rest. Queen's had scored!

What a shriek split the air over the Queen's stands! The cheer leaders forgot their work entirely, and did nothing but jump up and down and toss their megaphones into the air, careless whether they landed on the ground, on their own heads or on the head of some one else. After perhaps two minutes of this din, the leaders suddenly remembered that they were supposed to get organized sounds out of the spectators, and for the space of several minutes, they worked their already tired throats to the limit of endurance in the short cheer—"now hip! hip!"—the long cheer, and a final rousing yell for "Turner, Turner, Turner!"

The Warwick crowd, unable to believe their eyes, sat dumfounded. Every one was trying to explain to every one else just how it had happened—Burns had failed to have one of his backs on the lookout for just such an emergency; the pass had been too slow; the end had been too far out. These and a dozen other excuses the Warwick sympathizers had to offer, but meantime the scoreboard at the end of the field showed the indisputable fact that, explanations or no explanations, the score stood:

Wheeler made a sorry exhibition of a kick-out and sent the ball over the head of the catcher. It hit the ground, and of course there was no chance for a try at the goal. What should have been an easy point for Queen's was thus lost to them.

"Come on now, fellows!" shouted the Warwick Captain. "We'll get that touchdown in five minutes!"

"We'll get it all back again and half a dozen more, too!" said Robinson tauntingly to Chip, as the two teams moved to their places for the next kick-off. But before half a dozen plays had been made, the whistle sounded to end the first quarter.

Excitement reigned in the stands during the intermission and when the teams faced each other for the second quarter, the interest was intense.

"Go for them, Warwick!" yelled a voice in the front row of the Warwick stand. "Eat 'em alive!"

And the Warwick team did its best to follow this cannibalistic advice. Taking up the former smashing game, Warwick quickly carried the ball far down the field, but just when Queen's was beginning to settle desperately to work, a fumble in the Warwick back field, which was recovered by Queen's, relieved the strain and Wheeler sent the sphere spinning back down the field.

Warwick, nothing daunted, with the same old methods, came back as determinedly as ever. Queen's seemed unable to stop them anywhere excepting once inside their own 10-yard line at the urgings of the stands, when the line stood up to its work like heroes and threw the Warwick runner back on the last down for a loss and took the ball; and once again when an onside kick was partially blocked and the ball recovered by Jimmy Turner.

Warwick had played so desperately hard to overcome the Queen's lead, that they were tiring perceptibly as the minutes went on. They had carried the ball two or three times the length of the field if all their gains were counted, but just when distance counted most, down by the Queen's goal, something would go wrong. Not only the Warwick bodies but their spirits were lagging, and they were as glad as the players of Queen's when the whistle blew to end the half. The score had not been changed and the hopes of the Queen's followers, as well as those of the team itself, had risen wonderfully.

The two teams trudged off rather slowly to their dressing rooms to be sponged off and talked to and rested during the fifteen minutes of intermission, leaving behind them a babel of talk on both sides of the field, interrupted every now and then by a school song or a series of cheers from one side or the other. It was all most friendly between the halves. Queen's boys and Warwick boys tumbled down from the stands and hobnobbed with each other. Queen's was jubilant, while in every Warwick boy's face one could read plainly: "Wait and see what we'll do in the second half."

The intermission passed rapidly. The appearance of the big Maroon players was the signal for a roar from the Warwick stands, broken into immediately by a like demonstration from Queen's when the blue-stockinged boys trotted onto the field from the opposite end, as spry-looking as if they had not gone through a hard half. Little time was lost in preliminaries. The Warwick captain, who had the kick-off, slapped his hands together and shouted confidently to his team-mates to "follow the ball hard." Down the field the Queen's players were scattered in defensive array, grim and defiant.

"Ready, Captain Wheeler?" cried the referee. Wheeler waved his hand as a signal that he was.

"Ready, Captain Burns?" The stands were so quiet that Burns' answer—"All ready, sir!"—could be plainly heard. The whistle shrilled sharply, the ball flew in a long curve down the field, settling in Turner's arms, who, after covering ten yards, was slammed to the earth. The last half of that memorable battle was on.

During the intermission, the Codfish, Lewis and David had squeezed themselves onto the sacred benches of the substitutes as near as they could get to Frank, and the four boys, with muscles stiffening at each crash of the lines, watched the tide of battle swing up and down the gridiron.

Warwick played furiously at the beginning, and although, as in the first half, they lost valuable territory by fumbles and misplays, gradually Burns steadied his team. After a particularly disastrous fumble, taking the ball at their own 35-yard line, Burns' Maroon-stockinged warriors began a great advance. Four and five yards were reeled off at every clip, and once when there was danger of being held Burns worked a beautiful forward pass for twenty yards. Warwick was now on Queen's 23-yard line, and their football machine was working with deadly precision.

"Now we have them!" yelled Burns jubilantly. "Squeeze that ball, you backs, and make it go!" The signal was snapped out, there was a crash of meeting bodies and Burns himself, with his head down, bored through the line like a drill until he met Wheeler and Jimmy; but when the pile which followed was pulled apart, the ball was five yards nearer the Queen's goal line.

"They can't hold them!" said the Codfish in a tense whisper, as the lines prepared again for the scrimmage. "Oh, if the line would only give our backs a little chance, we might stand them off yet! There they go! Oh, thunder, look at that!"

This exclamation was brought forth by a pretty double pass worked by the Warwick backs. The feint toward the Queen's left end threw the defense off their balance, and before they recovered Hudson, the fleet full-back of Warwick, who had been saved for just such an opportunity as had now arrived, was off like the wind. The Queen's end was bowled over neatly by Burns, and the way to the goal line was clear excepting for Dixon.

Warwick had used so many straight plays into the line that the clever and quickly worked pass came as a great surprise to every one, and the Warwick stands, quiet for a moment, burst into a great yell as they saw a touchdown coming, or thought they saw it, at least. Dixon moved up to meet Hudson, crouching ready for the tackle. The boy with the ball feinted to the inside of Chip. Dixon lunged to meet him, but Hudson quickly side-stepped and with an extra speed slipped outside of him and was clear. Dixon dived after him, but missed and lay sprawling on the ground. The momentary check of Hudson gave Jimmy a chance at the runner, however. He started across, badly bothered by the Warwick tackle, but finally got clear and came over the field like a whirlwind.

Hudson saw him coming, and, fearing to be intercepted, began to edge off toward the side-line. Jimmy pressed him hard in spite of his superior speed, and when Hudson was only five yards from the goal line, Jimmy made a last effort and threw himself at the runner with all his strength. The blow knocked Hudson off his feet. He half turned in the air, struck on his shoulder and actually bounded over the goal line. It was a magnificent attempt on Jimmy's part, but it failed, and Warwick had crossed the Queen's line with points enough resulting to tie the score!

It was now Warwick's turn to yell, and they did it with an energy which far surpassed their best previous efforts. Queen's by rights should have been silent, but they yelled almost as loudly as did their friends in the opposite stand, for Turner's wonderful try to get Hudson brought every one to his feet cheering.

"Five feet more," said Frank, "and Turner would have had him sure."

"Who'd have thought the old mule could run that way?" cried the Codfish. "I'll never call him slow any more."

"You can always figure on Jimmy doing his best and a little more," returned Frank. "Good old Jimmy! But what's the matter with Dixon?"

This, as Dixon got up and began twisting and turning his right wrist.

"The matter is," returned the Codfish, "that Chip is getting ready to give a good excuse for missing his tackle."

The team gathered around Chip without paying any attention to the jubilation of the Warwick crowd, which extended even to the team itself. Horton ran out on the field to the little knot of Queen's players and after half a minute's examination of Chip's wrist came back to the side-lines, while the Warwick team prepared for a kick-out. The ball had crossed the line far over toward the side of the field, and it was not thought possible to kick a goal if the ball were brought straight out, because of the difficult angle.