All day long on the fourteenth of September the trains disgorged batches of young studiosi upon the platform of the Seaton station. The older boys, veterans of at least a year, hallooed jubilantly over the heads of the crowd to their returning friends, and in joyous groups which rapidly formed and dissolved, clinched grips and thrashed each other’s arms about in gestures quite contrary to the latest rules of etiquette. The newcomers, awed and diffident, threaded their way ungreeted through this waste of welcomes. Some came with mammas, who viewed the boisterous crowd with disapproval and skirted it in haste; some with papas, who looked and smiled and wished their own lads among the merrymakers; some with older brothers, who knew the station agents and the townspeople, but not the boys; and some like Dick Melvin of old and Laughlin of two years before, alone, unknown, with little money in the purse, but in their hearts a valiant purpose to accept the opportunity the school offered and climb the hard path others had climbed before them.

“Where’s Dave Laughlin?” was Wolcott’s first cry as he jumped from the car steps and was seized on one side by Durand and Ware, and on the other by the twins.

“Over there smashing baggage,” said Ware, pointing down the platform. “He’s delivering trunks round town.”

“I’ll take him your order,” said a Peck.

“I’ll take it myself, thank you,” answered Wolcott, scanning the two sunburned faces. “You’ve grown different during the summer. I can tell you apart now.”

“Well, which is which?” demanded Durand.

“That’s Donald. He’s the one that has the mole on his back,” Wolcott replied promptly, pointing to the twin who had spoken.

The Pecks chuckled. Durand hooted: “Wrong! And they’ve both grown moles by this time, I’ll bet my hat!”

“How’d the exams go?” asked Ware, coming to Wolcott’s aid.

“Fine. I got eighteen points, a lot better than I expected. How were yours?”

“Fair,” replied Ware.

“Four honors, that means,” put in Durand.

“Butler here, and Pope and Jackson?”

“Yes, all back, and every old football man except the three who graduated last June. Buist’s failed and is coming back for another year, so the old back field will be here. If we have any kind of luck, we ought to have a great team this year.”

Ware’s words were meant to bear a message of good news, but they brought instead a quiver of disappointment to Wolcott’s heart. If the ranks were so full, the chances for new men were certainly small. He was ashamed of the feeling as soon as he recognized it, and he threw it off with a sudden jerk of the head, as a swimmer shakes the water from his hair.

“That’s bully,” he said. “The best is none too good for us. I’m going to find Dave.”

Laughlin was standing beside the pile of baggage, in cap and overalls, receiving checks and addresses and making out receipts. Two big wagons were backed up to the platform, and two assistants were clumsily lifting in the heavy trunks.

“That’s mine, Dave,” called Wolcott, calmly reaching over the heads of the row of fellows who in jolly bustle and with unconcealed desire to rattle the amateur baggageman were insisting each on immediate attention.

The big fellow looked up and squared his broad face, dripping with perspiration, toward the familiar voice. Over his features spread a smile fairly glowing with the spirit of welcome.

“Hello, Wolcott!” he cried, grasping the outstretched hand by the knuckles and shaking it vigorously. “Awfully glad to see you.”

“Then take this check,” said Wolcott. “I’m at the old place.”

But Laughlin only nodded shrewdly and retorted: “No, sir! You take your turn at this shop.”

With this uncompromising reply on his lips, the deliverer of trunks turned to one of the half dozen who were shouting: “Here!” “Here!” “I’m next!” and gave himself up to business. Wolcott, thus forced to wait his proper time, waited still longer and watched the scene.

The two assistants stumbled with a heavy trunk. The boss pushed them aside, grasped the unwieldy thing and tossed it into the wagon.

“What a hand you’d be in a baggage car, Dave!” cried Wolcott.

“I’ve done it before,” answered Laughlin. “It’s not so hard if you know the trick.—Here, you fellows, get into the wagon and push ’em up while I throw ’em in.—I’ve got a lot of things to say to you, but I can’t say ’em now. I’ll be over this evening sometime.”

It was nearly ten o’clock when Laughlin at last came slowly up the stairs and with a sigh of satisfaction stretched out on Wolcott’s sofa.

“About as hard a day’s work as I ever did,” said the truckman. “One hundred and eight trunks since six o’clock this morning! I could have done a lot more if I had had another outfit.”

“I hope you made a good pile out of it,” said Wolcott, “and that all the fellows will pony up.”

“They paid cash,” replied Laughlin, shrewdly, pulling out a fistful of halves and quarters. “If they ever have ready money, it’s when they come in the fall. One hundred and eight trunks at twenty-five cents each is twenty-seven dollars. Taking out two dollars for each of the fellows who helped me, and six dollars for the wagons, I have seventeen left. How’s that for a day’s work?”

“Great! I haven’t earned as much money in all my life. You won’t do it soon again either, unless you get paid for playing college football,” he added with a teasing smile.

“Then I never shall,” returned Laughlin, quietly. “Those fellows down at X have been after me again.”

“Same offers?” asked Wolcott.

“Better ones. I can have the earth. They promise to find me a place to work where all I have to do is to draw my pay, and they’ll see to it that my expenses don’t worry me. It amounts to an offer to get me into college, keep me there, and find me a job when I get out. All I have to do is to play football.”

“Going?” asked Wolcott, laughing.

“Going!” repeated Laughlin, as he snapped himself up into a sitting position on the sofa and stared reproachfully at his questioner. “Not if I know myself! There isn’t money enough in the whole institution to buy me. And what’s more, I’m not going to a place where they do business in that way. I’d rather not go to college at all than hire myself out to play football.”

Wolcott gazed at his big friend in silence, but the admiration which his lips failed to express was revealed by the gleam of feeling in his eyes. Laughlin had toiled away the vacation weeks as porter in a summer hotel. His school life was but a routine of close study and hard manual labor, of plugging at lessons and furnace tending and snow shovelling and odd jobbing. The time given to football involved a personal sacrifice to be made good by greater effort after the season closed. The future had nothing in store for him except what his own hands and brain could provide. What a temptation, then, this promise of an easy and glorious college course!

“There seems to be a wrong notion of me going round,” continued Laughlin. “I don’t see why they should keep after me so. Even if I were willing to sell myself, I doubt if I could deliver the goods. I’m really only a fair sort of player. They seem to think I belong on an all-American eleven.”

“You’ll make it some day if you keep on,” declared the admirer, his ardor of feeling finding expression in emphasis rather than in words.

“Whether I do or not makes mighty little difference to me at present. All I ask is to win the Hillbury game.”

“Oh, you’ll do that fast enough. Just look at the old men you’ve got back.”

“I’ve looked at ’em,” the captain answered sagely. “Some of ’em will be better than they were last year and some worse, and all harder to control. It looks like just the kind of a veteran team that gets done up. You’re coming out to-morrow, aren’t you?”

Wolcott reddened with pleasure. “Yes, if you want me.”

“Want you! We want everybody. Give us your hand.”

Wolcott reached out his hand and clasped the other’s brawny, callous fist.

“Squeeze!” commanded the captain, tightening his grip.

Wolcott squeezed. His summer, though wholly unlike Laughlin’s, had not been spent in idleness, and he met pressure with pressure. Second followed second, and still the two hands trembled in the clasp, while eye searched eye for sign of wavering. Wolcott’s muscles were failing, his hand was growing numb; but he marshalled his nerves to reËnforce his muscles, determined not to show the white feather if his hand were crushed to pieces, and holding his own against his antagonist. It was Laughlin who ended the ordeal by suddenly wrenching his hand loose.

“You’ll do. What have you been doing all summer—rowing?”

“Yes, lots of it, and swimming and hauling sails.”

“How much do you weigh?”

“One hundred and seventy-nine, stripped.”

Laughlin nodded thoughtfully. “That’s not much in these days. I’m under my usual weight at two hundred and ten. Is that the outside wall there, behind the sofa?”

“Yes,” answered Wolcott, with wonder.

“Let’s pull the sofa out, then; I don’t want to smash a partition.”

The sofa out of the way, Laughlin began again. “You know how to charge?”

Wolcott nodded assent.

“A good way to practise it is to charge against a wall. You ought to do it outside, and of course if you have a charging machine with a padded surface to smash against, it isn’t so hard on the wrists; but I can show you what I mean right here.”

Laughlin crouched on the floor a yard from the wall, resting on his finger-tips and toes, with one foot somewhat behind him. Then he counted three and at the last number suddenly lifted and threw himself forward, catching himself with the palms of his hands against the wall.

“That’s a charging exercise. It’s hard on the wrists, but it’s good training. The main thing is to hold your head up and go like a shot when you hear the word. Try it with me.”

They stooped side by side on the imaginary line. At first Dave counted, afterward Wolcott. Each time, however, the old player, in spite of his weight, got off first and was the first to strike the wall.

“I beat you,” said Laughlin, reproachfully, “and they call me slow.”

“I’ll learn it,” declared Wolcott, resolutely.

“I don’t doubt you will,” Laughlin said, as they resumed their seats, “for you’re naturally quick. It isn’t all the game by a long shot, but it’s much better to start right. The same holds true about tackling. You don’t want to make a single bad tackle the whole season through. That means that the first time you try it, and every time you try it, you go straight for the man’s knees. If you follow that scheme in everything, you won’t have bad habits to come back at you later on.”

Wolcott nodded understandingly, and seeing that Laughlin, weary though he was from his hard day’s work, was still inclined to talk, smothered the questions on his lips and listened.

“I believe that most of the end-of-the-season careless playing comes from poorly learned elements like tackling, charging, and dropping on the ball. You see, at the start-off, everybody, old and new, is hammering away at these things, and they all do pretty well. Then weeks afterward, when we’re working at signals, and practising combinations, and everybody’s attention is on the team work and not on the elements, there’s likely to be a big slump. The poor tacklers go high, and the fumblers juggle the ball, and the linesmen get interested in their men and don’t watch the ball, and break for the wrong bunch. It’s about then that the new man who has got the elements so sure that he does them right automatically elbows the old player off the field.”

“I think I’ve learned the elements,” said Wolcott, cautiously.

“Learn them over again, then,” returned Laughlin, “and keep learning them till you’d no more do them wrong than you’d walk backward over to recitation. It’s one thing to do a thing right when your mind is on it; it’s a very different thing to do it right always, whatever your mind is on. Take a fumbling back, for example. Let a coach give a fumbler an awful rake-down before a game, and the probability is he won’t do any fumbling; but he won’t do anything else either. His mind is on the fumbling.”

“I’ll do my best. What had I better try for?”

“Guard,” replied Dave, instantly. “You are rather light, but I’ve had a quick, light guard keep me working my hardest to stop him. We’ve three fair tackles now, but we need a guard to play second to Butler. If you work hard through the season, you may get a chance for your ‘S’ in the Hillbury game. Well, good night. Be out at three, sure!”