Wolcott was out on the next afternoon at the appointed hour, feeling at first a little sheepish under the scrutiny of the critical crowd at the side-lines, but soon oblivious to everything except the work to be done and the directions of the coachers. On this first day the candidates practised little except the simplest elements, such as tackling and falling on the ball. The prudent coach sent them all down early, when to Wolcott it seemed as if the work had just begun. The next day the same programme was followed, the green linesman receiving in addition personal instruction from the veterans in the rudiments of line play: how to stand, how to charge, how to use the hands, or, what was perhaps more important, how not to use them. Wolcott was not altogether without experience, or he would have made little out of this amateur coaching. He kept his eyes open, however, watching the motions rather than trying to follow the words of his instructors, and seeking to learn what was most worth learning. Laughlin gave him a suggestion now and then as he went among the squads, and Lauder, the coach, devoted a few minutes to him. He did not need to be told that a guard plays close up to the centre on the offence and loose on the defence; that he must keep his head up and his play low, meet the other man harder and quicker than the other man meets him, throw himself into the enemy’s country at the earliest possible instant, and always watch the ball. All this as theory was tolerably familiar to him,—so familiar, in fact, that he almost resented being held down like a greenhorn to a primary course when he was capable of going higher. But when, after a few days, he got into his first line-up, and in five minutes of play got offside through overhaste, charged into the air, lost sight of the ball, rushed his man away from the play which he was supposed to stop, and leaped twice at a runner’s throat instead of at his shins—he despised the primary course no longer.

“It does no good to jump around unless you’re helping some one on your side or stopping some one on the other,” said Laughlin, reproachfully, as he talked over the day’s practice afterward. “You want to be lively, but every step ought to tell. Always strike for the ball or the bunch where the ball is. You made a terrible mess when you tried to tackle Fearns!”

“I know it,” replied Wolcott, humbly. “I’m afraid I lost my head.”

“I wish you’d do what I told you the other night,” continued the captain: “make sure of the rudiments whether you know anything else or not. If you’re good at those, there’ll always be a place for a fellow of your size on the second; but if you take to making neck tackles and shutting your eyes in a scrimmage, you won’t be of any use anywhere.”

“I won’t do so any more,” said Wolcott. And then he added, with an accent of discouragement, “You think I can make the second, don’t you?”

Laughlin understood the tone quite as well as the words. “Of course you can if you try, and I don’t mean that you can’t make the first either. You’ve got to make the first by way of the second. The second is just the place for you, or for any one else who wants to learn; it’s the regular training-school for the first. You’re on the field every day, you play against a better man who can’t help giving you points, and you’re right where you can be watched. Don’t you worry about the first. Just play your hardest all the time, make the man opposite you work to keep you under, learn his game and improve on it, and then, if you beat him out, you’ll be taken on to the first in his place. But don’t ask now whether you’re going to land in the first or the second. You’ve got a chance during the next six weeks to learn the game and show what you can do. That’s all any one can ask.”

Wolcott was silent, but he was not at all convinced that the mere opportunity to play on the second was in itself all he could ask for, and his later experiences rather confirmed his doubts. To begin with, he got but little personal coaching, for the coachers devoted themselves especially to the first, helping the second, for the most part, only incidentally. Then he was pitted against Butler, an experienced man, fifteen pounds heavier, who had the support of the best line in school and the best secondary defence. Bullard, who played centre on the first, was not counted a great player, but he was certainly better than thick-headed, heavy-limbed Kraus, who usually occupied the corresponding position on the second, and who was likely either to topple over on Lindsay’s back, or fall in his way, or in some other inexplicable fashion deprive the new guard of the fruit of his efforts. Durand was captain of the second, as clever and quick and “scrappy” a quarter as one could desire. But what could the cleverest quarter do with a centre who couldn’t get the ball back, and a line which wouldn’t hold long enough to allow the backs to get started? At the end of a week of play, Wolcott began to suspect that the second had no other reason for existence than to be tossed and mauled about for the good of the first, as the punching-bag suffers to harden the boxer’s muscle.

Another week went by, and the new player’s ambition began to wane. He didn’t mind the hard knocks and the hard words; he was willing to work and wait and play with all his might; but it did seem an unfair handicap to pit him against a veteran player, a stronger and better-trained line, the head coach and the captain, and still expect him to distinguish himself. Laughlin had paid him but little attention during the last week. The captain still made occasional suggestions, mostly in the form of frank and unadorned condemnation of methods that were wrong, with now and then a word of praise as a relish; but the old intimate relation in which they had discussed the football campaign as a thing in which the two had a similar interest, no longer existed. Was Laughlin too much absorbed to notice him? Or had he already made up his mind that Lindsay was of no use?

“Why didn’t you try for tackle, Lindsay?” asked Jackson, the quarter-back, that afternoon, as the two stood briskly rubbing themselves in the corner of the shower-bath drying room. “There isn’t much show at guard against a man like Butler.”

“Because Dave wanted me to play guard,” answered Wolcott, sharply. He had been puzzling over that very question himself.

“Did he?” answered Jackson, in a tone of surprise. “I wonder why.” And then, after considering a few seconds, he added: “I guess he thought ’twould be better to have a good solid centre on the second to buck against than another green tackle for the first. I guess he’s right, too. It’s rather hard on you, though, isn’t it?”

Wolcott forced a laugh. “It makes no difference to me where I play. I never expect to get beyond the second, anyway.”

Wolcott’s attention wandered in the recitation that afternoon, and he went to his room after dinner in distinctly low spirits. He had dreamed of making the eleven. Indifferently as he had spoken to Jackson, he could not deny that the hope had been in his heart daily for the last six months. All the labor and training of the summer had been undergone with this prize before his eyes. If Dave was disappointed in him, he was still more disappointed in himself; but in any case he must bear his fate like a man, not whine over it like a child. After all, if he did his best, his absolute best, and did not compass his ambition, he had nothing to be ashamed of. He certainly wanted the best team put into the field, and if his greatest service to the team lay in his furnishing a “good, solid centre on the second for the first to buck against,” why should he hesitate?

No, he would think no more of the first eleven. His place was on the second. But on the second he would do something worth doing. He would play his game to the end, without shirking or shrinking, to the best of his ability in the place where he was put. And the second eleven should be a good eleven, as far as he could make it, or help others to make it!

Full of a new purpose, Wolcott seized his cap and hurried over to Durand’s room. Durand was writing names on a sheet of paper.

“Hello!” said Durand, “did you meet Dave?”

“Dave? No! Why?”

“He’s just been in here. He was going over to see you. He wants us to brace up the second.”

Wolcott uttered an exclamation. “That’s just what I was going to talk with you about.”

“Dave says we’re of no use, and we can’t deny it. He’s given me a free hand to get out the best team we can. What do you think of this combination?” And he read his list of names.

On the following day there were some new faces on the second. Kraus was put to running laps on the track, and into the centre went Scates, a burly White Mountain villager who had never touched a football until he arrived in Seaton that September. They planted him in the line, told him that the opposite centre was his personal enemy, bade him stand like a rock, put the ball back when required, and then pile into his enemy as if he were pushing a log into the Androscoggin. When the other side had the ball, he was to smash through and get it. Milliken, a big Pennsylvanian who had been vainly trying to stop Laughlin, was pulled out of his position and set to bucking the line. The practice that afternoon was lively, if nothing else.

The next day was Saturday, and the Bates College team appeared for their annual game. Wolcott lounged at the side-lines in football clothes with the rest of the big squad, on the extremely small possibility that a sufficient number of accidents would occur to bring him into the game. As the substitutes lounged, they watched and commented.

“Butler is putting it over his man all right,” observed Conley, who sat at Wolcott’s elbow, in characteristic slang.

Wolcott was watching. Both Butler and his Bates opponent, though starting low, charged upward, meeting nearly erect. Then Butler, who was heavier and stronger, would push the other back or throw him aside, and pass quickly through. Why did they rise like that? The movement was instinctive, of course, but why did not the lighter man keep on the ground where his advantage lay, and not be tempted into the air? Interested in the pair, Wolcott followed the play along the side-lines, catching glimpses from time to time of the attitude of the two men as they clashed. The advantage was always on Butler’s side.

In the second half Butler faced a new foe, who for a time fared no better at his hands than his predecessor. But presently a change was perceptible. The new guard did not rise to meet his enemy’s charge, but instead dodged past the Seaton man close to the ground on the defensive, and charged his hips on the offensive. Gains behind Butler became less frequent; twice his man stopped the Seaton play behind the line.

Wolcott kept his own counsel after the Bates game, but his treatment of Butler when he next lined up against him was different. When the first had the ball, instead of dashing himself against his opponent, he dived past him on his knees. Twice he overran the ball because he did not keep his head up to see where the play was going; twice he lost his footing, and was useless; but several times he was through in season to smash the interference as it was forming, or drive the runner in a wasteful circuit. When his own side had the ball, the play was not so easy; but by diving into his opposite the very instant the ball moved, he at least succeeded in keeping him out of the way.

“It was a good game you put up to-day, Lindsay,” said the coach, as the line broke. Lindsay thanked him, beaming with joy.

On the way down Laughlin joined him. “Good work you did to-day; keep it up.” Wolcott nodded and smiled again. But the smiles and the joy were not due to the compliments, nor to the reawakening of fatuous hopes of swift promotion to the school eleven. His present ambition was centred on holding his own against Butler, and now he knew he had his man.