The first skirmish in the feud that was bound to arise came on the following day at Adams’s, when a group of fifth and sixth lads, thinking themselves safe in the shadow of the dormitory, sang out the new nickname derisively across the field to Dunn. Dunn, who was still in a state of irritation, and by no means ready, as yet, to accept the inevitable nickname, made a dash for the group, which broke into screaming flight round the corner of the locker house. The first lad whom Jason met as he rounded the corner in full pursuit, was Mike, engaged in tossing a football against the side of the building. Without stopping to raise the question whether Mike had been one of the offenders, Dunn proceeded to the agreeable task of teaching the urchin a lesson. The boy resisted with hands, feet, voice, and teeth. The older fellows, hurrying forth at the shrill cries for help, found Mike lying on his back, like the arms of a hay tedder, squirming to keep his antagonist at bay and squawking like a hen in distress.

The majority of the newcomers lined up in good positions, to enjoy the amusement which chance had thrown in their way; but Talbot, who had seen the beginning of the incident from a distance, pushed through the line, jerked the boy to his feet, and commanded him to stop his noise.

“He knocked me down when I wasn’t doing a thing!” screamed Mike, weeping more from rage than because of any hurt which he had received. “Let me get a stone, and I’ll kill him!”

“You won’t do anything of the sort,” said Talbot, firmly. He turned to Dunn. “What’s the row, anyway? What’s the use of pitching into a little fellow like him?”

“I’m not going to have him calling me names,” said Dunn, defiantly. “He thinks because he’s small he can be as fresh as he wants to, without getting hurt.”

“I didn’t call him names,” sobbed Mike. “I wasn’t doing a thing.”

“It wasn’t him,” offered Dickie Sumner, who had been tempted back by all-compelling curiosity. “He wasn’t with us at all.”

Talbot turned and seized the rash youngster by the arm. “So it was you, was it? Now, look here! We aren’t going to have any calling names or any other freshness from you young kids round this place. If we catch you at it, we’ll duck you under the cold-water faucet and forbid you the grounds. Understand?”

Dickie understood. “All right,” he answered faintly, and tried to pull away; but Talbot still held him in a tight grip.

“What do you say, Jack?” he added, turning to Dick’s older brother, who shared with him the responsibility for order on the grounds.

“That’s right!” replied Jack Sumner, sacrificing his fraternal obligation in the cause of justice with surprising equanimity. “He’s a good one to begin on.”

Talbot released the youngster, who speedily escaped from the circle of danger to join his confederates over by the tennis courts, where they discussed for a time in subdued voices the probability that Pete meant business. They were soon diverted by tag.

“All the same, Dunn is a fool to notice them,” murmured Talbot in Hardie’s ear as they returned to the locker room to finish their dressing.

“I don’t believe he can shake off the nickname, now,” said Roger.

“No, it’s branded in. He isn’t showing much of the good-nature they talk about, is he?”

In fact, Dunn’s good-nature didn’t extend far below the skin. It was a mannerism assumed to win him the popularity which he craved. He was vain, lazy, and characterless. In the football field his fine physique, together with the professional air with which he bore himself, for some time blinded the eyes of critics to his shortcomings. Yards, the coach, felt sure that something could be made of a man of Dunn’s vigor and apparent knowledge of the game. Yet a strong player opposite him, or the grinding strain of an uphill contest, invariably produced slackened effort and excuses.

“It’s come to be the weakest place in the team,” said the coach, a few days before the Groton game. “If we could brace up the left end and quarter-back, we should have some hope of giving Newbury a tussle.”

“Is Sumner so bad as all that?” asked Harrison, disturbed. “I thought he was running the play very well.”

“He runs the play well enough, but look at the errors! He fumbles, muffs punts, misses tackles. A quarter-back has no right to do anything of the kind.”

“No one plays perfectly,” Harrison hastened to offer in defence of his friend. “Besides, he’s the only man we’ve got for the place.”

“Hardie is coming on well,” observed the coach. “He’s going to push Ben Tracy pretty hard for tackle. We might give him a trial at quarter.”

“I don’t think he’d do at all,” answered Harrison, quickly. “He’d be entirely new to the position, and we shall need him as a substitute tackle before the season is over.”

The coach considered for a time in silence. Yards was a loyal Westcott graduate, whose devotion to his school was strong enough to make him sacrifice his afternoons at the Law School for the sake of helping the Westcott team. He knew the game well and could teach it, but he lacked confidence in his own judgment of the comparative merits of individuals, and he was morbidly anxious to avoid the foolish jealousies which he remembered as a source of weakness to the school in his own day. It was clear that Harrison’s heart was set on keeping Sumner in his place. To insist on a change which would be at best an experiment with an unknown quantity, and which might give rise to factions, seemed at present unwise.

“We’ll give McDowell a chance on the end, anyway,” he said, “and let Dunn rest.”

To this proposition Harrison assented eagerly, and went hot foot to warn Sumner that he must bestir himself if he wanted to keep his post.

“Am I as bad as that?” asked Sumner, in consternation.

“You’re not bad, but you’ve got to be better.”

In place of replying, Sumner swung his sweater to the other shoulder and gazed, a sober, startled expression in his eyes, across the field. Harrison stole a side glance at his friend’s face and took his arm affectionately. “It’s all right, Jack; don’t worry,” he said. “Just play your best game, and I’ll stand back of you.”

“You’re wrong there, Harry,” Jack said quietly. “You’ve no right to stand back of me. My playing has been rotten lately, and I know it. I’m fumbling punts and missing tackles all the time. If you’ve got some one else who can do better, I won’t have you keep me on just out of friendship.”

“You’re talking rot,” returned Harrison, impatiently. “Stubby Weldon is no use, as you know perfectly well. There’s no one else.”

Sumner breathed easier. “I’ll do better if I can,” he said.

So McDowell went to Groton to play left end, and Dunn was told to stay at home and rest. He neither stayed at home nor rested. Stover took him to the game with Hargraves and Reeves in his flyer. He amused himself watching the play incognito, and got back before the return train delivered the weary, disheartened team at the station in Boston.

Westcott’s fared ill at Groton. Sumner’s game was worse than ever. McDowell strove like a hero against men a whole head taller and many pounds heavier, tackling fiercely and surely whenever he got within striking distance of the ball; but his opponents brushed his interference aside, charged through him in the line and blocked him off from the play almost at will. The score was eighteen to nothing at the end of the first half.

“I can’t do it!” groaned McDowell, as the players tried to hearten each other during the intermission. “I’m not big enough. Put Hardie in.”

As Dunn was out, there was nothing else to do. Hardie went in at left end, and fat Bumpus, who had lost in weight but gained in muscle and wind by his patriotic exertions on the field, relieved Kimball at guard. The team sallied forth once more, crestfallen but determined.

Groton got the ball on Talbot’s kick-off, and tried the old trick of circling Westcott’s left end, but Hardie could not be disposed of, and the play came to grief. They bucked the centre, only to find big Bumpus sprawling effectually in the path. A forward pass found its way into Horr’s hands. Then Sumner gave the ball to Talbot, who discovered a hole where McDowell had failed to make one. Encouraged, he repeated the play and made the first down. A lucky forward pass which, to his great delight, fell into Hardie’s hands, saved Westcott’s at the next third down, and carried the ball to the centre of the field. Twenty yards farther they pressed, and then Talbot was forced to kick. Groton started on a return journey, which proved to be slow and frequently interrupted. A fumble by Westcott’s before the goal posts gave the home eleven the only score which they made during the second half.

Roger Hardie felt very happy as he took his seat in the barge with his mates to drive to the station, for he knew, without regard to the compliments paid him by his polite opponents, that his chance had come and he had not missed it.

The leaders, however, were in no exultant mood. Twenty-three to nothing is a big score for a coach and captain to swallow, especially when it is clear that two-thirds of it is due to avoidable errors. On the train Mr. Adams, who had accompanied the team, sat with Yards, Harrison, and Talbot in a double seat, and tried to point out signs of hope for the future in the day’s disaster.

“I should like to suggest two changes,” he said at length, “which may help the team. One I think you will accept. The other I have my doubts about.”

The trio looked at him expectantly. “Hardie should play regularly at left end,” went on the teacher. “His work to-day was almost equal to Harrison’s.”

“Better, sir!” said Harrison, quickly. “We accept that suggestion on the spot, don’t we, Yards?”

Yards nodded. “We ought to have had him there before. What’s the other suggestion,—Bumpus?”

“No. Bumpus can take care of himself. I want to propose that you try McDowell at quarter. He’s out of place in the line, but he’s a good tackler, catches punts well, and has a good head.”

Talbot looked at Yards, and Yards looked at Harrison, who pressed his lips together and looked at no one. There was an interval of silence.

“I don’t see why he should be any better than Sumner!” said the captain, defiantly.

“I don’t see how he could be any worse!” ejaculated Talbot.

“I don’t urge it,” said Mr. Adams, kindly. “I merely suggest it for consideration.”

“He couldn’t run the game as Jack does,” said Harrison.

“He could save touch-downs as Jack doesn’t,” asserted Talbot. “I think as much of Jack as you do, but my thinking a lot of him can’t make him play well.”

“He has been on the team all the season. It is hard to put him off now.”

“No one stays on the crew because he’s been on all the season—I’ll tell you that in advance!” blurted Pete, savagely. “I’ll fire myself if there are four better men.”

Harrison smiled faintly. “It’s easy to say that now. Wait till spring.”

“Sh! Here he comes,” exclaimed Yards, speaking for the first time. “We’ll think it over during the night.”

Sumner came oscillating down the aisle from the seat which he had occupied, dismally brooding alone, during half the journey. He stopped at the end of the double seat and addressed Harrison, but his gaze, as he spoke, wandered uneasily away over the captain’s head; while his flushed cheek and hurried tones betrayed the strain under which he had been laboring.

“I’ve been thinking the thing all over,” he began, “and I see perfectly plainly what’s the right thing to do. I’ve gone to the bad in my play. I know it as well as anybody. I want you to put little Mac into my place at quarter and give him a good, fair show to prove what he can do. He’s no good in the line because he’s so light, but he tackles like a little fiend in the open, and he can catch anything that can be kicked. I could tell him all he doesn’t know about signals and plays in twenty minutes. I believe the change would give the team a new start.”

“By Jove, you’re the stuff, Jack!” cried Talbot, as he clutched his friend’s hand and gave it a wring. “If we win anything this year, that’s the spirit that’ll bring it. There’s something in a name, after all.”

“Give McDowell the place and wrest it back from him,” suggested Mr. Adams, who felt the tension of the scene.

“I shan’t wrest it back, if he has a fair show, sir,” answered Sumner, with a melancholy laugh.

“We’ll try him, then,” concluded Harrison; “shan’t we, Yards?”

Yards acquiesced with a vast sense of relief. He had already determined on this very change, though how he was to bring it about had greatly perplexed him. Sumner’s magnanimity relieved him of all anxiety.