Almost before he knew it Stover was in the car and the wheels were moving at last irresistibly toward the field. There was no longer any pretense in those last awful moments that had in them all the concentrated hopes and fears of the weeks that had rushed away. The faces of his own team-mates were only gray faces without identity. He saw some one's lips moving incessantly, but he did not remember whose they were. Opposite him, another man was bending over, his head hidden in his hands. Some one else at his side was nervously locking and unlocking his fingers, breathing short, hard breaths. He remembered only the stillness of it all, the forgetfulness of others, the set stares, and Charlie de Soto fidgeting on the seat and nervously humming something irrelevant.

Caught up in this unreasoning intensity of a young nation, filled, too, with this exaggerated passion of combat, Stover leaned back limply. Outside, the street was choked with hilarious parties packed in rushing carriages, blue or orange-and-black. Horns and rattles sounded like tiny sounds in his ears, and his eyes saw only grotesque blurred shapes that swept across them.

"I'll get 'em off—they won't block any on me—they mustn't," he said to himself, closing his eyes.

Then, on top of the draining weakness that had him in its grip, came a sudden feeling of nausea, and he knew suddenly what the man opposite him with his head in his hands was fighting. He put his arms over the ledge of the door, and rested his head on them, too weak to care that every one saw him, gulping in the stinging air in desperation.

All at once there came a grinding jerk and the car stopped. From the inside came Tompkins' angry, rasping voice:

"Every one up! Get out there! Quick! On the jump!"

Instinctively obedient, the vertigo left him, his mind cleared. He was out in the midst of the bobbing mass of blue sweaters, moving as in a nightmare through the black spectators, seeing ahead the mammoth stands, hearing the dull, engulfing roars as one hears at night the approaching surf.

Then they were struggling through the human barriers, and he saw something green at the bottom of a stormy pit, and a great growing roar of welcome smote him as of a descending gale, the hysterical cry of the American multitude, a roar acclaiming Yale.

"All ready!" said Dana's unrecognizable voice somewhere ahead. "On the trot, now!"

Instantly he was sweeping on to the field and up along the frantic stands of suddenly released blue. All indecision, all weakness, went with the first hoarse cry from his own. Something hot and alive seemed to flow back into his veins, and with every stride the spongy turf underneath seemed to send its strength and vitality into his legs.

From the other end of the field, through the somber crowd, an orange-and-black group was trickling, flowing into a band and sweeping out on the field, while the Princeton stands were surging to their feet, adding the mounting fury of their welcome to the deafening uproar that suddenly bound the arena in the gripping hollow of a whirlwind.

"Line up, you blue devils," came Charlie de Soto's raucous cry. "On your toes. Get your teeth into it. Hard, now. Ha-a-ard!"

He was in action immediately, thinking only of the signals, sweeping down the field, now to the right, now to the left, stumbling in his eagerness.

"Enough," said the captain's voice, at last. "Get under your sweaters, fellows. Brown and Stover, start up some punts."

Dana and Dudley went back to practise catching. Brown, the center, pigskin under hand, set himself for the pass, while Stover, blowing on his hands, measured his distance. Opposite, Bannerman, the Princeton fullback, was setting himself for a similar attempt.

In the stands was a sudden craning hush as the great audience waited to see with its own eyes the disparity between the rival fullbacks.

Stover, standing out, felt it all instinctively, with a little nervous tremor—the quick stir in the stands, the muttered comments, the tense turning of even the cheer leaders.

Then the ball came shooting back to him. He caught it, turned it in his hands, and drove forward his leg with all his might. At the same moment, as if maliciously calculated, the great booming punt of Bannerman brought the Princeton stands, rollicking and gleeful, to their feet in a burst of triumph.

In his own stands there was no answering shout Stover felt on his cheeks, under his eyes, two hot spots of anger. What did they know, who condemned him, of the sacrifice he had made, of the far more difficult thing he was doing? He remembered Tompkins' advice; he could not compete with Bannerman in the air. Deliberately he sent his next punt low, swift, striking the ground about thirty yards away and rolling treacherously another fifteen feet before Dudley, who had swerved out, could stop it. This time from the mass almost a groan went up.

A sudden cold contempt for them, for everything, seized possession of Stover. He hated them all. He stooped, plucked a blade of grass, and stuck it defiantly between his teeth.

"Shoot that back a little lower, Brown," he said with a sudden quick authority, and again and again he sent off his fast, low-rolling punts.

"That's the stuff, Dink," said Tompkins, with a pat on the shoulder, "but you've got to get 'em off on the instant—remember that. Here, throw this sweater over you."

"All right."

He did not sit down, but walked back and forth with short steps, waiting for the interminable conference of the captains to be over. And again that same sinking, hollow feeling came over him in the suspense before the question that would be answered in the first shock of bodies.

The feeling he felt ran through the thousands gathered only to a spectacle. The cheers grew faint, lacking vitality, and the stir of feet was a nerve-racked stir. Dink gazed up at the high benches, trying to forget the interval of seconds that must be endured. It did not seem possible that he was to go out before them all. It seemed rather that in a far-off consciousness he was the same loyal little shaver who had squirmed so often on the top line of the benches, clinging to his knees, biting his lips, and looking weakly on the ground.

"All ready—get out, boys!"

Dana came running back. Yale had won the toss and had chosen to kick off.

Some one pulled his sweater from him, struck him a stinging slap between the shoulders, and propelled him on the field.

"Yale this way!"

They formed in a circle, heads down, arms locked over one another's shoulders, disputing the same air; and Dana, the captain, who believed in a victory, spoke:

"Now, fellows, one word. It's up to us. Do you understand what that means? It's up to us to win, the way Yale has won in the past—and win we're going to, no matter how long it takes or what's against us. Now, get mad, every one of you. Run 'em right off their feet. That's all."

The shoulders under Stover's left him. He went hazily to the place, a little behind the rest, where he knew he should go, waiting while Brown poised the football, waiting while the orange-and-black jerseys indistinctly scattered before him to their formation, waiting for the whistle for which he had waited all his life to release him.

And for a third time his legs seemed to crumble, and the whole blurred scheme of stands and field to reel away from him, and his heart to be lying before him on the ground where he could lean over and pick it up.

Then like a pistol shot the whistle went throbbing through his brain. He sprang forward as if out of the shell of himself, keen, alert, filled with a savage longing.

Down the field a Princeton halfback had caught the ball and was squirming back. Then a sudden upheaval, and a mass was spread on the ground.

"Guess he gained about fifteen on that," he said to himself. "They'll kick right off."

Dana came running back to support him. Out of the sky like a monstrous bird something round, yellow, and squirming came floating toward him. He was forced to run back, misjudged it a little, reached out, half fumbled it, and recovered it with a plunging dive just as Cockerell landed upon him.

"Get you next time, Dink," said the voice of his old school captain in his ear.

Stover, struggling to his feet, looked him coolly in the eye.

"No, you won't, Garry, and you know it. The next time I'm going back ten yards."

"Well, boy, we'll see."

They shook hands with a grim smile, while the field straggled up. He was lined up, flanked by Dana and Dudley, bending over, waiting for the signal. Three times De Soto, trying out the Princeton line, sent Dana plunging against the right tackle, barely gaining the distance. A fourth attempt being stopped for a loss, Stover dropped back for a kick on the second down.

The ball came a little low, and with it the whole line seemed torn asunder and the field filled with the rush of converging bodies. To have kicked would have been fatal. He dropped quickly on the ball, covering it, under the shock of his opponents.

Again he was back, waiting for the trial that was coming. He forgot that he was a freshman—forgot everything but his own utter responsibility.

"You center men, hold that line!" he cried. "You give me a chance! Give me time!"

Then the ball was in his hands, and, still a little hurried, he sent it too high over the frantic leaping rush, hurled to the ground the instant after.

The exchange had netted Princeton twenty yards. A second time Bannerman lifted his punt, high, long, twisting and turning over itself in tricky spirals. It was a perfect kick, giving the ends exact time to cover it.

Stover, with arms outstretched, straining upward, cool as a Yankee, knew, from the rushing bodies he did not dare to look at, what was coming. The ball landed in his convulsive arms, and almost exactly with it Garry Cockerell's body shot into him and tumbled him clear off the ground, crashing down; but the ball was locked in his arms in one of those catches of which the marvel of the game is, not that they are not made oftener, but that they are made at all.

"Come on now, Yale," shouted Charlie De Soto's inflaming voice. "We've got to rip this line. Signal!"

Two masses on center, two futile straining, crushing attempts, and again he was called on to kick. The tackles he had received had steadied him, driving from his too imaginative mind all consideration but the direct present need.

He began to enjoy with a fierce delight this kicking in the very teeth of the frantic Princeton rushes, as he had stood on the beach waiting for great breakers to form above his head before diving through.

On the fourth exchange of kicks he stood on his own goal-line. The test had come at last. Dana, furious at being driven back without a Princeton rush, came to him wildly.

"Dink, you've got to make it good!"

"Take that long-legged Princeton tackle when he comes through," he said quietly. "Don't worry about me."

Luckily, they were over to the left side of the field. He chose his opening, and, kicking low, as Tompkins had coached him, had the joy of seeing the ball go flying over the ground and out of bounds at the forty-yard line.

The Princeton team, springing into position, at last opened its attack.

"Now we'll see," said Stover, chafing in the backfield.

Using apparently but one formation, a circular mass, which, when directly checked, began to revolve out toward end, always pushing ahead, always concealing the runner, the Princeton attack surely, deliberately, and confidently rolled down the field like a juggernaut.

From the forty-yard line to the thirty it came in two rushes, from the thirty to the twenty in three; and then suddenly some one was tricked, drawn in from the vital attack, and the runner, guarded by one interferer, swept past the unprotected end and set out for a touchdown.

Stover went forward to meet them like a shot, frantic to save the precious yards. How he did it he never quite knew, but somehow he managed to fling himself just in front of the interferer and go down with a death grip on one leg of the runner.

A cold sponge was being spattered over him, he was on his back fighting hard for his breath, when he again realized where he was. He tried to rise, remembering all at once.

"Did I stop him?"

"You bet you did."

Regan and Dudley had their arms about him, lifting him and walking him up and down.

"Get your breath back, old boy."

"I'm all right."

"Take your time; that Princeton duck hasn't come to yet!"

He perceived in the opposite group something prone on the ground, and the sight was like a tonic.

The ball lay inside the ten-yard line, within the sacred zone. In a moment, no longer eliminated, but close to the breathing mass, he was at the back of his own men, shrieking and imploring:

"Get the jump, Yale!"

"Throw them back, Yale!"

"Fight 'em back!"

"You've got to, Yale—you've got to!"

Then, again and again, the same perfected grinding surge of the complete machine: three yards, two yards, two yards, and he was underneath the last mass, desperately blocking off some one who held the vital ball, hoping against hope, blind with the struggle, saying to himself:

"It isn't a touchdown! It can't be! We've stopped them! It's Yale's ball!"

Some one was squirming down through the gradually lightening mass. A great weight went from his back, and suddenly he saw the face of the referee seeking the exact location of the ball.

"What is it?" he asked wildly.

"Touchdown."

Some one dragged him to his feet, and, unnoticing, he leaned against him, gazing at the ball that lay just over the goal-line, seeing with almost a bull-like rage the Princeton substitutes frantically capering up and down the line, hugging one another, agitating their blankets, turning somersaults.

"Line up, Yale," said the captain's unyielding voice, "this is only the beginning. We'll get 'em."

But Stover knew better. The burst of anger past, his head cleared. That Princeton team was going to score again, by the same process, playing on his weakness, exchanging punts, hoping to block one of his until within striking distance, and the size of the score would depend on how long he could stand it off.

"Goal," came the referee's verdict, and with it another roar from somewhere. He went up the field looking straight ahead, hearing, like a sound in a memory, a song of jubilation and the brassy accompaniment of a band.

Again the same story: ten, fifteen yards gained on every exchange of kicks, and a slow retrogression toward their own goal. Time and again they flung themselves against a stronger line, in a vain effort to win back the last yards. Once, in a plunge through center, he found an opening, and went plunging along for ten yards; but at the last the ball was Princeton's on the thirty-five-yard line, and a second irresistible march bore Yale back, fighting and frantic over the line for the second score.

Playing became an instinct with him. He no longer feared the soaring punts that came tumbling to him from the clouds. His arms closed around them like tentacles, and he was off for the meager yards he could gain before he went down with a crash. He no longer felt the shock of the desperate tackles he was called on to make, nor the stifling pressure above him when he flung himself under the serried legs of the mass.

He had but one duty—to be true to what he had promised Tompkins: not to fumble, not to miss a tackle, to get each punt off clean.

All at once, as he was setting in position, a body rushed in, seizing the ball.

"Time!"

The first half was over, and the score was: Princeton, 18; Yale, 0.

Then all at once he felt his weariness. He went slowly, grimly with the rest back to the dressing-room. A group of urchins clustering to a tree shrieked at them:

"O you Yaleses!"

He heard that, and that was all he heard. A sort of rebellion was in him. He had done all that he could do, and now they would haul him over the coals, thinking that was what he needed.

"Oh, I know what'll be said," he thought grimly. "We'll be told we can win out in the second, and all that rot."

Then he was in the hands of the rubbers, having his wet, clinging suit stripped from him, being rubbed and massaged. He did not want to look at his comrades, least of all Dana. He only wanted to get back, to have it over with.

"Yale, I want you to listen to me."

He looked up. In the center stood Tompkins, preternaturally grave, trembling a little with nervous, uncontrollable twitches of his body.

"You're up against a great Princeton team—the greatest I remember. You can't win. You never had a chance to win. But, Yale, you're going to do something to make us proud of you. You're going to hold that score where it is! Do you hear me? All you've got left is your nerve and the chance to show that you can die game. That's all you're going to do; but, by heaven, you're going to do that! You're going to die game, Yale! Every mother's son of you! And when the game's over we're going to be prouder of your second half than the whole blooming Princeton bunch over their first. There's your chance. Make us rise up and yell for you. Will you, Yale?"

He passed from man to man, advising, exhorting, or storming, until he came to Stover.

"Dink," he said, putting out his hand and changing his tone suddenly, "I haven't a word to say to you. Play the game as you've been doing—only play it out."

Stover felt a sudden rush of shame; all the fatigue left him as if by magic.

"If Charlie'll only give me a few chances at the center. I know I could gain there," he said eagerly.

"You'll get a chance later on, perhaps, but you've quite enough to do now."

The second view of the arena was clear to him, even to insignificant details. He thought the cheer leaders, laboring muscularly with their long megaphones, strangely out of place—especially a short, fat little fellow in a white voluminous sweater. He saw in the crowd a face or two that he recognized—Bob Story in a group of pretty girls, all superhumanly glum and cast down. Then he had shed his sweater and was out on the field, back under the goal-posts, ready for the bruising second half to begin.

"All ready, Yale!"

"All ready."

Again the whistle and the rush of bodies. Dana caught the ball, and, shifting and dodging, shaking off the first tacklers, carried it back twenty yards. Two short, jamming plunges by Dudley, through Regan, who alone was outplaying his man, yielded first down. Then an attempt at Cockerell's end brought a loss and the inevitable kick.

Instead of a return punt, the Princeton eleven prepared to rush the ball.

"Why the deuce do they do that?" he thought, biting his fingers nervously.

Opening up their play, Princeton swept out toward Bangs's end, forcing it back for four yards, and immediately made first down with a long, sweeping lunge at the other end.

Suddenly Stover, in the backfield, watching like a cat, started forward with a cry. Far off to one side, a Princeton back, unperceived, was bending down, pretending to be fastening one of his shoe-laces.

"Look out—look out to the left!"

His cry came too late. The Princeton quarter made a long toss straight across, twenty yards, to the loitering half, who caught it and started down field clear of the line of scrimmage.

A Princeton forward tried to intercept him, but Stover flung him aside, and, without waiting, went forward at top speed to meet the man who came without flinching to his tackle. It was almost head on, and the shock, which left Stover stunned, instinctively clinging to his man, sent the ball free, where Dana pounced upon it.

"Holy Mike, what a tackle!" said Regan's voice. "Any bones broken?"

"Of course not," he said gruffly.

Some one insisted on sponging his face, much to his disgust.

"How's the other fellow?" he said grimly.

"He's a tough nut; he's up, too!"

"He must be."

The recovery of the ball gave them a short respite, but it served also to enrage the other line, which rose up and absolutely smothered the next plays. Again his kick seemed to graze the outstretched fingers of the Princeton forwards, and he laughed a strange laugh which he remembered long after.

This time the punting duel was resumed until, well within Yale territory, Cockerell looked around and gave the signal for attack.

"Now, Yale, stop it, stop it!" Dink said, talking to himself.

But there was no stopping that attack. Powerless, not daring to approach, he saw the blue line bend back again and again, and the steady, machine-like rolling up of the orange and black. Over the twenty-five-yard line it came, and on past the twenty.

"Oh, Yale, will you let 'em score again?" De Soto was shrieking.

"You're on your ten-yard line, Yale."

"Hold them!"

"Hold them!"

Two yards at a time, they were rolled back with a mathematical, unfeeling precision.

"Third down; two yards to go!"

"Yale, stop it!"

"Yale!"

And stop it they did, by a bare six inches. Behind the goal-line, Charlie De Soto came up, as he stood measuring his distance for a kick.

"How are you, Dink? Want a bit of a rest—sponge-off?"

"Rest be hanged!" he said fiercely. "Come on with that ball."

Suddenly, instead of kicking low and off to the right, he sent the ball straight down the field with every ounce of strength he could put in it. The punt, the best he had made, catching the back by surprise, went over his head, rolling up the field before he could recover it. A great roar went up from the Yale stands, fired by the spirit of resistance.

Thereafter it had all a grim sameness, except, in a strange way, it seemed to him that nothing that had gone before counted—that everything they were fighting for was to keep their goal-line inviolate. Nothing new seemed to happen. When he went fiercely into a mÊlÉe, finding his man somehow, or felt the rush of bodies about him as he managed each time to get clear his punt, he had the same feeling:

"Why, I've done this before."

A dozen times they stopped the Princeton advance, sometimes far away and sometimes near, once within the five-yard line. Every moment, now, some one cried wearily:

"What's the time?"

The gray of November twilights, the haze that settles over the struggles of the gridiron like the smoke of a battle-field, began to close in. And then a sudden fumble, a blocked kick, and by a swift turn of luck it was Yale's ball for the first time in Princeton's territory. One or two subs came rushing in eagerly from the side lines. Every one was talking at once:

"What's the time?"

"Five minutes more."

"Get together, Yale!"

"Show 'em how!"

"Ram it through them!"

"Here's our chance!"

Stover, beside himself, ran up to De Soto and flung his arms about his neck, whispering in his ear:

"Give me a chance—you must give me a chance! Send me through Regan!"

He got his signal, and went into the breach with every nerve set, fighting his way behind the great bulk of Regan for a good eight yards. A second time he was called on, and broke the line for another first down.

Regan was transformed. All his calm had gone. He loomed in the line like a Colossus, flinging out his arms, shouting:

"We're rotten, are we? Carry it right down the field, boys!"

Every one caught the infection. De Soto, with his hand to his mouth, was shouting hoarsely, through the bedlam of cheers, his gleeful slogan:

"We don't want to live forever, boys! What do we care? We've got to face Yale after this. Never mind your necks. We've got the doctors! A little more murder, now! Shove that ball down that field, Yale! Send them back on stretchers! Nineteen—eight—six—four—Ha-a-ard!"

Again and again Stover was called on, and again and again, with his whole team behind him or Regan's great arm about him, struggling to keep his feet, crawling on his knees, fighting for every last inch, he carried the ball down the field twenty, thirty yards on.

He forgot where he was, standing there with blazing eyes and colorless face. He forgot that he was only the freshman, as he had that night in the wrestling bout. He gave orders, shouted advice, spurred them on. He felt no weariness; nothing could tire him. His chance had come at last. He went into the line each time blubbering, laughing with the fierce joy of it, shouting to himself:

"I'm the weak spot, am I? I'll show them!"

And the certainty of it all overwhelmed him. Nothing could stop him now. He knew it. He was going to score. He was going to cross that line only fifteen yards away.

"Give me that ball again!" he cried to De Soto.

Then something seemed to go wrong. De Soto and Dudley were shrieking out something, protesting wildly.

"What's wrong?" he cried.

"They're calling time on us!"

"No, no, it's not possible! It's not time!"

He turned hysterically, beseechingly, catching hold of the referee's arm, not knowing what he did.

"Mr. Referee, it isn't time. Mr. Referee—"

"Game's over," said Captain Dana's still voice. "Get together, Yale. Cheer for Princeton now. Make it a good one!"

But no one heard them in the uproar that suddenly went up. Nature could not hold out; the disappointment had been too severe. Stover stood with his arms on Regan's shoulders, and together they bowed their heads and went choking through the crowd. Others rushed around him—he thought he heard Tompkins saying something. He seemed lost in the crowd that stared at him, struggling to hold back his grief. Only one figure stood out distinctly—the figure of a white-haired man, who took off his hat to him as he went through the barrier, and shouted something unintelligible—a strangely excited white-haired man.

All the way back to the gymnasium, through the jubilant street, Dink sat staring out unseeing, his eyes blurred, a great lump in his throat, possessed by a fatigue such as he had never known before. No one spoke. Through his own brain ceaselessly the score, strangely jumbled, went its tiring way:

"Eighteen to nothing—to nothing! Eighteen to six—it should have been eighteen to six. Eighteen to nothing. It's awful—awful! If I only could punt!"

His ideal, his dream of a Yale team, had always been of victory, not like this, to go down powerless, swept aside, routed—to such a defeat!

Then he shut his eyes, fighting over again those last desperate rushes against defeat, against hope, against time, unable to believe it was over.

"How many times did I take that ball?" he thought wearily. "Was it seven or eight? If I'd only got free that last time—kept my feet!"

He remembered flashes of that last frenzy—the face of a Princeton rusher who reached for him and missed, the teeth savage as a wolf's and the strained mouth. He saw again Regan turning around to pull him through, Regan, the brute, raging like a fury. He remembered the quick, strange white looks that Charlie De Soto had given him, wondering each time if he had the strength to go on. Why had they stopped them? They had a right to that last rally!

"Eighteen to nothing. Poor Dana—I wonder what he'll do?"

He remembered, in a far-off way, tales he had heard of other captains, disgraced by defeat, breaking down, leaving college, disappearing. He dreaded the moment when they should break silence, when the awful thing must be talked over, there in the gymnasium, feeling acutely all the misery and ache Dana must be feeling.

"All right there, Stover? Let yourself go, if you want to."

The voice was Tompkins', who was looking up at him anxiously, the gymnasium at his back.

"All right," he said gruffly, raising himself with an effort and half slipping to the ground.

"Sure? How's Dudley?"

He realized in a curious way that others, too, had gone through the game. Then Regan's arm was around him. He did not put it from him, grateful for any support in his weakness. Together they went through the crowd of ragamuffins staring open-mouthed at a defeated team.

"What's the matter with Dudley?"

"Played through all the last with a couple of broken ribs."

"Dudley?"

"Yes. Go as slow as you want, old bantam."

"If we only could have had another minute, Tom—" He stopped, unable to go on, shaking his head.

"I know, I know."

"It was tough."

"Darned tough."

"I thought we were going to do it."

"Now, you shut up, young rooster. Don't think of it any more. You played like a fiend. We're proud of you."

"Poor Dana!"

Upstairs a couple of rubbers took charge of him, stripping him and rubbing him rigorously. Two or three coaches came up to him, gripping him with silent grips, patting him on the back. The cold bite of the shower brought back some of his vitality, and he dressed mechanically with the squad, who had nothing to say to one another.

"Yale, I want to talk to you boys a moment."

He looked up. In the center of the room was Rivers, coach of coaches, around whom the traditions of football had been formed. Stover looked at him dully, wondering how he could stand there filled with such energy.

"Now, boys, the game's over. We've lost. It's our turn; we've got to stand it. One thing I want you to remember when you go out of here. Yale teams take their medicine!"

His voice rose to a nervous staccato, and the sharp, cold eye seemed to look into every man, just as at school the Doctor used to awe them.

"Do you understand? Yale teams take their medicine! No talking, no reasoning, no explanations, no excuses, and no criticism! The thing's over and done. We'll have a dinner to-night, and we'll start in on next year; and next year nothing under the sun's going to stop us! Go out; take off your hats! A great Princeton team licked you—licked you well! That's all. You deserved to score. You didn't. Hard luck. But those who saw you try for it won't forget it! We're proud of that second half! No talk, now, about what might have happened; no talk about what you're going to do. Shut up! Remember—grin and take your medicine."

"Mr. Rivers, I'd like to say a few words."

Stover, with almost a feeling of horror, saw Dana step forward quietly, purse his lips, look about openly, and say:

"Mr. Rivers, I understand what you mean, and what's underneath it all, and I thank you for it. At the same time, it's up to me to take the blame, and I'm not going to dodge it. I've been a poor captain. I thought I knew more than you did, and I didn't. I've made one fool blunder after another. But I did it honestly. Well, that doesn't matter—let that go. I say this because it's right, too, I should take my medicine, and because I don't want next year's captain to botch the job the way I've done. And now, just a word to you men. You've done everything I asked you to do, and kept your mouths shut, no matter what you thought of it. You've been loyal, and you'll be loyal, and there'll be no excuses outside. But I want you men to know that I'll remember it, and I want to thank you. That's all."

Instantly there was a buzz of voices, and one clear note dominating it—Regan's voice, stirred beyond thought of self:

"Boys, we're going to give that captain a cheer. Are you ready? Hip—hip!"

Somehow the cry that went up took from Dink all the sting of defeat. He went out, head erect, back to meet his college, no longer shrinking from the ordeal, proud of his captain, proud of his coach, and proud of a lesson he had learned bigger than a victory.