Tommy Wormsey was a meek little boy with an ugly face, mostly covered with court-plaster, and he would rather fall on a football than eat.

When he came trotting out upon the field, the college along the side lines always smiled at the way he tipped his head to one side with his eyes on the ground, as though he was ashamed of himself and of his funny little bumpy body, stuck into a torn suit and stockings which weren't mates and had holes in them. When he skimmed over the ground and dived through the air and brought down a two-hundred-and-something-pound guard, with his knotty little arms barely reaching about the big thighs, it looked very absurd, and when he jumped up again, yelling "3—9—64" in his shrill earnest voice, and ran sniffling back to his place, with his sorrowful face seeming to say, "I know I oughtn't to have let him slide so far, but please don't scold me this time," the crowd laughed uproariously, which hurt his feelings.

But he paid very little attention to anything except the scrub captain's orders and the admonitions of the coachers, to whom he said, "Yes, sir," and "I'll try it that way, sir." He was afraid of them, and looked down at his torn stockings when they spoke to him. Those of the crowd along the ropes who knew everything, as well as the other spectators who only knew a few things, said that Freshman Wormsey had more sand and football instinct than any man on the field. But they did not know what a coward he was at heart.

More than once when a 'varsity guard had broken through and jumped on him, and the scrub halves had fallen on him from the other direction to keep him from being shoved back, and the other 'varsity guard and the centre, who were not light, had thrown themselves upon these, and one of the ends had swung round and jumped on the top of the pile on general principles, Wormsey, at the bottom, said "ouch!" under his breath, if he had any. He weighed 137 pounds stripped.

At night, after the trick practice with checkers at the Athletic Club, he always hurried back to his room, and stacked the pillows and sofa cushions up in the corner of the room, with the black one in the centre, and taking his place on one knee in the opposite corner, socked the ball into the pile. Every time he missed the black one in the centre he called himself names.

Sometimes when he did this he became excited, and sprang forward and knocked down chairs and tables and things. But he paid no attention to that. He only bit his nails and fell to passing again, and kept it up sometimes until eleven o'clock, which was a whole hour later than he had any business to be out of bed.

But there were days when it became tiresome, this constant pound, pound, pound, fall down, get up and pound again, and once in a while there came dark times when he felt that it all didn't pay, which was very unpatriotic thinking; and the next day, when the crowd yelled, "Well tackled, Wormsey!" he wondered how he could have been such a mucker as to think it. But it was rather hard work for a seventeen-year-old boy whose bones weren't knit to play two thirty-minute halves every day as hard as they were doing now, and then practise place kicks and catching punts afterward, besides keeping hold of all the signals and systems and stuff that were drummed into his little head every evening, along with the rest of the second eleven, in the room across the hall from the one where the 'varsity were learning their systems and signals and tricks.

It's all well enough for them. They have their 'varsity sweaters with the big P on them, and have their pictures printed in the papers, and are pointed out and praised and petted and fondled and fussed over like blue-ribboned hunters at the horse show; but for the poor, faithful, unappreciated scrub it's a different story. There's none of the glory, and all work and grind and strain at the top notch of capacity. And nothing at the end of it but thanks and the consciousness of doing one's duty by the college. So about this time, when they were approaching that critical stage in training which is like getting one's second wind in a cross-country run, he used to have some terrible times with himself. If anyone knew what muckerishly cowardly thoughts he had, he was afraid they'd fire him from college.

He was ashamed of himself, but he couldn't help it. He was getting sick of training, sick of getting up at seven o'clock in the morning and hurrying down to breakfast while the alarm clocks were going off in East and West colleges, and the frost was still on the grass. Every day, as soon as the morning recitations were over, no matter what kind of weather, he must jump into the 'bus at the corner of Dickinson Hall, drive down to the grounds, undress and dress again, and hobble out upon the field, and get his poor little body bumped and pounded and kicked and trampled on, and the rest of his personality yelled at by the captain, and scolded by the coachers, who stand alongside in nicely creased trousers, with canes in their hands, and call out, "Line up more quickly, scrub," which is hard to do when one's lungs are breathless, especially when one is a quarter-back, and needs a certain amount of wind to scream out the signals in a loud enough tone to keep from being sworn at. And that's the way they make football stuff.

To-day he let Hartshorn drag him five yards and missed one tackle outright, and he was discouraged. After the line-up, while they were practising him at catching punts, he seemed to have such bad luck holding the ball; and once, in trying for a wild one when he had run over by the cinder track, grunting and straining, and had put up his little arms, only to feel the ball bounce off his chest, he gnashed his teeth so loud and said "Oh, dear!" in such a plaintive whimper, like a child waking from a bad dream, that two pipe-smoking seniors, who were trooping out in the rear of the crowd, smiled audibly and said something about him. He could not hear what it was. He only heard them laugh, and it nearly broke his heart. But all that he could do was to call them things under his breath, and run sniffling back to his place again.

The trouble with the boy was he had worked so hard and worried so much that he was over-trained, and so, naturally, there was not much ginger left in him. And the reason the keen-eyed trainer did not see this and lay him off for a few days was that Wormsey thought it his duty to make up in nerve what he lacked in ginger; and he was too bashful to tell anyone how difficult it was to make himself play hard, and how that he no longer felt springy when he jumped out of bed in the morning, and that he slept all the afternoon after practice, instead of studying, as all football men should.

He went into the field-house the next day, unbuttoning his coat and hating football. He hated the ill-smelling dressing-room. He was sick of training, sick of rare beef and Bass's ale and bandages and rub-downs, and the captain's admonitions and the coacher's scoldings. He thought he would give anything not to be obliged to play that day. He was sore all over, and his ear would be torn open again, and he didn't like having the blood trickle down his neck; it felt so sticky.

It was a hot, lazy, Indian-summer day; and his muscles felt exhausted. He felt as much like exerting them as one feels like studying in spring term directly after dinner, when the seniors are singing on the steps. As he came hobbling out of the field-house he laced his little jacket, and made up his mind that after the practice he would tell the captain that he could not spare the time from his studies to play football, patriotism or no patriotism. This was not necessary, because he was tumbled over in the opening play, and remained upon the ground even after the captain cried "Line up quickly," with his ugly little face doubled up in a knot.

"There goes another back," said the scrub captain, pettishly, snapping his fingers. "Rice, you play quarter; and Richardson, you come play half in Rice's place."

Another sub and William, the negro rubber, picked Wormsey up, the doctor following behind, and turning back to see the play, which had already begun again, for he wanted to see how the new system was working.

As they approached the field-house he saw the two fellows who had laughed at him the day before standing apart down at the end of the field. One of them was tapping his pipe against the heel of his shoe, and saying, "I didn't know that that little devil could be hurt. He always—" But just then the 'varsity full-back made a long "twister" punt, and he interrupted himself with an exclamation about that. It sounded like a reproach to Wormsey, and he began to feel that he had somehow gotten hurt with malice aforethought. And this made him so ashamed that when they reached the field-house the trainer, sponging his face, said, encouragingly: "That's all right, me boy. Don't feel badly. You'll be out again in a couple of weeks. I've been meaning to lay you off for a while, anyway. I'll tell you for why; you're a little stale, Tommy, a little stale."

Every day now Wormsey trudged down to the field on crutches—they had to be sawed off at the bottom first—and watched the practice from a pile of blankets on the side-lines. It was a fine thing, he told himself, to watch the others do all the work while he sat still with four 'varsity sweaters tied about his neck. This was a great snap; he was still on the scrub, was at the training table, and would have his picture taken, would go to the Thanksgiving game free, and yet did not have to get pounded and pummelled.

He was made a good deal of now. The coachers patted him on the back and said "My boy" to him. He had a lot of sympathetic adulation from admiring classmates. Upper-classmen whom he had never seen before, but who somehow knew him, came up and said, "How's the leg, Tommy?" At which he hung his head and sniffled, and said, "Getting along pretty well, thank you," and then grinned, because he didn't know whether they were guying him or not.

In a few days he could walk with a cane, and he put on his football clothes because they were more comfortable. He limped after the teams up and down the field, and squatted down to see how the 'varsity made their openings, and he learned how to tell, by the expression of his legs, on which side the quarter was going to pass the ball, which nobody else in the world could tell. Also, by carelessly daily sauntering into the cage during the preliminary practising, with a guileless smile on his face, he found out the 'varsity signals, which he had no business to find out.

Sometimes he became very much excited during the scrimmages, and once, when Dandridge, the wriggly 'varsity half-back, kept on squirming and gaining after he had been twice downed, Wormsey screamed, as he hopped up and down on one foot, "Oh, grab—grab him! Please grab him! Oh! oh!" so loud that all the field heard it and laughed at him. Then he realized what a fool he had made of himself and kicked himself with his good leg, and limped slowly up the field to study the next play.

But conceited as it was, he really thought that he would have stopped that runner if he had been there. He imagined just how it would feel to have once more the thrill of a clean tackle, sailing through the air, and locking his arms tight, and squeezing hard, and both rolling over and over, while the crowd yelled in the distance. And he thought it would be fine to get out there again, and run his hands through his hair, and call out the signals, and plunge the ball home into the back's stomach, and then pitch forward, and push and strain and sweat and fall down and get up again. He had a firm healthy skin now, and had gone up to the tremendous weight of 138½, which was vulgar obesity.

One windy sunny day when Wormsey was limping friskily up and down the field with his hair blowing about, Stump, the 'varsity quarter, instead of springing up to his place after one of the tandem plays, as he should have done, lay still on the ground, while the college held its breath.

"It's Stump! it's Stump!" they whispered to one another with scared faces. Then they no longer held their breaths. They moaned, and stamped their heels into the frosty ground, and gazed out sadly toward the dear, frowzy head of the man who was being carried to the field-house.

"It's only a wrench," said the doctor. "He'll be out in a few days."

The captain's mouth grew a little more stern, but he only snapped his fingers, and said: "Bristol! No, he's laid off too. Wait a moment, doctor," he called out. "Is Wormsey well enough to play?"

"Wormsey?" said Tommy to himself in little gasps. "Why, I'm Wormsey. What! play with the 'varsity!"

And the doctor's voice came back through the wind, "No, I think not."

"Oh, yes, I am!" yelled the shrill voice, which was heard all up and down both sides of the field, and reached to the Athletic Club; and throwing away his cane, and bending over to let some one pull off two sweaters, Wormsey ran sniffling out on the field.

"See, Jack," he called to the trainer. "I don't limp a bit." But he kept his face turned to one side so that the trainer couldn't see it twitch.

"Come here and I'll give you the signals, Wormsey," said the captain.

"I know them already," said Wormsey, looking ashamed of himself; and he took his place on one knee behind the centre who had so often tumbled upon him.

Then he jumped in and showed everybody what he had been learning during the past ten days. He was in perfect condition now, except for the ankle, which he forgot about. He was quite accurate in his quick method of passing, and he tackled ravenously. Fellows like Wormsey never get soft. "Just watch that boy follow the ball," exclaimed one of the coachers to another. "Too bad he's so light," said the other.

Once when the scrub had the ball they gave the signal for a trick which they had been saving up as a surprise for the 'varsity. Tommy knew that signal. He dashed through the line between tackle and end, he caught the long pass on the fly, and having plenty of wind and a clear field, he made a touch-down unassisted, which made the crowd yell and applaud. Of course it was a great fluke, and Wormsey knew that, but all the same, while the crowd gave a cheer for Tommy Wormsey, and a three-times-three for "the little devil," he grinned for a moment, and puckered up his eyes. But it is not the crowd that chooses the team.

That evening at dinner all the college was talking about the great tear the little freshman had made, and down at the Athletic Club Wormsey overheard one of the coachers say: "When Stump comes out again, it'll make him work to see the freshman putting up a game like that. But of course he can't keep it up. The pace is too fast."

Wormsey bit his nails and had his own opinion about that. But whatever it might have been was never learned, because the next day he was taken off the field for the season. His bad ankle was sprained in the first half, which served him right for disobeying the doctor's order. But he should not have cared. Didn't he play one whole day on the 'varsity?