Page:The fighting scrub, (IA fightingscrub00barb).pdf/274

 A silver half-dollar had spun into the sunlight and dropped to the turf. Captains and officials were back on the side-lines. The raucous blaring of the Wolcott Student Band was stilled, the cheering had momentarily hushed and the throng that filled every seat in the stand and overflowed along the ropes drew coats and wraps higher, resettled in their places and braced themselves for the fray. Then eleven brown-stockinged youths ran out from one side of the barred battlefield and eleven blue-stockinged youths from the other, and the cheers began again and the Wolcott bass-drummer thumped mightily and several thousand persons, many of them normally unemotional, experienced a sudden shortness of breath accompanied by a fluttery sensation of the heart. And at about that moment, on the east side of the field, a man in a black derby confided to a man in a chauffeur's livery that, "That's the captain of our side, Henry. Lothrop his name is. He's to kick the ball away."

"With them long legs, and the powerful looks of him," responded his companion with relish, "I'm thinkin' them other laddies'll be chasin' it back to the hills yonder!"

That no such performance as that was contemplated or desirable was being explained when the ball sailed up and away and the informant relapsed into silence. Somewhere at the north end of the field a player caught the pigskin, tucked it against him and went down before he had taken two strides. The Wyndham cheers burst forth, high and sharp. Wolcott tried the Wynd