remarks; and at ten o'clock went back
to Walton and bed, only to lie awake until long after the town-clock
had struck midnight, excited and happy.

Had you been at Erskine at any time during the following two weeks and
had managed to get behind the fence, you would have witnessed a very
busy scene. Day after day the varsity and the second fought like the
bitterest enemies; day after day the little army of coaches shouted and
fumed, pleaded and scolded; and day after day a youth on crutches
followed the struggling, panting lines, instructing and criticizing, and
happier than he had been at any time in his memory.

For the "antidote," as they had come to call it, had been tried and had
vindicated its inventor's faith in it. Every afternoon the second team
hammered the varsity line with the tackle-tandem, and almost every time
the varsity stopped it and piled it up in confusion. The call for
volunteers for the thankless position at the front of the little tandem
of two had resulted just as Sydney had predicted. Every candidate for
varsity honors had begged for it, and some half dozen or more had been
tried. But in the end the choice had narrowed down to Neil, Paul,
Gillam, and Mason, and these it was that day after day bore the brunt of
the attack, emerging from each pile-up beaten, breathless, scarred, but
happy and triumphant. Two weeks is short time in which to teach a new
play, but Mills and the others went bravely and confidently to work, and
it seemed that success was to justify the attempt; for three days
before the Robinson game the varsity had at last attained perfection in
the new play, and the coaches dared at last to hope for victory.

But meanwhile other things, pleasant and unpleasant, had happened, and
we must return to the day which had witnessed the inception of Sydney
Burr's "antidote."

CHAPTER XVI

ROBINSON SENDS A PROTEST

When Sydney left Mills that morning he trundled himself along Elm Street
to Neil's lodgings in the hope of finding that youth and telling him of
his good fortune. But the windows of the first floor front study were
wide open, the curtains were hanging out over the sills, and from within
came the sound of the broom and clouds of dust. Sydney turned his
tricycle about in disappointment and retraced his path, through Elm
Lane, by the court-house with its tall white pillars and green shutters,
across Washington Street, the wheels of his vehicle rustling through the
drifts of