all on
that ball?"

"It was on the cinders," answered Paul, in evident surprise. Mills made
a motion of disgust, of tragic impatience.

"I don't care," he cried, "if it was on broken glass! You've got orders
to fall on the ball. Now bring it over here, put it down
and--_fall_--_on_--_it_!"

Neil watched his chum apprehensively. Knowing well Paul's impatience
under discipline, he feared that the latter would give way to anger and
mutiny on the spot. But Paul did as directed, though with bad grace, and
contented himself with muttered words as he threw the pigskin to a
waiting end and went back to his place.

Soon afterward they were called away for a ten-minute line-up. Paul,
still smarting under what in his own mind he termed a cruel indignity,
played poorly, and ere the ten minutes was half up was relegated to the
benches, his place at right half being taken by Kirk. The second managed
to hold the varsity down to one score that day, and might have taken the
ball over itself had not Pearse fumbled on the varsity's three yards. As
it was, they were given a hearty cheer by the watchers when time was
called, and they trotted to the bucket to be sponged off. Then those who
had not already been in the line-up were given the gridiron, and the
varsity and second were sent for a trot four times around the field, the
watchful eye of "Baldy" Simson, Erskine's veteran trainer, keeping them
under surveillance until they had completed their task and had trailed
out the gate toward the locker-house, baths, and rub-downs.

CHAPTER VIII

THE KIDNAPING

Fanwell Livingston was curled in the window-seat in his front room, his
book close to the bleared pane, striving to find light enough by which
to study. Outside it was raining in a weary, desultory way, and the
heavens were leaden-hued. Livingston's quarters were on the front of
that big lemon-yellow house at the corner of Oak and King Streets, about
equidistant from campus and field. The outlook to-day was far from
inspiriting. When he raised his eyes from the pages before him he saw an
empty road running with water; beyond that a bare, weed-grown, sodden
field that stretched westward to the unattractive backs of the one-and
two-storied shops on Main Street. Livingston's room wasn't in any sense
central, but he liked it because it was quiet, because aside from the
family he had the house to himself, and because Mrs. Saunders, his
landlady, was goodness itself and administere