ewn plain,
And he uttered the name of his love, in vain,
As he stumbled over the crest;
He fought with the fierceness of dark despair
And drove the cowering foe to his lair--
Ere he crept to his Father's breast.

VICTORY

WALTER F. WHITE

"Now, Ted, just forget they're after you and remember you've got ten men
out there with you. Fight 'em and fight 'em hard, but hold that
man-eating temper of yours. If you don't, we're lost."

Dawson, varsity coach of Bliss University, affectionately known and
revered by two thousand undergraduates as "Skipper Bill" sat in the
locker room with his arm around Ted Robertson's shoulders, star halfback
and punter of the varsity eleven. Around them moved the other varsity
players, substitutes, second string men, trainers and rubbers.

In the stands overhead every seat was taken, for these were the last few
minutes before the big game of the year--the annual battle with Sloan
College. On one side the sober blues and grays and blacks formed a
background for huge yellow chrysanthemums and light blue ribbons, the
Bliss colors, and the same background in the stands opposite set off the
crimson of Sloan College.

The rival college bands of the two most important colored universities
of the United States blared almost unheeded in the din, while agile
cheerleaders clad in white from head to foot performed gymnastics in
leading rolling volumes of cheers. All were in that tense,
nerve-gripping mood prior to that game in which victory or defeat meant
success or failure of the season's efforts of the teams of young giants
that represented the two schools.

In the locker room, however, a different scene was being enacted. Every
man was acting according to his own temperament and each in his own way
attempted to hide the anxious thrill that every real football player
feels before "the big game."

Jimmy Murray, quarterback and thrower of forward passes _par
excellence_, nervously tied and untied his shoe laces a dozen times;
"Tiny" Marshall, left tackle, who weighed two hundred and ten pounds,
tried to whistle nonchalantly and failed miserably, while "Bull" Bascom,
fullback, the only calm man in the room, was carefully adjusting his
shoulder pads. Around them hovered the odor of arnica and liniment mixed
with the familiar tang of perspiration which has dried in woolen
jerseys--perspiration that marked many a long and wearisome hour of
training and perfection of the