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LEFT TACKLE THAYER

CHAPTER I

A NEW BOY AND AN OLD ONE

A boy in a blue serge suit sat on the second tier of seats of an
otherwise empty grand-stand and, with his straw hat pulled well over his
eyes, watched the progress of a horse-drawn mower about a field. The
horse was a big, well-fed chestnut, and as he walked slowly along he
bobbed his head rhythmically. In the seat of the mower perched a thin
little man in a pair of blue overalls and a shirt which had also been
blue at one time, but which was now faded almost white. A broad-brimmed
straw hat of the sort affected by farmers, protected his head from the
noonday sun. Between the overalls and the rusty brogans on his feet
several inches of bare ankle intervened, and, as he paraded slowly
around the field, almost the only sign of life he showed was when he
occasionally stooped to brush a mosquito from these exposed portions of
his anatomy. The horse, too, wore brogans, big round leather shoes which
strapped over his hoofs and protected the turf, and, having never before
seen a horse in leather boots, the boy on the grand-stand had been for
a while mildly interested. But the novelty had palled some time ago, and
now, leaning forward with his sun-browned hands clasped loosely between
his knees, he continued to watch the mower merely because it was the
only object in sight that was not motionless, if one excepts the white
clouds moving slowly across a blue September sky.

Now and then the clouds seemed to shadow the good-looking, tanned face
of the youth, producing a troubled, sombre expression. The truth is that
Master Clinton Boyd Thayer was lonesome and, although he would have
denied it vigorously, a little bit homesick. (At sixteen one may be
homesick even though one scoffs at the notion.) Clinton had left his
home at Cedar Run, Virginia, the evening before, had changed into a
sleeper at Washington just before midnight, and reached New York very
early this morning. From there, although he had until five in the
afternoon to reach Brimfield Academy, he had departed after a breakfast
eaten in the Terminal and had arrived at Brimfield at a little before
nine. An hour had sufficed him to register and unpack his bag and trunk
in the room assigned to him in Torrence Hall. Since that time--and it
was now almost twelve o'clock--he had wandered about the school. He had
peeped into the other dormitories and the recitation building, had
explore