ter-backs and half-backs on either side ran and got round the
scrimmages; and when at last they were collared, took to ending up with
an expiring drop-kick, which sent the ball far in the direction of the
coveted goals.

Nothing could have happened worse for Saint Dominic's, for the strain
fell upon them just at their weakest point. Stansfield groaned as he
saw chance after chance missed behind his scrimmages. Young Forrester
played pluckily and hard at quarter-back, and shirked nothing; but he
could not kick, and his short runs were consequently of little use.
Callonby, of course, did good work, but Loman, the half-back, was
woefully unsteady.

"What a jackass I was to put the fellow there!" said Stansfield to
himself.

And yet Loman, as a rule, was a good player, with plenty of dash and not
a little courage. It was odd that to-day he should be showing such
specially bad form.

There goes the ball again, clean over the forwards' heads, straight for
him! He is going to catch it and run! No; he is not! He is going to
take a flying kick! No, he is not; he is going to make his mark! No,
he is not; he is going to dribble it through! Now if there is one thing
fatal to football it is indecision. If you wobble about, so to speak,
between half a dozen opinions, you may just as well sit down on the
ground where you are and let the ball go to Jericho. Loman gets
flurried completely, and ends by giving the ball a miserable side-kick
into touch--to the extreme horror of everybody and the unmitigated
disgust of the peppery Stansfield.

Yet had the captain and his men known the cause of all this--had they
been aware that that flash, half-tipsy cad of a fellow who, with half a
dozen of his "pals," was watching the match with a critical air, there
at the ropes was the landlord of the Cockchafer himself, the holder of
Loman's "little bill" for 30 pounds, they would perhaps have understood
and forgiven their comrade's clumsiness. But they did not.

Whatever had brought Cripps there? A thousand possibilities flashed
through Loman's mind as he caught sight of his unwelcome acquaintance in
the middle of the match. Was he come to make a row about his money
before all the school? or had anything fresh turned up, or what? And
why on earth did he bring those other cads with him, all of whom Loman
recognised as pot-house celebrities of his own acquaintance? No wonder
if the boy lost his head and became flurried!

He felt