nd Steve was very proud of his pupils' work on that occasion. It
was held one Saturday afternoon and everyone attended, including even
"Josh," more formally known as Mr. Joshua Fernald, the principal. There
was fancy diving and swimming, a short game of water polo and all kinds
of races, beside which Steve showed some six or eight different strokes,
swam the length of the tank under water and performed other quite
startling feats to the delight of his audience. Mr. Fernald shook hands
with him afterwards and said several very nice things. But all this is
far beyond my story, and I am only telling of it because it led the
following autumn to the installation of a swimming instructor at
Brimfield and the addition of swimming to the list of "required studies"
for the boys of the four lower forms. The instructor came to the school
twice a week and put in two very busy hours there. So you see that
fracas between Steve and Eric Sawyer that evening strangely enough
resulted in important consequences and, since a knowledge of swimming is
a most useful one, worked for good.

But there were other consequences of that fracas as well, and I must get
back to those. Larchville Academy followed Miter Hill on Brimfield's
schedule and administered the first defeat of the season to the
Maroon-and-Grey. It wasn't so much that Brimfield played poorly as that
Larchville played unusually well. The visitors presented an aggregation
of big, well-trained youths who, most of them having been on their team
the previous year, were far in advance of Brimfield in the matter of
season development. Larchville's performance was what one might expect
in November, but scarcely looked for in the second week of October. Her
men played together all the time and her team-work stood out in strong
contrast to that of Brimfield, who had scarcely begun as yet to develop
such a thing. The final score was 17 to 3, and the only consolation was
found in the fact that Larchville's end of it might well have been much
larger. Brimfield's three points came as the result of one really
brilliant advance for half the length of the field followed by a neat
place-kick by Williams. The rest of the game was very much Larchville,
and Brimfield was on the defence most of the time.

And, to give credit where it belongs, it was Eric Sawyer who, back in
his position at right guard, held his side of the line firm on two
anxious occasions when Larchville was striving to hammer out to