ree afternoons of such treatment Roy was ready to
give up the fight. After practice on Saturday he waited for Jack Rogers
outside the gymnasium and ranged himself alongside the older boy as he
turned toward the dormitory. Jack shot a quick glance at him and nodded.

[Illustration: "Roy lifted his hat, and nodded with a friendly smile,
but his only reward was an unseeing glance from the blue eyes."]

"I thought I'd better tell you," began Roy, "that I've decided to give
up football."

"Think so?" asked the captain dryly.

"Yes," replied Roy, looking a little bit surprised. There was nothing
further from the other and Roy strode on at his side, trying to match
his long stride and somewhat embarrassedly striving to think of what to
say next.

"You see," he said finally, "there's no use in my trying to play quarter
while the fellows are down on me. It's just a waste of time. I--I don't
seem to be able to get things right."

What he meant was that the others were doing their best to get things
wrong, but he didn't want to seem to be complaining of them to Rogers.
The latter turned and observed Roy thoughtfully.

"That your only reason?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Well, let's stop here a minute if you've got time." The two seated
themselves on a wooden bench under the trees a few yards from the
entrance to the dormitory. "You're new here," continued Jack, "and there
are some things you don't know. One of the things is this: we've got to
win from Hammond this Fall if we have to work every minute between now
and the day of the game. They beat us last year and they didn't do it
very squarely. That is, they played a great big fellow named Richardson
at right guard who had no business on their team. We protested him, but
it did no good. He was a student of the academy at the time, and
although we knew he was there just to play football, we couldn't do
anything beyond making the protest. As it turned out we were right, for
Richardson left Hammond a week after the game, and this year he's
playing on a college team. He was a big fellow, twenty years old,
weighed two hundred pounds and simply played all around our men. He used
up two of them before the game was over. He played mighty dirty ball,
too. Our captain last year was Johnny King--he's playing with Cornell
this year--and he was plucky clean through. The whole school was in
favor of refusing to play Hammond, and Cobb was with us. But King said
he'd play them if they had the