mmon life.

EAST'S CHARGE.

The quarter to five has struck, and the play slackens for a minute
before goal; but there is Crew, the artful dodger, driving the ball in
behind our goal, on the island side, where our quarters are weakest.
Is there no one to meet him? Yes, look at little East! the ball is
just at equal distances between the two, and they rush together, the
young man of seventeen, and the boy of twelve, and kick it at the same
moment. Crew passes on without a stagger; East is hurled forward by
the shock, and plunges on his shoulder, as if he would bury himself in
the ground; but the ball rises straight into the air, and falls behind
Crew's back, while the "bravos" of the School-house attest the
pluckiest charge of all that hard-fought day. Warner picks East up
lame and half-stunned, and he hobbles back into goal, conscious of
having played the man.

And now the last minutes are come, and the School gather for their
last rush, every boy of the hundred and twenty who has a run left in
him. Reckless of the defence of their own goal, on they come across
the level big-side ground, the ball well down amongst them, straight
for our goal, like the column of the Old Guard up the slope at
Waterloo.[52] All former charges have been child's play to this.
Warner and Hedge have met them, but still on they come. The bull-dogs
rush in for the last time; they are hurled over or carried back,
striving hand, foot, and eyelids. Old Brooke comes sweeping round the
skirts of the play, and, turning short round, picks out the very heart
of the scrummage, and plunges in. It wavers for a moment--he has the
ball! No, it has passed him, and his voice rings out clear over the
advancing tide: "Look out in the goal." Crab Jones catches it for a
moment; but before he can kick, the rush is upon him and passes over
him; and he picks himself up behind them with his straw in his mouth,
a little dirtier, but as cool as ever.

The ball rolls slowly in behind the School-house goal, not three yards
in front of a dozen of the biggest School players-up.

[52] #Waterloo#: (in Belgium) the scene of the crushing defeat
of the French in 1815, by the allied forces under the Duke of
Wellington, by which the power of Napoleon was finally broken.
The Old Guard was the emperor's favorite body of troops, and
was considered irresistible.

TOM'S FIRST EXPLOIT.

There stands the School-house praepostor, safest of goal-keepers, and