s so well
known and such a favorite by this time.

Finally Judd calmed himself enough to face the ordeal. He raised his
head and looked out over the crowd.

"Fellows, before I say anythin' more..." he started. But such a flood
of laughter and cheering greeted these words that he could get no
further.

"Gee!" complimented McCabe, "You've scored a touchdown from kick-off!"

Bob and Cateye came pushing their way through the crowd, supporting a
limping Benz between them.

"Rube ...!" started Benz, face beaming. "I ... er ... mean--_Judd!_"

Bartlett's hero of the hour grinned.

"No you don't Benz ... you mean Rube. You couldn't really call me
anything else and I wouldn't want you to. I reckon that name fits me
best."

"All right, then!" conceded Benz, cuffing Judd playfully, "Though I
claim I'm really the rube for calling you a rube!"

And then Cateye said something about the team's planning to make Judd
next year's captain and Bob brought cheers by giving out that he was
returning to college next fall.

"Gosh, that does me out of a room-mate," said Judd, suddenly, with a
mischievous glance at his brother.

"Not necessarily," spoke up Benz, "What do you say, Rube, to ... er ...
bunking with me?"

Benz and Judd--room-mates! This would astound the college.

"I've been known to talk in my sleep," Judd warned, grinning.

"_Yell_ and see if I care!" accepted Benz.

And so, feuds ended, there came to one Judd Billings the tingling
realization of what real college spirit meant. It had taken him all
this while to get back in step after starting in college on the wrong
foot. He had developed so very much in the past few years from a
timid, awkward youth at Trumbull High who had fought so hard to live up
to his brother Bob's contract--and later, as a Freshman at Bartlett,
unused to the ways of the fellows but with his old-time fear conquered.
But now Judd knew, happily, that he was one with all the fellows for a
cheer was being proposed in honor of "Bartlett's Big Four"--Bob and
Cateye and Benz and--Rube! And the ones who were responding to this
cheer the loudest were his own team-mates!

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Over the Line, by Harold M. Sherman

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