won over to good
temper. "Every little freshman thinks he can buy a pair of moleskins and
be a football man. Look at that fellow over yonder, the one with the
baggy trousers and straw hat. The idea of that fellow coming down here
just out of the hayfield and having the cheek to report for football
practice! What do you suppose he would do if some one threw a ball
at him?"

"Catch it in his hat," suggested Wallace Clausen.

"He _does_ look a bit--er--rural," said Outfield West, eying the youth
in question. "I fear he doesn't know a bulger from a baffy," he added
sorrowfully.

"What's more to the subject," said Wallace Clausen, "is that he probably
doesn't know a touch-down from a referee. There's where the fun
will come in."

"Well, I'm no judge of football, thank goodness!" answered West, "but
from the length of that chap I'll bet he's a bully kicker."

"Nonsense. That's what a fellow always thinks who doesn't know anything
about the game. It takes something more than long legs to make a
good punter."

"Perhaps; but there's one thing sure, Bart: that hayseed will be a
better player than you at the end of two months--that is, if he gets
taken on."

"I'll bet you he won't be able to catch a punt," growled Cloud. "A fool
like him can no more learn football than--than--"

"Than you could learn golf," continued West sweetly.

"Oh, shut up! I know a mule that plays golf better than you do."

"Well, I sha'n't attempt to compete with your friends, Bart."

"There you both go, quarreling again," cried Clausen. "If you don't shut
up, I'll have to whip the pair of you."

Wallace Clausen was about two thirds the size of Cloud, and lacked both
the height and breadth of shoulder that made West's popular nickname of
"Out" West seem so appropriate. Clausen's threat was so absurd that
Cloud came back to good humor with a laugh, and even West grinned.

"Come on, Wall--there's Blair," said Cloud. "You'd better come too, Out,
and learn something about a decent game." West shook his head, and the
other two arose and hurried away to where the captain of the school
eleven was standing beneath the west goal, surrounded by a crowd of
variously attired football aspirants. West, left to himself, sighed
lazily and fell to digging holes in the turf with his brassie. Tiring of
this amusement in a trice, he arose and sauntered over to the side-line
and watched the operations. Some sixty boys, varying in age from fifteen
to nineteen,