' 'cause it's kind
o' teachin' me how to put two and two together so's they'll figger up to
make four, if you know what I mean, and then I'm a mite stirred up
myself about that game to-morrer and it's quietin' to my nerves."

So Snubby Turner left his friend in the little basement room, walked
quietly up the stairs to his room and made up his mind that the best
thing for him to do was to turn in.

Mass meetings, preliminary games and final practice were over and
everything now awaited the climax of the season. By half-past nine
lights were going out in the dormitories and presently quiet reigned
over the white buildings on the hill and the stars, sending down their
radiance from a clear sky, presaged fair weather for the great contest.
The light was out in Teeny-bits' room and no one in the school--with the
exception of two persons--doubted that the smallest member of the eleven
was not sleeping soundly beneath the roof of Gannett Hall.

Saturday morning dawned as fair as the fairest day in the year; there
was a nip in the air that suggested winter, but as the morning wore on,
the mounting sun mellowed the chill until the "old boys"--men who had
played for Ridgley and Jefferson twenty years before and who had come
back to view once again the immortal combat between the "best school in
all the world" and her greatest rival--slapped each other on the back
and said:

"Perfect football weather!"

All roads led to Ridgley--or seemed to--on this day of days. The trains
came rolling into the Hamilton Station, discharged their burdens of
humanity and rolled on. Automobiles by the score climbed the long hill
to the school,--automobiles bearing the fluttering red of Ridgley and
the fluttering purple of Jefferson. There were shouts of greeting and
shouts of gay challenge, honking of horns and a busy rushing here and
there that suggested excitement, anticipation and hopes built high. And
then came the special train from Jefferson--the Purple Express, so
named--bearing hundreds of cheering students and a brass band of twenty
pieces which led the procession into Lincoln Hall to the strains of the
Jefferson Victory Song,--a fiendish piece of music in the ears of
Ridgley's loyal sons, a stirring pean of confidence and challenge in the
ears of those who waved aloft the purple. At Lincoln Hall the Jefferson
guests--according to immemorial custom--sat down to a luncheon that
Ridgley School provided. A year later the compliment would