"I wonder if any of the Fairview girls will be here," said Tom as he and Phil were passing the ball back and forth. "I don't know about all of 'em," replied the quarter-back, "but Ruth and Madge are coming." "Since when have you been calling her 'Madge'?" asked Tom, with a sharp look at his chum. "Since she gave me permission," was the answer, and Phil booted the pigskin well down the field. "And how long is that?" "What difference does it make to you?" and there was a shade of annoyance in Phil's voice. "Nothing, only I--er--well---- There they come!" cried Tom suddenly, but it was not to the girls that he referred. The Boxer Hall team had just trotted out, to be received with a round of cheers from their partisans. "Husky-looking lot," observed Ed Kerr, as he and the other Randall players gazed critically at their opponents. "They are that," conceded Bricktop Molloy, one of the biggest guards who ever supported a center. "I'm afraid they'll do us," came from Snail Looper, who was not of a very hopeful turn of mind. "Nonsense! Don't talk that way, me lad!" objected Bricktop, lapsing into brogue, as he always did when very much in earnest. "Just because they're a lot of big brutes doesn't argue that we can't smash through them. _Omnis sequitur_, you know." "Oh, you and your Latin!" exclaimed Tom. "Don't we get enough of that in class." "It's a fine language," went on Molloy, who was a good classical scholar. "But suppose we line up and run a bit." The practice was over, the preliminaries had all been arranged, the new ball was brought out and handed to Boxer Hall, for Captain Stoddard had won the toss, and elected to kick off. The yellow spheroid was placed on the center line, on top of a little mound of earth. "Are you all ready?" asked the referee, and Captain Holly Cross cast a quick eye on his team, which, spread out on their field, was like an aggregation of eager foxhounds, waiting for the start. "Ready," answered Holly. "Ready," responded Stoddard. The whistle sounded shrilly, and a moment later Pinkey Davenport's good right toe had met the pigskin with a resounding "thump," and the ball was sailing toward the Randall goal. Jerry Jackson caught it and began scuttling back toward the center of the field. Tom, with Ed Kerr and Bricktop Molloy, formed interference for him, and with their efficient aid Jerry rushed the leather back for thirty yards, or to within five yards of the middle of the gridiron. There he was downed with a vicious tackle by Dave Ogden, who had managed to get through between Tom and Bricktop, though they flung themselves at him. Jerry lay still for a moment after falling, with the ball tightly clasped in his arms. Captain Cross ran to him. "Hurt?" he asked anxiously. "No. Only--only a little wind knocked out of me," answered the plucky left half-back. "I'm all right now." "Line up, fellows!" cried Holly, and Phil began rattling off a string of numbers and letters.