Kendall laughed and The Duke, encouraged, rattled on. “Now the question is whether we’d better divulge the news all at once or sort of prepare folks for it. I tell you it’s going to make an awful difference to the team, having Cotton on it. With his noble example before you, you fellows can’t help but go in and win. I hope Broadwood won’t hear about it. If she did she’d probably disband her team to-morrow.” “Has he ever played before?” asked Kendall as they joined the throng crowding its way into Oxford. “No, never, I believe. I think he offered his services last year wherever he was, but they were not accepted. He lays the fact to jealousy. Isn’t it sad such things can be? Where are you headed? Latin? Me, too. And that reminds me that I forgot to do my composition. Won’t Collins be pleased!” If the Assistant Principal was pleased he didn’t allow the fact to become evident, for he said several dryly sarcastic things to The Duke and ended by suggesting to him that he deliver the Latin composition to him at his room not later than six o’clock that evening. Whereupon The Duke, cheerful and forgiving, promised to accept the suggestion and the Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero engaged the attention of the class. As it was Saturday, football practice began at three o’clock instead of four. Kendall joined the stream of candidates that flowed from the gymnasium locker room to the field and wondered whether Coach Payson would see fit to start him to-day with the first squad. Kendall’s opinion of his football ability was modest, but he firmly believed that, while there was undoubtedly plenty left for him to learn, he could play half-back as well as either Fayette or Crandall, players who thus far enjoyed the call for the position he coveted. However, he kept this opinion to himself, which was a wise thing to do. Fifteen minutes later, one of a dozen candidates for places behind the line who were busily engaged in catching punts and running them back, he spied the redoubtable Cotton, long, lanky, awkward and bewildered, hurling himself to the ground in the effort to land upon a deceptive pigskin tossed by the hand of a bored and pessimistic veteran to whom the drudgery of breaking in a squad of green candidates had been entrusted. Cotton was suitably arrayed, and his canvas breeches and cleated shoes held the stamp of newness. The striped blue and white jersey, however, in which the upper part of his thin body was attired had evidently seen service of some kind. Observing him a moment, Kendall decided that the jersey had not reached its present faded and torn condition on the football field, for Cotton was so palpably out of his element that the spectacle he afforded was almost pathetic. Kendall, recalling Wellington’s nonsense, smiled. Cotton, he told himself, had a hard row to hoe before he reached the First Team!