That touchdown spelled defeat for Yardley and even the staunchest supporter of the Blue realized it. Even though Forest Hill failed at the goal the lead was too big to overcome in the two or three minutes that remained. But Yardley went desperately to work again. It was agreed afterward that had she played during the first of the game as she played then there would have been a different tale to tell. Using every play he knew, Simms, when a lucky fumble gave Yardley the ball after the kick-off, hurled his backs and tackles against the weakening Forest Hill line. From their own forty yards to the enemy’s thirty-five they went, gaining their distance at times by only an inch or two, but always gaining it. And there, with the timekeeper proclaiming forty seconds left, Kendall was sent back to the forty-five-yard line, while the stand held its breath, took the ball breast-high from Best, dropped it lightly to earth and sent it spinning as straight as an arrow over the very center of the cross-bar! Let us be thankful for small favors. Five to three was better than five to naught, and Yardley cheered philosophically and rose up in the grand stand and called Kendall blessed. And at the entrance The Duke, casting one final glance up the hill, derived what satisfaction he might from a plot well carried out. Forest Hill, all smiles, hurried off with the captured football, and Yardley, rather glum and very tuckered, wrapped her blankets about her and trotted back to the gymnasium under the stigma of her first defeat. Gerald and Harry were inclined to dejection, although Kendall’s brilliant goal from the field was a mitigating ray in the surrounding gloom of failure. But The Duke, with the fine bravado of one on the way to the guillotine, refused to be downcast. “Who cares?” he demanded. “What’s Forest Hill to us? She showed us we weren’t as good as we thought we were and that ought to help. It’s Broadwood’s scalp we want, fellows, and to-day’s little setback will do us a lot of good. Besides,” he chuckled, “our friend Gibson is returning empty-handed. Let us rejoice and make merry, O my comrades, for to-morrow we die! At least, I do!” CHAPTER XII COTTON MEETS A FRIEND Mr. William Gibson, of Broadwood Academy, really deserves no place in this narrative, yet I hardly see how we can keep him out inasmuch as his trip to Yardley that Saturday afternoon proved to be the first link in a chain of events involving many of the principal actors in our little drama. For if Gibson had not come to Yardley he would not have been ignominiously imprisoned in the telephone booth, and if he had not been shut up in the booth he would not have run across Charles Cotton, and――but I am getting ahead of the story.