“Go in for Noble,” he said crisply, “and kick out of there. Mind you, don’t speak to any one but the officials until after the first play. You’ll have to work fast, Locke, for those fellows are going to block if they can. Keep your head, boy, lock your leg, and wham it! Go ahead!” [Illustration: “KEEP YOUR HEAD, BOY, LOCK YOUR LEG, AND WHAM IT!”] And Barry went ahead, trailing his blanket well onto the field before he remembered that it still hung from one arm, rather scared but still more determined to give a good account of himself, as he ran repeating the coach’s brief instructions. He reported breathlessly, took Noble’s head-guard, and slipped into position. Zinn gave the signal and he smashed in behind Haviland. There was a moment of frantic swaying and grunting and then the whistle and the referee’s voice: “Second down! About seven to go!” Johnny Zinn, trotting back from a deceptive sortie toward the left of the line, called signals as he came: “_Locke back! Twenty-seven, sixty-one, fourteen! Twenty-seven, sixty-one, fourteen!_” Barry shuffled his feet two yards behind the goal-line, came to rest, stretched his hands toward the stooping Sisson. Beyond the line of his own forwards, he saw the swaying, eager forms of the enemy, feinting, pawing the air, desperation on every face. Then something brown left the trampled sod ahead of him, grew larger as it turned lazily over in its flight, and came to rest in his outthrust hands. Ten yards away turmoil and confusion sprang to life. Forms leaped against the sky as Barry took his step, dropped the ball, and swung a stiff right leg through its arc. There came to him the reassuring concussion of leather against leather, but he sensed it rather than heard it, for the air was filled with cries and the pounding of feet and the rasping of canvas-clad bodies. Then a charging enemy hurtled against him and he went spinning aside and rolled over and over on the turf. When he found his feet again the scene of battle was far off, for the ball had covered more than forty-five yards and, its flight deflected by the wind, had escaped a Murray back and bounced across the side-line squarely in front of the Broadmoor bench and the Broadmoor coach. Barry went limping up the field, trailing the green-hosed youth who had thrown a hundred and sixty pounds against his ribs. The ball was being stepped in midway between the forty-five and the fifty yards. Broadmoor, on the stand, was still voicing its satisfaction. Johnny Zinn, coming back to safety position, grinned at Barry. “Corking work, Locke!” he commented as he passed.