Captain Cooper stole the puck close to the Wolcott goal and set off with it, alone for the moment and unaided, while shrill shouts and yells of triumph hailed his progress. Dodging right and left, skating from side to side of the rink, he eluded the enemy defenders until, at last, he had an unchallenged shot. Just before a Wolcott man plunged at him he slammed the puck viciously at the net. But the Brown’s goal keeper threw himself in front of it and it rebounded, and before a second Wyndham player could reach it the Wolcott point had whipped the disk to the boards and another attempt had failed. There was a frantic struggle for possession in the corner and then the disk went flying back up the rink to be knocked down by Cowden who, in spite of a hundred protests, fed it back to the forwards. It was Houston who tried for the puck, touched but missed it and put Clif on-side. Clif hooked the rubber from just in front of Houston’s reaching blade, slid it to the right for a team mate to take, saw to his consternation that no team mate was there and so went after it again himself. Houston was beside him, very free with his stick, but Clif only blinked when the blows met his shin guards, and pulled the puck toward him. What happened after that will always remain a great mystery to Clif. To his surprise the puck was in front of him, traveling right, left, straight ahead, at the direction of his stick. But surprise lasted only an instant. Then came chaos. He was threatened in front and from the right, forced to the boards, forced away from them, half checked once. Yet by some marvelous chance the little hard-rubber disk lay always right at the tip of his stick. Somehow he kept his feet, he who had so often fallen ingloriously with far less excuse, and somehow he wormed and dodged and battered his way to the Wolcott goal. At the last moment, when cries from Cooper and from Raiford imploringly urged him to pass, he slid the puck a yard to the left, staggered under the impact of the point’s desperate check, whirled precariously around on one skate and, the goal keeper’s scowling countenance looming large and close, made a despairing sweep with his stick. After that he crashed against an iron of the net, rebounded, and slid across the ice in a sitting position until brought up by the boards. But the goal umpire had flung up a hand, Wyndham was shrieking like mad and to Clif, still dazed, came the sweet knowledge that the puck had been caged and that the Dark Blue team had won! CHAPTER II THE TRIUMVIRATE