On Tuesday hard work began again and Mr. Payson sought to correct some of the faults shown in the Nordham contest. The two-day rest had brought the players around in fine shape and the spirit shown argued well for the team’s success. Only Dan was disappointing that day. He was badly off his game and seemed in a very low frame of mind. Mr. Payson watched him closely, and so did Andy Ryan, the trainer. The coach trusted that he would pull around by the morrow, but on Wednesday, the final day of real work, Dan was still listless and dumpy. After supper that evening Mr. Payson dropped into Number 28 Clarke again. “Hello!” said Dan, who was half-heartedly going over his Greek, “I was just going down to see you.” “I thought I’d save you the trouble. Good evening, Pennimore. How are you?” “Very well, thank you, sir. I wish Dan felt as well.” Dan frowned. “There’s nothing wrong with me, Gerald, so please cut it out.” “You don’t look terribly bright and cheerful,” said Mr. Payson smilingly. “Sleeping all right?” “Pretty fair,” answered Dan. “He’s fibbing, sir,” said Gerald. “He was awake about half of last night. Twice I woke up and found him reading.” “For goodness’ sake, Gerald, mind your own business,” said Dan crossly. “I’m no baby. What if I did read a while? I wasn’t sleepy.” “Well, but that won’t do, Vinton, and you know it as well as I do,” said Mr. Payson quietly. “We can’t have you getting nervous now. Too much depends on your being in good shape Saturday.” “Oh, I’ll be all right, sir,” answered Dan impatiently. “Of course. Well, let’s talk about to-morrow if you have time. I suppose we’ll have to go through the motions of practice for the sake of the school, eh?” “Oh, yes, sir,” said Dan. “They’re going to march down to the field as usual and shout themselves hoarse. There was some talk of having the band up.” “Well, we’ll call practice for four o’clock then. That’ll give us fifteen or twenty minutes of it. And that reminds me.” He took out a memorandum book and made a note in it. “I’m going to have Fogg and Girard go down early and practice passing to Simms and Holmes. Fogg was a bit ragged Saturday.” “That’s a good idea,” said Dan. “And Norton ought to have a good half hour at goal practice.” “We’ll have him try a few kicks, Vinton, but I don’t want to shove him too hard. We’ve got the fellows just about on edge and some of them, fellows like Norton, are likely to go over if we push them too much. But I guess a couple of dozen drop-kicks won’t hurt him. I hope, though, that we won’t have to rely on Norton to score. I think that by next fall he will be a pretty good drop-kicker, if he’s willing to keep at it and practice.” “I wish he could do it now,” said Dan bitterly. “With all the fellows in this school it certainly seems as if there might be one able to lift the ball over the goal once out of ten times!”