But Broadwood wasn’t ready to acknowledge defeat. Back she went as savagely as ever, but Yardley seemed to have found herself now and, while she couldn’t always stop the Green, she made the going much more difficult. Broadwood lost the ball presently on a fumble and Yardley started back the way she had come. Simms was holding nothing back now. Every play he knew was called on. But the opponents were well blessed with that football sense that enables a team to “size up” a play even while it is getting under way, and few of Payson’s pet tricks netted real gains. It was elemental football that won the most ground for Yardley, plays in which Roeder or Hammel banged, smashed and wormed themselves through the opposing line. Stearns, too, found his holes and did his best. Forty-eight yards went the Blue without a pause, just winning their distance time and again by inches only. Then came a mix-up of signals and Roeder was thrown heavily three yards behind his line. It took him a minute or two to get his breath back and the Yardley supporters waited anxiously. But presently he was up again, shaking his head like a bulldog who has had the worst of a battle, and a wild shout of joy hurtled across to him. A forward pass, Simms to Norton, gained seven yards, and the whistle blew for the end of the quarter. The ball was carried to the other end of the field and in a minute or two later they were at it again. It was Yardley’s ball on Broadwood’s seventeen-yard line and nothing, it seemed, could prevent a second score for the Blue. But something did. Something turned a decisive victory into a probable defeat. With four yards to go on second down, Roeder fumbled. Simms fell on the ball. It was third down and eight to go. Roeder plunged straight at right tackle, the line wavered and gave, cries and tumult filled the air. The whistle blew. Somewhere at the bottom of a pile of players lay the ball――and Tom Roeder. When they found the former it lacked a foot of being where it should have been for a first down, and when they found Tom they turned him over and held him quiet while the doctor ran onto the field. It was a blow on the head, or possibly a kick, and Tom was of no more use that day. He was borne off between two substitutes, his head lolling on his shoulder, the little doctor striding along briskly behind, while a great cheer went up for “_Roeder! Roeder! Roeder!_”