Matters and things ran along this way until the foot-ball season was well started. There were class games on the home field, in one of which the Freshmen, clinching their success in the bridge scrap, literally wiped the earth with the Sophomores in a score of 47 to nothing, and public acclaim――what there was of it――gave the credit, or a good share of it, to a certain red-headed, big-boned half-back, whom nothing seemed to be able to stop. Meanwhile the ’Varsity was playing around the circle, and having hard luck. Not once, as yet, had there been occasion to call out the “snake dance” and “night-shirt parade” with which Sheddon victories were celebrated. Through all this, Larry seemed to be the only member of the student body who remained unmoved. Day after day he plugged along, religiously giving his afternoons when his team was called out; but that was all. “Larry, you’re a fright――simply a fright!” Dick stormed, one evening when the news had come of another defeat for the “Blacksmiths.” “How you can go on, just as if nothing was happening, when――――” “Might say nothing _is_ happening――to me,” put in the offish one grumpily. “Of course it’s happening to you!” Dick yelped. “Aren’t you a part of Old Sheddon, I’d like to know? Haven’t you any heart at all?” Larry jumped up and tramped across to the window which, in daylight, looked out upon Engineering Lab., and gave a cornerwise glimpse at the athletic field. When he turned back to face Dick his lip was shaking. “It _does_ get me, Dick! I’ve fought it――fought it just as hard as I could. I know the fellows don’t like me, and a lot of ’em are calling me a ‘worm.’ Just the same, it’s breaking my heart to see Sheddon losing this way! I――――” and he turned to the window again, quickly, this time, as if to hide something that he was ashamed to let Dick see. In a second Dick was beside him. “Larry, you old sorehead――you don’t know how much good it does me to hear you s-say that!” he stammered. And then, in a steadier voice: “You’re all wrong about the fellows not liking you: _they’ll like you just as much as you’ll let them_. There isn’t a worth-while fellow in Old Sheddon that cares a hoot whether you’re rich or poor. If you’d only loosen up――――” Larry did “loosen up” the next day when he was on the field with his team; and it was Oliver McKnight, son of any number of millions of Consolidated Steel, who applied the loosening twist. In an intermission, McKnight came and flung himself down beside Larry. “Say, Donovan,” he began abruptly, “you ought to push my face in. Four or five weeks ago I said some things about you to Cal Rogers that gave you a good right to hate me straight through the four years. Of course, I didn’t know you were overhearing me; but that only makes it worse――looks as if I didn’t have the nerve to say such things to your face. I was a mucker; and ever since, I’ve been trying to dig up sand enough to come and tell you so.”