“Gee!” said Larry, with a gasp; “are you trying to tell me that this ‘Mixer’ thing is a gambling club?” “That’s what you hear whispered about it.” “And Dick Maxwell belongs to it?” “I’m afraid he does. Anyway, he runs with that sort of a crowd.” “I don’t believe it――I can’t believe it, Purdy!” said Larry; but when he left the house a few minutes later to breast his way through a softly falling snow to the newspaper office on the other side of the river, he knew that his last word to Purdick had been more of a hope than a conviction. VII IN WHICH DICK MIXES IT March at Old Sheddon, which had come in like a lion, was promising to go out like a lamb. By the middle of the month the snow was all gone and the athletic field was beginning to dry out enough to let the teams get a little outdoor work. Keeping up his job as athletic reporter for the student daily, Larry was always on hand when there was anything doing on the field, and as soon as Coach Brock began to organize the teams and squads, he was given a chance to train for the next year’s ’Varsity foot-ball. Ordinarily, you’d say, any fellow would jump at a chance like that, coming while he was still in his Freshman year, and Larry, who had all along been hoping he might make the team, was ready enough to jump. “If you think I’m good enough,” was the way he took the bid; and after Brock, who never coddled any of his men, had said he would probably grow to be good enough if he worked hard, Larry left the field feeling about three inches taller than any self-respecting measuring machine would have recorded his stature. One of the ambitions he had begun to cherish, as soon as he had acquired a little of the “college spirit” that Dick Maxwell had tried so hard to hammer into him at the beginning of the year, was to make the ’Varsity foot-ball, and all through the year he had been hoping that Coach Brock wouldn’t forget the November game with Rockford Poly and the part in it that one Larry Donovan had taken. Little Purdick, who had an almost uncanny knack of face-reading, knew instantly what had happened as soon as Larry entered their joint room in the Man-o’-War. “So Brock has picked you, has he?” he said, as Larry flung his cap and dropped into a chair. “Where’s he playing you?” “I don’t know,” said Larry; “I guess it will be right half. That’s the job I know best.” “Tickled purple, I suppose?” put in Purdick with his queer little grin. “You’ve said it, Purdy; hits me right where I live. It’s going to take a lot of time, but I’d rather sit up nights than miss it.” “I’ll help you all I can in the ‘boning,’” Purdick offered, out of the depths of a loyalty to his big room-mate which had been steadily growing ever since the night when Larry had bundled him in blankets and carried him down two flights of stairs to chuck him into the hired auto. “You must turn all your copying and problem drawing over to me. I can do ’em just as well as not.”