THE THIRD WARNING. Bob Hollister played right end on the varsity, and was one of the most valuable men on the team. He was remarkably speedy, quite equaling the Indian, Joe Crowfoot; absolutely tireless, with the added advantage of having played the game ever since his prep school days, so he was familiar with every phase of it. No matter in what apparently direful straits the team might be, Bob never gave up hope. Not until the final whistle blew, announcing that the game was finished, would he acknowledge that he was beaten, and his cheery optimism always had an inspiring effect on the discouraged members of the team, more than once being the means of pulling them out of the slough of despondency and changing defeat into victory. Perhaps more than anything else, the quality which made him valuable was the fact that he never lost his head. No matter what might be happening, Bob Hollister could always be depended on to use his brains. And not only did he use them to advantage during the progress of a game, but he was noted for the ingenious combinations and strategic plays which he worked out and submitted to Bill Fullerton, the head coach. The latter had often remarked that Hollister had either a perfectly phenomenal mind, or else he spent his entire waking hours doping out these plays, so many of which had proved invaluable to the eleven. His latter supposition had been the correct one. Hollister’s brain did, indeed, work very quickly; and that, together with his perfect knowledge of football, enabled him to work out clever schemes in far less time than the ordinary mortal; but what had at first started as a more or less interesting pastime now reached a point when it absorbed almost every conscious moment. Dick Merriwell’s words opened his eyes to the truth, and, as he crossed the campus to his rooms in Vanderbilt, he gave them very serious thought and attention. He would start in the very next day with the necessary reform. He would do as Dick advised, and cut out thinking about football except when he was on the field. It was too bad the profs hadn’t let him alone until after the end of the season, for then he could have turned his attention to his books with a much freer mind; but since they hadn’t, he must simply make the best of it. It would be a hard pull, but he did not doubt his ability to succeed. _He went to sleep that night thinking over a new variation of the forward pass._ Before leaving his rooms next morning, the expected warning from the dean, regarding his extremely poor showing in history, appeared. Hollister read it with an expression of whimsical annoyance on his pleasant face.