So far Holman’s had journeyed a rough path. She had played four games and won two of them. She had had her big moments, when it had seemed to coach and players and spectators that the Light Green was due for another successful season, with Munson’s scalp hanging from her belt in November, but there had been other moments not so grand. Saarsburg had fairly overwhelmed her in the third contest of the season, Holman’s playing football that might easily have disgraced a grammar school team. Some laid that to the fact that the thermometer hovered around eighty; but it wasn’t to be denied that it was just as hot for the visiting crowd, and Rusty, the red-headed Holman’s coach, chewed his gum very fast and swallowed a lot of things he wanted to say. Then, just to show what she could do, the Light Green took Center Hill Academy into camp to the tune of 23 to 0; and Center Hill was no infant at the pigskin game! And three days after that Joe Kenton joined his fortunes with Gus and Tom Meadows and Slim Porter and the others and contentedly, if dubiously, proceeded to do his bit. It wasn’t much of a bit at first. He was football stale and it took many days to get back into the rut again. Rusty gave him plenty of work and plenty of opportunities, trying him out for a week on the scrubs and then shifting him over to the first as a first-choice substitute. He got into the Mills game for some twenty minutes and, perhaps because Mills this year was only about fifty per cent of the team she had been last, he was fairly successful in making gains outside of tackle. Holman’s won without much effort, 19 to 0. Afterwards, Gus tried to tell Joe that he had played a corking game, but Joe knew better. “Talk sense,” he protested. “If we’d been playing Munson, or even Glenwood, I wouldn’t have made fifteen yards this afternoon. With you and Barrows boxing that end any one could have got his distance. And I mighty nigh got the signals mixed again that time on their sixteen yards when Sanford sent Leary into the line. I was within an ace of going after the ball myself. If Leary hadn’t started a split-second before I could get going I’d have gummed the game finely! No, sir, Gus, I’m no pigskin wonder, and I know it. I love the pesky old game and I’ll play it as long as you and Rusty can stand me, but I haven’t any whatyoucallems――any delusions of greatness.” “I don’t say you’re a great player,” demurred Gus, “but you got away fast and clean to-day, and you follow the ball, Joe. If there’s one thing I admire more than anything else in a football guy it’s that. I’m a prune, myself, at it. I never could keep my eyes on the old leather, and I’ve missed more tackles and fell over my own feet oftener than you could count just for that reason. Yes, sir, you follow the ball, and I sure like that, Joe.”