"Full-back, of course." "But Marline." "Marline will be given a chance to rest." Thornton nodded. "Knew it!" he muttered. "Rob is a good fellow, and this isn't a square deal. He won't be given a show. Merriwell is all right as a player, but he has no right to refuse to play and then come on after things are fixed and knock some other chap out. I'll tell Rob." So, at the first opportunity, Thornton told Marline what he had heard Halliday say. Marline was from South Carolina, and he was proud as Lucifer. In fact, his manner of always speaking of South Carolina as the "one" State in the Union was often little short of exasperating. He was haughty and overbearing, proud of his birth, inclined to boast, and utterly blind to his own shortcomings. No one questioned Marline's courage. He came from a family noted for courage and daring. His great-grandfather was a patriot officer of Revolutionary times, and his father had won a commission in the Confederate Army in the War of the Rebellion. The blood of fighters and heroes ran in Marline's veins. For all that, there was no one at Yale who could make himself more offensive than the boy from South Carolina. He had a way of sneering at everybody and everything outside his native State, and when he set out to call anybody down, the most withering and biting sarcasm flowed from his tongue. Marline was smart intellectually, but whimsical and set in his notions and beliefs. Once let him express an opinion and he would not confess himself in the wrong even when absolute proof lay before him. Instead, he was pretty sure to want to fight the fellow who offered the proof. As an orator the youth from South Carolina had no superior in college. He was strong in argument, and it was through him that Yale had succeeded in wresting from Harvard the honors in the annual debate. With the professors he stood unusually well, as he was regarded as a brilliant scholar, and he had never been known to take part in any of the students' carousals. Marline's face grew dark as he listened to Halliday. "They can't drop me without playing me at all," he said, harshly. "Can't! Guess you don't know Walt Forrest. He wouldn't hesitate a second if he thought he could improve the team. He doesn't allow his feelings to interfere at all with the discharge of what he thinks is his duty." "If they try to kick me out, there'll be a hot time, sah!" flashed the boy from South Carolina. "I'll show somebody that I'm not to be used like I am a dog!" "Don't blame you," nodded Tom. "It is a dirty trick." Marline was rattled. Three times he tried to catch a punted ball, and three times he dropped it, something remarkable for him to do--something that made the boys stare at him in surprise.