"Except that there are going to be some mighty good players among the freshmen this year," chimed in another boy, who emerged from the house at that moment and sat down on the step near which Garry was standing. "Maybe I'm speaking out of my turn, and there are some who won't agree with me--so much the worse for them--but I certainly think we turned out some pretty good players last year, if you should ask me." The speaker was Bill Sherwood, a tall, well-developed lad who had played center on the Hill Street grammar school eleven, and was affectionately known to his mates as "Big Bill." "You said it," agreed Nick Danter, a rather rangy, well-knit youth who lay stretched out at full length on the porch. "I'd go far enough to say that some of them could give the high school fellows a pretty nifty tussle at this minute." "That goes not only for our Hill Street boys, but for some of the fellows of the Cherry and Webster Street schools," put in Ted Dillingham, stocky and muscular, as he leaned lazily against the finishing post of the porch railing. "Look at Pete Maddern and Tom Allison! They're no slouches when it comes to playing football, and I hear they're going to high this fall." The boys were gathered about and on the porch of the Sherwood summer bungalow on the shores of picturesque Bass Lake, to which Garry Grayson, Rooster Long, Nick Danter and Ted Dillingham had been invited for a two week's stay, an invitation that they had gladly accepted, as they were the warmest and most congenial of friends. All of them had graduated from the Hill Street grammar school of Lenox the preceding term, and were planning to enter the high school in the fall. The summer was nearly at an end, and they were looking forward eagerly to the new experience in store for them. Books, however, were not foremost in their thoughts at the moment. All of them were football players, loved the great game, and had acquitted themselves well on the Hill Street football team that had won the grammar school championship the preceding season from their rivals of the Cherry and Webster Street schools. Garry Grayson especially had proved himself a remarkable player for a boy of his age. But, good as they had been on a grammar school eleven, they knew that the high school was a different matter--all the difference, as Nick Danter had at one time expressed it, that there was "between being big frogs in a little puddle and little frogs in a big puddle." But despite the cold water thrown on his hopes by his chums, Rooster Long still held tenaciously to his ambition. "I don't see why we can't make a try for the team, anyway," he persisted, with a long face. "Just because we're freshmen doesn't say we have to be dumbbells and sit back and take just whatever is handed to us."