Mr. Phillips took up the reins that same afternoon, when he gathered the first and second teams together in the gymnasium. He gave them a little talk full of hard sense and inspiration, paying a graceful tribute to Mr. Garwin, whose shoes he said modestly he could not hope to fill. It was a genial talk, but firm, and his hearers readily guessed that there was an iron hand in the velvet glove. No one could shirk and get away with it while he was at the helm. That the boys were going to support the new coach royally was evident from the very start. They were full of pep and ginger in practice. The two league games they had already played had gotten them into their stride. Now many weaknesses were eliminated, many new plays perfected. So when the day came for their match with Pawling they were at the top of their form. From the first it was a battle of rush lines, and the aerial attack seldom figured. Lenox proved to have the heavier, the more aggressive, and the best-trained line. Pawling was very generally outplayed and outrushed. Time and again the Lenox forwards would break through on plays and repeatedly spoiled the Pawling cut-in dashes of its fast backs whose end sweeps were blocked because of the Lenox drive into the interference. Lenox gained the lead in the first quarter, when after about five minutes of play, it staged a steady march down the field for a touchdown, aided by two beautiful end runs by Dittler. Knapp kicked the goal, and the home boys had got off to a flying start. That was all the scoring done in that period, but shortly after the beginning of the second the visitors threw a scare into the home team by advancing the ball as far as the Lenox eighteen-yard line. There Lenox got possession of it, and although Knapp's kick was blocked the visitors could not rush it over the line. A little later a fine run back by Wynn put the ball on the Pawling fifteen-yard line, where the visitors put up a stubborn defense and were finally saved when a forward pass was incompleted in the zone. It was not until the third that Pawling scored. A Lenox pass was intercepted, and the Pawling fullback drove ahead to the Lenox twenty-yard line. Then Abbott, the visitors' quarterback, tossed a forward pass over to the left and Wilson, sweeping in on the ball just beyond the scrimmage, carried it over the line for a touchdown, tying the score, and with the tally still unchanged the period ended. Knapp was limping when he came in for the minute's rest between periods, and it developed that he had strained a tendon in the last mix-up. Mr. Phillips's eye swept the line of substitutes on the bench and he beckoned to Garry. "You take Knapp's place," he directed. "Remember that I'm depending on you to break that tie." "I'll do my best," promised Garry, as he hurried out with the rest of the team.