“Is this you, father?” asked Wolcott. “Did you get my letter?” Laughlin heard dimly the sound of a voice in reply; Ware caught a few of the words. “You’ll decide it to-night, won’t you?” went on Wolcott. “It’s awfully important—you can’t possibly understand without being here how important. I’m really as sound as a nut. And they do need me. It seems as if I couldn’t possibly crawl out now.” The answer this time came more distinctly; Ware at the words and Laughlin at the tone felt their hearts drop within them. On Wolcott’s face settled an expression of black despair as he listened with hurried breath to his father’s sympathetic yet unyielding response. “But you’ll surely write to-night,” said the boy, when his chance to speak came; “and think of it as favorably as you can, won’t you? And remember that there are lots of competent judges who don’t agree with you. It can’t be as bad as you think if it has done me so much good.” Wolcott hung up the receiver and rose. “What does he say?” “It’s no go, I’m afraid. He will decide to-night, and write so that the letter will get to me to-morrow morning. The only good thing he sees about football is that the players are capable of getting up so good a brief for a bad cause.” “Does that mean that he’s laughing at us?” demanded Poole. “No, he was in earnest. He’ll give the arguments a fair hearing, and then decide against me.” “It won’t be a fair hearing,” said Ware, “if his mind is already made up.” Wolcott turned sharply. “He’ll do what he thinks is right, anyway—that I’m sure of.” Laughlin gave his manager’s arm a tug that pulled him half across the room. “Come home, Dan, and let Wolcott alone. You can’t gain anything now by arguing. We’ve just got to take what Mr. Lindsay says and make the best of it.” They parted for the night with few words. Wolcott, who would not listen to criticism of his father’s judgment from his friends, yet felt a very human resentment that he should be treated as a child whose opinion was valueless, in a matter with which he was familiar and his father obviously not, and that his father’s prejudices should be the only guide to the momentous decision. Great as was his mortification and his sense of ill treatment, he betrayed it openly to no one; and never had he the slightest notion of defying his father’s command. The letter-carrier was waylaid next morning as he turned into the schoolyard and forced to deliver instantly. With the fatal scroll in their possession, the four boys hurried upstairs to Poole’s room, which lay nearest on their way, and sat in solemn silence while Wolcott read. The letter was as follows:—