They went out to the field, and everything was not improved by the fact that a large crowd was gathered behind the ropes to watch them. This was an important game. The big school match was a fortnight from to-day, and Millett might get his colours on to-day’s game quite easily. And then suddenly the feel of the turf under his feet, the long, sweeping distance of the good grey sky above his head, the tang of autumn in the air, brought him confidence again. He was not aware that a lady visitor who had come out with Mr. Thompson to watch the game was saying at that moment, “Why, what a tiny boy! You don’t mean to say, Mr. Thompson, that he’s going to play with all those big fellows?” And Thompson said, “He’s the most promising footballer we have in the school. The half-back has to be small, you know.” “Oh, I do hope he won’t get hurt,” said the lady visitor. “Won’t do him any harm if he is,” said Mr. Thompson. The whistle went and the game began. Almost at once Jeremy was in trouble. Within the first minute the school fifteen were lining out in their own half of the field, and a moment later some of the “Rest” forwards had broken through, dribbled, tried to pass, thrown forward, and there was a scrum within Jeremy’s twenty-five. This is the kind of thing to make you show your mettle. To be attacked before you have found your atmosphere, realized the conditions of the day, got your feel of yourself as part of the picture, gained your first win, to have to fight for your team’s life with your own goal looming like the gallows just behind you, and to know that the loss of three or five points in the first few minutes of the game is very often a decisive factor in the issue of the battle—all this tests anybody’s greatness. Jeremy in that first five minutes was anything but great. He had a consciousness of his own miserable inadequacy, a state not common to him at all. He seemed to be one large cranium spread out balloon-wise for the onrush of his enemies. As he darted about at the back of the scrum waiting for the ball to be thrown in, he felt as though he could not go down to it; and then, of course, the worst possible thing happened. The “Rest” forwards broke through the scrum; he tried to fling himself on the ball, and missed it, and there they were sliding away past him, making straight for the goal-line. Fortunately, the man with the ball was flung to touch just in time, and there was a breathing space. Jeremy, nevertheless, was tingling with his mistake as acutely as though a try had been scored. He knew what they were saying on the other side of the rope. He knew that Baltimore, for instance, was winking his bleary eyes with pleasure, that all the friends of his rival half were saying in chorus, “Well, young Cole’s no good; I always said so,” and that Riley was glaring fiercely about him and challenging anyone to say a word. He knew all this and, unfortunately, for more than a minute had time to think of it, because