It was a silent and very disgusted throng of spectators that straggled back up the slope to the school. They were much too surprised as yet to talk. The talk came later, in dining-hall at supper-time, in the rooms afterwards. The consensus of opinion was that the Riverport School Football Team was “pretty punk.” Not a lovely phrase that, but it was very generally used and seemed to satisfy the requirements of the occasion. Of course there were all sorts of theories advanced to account for the day’s Waterloo, and fellows who didn’t know a touch-back from a nose-guard explained the whole trouble beautifully. In 32 Holden there was little discussion for the reason that Rob wouldn’t discuss, while Malcolm, as he had never played football, modestly refrained from offering opinions. All Rob would say, and he said it in an exasperatingly mysterious manner, was: “Wait! The hour is at hand!” With Malcolm’s assistance, Evan got Rob down on his bed and buried him under pillows――and then sat on the pillows. But all his reward was a stifled: “Wait! The hour is at hand!” The school was pretty well disgusted with the football situation, and the disgust increased when on the following Monday the Second Team tore up the First and scored a touch-down and a field-goal. Certainly the fact that the First’s line-up contained five substitutes had something to do with the Second’s easy conquest, but didn’t account for it entirely. The fact is that the First Team was suffering from something very much like nervous prostration. On Tuesday the feeling against the team was manifested on the field. Some forty boys marched down in procession and shouted derisive, unkind remarks during practice. Hopkins came in for more attention than he relished, while Prentiss lost his temper on several occasions. The Second held the First to a no-score tie throughout the two periods of scrimmaging, in spite of the fact that the First had all its best players back. Whenever the Second gained a yard the audience cheered wildly; when the First gained it was accorded hoots of derision. Nothing of the sort had ever happened before at Riverport and the school that evening was in a state of unwonted excitement. There was talk of a mass-meeting to protest against the present conduct of football affairs, but the project fell through because none of the upper class fellows would consent to issue the call. They took the stand that while the situation was pretty discouraging it was the school’s duty to stand by the team, that only harm could result from embarrassing the management. So the mass-meeting degenerated into a procession which marched through the yard at nine o’clock carrying placards and hooting derisively. One of the placards read: “We Want a Football Team”; another, “Riverport 0, Mountfort, 25”; another, “Try Jamaica Ginger”; another, “Wanted, A Nurse. Apply to Manager R. S. F. A.” After circling the yard the procession marched around to the rear of Holden and serenaded Hopkins