“Almost six minutes,” answered Malcolm from the side-line. Then Evan snapped out his signals, Rob fell back as though for a punt and Evan skirted the Second’s left end for a good twelve yards. Three plunges at the left of the opposing line gave them their distance again and the ball was just short of the fifty-five yard streak. Then came some pretty playing on the part of the Independents, while the spectators ran along the side-lines and cheered madly. Shaler, who had been used very little so far in the half was given the ball time after time and went fighting through for a yard, two yards, three, sometimes even four. Three times the Independents made their distance on line attack. Then the measuring tape showed that they had failed, and, to Evan’s despair, the ball went to the Second. On the threshold of the enemy’s goal luck had turned her back! But if luck can turn once it can turn again, and it did. After one ineffectual plunge at right tackle Peeble sent Putnam back. Again the Second’s line failed to hold, and Putnam, with another blocked kick threatening him, swung hurriedly and the pigskin went hurtling out of bounds at the forty yards. Evan took up the fight again, sending Lyman outside of left tackle for a short gain and then winning the distance in two plunges at the tackle-guard hole on the left. The thirty yard mark passed under foot. The Second was getting slow now and Evan, with no mercy for his own tired men, sent his plays faster and faster. Gus Devens began to put in substitutes: a new man at left end, a new man at left guard, a new man at center. But Corbett, at right guard, remained and Evan sighed with relief. Nothing about Corbett suggested the quitter to Evan, nor did the fellow seem soft, but Evan relied on Duffield’s judgment. It was second down now and eight to go, and the ball was still a good five yards from the twenty yard-line. Evan pulled Rob aside and whispered to him. Rob nodded, glancing at the cross-bar of the goal. Then he went back, patted the ground and held his arms out. The team formed for defence of kicker. Back went the ball, but not to Rob, although that youth seemed to catch it and swing his leg at it. It went to Evan, and Evan doubled himself over it an instant and then, straightening up and dodging his way behind the battling lines, he found an opening and went spinning through and would have had a clear field to the goal-line had not Putnam redeemed himself and brought him down some fifteen yards short of the last mark. Pandemonium reigned along the side-lines. Duffield, inscrutable and impartial, allowed himself the ghost of a smile as he waved to Malcolm and announced “First down!”