When the whistle blew, Burley climbed to his feet and ambled back to his position, unruffled and unheeding of the bruises that fell to his share. Nine plunges brought the ball to Robinson’s five yards. There the Brown line held for an instant. The first down netted a bare yard, the second brought scarcely as much. The cheering, which had been continuous from the first attack, died down, and a great silence fell. Tommy was nibbling the corner off his note-book, and Allan, kneeling beside him, was nervously biting his lip. Poor drew Burley and the backs aside for a whispered consultation. Then the players took their positions again, and-- Presto! Erskine had scored! Without signals, the tandem had plunged onto the Robinson left tackle, Burley’s leather head-guard had been seen for an instant tossing high above a struggling mass, and then had disappeared, and chaos had reigned until the referee’s whistle commanded a cessation of hostilities. When the piled-up mass was removed, Burley was found serenely hugging the ball to his chest a yard over the line. While the stands cavorted and cheered, Poor kicked the goal. Erskine was already victorious, and Robinson’s youngsters seemed to realize the fact. For, though they fought valiantly and doggedly for twenty minutes longer, it was evident that they no longer looked for victory. With every repulse their defense grew perceptibly weaker, while their rivals, as though they had husbanded their strength until now, made each attack fiercer than the one before, until in the last ten minutes of the contest they simply drove the Brown before them at will. Long before the game was at an end the stands began to empty; there was small pleasure in seeing a defeated enemy humbled. When the final whistle blew, the score stood 17 to 5, and Peter Burley, breathing hard through bleeding and swollen lips, said “he guessed he was ready to have his oats and be bedded down.” CHAPTER VII “THE RANCH” It is human nature to dwell at length upon our successes and dismiss our failures with a word. The writer has given a chapter to the freshman game, but he is going to tell the story of the varsity contest, which occurred a week later, in a paragraph. Robinson won in a clean, hard-fought game--11 to 0. Her rival never approached a score in either half, but by the grimmest sort of defensive work she managed to keep the final figures down to half of what they might have been had she gone to pieces for an instant. Hal played a brilliant game at full-back in that contest, and proved his right to the position. Thus the football season at Erskine ended in decisive defeat. It was an honorable defeat, to be sure; but, since at Erskine, as at other colleges in this country, they play more for the sake of winning than for love of the game, there were doleful faces a-plenty, and on Sunday the college had the appearance of a place smitten with the plague.