On Friday, although the gridiron was still soggy and slippery under a cloudy sky, the squad held outdoor practice for two full hours. Two very full hours indeed, Jim thought. With half the first-string players on the bench, the big team met the second for thirty strenuous minutes and failed to score in spite of the fact that three coaches bellowed and thundered, threatened and implored. Twice the first reached the second team’s ten-yard line and twice it was forced to yield the ball. Field-goals were not in Mr. Cade’s philosophy this afternoon, and so that means of scoring was denied. However, even though the second was time and again given an extra down, it was equally unable to pass its opponent’s goal-line, and the wearied and somewhat disgruntled first team players derived some satisfaction. After a five-minute rest a team of substitutes was run out and the first eleven, somewhat changed, was sent against it with instructions to use only forward-passes. There was ten minutes or so of that added insult, during which Jim, without really trying and without knowing it, somewhat distinguished himself as the receiving end of several tosses, Kruger, playing right end, being shifted to the other side of the line at such times and leaving Jim eligible. It was almost too dark to see the ball when Jim made his final catch of a long heave toward the side-line that netted a good eighteen yards to the first, and that play ended the work. In the evening there was an hour of drill in the gymnasium followed by a brief quiz by the coach. And then, on Saturday, Mount Millard came charging down on Alton, with most of her students in the line of march that wound through town from the station, and when Josh Plant, down to play right half in place of the absent Billy Frost, glimpsed the team as it romped away from the gymnasium he turned strickenly to Steve Whittier and grasped his hand. “Tell them,” he said tremulously, “that I died game, fighting against tremendous odds!” CHAPTER XVII ALTON MEETS WITH DISASTER The Gray-and-Gold presented a line-up that afternoon that lacked the names of four of its best players. Smith was at right guard in place of Captain Gus Fingal, Mulford played left tackle in place of Roice, Plant substituted Frost at right half and Barnhart ran the team. It was still a moot question whether Kinsey or Latham was first-choice quarter-back, but Barnhart was undeniably third-choice, and to-day, in the absence of both the others, he was faced by a stiff proposition. As Josh Plant had intimated, the visitors were a fine, sturdy looking lot, and they outsized Alton both in the line and the backfield. That they would score was a foregone conclusion. Whether Alton would score, too, was problematic. Watching the visitors perform during the brief warming-up session, many Alton partisans were flat-footed in the assertion that Coach Cade had erred in weakening his team as he had.