On the train Lowell Woodruff sat with Jim and was very talkative on the subject of the contest and the lessons to be learned from it. Jim, feeling rather glum, would much rather have watched the gray landscape and thought his thoughts, even if they weren’t very cheering. But he managed to make Lowell think he was attentive, and, since Lowell never demanded too much of his listeners, he had little opportunity to commune either with Nature or with Jim Todd during that forty-minute train ride. “We don’t want to get proud and haughty about this game,” was part of the wisdom imparted by the manager. “Of course, it wasn’t so bad, and if we’d played our best men all through we might easily have scored a couple more times and kept our own slate clean. But the point is that those raw meat eaters back there are slow as cold molasses. And their brains are sort of torpid, too. If they had a chance to make a gain they went into conference, you might say, and by the time they’d reached a decision some one of our crowd spilled the beans. I wouldn’t wonder if they had a pretty fair team by the end of the season, but any fast bunch could tie knots in ’em. That’s one thing we showed ourselves to be to-day, Slim, fast. Yes, sir, we’re plumb sudden the way we get started and move around. And Johnny Cade was mighty pleased, too. I guess there was a whole lot he didn’t like, but the speed we showed had him tickled to death. All we’ve got to do is keep up the speed, work out a nice running and passing game, and walk right away from Kenly Hall.” “You think we can do it?” asked Jim, who, having heard no more than half of Lowell’s remarks, was driven by compunction to a show of interest. Lowell grunted and looked past Jim into the gathering darkness. “I think we can beat Kenly, but I don’t think it the way I talked then,” he replied slowly. “That’s the trouble with these easy games. They make you see things that ain’t. Kenly licked the boots off us two years ago and tied us last, and I don’t see why she shouldn’t do it again. That is, if we aren’t a hundred per cent better than we were when she did it before. We’re some better already, but we’re a long way from twice as good. Kenly’s got most of her last year crowd on hand again, and you know we’ve had to build almost a new team. Anyway, I’d rather see Kenly win than tie us. There’s something beastly unsatisfactory about a game that neither side wins. Seems as if all the season’s work and planning had been wasted. It’s like a crazy dream I had once. I dreamed I was climbing up a lot of ladders hitched together at the ends. There were dozens of ’em, and I kept on climbing, rung over rung, scared blue all the time. And then when I finally reached the top of the last ladder I was just where I’d started!” Jim laughed. Then: “Tie games never come together, though,” he said knowingly. “I noticed that when I was reading the football records the other day.”