Hugh watched the work of the half-backs attentively. Vail was covering himself with glory and Bert was doing considerably better on attack than he had been doing of late, but was frightfully weak on defence. Time after time he was outside the play entirely, while, when he did get into it, he was quite as likely to miss his tackle as make it. Even Hugh, who was desperately anxious to make the best of Bert’s performance, could not fail to see that he was trying the patience of his team-mates and, probably, of Mr. Bonner as well. Southlake tried two forward passes in the third period and again got within scoring distance. She faked a drop-kick and sent a back on a wide run around Roy Dresser’s end and Roy, for once, was neatly boxed. Bert was the man to stop the runner and Bert made a miserable failure of the attempt, getting his man and then losing him again. Just how Yetter got into the affair was a mystery, but it was the left guard who pulled the Southlake runner down just short of the goal line. Franklin had been showing distress for some time and now Parker was sent in to play left tackle. At the same time Keyes was put back again, and it was perhaps the big full-back’s presence which stopped the enemy’s advance. Two tries lost her a yard and then she tried a drop-kick and it was Keyes who leaped into the path of the ball and beat it down. Southlake recovered on the fifteen, but she fumbled a minute or two later and the pigskin was Grafton’s. It was then that the Scarlet-and-Gray showed real form. From her own fifteen-yard line to the middle of the field she went in five plays, Keyes and Roy Dresser bringing off a forward pass that covered more than half the distance, and Vail and Siedhof, and once Keyes, plunging through the line for the balance. A second attempt at a forward pass grounded, but Vail got away outside the Southlake right tackle and reeled off fifteen yards, and from there down to the sixteen Grafton plugged relentlessly. There was a mistake in signals then and some four yards was lost, and Weston elected to try a goal from the field and Captain Trafford went back. But the line weakened somewhere and Ted had no chance to kick and Weston, holding the ball for him near the thirty-yard line, could only snuggle it beneath him and yell, “Down!” It was then that Coach Bonner beckoned Hugh from the bench. “Go ahead,” he said, “and see what you can do. Tell Weston to use Number 17, Ordway.” Hugh pulled off his sweater and legged it across with upraised hand, and the stand cheered him. Bert saw him coming and began to tug at his head harness. Then he stopped and waited. “You’re off,” said Hugh. “May I have that, please?” [Illustration: “‘You’re off,’ said Hugh. ‘May I have that, please?’”]