Hugh, having passed through a succession of thrills that had left him rather limp, loitered back to the tennis courts and, finding a seat on a stone roller, watched a game of doubles without seeing much of it. The contest he had just witnessed had settled his conviction that he wouldn’t be at all happy unless he was allowed to return to the football field and try for a place on the scrubs. Just now he felt quite certain that, given the opportunity, he could prove his right to a position there, and, while the white balls darted to and fro across the nets unseen by him and the voices of the players fell on deaf ears, he drew beautiful mental pictures in all of which he, Hugh Oswald Brodwick Ordway, clad in canvas and leather, stood out very prominently. After a while he discovered that the courts were almost deserted and that he was shivering, and so, plunging hands in pockets in Grafton fashion, he tramped thoughtfully back to Lothrop. CHAPTER XII TWO IN A CANOE “What do you think about when you are running with the ball as you were yesterday?” asked Hugh. “Think about?” repeated Nick. “Why, I don’t know. Nothing, I guess. There isn’t time. You just――just run like the dickens and watch for the opponents and get ready to straight-arm them or side-step them or something, you know, and keep on going until they nab you. Then you hold on to the ball hard and try to drop easy and get your head out of the way. I suppose you really do do a whole lot of thinking, ’Ighness, but it’s sort of like a dream. That is, you can’t remember afterwards. I’ve heard fellows who have made long runs, maybe the length of the field, or pretty near, tell afterwards just what they thought and planned, but I don’t believe them. They made that up afterwards. You don’t do much planning. You couldn’t, anyway. You get the ball and look for a place to turn in. Then a fellow smashes at you and you dodge him if you can or you put your hand out and let him have it hard. And then two or three others are coming at you and you swing in, maybe, or you swing out, and you get by them somehow――you never know quite how――and you beat it as hard as you can for the goal line. And about that time the quarter or a half makes for you and you try to get past him, and you do or you don’t. Mostly you don’t!” “It must be jolly exciting,” mused Hugh. “I thought they had you two or three times yesterday before they had.” “So did I. I missed my guess with that quarter of theirs. I thought that if I kept near the side line he would think I meant to turn in and then I’d keep on straight. But he didn’t fall for it.” “Why, then you did think, after all, didn’t you?” Nick looked puzzled. “I guess I must have,” he acknowledged. “I guess you’d call it unconscious cerebration. Here we are!”