Between them, the three boys loitering across the grass represented just three-elevenths of the Grafton School Football Team. Captain Trafford played right tackle, Bert Winslow was left half-back and Nick Blake was quarter. Ted had played on the School Team ever since he had entered the lower middle class, which meant two years. Bert, who was now an upper-middler, had made his position only last season, beating out Siedhof in the final contests. Nick had been second-string quarter-back last year and now, owing to the graduation of Balch, had automatically succeeded to the position. Barring unforeseen and unexpected accidents, each of the trio was certain of playing the coming season through as first-choice. At Grafton the school buildings stood in a row midway across the campus, a three-acre expanse of level turf intersected by gravel paths shaded by elms and surrounded by an ancient fence of granite posts and squared timbers, the latter thoughtlessly set with an angle uppermost. In shape the campus was a square with one corner rounded off where Crumbie Street changed its mind about continuing northward and swung westward to River Street and, a half mile beyond that, the station. River Street marked the westerly limits of the school property all the way to the river, which, in its turn, formed the southerly boundary. The campus proper ended at School Street, but successive purchases had added many more acres between it and the Needham River, so that now the school property extended in an unbroken strip some two blocks wide from Needham Street, at the back, all the way down to the river. What was virtually a continuation of the campus lay to the south of School Street, but, since it was of later acquisition, it was, for some unknown reason, called “the green.” A tree-bordered path led through the middle of the green to Front Street, and, across that quiet road, an ornamental gateway of old brick and sandstone and lacy ironwork. Set in the right-hand pillar was a bronze tablet bearing the inscription: “Lothrop Field. In Memory of Charles Parkinson Lothrop, Class of 1911.” Beyond the gateway the land sloped gently to the river, and here was the Field House, near at hand as one entered, the tennis courts to the right, the diamond beyond them, the running track to the left of the gate, with the School Team gridiron inclosed in the blue-gray ribbon, and, further toward the river, the practice field. Beyond that again, near where Crumbie Street crossed by an old covered bridge on its way to Needham, stood the boat house.