_His chance...!_ He tossed the blankets off and sprang up, making plans rapidly. The coffee-pot left by Billy was still warm in the banked ashes, but Neale put it aside. No coffee! After his breakfast of oatmeal and toast, he looked longingly at his pipe, but did not light it. No tobacco! He remembered that this was about the time for Miss Austin's train, but he did not change his clothes to go down to see her off. No girls! Still in his football togs, just as he had danced the last waltz, he set off for the first of his training, a two-mile jog-trot over the hills. CHAPTER XXVI September, 1902. After the first day's practice Neale and Biffy McFadden were jogging back to the dressing-room together. "Great, isn't it?" grunted Biffy, rubbing his jersey sleeve over his sweaty forehead. "Looks like a job for either you or me." "I'll have to step lively, if I get the job. Just you wait till I get some of the fat off me. I'm soft yet." He thought bitterly of time wasted on the hotel piazza. "Soft? Hell!" cried Biffy. "All I'll say is I hope you never tackle me when you're hard--thought you'd slapped me with a piece of lead pipe just after I caught that punt." McAlpine and Andrews were standing outside the Gym. door. Neale stopped to shake hands with his Captain whom he had not seen before practice. McAlpine punched him appraisingly in the abdomen. "Not so bad. Some fat but there's muscle behind it." Neale made way for Atkins of the '99 team, an alumnus always hanging around the squad every season. He was supposed to be devoting his heart's blood to bond-brokerage, down on Wall Street, but, a wistful exile from the world to which he had given the passion of his youth, he always came uptown in the fall to watch football practice. Also, which was of much more importance, he spent his summer vacation looking up available football material, "out in the bushes" as he expressed it. He now stopped in front of the Captain with a grin of pride, and jerking his head towards an approaching player, he inquired, "Well, how about him?" McAlpine replied with enthusiasm, "Built like a piano, isn't he? Where'd you raise him?" Neale followed their eyes and saw a squat, swarthy, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound linesman rolling past them towards the Gym. door. "Where'd I raise him? Stole him from the U. of P. Father's something or other up in the coal-fields--oodles of money. Son was all set up to go to Pennsy, but we got him down here and led him up and down the Great White Way a couple of nights. Nobody could coax him away now--unless there's a University at Paris." McAlpine stared after the powerful back and shoulders filling the doorway. "God, what a brute! Baby hippo walking on his hind legs. What's his breed anyway?" "Some sort of hunky. I'm not up on their stud book, but I'd say off-hand he's a cross between a Slovak cart-horse and a Ruthenian wild boar--lots of space in his garret, but you can't hurt him with a pick-ax."