Neale flung himself against Fate. He fell on his knees beside the prostrate man, and took the bullet head into his arms. "Mike," he pleaded. "Not now! _We need you, Mike!_" Like a mother with a baby lying between life and death, he hung over that coarse, bruised face. All the love he had ever felt for any one seemed shallow compared to his yearning over this debauched, foul-mouthed, hairy boozer. He could have kissed the ugly blue mug as the eyelids flickered, the color came back, and the giant rolled to his feet and lumbered back into the line. * * * * * The season rolled along. The luck seemed finally to have changed. They were almost through, with the best record in years. Then two days before the final game, Marshall the Captain broke a bone in his foot. The faces of the team were grave (all but that of Dodd, the sub thus let into the Varsity) as they gathered in the dressing-room before the game. The coach looked them over, casting about for the right note, and had the inspiration to lay by his usual impassioned, florid appeal. "Nicholson will play center," he began, his plain, heavy words like iron; "Burke and Dodd guards; Mike and Larsen tackles; Greenway and Huggins, ends; Edwards quarter. Crittenden and Wallace halves; Bascomb full-back. Crittenden will act as Captain." He looked full at Crittenden, "It's the last time you'll wear the blue and white, Neale Crittenden!" Neale throbbed like a great brazen bell, struck by the hammer. Andrews turned his eyes on the team and made the rest of his speech short and hard. "Boys, it's easy to lose and it's hard to win. Don't be fooled by the rooters saying you made a game fight. What _would_ you do? Run away? Take it from me, there's a time in every game when either team can win. It's the team that has the sand, that's got the guts to put in an extra pound _right then_, that wins! I'm not telling you this Cornell team is easy. They're damned hard. But you've got weight enough, you've got speed enough, you know football enough. Now you go out there on the field, and show me you've got guts enough to win!" With set jaws and grim, resolute hearts, the team, Neale at their head, trotted out on the gridiron. "It's the last time you'll wear the blue and white, Neale Crittenden!" He was clanging to that note. They were lucky to get through the first half with a clean slate. Cornell came fast and hard, but time after time they held them and punted out of danger. The ten minutes' intermission seemed to last barely ten seconds and they were at it again, dead-locked, swaying from one forty-yard line to another. "Looks like a tie-game, barring a fluke," thought Neale, and then with an angry throb of alarm, "By God, I believe we're letting up! Here's where we put in that extra pound!"