Diemann had been thinking of this that very morning when he got the doctor's telegram. The shock had driven out every thought of Ashley and the team. All through his work with the sub it had not occurred to him that anything fatal could come to Blake, he had been doing so well; then, without warning, came the message saying that he was sinking. He had got there just in time. Now it was all over and he was going back to college, where Fred would never hear them shout for him again, never feel an arm about him in the long walks over the hills. When the train drew into Palo Alto, Frank Lyman, the football manager, quiet and sober-faced, stood under the station-light. "Can you come to dinner with me?" asked Diemann. The two rode along under the oaks to the instructor's Palo Alto boarding-house. When they were alone upstairs, the manager said: "Will you tell me about it? You got up there all right?" "Yes," said the other, slowly; "not any too soon. The boy was conscious at the last, and knew me and talked a bit. It was all football, pretty much. I don't think he was quite clear enough to talk about other things." "What did he say--that is, anything special?" "No; he said he was more than sorry that he wasn't going to get in the game; it was his last and he wanted to play, but, of course, it wasn't his fault, and the college wouldn't think he had thrown them down. He'd never been a quitter, he said." "No, never," said the manager. "He went on in that strain a good deal; said that he wished that he could have stayed longer, just to play for them again. At the end he pressed my hand and said: 'I'll come back somehow, Die, if there is anything in it.'" The Psychology instructor had spoken half in revery. He added quickly: "He was pretty well gone then, poor old chap, and wandering a little, and soon after that, why, he went over the line." He was sorry for having let that sentence slip out. The student would not understand it; he could not know what those last words of Blake's had meant to him, who saw their meaning. Lyman would only think it a bit of ghastly humor that need not have been repeated. But the manager did not take it so, evidently. "That reminds me of something, Diemann," he said. "I haven't talked it over with anyone yet, because everybody is sour-balled enough as it is. It's about Ashley. I'm afraid he is going stale." "Yes?" said Diemann, with dull interest, "I've rather been afraid of it."