Stover felt it keenly, almost with a sharp antagonism that drove from him finally the slumbering rebellion he had felt all that night--the tugging at the bridle of consciousness which had been imposed upon him. This was a bigger thing, a thing that wakened in him the great instincts of combat. He would be a leader among leaders. He would succeed as success was reckoned. He gave a little laugh and held out his hand to Hunter. "Good night, Jim," he said. "Why--good night," said Hunter, surprised at the laugh and the unnecessary handshake. But the hand had been offered in challenge, and the laugh marked the final deliberate acceptance of all that Le Baron had logically exposed to him. "I'll play the game, and I'll play it better than they will," he said, setting his lips. "I've got my eyes open, and I'm not going to throw away a single chance. We'll see who'll lead!" CHAPTER VIII The intensity and seriousness of the football season abetted Stover in his new attitude of Napoleonic seclusion by leaving him little time for the lighter side of college pleasures. Every hour was taken up with the effort of mastering his lessons, which he then regarded, in common with the majority of his class, as a laborious task, a sort of necessary evil, the price to be paid for the privilege of passing four years in pleasant places with congenial companions. After supper he returned immediately to his rooms, where presently a succession of visiting sophomores, members of the society campaign committees, took up the first hours. These inquisitorial delegations, formal, stiff, and conducted on a basis of superior investigation, embarrassed him at first. But this feeling soon wore off with the consciousness that he was a subject of dispute; and, secure in the opportunity that would come to him with the opening of the winter-term period of elections, his interest was directed only to the probable selection among his classmates. By the middle of October the situation at Yale field had become critical. The earlier games had demonstrated what had been foreseen--the weakness and inexperience of the raw material in hand. Serious errors in policy were committed by Captain Dana, who, in the effort to find some combination which would bolster up the weak backfield, began a constant shifting of the positions in order to experiment with heavier men behind the line. A succession of minor injuries arrived to further the disorganization. The nervousness of the captain communicated itself to the team, harassed and driven in the effort for accomplishment. That there was serious opposition among the coaches to these new groping policies every man saw plainly; yet, to Stover's amazement, the knowledge remained within the team, impregnated with the spirit of loyalty and discipline. After three weeks of brilliancy at his natural position of end, buoyed up by the zest of confidence and success, he was abruptly called to one side.