"Stover, you've played behind the line, haven't you?" said Dana. "A couple of games at school, sir," he answered hastily, "just as a makeshift." "I'm going to try you at fullback." "At fullback?" "Get into it and see if you can make good." "Yes, sir." He went without spirit, sure of the impossibility of the thing, feeling only the humiliation and failure that all at once flung itself like a storm-cloud across his ambition. A coach took charge of him, running over with him the elementary principles of blocking and plunging. When he lined up, it was with half of the coaching force at his back. "Come on, Stover; get into it!" "Wake up!" "Get your head down!" "Keep a-going!" "Ram into it!" "Knock that man over!" "Knock him _over_!" He went into the line blindly, frantically, feeling for the first time that last exhausting, lunging expenditure of strength that is called forth with the effort to fall forward when tackled. Nothing he did satisfied. It was a constant storm of criticism, behind his back, in his ears, shrieked to his face: "Keep your feet--oh, keep your feet!" "Smash open that line!" "Rip open that line!" "Hit it--hit it!" "Hard--harder!" "Go on--don't stop!" A dozen times he flung his meager weight against the ponderous bodies of the center men, crushed by the impact in front, smothered by the surging support of his own line behind, helpless in the grinding contention, turned and twisted, going down in a heap amid the shock of bodies, thinking always: "Well, the darn fools will find out just about how much use I am here!" When the practise ended, at last, Dana called on Tompkins. "Joe, take Stover and give him a line on the punting, will you?" "I say, he's been worked pretty hard," said the coach with a glance. "How about it?" said Dana quickly. "All right," said Stover, lying gloriously. At that moment, aching in every joint, he would have given everything to have spoken his mind. Instead he brought forth a smile distinguished for its eagerness, and said, "I'd like to get right at it, sir." "Fullback's the big problem," said Tompkins, as they started across the field. "Bangs can fill in at end, but we've got to get a fullback that can catch punts, and with nerve enough to get off his kicks in the face of that Princeton line." "I'll do my best, sir," said Stover, with a sinking feeling. For twenty minutes, against the rebellion of his body, he went through a rigorous lesson, improving a little in the length of his punts, and succeeding fairly well in holding the ball, which came spinning end over end to him from the region of the clouds. "That'll do," said Tompkins, at last. "That's all?" said Stover stoically, picking up his sweater.