Leaving Hicks to read the rest of Scoop Sawyer's long missive, terminating with indignant condemnation of the sunny youth's love of mystery, the terrific enthusiasm roused at old Bannister by the daily appearance on Bannister Field of Thor, and his irresistible marches through the 'Varsity, must be chronicled and explained. Not for five seasons, not since the year before Hicks, Pudge, Butch, Beef and the others of 1919 were Freshmen, had the Gold and Green corraled that greatest glory, The State Intercollegiate Football Championship! In Captain Butch's Sophomore year, he had flung his bulk into the fray, training, sacrificing, fighting like a Trojan, only to see the pennant lost by a scant three inches, as Jack Merritt's forty-yard drop-kick for the goal that would have won the Championship struck the cross-bar and bounded back into the field. And the past season-old Bannister could still vision that tragic scene of the biggest game. The students could picture Captain Brewster, with the Bannister eleven a few yards from Ballard's goal-line, and the touchdown that would give the Gold and Green that supreme glory. One minute to play; Deacon Radford had given Butch the pigskin, and like a berserker, he fought entirely through the scrimmage. But a kick on the head had blinded him, in the _mêlée_--free of tacklers, with the goal-line, victory, and the Championship so near, he staggered, reeled blindly, crashed into an upright, and toppled backward, senseless on the field, while the Referee's whistle announced the end of the game, and glory to Ballard. Even then, after the first terrible shock of the loss, of the cruel blow fate dealt the Gold and Green two successive seasons, the slogan was: "_Next year_--Bannister will win the Championship--_next year_!" It was now "next year!" Losing only Jack Merritt, Babe McCabe and Heavy Hughes from the line-up, and having Monty Merrlweather and Bunch Bingham, fully as good, Coach Corridan's Gold and Green eleven, before the season started, seemed a better fighting machine than even the one of the year before. But when the irrepressible T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., in some mysterious fashion making good his rash vow to produce a smashing full-back that can't be stopped, towed that stolid, blond Colossus, Thor, to old Bannister, enthusiasm broke all limits! Mass-meetings were held every night. Speeches by Coaches, Captain, players, Faculty, and students, aroused the campus to the highest pitch; every day, the entire student-body, with The Bannister Band, turned out on Bannister Field to cheer the eleven, and to watch the Prodigious Prodigy perform valorous deeds, like the god Thor. "Bannister College--State Championship!" was the cry, and with the giant Thor to present an irresistible catapulting that could not be stopped, the Gold and Green exultantly awaited the big games with Hamilton and Ballard.