The psychology of football is inexplicable. Yale, beaten by Virginia, Brown, and Wash-Jeff, with the Blue's best gridiron star ineligible to play, a team that seemed at odds with itself and the 'Varsity, mismanaged, poorly coached, journeys to Princeton to battle with old Nassau; the Tiger, Its tail as yet untwisted, presents its best eleven for several seasons, a great favorite in the odds, and yet the final score is Yale, 14; Princeton, 7! A strange fear of the Bulldog, bred of many bitter defeats, of similar occasions when a feeble Yale team aroused itself and trampled an invincible Orange and Black eleven, when the Blue fought old Nassau with a team that "wouldn't" be beat, gave victory to the poorer aggregation. So many things unforeseen often enter into a football contest, shifting the balance of power from the stronger to the weaker team. One eleven gets the jump on the other, the favorite weirdly goes to pieces--team dissension may exist, a dozen other causes--but, boiled down, Mike Murphy's statement was most appropriate now. Latham simply _would not_ be beat! The sporting pages had said: "Latham simply can't beat Bannister!" Here the team, that could not be beaten was being defeated, and the team that would not be defeated was, so far, the victor. Perhaps the threatened dropping of Thor from the Gold and Green squad shook somewhat Captain Butch's players; more likely, the Latham aggregation got the jump on Bannister, opening up a bewildering attack of criss-crosses, line plunges, cross-bucks, and tandems, from all of which the forward pass frequently developed; they literally overwhelmed a supposedly unbeatable team. And once they got the edge, it was hard for Bannister to regain poise and to smother the fast plays that swept through or around the bewildered eleven. "We have _got_ to beat 'em!" growled Shad, "Mike Murphy or not. Why, if little old Latham cleans us up, smash go our chances of the State Championship! Oh, look at Thor--the big mountain of muscle. Why doesn't he wake up, and go push that team off the field?" Thor, the Prodigious Prodigy, his vast hulk unprotected from the cold wind by a football blanket, squatted on the ground, on the side-line, apparently in a trance. Ever since the night before, when his father's letter had dealt such a knock-out blow to his hopes of fulfilling the promise to his dying mother, had rudely side-tracked him from the climb to his goal, the blond giant had maintained that dumb apathy. If anything, it seemed that the cruel blow of fate had only served to make Thor more stolid and impassive than ever, and Theophilus wondered if the Colossus had really grasped the import of the tragic letter as yet. The news had spread over the college and campus, and the students were sincerely sorry for Thor. But to offer him sympathy was about as difficult as consoling a Polar bear with the toothache.