"Them's harsh sentences, Beef!" chuckled T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., as that behemoth kicked open Hicks' door, bore the futilely squirming, kicking youth into the room, and hurled him on the davenport. "Watch my banjo, there, Butch; have a couple of cares! Say, what'smatter wid youse guys, anyhow? This is my first saengerfest for eons. Old Bannister has a clear track ahead at last, the Championship is won for _sure_, and Thor, that mighty engine of destruction to Ham's and Ballard's hopes, after much tinkering, is hitting on all twelve cylinders. Why, I prithee, deny me the pleasure of a little joyous song?" T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., since the memorable Latham game, when Thor had awakened between halves, and the Prodigious Prodigy had shown himself worthy of his title by winning the game after defeat leered at old Bannister, had suffered a relapse, and was again his old sunny, heedless, happy-go-lucky self. Now that John Thorwald had been startled into realizing that he loved his college and had been saved from having to leave, now that he played football for his Alma Mater, and Bannister's hopes of the Championship were roseate, the blithesome Hicks had abandoned himself to a golden existence of Beefsteak Busts downtown at Jerry's, entertaining jolly comrades in his cozy room, and pestering the campus with his banjo and ridiculous imitations of Sheerluck Holmes, the Dachshund Detective. Big Butch Brewster, lecturing him for his care-free ways, as futilely as he had done for three years past, gave up in despair. "I might as well be showing moving-pictures to the inmates of a blind asylum," he growled on one occasion, "as to persuade you to quit acting like a lunatic! You, a Senior--acting like an escaped inhabitant of Matteawan! Bah!" Big Butch Brewster, drawing a chair up to the davenport, assumed the manner of a physician toward a recalcitrant patient, while Beef carefully stowed the banjo in the closet and Deacon Radford, an interested spectator, sat on the bed. The happy-go-lucky Hicks, at a loss to account for the strange expressions of his comrades, tried to arise, but the football captain pinned him down with one hand. "Seriously, Hicks," spoke Butch, "your saengerfest came at a lamentably inopportune time! I regret to Inform you that old Bannister faces another problem, with regard to Thor, and unless it is solved, I fear--" "Thor has balked again?" gasped the dazed Hicks, whom Butch now allowed to sit up, as he showed interest. "Has the engine of destruction stalled? Why, as fast as we get him lined up, off he slides at an angle! Well, you fellows did perfectly right to bring this baffling problem, whatever it is, to me. What is the trouble--won't Thor play football?"