As he sat, enveloped in a penumbra of gloom, the campus entrance door of Bannister Hall, the Senior dorm., opened suddenly, and T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., that happy-go-lucky youth, came out cautiously, after the fashion of a second-story artist, emerging from his crib with a bundle of swag, the last item being represented by a football tucked under Hicks' left arm. Beholding Butch Brewster on the Senior Fence, the sunny-souled Senior exhibited a perturbation of spirit seeming undecided whether to beat a retreat or to advance. "Now what's ailin' _you_?" demanded Butch wrathily, believing the pestersome Hicks to be acting in that burglarious manner for effect. "Why should _you_ sneak out of a dorm., bearing a football like it was an auk's egg? Why, you resemble a nigger, making his get-away after robbing a hen-roost! Don't torment me, you accident-somewhere-on-its-way-to-happen. I feel about as joyous as a traveling salesman who has made a town and gotten nary a order!" "It's _awful_!" soliloquized T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., perching beside the despondent Butch on the Senior Fence. "I am not a fatalist, old man, but it _does_ seem that fate hasn't destined Thor to play football for old Bannister this season! Here, after he won the Ham game, and we expected him to waltz off with Ballard's scalp and the Championship, he has to tumble downstairs! Oh, it's tough luck!" It was two days before the biggest game, with Ballard--the contest that would decide the State Intercollegiate Football Championship. Ballard, the present champions, discounting even Hamilton's stories of Thor's prowess, were coming to Bannister with an eleven more mighty than the one that had crushed the Gold and Green the year before, with a heavy, stonewall line, fast ends, and a powerful, shifty backfield. The Ballard team was confident of victory and the pennant. Bannister, building on the awakened Thorwald, superbly sure of his phenomenal strength and power, of his unstoppable rushes, serenely practiced the doctrine of preparedness, and awaited the day.