The ex-Yale football star, delighted at his son's ambition to serve old Bannister and joyous at discovering that Hicks actually possessed the peculiar knack of drop-kicking, coached the splinter-youth all summer at their country place near Pittsburgh. Under the instruction of Hicks, Sr., the youth developed rapidly, and when he returned to the campus for his final year, he was a sure, dependable drop-kicker, inside the thirty-yard line. As Theophilus stated, beyond that he lacked the power, but in that zone he could boot 'em over the cross-bar from any angle. "He's been practicing all this season, in secret!" quavered the little Senior, "and he's a--a _fiend_, Butch, at drop-kicking. And yet, here it is time for the last game of his college years, and--he lacks confidence to tell you, or Coach Corridan. Oh, I'm afraid he will be angry with me for betraying him, and yet--I just _can't_ let him miss his splendid chance, now that Thor is out and old Bannister _needs_ a drop-kicker!" Big Butch was silent for a time. The football leader was deeply impressed and thrilled by Theophilus Opperdyke's story of T. Haviland Hicks, Jr.'s ambition. As he roosted on the Senior Fence, the behemoth gridiron star visioned the mosquito-like youth, whom nature had endowed with a splinter-structure, sneaking out on Bannister Field, at every chance, to practice clandestinely his drop-kicking. He could see the faithful Human Encyclopedia, vastly excited at his blithesome colleague's improvement, retrieving the pigskin for Hicks. He thrilled again as he thought of the bean-pole Hicks, who could never gain weight and strength enough to make the eleven, loyally training and perfecting himself in the drop-kick, trying to develop into a sure kicker, within a certain zone, hoping sometime, before he left college forever, to serve old Bannister. With Thor in the line-up at fullback, he would not have been needed, but now, with the Prodigious Prodigy out, it was T. Haviland Hicks, Jr.'s big chance!