"Why, Wray, you remember me saying that evening, after I left the study, the only fellow I met in the passage besides Simon was Loman?" "Yes; so you did." "He was going towards the Doctor's study," said Oliver. "Hum! I remember now you said so." "And yet," continued Oliver, plunging into his jersey--"and yet I can't see how, if he did take the paper, he didn't do better in the exam. He came out so very low." "Yes, that's queer, unless he took a fit of repentance all of a sudden, and didn't look at it." "Then it's queer he didn't destroy it, instead of sticking it in his Juvenal." "Well, I suppose the Doctor will clear it up, now he's on the scent." "I suppose so," said Oliver; "but, I say, old man," he added, "of course there's no need for us to say anything about it to anybody. The poor beggar doesn't want _our_ help to get him into trouble." "No, indeed. I'd be as glad, quite, if it were found to be another wrong scent, after all," said Wraysford. "The fellow's in a bad enough way as it is." "Are you nearly ready, you two?" thundered Stansfield at the door. "Just ready!" they exclaimed; and in another minute they, too, had dismissed from their minds everything but Saint Dominic's versus County, as they trotted off to join the rest of their comrades on the field of battle. And, indeed, for the next two hours there was no opportunity, even, had they desired it, for any one to think of anything but this momentous struggle. For three years running the County had beaten the schoolboys, each time worse than before, until at last the latter had got to be afraid the others would begin to think them foemen not worthy of their steel. This year they hardly dared hope a better fate than before, for the enemy were down in force. Yet the boys had determined to die hard, and at least give their adversaries all the trouble they could before their goal should fall; and of this they were all the more sanguine, because their team was the very best the school could muster, and not a man among them but knew his business, and could be depended on to do it too. Bad luck! Of course, just when it's not wanted there's a breeze got up, blowing right down the field, and in the very teeth of the schoolboys, who have lost the toss, and have to play from the oak-tree end for the first half of the game! "It's always the way," growls Ricketts. "They'll simply eat us up while they've got the chance, you see!" "No they won't," says Stansfield, bound to take a cheerful view of things. "We're strong in backs. It's not like last match, when Greenfield wasn't playing, and Loman was there to make such a mess of it." "Well, it's a comfort, that, anyhow." "Of course it is," says the captain. "What you fellows have got to do is to keep the ball in close, and nurse it along all the while, or else run--but you'd better let the quarter-backs do that."