Then he dug out, the ball tucked firmly between arm and body, his right hand outstretched for action. He could run, could Clif, and he ran now, but there was the First Team quarter bearing diagonally across to intercept him, and the fleet Jensen was close behind. It seemed to Clif that he had taken but a dozen strides when Jensen shot for him, and, despite his plunge to the right, caught him, and brought him crashing down, and yet when he was pulled, breathless, to his feet a moment later, there was the fifty-yard line behind the ball! Somehow he had successfully caught a thirty-yard pass, and carried it seventeen yards further! The Scrub assailed him as one man, and did him painful honor! The First was disgruntled, and Mr. Otis’s disgusted observations did little to soothe it. Tom, smiting Clif mightily between his shoulders and depriving him momentarily of what little breath he had left after being thumped to earth by Stoddard, and sat on by Jensen, grinned expansively and shouted “Good stuff, old son! That’s the way to treat ’em!” Sim called on Thayer for a fullback buck and Johnny was piled up with a sickening thud. The First was through with nonsense! Stiles tried to slip off tackle, and was thrown for a loss, but a too-eager First Team end had been off-side and the ball went to the forty-four, and it was still second down. Stiles tried the same play again and got a yard. Kemble went back and Sim cut through for three. Kemble punted to the five-yard line, and Jensen ran the ball back to the seventeen. Fargo made two and then four through Greene. Sproule, on an end run, added two more and Fargo punted short to the Scrub’s forty-six, where the ball went out. Adams lost three yards on an end-round play. Kemble went back to punting position, and, with a widespread formation, hurled to the left for twelve yards, where Stiles pulled it down, only to lose it. Thayer took Kemble’s place up-field, but the ball went to Kemble instead, and he raced back behind Thayer and again threw forward, this time far down the field. The throw was hurried, for the First piled through desperately, and were all around Tom when the ball got away. Thayer, however, did good work as defense, and the pass reached its destination. The destination was Jeff Adams, right end. Jeff had crossed behind the enemy, and was uncovered. The rest is history. CHAPTER IX AN “UNEXPECTED” HONOR Jeff had just twenty-eight yards to go for a touchdown, and he covered twenty-two of them before he was threatened. Then Drayton, right end, overhauled him. But after the tackle Jeff made three good yards, and when the whistle sounded, the pigskin lay no more than four feet from the last whitewashed streak. A horn tooted hoarsely, but “G.G.” would have none of it. “Play on,” he ordered grimly. “Two minutes more, First!”