“That’s very true, Clif,” agreed Mr. McKnight. “He has always been able to win coöperation. We were at college together, although I knew him only slightly. He was a class ahead of me. But it was so with everything he went into there. They made him captain of the Senior eleven his last year, and he went in and won the class championship. It’s like pulling teeth without gas to get a senior to come out and practice for football, but Babcock did it somehow, and they licked the sophomores first, and then tackled us after we had nosed out ahead of the freshmen. Of course we expected to beat them badly, and every one else expected us to, but Babcock worked up a cheering section with plenty of tin pans, and watchman’s rattles――noise was always part of the game――and held us for the first half. I was only a substitute and didn’t get into the fun until the last minute. We got a field-goal in the third quarter, and thought we had the class championship won. But along toward the last of it Babcock called for time and got his crowd together and gave instructions. They had been using only six or eight old plays, and we’d had no trouble guessing what was coming. We could see Babcock making a sort of diagram with his finger on the ground, and the others bending over and watching, and we laughed, and our crowd on the side-line made fun of them. Then they came back and spread themselves all across the field in a ridiculous sort of formation, with only two men behind the line. Of course we spread out to cover them, and played our center back, and got all set for a tricky pass. But we were all wrong. Their quarterback took the ball, and came straight through with it, and, as we were wide open, he had a good start with two men making interference for him before we found out what was happening. We chased him sixty-odd yards, but every time one of us thought we had him, a Senior would crowd us off, and send us tumbling, and he went over right between the goal-posts――that was in the days of the free-try for goal――and so they licked us, seven to three. Babcock has told me since that he knew the only way to beat us was to get our forward line open, and that all that instruction and diagram stuff was merely bluff. All the instruction he gave was to the quarter. ‘Take the ball,’ he said, ‘and run it straight down for a score.’” CHAPTER X CLIF GOES FOR A PAPER