In another regard as well, and a more essential regard, too, she showed superiority. For these champions from the upper Corn Belt had what plainly their opponents always before during the season had likewise had, but now lacked: they had an enormous conceit of themselves, a mountainous and a monumental belief in their ability to take this game away from the rival team. They had brought it with them--this assurance--and they had fed it stall-fat beforehand; and now, with the easy and splendid insolence of lusty, pampered youth, they exhibited it openly before all these hostile eyes upon the enemy's soil. It showed in them individually and as a unit. Almost as visibly as though words of defiance had been stencilled upon their tight-laced jerkins fore and aft, they flaunted forth their confidence in themselves, somehow expressing it in their rippling leg muscles and in their broad backs and in their hunched shoulders as they bunched up into formidable close formation, and in everything they did and said in the few minutes of practice intervening before they should be at grips with their opponents. They accepted the handclaps from the onlookers--a tribute of hospitality this was, extended by people to whom hospitality for the stranger was as sacred as their religion and as sincere as their politics--with an air which betokened, most evidently, that presently they meant to repay those who greeted them for the greeting, by achieving one of Sangamon's customary victories in Sangamon's customary workmanlike fashion. Among them Vretson, the much-advertised, loomed a greater giant above lesser giants, justifying by bulk alone his title of the Terrible Swede. As for Midsylvania's players, upon the other hand, it seemed to me, as I watched them, that they, in turn, watched the young Gogs and Magogs who were to grapple with them in a half-fearsome, half-furtive fashion. I marked that they flinched nervously, like débutantes, before the volleys of friendly applause from the crowd. It occurred to me that their thoughts must be studded with big black question marks; whereas we all could understand that no suggestion of doubtfulness punctuated the anticipations of the opposing eleven touching on the possibilities of the next two hours.