"He's got cold feet," decided Tompkins, with the mild wonder of one to whom the game had never brought anything but exhilaration and delight. "They must be mighty good friends for Phelps to help him out like that!" He sighed a little wistfully. Ranny was letting no chance slip these days to show his disapproval of the newest member of the troop. There were others, too, who followed his example and treated the tenderfoot with marked coldness. Even stout Harry Vedder, though occasionally forgetting himself in the heat of play, lacked the good-natured friendliness of that first day. To be sure, these were far from being a majority. They included practically only the members of Ranny Phelps's own patrol; the others had apparently accepted Tompkins as one of the bunch and continued to treat him as such. But Dale's was a friendly nature, and it troubled him a little, when he had time to think about it, to be the object of even a passive hostility. These moments, however, were few and far between. What with football every afternoon, with lessons and occasional studying for the second-class tests, to say nothing of his paper-route and some extra delivery-work he had undertaken to add to his "suit" money, his days were pretty full. Besides, that doubt as to the entire efficiency of the team continued to worry him much more than any small personal trouble. On Saturday they played Troop Six, and Dale sat among the substitutes on the side-lines. It was an admirable chance for sizing up the playing of the team as a whole, and before the end of the second quarter his freckled forehead was puckered with worried lines. He had no fear of their losing the game. Their opponents had notoriously the weakest team in the entire scout league, and already two goals had been scored against it. The tenderfoot was thinking of next Saturday, and wondering more and more what sort of a showing the fellows would make then.