“Yes, I saw in the paper last week that you had been placed on the sub list of the Varsity.  I hope you’ll have a chance to play against Yates, although I don’t wish Prince any harm.  He’s a good fellow and a hard worker.  Hello, it’s one-fifteen.  Let’s get some lunch.”

A half hour later they parted, Joel hurrying off to recitation and Remsen remaining behind to keep an appointment with a friend.  After this they met almost every day, and Remsen was a frequent caller at Joel’s room, where he with Joel and Outfield held long, cosy chats about every subject from enameling golf balls to the Philosophy of Kant and the Original Protoplasm.

Meanwhile the season hurried along.  Harwell met and defeated the usual string of minor opponents by varying scores, and ran up against the red and blue of Keystone College with disastrous results.  But one important contest intervened between the present time and the game with Yates, and the hardest sort of hard work went on daily inside the inclosed field.  A small army of graduates had returned to coach the different players, and the daily papers were filled, according to their wont, with columns of sensational speculation and misinformation regarding the merits of the team and the work they were performing.  Out of the mass of clashing “facts” contained in the daily journals but one thing was absolutely apparent:  to wit, the work of the Harwell Eleven was known only to the men and the coaches, and neither would tell about it.

At last, when chill November had been for a few days in the land, the game with the red and white clad warriors from Ithaca took place on a wet and muddy field, and Joel played the game through from start to finish, Prince being engaged in nursing his treacherous ankle, which had developed alarming symptoms with the advent of wet weather.  The game resulted in a score of twenty-four to five, the Ithacans scoring a neat, but inexcusable, goal from field in the first half.  Joel played like a Trojan, and went around the left end of the opposing line time and again for good gains, until the mere placing of the ball in his hands was accepted by the spectators as equal to an accomplished gain.

Wesley Blair made a dashing charge through a crowded field for twelve yards and scored a touch-down that brought the onlookers to their feet cheering.  Dutton, the captain, played a steady brilliant interfering game, and Kingdon, at right half-back, plunged through the guard-tackle holes time and again with the ball hugged to his stomach, and kept his feet in a manner truly marvelous until the last inch had been gained.

But critics nevertheless said unkind things of the team work as they wended their way back over the sodden turf, and shook their heads dubiously over the field-goal scored by the opponents.  There would be a general shaking up on the morrow, they predicted, and we should see what we should see.  And the coaches, too, although they dissembled their feelings under cheerful countenances, found much to condemn, and the operations of bathing, dressing, and weighing that afternoon were less enjoyable to the breathless, tattered men.