But Tug was so mixed up in the slight differences between this game and his beloved football, and so insisted upon running (which is against the rules of basket-ball), and upon tackling (which is against the rules), and upon kicking (which is against the rules), that he finally gave up in despair, and said that if he became a good basket-ball player he would be a poor football-player.  And football was his earlier love.

Sleepy, however, who was the great baseball sharp, made this complaint, in his drawling fashion: 

“The rules say you can only hold the ball five seconds, and it takes me at least ten seconds to decide what to do with it; so I guess the blamed game isn’t for me.”

Out of the many candidates for the team the following regular five were chosen:  For center, Sawed-Off, who was tall enough to do the “face-off” in excellent style, and who could, by spreading out his great arms, present in front of an ambitious enemy a surface as big as a windmill—­almost.  The right-forward was Heady, and of course the left-forward had to be his other half, Reddy.  Pretty managed by his skill in lawn-tennis to make the position of right-guard, and the left-guard was the chief of the Crows, MacManus.  The Dozen treated him, if not as an equal, at least as one who had a right to be alive and move about upon the same earth with them.

The Kingston basket-ball team played many games, and grew in speed and team-play till they were looked upon as a terror by the rest of the Interscholastic League.

Finally, indeed, they landed the championship of the various basket-ball teams of the academies.  But just before they played their last triumphant game in the League, and when they were feeling their oats and acting as rambunctious and as bumptious as a crowd of almost undefeated boys sometimes chooses to be, they received a challenge that caused them to laugh long and loud.  At first it looked like a huge joke for the high-and-mighty Kingston basket-ball team to be challenged by a team from the Palatine Deaf-and-Dumb Institute; then it began to look like an insult, and they were angry at such treatment of such great men as they admitted themselves to be.

It occurred to Sawed-Off, however, that before they sent back an indignant refusal to play, they might as well look up the record of the deaf-and-dumb basket-ball men.  After a little investigation, to their surprise, they found that these men were astoundingly clever players, and had won game after game from the best teams.  So they accepted the challenge in lordly manner, and in due time the Palatiners appeared upon the floor of the Kingston gymnasium.  A large audience had gathered and was seated in the gallery where the running-track ran.

Among the spectators was that girl to whom both Reddy and Heady were devoted, the girl who could not decide between them, she liked both of them so immensely, especially as she herself was the champion basket-ball player among the girls at her seminary.  Each of the Twins resolved that he would not only outdo all the rest of the players upon the gymnasium floor, but also his bitter rival, his brother.