“I can’t make a single thing out of it all,” sighed Dan.  “All I can get at is that some of the seniors and some of our class, the juniors, are talking as though they didn’t care about playing this year.  I know that Coach Morton is worried.  In fact, he’s downright disheartened.”

“Surely,” interjected Dick, “Mr. Morton must have an idea of what is keeping some of the fellows back from the team?”

“If he does know, he isn’t offering any information,” returned Harry Hazelton.

“I don’t see any need for so much mystery,” broke in Dave Darrin, in disgust.

“Well, there is a mystery about it, anyway,” contended Tom Reade.

“Then, before I’m much older, I’m going to know what that mystery is,” declared Dick.

“You’re surely the one of our crowd who ought to be put on the trail of the mystery,” proposed Dalzell, with a laugh.

“Why?” challenged Prescott.

“Why, you’re a reporter on ‘The Blade.’  Now mysteries are supposed to constitute the especial field of reporters.  So, see here, fellows, I move that we appoint Dick Prescott a committee of one for Dick & Co., his job being to find out what ails football—–­to learn just what has made football sick this year.”

“Hear!  Hear!” cried some of the others.

“Is that your unanimous wish, fellows?” asked Dick, smiling.

“It is,” the others agreed.

“Very good, then,” sighed Prescott.  “At no matter what personal cost, I will find the answer for you.”

This was all in a spirit of fun, as the chums understood.  Yet this lightly given promise was likely to involve Dick Prescott in a good deal more than he had expected.

Readers of the preceding volumes in this series know Dick & Co. so well that an introduction would be superfluous.  Those to whom the pages of “The High School Freshmen” are familiar know how Dick & Co., chums from the Central Grammar School, entered Gridley High School in the same year.  How the boys toiled through that first year as half-despised freshmen, and how they got some small share in school athletics, even though freshmen were not allowed to make the school athletic teams, has been told.  The pranks of the young freshmen are now “old tales.”  How Dick Prescott, with the aid of his chums, put up a hoax that fairly seared the Board of Education out of its purpose to forbid High School football does not need telling again.  Our former readers are also familiar with the enmity displayed by Fred Ripley, son of a wealthy lawyer, and the boomerang plot of Ripley to disgrace Prescott and brand the latter as a High School thief.  The same readers will recall the part played in this plot by Tip Scammon, worthless son of the honest old High School janitor, and how Tip’s evil work resulted in his going to the penitentiary for the better part of a year.