“We’ll do it,” retorted Captain Dick.  “We’ve got to!”

“And to make the boys forget all the old calls, so that they won’t mix the signals!” muttered Dave disconsolately.

“We’ll do it!”

It was Coach Morton who took up the refrain this time.  And it was Prescott who added: 

“We’ve got to do it.  Nothing is impossible, when one must!”

It was just twenty-five minutes past three when the coach and his two younger companions turned around the corner of the athletic grounds and slipped in through the gate.

Most of the fellows were in the dressing quarters.

Phin Drayne sat on the edge of a locker chest.  One of his feet lay across the knee of the other leg.  He was in the act of unlacing one of his street shoes when Coach Morton called to him.

“Me?” asked Phin, looking up quickly.

“Yes,” said Mr. Morton quietly.  “I want to post you about something.”

“Oh, all right; right with you, sir,” returned Phin, leaping up and following the coach outside.

“What is it?” asked Phin, beginning to feel uneasy.

“Come along where the others can’t hear,” replied Mr. Morton, taking hold of Drayne’s nearer elbow.

Phin turned white now.  He went along, saying nothing, until Mr. Morton halted by the outer gate.

“Pass through, Drayne—–­and never let us see your face inside this gate again.”

“But why?  What——­”

“Ask your conscience!” snapped back the coach.  “You’d better travel fast!  I’m going back to talk to the other fellows!”

Mr. Morton was gone.  For an instant Phin Drayne stood there as though he would brave out this assertion of authority.  Then, seized by another impulse, he turned and made rapidly for a town-bound street car that was heading his way.

“What’s up?” asked two or three of the fellows of Dick Prescott.  Perceiving something out of the usual, they spoke in the same breath.

“Oh, if there’s anything to tell you,” spoke Prescott, suppressing a pretended yawn, “Mr. Morton may tell you——­some time.”

But Mr. Morton was soon back.  Knocking on the wall for attention, he told, in as few and as crisp sentences as he could command, the whole story, as far as known.

“Now, young gentlemen,” wound up the coach, “we must practice the new signals like wild fire.  There’s mustn’t be a single slip not a solitary break in our game with Tottenville.  And that game will begin at three-thirty on Saturday!

“In reverting to Drayne, I wish to impress upon you all, with the greatest emphasis, that this must be treated by you all with the utmost secrecy until we are prepared, with proofs, to go further!  If it should turn out that we’re wrong in our suspicions, we’ll turn and give Phineas Drayne the biggest and most complete public apology that a wronged man ever received.”

“All out to practice the new signals!” shouted Prescott, the young captain of the team.