When there were but seven minutes left neither team had scored.

Gridley now had the ball for snap-back at its own twenty-five-yard line.

The most that home boosters were hoping for now was that Gridley would be able to hold down the game to no score.

Dave had been thinking deeply.  He had just found a chance to mutter orders swiftly.

Fenton, little, wiry and swift, was to-day playing at left end, the position that Dick himself had made famous in the year before.

“Eighteen—–­three—­eleven—–­seven—–­nine!” called Tom Reade, crisply.

The first four figures called off the play that Gridley was to make, or to pretend to make.  But that nine, capping all at the end, caused a swift flutter in Gridley hearts.  For that nine, at the end of the signal, called for a fake play.

Yet the instant that the whistle trilled out its command every Gridley player unlimbered and dashed to the position ordered.

Only three men on the team understood what was contemplated.  Coach Morton, from the side lines, had looked puzzled from the moment that he heard the signal.

Dick Prescott, eager for his chum’s success, as well as the team’s, stood as erect as he could beside Mr. Morton, trying to take in the whole field with one wide, sweeping glance.

As Tom Reade caught the ball on its backward snap, he straightened up, tucking the ball under his left arm and making a dash for Gridley’s right end.

Immediately, of course, Hallam rushed its men toward that point.

Yet the movements of Gridley’s right wing puzzled the visitors.  For all of Dave’s right flankers dashed forward, making an effective interference.

Surely, reasoned Captain Forsythe, Tom Reade didn’t mean to try to break through by himself with the pigskin.

That much was a correct guess.  Tom didn’t intend anything of the sort.

All in a flash Reade, as prearranged, dropped the ball, punting it vigorously.

Up it went, soaring obliquely over Gridley’s left flank and far beyond.

Just a second before the ball itself started, little Fenton had put himself in motion.  By the time that the ball was in the air Fenton was past Hallam’s line and scorching down the field.

Now Forsythe and every Hallam man comprehended all in a flash.

Fenton had caught the ball with a nicety that brought wild whoops from the Gridley boosters, now standing on their seats and waving the Gridley colors.

“That little fellow looks like a streak of light,” yelled one Gridley booster.

The description wasn’t a bad one.  Fenton was doing some of the finest sprinting conceivable.  Before him nothing menaced but big Harlowe, Hallam’s fullback.  Harlowe, however, was hurling himself straight in the impetuous way of little Fenton.

It looked like a bump.  There could be but one result.  Fenton would have to go down to save the ball.