Just before the Gridley youngsters were ready to go out for preliminary practice the big Fordham fellows came off the field.

“Hullo!” piped Dave, as the Gridley boys strolled out to the gridiron.  “You ought to feel happy, Dick.  There’s a big section of West Point over on the grand stand.”

Nearly two hundred young men in black and gray cadet uniforms of the United States Military Academy pattern sat in a solid block at one point on the grand stand.

“No, they’re not West Pointers,” sighed Dick.  “See here, those fellows, of course, are students at the Fordham Military institute.  They wear the West Point uniform.  And that’s the military school that Phin Drayne went to.”

“The sneak!” grunted Dave.  “I wonder if he’s over in that bunch, now.”

“I’m not even enough interested to wonder,” returned Prescott.  “He’s where he can’t do us any harm, anyway.”

“But, if the Fordham boys put anything over us, I’ll bet Drayne has things timed so that the military boys will do a big and noisy lot of boasting.”

“They will, anyway, if we allow them a chance,” answered Dick.  “Now, spread out, fellows,” he called, raising his voice.

In the next moment the ball was in lively play.

The first time that a fumble was made a jeering chorus sounded among the military school boys.

“I expected it,” growled Darrin.

“We don’t care, anyway,” smiled Dick.  “Let ’em hoot!  I don’t draw the line until they throw things.”

“If they knew Phin Drayne as we do, they’d throw him first,” grimaced Darrin.

A minute later another hoot went up.  It was plain that the military school boys had been primed for this.

But the gray-clad youths, it was very soon evident, were not the only ones who had come out to make a noise.  Half of the Fordham crowd present joined in the volleys of derision that were showered down on the practicing boys from Gridley.

“It’s nothing but a mob!” declared Darrin, his eyes flashing.

“Careful, old fellow,” counseled Prescott coolly.  “They’re trying to get our nerve before the game begins.  Don’t let ’em do it.”

This excellent instruction Dick contrived to pass throughout his team.  Thereafter the Gridley boys seemed not to hear the harsh witticisms that were hurled at them from all sides of the field.

Just in the nick of time the Gridley Band began playing.  That stopped the annoyance for a while, for Fordham had neglected to provide a band.

Yet when the Gridley High School song was started by the band, and the Gridley boosters joined in the words, the answer from Fordham came in the form of a “laughing-song,” let loose with such volume that the Gridley offering to the merriment was drowned out.

“I hope we can give this rough town a horrible thumping—–­that’s all,” muttered Dave, his eyes flashing.

“Don’t let them capture your ‘goat,’ and we will,” Dick promised, as quietly as ever.