“Why don’t you talk to Prescott, too?” demanded the Fordham captain sulkily.

“I don’t need to.”

“You——­don’t—–­need to?” demanded Barnes, opening his eyes in pretended wonder.

“No; Prescott and his fellows have a magnificent reputation for fair play, and they’ve won it on merit.”

“You’re down on us,” growled Captain Barnes.

“I’m only waiting till I can put my finger on some slugging to stop the game and hand it to Gridley,” retorted the referee, with a snap.

“Be mighty careful, fellows; be clever,” whispered the Fordham captain to his most “dependable” men.

“Are we going to throw the game?” demanded the slugger who had so angered Hudson.

“No; but don’t get caught at anything.  Better not do anything.  We’ve got those milk-diet infants eight to nothing now.  Play their own kind of kindergarten game as long as we can hold the score without rough work.”

Barnes’s own instructions would have sufficiently stamped his team, had these orders been heard by anyone else.

At the beginning of the second half Fordham played a much more honest game, and Gridley began to pick up hope that fairness might prevail hereafter.

Gridley’s own game, in the second half, was as swift and scientific as it had ever been.  By sheer good playing and brilliant dashes Dick and his men carried the ball down the field, losing it once on downs; but after the first ten minutes of the half they kept the pigskin wholly in Fordham territory.

Back and forth surged the battle.  Fordham, despite its greatly superior weight and bulk, was not by any means superior when under the utmost watchfulness of a referee avowedly anxious to penalize.

Yet, until the game was nearly over, Fordham managed to keep the ball away from its own goal line.

Then, while the lines reformed and Dick bent over to snap back, Dave Darrin called out a signal that electrified the whole Gridley line.  It called for one of their most daring plays, that Prescott himself made famous the year before.

While the start, after the ball was in play, seemed directed toward the right wing of Gridley, the ball was actually jumped to little Fenton, at the left end, and Fenton, backed solidly by a superb interference, got off and away with the ball.  In a twinkling he had it down behind Fordham’s goal line.

Then the ball went back for the kick.  The band played a few spirited measures while the wearied Gridley boosters suddenly rose and whooped themselves black in the face.

The kick, too, was won.

“Oh, well.” growled Barnes, “we have two points to the good yet, and only four minutes and a half left for the game.  Don’t get rough, fellows, unless you have to.”

As the Gridley boys sprang to a fresh line-up their eyes were glowing.

“Remember, fellows, the time is short, but battles have been won in two minutes!”