and fast runners.  They never join in the very rough work, but they always follow on the outskirts of the forwards, and if the ball is forced past it is their duty to pick it up and make away with it like lightning.  If they are very fast they may succeed in carrying it a long way before they are caught—­’tackled,’ as we call it.  It is their duty also to keep their eye on the quarter-backs of the enemy, and to tackle them if they get away.  Behind them again are the two half-backs—­or ‘three-quarters,’ as they call them in England.  I am one of them.  They are supposed to be fast runners too, and a good deal of the tackling comes to their lot, for a good runner of the other side can often get past the quarters, and then the halves have got to bring him down.  Behind the half-backs is a single man—­the back.  He is the last resource when all others are past.  He should be a sure and long kicker, so as to get the ball away from the goal by that means—­but you are not listening.”

“Oh yes, I am,” said Kate.  As a matter of fact the great throng and the novel sights were distracting her so much that she found it hard to attend to her companion’s disquisition.

“You’ll understand it quickly enough when you see it,” the student remarked cheerily.  “Here we are at the grounds.”

As he spoke the carriage rattled through a broad gateway into a large open grassy space, with a great pavilion at one side of it and a staked enclosure about two hundred yards long and a hundred broad, with a goal-post at each end.  This space was marked out by gaily coloured flags, and on every side of it, pressing against the barrier the whole way round, was an enormous crowd, twenty and thirty deep, with others occupying every piece of rising ground or coign of vantage behind them.  The most moderate computation would place the number of spectators at fifteen thousand.  At one side there was a line of cabs in the background, and thither the carriage of the Dimsdales drove, while Tom rushed off with his bag to the pavilion to change.

It was high time to do so, for just as the carriage took up its position a hoarse roar burst from the great multitude, and was taken up again and again.  It was a welcome to the English team, which had just appeared upon the ground.  There they were, clad in white knickerbockers and jerseys, with a single red rose embroidered upon their breasts; as gallant-looking a set of young fellows as the whole world could produce.  Tall, square-shouldered, straight-limbed, as active as kittens and as powerful as young bullocks, it was clear that they would take a lot of beating.  They were the pick of the University and London clubs, with a few players from the northern counties; not a man among them whose name was not known wherever football was played.  That tall, long-legged youth is Evans, the great half-back, who is said to be able to send a drop-kick further than any of his predecessors in the annals of the game.  There