“I think,” he explained, “that it is a little more evenly developed.  She is surer in all departments than she was a year ago.  Like us, the Blue started the season with five of her old men in the line-up, and, like us, she had a good crowd of substitutes to pick from.  Her captain and quarter-back, Ainsmith, is one of the best in the game today, and in her full-back, Atkinson, whom you probably remember, she has another star.  Her halves are new men, but they’re fast and hard to stop.  In the line, tackle to tackle, I think we’ll even up with them.  As for our ends, I believe we can show better goods than they can, although Mumford, who played with them last year, is a very good man.  I’m not telling you this to discourage you, for I firmly believe we’re going to win, but I don’t want you to think that it’s going to be a walk-over, for it isn’t, not by any manner of means.  We’ve got to work hard and use everything we know if we’re to have the long end of the score a week from today.  That’s what our team has got to do.  As for you fellows, you’ve got to stand right up behind it every minute and make it feel that you have confidence in it.  I can’t be here to see the game myself; I wish I could; but I fully expect to take up the paper a week from tomorrow morning and read that Brimfield has turned the trick again.  And I expect to read, too, that a notable feature of the contest was the whole-souled, hearty support given the Maroon-and-Grey by their fellows!  That’s all I’ve got to say to you.  The team’s going to do its part.  You do yours.”

The next day dawned fair and warm, with an almost imperceptible haze in the atmosphere, a veritable Indian summer day if ever there was one.  After dinner, a rather more hearty meal than was served to the football players on week-days, Clint went back to his room with the noble intention of writing a fine long letter to his father and mother.  There had been complaints from Cedar Run of late to the effect that Clint’s epistles were much too brief.  Today he resolved to send at least eight pages.  He would tell them all about the fine weather and yesterday’s game—­mentioning quite incidentally his own part in it—­and the football spirit that prevailed throughout the Academy and—­and—­About this time Clint found himself smothering a yawn and viewing distastefully the writing pad in front of him.  Through the open windows came the sound of voices borne on the still, soft air, and he pushed back his chair and wandered to the casement.  Across the field the Autumn woods were brown and sunlit and their depths filled with a purple haze.  Boys were strolling in couples and groups across the yellowing turf.  After a minute Clint went back to the table, looked indecisively at the still clean sheet of paper awaiting his pen, picked up his cap from the chair and, with a guilty backward glance, stole out of the room.  He felt very much as though he was playing hookey, a feeling which perhaps naturally increased his pleasure as he ran down the stairs and issued forth on the Row.