“When you get it, hold on to it,” he said dryly.  Neil arose with reddening cheeks and, amid the smiles of the others, went back to his place trying to decide whether, if he could have his way, the coach should perish by boiling oil or by merely being drawn and quartered.  But after that it was a noticeable fact that the men clung to the ball when they got it as though it were a dearly loved friend.

Later, passing down the line in front from end to end, the head coach threw the ball swiftly at the feet of one after another of the candidates, and each was obliged to drop where he stood and have the ball in his arms when he landed.  When Mills came to Neil the latter was still nursing his resentment, and his cheeks still proclaimed that fact.  After the boy had dropped on the ball and had tossed it back to the coach their eyes met.  In the coach’s was just the merest twinkle, a very ghost of a smile; but Neil saw it, and it said to him as plainly as words could have said, “I know just how you feel, my boy, but you’ll get over it after a while.”

The coach passed on and the flush faded from Neil’s cheeks; he even smiled a little.  It was all right; Mills understood.  It was almost as though they shared a secret between them.  Alfred Mills, head football coach at Erskine College, had no more devoted admirer and partizan from that moment than Neil Fletcher, ’05.

Next the men were spread out until there was a little space between each, and the coach passed behind the line and shot the ball through, and they had an opportunity to see what they could do with a pigskin that sped away ahead of them.  By careful management it is possible in falling on a football to bring almost every portion of the anatomy in violent contact with the ground, and this fact was forcibly brought home to Neil, Paul, and all the others by the time the work was at an end.

“I’ve got bones I never knew the existence of before,” mourned Neil.

“Me too,” growled Paul.  “And half a dozen of my front teeth are aching from trying to bite holes in the ground; I think they’re all loose.  If they come out I’ll send the dentist’s bill to the management.”

A few minutes later Neil found himself at left half in one of the six squads of eleven men each that practised advancing the ball.  They lined up in ordinary formation, and the ball was passed to one back after another for end runs.  Mills went from squad to squad, criticizing briefly and succinctly.

“Don’t wait for the quarter to pass,” he told Paul, who was playing beside Neil.  “On your toes and run hard.  Have confidence in your quarter.  If the ball isn’t ready for you it’s not your fault.  Try that again.”

And when Paul and Neil and the full-back had plowed round the left end once more—­