Team play was as yet utterly lacking in the Erskine eleven, and though the men were as a rule individually brilliant or decidedly promising, Woodby had far the best of it there.  Fumbles were many on both sides, but Erskine’s were the most costly.  Stone’s fumble of a free kick soon after the second half began gave Woodby her second touch-down, from which, luckily, she failed to kick goal.  The veterans on the team, Tucker at left tackle, Graham at center, Cowan at right-guard, Foster at quarter, and Devoe at right end, played well with the glaring exception of Cowan, whose work in the second half especially was so slipshod that Mills, with wrath in his eye, took him out and put in Bell, a second eleven man.

With the score 11 to 6 against her, Erskine braced up and fought doggedly to score.  Neil proved the best ground-gainer, and made several five-and ten-yard runs around right end.  Once, with the ball on Woodby’s twelve yards and the audience shouting vehemently for a touch-down, Foster called on Paul for a plunge through right tackle.  Paul made two yards, but in some manner lost the ball, a fumble that put Erskine back on her fifty-yard line and that sent her hopes of tying the score down to zero.

The second half was to be but fifteen minutes long, and fully ten of the fifteen had gone by when Erskine took up her journey toward Woodby’s goal again.  Mason, the full-back, and Neil were sent plunging, bucking, hurdling at the enemy’s breastworks, and time after time just managed to gain their distance in the three downs.  Fortune was favoring Erskine, and Woodby’s lighter men were slower and slower in finding their positions after each pile-up.  Then, with the pigskin on Woodby’s twenty-eight yards, Neil was given the ball for a try outside of right tackle, and by brilliantly leaving his interference, which had become badly tangled up, got safely away and staggered over the line just at the corner.  The punt-out was a success and Devoe kicked goal, making the score 12 to 11 in Erskine’s favor.  For the rest of the half the home team was satisfied to keep Woodby away from its goal, and made no effort to score.  Woodby left the field after the fashion of victors, which, practically, they were, while the Erskine players trotted subduedly back to the locker-house with unpleasant anticipations of what was before them—­anticipations fully justified by subsequent events.  For Mills tore them up very eloquently, and promised them that if they were scored on by the second eleven before the game with Harvard he’d send every man of them to the benches and take the second to Cambridge.

Neil walked back to college beside Sydney Burr, insisting that that youth should take his hands from the levers and be pushed.  Paul had got into the habit of always accompanying Cowan on his return from the field, and as Neil liked the big sophomore less and less the more he saw of him, he usually fell back on either Ted Foster or Sydney Burr for company.  To-day it was Sydney.  On the way that youth surprised Neil by his intelligent discussion and criticism of the game he had just watched.