run across.”  And away went East, Tom close behind him.  East was evidently putting his best foot foremost; and Tom, who was mighty proud of his running, and not a little anxious to show his friend that, although a new boy, he was no milksop, laid himself down to work in his very best style.  Right across the close they went, each doing all he knew, and there wasn’t a yard between them when they pulled up at the island moat.

“I say,” said East, as soon as he got his wind, looking with much increased respect at Tom, “you ain’t a bad scud, not by no means.  Well, I’m as warm as a toast now.”

“But why do you wear white trousers in November?” said Tom.  He had been struck by this peculiarity in the costume of almost all the School-house boys.

“Why, bless us, don’t you know?  No; I forgot.  Why, to-day’s the School-house match.  Our house plays the whole of the School at football.  And we all wear white trousers, to show ’em we don’t care for hacks.  You’re in luck to come to-day.  You just will see a match; and Brooke’s going to let me play in quarters.  That’s more than he’ll do for any other lower-school boy, except James, and he’s fourteen.”

“Who’s Brooke?”

“Why, that big fellow who called over at dinner, to be sure.  He’s cock of the school, and head of the School-house side, and the best kick and charger in Rugby.”

“Oh, but do show me where they play.  And tell me about it.  I love football so, and have played all my life.  Won’t Brooke let me play?”

“Not he,” said East, with some indignation.  “Why, you don’t know the rules; you’ll be a month learning them.  And then it’s no joke playing-up in a match, I can tell you—­quite another thing from your private school games.  Why, there’s been two collar-bones broken this half, and a dozen fellows lamed.  And last year a fellow had his leg broken.”

Tom listened with the profoundest respect to this chapter of accidents, and followed East across the level ground till they came to a sort of gigantic gallows of two poles, eighteen feet high, fixed upright in the ground some fourteen feet apart, with a cross-bar running from one to the other at the height of ten feet or thereabouts.

“This is one of the goals,” said East, “and you see the other, across there, right opposite, under the Doctor’s wall.  Well, the match is for the best of three goals; whichever side kicks two goals wins:  and it won’t do, you see, just to kick the ball through these posts—­it must go over the cross-bar; any height’ll do, so long as it’s between the posts.  You’ll have to stay in goal to touch the ball when it rolls behind the posts, because if the other side touch it they have a try at goal.  Then we fellows in quarters, we play just about in front of goal here, and have to turn the ball and kick it back before the big fellows on the other side can follow it up.  And in front of us all the big fellows play, and that’s where the scrummages are mostly.”