At this moment Griffith, the itinerant vender of oranges from Hill Morton, enters the close with his heavy baskets.  There is a rush of small boys upon the little pale-faced man, the two sides mingling together, subdued by the great goddess Thirst, like the English and French by the streams in the Pyrenees.  The leaders are past oranges and apples, but some of them visit their coats, and apply innocent-looking ginger-beer bottles to their mouths.  It is no ginger-beer though, I fear, and will do you no good.  One short mad rush, and then a stitch in the side, and no more honest play.  That’s what comes of those bottles.

But now Griffith’s baskets are empty, the ball is placed again midway, and the School are going to kick off.  Their leaders have sent their lumber into goal, and rated the rest soundly, and one hundred and twenty picked players-up are there, bent on retrieving the game.  They are to keep the ball in front of the School-house goal, and then to drive it in by sheer strength and weight.  They mean heavy play and no mistake, and so old Brooke sees, and places Crab Jones in quarters just before the goal, with four or five picked players who are to keep the ball away to the sides, where a try at goal, if obtained, will be less dangerous than in front.  He himself, and Warner and Hedge, who have saved themselves till now, will lead the charges.

“Are you ready?” “Yes.”  And away comes the ball, kicked high in the air, to give the School time to rush on and catch it as it falls.  And here they are amongst us.  Meet them like Englishmen, you Schoolhouse boys, and charge them home.  Now is the time to show what mettle is in you; and there shall be a warm seat by the hall fire, and honour, and lots of bottled beer to-night for him who does his duty in the next half-hour.  And they are well met.  Again and again the cloud of their players-up gathers before our goal, and comes threatening on, and Warner or Hedge, with young Brooke and the relics of the bull-dogs, break through and carry the ball back; and old Brooke ranges the field like Job’s war-horse.  The thickest scrummage parts asunder before his rush, like the waves before a clipper’s bows; his cheery voice rings out over the field, and his eye is everywhere.  And if these miss the ball, and it rolls dangerously in front of our goal, Crab Jones and his men have seized it and sent it away towards the sides with the unerring drop-kick.  This is worth living for—­the whole sum of school-boy existence gathered up into one straining, struggling half-hour, a half-hour worth a year of common life.

The quarter to five has struck, and the play slackens for a minute before goal; but there is Crew, the artful dodger, driving the ball in behind our goal, on the island side, where our quarters are weakest.  Is there no one to meet him?  Yes; look at little East!  The ball is just at equal distances between the two, and they rush together, the young man of seventeen and the boy of twelve, and kick it at the