On the 12th of October, Woodby College sent a team of light but very fast football players to Erskine with full determination to bring back the pigskin. And it very nearly succeeded. It was the first game of the season for Erskine, but Woodby had already played two, and was consequently rather more hardened. The first half ended with the score 6 to 6, and the spectators, fully three hundred supporters of the Purple, looked glum. Neil and Paul were given their chance in the second half, taking the places of Gillam and Smith. Many other changes were made, among them one which installed the newly discovered Browning at left guard vice Carey, removed to the bench.
There was no use in attempting to disguise the fact that Woodby literally played all around the home team. Her backs gained almost at will on end runs, and her punting was immeasurably superior. Foster, the Erskine quarter-back, sent kick after kick high into the air, and twenty yards was his best performance. On defense Woodby was almost equally strong, and had Erskine not outweighted her in the line some five pounds per man, would have forced her to kick every time. As it was, the purple-clad backs made but small and infrequent gains through the line, and very shortly found that runs outside of tackle or end were her best cards, even though, as was several times the case, her runners were nailed back of her line for losses.
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.
"How on earth did you get to know so much about football?" asked Neil. "You talk like a varsity coach."
"Do I?" said Sydney, flushing with pleasure. "I--I always liked the game, and I've studied it quite a bit and watched it all I could. Of course, I can never play, but I get a good deal of enjoyment out of it. Sometimes"--his shyness returned momentarily and he hesitated--"sometimes I make believe that I'm playing, you know; put myself, in imagination, in the place of one of the team. To-day I--to-day I was you," he added with a deprecatory laugh.
"You don't say?" cried Neil. Then the pathos of it struck him and he was silent a moment. The cripple's love and longing for sport in which he could never hope to join seemed terribly sad and gave him a choking sensation in his throat.
"If I had been--like other fellows," continued Sydney, quite cheerfully, "I should have played everything--football, baseball, hockey, tennis--everything! I'd give--anything I've got--if I could just run from here to the corner." He was silent a minute, looking before him with eyes from which the usual brightness was gone. Then, "My, it must be good to run and walk and jump around just as you want to," he sighed.
"Yes," muttered Neil, "but--but that was a good little run you made to-day." Sydney looked puzzled, then laughed.
"In the game, you mean? Yes, wasn't it? And I made a touch-down and won the game. I was awfully afraid at one time that that Woodby quarter-back was going to nab me; that's why I made for the corner of the field like that."
"I fancied that was the reason," answered Neil gravely. Then their eyes met and they laughed together.
"Your friend Gale didn't play so well to-day," said Sydney presently. Neil shook his head with a troubled air.
"No, he played rotten ball, and that's a fact. I don't know what's got into him of late. He doesn't seem to care whether he pleases Mills or not. I think it's that chap Cowan. He tells Paul that Mills and Devoe are imposing on him and that he isn't getting a fair show and all that sort of stuff. Know Cowan?"
"Only by sight. I don't think I'd care to know him; he looks a good deal like--like--"
"Just so," laughed Neil. "That's the way he strikes me."
After dinner that evening Paul bewailed what he called his ill luck. Neil listened patiently for a while; then--
"Look here, Paul," he said, "don't talk such rot. Luck had nothing to do with it, and you know it. The trouble was that you weren't in shape; you've been shilly-shallying around of late and just doing good enough work to keep Mills from dropping you to the scrub. It's that miserable idiot Tom Cowan that's to blame; he's been filling your head with nonsense; telling you that you are so good that you don't have to practise, and that Mills doesn't dare drop you, and lots of poppycock of that kind. Now, I'll tell you, chum, that the best thing to do is to go honestly to work and do your best."
Paul was deeply insulted by this plain speaking, and very promptly took himself off up-stairs to Cowan's room. Of late he spent a good deal of his time there and Neil was getting worried. For Cowan was notably an idler, and the wonder was how he managed to keep himself in college even though he was taking but a partial course. To be sure, Cowan's fate didn't bother Neil a bit, but he was greatly afraid that his example would be followed by his roommate, who, at the best, was none too fond of study. Neil sat long that evening over an unopened book, striving to think of some method of weakening Cowan's hold on Paul--a hold that was daily growing stronger and which threatened to work ill to the latter. In the end Neil sighed, tossed down the volume, and made ready for bed without having found a solution of the problem.
The following Monday Neil was rewarded for his good showing in the Woodby game by being taken on to the varsity. Paul remained on the second team, and Cowan, greatly to that gentleman's bewilderment and wrath, joined him there. The two teams, with their substitutes, went to training-table that day in Pearson's boarding-house on Elm Street, and preparation for the game with Harvard, now but nine days distant, began in earnest.