Stood there like a silly dummy and let St. Matthew’s jump on him, that’s what he did!”  
“Lost his head completely, Teddy! Worst case of stage fright I ever saw on a football field!”
 
“Had a clear field ahead of him if he’d started on the jump. Gee, it’s enough to sour your disposition!”
 
“I always said he’d never make another Ginger. Anyone can see that by looking at him. Don’t see what the dickens Cotting kept him on for!”
 
“Well, he’s played a pretty fair game at times, Bill, you’ve got to say that for him. I suppose every fellow is likely to make mistakes——”
 
“Mistakes! He didn’t make any mistake; he just didn’t do anything—until it was too late.[254] Of course, the St. Matthew’s game doesn’t mean much to us, although they looked such a cocky lot I’d liked to have seen them beaten, but, if he does things like that in an unimportant game, he’s likely to do them when we’re playing Bursley, I guess. Best thing Cotting can do is drop him.”
 
This is the conversation Rodney overheard that evening in the corridor of West Hall. He had hurried through his own supper in order to catch Mr. Cotting before the latter left the school dining-hall, and arriving there early, had perched himself on top of a radiator in a dim angle of the corridor to wait. The three boys who had emerged from supper a minute later either didn’t see him or failed to recognize him, and their remarks lasted from the doorway to the entrance, a few yards distant, where they stood a few moments before going their separate ways. Rodney’s thoughts had not been pleasant before, but this exposition of what Rodney believed to be the popular judgment left him tingling and miserable. As little inclined as he was to be seen just now, he left his corner and stood in the light for fear that others might come[255] out, and, not noticing him, give further expression of public opinion. He was glad when Mr. Cotting emerged presently. A boy who followed him out started toward the coach, but Rodney got ahead of him.
 
“Mr. Cotting, may I speak to you, please, sir?”
 
The coach, slipping into his raincoat, turned.
 
“Hello, Merrill! Why, yes, certainly.” He put his cap on and led the way to the entrance. Rodney was relieved to find that the three critics had taken their departure. “Will you walk along with me toward my place, or shall we drop into the library?”
 
“I’ll walk, sir. It isn’t much, what I want to say. I——”
 
“Stopped raining, I guess. How do you feel after your game, Merrill?”
 
“All right, thanks.”
 
The coach took the circling path that led around Main Hall and Rodney ranged alongside.
 
“I just wanted to say, sir, that—that I’ve decided to resign from the team.”
 
“Have, eh?” Mr. Cotting seemed neither surprised nor disturbed. “Decided to give up football, have you?”
 
[256]
 
“Yes, sir, for this year, anyway.”
 
“Think you’d like to try again next fall?”
 
“Yes, sir, I think so.”
 
“It doesn’t occur to you, does it, that I might hesitate to take you back and give you another trial if you had run away on the eve of battle, so to speak?”
 
Rodney glanced up in surprise and found the coach smiling.
 
“Why, sir, I thought—it seemed the best way out of it!”
 
“Best way out of what, Merrill?”
 
“Out of—out of the mess I made to-day. I lost the game, you know, sir!”
 
“Hardly that, Merrill. You failed to win it, but you can’t be said to have lost it. Even if you had, though, what’s that got to do with it? Seems to me if you made a mess of things you’d want to stick around and see what you could do another time. Sort of weak, isn’t it, to cut and run?”
 
“But—I thought—” Rodney stopped, trying to get the coach’s surprising point of view.
 
“I know what you thought, Merrill.” Mr. Cotting laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You[257] thought everyone had it in for you, that we blamed you for the loss of the game, and that we wouldn’t want you any longer, eh?”
 
“Yes, sir, about that.”
 
“Yes. Well, let me tell you something that happened to me, Merrill, when I was here, and that’s a good many years ago now. I made the team in my second year. Our game was a good deal different then from what it is now, but we took it pretty nearly as seriously. I was rather a clever end for a youngster, and so when we played Bursley I got in at the beginning of the second half. In those days an end had less to do than he has now, but he was supposed to get down under punts no matter what else he did or didn’t do, and that was rather a specialty of mine. I had a neat way of fooling my opponent and getting off quickly, and once off I was hard to stop. Bursley had us six to four when the second half began and we needed a touchdown to win. Half way through that half we punted and I streaked down under the ball. I remember that Stallings was our punter—he played with Princeton afterwards—and he was a wonder. Used to get fifty yards[258] often. This tim............