“‘All’s well that ends well,’
you say. Hicks,” he spoke slowly, his face
joyous. “That’s true; but I’m
just starting, fellows. I’m just beginning
to live my college years, not for myself, but for old
Bannister, for my Alma Mater, for I am awake, and
free!”
THEOPHILUS BETRAYS HICKS
Big Butch Brewster, a life-sized picture of despair,
roosted dejectedly on the Senior Fence, between the
Gym and the Administration Building. It was quite
cold, and also the beginning of the last study-period
before Butch’s final and most difficult recitation
of the day, Chemistry. Yet instead of boning
in his warm room, the behemoth Senior perched on the
fence and stared gloomily into space.
As he sat, enveloped in a penumbra of gloom, the campus
entrance door of Bannister Hall, the Senior dorm.,
opened suddenly, and T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., that
happy-go-lucky youth, came out cautiously, after the
fashion of a second-story artist, emerging from his
crib with a bundle of swag, the last item being represented
by a football tucked under Hicks’ left arm.
Beholding Butch Brewster on the Senior Fence, the sunny-souled
Senior exhibited a perturbation of spirit seeming
undecided whether to beat a retreat or to advance.
“Now what’s ailin’ you?”
demanded Butch wrathily, believing the pestersome
Hicks to be acting in that burglarious manner for effect.
“Why should you sneak out of a dorm.,
bearing a football like it was an auk’s egg?
Why, you resemble a nigger, making his get-away after
robbing a hen-roost! Don’t torment me,
you accident-somewhere-on-its-way-to-happen. I
feel about as joyous as a traveling salesman who has
made a town and gotten nary a order!”
“It’s awful!” soliloquized
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., perching beside the despondent
Butch on the Senior Fence. “I am not a fatalist,
old man, but it does seem that fate hasn’t
destined Thor to play football for old Bannister this
season! Here, after he won the Ham game, and we
expected him to waltz off with Ballard’s scalp
and the Championship, he has to tumble downstairs!
Oh, it’s tough luck!”
It was two days before the biggest game, with Ballard—the
contest that would decide the State Intercollegiate
Football Championship. Ballard, the present champions,
discounting even Hamilton’s stories of Thor’s
prowess, were coming to Bannister with an eleven more
mighty than the one that had crushed the Gold and
Green the year before, with a heavy, stonewall line,
fast ends, and a powerful, shifty backfield. The
Ballard team was confident of victory and the pennant.
Bannister, building on the awakened Thorwald, superbly
sure of his phenomenal strength and power, of his unstoppable
rushes, serenely practiced the doctrine of preparedness,
and awaited the day.
