A minute later, while the ball still hovered about the twenty-yard line, Yates secured it on a fumbled pass, and the tide ebbed away from the beleagured posts.  Back as before were borne the crimson warriors, while the Yates forwards opened holes in the opposing line and the Yates halves dashed and wormed through for small gains.  Then Fate again aided the crimson, and on the blue’s forty-seven-yard line a fake kick went sadly aglee and the runner was borne struggling back toward his own goal before he could cry “Down!” And big Chesney grinned gleefully as he received the leather and bent his broad back above it.

Canes, crysanthemums, umbrellas, flags, carnations, hats, all these and many other things waved frantically above the great bank of crimson as the little knot of gallant knights in moleskin crept back over their recent path of retreat and took the war again into the enemy’s country.  Every inch of the way was stubbornly contested by the defenders, but slowly they were pushed back, staggering under the shocks of the crimson’s attack.  Chesney, Rutland, and Murdoch worked together, side by side, like one man—­or forty!—­and when time was called for an instant on the Yates twenty-five yards it was to bring Galt, the blue’s left tackle, back to consciousness and send him limping off the gridiron.  His place in the line was taken by an old Hilltonian, one Dunsmore, and the game went on.

And now it was the blue that was in full retreat and the crimson that pursued.  Nearer and nearer to the Yates goal line went the resisting besieged and the conquering besiegers, and the great black score-board announced but eight more minutes of the first half remaining.  But even eight were three more than were needed.  For Harwell crossed the twenty yards by tandem on tackle, gained the fifteen in two downs by wedges between tackle and guard, and from there on until the much-desired goal line was reached never paused in her breathless, resistless onslaught.  It was Wesley Blair who at last put the ball over for a touch-down, going through between center and left guard with all the weight of the Harwell Eleven behind him.  His smothered “Down!” was never heard, for the west stand was a swaying, tumultuous unit of thunderous acclaim.

Up went the flags and banners of crimson hues, loud sounded the paean of praise and thanksgiving from thousands of straining throats, while below on the side lines the coaches leaped for joy and strained each other to their breasts in unspeakable delight.

And while the shouting went on as though never would the frenzied shouters cease, the grim, panting Yates players lined up back of their goal line, on tiptoe, ready at the first touch of the ball to the earth to spring forward and, leaping upward, strive to arrest the speeding oval.  Prone upon the ground, the ball in his hands, lay Story.  A yard or two distant Blair directed the pointing of it.  The goal was a most difficult one, from an angle, and long the full-back studied and directed, until faint groans of derision arose from the impatient east stand and the men behind the goal line moved restively.