“There they go, now!” muttered Dave Darrin, in disgust.  “Nothing is going to stop the big fellows!”

“They’re getting nearer our goal line,” Dick admitted.  “But a game is never won until it’s finished.  Cobber, as yet, hasn’t even gotten the touchdown!”

A minute later Cobber had.  To the Gridley onlookers it sent a shock of dismay.  The college men certainly had scored.

“It’s Cobber’s beef, not science,” Dick stoutly asserted.  “Our fellows play with more speed and real skill. Say—–­look at that!”

For Bentley, of the college eleven, had just missed the kick from field.

Five points for the visitors!  The teams swiftly changed ends and lined up.  The whistle’s call sent them off to the fray, for there were but three minutes left of the first half.

Cobber won the kick but didn’t carry it far.  Gridley got down as far as the enemy’s twenty-yard line.  Then the smaller High School boys were fairly pushed back into their own territory, losing twelve yards of their own side of the field.

Trill-ll!  The first half was over.

“Sam, can you do better?  Do you want to go back on the job?” asked Ben Badger.

“No,” replied the Gridley captain.  “It’s been tough on us, but you’ve done everything that I could have done.  I’m satisfied, and I believe the coach is.”

“We’ll ask him,” proposed Badger.

Morton was hurrying toward his boys.  The coach’s face was impassive.  For all his looks showed he might have been congratulating himself on a winning.

“No; there’s no need to change captains,” decided the coach.  “It’s like changing a horse in mid-stream.  I don’t see, Badger, that you’re lost any tricks that Edgeworth could have made.

“What’s our weak point?” asked Ben.

“There isn’t much of a weak point, anywhere, as far as your play goes,” Mr. Morton responded.  “In many respects your play has been better than Cobber’s.  Weight is your poor point.”

Nevertheless the coach made several suggestions in the time that was allowed him.

“Whenever you get a proper chance, Captain, and have the ball, open up the play as much as you can.  Don’t give Cobber a chance to bump you any when it can be avoided.”

In the meantime the Cobber fans, as was their right, were hurling the most abusive cheers and taunts.  Dick, as cheer-master, allowed this to pass until nearly the end of the intermission.  At last he gave the sudden call through the megaphone: 

“Twenty-three!”

The number sounded ominous; so did the cheer that was designated by it.  The Gridley H.S. boys on the grand stand responded hardly more than half-heartedly: 

"Com-pan-nee served first! 
That’s our steady rule! 
Manners the best are taught
In Gridley school!

“But he who waits laughs best! 
’Tis but a distance short
’Twixt laugh and weep—–­
Your joy’ll be short!"_