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There was a salvo of polite handclapping from the group within sound of the coach’s voice and it broke up. Andy Ryan, the trainer, emptied a canvas bag of trickling footballs and they were pounced on and borne away to various parts of the field. The big group became half a dozen smaller ones. It was only “kindergarten stuff” to-day, even for the veterans; passing and falling and starting; not very interesting from the viewpoint of candidate or audience. Toby located Arnold working with a squad under big Jim Rose. Arn was, as Toby knew, pretty soft after a fairly lazy summer, and the boy in the shade of the big stand smiled unfeelingly as he saw his chum straighten himself slowly in deference to protesting muscles.

“He will be good and sore to-night,” thought Toby. “Sailing a boat all summer doesn’t keep a football man in very good trim, I guess!”

After that he lost interest in the scene before him, and, his somewhat battered straw hat on one knee and the lazy breeze drying his damp hair, let his thoughts carry him back to Greenhaven and the folks in the little white cottage on Harbor Road. It would be very pleasant there to-day on the vine-shaded steps, with the harbor and the white sails before him and the cheery click-clock of the caulking iron and mallet and the busy pip-pup, pip-pup of the gasoline engine sounding across from the boat yard. Better still, though, would it be to lie in the stern of a boat, main-sheet in hand, and slip merrily out past the island to where, even to-day, the white-caps would be dancing on the sunlit surface of the bay. He was getting the least bit homesick when the sound of approaching steps brought his wandering thoughts back. Climbing the aisle was a somewhat thin, carelessly dressed youth. His head was bent and so Toby couldn’t see his face well, but there was something dimly familiar about the figure. Toby wondered why, with several hundred empty seats to choose from, the boy, whoever he was, had to come stamping up here. He sighed and changed his position and was relapsing into his thoughts again when he saw to his annoyance that the approaching youth had stopped at the end of his row, two seats distant. Toby’s gaze lifted curiously to the boy’s face. Perhaps it was more the two strips of rather soiled surgeon’s plaster adorning the chap’s upper lip than the features that led Toby to recognize him. Mentally, Toby groaned. Aloud, trying to make his voice sound decently friendly, he said: “Hello! Well, how’s it going?”