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“It does get me, Dick! I’ve fought it—fought it just as hard as I could. I know the fellows don’t like me, and a lot of ’em are calling me a ‘worm.’ Just the same, it’s breaking my heart to see Sheddon losing this way! I——” and he turned to the window again, quickly, this time, as if to hide something that he was ashamed to let Dick see.

In a second Dick was beside him.

“Larry, you old sorehead—you don’t know how much good it does me to hear you s-say that!” he stammered. And then, in a steadier voice: “You’re all wrong about the fellows not liking you: they’ll like you just as much as you’ll let them. There isn’t a worth-while fellow in Old Sheddon that cares a hoot whether you’re rich or poor. If you’d only loosen up——”

Larry did “loosen up” the next day when he was on the field with his team; and it was Oliver McKnight, son of any number of millions of Consolidated Steel, who applied the loosening twist. In an intermission, McKnight came and flung himself down beside Larry.

“Say, Donovan,” he began abruptly, “you ought to push my face in. Four or five weeks ago I said some things about you to Cal Rogers that gave you a good right to hate me straight through the four years. Of course, I didn’t know you were overhearing me; but that only makes it worse—looks as if I didn’t have the nerve to say such things to your face. I was a mucker; and ever since, I’ve been trying to dig up sand enough to come and tell you so.”