is dry smiles.

"You didn't?" gasped Wadleigh.

"No, sir! I did it for the school. I wanted to see our team
have the best possible captain and the winning eleven!"

Bert and Bayliss happened to be passing the gymnasium when they
heard of the selection of Wadleigh.

"Bert," whispered Bayliss, "I believe you're at least half a man!"

"What are you driving at?" demanded Dodge.

"We owe Dick Prescott a few. If you're with me we'll see if
his season on the gridiron can't be made a farce and a fizzle."

CHAPTER XIII

BERT DODGE "STARTS SOMETHING"

As always happens the schedule of the fall's games was changed
somewhat at the last moment.

In the first change there was a decided advantage. Wrexham withdrawing
its challenge almost at the last, Coach Morton took on Welton
High School for the first game of the season.

Now, Welton must have played for no other reason than to gratify
a weak form of vanity, for there were few High School teams in
the state that had cause to dread Welton High School.

For Gridley, however, the game served a useful purpose. It solidified
Captain Wadleigh's team into actual work. The score was 32 to
0, in favor of Gridley. However, as Dick phrased it, the practice
against an actual adversary, for the first time in the season,
was worth at least three hundred to nothing.

"But don't you fellows make a mistake," cautioned Captain Wadleigh.
"Don't get a notion that you've nothing bigger than Welton to
tackle this year. Next Saturday you've got to go up against
Tottenville, and there's an eleven that will make you perspire."

Coach Morton had Tottenville gauged at its right value. During
the few days before the game he kept the Gridley boys steadily
at work. The passing and the signal work, in particular, were
reviewed most thoroughly.

"Remember, the pass is going to count for a lot," Mr. Morton warned
them. "You can't make a weight fight against Tottenville, for
those fellows weigh a hundred and fifty pounds more, to the team,
than you do. They're savage, swift, clever players, too, those
Tottenville youths. What you take away from them you'll have
to win by strategy."

So the Gridley boys were drilled again and again in all the special
points of field strategy that Coach Morton knew or could invent.

Yet one of the best things that Mr. Morton knew, and one that
always characterized Gridley, was the matter of confidence.

Captain Wadleigh's young men were mad