right."

Paul looked at him as though rather puzzled.

"By Jove, I don't believe you care very much whether you play or don't,"
he said at last. "If it had been me they'd let out I'd simply gone off
into a dark corner and died."

"I'm glad it wasn't you," answered Neil heartily.

"Thunder! So'm I!"

The college in general had taken Neil's deflection philosophically after
the first day or so of wonderment and dismay. The trust in Mills was
absolute, and if Mills said Fletcher wasn't as good as Gale for left
half-back, why, he wasn't; that was all there was about it. There was
one person in college, however, who was not deceived. Sydney Burr,
recollecting Neil's "supposititious case," never doubted that Neil had
purposely sacrificed himself for his room-mate. At first he was inclined
to protest to Neil, even to go the length of making Mills cognizant of
the real situation; but in the end he kept his own counsel, doubtful of
his right to interfere. And, in some way, he grew to think that Paul was
not in the dark; that he knew of Neil's plan and was lending his
sanction to it; that, in fact, the whole arrangement was a conspiracy in
which both Neil and Paul shared equally. In this he did Paul injustice,
as he found out later.

He went to Neil's room that Friday night for a few minutes and found
Paul much wrought up over the disappearance of Tom Cowan. Cowan's room
looked as though a cyclone had struck it, Paul declared, and Cowan
himself was nowhere to be found.

"I'll bet he's done what he said he'd do and left," said Paul. But
Sydney had seen him but an hour or so before at commons, and Paul set
out to hunt him up.

"I know you chaps don't like him," he said; "but he's been mighty decent
to me, and I don't want to seem to be going back on him just now when
he's so down on his luck. I'll be back in a few minutes."

Sydney found Neil quite cheerful and marveled at it. He himself was
oppressed by a nervousness that couldn't have been worse had he been due
to face Robinson's big center the next day. He feared the "antidote"
wouldn't work right; he feared Robinson had found out all about it and
had changed their offense; he feared a dozen evils, and Neil was kept
busy comforting him. At nine o'clock Paul returned without tidings of
Cowan, and Sydney said good-night.

"I don't believe I'll go out to the field to-morrow," he said half
seriously. "I'll stay in my room and listen to the cheering. If it
sounds right t