ason why Ole was
going to play. It didn't matter much what he did.

Ole was just coming to a boil when we got him into his clothes. Bost's
remarks had gotten through his hide at last. He was pretty slow, Ole
was, but he had begun getting mad the night before and had kept at the
job all night and all morning. By afternoon he was seething, mostly in
Norwegian. The injustice of being called a muttonhead all week for not
obeying orders, and then being called a mudhead for stopping for orders,
churned his soul, to say nothing of his language. He only averaged one
English word in three, as he told us on the way out that to-day he was
going to do exactly as he had been told or fill a martyr's grave--only
that wasn't the way he put it.

The Muggledorfers were a pruny-looking lot. We had the game won when our
team came out and glared at them. Bost had filled most of the positions
with regular young mammoths, and when you dressed them up in football
armor they were enough to make a Dreadnought a little nervous. The
Muggleses kicked off to our team, and for a few plays we plowed along
five or ten yards at a time. Then Ole was given the ball. He went
twenty-five yards. Any other man would have been crushed to earth in
five. He just waded through the middle of the line and went down the
field, a moving mass of wriggling men. It was a wonderful play. They
disinterred him at last and he started straight across the field for
Bost.

"Aye ent mean to stop, Master Bost," he shouted. "Dese fallers har, dey
squash me down--"

We hauled him into line and went to work again. Ole had performed so
well that the captain called his signal again. This time I hope I may be
roasted in a subway in July if Ole didn't run twenty-five yards with
four Muggledorfer men hanging on his legs. We stood up and yelled until
our teeth ached. It took about five minutes to get Ole dug out, and then
he started for Bost again.

"Honest, Master Bost, Aye ent mean to stop," he said imploringly. "Aye
yust tal you, dese fallers ban devils. Aye fule dem naxt time--"

"Line up and shut up," the captain shouted. The ball wasn't over twenty
yards from the line, and as a matter of course the quarter shot it back
to Ole. He put his head down, gave one mad-bull plunge, laid a windrow
of Muggledorfer players out on either side, and shot over the goal line
like a locomotive.

We rose up to cheer a few lines, but stopped to stare. Ole didn't stop
at the goal line. He did