er-back, raced back a few steps, then halted,
looking keenly, swiftly over the field.

Phin Drayne drew his breath sharply. Then his heart almost stopped
beating as he listened.

"Thirty-eight---nine---eleven---four!" sounded Darrin's voice,
sharp and clear.

"That's the run around the left end!" throbbed Phin Drayne.

But it wasn't. A fake kick, followed by a cyclonic impact at
the right followed.

"They've changed the signals!" gulped the guilty masquerader behind
the black veil. "Then they've found out."

With this came the next disheartening thought:

"That's the reason, then, why the coach ordered me out of the field
Thursday afternoon. Morton is wise. I wonder if he has told it
all around?"

Gridley High School was doing some of its brilliant, old-style
play now. Prescott was proving himself an ideal captain, quick-witted,
full of strategy, force, push and dash, yet all the while displaying
the best of cool judgment in sizing up the chances of the hard
battle.

But that which Phin Drayne noted most of all was that every signal
used had a different meaning from that employed in the code he
had mailed to the captains of the other school teams.

"It was all found out, and Gridley wasn't hurt," thought Phin,
gnashing his teeth. "Good luck always seems to follow that fellow
Prescott! Can't he be beaten? We shall see! Prescott, my fine
bully, I'm not through with you yet."

The first half ended without either side scoring. Impartial onlookers
thought that perhaps formidable Tottenville had had rather the
better of it, but no one could tell with certainty which was the
better team.

When neither side scores in the first half that which remains
to be determined is, which side will show the bigger reserve of
vitality in the second half.

And now the ball was off again, with twenty-two men pursuing and
fighting for it as though the fate of the nation hung on the result.
Dick, too, soon had things moving at a gait that had all Gridley
standing up and boosting with all the powers of lungs, hands and
feet.

All that remained to interest Phin Drayne was to discover whether
his late comrades had sufficiently mastered their new signals
not to fail in their team work.

Once in the second half there was a brief fluster. Two Gridley
men went "woozy" over the same signal. But alert Dave Darrin
rushed in and snatched a clever advantage out of momentary confusion.

After that there was no more conf