ifteen.

Some of my readers may perhaps know from actual experience what are the
numerous and serious anxieties which always beset the captain of the
football fifteen. If the fellow is worth his salt he knows to a nicety
where he is strong and where he is weak; he knows, if the wind blows one
way, which is the best quarter-back to put on the left and which on the
right. He knows which of his "bulldogs" he can safely put into the
middle of the scrimmage, and which are most useful in the second tier.
He knows when to call "Kick!" to a man and when to call "Run!" and no
man knows better when to throw the ball far out from touch, or when to
nurse it along close to the line. It is all very well for outsiders to
talk of football everlastingly as a _game_. My dear, good people,
football is a science if ever there was a science; the more you know of
it the more you will find that out.

This piece of lecturing is thrown in here for the purpose of observing
that Stansfield was a model football captain. However worried and
worrying and crabby he was in his ordinary clothes, in his football togs
and on the field of battle he was the coolest, quickest, readiest, and
cunningest general you could desire. He said no more than he could
help, and never scolded his men while play was going on, and, best of
all, worked like a horse himself in the thick of the fight, and looked
to every one else to do the same.

Yet on this Saturday all the captain's prowess and generalship could not
win the match for Saint Dominic's against Landfield.

The match began evenly, and for the first half of the time the game was
one long succession of scrimmages in the middle of the ground, from
which the ball hardly ever escaped, and when it did, escaped only to be
driven back next moment into the "mush."

"It'll do at this rate!" thinks Stansfield to himself. "As long as they
keep it among the forwards we shan't hurt."

Alas! one might almost have declared some tell-tale evil spirit had
heard the boast and carried it to the ear of the enemy, for next moment
half-time was called, the sides changed over, and with them the
Landfielders completely reversed their tactics.

The game was no longer locked up in a scrimmage in the middle of the
ground. It became looser all along the line; the ball began to slip
through the struggling feet into the hands of those behind, who sent it
shooting over the heads of the forwards into more open ground. The
quar