h. Before they can cover the few yards which
divide them, the ball is dropped beautifully, and flies, straight as an
arrow, over the cross-bar, amid the tremendous cheers of the County men
and their friends.

"Never mind!" says Stansfield, as his men walk out once more to the
fray, "they shan't get another before half-time!"

Won't they? Such is the perversity of that creature people call Luck,
and such is the hatred it has for anything like a boast, that two
minutes--only two minutes--after the words are out of the captain's
mouth another Dominican goal has fallen.

For Stansfield in kicking off gets his foot too much under the ball,
which consequently rises against the wind and presents an easy catch to
any one who comes out to take it. A County forward sees his chance.
Rushing up, he catches the ball, and instantaneously, so it seems,
drop-kicks it, a tremendous kick clean over the School goal, before even
the players have all taken up their places after the last catastrophe.

This is dreadful! worse than ever! Never in their worst days had such a
thing happened. For once in a way Stansfield's hopefulness deserts him,
and he feels the School is in for an out-and-out hiding.

The captain would like extremely to blow some one up, if he only knew
whom. It is so aggravating sometimes to have no one to blow-up.
Nothing relieves the feelings so, does it?

However, Stansfield has to bottle up his feelings, and, behold! once
more he and his men are in battle array.

This time it's steady all again, and the ball is kept well out of sight.
It can't even slip out behind now, as before; for the School
quarter-backs are up to that dodge, and ready to pounce upon it before
it can be lifted or sent flying. Indeed, the only chance the wretched
ball has of seeing daylight is--

Hullo! half-time!

The announcement falls on joyful ears among the Dominicans. They have
worked hard and patiently against heavy odds; and they feel they really
deserve this respite.

Now, at last, if the wind wouldn't change for them, they have changed
over to the wind, which blows no longer in their faces, but gratefully
on to their backs.

The kick-off is a positive luxury under such circumstances; Stansfield
needn't be afraid of skying the ball now, and he isn't. It shoots up
with a prodigious swoop and soars right away to touch-line, so that the
County's "back" is the first of their men to go into action. He brings
the ball back de