ce. "Whose bloody fault is it but his, I
should like to know? He is a disgrace to the House, working for some
rotten scholarship when he ought to be training on our juniors. Rotten
swine."

"Well, he's pretty well all right this term, at any rate," said Gordon.
"For the Lord's sake don't go grousing about; or we sha'n't keep the
score under eighty, let alone ninety. If we lose, we lose; and, my God,
we'll make 'em play for it."

The side certainly tried hard, and Simonds did his best, but all the
same, on the day of the match, Buller's were backing their chances of
running up a score of over thirty points at three to one.

"The swine!" said Gordon. "Swanking it about how they are going to lick
us to bits. My word, I would give something to smash them to
smithereens. I have taken on a bet with every man in Buller's whom I
found offering long odds. I stand to win quite a lot. And I shall win
it."

"God's truth," said Mansell, "do they think there's no guts left in the
House at all? They may go gassing about the number of Colts' badges they
have got, but they are not used to our way of playing. We go for the
ball, and if a man's in the light we knock him out of it. School House
footer is not pretty to look at; but it's the real thing, not a sort of
nursery affair. We go in to win."

Just before lunch a typical telegram from Meredith was pinned up on the
House board:

"Go it House. And give them ----"

The blank was left to the imagination. The House remembered Meredith and
filled it in accordingly.

Nothing is more horrible than the morning before a first House match.
Gordon woke happy and expectant, but by break he had begun to feel a
little shivery, and at lunch-time he was done to the world. He ate
nothing, answered questions in vague monosyllables, and smiled half
nervously at everyone in general. He was suffering from the worst kind
of stage fright. And after all, to play in an important match before the
whole school is a fairly terrifying experience. As he sat trembling in
the pavilion, waiting for the whistle to blow, Gordon would have
welcomed any form of death, anything to save him from the ordeal before
him. The whistle blew at last. As he walked out from the pavilion in his
magenta-and-black jersey, an unspeakable terror gripped him; his knees
became very weak; his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, and then
something seemed to snap in his brain. He walked on quite cheerfully. He
was as a spec