ack on last year's second team. He was a cheerful,
hardworking little chap and the "rookies" took to him at once. He was
quick to find fault, but equally quick to applaud good work, and under
his charge the third squad, composed now of some fourteen candidates,
began to smooth out. A half-hour session with the tackling dummy was now
part of the daily routine and many a fellow who had thought rather well
of himself suffered humiliation in the pit. Steve was one of these.
Tackling proved to be a weak point with him. Even Tom got better results
than he did, and every afternoon Steve would scramble to his feet and
wipe the earth from his face to hear Marvin's patient voice saying: "Not
a bit like it, Edwards. Don't shut your eyes when you jump. Keep them
open and see what you're doing. Once more, now; and tackle below the
knees." And then, when the stuffed figure had been drawn, swaying
crazily, across the square of spaded turf once more, and Steve had
leaped upon it and twisted his arms desperately and convulsively about
it, "That's a little better," Marvin might say, "but you'd never stop
your man that way."

Steve was getting discouraged about his tackling and a little bit
incensed with Marvin. "He takes it out on me every time," he confided to
Tom one afternoon after practice. "Lots of the fellows don't do it a bit
better and he just says 'Fair, Jones' or 'That's better, Freer,' and
that's all there is to it. When it comes my turn, he just makes up his
mind I'm not going to do it right and then rags me. Didn't I do it just
as well as you did to-day, Tom?"

Tom, intensely loyal though he was, had to shake his head. "Maybe you
did, Steve; I don't do it very well myself, but you--you don't seem to
get the hang of it yet. You will, of course, in a day or two. I don't
believe Marvin means to rag you, though; he's an awfully decent fellow."

But Tom's day or two stretched into a week or two, and one by one
fellows disappeared from the awkward squad, some to the private walks of
life and the consolation of hall football and some, fewer in number
these, to the squad ahead. Brimfield played its first game of the year
one Saturday afternoon with Thacher School, and came through with flying
colours. But Thacher presented a line-up considerably younger and
lighter than Brimfield's, and the victory brought no great glory to the
Maroon-and-Grey. Steve and Tom watched that contest from the side-line,
Tom with absorbed interest and S