Steve has played more than I have," replied Tom. "He was on our high
school team at left end last year. He's pretty good, Steve is. I didn't
make the 'Varsity, but I played a couple of years with the scrubs."

"Tom plays a good game," said Steve. "I suppose it's pretty hard to get
on the team here."

"About the same as anywhere," answered Miller. "If you show the goods
you're all right." He viewed Steve speculatively and then turned an
appraising gaze on Tom. "You chaps look pretty fit for this time of
year. What do you weigh, Edwards?"

[Illustration: Steve slipped on the tiling and fell sidewise into the
water]

"About a hundred and thirty-eight."

"You look solid, too," said Miller approvingly. "You chaps show up in
togs day after to-morrow at four. Look me up and I'll see that you get a
good chance to show what you can do. Where have you played, Hall?"

"At tackle, mostly. I played half a little last fall."

"You look rather likely, I think. Don't be disappointed if you don't
make the first or second this year, fellows. Keep going. There's your
hall team. Try for that. You'll get lots of good fun and experience. I
tell you this not to discourage you but because we've kept a lot of last
year's fellows and it's going to be harder than usual to break into the
first team, I guess. And that means that a good many of the second team
fellows will be disappointed and will have to stay where they are. Hard
on them, but lucky for the school. I don't know whether you chaps
understand the football situation with us?"

"I don't believe so," replied Steve.

"Well, it's like this. When I came here four years ago there wasn't any
team. Before that, five or six years before, they'd played, but about
that time football got into disfavour and the faculty stopped it. I
believe they allowed the hall teams to play, but that didn't last long.
My second year here they lifted the ban and we started a team. Of course
it didn't amount to much that first year and we got licked right and
left. The next year, though, we did a good deal better, and last year we
turned out a mighty good team. We lost only two games out of nine and
tied one. Unfortunately, though, one of the games we lost was the game
with Claflin, which is our big game of the year. Claflin has beaten us
three years running now and this year we're out for revenge with a
rolling R. Considering that we've played only three seasons, we've got a
pretty good start. Our coach i