e crowd of spectators
to cheer and shout and urge St. James' to another glorious victory.
Match after match that year earned immortal fame in the school records,
sending the patriotic Jacobeans of every size and age home to a happy
tea in the rainy twilight. Those were indeed afternoons of thunderous
excitement. How everybody used to shout--School--Schoo-oo-ol--Schoo-ol!
Play up--Schoo-oo-ool! James! Ja-a-a-mes! Oh, go low. Kick! Touch!
Forward! Held! Off-side! Go in yourself! Schoo-ool!

How Michael's heart beat at the thud of the Dulford forwards in their
last desperate rush towards the School 'twenty-five.' Down went the
School halves, and over them like a torrent swept the Dulford pack. Down
went the three-quarters in a plucky attempt to sit on the ball. Ah!
There was an unanimous cry of agony, as everybody pressed against the
boundary rope and craned towards the touch-line until the posts creaked
before the strain. Not in vain had those gallant three-quarters been
smeared with mud and bruised by the boots of the surging Dulford pack;
for the ball had been kicked on too far and Cutty Jackson, the School
back, had fielded it miraculously. He was going to punt. 'Kick!' yelled
the despairing spectators. And Jackson, right under the disappointed
groans of the Dulford forwards whose muscles cracked with the effort to
fetch him down, kicked the ball high, high into the silvery November
air. Up with that spinning greasy oval travelled the hopes of the
onlookers, and, as it fell safely into touch, from all round the field
rose like a rocket a huge sigh of relief that presently broke into
volleys and paeans of exultation, as half-time sounded with St. James' a
goal to the good. How Michael admired the exhausted players when they
sucked the sliced lemons and lay about in the mud; how he envied Cutty
Jackson, when the lithe and noble fellow leaned against the goalpost and
surveyed his audience. 'Sidiness' could be easily forgiven after that
never-to-be-forgotten kick into touch. Why, thought Michael, should not
he himself be one day ranked as the peer of Cutty Jackson? Why should
not he, six or seven years hence, penetrate the serried forces of
Dulford and score a winning try, even as the referee's whistle was
lifted to sound 'time'? Ambition woke in Michael, while he surveyed upon
that muddy field the prostrate forms of the fifteen, like statues in a
museum. Then play began and personal desires were merged in the great
hope o