e team is shot to pieces," groaned Tom.

"The hoodoo is certainly working overtime," muttered Dick.

"It's a raw deal for fair," acquiesced Bert, "but we're far from being
dead ones yet. We haven't got a monopoly of the jinx. Don't think that
the other fellows won't get theirs before the season's over. Then, too,
the new men may show up better than we think. Morley's no slouch, and
there may be championship timber in Winston. Besides, Axtell and Hodge
may be back again in a week or two. It's simply up to every one of us to
work like mad and remember that

The fellow worth while is the one who can smile
When everything's going dead wrong.

"You're a heavenly optimist, all right," grumbled Tom. "You'd see a
silver lining to any little old cloud. You remind me of the fellow that
fell from the top of a skyscraper, shouting as he passed the
second-story window: 'I'm all right, so far.' We may be 'all right so
far,' but the dull thud's coming and don't you forget it."

And during the days that followed it seemed as though Tom were a truer
prophet than Bert. Storm clouds hovered in the sky, and the barometer
fell steadily. On Wednesday they were scheduled to play a small
college--one of the "tidewater" teams that ordinarily they would have
swallowed at a mouthful. No serious resistance was looked for, and it
was regarded simply as a "practice" game. But the game hadn't been
played five minutes before the visitors realized that something was
wrong with the "big fellows," and taking heart of hope, the plucky
little team put up a game that gave the Blues all they wanted to do to
win. Win they did, at the very end, but by a margin that set the coach
to frothing at the mouth with rage and indignation. After the game they
had a dressing down that was a gem in its way, and which for lurid
rhetoric and fierce denunciation left nothing to be desired.

But despite all his efforts, the lethargy persisted. It was not that the
boys did not try. They had never tried harder. But a spell seemed to
have fallen upon them. They were like a lion whose spine has been
grazed by a hunter's bullet so that it can barely drag its deadened body
along. In vain the coach fumed and stormed, and figuratively beat his
breast and tore his hair. They winced under the whip, they strained in
the harness, but they couldn't pull the load. And at length "Bull"
Hendricks realized that what he had been dreading all season had come.

The tea