nd the
college town was reached at half past eleven.

The men were welcomed at the station by a crowd of Harwell fellows who
had already arrived, and the Harwell band did its best until the team
was driven off to the hotel. There for the first time the men were
allowed to see the line-up for the game. It was a long list, containing
the names, ages, heights, and weights of thirty-six players and
substitutes, and was immediately the center of interest to all.

"Thunder!" growled Joel ruefully, as he finished reading the list over
Blair's shoulder, "it's a thumpin' long ways down to _me!_"

CHAPTER XXII.

BEFORE THE BATTLE.

"Harwell, Harwell, Harwell! Rah-rah-rah, Rah-rah-rah, Rah-rah-rah,
Harwell!"

The lobby grew empty on the instant, and outside on the steps and on the
sidewalk the crowd spread itself. The procession had just turned the
corner, the college band leading.

"The freshmen won!" cried a voice on the edge of the throng, and the
news was passed along from man to man until it swept up the steps,
through the lobby and to the dining room upstairs where the football men
of the Varsity team were impatiently awaiting lunch. "A good omen," said
the head coach.

Below in the street admonitory thumps upon the great drum, with its
college coat-of-arms on the head, were heard, and a moment later the
shouts of the exuberant freshmen and their allies were drowned in the
first strains of the college song. Off came the silk hats of the
frock-coated graduates and the plaided golf caps of the students, and
side by side there in the sun-swept street they lifted their voices in
the sweet, measured strains of the dear familiar hymn. And stout,
placid-faced men of fifty, with comfortable bank accounts and incipient
twinges of gout, felt the unaccustomed dimming of the sight that
presages tears, and boyish, carefree students, to whom the song was as
much an everyday affair as D marks and unpaid bills, felt strange
stirrings in their breasts, and with voices that stumbled strangely over
the top notes sang louder and louder. And upstairs in the dining room
many a throat grew hard and "lumpy" as the refrain came in at the
open windows.

But, as the trainer muttered presently, it was only the freshmen who had
won, and the real battle of the day was yet to come. And soon the band
and the shouting parade wheeled away from beneath the windows and swung
off up the street to make known far and wide the greatness of Harw