rwood battle.

It was certain that John Brown would say something distinctly
significant. His stone silence over the week-end would indicate that.
Whatever his reactions to the boiling pot of criticism which had been
stewed over him, the team could expect to get most of these reactions
in the form of sharply defined lightning thrusts at weaknesses
which--to Coach Brown--had been responsible for Elliott's failure to
win. Team members instinctively knew that, so far as Tim Mooney was
concerned, John Brown would regard him as though he had never lived.
The coach would chalk up the defeat--not against Mooney's absence from
the line-up--but against the team individually or collectively failing
to come through in some particular. They knew this because John Brown
had emphasized, in some outstanding past instances, that "Games are
never won by the men on the sidelines but by the eleven on the field."

At the clubhouse the hands of the old wooden-faced clock pointed to
five minutes after four. This was fifteen minutes past the time that
the Monday talk usually began. Players, lounging in the locker room,
looked at one another in silent wonderment and then strolled toward the
windows and gazed out down the walk which led through a lane of trees
to the campus. As the clock droned the quarter hour, Red
Murdock--assistant coach--got up, with an air of uneasiness, and
sauntered to the door and stood, peering. An unnatural quiet fell upon
those present. Coach Brown had never been late before. Punctuality
had been one of his iron-clad rules. And now he had kept them sitting
there, in growing impatience and suspense, some twenty-five minutes!

Suddenly the assistant coach straightened up and stepped from the door.
Automatically the players changed from lounging positions to attitudes
of expectant attention. And every face cried to heaven of the
exclamation, "Ah,--he's coming!"

There followed the sound of feet on the sidewalk--a firm, measured
tread which grew methodically nearer until it stopped abruptly at the
threshold. A moment more and a figure filled the doorway. But such a
figure! John Brown to be sure--yet a different John Brown, an older
John Brown; a sadder John Brown. His face looked white--not so white
as the chalk lines on the gridiron--but unusually white. And there was
a drawn quality about it with a certain weariness under the eyes. All
this no one could help but notice as he stood in the doorway, fa