ne and the same rush they will carry it right away to
the School-house goal. Fond hope! it is kicked out and caught
beautifully. Crab strikes his heel into the ground, to mark the spot
where the ball was caught, beyond which the School line may not advance;
but there they stand, five deep, ready to rush the moment the ball
touches the ground. Take plenty of room! don't give the rush a chance of
reaching you! place it true and steady! Trust Crab Jones--he has made a
small hole with his heel for the ball to lie on, by which he is resting
on one knee, with his eye on old Brooke. "Now!" Crab places the ball at
the word, old Brooke kicks, and it rises slowly and truly as the School
rush forward.

Then a moment's pause, while both sides look up at the spinning ball.
There it flies, straight between the two posts, some five feet above the
cross-bar, an unquestioned goal; and a shout of real genuine joy rings
out from the School-house players-up, and a faint echo of it comes over
the close from the goal-keepers under the Doctor's wall. A goal in the
first hour--such a thing hasn't been done in the School-house match this
five years.

"Over!" is the cry: the two sides change goals, and the School-house
goal-keepers come threading their way across through the masses of the
School; the most openly triumphant of them, amongst whom is Tom, a
School-house boy of two hours' standing, getting their ears boxed in the
transit. Tom indeed is excited beyond measure, and it is all the
sixth-form boy, kindest and safest of goal-keepers, has been able to do,
to keep him from rushing out whenever the ball has been near their goal.
So he holds him by his side, and instructs him in the science of
touching.

At this moment Griffith, the itinerant vendor of oranges from Hill
Morton, enters the close with his heavy baskets; there is a rush of
small boys upon the little pale-faced man, the two sides mingling
together, subdued by the great Goddess Thirst, like the English and
French by the streams in the Pyrenees. The leaders are past oranges and
apples, but some of them visit their coats, and apply innocent looking
ginger-beer bottles to their mouths. It is no ginger-beer though, I
fear, and will do you no good. One short mad rush, and then a stitch in
the side, and no more honest play; that's what comes of those bottles.

But now Griffith's baskets are empty, the ball is placed again midway,
and the School are going to kick off. Their leaders h