e was strongest in, the weak subjects in which
she was strong. There was an inexorable rule about being signed up by
every teacher for satisfactory work on Friday afternoon before a
Saturday football game; it was as a law of the Medes and Persians; even
the teachers who adored him most needs must abide by it. There was no
cajoling any of them; even the pretty, ridiculously young thing who
taught Spanish maintained a Gibraltar-like firmness.

"You'll simply have to study, Jimsy, that's all," said Honor.

"Study, yes, but that's not learning, Skipper!" (She had been that ever
since her first entirely seaworthy summer at Catalina.) "I can study, if
I have to, but that's not saying I'll get anything into my sconce! I'm
pretty slow in the head!"

"I know you are," said Honor, sighing. "Of course, you've been so busy
with other things. Think what you've done in athletics!"

"Fast on the feet and slow in the head," he grinned. "Well, I'll die
trying. But you've got to stand by, Skipper."

"Of course. I'll do your Latin and English and part of your Spanish."

"Gee, you're a brick."

"It's nothing." She dismissed it briefly. "It's my way of doing
something, Jimsy, that's all. It's the only way I can be on the team."
She glowed pinkly at the thought. "When I sit up on the bleachers and
see you make a touchdown and hear 'em yell--why I'm _there_! I'm on the
team because I've helped a little to keep you on the team! It almost
makes up for having to be a girl. Just for the moment, I'm not sitting
up high, clean and starched and safe; I'm on the field, hot and muddy
and with my nose bleeding, _doing_ something for L. A.! I'm _there_!"

Jimsy slapped her on the shoulder like a man and brother. "You're
_there_ all the time, Skipper! You're there a million!"

He made the first team the first day he went out to practice. There was
no denying him. He captained the team the second year and every year
until he graduated, a year late for all his friend's unwearying toil. As
a matter of fact they did not make a special effort to get him through
on time; the team needed him, the squad needed him, L. A. needed him. It
was more like a college than a High School in those days, with its
numbers and its spirit, that strong, intangible evidence of things not
seen. There was something about it, a concentrated essence of Jimsy King
and hundreds of lesser Jimsy Kings, which made it practically
unconquerable. In the year before his final one th