In the Line

by Albertus T. Dudley

“Give me that man for two years, and I’d make him the greatest guard that ever played!” cried Lauder, who had the true trainer’s enthusiasm for his pet athlete. “Light as he is, he’s a match for ’most any man twenty pounds heavier, and he’s growing all the time. Why, he’s all you can handle now, and just think how green he is!”

“That’s the trouble with Wolcott,” said Laughlin, thoughtfully, “he’s had so little experience. The Hillbury game is a pretty hard strain on a green man. If he only keeps his head!”

“He’ll do it, I’m sure,” the coach answered with confidence. “He’s a natural player, and fellows of that kind play by instinct; they think more with their nerves than with their minds. We’ll see how he gets along with that Harvard Second man.”

The game with the Harvard Second was at the same time Wolcott’s glory and his undoing. He had opposite him a player of the familiar college type,—big, strong, experienced, well versed in the tricks of the trade, but without the power or the brains or the temperament necessary to make a first-class varsity man. He played a game of smash and drive, much like that which Wolcott had learned to expect from Butler,—high in the air and slow. The ease with which the Seaton left guard did the work expected of him set the coaches on the side-lines dancing with joy. So unsuccessful was the bulky Harvard man in stopping his troublesome opponent that toward the end of the second half he lost his head or his temper; and in his struggles, by accident or design, one of his fists landed smartly on Wolcott’s nose. As luck would have it, in the same scrimmage, Wolcott also received a hard, numbing blow in the leg from some heavy Harvard boot. Though the limping fellow protested that he was quite able to play, Laughlin, fearing to take risks with a valuable man, sent him to the side-lines and called in Butler to finish the game.

“Lindsay’s nose wasn’t broken, was it?” asked Mr. Graham, meeting the school physician a few hours later.

Dr. Kenneth laughed. “Oh, no; he had nothing worse than nosebleed. His thigh will be lame for a day or two from the kick that he got in the last scrimmage, but neither injury requires my care.”

And while Wolcott was having his leg rubbed, and gossiping joyously with Laughlin about the work of the eleven of which he was at last a full-fledged member, the professional disseminator of evil tidings was preparing the following “story” for the Boston Trumpeter:—

“The Harvard Second went to Seaton yesterday and received a drubbing to the tune of 16 to 0. It wasn’t as easy as the score seems to indicate, for the game was a fight from start to finish, only the gilt-edged training and splendid team work of the Seatonians enabling them to pull out a victory. Milliken was the sledge hammer most successfully used to smash the Harvard line, though Buist also proved no slouch in pushing the pigskin forward. Laughlin was as invincible as usual, while Lindsay, Seaton’s new left guard, put up an especially lively, scrappy game, until he was carried off the field near the end of the second half, with the blood streaming down his face. It is to be hoped that his injuries won’t keep him permanently off the gridiron, as he seems to be the great find of the season.”

Wolcott read the account the next morning when he returned from his first recitation, and hooted with amusement. Mr. Lindsay read it at his breakfast table and shuddered. He carried the paper down town with him to his office to keep it out of Mrs. Lindsay’s hands; and all the way down he grew more and more indignant. The first thing he did at the office was to call up the school authorities at Seaton and demand a report of his son’s condition. The reassuring answer did not change his purpose. He sat down at his desk and wrote the misguided youth a letter, ordering him peremptorily to play football no more. Then, having by parental ukase rescued his son from threatening peril, he took up with relief the business of the day.

Wolcott received the letter that afternoon, as he came in from the field where he had been watching the practice. He read it through in amazement. He reread it with quickened breath and a mist forming before his eyes. And then, big fellow as he was, he threw himself on his bed and wept.