"Oh, we’ll walk off with another scalp, you bet your boots," said the irrepressible Buckhart.
"You mustn’t forget my lesson on overconfidence, given you before the last game. It’s just about as bad as lack of confidence. Hudsonville was overconfident, and Fardale defeated her."
"Well," said Steve Nunn, captain of the eleven, "the report is that Viewland is worried. She thought Hudsonville would have an easy time, but the result of the game has set her thinking in a different way."
"It’ll kill her to death to be beaten by Fardale," said Don Kent. "She beat us sixteen to nothing last year."
"It’s going to be different this year," declared big Bob Singleton.
"But Viewland will do anything to win," asserted Kent. "Those people haven’t any scruples."
Then Dick Merriwell spoke up for the first time.
"There are certain chaps here at Fardale who want to see us lose," he said. "I know them, but, for reasons, I’m not going to call their names. We have traitors and spies at this school."
"Oh, I don’t like to think that any Fardale fellow really wants to see us beaten!" exclaimed Steve Nunn.
"I don’t like to think so," said Dick; "but I know it."