"I shall be pleased to see you at any time, Miss Gale, but, if you call on me, perhaps it would be well not to bring a certain person with you. It might be embarrassing and unpleasant. Good-day."

Bounding down the steps, Frank walked swiftly away. There was a hard, set look on his face, which had grown singularly pale.

"Yes," he muttered, "I understand it all now. She would not tell me why she did not wish me to play on the eleven, but I know now. Somewhere she has met Rob Marline, and she is stuck on him. He wanted to play full-back for Yale, and she aided him all she could by inducing me to promise that I would not play. I see through the whole game! She was playing me for a fool! I did not think that of her, but it is as clear as crystal."

And Marline had cut him out with Inza! He felt sure of that.

"Well," he grated, "I have been easy with that fellow. Now we are enemies to the bitter end! Let him look out for me!"


CHAPTER XXXIX.

THE HOMEWARD JOURNEY.

"What's the matter with Merriwell?" asked Lewis Little, speaking to a group of jolly lads who were on the train that bore the Yale football team out of Boston on its way to New Haven. "He's grouchy."

"Is he?" cried Paul Pierson. "Well, he ought to be ashamed of himself! Why, he's the hero of the day! All the papers will have his picture to-morrow. I saw at least five persons snapping him with cameras on the field. Grouchy, is he? Well, confound him! He has no right to get a grouch on."