Don was heard coming swiftly downstairs, taking three at a time.
“Good-by!” he shouted. “I’m off.”
“Good luck, my boy,” called the doctor. “Remember my advice. Take care of yourself, and do your level best to help Rockspur win.”
The door slammed and Don was gone, but not to play football.
CHAPTER XX.
WHILE THE GAME WAS PLAYED.
On a jutting ledge far up the side of Ragged Mountain, where he could overlook the village, harbor, open sea and hilly country to the westward, a lonely boy sat astride a spur of the blue rock, gazing downward at a dark object crawling steadily along the brown thread of a road which led from the village, crooked about the shores of the amethyst lake and wound into the distance that swallowed it from sight.
The boy was Don Scott, who had made feverish haste to get out of Rockspur ahead of the football team, leaving his overcoat at the little railroad station which he passed on the Lobsterville side. From the station he had followed the railroad to the foot of the mountain, where he found a dimly-defined path that led him, panting and toiling, upward to the ledge on which he was now perched.
At his feet lay Lake Glenwood, seeming near enough for him to hurl a pebble into it with no great effort, although he knew it was quite half-a-mile from the foot of the mountain. His eyes had hastily followed the road along the shore till they found, far beyond the middle section of the lake and pursuing the stream that led off from it, the dark object which he knew was the big buckboard carrying the members of the Rockspur Eleven to Highland.
“There they go!” he panted. “Renwood is with them! Bentley is with them! and I am here!”
He laughed bitterly, and then became silent as the wind seemed to bring faintly to his ears the refrain of a familiar song often sung by the boys on their way to a game or returning from a victorious contest. He could not distinguish the words, but the indistinct sound of the chorus, like a momentary murmur of the wind, was enough to cause those words to flash across his mind.