Old Jerry gave voice to a cackle of mirth. "Bet you'll sleep all right," he said. "I never yet seen a feller like you that didn't sleep when the time come for it, and as for helping, I guess you'll do your part if you keep on believin' that Ridgley School can't be beat and when the game is goin' on you yell your dumdest to encourage the team."
"Well," said Snubby, "I suppose you want to go on readin' that lurid-looking book of yours, so I'll be going up to my room, I guess."
"It ain't so lurid," said Jerry, "but it's interestin' 'cause it's kind o' teachin' me how to put two and two together so's they'll figger up to make four, if you know what I mean, and then I'm a mite stirred up myself about that game to-morrer and it's quietin' to my nerves."
So Snubby Turner left his friend in the little basement room, walked quietly up the stairs to his room and made up his mind that the best thing for him to do was to turn in.
Mass meetings, preliminary games and final practice were over and everything now awaited the climax of the season. By half-past nine lights were going out in the dormitories and presently quiet reigned over the white buildings on the hill and the stars, sending down their radiance from a clear sky, presaged fair weather for the great contest. The light was out in Teeny-bits' room and no one in the school—with the exception of two persons—doubted that the smallest member of the eleven was not sleeping soundly beneath the roof of Gannett Hall.
Saturday morning dawned as fair as the fairest day in the year; there was a nip in the air that suggested winter, but as the morning wore on, the mounting sun mellowed the chill until the "old boys"—men who had played for Ridgley and Jefferson twenty years before and who had come back to view once again the immortal combat between the "best school in all the world" and her greatest rival—slapped each other on the back and said:
"Perfect football weather!"
All roads led to Ridgley—or seemed to—on this day of days. The trains came rolling into the Hamilton Station, discharged their burdens of humanity and rolled on. Automobiles by the score climbed the long hill to the school,—automobiles bearing the fluttering red of Ridgley and the fluttering purple of Jefferson. There were shouts of greeting and shouts of gay challenge, honking of horns and a busy rushing here and there that suggested excitement, anticipation and hopes built high. And then came the special train from Jefferson—the Purple Express, so named—bearing hundreds of cheering students and a brass band of twenty pieces which led the procession into Lincoln Hall to the strains of the Jefferson Victory Song,—a fiendish piece of music in the ears of Ridgley's loyal sons, a stirring pean of confidence and challenge in the ears of those who waved aloft the purple. At Lincoln Hall the Jefferson guests—according to immemorial custom—sat down to a luncheon that Ridgley School provided. A year later the compliment would be returned. The band played, the visitors cheered, the song leader jumped on a table and swung his arms in time to the latest Jefferson song,—and all Ridgley School knew that Jefferson was having the time of her life. She had come to her rival with the best team in her history and she meant to enjoy every moment of a triumph which she was confident would be colossal. In all this excitement Teeny-bits' absence was not at first noticed. At breakfast some one asked for him and some one else said:
"I guess he's already eaten and gone; he probably didn't want to listen to our football gossip."
During the course of the morning two members of the faculty called for him—Doctor Wells and Mr. Stevens. They had an identical thought in mind—though neither knew that the other was thinking it. They were busy in extending the hospitality of Ridgley to the members of the Jefferson faculty and in greeting the "old boys" who had returned for the big game, but both wanted to have a word with Teeny-bits,—to tell him that they had confidence in him and that they knew everything would turn out right in the end and that they should watch him with special interest this afternoon and knew that he would forget everything else and play his best for Ridgley. They left word for him at the dormitory.