"I don't wonder," put in Dick. "The way that big McAlpin lammed into you was a crime. He piled on me in one of the scrimmages, and I thought the Flatiron building had fallen."
"He's a tough bird, all right," said Drake, "but he ran up against a tougher one when he tried to go through Bert for that last down in the second quarter. I never saw anything prettier than the way Bert flung him back as though he had been a lightweight. I caught the bewildered look on his face as he went over. He didn't know for a minute what had hit him."
"It was the only thing that saved us from being scored on," said Martin. "It's the tightest place we've been in so far this season."
"Well, a miss is as good as a mile," said Bert, slipping on his coat. "But hurry up, you fellows, and let us tackle some eats. I'm so hungry that it hurts."
He had struck a responsive chord and in a few minutes they were on their way to the mess hall of the cadets, who had insisted that they should be their guests at supper.
To reach the dining hall they had to cross the baseball field, abandoned now in the early fall, but the scene of fierce diamond battles earlier in the season. To Bert and Tom and Dick it brought back the memory of the great game they had played there two years before—a game that had gone into extra innings, and had been won by a wonderful bit of playing on the part of Tom who was holding down third.
"Remember that game, Tom?" asked Bert.
"O, no," mocked Dick. "He doesn't remember. A man who has made a triple play unassisted never thinks of it again."
"He's blushing," exclaimed Drake. "Look at him, fellows. What a shrinking violet."
Tom made a pass at him.