All at once, as he was setting in position, a body rushed in, seizing the ball.
"Time!"
The first half was over, and the score was: Princeton, 18; Yale, 0.
Then all at once he felt his weariness. He went slowly, grimly with the rest back to the dressing-room. A group of urchins clustering to a tree shrieked at them:
"O you Yaleses!"
He heard that, and that was all he heard. A sort of rebellion was in him. He had done all that he could do, and now they would haul him over the coals, thinking that was what he needed.
"Oh, I know what'll be said," he thought grimly. "We'll be told we can win out in the second, and all that rot."
Then he was in the hands of the rubbers, having his wet, clinging suit stripped from him, being rubbed and massaged. He did not want to look at his comrades, least of all Dana. He only wanted to get back, to have it over with.
"Yale, I want you to listen to me."
He looked up. In the center stood Tompkins, preternaturally grave, trembling a little with nervous, uncontrollable twitches of his body.