"I can't," said Dick despairingly. "I didn't score."
Bessingham turned abruptly to the referee.
"Sir," he said, "that was Forge's goal—this is Foxenby's game. Give them the verdict."
The referee was a big man, nearing middle age, who had ruled exciting games before Bessingham was born. He knew the laws of football from A to Z—had, indeed, helped to make not a few of them. And pleading with him to alter those rules, even by a hairsbreadth, was merely a way of wasting breath.
"Impossible," he said. "I'm sorrier than I can say, but Regulation 17 definitely rules that, if all or any portion of the crowd encroaches on the ground during the game, the tie shall be replayed in its entirety. The spectator broke in—that washes out the match."
"No, no, I beg of you," the Octopus pleaded. "Restart the game here and now, and I'll see that all comes right. Foxenby's won, sir—be a sport!"
"I'm a referee first—a sport afterwards," said the whistle-blower, sharply. "Time!"
CHAPTER III
A Rival to "The Foxonian"
Roger Cayton tried in vain to pump the Juniors about Fluffy Jim's luckless interference with the final tie.