Forge of Foxenby

by R. A. H. Goodyear

Well, there is no game so full of sensational surprises as football, and it fell out that the second half was in vivid and delightful contrast to the first. The ball hadn't been in motion two minutes before everybody noticed that something different was happening.

Of fancy work there was none—gallery play was to be scrapped, evidently. Twice in quick succession Meynard got away on the left wing, and put across two fine centres which Forge and Lake nearly made into goals, one shot striking the cross-bar and the other glancing off the goalkeeper for a corner. Though Meynard dropped this flag-kick on to the net by trying to make too sure a thing of it, St. Cuthbert's were visibly rattled by these narrow escapes.

"That outside-left of yours has got a rare turn of speed," remarked a Cuthbertian to Lyon. "He needs watching."

So they started watching him, forgetting that while two men are playing policeman to one, his pal goes unmarked and free.

This was where Robin's smaller size came in. What could a little chap like that do, anyhow? St. Cuthbert's had ceased to reckon him. So, cottoning to a significant glance from his captain, Robin stood with apparent listlessness behind the Cuthbertians who were worrying Meynard, snapped a chance, scraped the ball from their heels, and passed it back to Dick, who promptly swung it out to Lake. Lake dribbled till Bessingham came thundering down, and then ballooned the ball back to Dick, who nearly made a hole in the goalie's chest with a drive so fierce that the crowd bellowed joyfully.

In this vigorous little scene the Octopus played second fiddle, and probably he was more surprised than anybody to be left out of the movement. Having, with the rest of his side, held Robin and Osbody cheaply in the first half, some fifteen minutes went by before it struck him that the improvement in the play of the two Juniors was having an effect on the run of the game. And by the time he and his colleagues woke up to the change the mischief had been done—Foxenby had scored an equalizing goal.

Funniest goal of the season it might possibly be called—either a side-splitting fluke, or a piece of football wizardry never before attempted. Only Robin Arkness could say in which class to place it, for it was that bright-faced youngster who, with his back to St. Cuthbert's goal, and just outside the penalty-area, screwed the ball over his head into the top angle of the sticks, from whence it rebounded into play again. Robin span round and met it with his forehead, and it flew into the net like a cannon-ball at close quarters, making the astonished goalkeeper look and feel like a ventriloquist's dummy.

The great roar of cheering which greeted this extraordinary goal might have turned Robin's head if he had known for certain that it was still on his shoulders. But his delighted team-mates, swooping down upon him to smother him with congratulations, saw him sink to the ground in a dazed fashion, with both hands clasping the nape of his neck, which Robin quite thought, as he confessed afterwards, to be broken.

"Buck up, kid," said Lyon. "My stars, what a goal! The crowd's crazy about it. Hear 'em yelling!"

Robin looked with unseeing eyes at the admiring sympathizers grouped round him. Friendly fingers rubbed him back to a dim idea of his surroundings, but for the remainder of the game he was rather a wan and woebegone passenger. He struggled on, but when "time" was called, and the referee ordered the teams to go straight on for an extra fifteen minutes' play each way, Dick and Lyon made a chair of their arms and carried the small hero to the dressing-room, feeling proud, for his sake, of the sympathetic cheers which accompanied his exit.