CONTENTS

CHAPTERPAGE
I[The Three Guardsmen]1
II[Kidnapped!]17
III[Held by the Enemy]29
IV[Harmon Comes to Terms]37
V[The Wrong Boy]53
VI[First Days at Alton]65
VII[In the Coach’s Room]76
VIII[The Boy in the Green Sweater]87
IX[McNatt on Science]101
X[Alton Squeezes Through]116
XI[The First Defeat]128
XII[“Do Your Best”]146
XIII[A Forty-yard Run]157
XIV[Onions!]167
XV[Martin Calls Quits]180
XVI[Diplomacy]193
XVII[McNatt Joins the Team]213
XVIII[Revenge!]227
XIX[Black Paint]239
XX[Evidence]250
XXI[Bob Says So]262
XXII[On Probation]274
XXIII[McNatt Tries Photography]287
XXIV[Alton Celebrates]302

ILLUSTRATIONS

[“Go out and play full-back as it should be played”]Frontispiece
[“You don’t come that, Harmon! That’s off! You hear me?”]54
[One brief instant they tarried to admire]242
[It was Alton’s day all through]310

LEFT HALF HARMON

[CHAPTER I]
THE THREE GUARDSMEN

At a few minutes past three o’clock on a particularly warm afternoon in late September of last year three boys removed themselves and their luggage from the top of a Fifth Avenue stage in New York City and set forth eastward along Forty-second Street. Although decidedly dissimilar in looks and slightly dissimilar in build, they showed, nevertheless, a certain uniformity of carriage and action and, to a lesser degree, of attire. There was nothing strange in that, however, since, for the last two years, at least, they had spent nine months of the twelve in the same place, at the same pursuits and under the same discipline. The likeness of attire was less in material and color than in a certain tasteful avoidance of the extremes. Joe Myers and Martin Proctor wore blue serge and Bob Newhall a brownish-gray tweed, and in no case was the coat snugged in to the figure or adorned with a belt in conformity to the dictums of the Rochester school of sartorial art. Joe and Bob wore gray-and-gold ribbons about their straw hats, Martin a plain black. Each of the three carried a brown leather suitcase, and, had you looked closely, you would have discovered on each bag, amongst numerous other labels, a gray triangle bearing two A’s in gold snuggled together in a pyramid-shaped monogram.