“You go in, Fairbairn,” said the captain.
The Parretts felt their fate to be sealed hopelessly. Had Game been sent in he might still have done something for Parrett’s, but now his chance might never come.
It did not come. Fairbairn joined Crossfield, and the two did just what they liked with the bowling. As the score shot up from fifty to sixty and from sixty to seventy, the school became perfectly hoarse with cheering. Even most of the partisans of Parrett’s, sorely as the match was going against them, could not help joining in the applause now that the prospect of the school winning by seven wickets had become a probability.
Up went the score—another three for Fairbairn—another two for Crossfield—seventy-five—then next moment a terrific cheer greeted a four by Fairbairn, which brought the numbers equal; and before the figures were well registered another drive settled the question, and Willoughby had beaten Rockshire by seven wickets!
Chapter Twenty Five.
“Am I My Brother’s Keeper?”
The evening of the Rockshire match was one of strangely conflicting emotions in Willoughby.
In the schoolhouse the jubilation was beyond bounds, and the victory of the school was swallowed up in the glorious exploits of the five schoolhouse heroes, who had, so their admirers declared, as good as won the match among them, and had vindicated themselves from the reproach of degeneracy, and once for all wiped away the hateful stigma of the boat-race. The night was spent till bedtime in one prolonged cheer in honour of their heroes, who were glad enough to hide anywhere to escape the mobbing they came in for whenever they showed their faces.