"Oh, my leg!" groaned the sufferer, feebly. "There's a hole bored clear through it, and it's bleeding like one o'clock."
And then Mr. Jones, who had been examining the injured member, did a very remarkable thing. He deliberately bestowed upon his wounded superior a couple of hearty kicks, and then proceeded to assist him to his feet.
"Get up, Phil, and don't make an ass of yourself. Here's the fatal bullet that laid you low." He picked up something from the ground, and showed it first to Captain Phil and then to Jack. The latter nodded, took it, and stowed it away in his pocket. A few words in undertone followed, and then the football Captain laughed and held out his hand to Jack.
"I wish you fellows would come up to the college and have some tea," he said, heartily. "Sure you haven't the time? Well, then, remember that I'll expect you over for the first baseball game of the season next Saturday—and your friends too."
"You're sure that you're all right again?" inquired Jack.
Captain Phil turned a handspring with remarkable agility, and came up smiling, to the manifest astonishment of three or four of his late companions in crime, who were cautiously making their way back to the scene of battle, in the evident expectation of having to perform the last sad offices for their late leader.
"Straight as a string and sound as a bell," announced Captain Phil, cheerfully. "But just wait, young fellow, until you enter Fresh, in the fall, and I can get a chance to tackle you on the twenty-yard line. That ought to square things between us."
Jack laughed, and with another hearty shake of the Captain's hand, he sprang into his saddle, and the Arrow was quickly speeding towards Fairacre again.
"He ought to make a rattling quarter-back," said Captain Phil, reflectively, to Tom Jones. "A fellow with his nerve is just the man we want to fill Robinson's shoes."
And Jones nodded an oracular assent.