The First Team departed for Toll's Academy at eleven-thirty the next forenoon, twenty-eight strong. The game would be the last real test before Wolcott was encountered, and so the result was awaited with a good deal of interest. Wolcott had defeated Toll's by 26 to 9 and Coach Otis's warriors hoped to at least equal that creditable performance. The students sent the team off with confident and vociferous cheers before they piled into dining hall for an early dinner that would permit them to follow at one o'clock. Of course not all the fellows made the trip, and amongst the half-hundred or so who remained at Wyndham, were, besides the Scrub Team members, Tom and Loring.
Tom had somewhat testily declared his intention of spending the afternoon in study, but Loring and Clif had only grinned. The picture of Tom occupied in the pursuit of knowledge while the Fighting Scrub battled with an enemy somehow lacked distinctness! Anyhow, Tom didn't spend that afternoon in Number 34 West. He occupied Wattles's stool beside Loring's chair, which had been wheeled to the corner of the grand stand, and he and Wattles, the latter slightly in the background, watched proceedings with about equal interest. It was a good game, a hard, fast, close contest that wasn't decided until, in the fourth period, while the small audience held its collective breath, Hoppin, sent in for the purpose, added a goal to the Scrub's second touchdown. Scrub had set out with the intention of beating Minster High as thoroughly as the
