Forge of Foxenby E-Book

R. A. H. Goodyear

• Herausgeber: Publisher s11838
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Forge of Foxenby written by R. A. H. Goodyear who was an English author of children's stories. This book was published in 1920. And now republish in ebook format. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy reading this book.

Leseprobe

Forge of Foxenby

By

R. A. H. Goodyear

Illustrator: T. M. R. Whitwell

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I. The County Schools' Final

CHAPTER II. The Captain and "The Octopus"

CHAPTER III. A Rival to "The Foxonian"

CHAPTER IV. What followed the First Number

CHAPTER V. Rhymes and Riddles

CHAPTER VI. The Plea of Peter Mawdster

CHAPTER VII. The Squirms in the Forest

CHAPTER VIII. The Burglary

CHAPTER IX. Luke Harwood in the Picture

CHAPTER X. The Merry Men give an Entertainment

CHAPTER XI. Settling the Score

CHAPTER XII. Dick has Friendship thrust upon Him

CHAPTER XIII. The Printer is Polite no Longer

CHAPTER XIV. The Fight on the Bowling-green

CHAPTER XV. The Cloud with the Silver Lining

CHAPTER XVI. In which Peter has an Unhappy Day

CHAPTER XVII. The Friend in Need

CHAPTER XVIII. Fluffy Jim provides a Sensation

CHAPTER XIX. Roger returns to Brighter Skies

CHAPTER XX. The Tourist who talked Poetry

CHAPTER XXI. The Merry Men win Glory

CHAPTER XXII. Home Truths for Luke Harwood

CHAPTER XXIII. A Merry Man's Magazine

CHAPTER XXIV. The Three-cornered Tournament

CHAPTER XXV. The Merry Men Score Goals

CHAPTER XXVI. Two from Eleven leaves Nine

CHAPTER XXVII. A Gift-goal for St. Cuthbert's

CHAPTER XXVIII. The Winning of the Cup

CHAPTER I. The County Schools' Final

"A goal!"

"Straight from the kick-off—a goal!"

"Oh, played, St. Cuthbert's! One up! Hurrah!"

"Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!" came the delighted chorus of congratulations from Cuthbertians in all parts of the field.

But, until the ball is seen resting in the back of the net, it is as unwise to count a goal as it is to reckon chickens still in the shell. There was a youth behind the Foxenby posts with a muddy mark on the side of his face, and he at least knew no goal had been scored.

The first shot of the match had flashed by the upright—on the wrong side of it for St. Cuthbert's, on the right side of it for Foxenby, whose sigh of heart-felt relief was audible when their rivals' untimely cheers had died down.

"A narrow squeak, old man!" said Dick Forge, the captain of the Foxenby team, to Broome, the inside-left, selected from Holbeck's House.

"Rather!" answered Broome. "It quite turned my heart over. Their centre's got his shooting-boots on this afternoon."

"Helped by the wind, of course. It's buzzing across from goal to goal. Feel the pressure of it! Like running up against a house-side."

"We'll never get going against it, Captain. They'll be a dozen goals up at half-time."

"Fudge!" cried the captain. "They've got Lebberston and Lyon—grand old Lyon—to beat first, and Ennis after that. Throw your chest out, Broome, old man, and smile!"

Dick's laughing face was a tonic to the faint-hearted ones always. However dark the picture seemed to be, he had the happy knack of turning it to the light so that his chums could see something cheery in it.

To-day they had much need of his enthusiasm, too. By calling "heads" as the referee span a coin in the air, when it would have been much nicer had he said "tails ", he had passed the luck of the toss to the rival captain, who thankfully grabbed the chance of placing a spanking sea-breeze at the back of his team.

Hard lines indeed, you Foxenby fellows, to lose the toss in a wind like this, and on such a very important day. For you have worked your way through to the final tie of the County Schools' Cup against teams of stronger build, only to meet, in the last match, eleven sturdy youths who outweigh you almost man for man.

Forge and Lyon alone can be said to be up to the average bulk of your opponents. Ennis, your trusty goalkeeper, is certainly tall, but see how thin he looks! Almost like a third goalpost, you might say. Your forwards are fleet-footed to a man, and your halves are like terriers, ever worrying the foe.

But you can't get away from the fact that weight plays a big part in footer, and when a mass of bone and brawn has half a gale behind it to help it whenever it charges you, why, phew! you need all the pluck you can muster to pick yourselves up and start in afresh!

"St. Cuthbert's are a dandy side this season," remarked a young Cuthbertian behind the Foxenby goal. "Scored twenty-three times in the Cup-ties up to date, and never once had a goal notched against them."

"Ah, well, they'll blot their copy-books this afternoon, if never before," retorted Robin Arkness, a Foxenby Junior, who had gathered round him a little cluster of select pals, and was in a mood to blow his own side's trumpet.

"Who's going to score against them, anyhow?" asked the perky Cuthbertian youngster.

"Forge will, Broome will, perhaps even old Lyon will, from full-back, given half a chance," declared the optimistic Robin.

"Pooh! They can't even cross the half-way line," snorted the champion of St. Cuthbert's, contemptuously. "See how we're peppering your goalie all the time. Play up, Saints! Bang 'em in, boys! Oo—ooo, a goal—no, hang it, only a corner! Allow for the wind, Monty—allow for the wind!"

"You mean 'allow for the gas', don't you, kid?" asked Robin. "You're a tip-topper at scoring goals with your tongue."

Nevertheless the cocksure young Cuthbertian had every reason for his confidence. Already there were many ominous smudges of mud on the newly-whitewashed goalposts and crossbar, and a series of finely-placed corner-kicks had only been hustled away by what seemed to be desperate scrimmages of the Rugby order, with the luck on Foxenby's side.

The impartial crowd of Walsbridge townspeople, on whose ground the final tie was being played, had read wonderful accounts of the Cuthbertians' rock-like defence—it delighted them to see that these hefty youths knew also the straight route to an opponent's goal. Therefore, they began by wishing Ennis, the goalkeeper of the "Foxes", good luck, and plenty of hard work!

They flocked behind his goal, cheering him again and again as he flung himself backwards and forwards to fist away corking shots, some of which he probably knew very little about, though it just happened that his long body was always in the way. The better the goal-keeper, the more good fortune he enjoys as a rule. Forwards seem somehow magnetized into shooting where he is.

"How about that hatful of goals your team were going to score?" Robin Arkness wanted to know, after twenty minutes of this sort of thing. "Rather overlooked the fact that our side had a goalkeeper, didn't you, Cuthbert kid?"

"He kept that last one out by a sheer fluke," grumbled the young Cuthbertian. "See, there he goes again, bobbing the ball away with his eyes shut."

"How unkind of him!" said Robin, in mock indignation. "Ennis, you're a cad, you know, not letting the nice little Saints add to their twenty-three goals. Stand aside, you naughty man, while they drive holes through the net!"

But older heads than Robin's were being shaken over the sore straits in which Foxenby found themselves so early in the game. Luke Harwood, the prefect of Holbeck's House, and editor of the school magazine, seemed so concerned about it that he voiced his fears to Roger Cayton, prefect of Rooke's House, whose close personal friendship with the captain of the team made him doubly anxious about the way things were going.

"Ennis is marvellous," said Luke, "but one-man shows don't win football matches. Our halves and forwards can't even raise a gallop."

"That's no surprise, seeing that you and I have to hold our caps on in the breeze."

"Granted, Cayton. Still, I wouldn't leave all the donkey-work to Ennis and Lyon if I were captain. I'd fall back and help."

"If you were captain, yes. But Forge has different ideas. Let's give him credit for knowing more about football than a spectator can."

There was a sting in this comment, which Luke Harwood did not fail to observe. As editor of the Foxonian he was unapproachably the school's best pupil, and so obviously the Head's favourite boy that he was known throughout both houses as "Old Wykeham's Pet Fox". But as a footballer he was "only middling", and to-day the selection committee had quietly passed him over. The pill was a bitter one, and Roger's comment made it still harder to swallow, but all he did was to whistle softly and smile.

"I'd like to know the name of the artist who decked Fluffy Jim, the village idiot, in those stripes of coloured paper," continued Roger Cayton. "Club colours, of course, blue and white stripes. Still, football enthusiasm may be carried too far, and such tomfoolery makes me sick. What goats the St. Cuthbert's fellows will think us!"

"Pray don't take our little joke too seriously, Cayton," said Luke, with a pleasant laugh. "Where's the big league club that doesn't cart its mascot around with it on cup days? Fluffy Jim may bring us luck and some second-half goals."

"Oh, yes, to be sure," snapped Roger. "Particularly as St. Cuthbert's have come through to the final with a clean goal-sheet. They're the sort of chaps who would be scared out of their form by a guy in coloured paper, no doubt."

Harwood gave a resigned shrug of his shoulders.

"Funny, isn't it, how the best-laid schemes 'gang aft agley'?" he commented. "Some of us thought that the sight of a mascot in gala garb would serve to keep the footballing Foxes in good-humour throughout the game."

"It's cheap and nasty," said Roger Cayton, not without pluck, considering that Luke Harwood could have made a broken reed of him in physical combat. "Weakness of intellect is a sorry enough thing in itself. A coloured advertisement of it is worse."

Composed in manner always, seldom without an engaging smile, Harwood did not let this half-challenge pass unnoticed. There was a gleam in his eyes which even short-sighted Roger saw.

Between these two quick-witted boys existed an unspoken feud, founded on Harwood's refusal to print in the Foxonian the contributions which Roger persisted in sending. Doubtless Harwood felt that there was scarcely room in the school magazine for two such literary stars as he and Roger to shine at the same time.

"Well," said Harwood, calmly, "sorry if my cronies and I have given offence. Our consolation must be that Fluffy Jim is having the happiest day of his life. And you fellows may yet come to hail him as a luck-bringer."

"Superstitious piffle, Harwood," Roger grunted, He and Luke then drifted casually, apart. Neither desired to spoil a good football match by bearing each other company any longer. Oil and vinegar, these two!

"I have a rotten grain of suspicion in my nature, doubtless," thought Roger. "Still, Forge is captain of the football team and captain of the school—Luke Harwood would like to be both, and is neither. He knows Dick is strung on wires, and how small a thing upsets him on big occasions. This fool idea, then, of dressing the village idiot like a circus clown—is there method in his madness? Is there a secret hope that it will put Dick off his game?"

Left to himself, the half-witted youth known as "Fluffy Jim" was as quiet as an old sheep. Now, inspired by someone behind the goal, he used his booming voice to shout out repeatedly, in the dialect of the district:

"Coom back an' keep 'em oot—coom back, coom back, afoör they scoöar!"

Others—and some who should have known better—took up the cry; but Fluffy Jim's voice rose above the rest, just as his paper costume was the most conspicuous thing on the field.

"Mascot, indeed!" thought Dick Forge bitterly. "His ridiculous rig-out gets on my nerves, and now his voice is doing ditto. Some kind friend in Holbeck's House is pulling the strings, I suspect. Bother it, how cold and irritable this standing about makes me feel!"

As if to rub it in, his colleagues in the forward line began imploring him to strengthen the defence. In imagination they saw Ennis beaten by every fresh shot which the determined St. Cuthbert's team fired at the goal, and it certainly seemed impossible that the tall, thin youth, who had already done wonders, could hold the fort much longer. But Dick Forge refused to be "rattled".

"Don't get the wind up, chaps," he urged. "If I'm injured and carried off the field, you can pack the goal then. While I'm captain, you won't."

"But they've worn our backs to fiddle-strings—it's inhuman not to help the poor beggars out," protested Broome.

A grunt was the captain's only reply.

"Do you want Cuthbert's to score, Forge?" continued Broome.

It was an ungenerous speech, of which he was heartily ashamed a moment later. The captain winced as he replied:

"You're as bad as the rest, Broome. This is football—a game—a match—British sport. Backs defend goals—forwards shoot them. Yes, I want St. Cuthbert's to score—if they can!"

His sympathy for the defence in their gruelling was acute, but he shammed indifference to it. Let the Cup be lost or won, none should say afterwards that the Foxes saved their goal by playing one goalkeeper and ten backs. Finer to be a dozen goals behind at half-time than that!

"Good old Dick!" shouted Roger from the touch-line. "Stick to your game, old man!"

Dick turned a grateful face in the direction from which the voice came, and then ran back anxiously as a great yell of "Penalty, penalty!" came from the St. Cuthbert's players and spectators alike.

"What's happened, Clowes?" he said to the centre-half.

"They say that Lyon handled in the penalty-area," answered Clowes. "Hear them bawling at the referee! Hope to goodness he turns them down."

Pushing his way through the crowd of excited players, the flushed referee ran to consult one of his linesmen, who shook his head at once.

"A pure accident, 'ref.'," he declared.

"Exactly what I thought myself, but St. Cuthbert's were positive that he handled purposely."

St. Cuthbert's were very sore about it, too, when the referee bounced the ball, instead of awarding the penalty-kick they wanted so. How very much easier it would have been to beat the lanky Ennis with an uninterrupted shot, than when Lyon was circling round him like an eagle defending its nest!

Lyon was too bad—Lyon had handled purposely, and he ought to have owned up to it, said the mortified Cuthbertians.

But Lyon the Silent set his teeth and said nothing. It still wanted ten minutes of half-time, and for that trying period he meant to save his breath.

The crowd swayed backwards and forwards behind Ennis's goal. They couldn't keep still, and in their excitement kicked one another without noticing it.

Every player on the St. Cuthbert's side, save only the goalkeeper, became a sharpshooter. Each "potted" Ennis from every angle, allowing him no rest. The cross-bar rattled and creaked like the swinging sign-board of a tavern, and corner-kicks seemed almost as plentiful as roadside blackberries. But between the posts that aggravating ball simply would not go.

"Three more minutes, Foxenby—kick away, kick away!" yelled Robin Arkness and his frenzied chums.

"It's positively sickening," said the young Cuthbertian, working his shoulders about in sheer agony of suspense. "Your chaps have had chunks of luck thrown at 'em. We ought to have been sixteen goals up by now."

"And still stick at the old twenty-three," was Robin's gibe. "Poor old Saints, such sinners at shooting! Hey, hooray! Forge is on the ball—Forge is tivying off to the other end! Oh, bother! The wind's beaten him—the ball's in touch. Never mind—we're across the half-way line. All together, you Foxes—only a minute more!"

"Fibber!" shouted the Junior Cuthbertian. "It's two minutes off half-time!"

"Blow the dust out of your half-crown watch and open your ears for the referee's whistle, Cuthy. He's got it to his lips now. He's going to blow. He has blown. Half-time! Bravo, you jolly Foxes!"

"Good old Lyon; played, old Ennis!" shouted the Foxenby section of the crowd.

The wild and whirling first-half was indeed over. "Six—one" might easily have been the score; "nil—nil" it actually was, with the breeze still going strong. Small wonder that the Foxenby team left the playing pitch with easier minds, and that the Junior Foxes grabbed one another frantically and waltzed and pirouetted round and round the ropes.

CHAPTER II. The Captain and "The Octopus"

There was more talk than Forge liked in the cramped little dressing-room during the interval. Nevertheless, he grimly held his tongue while those candid advisers, whose speciality is winning football matches with their mouths, put in their interfering oars.

"What killed St. Cuthbert's pig was the way their backs held aloof till the last few minutes," said one.

"Yes," agreed another expert. "If they'd crowded on all sail like that earlier on, they could have walked the ball through."

"Rather—by sheer force of numbers," chimed in a third.

"We shan't make that mistake," quoth yet another oracle. "Why, even old Ennis will come out of his hutch and have a pot-shot now and again, won't you, Ennis?"

Ennis might have been part of the furniture for all the notice he took of this remark. He just sat back in the corner, sprawling out his long legs, and breathing hard.

Some of his finger-nails were torn, the backs of his hands wore long scratches, and his knuckles were bruised and bleeding. Smears of mud blackened his face, which he had not yet found energy to sponge. Battered knees and swollen shins, too, were part of the price he had paid for keeping his goal unpierced. None but he knew the aches and pains he had endured to hold the fort for Foxenby. It would be many a long day before his skin was free of scars.

"Here, old man, have a drink of this," said Forge, holding to the goalie's lips a cup of coffee. "Good stuff, eh? Buck you up no end. Alstone, hurry up with that bowl of warm water. All St. Cuthbert's have printed their autographs on Ennis's face."

The water was hurriedly brought, and Dick sponged the goalie's features with it as well as he could, what time the babel of voices went on uninterruptedly about them.

"What a narrow squeak when Lyon handled! Looked all over like a penalty to me. Had they got it their 'cap.' would have converted—he never misses a spot-kick."

"If we have a penalty Broome must take it. He put three through for Holbeck's in the practice match last Saturday—didn't you, Broome?"

"Shut up!" snapped Broome, colouring a little. He was still kicking himself for what he had said to Forge before, and was determined in future to leave captaincy to the captain.

Luke Harwood, too, thought the time ripe for an exhibition of the good-sportsmanship which he liked to think was a feature of Holbeck's House.

"Outside, you wiseacres," he commanded. "This is a dressing-room, not a monkey-house. Don't burn up the team's oxygen. Don't speak to the man at the wheel. Other 'don'ts' to follow if you don't clear quickly."

He bundled out a few Juniors, and, as if by accident, bustled Roger Cayton too. Roger flushed and side-stepped, but said nothing. He was a slimly-built, spectacled youth, healthy enough, but physically no match for boys of his own age. By pretending to mistake him for one of the batch of Juniors Luke Harwood was, Roger believed, deliberately putting a slight on him. Still, he pursed his lips and swallowed his resentment, and the bit of by-play passed unnoticed by the others.

"All ready again, chaps?" asked Forge. "Come on, then. The referee's piping up."

Not a word, you will notice, did Forge speak of encouragement or advice. They knew better than to expect "jaw" from him, he being one of those wise captains who shout instructions only when the necessity is strong. He expected them all to do their best without any nagging, and to use their own wits in an emergency.

"Now we'll put it across you, Cuthy," said Robin Arkness, as the teams lined up. "We're after goals, not 'hard lines' and 'try again, boys!' You'll be wanting to creep into a rabbit-hole, Cuthy, before we've done with you."

"Swank!" retorted Cuthy. "You can't get goals against St. Cuthbert's; nobody ever does."

All the same, the youthful Cuthbertian's voice had an anxious tremor in it. He had a lively idea where all the play was likely to be, for he had never budged from his excellent standpoint behind the goal. Nor had Robin and his chums. Even the chance of a warming cup of coffee had failed to lure them away. The Foxenby "mascot" stuck there, too, grinning amiably at those who chaffed him about his make-up. The bulk of the spectators, neutral or otherwise, had not moved either. They pulled their overcoats closely about them, and stamped their feet to nullify the effect of the cold wind, which still blew straight towards that particular goal with unabated fury.

"Unless they've gotten a goalkeeper as 'wick' as Foxenby—which ain't to be expected—it's all ower but shoutin'," remarked a Walsbridge rustic. "Wi' a wind like this behind me, Ah could scoöar mesen."

"Leave that to us, old boy," Robin answered him complacently. "You won't have long to wait. See that? Oh, what a top-hole shot, Forge! An inch lower, and he'd have been beaten to the 'wide'!"

Indeed, for the past ten minutes one continuous roar of delighted cheering had accompanied Foxenby's sparkling bombardment of the St. Cuthbert's goal. Excellent shots went astray by fractions of inches only. Broome twice nearly did damage to the cross-bar, and one crafty "balloon" from Forge, over the heads of a bobbing mass of players, was scooped out of the top angle of the goal by the keeper's finger-tips only. Hundreds of hoarse throats yelled "Goal!" prematurely. It was only a corner, which tall Bessingham, the six-foot captain of St. Cuthbert's, leapt high to head away.

"Whose toes are you jumping on, clumsy?" grumbled the Junior Cuthbertian, sourly.

"Sorry, Cuthy—I couldn't help it," Robin confessed. "Simply can't keep still. It's our turn for a song and dance this half, you know."

"Laugh when you've beaten old 'Bess', not before," Cuthy cautioned him.

There was something in the warning, too. A wonderful boy this reed-like, overgrown Bessingham, with arms always straight to his sides, and legs that seemed everywhere. He could use either foot with equal power, and when his boot caught the ball he made kicking against the wind seem as simple as kicking with it.

St. Cuthbert's called him "The Octopus", and by that nickname he was known also to certain Football League Clubs, who wanted him to play for them when he left school.

A weird, silent player, ever where the ball was, never seeming to take a useless stride. Those who saw him to-day ceased to marvel at St. Cuthbert's feat in reaching the final tie without yielding a goal. The seventeen-year-old footballer was a man in all but age, with the cool judgment of a veteran to guide his restless legs.

"Botheration, I can't dodge him!" panted Broome to Dick. "Did you see us mixed together just now? His legs were round my neck. It—it's clammy—like having snakes crawling over you."

"We've something to learn from him, Broome," said Dick. "Single combat won't pay us. We must work round his flanks."

"Flanks! Why, he faces all ways," Broome groaned. "Superman, eh! Chuck that, Broome—we've got to hammer away till we find his weak spot. Nothing to fear from the forwards, the wind has them in a bottle-neck. Let's drop this first-time shooting stunt, and try a bit of conjuring."

"And he'll juggle better," said Broome, still despairing. Then, brightening up a little, he cried eagerly: "Here, take that centre from Lake; it's a ripe cherry, Forge!"

So it was. But the Octopus had a taste for ripe fruit too, and at this particular cherry he had the first bite.

Though Dick made quickly for the outside-right's fine centre, Bessingham matched him. Their boots met the ball together, and the greater force of Bessingham's kick lifted Dick off his feet. He sprawled yards within the penalty-area, with a conviction that something awkward had happened to his big toe.

"Penalty, penalty!" roared some of the crowd. It is the habit of football spectators to claim free kicks when things like this happen. To eyes blinded by prejudice it looked as though Dick had been roughly kicked about, but the players and the referee knew better. In a straight-out trial of physical strength, the sturdy captain of Foxenby had come off second-best. Moreover, he limped a little as the result, which was more ominous still.

"What did I tell you, kid?" said the Junior Cuthbertian, taking heart of grace. "You can't get past old 'Bess'. Old Bess is a brick wall. Old Bess is a house-side!"

"He's a clinking player, I admit," said Robin, "but who'll pay the doctor's bill if he kicks somebody's teeth out?"

"That's your affair," snapped Cuthy. "Perhaps you'd like old Bess to play on crutches to give your forwards a chance."

"He's not All England versus The Rest," retorted Robin. "We'll make rings round him yet."

Spoken like a true optimist, Robin! But spectators cannot win games, however loyal they may be, and rose-coloured spectacles are as useless in football as in any other field of activity. Bluff could not disguise that the luck had again turned against Foxenby. The sun came out and shone in their eyes and the wind suddenly moderated. Forwards who had stood idly on the half-way line (glad enough to rest after their first-half exertions) now found it possible to pick up Bessingham's big kicks and move towards Ennis again. True, they kept a respectable distance from Lyon and Lebberston, and only sent in long-range shots with little powder behind them. Ennis, ever reliable, hugged them safely to his breast and punted them back with ease. All very well and good; but each movement in his direction brought relief to St. Cuthbert's defenders, and cut down Foxenby's scoring chances at the same time.

The gathering behind the top goal thinned a little as some of the crowd drifted speculatively down the field. They thought they saw a prospect of a bit of sport at the other end. There was always a chance of Ennis's sun-dazzled eyes failing to judge a straight one, however languidly the ball were kicked.

Gradually the outlook became darker for the Foxes. Broome appeared to have lost heart and could do nothing right. Atack, the inside-right, quite openly shrank from close contact with the Octopus. He had once chanced his arm in a flying charge at Bessingham, and had been feeling it ever since in the fear that it was dislocated. Lake, bothered by the sun, kept missing his luck entirely and blundering into touch. All he could do, it seemed, was to tread down the flags and inconvenience the linesmen. Meynard, the swift-footed outside-left, certainly kept cool, but that was because he had little to do. He waited in vain to be fed by Broome, who seemed always under Bessingham's feet.

It didn't mend matters when the Foxenby halves lost patience with the men in front of them and commenced to play hard on top of them. Not being marksmen, they drew upon themselves the ironical contempt of the crowd by shooting high over goal—"aiming at the new moon", to quote the gleeful opinion of "Cuthy", who had once more become offensively cocksure of his team's abilities.

Precious time oozed away while spectators retrieved the ballooned ball, and all the while Dick's big toe hurt like toothache. A pretty kettle of fish all round.

Dick had a temper, and came near to losing it publicly. Again the maddening voice of the village idiot began to boom at him. "Owd can't scoöar!" it bellowed monotonously. It had the melancholy effect of a ship's steam-siren in a fog. It worried the sensitive captain more than his damaged toe did.

"This is aching misery," he mentally decided. "Hang it all, I'll waste no more passes on Lake and Atack. Fifteen minutes to go, and not a ghost of a goal in sight. 'Owd can't scoöar' or not, I'll butt right into the Octopus and chance it."

From the moment of this resolve a mighty change was wrought in the game. Of combination there was none, but of vigorous individual action there was a great deal. Giving his damaged foot no quarter, using it as though it were sound, Dick dribbled for goal by the straightest route, clashing against Bessingham each time he did so. It became a battle of giants, almost too thrilling to those onlookers who favoured one team more than the other. Players on both sides, brought to a standstill by the gruelling pace, seemed to have slipped out of the picture, leaving the centre of the field to Dick and the Octopus, two gladiators at ever-closer grips.

"Stick to him, Forge!" yelled Robin. "He's cracking up! You'll be his 'daddy' yet!"

"Old Bess lets nobody be his daddy," indignantly retorted Cuthy. "Your captain's only a kid beside him."

"Kid yourself!" snorted Robin. "Just you watch Forge, Cuthy—there'll be a hole in the back of this net shortly."

Lyon alone on the Foxenby side gave useful aid to his captain, and it was from two of the plodding fullback's returns that Dick twice dodged Bessingham and struck the cross-bar.

Both shots went where the keeper was not—each, an inch lower, would have made a goal. Such rough luck notwithstanding, "Owd can't scoöar, owd can't scoöar!" bawled Fluffy Jim, derisively waving his papered arms.

"Some sort of mascot, this," thought the bitterly-disappointed captain, "and to make sure I shan't miss seeing him, they flatten him against the ropes. Fun for them—rotten for me!"

Time travelled apace. The referee looked at his watch—a plain hint that the end was nigh. Nothing seemed likelier than the match fizzling out in a goalless draw—a depressing result, satisfactory to neither side.

Yet there was one among the spectators whose youthful heart declined to be downcast. One also whose lungs were sound as a bell, and whose throat was still capable of leading the way in a fresh chorus of rousing yells.

Robin Arkness was the undaunted enthusiast who started the swelling cheer which infected the neutral spectators and struck a warm, reviving glow to Dick Forge's heart.

"Well played, Forge—played the captain of the Foxes!" yelled the Juniors, in uplifting chorus. "Three cheers for the good old captain—hip, hip, hooray!"

Ah, what priceless encouragement was this, at a moment when all seemed lost! To Dick it seemed to bring new life, fresh strength. He could feel his pulses leaping again as the ball came his way once more. Broome, too, felt the spur of that timely cheer, shook off his ill-humour, and sprinted to the captain's side.

"Hang on, Forge!" he said. "Go ahead! Don't bother passing just yet."

Bessingham, cool and confident as ever, bore down upon the pair, feeling for the ball with feet that never erred. Clever, uncanny Bessingham! Just how he did it, you couldn't tell, but he nipped the leather right from Dick's toe, and down went the mercury behind the goal, changing the Cub-foxes' cheer to a groan.

"Oh, jumping crackers!" cried Robin. "Forge has lost it!"

"Didn't I tell you?" shrieked the delighted Cuthy. "The chap isn't born that can run round old Bess."

But this time it was not to be altogether a one-man show. Broome did not fail his captain. The funk, which had weakened his knees before, passed suddenly away from him. Brain-concussion was the risk he lightly took as he jumped up to Bessingham's mighty kick and headed the ball down again. Jove, how it hurt him! For a moment it knocked him silly, but he recovered himself sufficiently to dribble a few yards and pass the ball to Dick.

Oh, glorious moment, sweet to have come to see! At last, at last, the Octopus was beaten—stranded in utter helplessness. His long legs, stride they never so widely, could not overtake the flying Foxonian now. His colleagues had trusted implicitly to him to clear; only one of them could get near enough to Forge to thrust out a hacking foot, over which Dick nimbly jumped. It was then a clear man-to-man encounter between centre-forward and goalkeeper, with all the rest of the players as idle spectators.

For the first time, in eighty-eight minutes of strenuous football, the Octopus betrayed emotion and spoke.

"Come out to meet him, goalie!" he cried, in desperation.

Out came "goalie" at the word of command, and round him, with the ease of a dancing-master, waltzed Dick. Tears of real joy stung Dick's eyelids, for there in front of him yawned the empty goal that nobody could miss. To make assurance doubly sure, he would not even risk a gentle kick, but would, he told himself, walk the ball into the net. Oh, surely the Cup was Foxenby's now!

And then, right across his path, almost beneath the cross-bar, there came blundering an absurdly clumsy figure in blue-and-white paper trappings—the grotesque form of Fluffy Jim, the village idiot, who lunged at the ball with a hobnailed boot and kicked it into the net under the very eyes of the horrified captain.

"Theer!" cried Fluffy Jim, with a shriek of imbecile laughter. "Tha couldn't scoöar thesen, so Ah've scoöared for thee!"

Poor Forge! Unlucky captain of the luckless Foxes! What miserable turn of events was this? Why had so farcical a thing come to mock him on the very verge of his triumph? A wild absurdity, yet an unspeakable misfortune! It made him feel dazed and stupid. There was a queer vagueness in the impression he got of an excited crowd of spectators and players falling upon Fluffy Jim and tearing to tatters his blue-and-white costume. He felt himself pulled hither and thither by roughly-sympathizing hands, and with difficulty wrenched himself free. Then up strode the Octopus, genuinely distressed and grimly resolute.

"Forge," said the Octopus, "the goal was yours and the game is yours. You will take the Cup."

"I can't," said Dick despairingly. "I didn't score."

Bessingham turned abruptly to the referee.

"Sir," he said, "that was Forge's goal—this is Foxenby's game. Give them the verdict."

The referee was a big man, nearing middle age, who had ruled exciting games before Bessingham was born. He knew the laws of football from A to Z—had, indeed, helped to make not a few of them. And pleading with him to alter those rules, even by a hairsbreadth, was merely a way of wasting breath.

"Impossible," he said. "I'm sorrier than I can say, but Regulation 17 definitely rules that, if all or any portion of the crowd encroaches on the ground during the game, the tie shall be replayed in its entirety. The spectator broke in—that washes out the match."

"No, no, I beg of you," the Octopus pleaded. "Restart the game here and now, and I'll see that all comes right. Foxenby's won, sir—be a sport!"

"I'm a referee first—a sport afterwards," said the whistle-blower, sharply. "Time!"