anxiously.

"No; I think it's all straight enough," persisted Tom, shaking
his head to silence Holmes. "It came to me straight enough, though
I don't feel at liberty to tell you who told me."

All six members of Dick & Co. were present. The scene of the
meeting was Dick Prescott's own room at his home over the bookstore
kept by his parents. The hour was about nine o'clock in the evening.
It was Friday evening of the first week of the new school year.
The fellows had dropped in to talk over the coming football
season, because the week had been one of mysterious unrest in
the football squad at Gridley High School.

Just what the trouble was, where it lay or how it had started
was puzzling the whole High School student body. The squad was
not yet duly organized. This was never attempted until in the
second week of the school year. Yet it was always the rule that
the new seniors who, during their junior year, had made good records
on either the school eleven, or the second eleven, should form
the nucleus of the new pigskin squad. Added to these, were the
new juniors, formerly of the sophomore class, who had shown the
most general promise in athletics during the preceding school
year.

Gridley High School aimed to lead---to be away at the top---in
all school athletics. The "Gridley spirit," which would not accept
defeat in sports, was proverbial throughout the state.

And so, though the football squad was not yet formally organized