wherein the Sixth moves. He was brilliantly clever, with that sort of
showy brilliance which some fellows possess: in the exams, he would walk
clean through a paper, or leave it untouched--no half measures. He was in
Biffen's house and quite the most important fellow in it, and no end
popular with his own crowd, for they looked to him to give their house a
leg up, both in the schools and in the fields, for Biffen's were the
slackest house in St. Amory's. He played football with a dash and vim good
to see, and I know a good few of the eleven envied him his long, lungeing
rush, which parted man and ball so cleanly, and his quick, sure kick that
dropped the ball unerringly to his forwards. He was not in the eleven; but
that he would be in before the term was over was a "moral." He was
good-looking and rather tall, and had a certain foreign air, I thought;
his dark face seemed to be hard and proud, and I had heard that his temper
was fiery.

Bourne had chosen him to play against Shannon's team, and as Acton bottled
up the forwards on his wing Bourne felt that the school's future right
back would not be far to seek.

I soon saw that the school was not quite good enough for the others:
Shannon was almost impassable, and Amber, the half, generally waltzed
round our forwards, and when he secured he passed the ball on to Aspinall,
who doubled like a hare along the touch-line. The question then was "Could
Acton stop the flying International, who spun along like Bassett
himself?" And he did, generally; or, if he could not, he forced him to
part with the ball, and either Baines, our half, lying back, nipped in and
secured, or Bourne cleared in the nick of time. Nine times out of ten,
when Acton challenged Aspinall, the International would part with the ball
to his inside partner; but twice he feinted, and before either of the
school backs could recover, the ball was shot into the net with a high and