Head Coach Patrick Henry Corridan, known to toil-tortured Gold and Green
football squads from time immemorial as "the Slave-Driver," Captain Butch
Brewster, and serious Deacon Radford, the star Bannister quarter-back,
foregathered around a table in the Camp Bannister grub-shack.

It was ten-thirty of the morning whose dawn T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., had
blithesomely hailed with an impromptu musicale and saengerfest on "Lookout
There!" rock, and the football triumvirate were in togs. The squad, over in
the bunkhouse, noisily donned gridiron armor for the morning practice, and
the pestiferous Hicks was maintaining a mysterious silence, somewhere.

This football trio, on whom rested the responsibility of rounding out a
winning Bannister eleven, vastly resembled a coterie of German generals,
back of the trenches, studying a war-map. Before them was spread what
seemed to be a large checker-board. It was a miniature gridiron, with the
chalk-marks painted in white; there were thumb-tacks stuck here and there,
some with flat tops painted green and gold, others, representing the enemy,
were solid red. The former had names printed on them, Butch, Roddy,
Beef, and so on. By sticking these on the board, the three directors of
Bannister's football destiny could work out new plays, and originate
possible winning lineups.

"We've just got to win the State Championship this season, Coach!" declared
Butch, banging the table emphatically, as he stated a self-evident fact.
"It's my last year for Old Bannister, and so with Beef and Pudge. I'll give
every ounce of strength I possess In every game, to make that pennant float
over Bannister Field!"

"Bannister will win it!" vowed the behemoth Beef, his good-natured