Fifteen minutes later, one of a dozen candidates for places behind the line who were busily engaged in catching punts and running them back, he spied the redoubtable Cotton, long, lanky, awkward and bewildered, hurling himself to the ground in the effort to land upon a deceptive pigskin tossed by the hand of a bored and pessimistic veteran to whom the drudgery of breaking in a squad of green candidates had been entrusted. Cotton was suitably arrayed, and his canvas breeches and cleated shoes held the stamp of newness. The striped blue and white jersey, however, in which the upper part of his thin body was attired had evidently seen service of some kind. Observing him a moment, Kendall decided that the jersey had not reached its present faded and torn condition on the football field, for Cotton was so palpably out of his element that the spectacle he afforded was almost pathetic. Kendall, recalling Wellington’s nonsense, smiled. Cotton, he told himself, had a hard row to hoe before he reached the First Team!