Forge of Foxenby

"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."