Pemberton's Fluke

For an hour and a half Yale and Princeton had been battling on the gridiron; for an hour and a half the struggling lines had advanced and retreated from goal line to goal line; for an hour and a half the ball had gone arching up against the blue November sky, had been carried in short, desperate plunges or brilliant runs to and fro over the trampled white lines of Yale Field; for an hour and a half twenty-five thousand persons had watched the varying fortunes of the contest with fast-beating hearts, had waved their flags, sang their songs and shouted their cheers; and now, with the last half drawing toward its close, the score board still proclaimed: "Yale, 0; Opponents, 0."

Pemberton had found the contest exciting, breathlessly so at moments, but disappointing. Being a freshman, as well as a 'varsity substitute of a week's standing, he was intensely patriotic, and the thought of a tie game was unbearable; to a youth of his enthusiasm a tie was virtually a defeat for the Blue; and a defeat for the Blue was something tragic, inconceivable! Pemberton was a sandy-haired, blue-eyed, round-faced chap of eighteen; in height, five feet nine; in weight, one hundred and sixty-eight; neither large nor heavy, but speedy as they make them, a bundle of nerves, endowed with a fanatical enthusiasm and a kind of brilliant, dashing recklessness that often wins where larger courage fails.

At Exeter he hadn't gone in for football until his senior year; the Physical Director couldn't see the thing from Pemberton's viewpoint; physical directors are narrow-minded souls; Pemberton will tell you so any day. With three years of lost time to make up, Pemberton had put his whole mind into football with the result that he had made the team in time to play for five short, mad minutes against Andover. This fall he had distinguished himself on the Freshmen Eleven, and the game with the Harvard youngsters, if it hadn't resulted in a victory for Yale, had, at least, made the reputation of Pemberton, left half back. In that somewhat one-sided contest he had shown such dash and pluck, had eeled himself through the Crimson's line, or shot like a small streak of lightning around the ends so frequently that he had been called to the 'varsity bench. And on the 'varsity bench, one, and quite the smallest one, of a long line of substitutes, he had sat since the beginning of the Princeton game, with an excellent chance of staying there until the whistle blew.

He wasn't a fellow to accept inactivity with gracefulness. That "they also serve who only stand and wait," he was willing to accept as true; but that wasn't the kind of serving he hankered for; Pemberton's ideal of usefulness was getting busy and doing things--and doing them hard.

On opposite sides of the field rival bands were blaring out two-steps, the strains leaking now and then through the deep, thundering cheers. Down on Yale's thirty-five-yard line Princeton was