Governor was a "natural born fool." Down at the 'varsity there were bonfires and other things that most men miss on quitting the penitentiary. Some of the conservatives entered protest; eastern college papers crushingly said it was "deadly western;" and the 'varsity's opponents were even more emphatic than that; but it was clearly a case for the faculty of Clark's university, and they, it will be remembered, were under hypnotic influence.

The first game of the season was the most coveted and most dreaded of them all. It was with their conscientiously hated foes, the men just to the north. Last season, in a never-to-be-forgotten game, they had defeated them for the first time in their history. This year, before they knew the prison gates were to yawn for Clark, they talked gloomily of keeping the score under fifty. But now it was different. Clark said they were going to win, and the way he said it made them square their shoulders.

It came at last, bringing the college men of two states, and thousands of others. When the elevens trotted to the gridiron experienced men predicted the hardest game ever played in the West. The whistle blew, the northerners kicked off, and they came together. To the side lines, that was all they did do. Iron had met iron, and there was no yield. Offensive plays were stopped when scarcely begun, and both battering rams met walls they could not pierce. There were murmurs of straight footballsuperb team work, but fifteen minutes had gone and they were still crashing together not far from the center of the field. Then it began to show that the fierceness of one man on the 'varsity's team was making itself felt. Slowly, very slowly, but perceptibly, they were hammering their way toward the enemy's goal. On the side lines there was frenzy. The team was going over. In the very

slowness of the advance was an element

of the inevitable. The cheers of a man in an automobile rose above the others. They said he was the Governor of the state, and that he was very fond of football. Up to the twenty yard line they pushed, and there with the all conquer ing power of desperation the men from the north held them for downs. With the ball in its possession the enemy took an awful brace. began retreating.

Slowly the pig-skin The cheering shifted to the other side. "Hold 'em, boys! hold 'em! hold 'em!" cried the man in the automobile.

And they did hold 'em. Almost back to the center of the field they got the ball again, and then the weary grind began

anew.

This time both sides were playing with more desperation; but one man on the 'varsity's team was playing with more than mere desperation. The rest were playing for their colleges, and for distinction. With him it was that-and something more. And it told. "Clark! Clark! Clark!" was coming from the automobile and all around, and with his own name ringing in his ears he some way shot away from the writhing mass and dived ahead for a thirty yard gain. It was the first markedly individual work of the game, and a howl of triumph crashed and thundered over the field. Crazed with not making goal, Winston Clark and his men pushed crushingly, impactly and unerringly on. No matter which way they pointed, it was ever with tremendous force and beautiful precision. Steadily, monotonously, grimly, gaining almost by inches, but gaining, they kept it up until they were at last on the five yard line, and it seemed the whole world was waiting for them to go over. Another dearly bought gain of two yards! Wild, passionate cries from the side lines! It was only a minute now-only a minute-but nations have. gone down for a minute-and the 'varsity was a minute too late. Time was called when Winston Clark and his men,

by as gritty a fight as ever battered a gridiron, stood three yards from the enemy's goal. The first half was over, and nothing had been written on the bulletin boards.

It seemed the hand of fate! The man in the automobile trembled and sat down. Then suddenly he jumped to his feet and shouted in a loud voice: "But there's twenty-five minutes left, boys! left!"

There's twenty-five minutes

They took it up all around, and even to the other side it carried, until all during the intermission the efforts of a brass band were annulled by the cries: "There's twenty-five minutes left, boys! There's twenty-five minutes left!"

And then twenty-two of the dirt coated and brave came back to the field. There was a long minute of cheering, and then there fell a silence, broken only by short, wild snorts as now this side, now that, gained a trifle. It was the same old thing; a double line of men resolving itself into a pile of wriggling, squirming, twisting humanity. A harder battle was never fought. When ten minutes had passed it looked a little as though the 'varsity was tiring them. But it was not enough to tell, and back and forth they fought, until fifteen minutes had gone, and still nothing had been written on the bulletin boards.

Then something happened. Before the side lines were sure what it was about, or how it had happened, an oval shaped piece of brown leather was flying between two tall posts. A superb drop kick from the forty yard line, and the northerners were five points to the good.

On the side lines to the right there was an unsymmetrical, indescribable and alarming mass of waving arms and legs. Men jumped high into the air, they embraced one another, they threw hats recklessly into the crowd, and all the while the air was hot with sounds which at any other time it would have surpassed

the power of normal beings to emit. The awful tension had been broken; Winston Clark and his men were underneath, and the game was fast drawing to a close.

A

The man in the automobile across the field had procured a megaphone. "But --there's-ten minutes-left-boys!" he called in slow, hammering tones. man who was standing in the center of the field with his hands to his hips turned and faced him. There were white patches on his face, but it looked more like the whiteness of supreme resolve than the whiteness of despair.

In the next five minutes three men were put out of the game, not illegitimately, but by the rushes and the tackling of Winston Clark. Only five minutes remained when the enemy made its final and disastrous punt. The oval sailed grandly through the deepening twilight, and then, an awful outreaching, a high backward leap, and the pig-skin was hugged to Winston Clark's breast, and Clark, like a meteor in dirty canvas, was going down the field. The sight of the ball in the arms of that man, at that desperate time of the game, did for the rest of them what they would not have believed within their power.

He could not have done

it without them, but no other man could have done it at all. He ducked, and he dodged, and he crashed-and he went on. Fleet-footed and invincible, he made the run of the entire field until on the very five yard line there popped up from some where the stoutest and bravest of the men c the north. With the white patches on his face now bigger and whiter, Winston Clark cleanly hurdled the low-crouching northerner and with the pig skin locked in his iron arms he landed a yard beyond the enemy's goal, coming to earth with a thud that was like the falling of hammered brass. The pig-skin was on the line, with Winston Clark's arms around it, and first one man and then twentyone were upon Clark; but when it was

all over, and they untangled themselves and arose, Winston Clark lay there with the white patches on his face now overspreading it all, but with arms still locked on the oval.

A man was standing on the seat of the automobile, shouting out his passionate, uncurbable joy. Behind him shouted

other thousands, and again the brass band tried in vain to be assertive. Across the field they waited with white faces, and no man dared to speak. Then when they had recovered enough to think, they said the goal was an impossible one, and the game would be a tie. And on the other side they saw the ball had reached the line far out in the field, and to put it between the posts looked an impossibility. That is why silence. fell even to the left, and they waited to see whether in the smallness of that angle there could still lie victory.

He

It was Clark who stood before the ball he had carried from the thick of the fight to the goal line of the foe. They thought at first he was not good for the kick, but he stood up and said he was all right, and they knew well if it could go over at all it could be put there by the man who had borne it where it was. stood there for a long time before it, a large, grim figure, alone on the field of battle, with the fate of his college in his hand. On both sides they knew he was Winston Clark, and that he had been in the penitentiary, and that the Governor had let him out to bring victory to his old school.

Clark looked from the ball to the center of the goal posts. Back and forth he looked until his eye had made a straight line that even the crowd could see. Then he stepped backward, and raised his leg. Without variation of an inch, the ball went where the eye had destined it should. The score stood six to fivethe game was over-and the 'varsity had won.

On the right of the field carriages

began backing out. What happened on the left can never be described, and maybe it should never be attempted. There are scenes for which words are inadequate, and what transpired on that field just before the sun slipped from sight that night can never be reduced to paltry phrases. Amid the ungovernable din a man was trying to push his way to the victorious team. Hundreds were trying to do it also, and he advanced but slowly. He could see Winston Clark on the shoulders of the men, and he pushed on. It was only when the boys were at last in their coach that a man, hatless, tieless, and breathless, jumped to the steps. From within there was a loud cheer of welcome. The dishevelled man was the Governor of the state. He was flushed with victory, and his face was twitching convulsively. He took Winston Clark's hands in his own, and as he looked up and down the big fellow who had that day flaunted the colors of the old school high, his eyes filled to the brim, and for a minute he did not speak. Then he unblushingly brushed his sleeve across his eyes.

"Come over to the office in the morning," he cried in a voice they could hear all around, "I want to change that thing I gave you. I want to make it into an unconditional pardon. A man who can do what you've done today doesn't need any strings tied to him."

From the hoarse throats within the coach there was a husky, jubilant yell of approval. But a man who had followed the Governor was pulling at his coat.

"Don't do it, Governor," he implored, "it means ruin to us all. You've won the game, but remember you are still in politics."

"Politics!" roared the Governor, looking back on the field of battle now black with rejoicing thousands, "Politics! To hell with politics. Why, man! -this boy is the football hero of the West!"

them. Our list of contributors includes more than a score of the most brilliant young writers of the day. We do not buy reputations, but give young writers

of South Carolina, Willard Dillman of South Dakota, Caroline Hunt Latta of Indianapolis, Frank M. Bicknell of Massachusetts, Anna Cosulich of Florida, Sophie Hammond of Maryland, Grace MacGowan Cooke of Tennessee, Addison Clark of Texas, Norman H. Crowell and Susan K. Glaspell of Iowa, Hayden Carruth of New York, Mary Clarke Huntington and Helen Green of Conecticut, Eva Hampton Prather of Georgia, W. L. Mallon of Washington, D. C., G. M. L. Brown of Montreal, and others, will contribute the fiction of the Nationaland we venture to hope there will be no more interesting stories than theirs published in any American magazine.