The High School Left End | Page 2

that Coach Morton is worried. In fact, he's downright disheartened."
"Surely," interjected Dick, "Mr. Morton must have an idea of what is keeping some of the fellows back from the team?"
"If he does know, he isn't offering any information," returned Harry Hazelton.
"I don't see any need for so much mystery," broke in Dave Darrin, in disgust.
"Well, there is a mystery about it, anyway," contended Tom Reade.
"Then, before I'm much older, I'm going to know what that mystery is," declared Dick.
"You're surely the one of our crowd who ought to be put on the trail of the mystery," proposed Dalzell, with a laugh.
"Why?" challenged Prescott.
"Why, you're a reporter on 'The Blade.' Now mysteries are supposed to constitute the especial field of reporters. So, see here, fellows, I move that we appoint Dick Prescott a committee of one for Dick & Co., his job being to find out what ails football---to learn just what has made football sick this year."
"Hear! Hear!" cried some of the others.
"Is that your unanimous wish, fellows?" asked Dick, smiling.
"It is," the others agreed.
"Very good, then," sighed Prescott. "At no matter what personal cost, I will find the answer for you."
This was all in a spirit of fun, as the chums understood. Yet this lightly given promise was likely to involve Dick Prescott in a good deal more than he had expected.
Readers of the preceding volumes in this series know Dick & Co. so well that an introduction would be superfluous. Those to whom the pages of "The High School Freshmen" are familiar know how Dick & Co., chums from the Central Grammar School, entered Gridley High School in the same year. How the boys toiled through that first year as half-despised freshmen, and how they got some small share in school athletics, even though freshmen were not allowed to make the school athletic teams, has been told. The pranks of the young freshmen are now "old tales." How Dick Prescott, with the aid of his chums, put up a hoax that fairly seared the Board of Education out of its purpose to forbid High School football does not need telling again. Our former readers are also familiar with the enmity displayed by Fred Ripley, son of a wealthy lawyer, and the boomerang plot of Ripley to disgrace Prescott and brand the latter as a High School thief. The same readers will recall the part played in this plot by Tip Scammon, worthless son of the honest old High School janitor, and how Tip's evil work resulted in his going to the penitentiary for the better part of a year.
Readers of "_The High School Pitcher_" will recollect how, in their sophomore year, Dick and Co. made their first real start in High School athletics; how Dick became the star pitcher for the nine, and how the other chums all found places on the nine, either as star players or as "subs." In this volume also was told the story of Fred's moral disasters under the tyranny of Tip Scammon, Who threatened to "tell." How Dick & Co. were largely entitled to the credit for bringing the Gridley High School nine through a season's great record on the diamond was all told in this second volume. Dick's good fortune in getting a position as "space" reporter on "The Morning Blade" was also described, and some of his adventures as reporter were told. The culmination of Fred Ripley's scoundrelism, and his detection by his stern old lawyer father, were narrated at length. Perhaps many of our readers will remember, the unpopular principal of the High School, Mr. Abner Cantwell; and the swimming episode, in which every High School boy took part, afterwards meekly awaiting the impossible expulsion of all the boys of the High School student body. Our readers will recall that Mr. Cantwell had succeeded the former principal, Dr. Thornton, whom the boys had almost idolized, and that much of Mr. Cantwell's trouble was due to his ungovernable temper.
During the first two years of High School life, Dick & Co. had become increasingly popular. True, since these six chums were all the sons of families in very moderate circumstances, Dick & Co. had been disliked by some of the little groups of students who came from wealthier families, and who believed that High School life should be rather governed by a select few representing the move "aristocratic" families of the little city.
Good-humored avoidance is excellent treatment to accord a snob, and this, as far as possible, had been the plan of Dick & Co. and of the other average boy at the High School.
"Let us see," broke in Dick, suddenly, "who are the soreheads in the football line?"
"Well, Davis and Cassleigh, of the senior class, for two," replied Dave Darrin.
"Dodge, Fremont and Bayliss, also first classmen," suggested Reade.
"Trenholm and Grayson,