I can no longer make out
much of anything except that one ruffian closely resembles every other
ruffian, and that one poor boy is lying on the ground perfectly still,
as though he were dead. There is just a little lull on the benches.
People are interested.
"Who is it?" gasps Josephine. "Is it he, dear?"
"Butchered to make a Roman holiday," I mutter between my teeth, with my
heart in my mouth.
They are pulling and rubbing the victim, and a doctor, retained for
such emergencies, is bending over him. After a few moments more he
rises slowly, looks round him in a dazed fashion, and resumes his
position with a painful limp, to a round of applause.
"It isn't Fred," says Josephine.
"But he has a mother, though," I answer.
"He'll be all right in a minute or two," says Sam. "They stamped the
wind out of him, that's all."
To have the wind stamped out of one is a mere bagatelle, of course, and
I have forgotten it in another moment under the spur of excitement. A
Harvard player has the ball, and no one seems to be able to stop him.
He throws off his antagonist and dodges two others, and races down the
field like a deer, while the wearers of the crimson scream his name
with transport and flourish their banners like madmen. It is Fred, it
is Fred, it is Fred! I know his figure now.
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