Then a silence, a few seconds of suspense,
as the pigskin whirled back to him, and then--a quick stepping forward,
a rip of toe against the leather, and--above the heads of the 'Varsity
players smashing through, the football shot over the cross-bar!
"Hicks! Hicks! Hicks!" was the shout, "Hicks will beat Ballard!"
That night, T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., having crossed the Rubicon, and
committed himself to Coach Corridan and Captain Brewster, had dispatched a
telegraphic night-letter to his beloved Dad. He informed his distinguished
parent that his drop-kicking powers were now known to old Bannister, and
that the chances were fifty-fifty that he would be sent in to try for a
field-goal in the biggest game. On the day before the game, Mr. Thomas
Haviland Hicks, Sr., in a night-letter, had wired back:
Son Thomas:
Am on my way to New Haven for Yale-Harvard game. Will stop off at old
Bannister--bringing thirty members of Yale '96. We hope our Class Kid will
get his chance against Ballard.
Dad.
On the morning of the Bannister-Ballard game, Mr. Hicks' private car the
Vulcan, with the Pittsburgh "Steel King," and thirty other members of
Yale, '96, had reached town. They had ridden in state to College Hill in
good old Dan Flannagan's jitney, where T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., proudly
introduced his beloved Dad to the admiring collegians. All morning, Mr.
Hicks had made friends of the hero-worshiping youths, who listened to his
tales of athletic triumphs at Bannister and at old Yale breathlessly.
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