Fantasy Football Challenge - Football Fanatics Library

Fantasy Football Challenge - Library of Books for Football Fanatics

Fantasy Football Challenge presents
The Triple Alliance

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Mugford, and one or two others whose prudence exceeded their valour, made a point of sitting down before they had gone many yards, preferring to take the fall in a milder form than it would have assumed at a later period in the journey. To the bolder spirits, however, every trip was like leading a forlorn hope, none expecting to return from the enterprise unscathed. The pace was terrific: on nearing the playground wall, all the events of a lifetime might have flashed across the memory as at the last gasp of a drowning man; and if fortunate enough to whiz through the doorway, and pull up "all standing" on the level stretch beyond, it was to draw a deep breath, and regard the successful performance of the feat as an escape from catastrophe which was nothing short of miraculous. The unevenness of the ground made it almost impossible to steer a straight course. A boy might be half-way down the path, when suddenly he felt himself beginning to turn round; an agonized look spread over his face; he made one frantic attempt to keep, as it were, "head to the sea;" there was an awful moment when house, garden, sky, and playground wall spun round and round; and then the little group of onlookers, their hearts hardened by their own sufferings, burst into a roar of laughter; while Acton slapped his leg, crying, "He's over! What a stunning lark! Who's next?" At the end of an hour and a half most of the company were temporarily disabled, and even their chief had not escaped scot free. "Now then for a regular spanker!" he cried, rushing at the slide. A "spanker" it certainly was: six yards from the commencement his legs flew from under him, he soared into the air like a bird, and did not touch the ground again until he sat down heavily within twenty paces of the bottom of the slope. One might have supposed that this catastrophe would have somewhat damped the sufferer's ardour; but instead of that he only seemed fired with a fresh desire to break his neck. He hobbled up the hill, and pausing for a moment at the top to take breath, suddenly exclaimed, "Look here, I'm going down it on skates." Every one stood aghast at this rash determination; but Acton hurried off into the house, and soon returned with the skates. He sat down on a bank, and was proceeding to put them on, when he discovered that, by some oversight, he had brought out the wrong pair. "Bother it! these aren't mine, they're too short; whose are they?" "I think they're mine," faltered Mugford. "Well, put 'em on." "But I don't want to." "But I say you must!" "Oh! please, Acton, I really can't, I--" "Shut up! Look here, some one's got to go down that slide on skates, so just put 'em on." It was at this moment that Diggory Trevanock stepped forward, and remarked in a casual manner that if Mugford didn't wish to do it, but would lend him the skates, he himself would go down the slide. His companions stared at him in astonishment, coupled with which was a feeling of regret: he was a nice little chap, and they had already begun to like him, and did not wish to see him dashed to pieces against the playground wall before their very eyes. Acton, however, had decreed that "some one had got to go down that slide on skates," and it seemed only meet and right that if a victim had to be sacrificed it should be a new boy rather than an old stager. "Bravo!" cried the dux; "here's one chap at least who's no funk. Put 'em on sharp; the bell 'll ring in a minute." Several willing hands were stretched out to assist in arming Diggory for the enterprise, and in a few moments he was assisted to the top of the slide. "All right," he said; "let go!" The spectators held their breath, hardly daring to watch what would happen. But fortune favours the brave. The adventurous juvenile rushed down the path, shot like an arrow through the doorway, and the next instant was seen ploughing up the snow in the playground, and eventually disappearing head first into the middle of a big drift. His companions all rushed down in a body to haul him out of the snow. Acton smacked him on the back, and called him a trump; while Jack Vance presented him on the spot with a mince-pie, which had been slightly damaged in one of the donor's many tumbles, but was, as he remarked, "just as good as new for eating." From that moment until the day he left there was never a more popular boy at The Birches than Diggory Trevanock. "I say," remarked Mugford, as they met a short time later in the cloak-room, "that was awfully good of you to go down the slide instead of me; what ever made you do it?" "Well," answered the other calmly, "I thought it would save me a lot of bother if I showed you fellows at once that I wasn't a muff. I don't mind telling you I was in rather a funk when it came to the start; but I'd said I'd do it, and of course I couldn't draw back." The numerous stirring events which happened at The Birches during the next three terms, and which it will be my pleasing duty to chronicle in subsequent chapters, gave the boys plenty of opportunity of testing the character of their new companion, or, in plainer English, of finding out the stuff he was made of; and whatever his other faults may have been, this at least is certain, that no one ever found occasion to charge Diggory Trevanock with being either a muff or a coward. One might have thought that the slide episode would have afforded excitement enough for a new boy's first day at school; yet before it closed he was destined to be mixed up in an adventure of a still more thrilling character. The Birches was an old house, and though its outward appearance was modern enough, the interior impressed even youthful minds with a feeling of reverence for its age. The heavy timbers, the queer shape of some of the bedrooms and attics, the narrow, crooked passages, and the little unexpected flights of stairs, were all things belonging to a bygone age, of which the pupils were secretly proud, and which caused them to remember the place, and think of it at the time, as being in some way different from an ordinary school. "I say, Diggy," exclaimed Jack Vance, addressing the new boy by the friendly abbreviation, which seemed by mutual consent to have been bestowed upon him in recognition of his daring exploit--"I say, Diggy,

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