It was nine o'clock, one night two weeks after the day when John Thorwald, better known as Thor, the Prodigious Prodigy, so mysteriously produced by Hicks, had stolidly paralyzed old Bannister by unemotionally stating his decision to play no more football. Since then, to quote the Phillyloo Bird, "Bannister has staggered around the ring like a prizefighter with the Referee counting off ten seconds and trying to fight again before he takes the count." In truth, the students had made a fatal mistake in building all their hopes of victory on that blond giant, Thor; seeing his wonderful prowess, and beholding how, in the first week of the season, the Norwegian Colossus had ripped to shreds the Varsity line which even the heavy Ballard eleven of the year before could not batter, it was but natural that the enthusiastic youths should think of the Championship chances in terms of _Thor_. For one week, enthusiasm and excitement soared higher and higher, and then, to use a phrase of fiction, everything fell with a dull, sickening thud!
In vain did Coach Corridan, the staff of Assistant Coaches, Captain Butch Brewster, and others strive to resuscitate football spirit; nightly mass-meetings were held, and enough perfervid oratory hurled to move a Russian fortress, but to no avail. It was useless to argue that, without Thor, Bannister had an eleven better than that of last year, which so nearly missed the Championship. The campus had seen the massive Thor's prodigies; they knew he could not be stopped, and to attempt to arouse the college to concert pitch over the eleven, with that mountain of muscle blotting out vast sections of scenery, but not in football togs, was not possible.
"One thing is sure," spoke Dad Pendleton seriously, gazing gloomily from the window, "unless we get Thor in the line-up for the Big Games, our last hope of the Championship is dead and interred! And I feel sorry for the big fellow, for already the boys like him just about as much as a German loves an Englishman; yet, arguments, threats, pleadings, and logic have absolutely no effect on him. He has said 'No,' and that ends it!"
"He doesn't understand things, fellows," defended T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., with surprising earnestness. "Remember how bewildered he seemed at our appeal to his college spirit, and his love for his Alma Mater. We might as well have talked Choctaw to him!"