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He heard Dan Donoghue near him ask Danny O’Neill what he thought of the game.

“Most of them don’t know how to play. They tackle high, can’t block, don’t even know how to play their position.”

“Well, they are uncoached, but don’t you think it was a fair bunch for an uncoached team?” asked Dan Donoghue.

Studs frowned when O’Neill superciliously answered yes. Remembered the punk when he ran around with his stockings falling and snot running out of his nose. Uncoached! Ought to slap his teeth! Seemed to think his was gold, droopy punk!

“That Schwartz is a player. I never tackled anybody as hard to get in my high school career with Loyola and I played against some tough men,” Dan said.

“He was good. But some of the guys, Kelly, McAuliffe, and Klein, for instance, were jokes.”

“What do you think of Studs?” asked Donoghue.

Studs tensed. Waited. Oughtn’t to care what the punk thought. Waited.

“A bit slow, but he knows what to do, leaves his feet when he tackles and handles himself well.”

“Studs is a natural-born football player,” Donoghue said. O’Neill wasn’t so bad. Heard too that he was a high school star. Studs sidled to them.

“Now that you’re a star on the team at the Saint Stanislaus high school, what did you think of our... amateur game?” Studs asked, fatuously.

Before O’Neill could answer, the rumor spread that Schwartz had died on the way to the hospital. Everybody gabbed and shouted at the same time.

“Will anything be done about it?” Studs asked Kelly.

“They might hold us for manslaughter.”

“Why? We played a fair game. The fight was afterwards.”

“Well, they might, only, of course, we’ll get out of it, and anyway, besides, we were in the right. We can get drag through my old man, who’s sergeant down at Fiftieth now, and your old man knowing politicians, and some other guys the same way,” Red said.

“We can get enough witnesses,” said Studs.

The rumor was still being discussed when Studs left for home. If they did throw them all in the jug! He saw himself in the pen for a manslaughter charge. But they couldn’t get him. He’d played a clean game.

He realized how tired be was, and his shoulders drooped. But it had been a great game, and a great fight, and he could feel proud of his part in both. He’d showed them all. He remembered that first clean tackle he had made, leaving his feet, the way he smashed into the runner, that sudden rush of his body through the air for a split second, and bang, the guy was down. Hundreds of people, too, had seen it. He was nostalgic to be still playing, making tackles like that.

Dumb, too, not to have gone to high school. If punks like O’Neill could make the grade, what couldn’t he have done? He cursed, though, realizing that they would lose their permit to play in Washington Park, and that they couldn’t get up a good team to travel, particularly after a fight like this; be-cause if they traveled and didn’t have a big enough mob along, they’d get the clouts plenty somewhere. Damn Reilley! And just when the scrap had started, he had been getting into top form, he felt. But the fight, too, had been a wow. The way he had hit that big yellow bastard. Only, gee, he might have been a bigger star in the game than even Schwartz, if it hadn’t started.

He stuck his shoulders back, and forced himself to walk briskly. Proud of himself and his body. In his prime right now.

He became aware that it was dark, and an autumn mist was settling over Fifty-eighth Street. Street lights were on at the alley between Indiana and Michigan. There were lights in windows. He heard the scrape of shoes in back of him, and the rumble of an elevated train. Down at State Street a street car was going, the bell donging. An automobile passed. The lonesome part of the day.

If Lucy had seen it, him! Well, what if he did admit to himself; he had played and acted like a hero!

That poor bastard Schwartz, game, had to grant that, lying dead in a hospital or morgue. It could have been him, perhaps. No, he knew he wouldn’t die that way; he knew that he had some kind of a destiny to live for, and that he would