It dropped in exactly the right place, and Jack Vance, by some happy fluke, kicked it just as it touched the ground.

Like a big round shot it whizzed through the posts, and there was a rapturous yell of "_Goal!_" The delight of the Birchites at having beaten their opponents was unbounded, and when, a short time later, the latter retired with a score against them of one to nil.

Jack Vance was seized by a band of applauding comrades, who, with his head about a couple of feet lower than his heels, carried him in triumph across the playground, and staggered half-way up the steep garden path, when Acton happening to tread on a loose pebble brought the whole procession to grief, and caused the noble band of conquering heroes to be seen all grovelling in a mixed heap upon the gravel.
But it is not for the simple purpose of recording the victory over Horace House that a description of the match has been introduced into our story; and although the important part played by Diggory in goal and Jack Vance in the "fighting line" caused it to be an occasion when the Triple Alliance was decidedly in evidence and won fresh laurels, yet there are other reasons which make an account of it necessary, as the reader will discover in following the course of subsequent events.

If Jack Vance had kicked the ball a yard over the bar instead of under it, the probability is that the following chapter would never have been written; while the public disgrace of young Noaks was destined to cause our three comrades more trouble than they ever expected to encounter, at all events on this side of their leaving school.
If the result of the match made such a great impression on the minds of the victors, it is only natural that it should have had a similar effect on the hearts of their opponents.

Most of the Philistines would have been content to take their defeat as a sportsman should, but neither Noaks nor his two cronies, Hogson and Bernard, had any of this manly spirit about them; and smarting under the disappointment of not having won, and the knowledge that at least one of them had reaped shame and contempt instead of glory, they determined to seek a speedy revenge.
As the three biggest boys in the school, they had little difficulty in inducing their companions to join in the crusade which they preached against The Birches, and the consequence was that the two schools were soon exchanging open hostilities with greater vigour than ever.
Now, although the Birchites had proved themselves equal to their opponents at football, they would have stood no chance against them in anything like a personal encounter.