"By the way, I have one clear notion in my head!" "What is it ?" "That Phin Drayne isn't marching in these close gray ranks about us." Phin Drayne wasn't.

At this moment Phin was back at the military institute, his face twitching horribly as he packed his clothing in the trunk in which it had come.
For, almost instantly after Reade had called out, some of the military students around Drayne had demanded of him whether there was a shadow of truth in what Reade had said.
Phin Drayne's "brass" had deserted him.

He knew, anyway, that these comrades could dig up his past record at Gridley very quickly.
Drayne knew that his days at Fordham were over.
"It was all my confounded tongue, too," muttered Phin dejectedly.
"If I had kept my tongue behind my teeth I don't believe any of the Gridley fellows would have noticed me, or said anything.
Oh, dear! I wonder where I can go next!" In the meantime the Gridley High School team and substitutes, escorted with so much pomp, attracted a great deal of notice in the streets of Fordham.
People turned out to cheer them, and to wave handkerchiefs and ribbons.

For Fordham wasn't all bad or rough; not even the High School.

The roughest element in the school had captured football---that was all.