did. And when, at length, sleep came, it was filled with visions in

which he stood in the center of a vast arena, the object of countless eyes, and tried over and over, and never with success, to kick a perfectly gigantic leather ball over a cross-bar that was higher than the Masonic Temple at home!

The truth is that Ned was over-trained and stale. And the further truth is that when he awoke to as sweet a November morning as ever peered down from a cloudless sky through golden sunlight, he felt, as he phrased it to himself, like a sock that had just come through the wringer!