On a recent bleak afternoon, Miss Marquard peered down her tortoise-shell bifocals at an elderly Italian with a white beard and the jaunty cap of a sea captain.

AFTER 40 years, the old boys from Hofstra University agree on one thing: that buzzer shot on a bleak afternoon may have ruined an undefeated season, but it did not ruin their lives.

Yet if there was a turning-point in his life, he reached it that bleak afternoon on the streets of Hannibal when a stray leaf from another life was blown into his hands.

It was that kind of bleak afternoon for Hoying, 25, the second-year quarterback from Ohio State.

The bleak afternoon brightened beyond the windows.

Finally he let the brightness of the party fade, and once again he was in Indianapolis on a grey, bleak afternoon, alone in an eight-dollar-a-week furnished room.

As the bleak afternoon began, the three men were preparing to lower the last hundred-pound explosive charge deep into the ice.

Sassmak stared, remembering that bleak afternoon when Abe had told her a tiny bit about that organization "A little/' she said cautiously.

I found my ride from the north village this afternoon bleak enough.

On the fourth play of the game on this bleak afternoon, the 28,956 spectators at Rutgers Stadium watched Virginia Tech fumble away a punt.