37056	----	[Illustration: JOE WAS DOING GOOD WORK.] Baseball Joe of the Silver Stars OR _The_ Rivals _of_ Riverside _By_ LESTER CHADWICK AUTHOR OF "THE RIVAL PITCHERS," "A QUARTERBACK'S PLUCK," "BATTING TO WIN," ETC. [Illustration] NEW YORK CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY BASEBALL JOE OF THE SILVER STARS Copyright, 1912, by Cupples & Leon Company CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I A Hot Game 1 II Tieing the Score 11 III Mrs. Matson is Worried 23 IV A Row with Sam 31 V Joe Helps the Manager 41 VI Joe Has Hopes 50 VII Laughed at 58 VIII A Mean Protest 66 IX Joe in the Game 73 X A Tight Contest 80 XI Joe's Run 89 XII Discontent 96 XIII Scientific Practice 103 XIV A Kettle of Apple Sauce 110 XV Joe Overhears Something 119 XVI Mr. Matson is Alarmed 129 XVII A Throwing Contest 136 XVIII Another Defeat 143 XIX Joe is Watched 151 XX "Would You Like to Pitch?" 161 XXI To the Rescue 167 XXII A Delayed Pitcher 174 XXIII Joe in the Box 185 XXIV Sam Arrives 191 XXV Joe Foils the Plotters 197 XXVI Sam Resigns 208 XXVII Bad News 215 XXVIII The Fight 221 XXIX The Challenge 228 XXX The Winning Throw--Conclusion 233 BASEBALL JOE CHAPTER I A HOT GAME "Come on, Sam, get a move on. I thought you'd be out on the diamond long ago. What's the matter?" "Oh, I had to help dad put in some fence posts. I'm through now, Darrell, and I'll be right with you." "Setting fence posts; eh?" and Darrell Blackney, the young manager of the Silver Star baseball nine of Riverside looked critically at Sam Morton, the team's pitcher. "Well, Sam, I hope it didn't make you stiff so that you can't put some good balls over the plate. It's going to be a hot game all right." "Oh, forget it!" cried Sam, as he finished buttoning his jacket while he joined his chum. "We'll beat 'em to a frazzle all right. I'm going to pitch my head off to-day." "You may--if you don't go to pieces the way you once did." "Say, what you talking about?" demanded Sam, with some warmth. "I can pitch all right, and don't you forget it." He seemed unnecessarily aroused. "Oh, I know you can pitch," spoke Darrell easily, "only I don't want you to be too sure about it. You know the Resolutes of Rocky Ford have a strong team this season, and their pitcher is----" "Oh, I know what Hen Littell is as well as you," broke in Sam. "He thinks he's a whole lot, but you wait. I've got a new drop ball, and----" "Well, then, you'd ought to have been out on the diamond this morning, practicing with Bart Ferguson. He's got a new catching glove, and if you and he can connect on the curves we may do some good work. But I wish you'd had some practice this morning." "So do I, but dad made me help him, and I couldn't very well get off. I tried to sneak away, but he got on to my game and put a stop to it." "Oh, well, of course if you had to help your father that's different," spoke Darrell, who was a manly young chap, somewhat in contrast to Sam, who was not as upright as he might have been. Sam had a boastful and confident air that caused many to dislike him, but as he was the best pitcher the Silver Stars had had in some seasons his short-comings were overlooked. And certainly Sam had been pitching pretty good ball thus far. True, at times, he "went up in the air," but all pitchers are likely to do this on occasions. Sam had great belief in his own ability. There was considerable baseball feeling in the little town of Riverside, located on the Appelby River, in one of our New England States. Though the nine was an amateur one, and composed of lads ranging from fourteen to nineteen years of age, yet many fast games had been seen on the village diamond, which was kept in good shape by volunteers. A small admission sum was charged to view the contests and from this the boys were able to buy their uniforms, balls, bats, and other things. With some of the money the grounds were renovated from time to time, and the fences, bleachers and grandstand kept in order. There was a sort of informal county league existing among several nines in the towns surrounding Riverside, and perhaps the bitterest rivals of the Silver Stars were the Resolutes of Rocky Ford, a place about five miles farther up the stream than Riverside. To-day one of the games in the series was to take place, and the occasion, being Saturday, was a gala one in the home town of the Silver Stars, on whose grounds the contest was to take place. "Well, you'll have a little time for practice before the game begins," remarked Darrell as he and Sam walked toward the diamond. "We've got about an hour yet." "Are the Resolutes here?" "They hadn't come when I passed the grounds a little while ago on my way to see you. I couldn't imagine what kept you." "Well, it was all dad's fault. Hang it all----" "Never mind," broke in Darrell quickly. "Dads are all right as a rule." He had lost his own father not long since, and his heart was still sore. He could not bear to have any one speak disrespectfully of parents. "I guess we'll make out all right," he added. "Oh, sure we will!" exclaimed Sam, full of confidence. "They won't have a look in." "Well, hurry up and get in some practice with Bart," advised the manager. "Who's going to cover first to-day?" inquired Sam, as they hurried along the streets, which were already beginning to fill with the crowds making their way to the game. "I think I am for most of the time," answered Darrell. "George Rankin and I talked it over and decided that would be a good way to lead off. Later, if I find I'm needed on the coaching line, I'll let Tom Davis take my place." "Tom isn't much good." "Oh, I think he is." "Didn't he miss two hot throws to first base in the game last Saturday?" "That was because you put them over his head. You want to be careful, Sam, when there are two on the bags, how you throw to first. Lots of times I have to jump for your throws, and if I wasn't pretty quick at it they'd get by me." "Oh, well, you won't have any complaint to-day. I'll get 'em there all right. But you'd better stay in the whole game yourself." "I'll see. Hark, what's that?" The inspiring notes of a coaching horn echoed down the village street. "Sounds like a tally-ho," remarked Sam. Just then there swung into view a large stage, drawn by four horses, the vehicle filled with a cheering, shouting and laughing crowd of boys. "That's the Resolute team," said Darrell. "They're coming in style all right." Again there came the thrilling notes of the bugle, blown by some one in the stage. Then followed another large vehicle, filled with a throng of cheering lads. "They've brought a crowd along," commented Sam. "Yes, maybe they're depending on rooters to help them win the game." "Well, our fellows can root some too," spoke the pitcher. "I'm glad there's going to be a big crowd. I can pitch better then." "Well, do your best," urged the manager. "There's Percy Parnell and Fred Newton over there. I thought they were out on the field long ago." "Maybe they had to set fence posts too." "Maybe," assented Darrell with a laugh. "And here comes Tom Davis. Who's that with him?" and the pitcher and manager glanced at a tall, well-formed lad who was walking beside the substitute first baseman. "Evidently a stranger in town," went on Darrell. "Yes, I've seen him before," remarked Sam. "He lives down on our street. The family just moved in. His name is Batson, or Hatson, or something like that. His father works in the harvester factory." "Hum," mused Darrell. "He looks like a decent sort of chap," and he gazed critically at the stranger. "Maybe he'd like to join our club," for the ball team was a sort of adjunct to a boys' athletic organization. "Oh, we've got enough fellows in now," said Sam quickly. "Always room for one more," commented the manager, who was ever on the lookout for good material for the nine. Perhaps Sam suspected something like this, for he glanced quickly at his companion. "Say, if you think I'm not good enough----" began the pitcher, who was noted for his quick temper. "Now, now, drop that kind of talk," said Darrell soothingly. "You know we're all satisfied with your pitching. Don't get on your ear." "Well, I won't then," and Sam smiled frankly. By this time Percy Parnell, the second baseman, and Fred Newton, the plucky little shortstop, had joined the pitcher and the manager, and greetings were exchanged. "Are we going to wallop 'em?" asked Fred. "Sure thing," assented Sam. "It's going to be a hot game all right," was Percy's opinion. "All the better," commented Darrell. "Say the people are turning out in great shape, though. I'm glad to see it. We need a little money in our treasury." They turned in at the players' gate. The Resolute team had preceded them, and already several of the members of that nine were in their uniforms and out on the diamond. They were lads of the same age as their rivals, and had about the same sort of an organization--strictly amateur, but with desires to do as nearly as possible as the college and professional teams did. But there was a great difference, of course, and mainly in the rather free-and-easy manner in which the rules were interpreted. While it is true that in the fundamentals they played baseball according to the general regulations, there were many points on which they were at variance, and a professional probably would have found much at which to laugh and be in despair. But what did it matter as long as the boys, and those who watched them, enjoyed it? Not a bit, in my opinion. As the Silver Star lads proceeded to the improvised dressing rooms under the grandstand, several more of the Resolute players hurried out, buttoning jackets as they ran. "Oh, we'll get you fellows to-day all right!" shouted Henry (otherwise known as Hen) Littell, pitcher and captain of the Resolutes. "All right, the game's yours--if you can take it," called back Darrell, with a laugh. The diamond soon presented an animated scene, with many players and a few substitutes pitching, catching or batting balls about. The crowds were beginning to arrive and occupy seats in the small grandstand or on the bleachers. Many preferred to stand along the first and third base lines, or seat themselves on the grass. Approaching the grounds about this time were the two lads of whom Sam and Darrell had spoken briefly. One was Tom Davis, the substitute first baseman and the other boy whom Sam had referred to as "Batson" or "Hatson." Sam had it nearly right. The lad was Joe Matson, and as he is to figure largely in this story I will take just a moment to introduce him to you. Joe was the son of Mr. and Mrs. John Matson, and had lately moved to Riverside with his parents and his sister Clara, who was a year his junior. The family had come from the town of Bentville, about a hundred miles away. Mr. Matson had been employed in a machine works there, and had invented several useful appliances. Located in Riverside was the Royal Harvester Works, a large concern. In some manner Mr. Isaac Benjamin, the manager, had heard of the appliances Mr. Matson had perfected, and, being in need of a capable machinist, he had made Mr. Matson an offer to come to Riverside. It had been accepted, and the family had moved in shortly before this story opens. Joe was a tall, well-built lad, with dark hair and brown eyes, and a way of walking and swinging his arms that showed he had some athletic training. He had made the acquaintance of Tom Davis, who lived in the house back of him, and Tom had asked Joe to go to the game that day. "For it's going to be a good one," said Tom proudly, since he was a member of the nine, even though only a substitute. "Who's going to win?" asked Joe, as they approached the grounds. "We will, if----" and then Tom stopped suddenly, for there was a yell from inside the fence and a moment later a ball came sailing over it, straight toward the two lads. "Look out!" yelled Tom. "That's a hot one! Duck, Joe, duck!" But Joe did not dodge. Instead, he spread his legs well apart and stood ready to catch the swiftly-moving horsehide in his bare hands. CHAPTER II TIEING THE SCORE Ping! The ball came in between Joe's palms with a vicious thud, but there it stuck, and a moment later the newcomer had tossed it back over the fence with certain and strong aim. "I guess some one will pick it up," he said. "Sure," assented Tom. "Say, that was a good stop all right. Have you played ball before?" "Oh, just a little," was the modest and rather quiet answer. In fact Joe Matson was rather a quiet youth, too quiet, his mother sometimes said, but his father used to smile and remark: "Oh, let Joe alone. He'll make out all right, and some of these days he may surprise us." "Well, that was a pippy stop all right," was Tom's admiring, if slangy, compliment. "Let's go in, I may get a chance to play." Joe turned toward the main entrance gate, and thrust one hand into his pocket. "Where you going?" demanded Tom. "Into the grounds of course. I want to get a ticket." "Not much!" exclaimed his companion. "You don't have to pay. Come with me. I invited you to this game, and I'm a member of the team, though I don't often get a chance to play. Members are allowed to bring in one guest free. I'll take you in. We'll use the players' gate." "Thanks," said Joe briefly, as he followed his new friend. "Here's a good place to see it from--almost as good as the grandstand," said Tom, as they moved to a spot along the first base line. "Though you can go up and sit down if you like. I'm going to put on my things. I may get a chance at first." "No, I'll stay here," said Joe. "Then I can see you make some good stops." "I can if Sam doesn't put 'em away over my head," was the reply. "Oh, yes, that's so. You started to say that you thought our side--you see I'm already a Silver Star rooter--that our side would win, if something didn't happen." "Oh, yes, and then that ball came over the fence. Well, we'll win, I think, if Sam doesn't go to pieces." "Who's Sam?" "Sam Morton, our pitcher. He's pretty good too, when he doesn't get rattled." "Then we'll hope that he doesn't to-day," said Joe with a smile. "But go ahead and dress." "All right," assented Tom, and he started off on a run to the dressing rooms. It was only just in time, too, for at that moment Darrell came hastening up to him. "Why haven't you got your suit on?" the manager asked. "You'll probably play some innings anyhow, and I don't want any delay." "All right--right away," Tom assured him. "I'm on the job." "Who do you think will win?" asked a youth sitting next to Joe on the grass. "Oh, I don't know," began Joe slowly. "I haven't seen either team play." "Oh, then you're a stranger here?" "Yes, just moved in." "I saw you with Tom Davis. You must be that Matson lad he told me lived back of him." "I am, and I hope Tom's side wins." "That's the stuff! So do I. But those Resolutes have a good nine." "Aw, go on!" broke in a lad back of Joe. "They haven't any good batters at all." "What's the matter with Hank Armstrong?" demanded some one. "Well, he's pretty good, but Ford Lantry or Seth Potter on our team can bat all around him." "How about their pitcher?" asked Joe. "Well, he's pretty good," admitted the lad who had first addressed Joe. "But he can't come up to Sam Morton when Sam is at his best," said some one else, joining in the conversation. "Yes--_when_ he's at his best," repeated another lad. "Those Resolutes have it in for us, but we're going to wipe up the ground with them to-day all right." "Like fun!" exploded a Resolute sympathizer. "I'll bet you----" "Play ball!" broke in the voice of the umpire, and the clanging of the gong warned the players and others to clear the field. "We're last at the bat," said Tom, "and that means a whole lot." "Yes," assented Joe, and then the Silver Star pitcher took his place in the box and exchanged a few preliminary balls with the catcher, Bart Ferguson. "Play ball!" yelled the young umpire again, selecting some pebbles with which to keep score. Hank Armstrong, the sturdy left fielder of the Resolutes, was the first at the bat for his side, and with a vicious swing he hit the first ball which Sam pitched to him. Squarely on the bat he caught it with a resounding ping! Away it sailed straight over Sam's head and over the head of the second baseman. Farther and farther it went, until the centre fielder began running back to get it. "Oh, wow! Pretty one! Pretty one!" "Go on! Go on!" "Make a three bagger of it!" "Run, you beggar!" These and many other cries speeded Armstrong on. He was running fast and reached second well in advance of the ball. But he dared not go on to third. "Hum, if they hit Sam like that too often he won't last very long," commented Tom. "Oh, that was a fluke," declared Rodney Burke, who sat behind Joe. There was a surprised and disconcerted look on Sam's face as he gazed at the next batter. No sooner had the ball left Sam's hand, that Armstrong was away for third like a shot, for he was a notorious base stealer. Bart threw to third, but the ball went too high and the baseman jumped for it in vain. Armstrong came in with the first run. "Begins to look bad!" yelled Tom in Joe's ear, for the cheers and exultant yells of the Resolute crowd made ordinary talking impossible. But that was all the visiting team got that inning, for Sam struck out two men, and the third fouled to Bart. "Now we'll see what our fellows can do," commented Tom. Seth Potter, the left fielder, was first up, and he had two strikes and three balls called on him in short order. Then he got under a pretty one and made first. "Watch out now, and run down when he throws!" cried Darrell, who was coaching. Seth did run, but was caught at second. Jed McGraw, the centre fielder, was next up and knocked a safety, getting to first. Then came Ford Lantry, who played right field, and he knocked a pretty three-bagger which brought in McGraw and the run. At that the Silver Star crowd went wild with joy, but it was all they had to crow over as the next two men struck out and Lantry died on third. The next two innings were marked by goose eggs for both sides, and in the fourth inning the Silver Stars brought in two runs, while their opponents could not seem to connect with the ball. "Old Sam is doing fine!" cried Tom. "Yes, he seems to have good control," commented Joe. "But he lacks speed," said Rodney Burke. "Oh, cheese it! Do you want to give all our secrets away to these fellows?" asked Tom in a low voice, indicating the many Resolute sympathizers who were all about. "Well, it's true," murmured Rodney, and Joe felt a sudden wild hope come into his heart. The game went on enthusiastically, if not correctly from a professional or college baseball standpoint. Many errors were made and several rules were unconsciously violated. The young umpire's decisions might have been questioned several times, and on numerous occasions the game was stopped while the respective captains, and some of the players, argued among themselves, or with the umpire. But the disputes were finally settled, though there was a growing spirit of dissatisfaction on both sides. "Play ball!" yelled the umpire, at the conclusion of an argument in the fifth inning. It was then that the Resolutes did some heavy stick work, and tallied three runs to the enthusiastic delight of the team and its supporters. "We've got to do better than this," murmured Darrell to Captain Rankin and Sam when they took the field at the end of that inning, and a big circle stared at them from the score board as the result of their efforts. "I'm doing all I can!" snapped Sam. "I'm not getting decent support." "Aw, cut it out! Of course you are!" asserted Rankin. A single tally by each side in the sixth, and two for the Silver Stars and one for the Resolutes in the seventh, brought the game to that usual breathing spot. The score was now a tie, and the excitement was growing. "For cats' sake beat 'em out, fellows!" pleaded Darrell. "Use your bats. They're to hit the ball with, not to fan the air!" Perhaps his frantic appeal had some effect, for in the next inning the Resolutes only got one run, while, when the Silver Stars came to bat to close the inning, they hammered out three, putting them well ahead. But there was trouble brewing. Sam's arm was giving out. He realized it himself but he dared not speak of it. Grimly he fought against it, but he saw that the other side was aware of it. "Come on now, we'll get his goat!" yelled the captain of the Resolutes. Then began what may be regarded as the cruel practice of yelling discouraging remarks at the man in the box. Sam was plainly told that he was "rotten" while other and less mild epithets were hurled at him. These had their effect. He gave two men their base on balls, and he made a number of wild throws to first where Tom Davis had replaced Darrell Blackney. However, by a strong brace Sam managed to hold his opponents runless, though in this saving work he was nobly assisted by his fellows, and by the quickness of Tom in not letting the wild balls get by him. Tom was a magnificent high jumper, which served him in good stead. The ending of the eighth saw the score nine to seven in favor of the Silver Stars, they having brought in three runs. It began to look, in spite of Sam's trouble, as if the home team would win. There was a riot of cheers when the Resolutes went to bat in the ninth inning, and despite the fact that they were two runs behind, their supporters did not fail them. "Win! Win! Win!" they yelled. "Oh, we'll win all right," said Captain Littell grimly. And he and his men gave good evidence of doing so a few minutes later. Sam literally "went to pieces." He lost all control of the ball, and was fairly "knocked out of the box." There was a look of despair on the faces of his mates. "What's the matter with him?" demanded Joe, who was surprised at the sudden slump. "Oh, that's what he does every once in a while," said a disgusted Silver Star supporter. "You can't depend on him. Wow, that's rotten!" for Sam had delivered a ball that was batted over the right-field fence. Instantly there was a wild scene. Two men were on second and third base respectively when this "homer" was knocked and they came racing in. The home-run batter followed. "Ring around the rosey!" yelled the Resolute captain. "If we had more on base they'd all come in. Hit at anything, fellows! Hit everything." It looked as if they were doing it, for they made six runs that inning, which brought the score to thirteen to nine in favor of the visitors. "Five runs to win, and four to tie," murmured Darrell as his men came in from the field for their inning. "Can we do it?" How it was done even he scarcely knew, for so fierce was the rivalry between the teams, and so high the excitement, that several times open clashes were narrowly averted. But the four runs were secured, and though the Silver Stars played their best they could not get another one. But even to tie the score after Sam's slump was something worth while. "Ten innings! It gives us another chance for our white alley," murmured Tom to Joe, as the first baseman made ready to go on the sack again. "If we can get one run, and hold them down to a goose egg it will do." But the Resolutes seemed to have struck a winning streak. Sam could not pull himself together, and got worse. Darrell was in despair, and there was gloom in the hearts of the Riverside residents. "Haven't they another pitcher they can put in?" asked Joe of one of his neighbors. "No, and if they had Sam would raise such a row that it might bust up the team. He'll play it out." In the tenth inning the Resolutes pounded out three more runs, batting Sam all over the field, and when the Silver Stars came up the score was sixteen to thirteen against them. "Oh, for a bunch of runs!" pleaded Darrell, as his men went to bat. But they couldn't get them. The Resolute pitcher with a grin on his freckled face sent in curve after curve and struck out two men in short order. Then Tom Davis knocked a little pop fly which was easily caught, and the game ended in a riot of yells, as a goose egg went up in the tenth frame for the Silver Stars. They had lost by a score of sixteen to thirteen, and there were bitter feelings in their hearts against their rivals. "Why don't you get a pitcher who can pitch?" demanded one of the Resolutes. "Don't you insult me!" cried Sam striding forward. "I can pitch as good as your man." "Aw, listen to him! He's dreaming!" some one yelled, laughingly. "I am; eh? Well, I'll show you!" cried Sam angrily, and the next instant, in spite of the effort of Darrell to hold him back, he had leaped for the lad who had mocked him, and had struck him a heavy blow. CHAPTER III MRS. MATSON IS WORRIED "What do you mean by that?" demanded the lad whom Sam had struck. "That's what I mean by it. I mean you can't insult me!" "I can't, eh? Well, I can whip you all right," and with those words Sam was nearly knocked off his feet by a return blow. "Here, cut that out!" yelled Darrell. "Aw, what's eating you?" demanded another of the Resolute crowd. "If you fellows are looking for a fight you can have it; eh boys?" "Sure thing!" came in a chorus, as the players crowded up, with bats in their hands. "This may be serious," murmured Darrell to Tom. "See if you can't stop Sam from fighting." But it was too late, as Sam and his opponent were at each other hammer and tongs. "Do you want to fight?" sneered the lad who had accosted the manager. "No, I don't." "Afraid?" "No, of course not." "Then come on," and the lad, half in fun perhaps, gave Darrell a shove. Now Darrell, though disliking fistic encounters, was no coward and he promptly retaliated with a blow that knocked his enemy down. "Wow! It's a fight all right!" yelled another lad, and then Darrell and his antagonist were at it. The crowd from the stands and bleachers now began thronging about the enraged players. There had always been more or less bad blood between the two rival nines and now, when the Resolutes had taken a game that was almost won away from the Silver Stars, the feeling broke out anew. On all sides there were impromptu battles going on. Some of the lads were good-natured about it, and only indulged in wrestling contests, but others were striking viciously at each other and soon there were some bloody noses and blackened eyes in evidence. "I'll show you whether I can pitch or not!" yelled Sam, as he aimed a hard blow at the lad with whom he had first had an encounter. He missed his aim, and went whirling to one side, to be met by a blow as he turned about, and almost sent down. "Do you want anything?" suddenly demanded a lad stopping in front of Joe, who was standing near Tom. Joe recognized his questioner as the Resolute shortstop. "No, he's a stranger here--he isn't on the nine," said Tom quickly. "Well, can't he fight?" was the sneering demand. "Yes, if I want to, but I don't want to," and Joe answered for himself. "I'll make you want to," was the retort, and Joe was struck in the chest. He was not a lad to stand for that and he retaliated with such good effect that his opponent went down in a heap on the grass, and did not arise for some seconds. When he did stagger up, and saw Joe calmly waiting for him, the lad moved off. "You can fight all right," he mumbled. "I've had enough." Meanwhile Darrell had disposed of his lad, and Tom, who was engaged with a small lad who made a sneering remark, grabbed hold of the chap and shook him until the lad begged for mercy. Sam and his opponent were still at it hot and heavy when there arose a cry: "Cheese it--here come the cops!" Riverside boasted of a small police force, and while it was not very formidable, most of the lads came from homes where a report of their arrest for fighting would meet with severe punishment. Their ardor suddenly cooled and, almost as soon as it had started, the impromptu battle was over. The victorious nine gathered up their belongings and moved off the diamond, jeering at their defeated rivals. "It was their fault--they started the fights," declared Tom Davis. "Yes, I guess it was," admitted Darrell. "Well come on, fellows. They beat us, and though I think it wasn't exactly square on some of the decisions, we can take our medicine. We'll do better next time." "Do you mean me?" demanded Sam half fiercely. "I mean--all of us," spoke Darrell slowly, "including myself." "Some excitement; eh?" asked Tom, as he linked his arm in that of Joe Matson and walked along with him. "Yes, but it was a good game just the same." "You play, don't you?" "I used to, at Bentville, where we moved from," answered Joe. "Have a good team?" "Pretty good." "Where'd you play?" "Well, mostly at pitching. I like that better than anything else." "Hum!" mused Tom. "It takes a pretty good one to pitch these days. It isn't like it used to be. Pitching is a gift, like poetry I guess. You can't go in and pitch right off the reel." "I know it," answered Joe quietly. "But it's my one ambition. I want to go to a good boarding school and get on the team as pitcher." "Well, I hope you do," and Tom laughed frankly. "I wouldn't mind that myself, though I don't know as I care so much for pitching." "It's the best part of the game!" cried Joe, and his eyes shone and he seemed to lose some of his usual quiet manner. "I'd like it above everything else!" "Got any curves?" asked the practical Tom. "Well, I don't know as I have--yet. I'm practicing though." "Got any speed?" "They used to say I had, back there in Bentville." "Hum! Well, I don't believe there's much chance for you here. Sam has the Silver Stars cinched. But he was rotten the last half of to-day's game. That's what made us lose it. Yes, it takes some pumpkins to pitch now-a-days." The boys walked on down the street after Tom had discarded his suit. Before them and behind them were other players and spectators, talking of nothing but the game and the fight that had followed. The Resolutes, cheering and singing triumphantly, had departed in their big stages, and in the hearts of the Silver Stars was gloom and despair. "Well, come over and see me sometime," invited Tom, as he parted from Joe. "I will. You come over and see me." The boys went their respective ways--Joe walking rather slowly and thinking of what had just taken place. "How I would like to pitch--and go to boarding school!" he mused as he walked toward his house. As he entered the side door he saw his mother sitting at the dining room table. Something about her attracted his attention--aroused his fears. The cloth had been spread, and though it was supper time, for the game had lasted until late, there were no dishes on the table. "Why mother!" exclaimed Joe, struck by a queer look on her face. "What is the matter? Has anything happened?" "Oh Joe!" she exclaimed starting up, as though she had not heard him come in. "Oh, no, nothing is the matter," she went on, and she tried to smile, but it was only an attempt. "I forgot it was so late. Your father was home, but he went out again." "Where?" "I don't know. He said he had some business to attend to. But I must hurry with the supper. Where were you?" "At the ball game. There was a fight. Our side lost. Oh, how I wish I had been pitching! If ever I go to that boarding school I'm going to try for the nine, first thing!" "Oh yes, you're always talking about a boarding school, Joe. Well, I--I hope you can go." "Mother, I'm sure something has happened!" exclaimed Joe, putting his arms around her and patting her on the shoulder, for she was a little woman. "No, really," she assured him. "I'm just a little worried, that's all. Now you can help me set the table if you will. Clara has gone to take her music lesson and isn't back yet." "Of course I will!" exclaimed Joe. "But what are you worried about, mother? I wish you'd tell me." "I can't now, Joe. Perhaps I will some time. It isn't anything serious--yet," and with that Mrs. Matson hurried out of the room. She smiled as she left her son, but when she reached the kitchen the same serious look came over her face again. "I hope what he fears doesn't come to pass," she remarked to herself. "Poor Joe! it would be too bad if he couldn't go to a boarding school when his heart is so set on it. And to become a pitcher! I wish he had some higher ambition in life, though I suppose all boys are alike at his age," and she sighed. "Hum," mused Joe as he went about setting the table, for the Matsons kept no girl and Joe and his sister often helped their mother with the housework when their school duties permitted. "Something is worrying mother," the lad went on. "I hope it isn't anything about father's business in the harvester works. He took a risk when he gave up his position in Bentville and took a new one here. But that was an exciting game all right," and Joe smiled at the recollection as he went on putting the plates around at their places. CHAPTER IV A ROW WITH SAM "What are you thinking about, Joe?" It was his sister Clara who asked the question, and she had noticed that her brother was rather dreaming over his books than studying. It was the Monday night after the Saturday when the memorable game with the Resolutes had taken place. "Oh, nothing much," and Joe roused himself from a reverie and began to pour over his books. "Well, for 'nothing much' I should say that it was a pretty deep subject," went on Clara with a laugh, as she finished doing her examples. "It isn't one of the girls here, is it Joe? There are a lot of pretty ones in our class." "Oh--bother!" exclaimed Joe. "Let a fellow alone, can't you, when he's studying? We have some pretty stiff work I tell you!" and he ruffled up his hair, as if that would make his lessons come easier. "It's a heap worse than it was back in Bentville." "I think so too, but I like it, Joe. We have a real nice teacher, and I've met a lot of pleasant girls. Do you know any of the boys?" "Hu! I guess you want me to give you an introduction to them!" exclaimed Joe. "No more than you do to the girls I know," retorted his sister, "so there!" "Now, now," gently remonstrated Mrs. Matson, looking up from her sewing, "you young folks keep on with your lessons. Your father can't go on reading his paper if you dispute so." Involuntarily Joe and his sister glanced to where Mr. Matson sat in his easy chair. But he did not seem to be reading, though he held the paper up in front of him. Joe fancied he saw a look of worriment on his father's face, and he wondered if he was vexed over some problem in inventive work, or whether he was troubled over business matters concerning his new position. Then there came to the lad's mind a memory of his mother's anxiety the night he had come in from the game, and he wondered if the two had any connection. But he knew it would not do to ask, for his father seldom talked over business matters at home. Finally, seeming to feel Joe's look, Mr. Matson, after a quick glance at his son, began to scan the paper. "Go on with your studying, Joe and Clara," commanded Mrs. Matson with a smile. "Don't dispute any more." "I was only asking Joe if he knew any nice boys," spoke Clara in vindication. "I know how fond he was of playing baseball back in Bentville, and I was wondering if he was going to play here." "Guess I haven't much chance," murmured Joe half gloomily, as he drew idle circles on the back blank leaf of his book. "Why not?" asked Clara quickly. "The girls say the boys have a good nine here, even if they were beaten last Saturday. There's going to be another game this Saturday, and Helen Rutherford is going to take me." "Oh, yes, there's a good enough team here," admitted Joe. "In fact the Silver Stars are all right, but every position is filled. I _would_ like to play--I'd like to pitch. I want to get all the practice I can on these small teams, so when I go to boarding school I'll have something to talk about." "And you're still set on going to boarding school?" asked Mrs. Matson, sighing gently as she looked at her son. "I certainly am--if it can be managed," replied Joe quickly. Mr. Matson started so suddenly that the paper rattled loudly, and his wife asked: "What's the matter, John, did something in the news startle you?" "Oh--no," he said slowly. "I--I guess I'm a bit nervous. I've been working rather hard lately on an improvement in a corn reaper and binder. It doesn't seem to come just right. I believe I'll go to bed. I'm tired," and with "good-nights" that were not as cheerful as usual he left the room. Mrs. Matson sighed but said nothing, and Joe wondered more than ever if any trouble was brewing. He hoped not. As for Clara she was again bent over her lessons. The Silver Star nine was variously made up. A number of lads worked in different town industries, one even being employed in the harvester works where Mr. Matson was employed. Others attended school. Joe Matson had attended the academy in the town of Bentville whence they moved to Riverside, and on arriving in the latter place had at once sought admission to the high school. He was given a brief examination, and placed in the junior class, though in some of the studies the pupils there were a little ahead of him, consequently he had to do some hard studying. The ambition to attend a boarding school had been in Joe's mind for a long while, and as his father was in moderate circumstances, and soon hoped to make considerable from his patents, Joe reasoned that his parents could then afford to send him. Among others on the nine who attended the high school were Darrell Blackney and Sam Morton, who were in the senior class, and Tom Davis, whose acquaintance Joe had made soon after coming to Riverside. There was a school nine, but it was made up of the smaller boys and Joe had no desire to join this. In fact none of the lads who were on the Silver Stars belonged to the school team. "Well, I'm through, thank goodness!" finally exclaimed Clara, as she closed her books. "And I am too," added Joe, a moment later. "Hope I don't flunk to-morrow." "Are you going to the game Saturday?" asked Clara. "Oh, I guess so. Wish I was going _in_ it, but that's too much to hope for." "Don't you know any one on the nine?" "Yes, Tom Davis." "He's the boy back of us, isn't he? His sister Mabel is in my class." "Yes," assented Joe, "but Tom is only a substitute." "Maybe you could be that at first, and then get a regular place," suggested Clara. "Um!" murmured Joe. He didn't have a very high opinion of girls' knowledge of baseball, even his sister's. When Joe reached home from school the following afternoon he saw his mother standing on the front steps with a letter in her hand. "Oh, Joe!" she exclaimed, "I was just waiting for you. Your father----" "Is there anything the matter with father?" the lad gasped, his thoughts going with a rush to one or two little scenes that had alarmed him lately. "No, nothing at all," answered his mother with a smile. "But he just hurried home from the factory with this note and he wanted you, as soon as you came home, to take it to Moorville. It's for a Mr. Rufus Holdney there. The address is on it, and I guess you can find him all right. You're to wait for an answer. Go on your wheel. It's only a few miles to Moorville, and a straight road, so your father says." "I know where it is," answered Joe. "Tom Davis has relatives there. He pointed out the road to me one day. I'll go right away. Here, catch hold of my books, mother, and I'll get my wheel out of the barn," for a barn went with the house Mr. Matson had rented. A little later the lad was speeding down the country road that pleasant spring afternoon. Joe was a good rider and was using considerable strength on the pedals when suddenly, as he turned a sharp curve, he saw coming toward him another cyclist. He had barely time to note that it was Sam Morton, the pitcher of the Silver Stars, and to utter a warning shout when he crashed full into the other lad. In a moment there was a mix-up of wheels, legs and arms, while a cloud of dust momentarily hid everything from sight. At first Joe did not know whether or not he was hurt, or whether Sam was injured. Fortunately Joe had instinctively put on the brake with all his strength, and he supposed the other lad had done likewise. Then, as the dust cleared away, and Joe began to pull his arms and legs out of the tangle, and arise, he saw that Sam was doing the same thing. "Hope you're not hurt much!" was Joe's first greeting. "Humph! It isn't your fault if I'm not," was the ungracious answer, as Sam felt of his pitching arm. "What do you mean by crashing into a fellow that way for, anyhow?" "I didn't mean to. I didn't know that curve was so sharp. I'd never ridden on this road before." "Well, why didn't you blow your horn or ring your bell or--or something?" "Why didn't you?" demanded Joe with equal right. "Never mind. Don't give me any of your talk. You're one of the fresh juniors at school, aren't you?" "I don't know that I'm 'fresh,'" replied Joe quietly, "but I am a junior. I'm sorry if I hurt you, but I couldn't help it." "Yes you could, if you knew anything about riding a wheel." "I tell you I couldn't," and Joe spoke a bit sharply. "I was into you before I knew it. And besides, you ran into me as much as I did into you." "I did not. If you don't know enough to ride a wheel, keep off the roads!" snarled the pitcher. "If I'm stiff for Saturday's game it will be your fault." "I hope you won't be stiff," spoke Joe, and he said it sincerely. "And if my wheel is broken you'll have to pay for it," went on Sam. "I don't think that's right," said Joe firmly. "It was as much your fault as mine, and my wheel may be broken too. I'm going to look," he added as he lifted his bicycle from where it was entangled with Sam's. A bent pedal, which would not interfere with its use, was all the damage Joe's wheel had sustained and beyond a few bent spokes and a punctured tire Sam's seemed to have suffered no great harm. "I'll help you straighten those spokes," said Joe cheerfully. "It won't take but a minute. I can have my father straighten my pedal at the factory. And I'll help you mend and pump up your tire. I'm sorry----" "Look here!" burst out Sam in a rage, "I don't want any of your help. You're too fresh. You come banging into a fellow, knocking him all over and then you think you can square things by offering to help him. I don't want any of your help!" "Oh, very well," replied Joe quietly. "Then I'll be going on. I've got an errand to do. But I'd like to help you." "Mind your own business!" snapped Sam, still rubbing his pitching arm. He made no motion to pick up his wheel. Joe was half minded to make an angry retort but he thought better of it. He wheeled his bicycle to the hard side-path of the road, and, ascertaining that his letter was safe, prepared to mount and ride away. "And mind you, if my arm is stiff, and I can't pitch Saturday it will be your fault, and I'll tell the fellows so," called Sam as he leaned over to pick up his wheel. "All right, only you know it isn't so," replied Joe quietly. As he pedaled on he looked back and saw Sam straightening some of the bent spokes. The pitcher scowled at him. "Hum," mused Joe as he speeded up. "Not a very good beginning for getting on the nine--a run-in with the pitcher. Well, I guess I wouldn't be in it anyhow. I guess they think I'm not in their class. But I will be--some day!" and with a grim tightening of his lips Joe Matson rode on. CHAPTER V JOE HELPS THE MANAGER "Well now, I'm real sorry," said Mrs. Holdney when, a little later, Joe dismounted at her door, and held out the letter for her husband. "Rufus isn't home. You can leave the letter for him, though." "No, I have to have an answer," replied Joe. "I think perhaps I'd better wait." "Well, maybe you had, though I don't know when Rufus will be back. Is it anything of importance?" "I guess it must be," spoke the lad, for, though he did not know the contents of his father's letter, he reasoned that it would be on no unimportant errand that he would be sent to Moorville. "Hum," mused Mrs. Holdney. "Well, if you want to wait all right, though as I said I don't know when my husband will be back." "Do you know where he's gone? Could I go after him?" asked Joe eagerly. He was anxious to deliver the letter, get an answer, and return home before dark. "Well, now, I never thought of that!" exclaimed Mrs. Holdney. "Of course you might do that. Rufus has gone down town, and most likely you'll find him in the hardware store of Mr. Jackson. He said he had some business to transact with him, and he'll likely be there for some time." "Then I'll ride down there on my wheel. I guess I can find the place. Is it on the main street?" "Yes, turn off this road when you get to the big granite horse-drinking trough and swing in to your right. Then turn to your left when you get to the post-office and that's Main Street. Mr. Jackson's store is about a block in." The lad repeated the woman's directions over in his mind as he rode along, and he had no difficulty in picking out the hardware store. He was wondering how he would know Mr. Holdney, but concluded that one of the clerks could point him out. "Yes, Mr. Holdney is here," said a man behind the counter to whom Joe applied. "He's in the office with Mr. Jackson." "I wonder if I could send a letter in to him," ventured the lad, for he did not want to wait any longer than he had to. "I'm afraid not," answered the clerk. "Mr. Jackson is very strict about being disturbed when he's talking business." "Then I guess I'll have to wait," said Joe with a sigh. "I wonder if he'll be in there long?" "I wouldn't want to say for sure," spoke the clerk, leaning over the counter in a confidential manner and speaking in a whisper. "I wouldn't even dare to guess," he went on with a look toward the private office whence came the murmur of voices, "but I'll venture to state that it will be some time. Mr. Jackson never does anything in a hurry." "Does Mr. Holdney?" "Yes, he's just the opposite. He's as quick as a steel trap. Too quick, that's the trouble. He and Mr. Jackson are good friends, but when Mr. Holdney springs something sudden on my boss, why Mr. Jackson is slower than ever, thinking it over. I guess you'll have to wait some time. Is there anything you'd like to buy?" "No, I think not," said Joe with a smile, and then he sat down on one of the stools near the counter while the clerk went off to wait on a customer. The lad was getting impatient after nearly an hour had passed and there was no sign of Mr. Holdney coming out. The murmur of voices continued to come from the private office--one voice quick and snappy, and the other slow and drawling--an indication of the character of the two men. "I wish they'd hurry!" thought Joe. He began to pace back and forth the length of the store, and he was just thinking he would have to ride home in the darkness, and was wondering whether there was oil in his bicycle lamp, when the door of the private office opened and two men came out. "Thank goodness!" exclaimed Joe to himself. The men were still talking, but Joe concluded that their business was about over so he chanced going up to them. "Excuse me," he said, "but I have a letter for Mr. Holdney. It's from my father, Mr. Matson." "Eh, what's--that--son?" asked the older of the two men, in drawling tones. "It's for me. I'm Mr. Holdney!" exclaimed the other quickly. "From Mr. Matson, eh? Well tell him I can't help him any more. I haven't any spare--but wait a minute, I'll write my answer." "Hadn't--you--better--read--the--letter--first," mildly and slowly suggested Mr. Jackson. "Humph! I know what it is all right!" exclaimed the other quickly. "But I'll read it. Let's have it!" He almost snapped it from the lad's hand and Joe wondered what could be the business relations between his father and this man. With a flourish and a quick motion Mr. Holdney tore open the envelope and read the letter almost at a glance. "Hum!" he exclaimed. "Just as I expected. No, I'm done with that business. I can't do any more. You may tell your father--hold on, though, I'll write it," and, whipping out a lead pencil Mr. Holdney scribbled something on the back of Mr. Matson's note. "So you're John Matson's son; eh?" he asked of Joe. "Yes, sir." "Hum! Go to school?" "Yes, the Riverside High." "Hum! Ever invent anything?" "No, not yet," answered Joe with a smile. "That's right--never do it. It's a poor business. Play ball?" "I did in Bentville where we lived, but I haven't had a chance here yet." "Hum! Yes, Bentville. That's where I met your father. Here's the answer. There you are. Now don't lose it," and quickly handing the communication to Joe, Mr. Holdney turned and resumed his talk with the hardware merchant. Joe was a little dazed by the quickness of it all, and there were many questions running through his mind. Somehow the manner of Mr. Holdney--the message he had started to ask Joe to deliver by word of mouth, his apparent refusal of something Mr. Matson had evidently asked him to do--all made Joe vaguely uneasy. He connected it with his father's nervousness the night before and with his mother's anxiety. "But there's no use worrying until I have to," concluded Joe with a boy's philosophy as he left the hardware store, and truth to tell, he was thinking more of his chances of going to boarding school in the fall perhaps, and whether or not he would get an opportunity to play ball, than he was of any possible trouble. On leaving the hardware store Joe was surprised to find it growing dusk. Gathering clouds added to the gloom and he made up his mind that the last part of his homeward journey would be made in darkness. "Guess I'll see if I have any oil in the lamp," he remarked as he was about to mount his wheel. "If I haven't I can get some here." But he found, on shaking the lantern, that it was filled enough to carry him to Riverside, and he was soon pedaling along that country road. The clouds continued to gather, and as the journey back was partly up hill, and as the bent pedal did not permit of fast riding, Joe soon found it necessary to alight and set the lamp aglow. He was riding on, looking carefully ahead of him, to avoid stones and ruts that the gleam of light revealed, when, as he came to rather a lonely spot on the road, he heard, just ahead of him, a commotion. There was a sound of carriage wheels scraping on the iron body guards, the tramping of a horse's feet, and then a voice called out: "Whoa now! Stand still, can't you, until I see what's the matter? Whoa! Something's broken, that's evident, worse luck! And I'm two miles from nowhere. Whoa, now!" "Where have I heard that voice before?" mused Joe as he rode more slowly so as not to have another collision in the darkness. He could hear some one jump to the ground and then the restless horse quieted down under the soothing words of the driver. "Yes, it's broken all right," the voice went on. "And how in the mischief am I going to mend it? Whoa, now!" Then Joe rode up, and in the glow of his light he saw Darrell Blackney, the manager of the Silver Stars, who was standing beside a carriage one side of the shafts of which hung down from the axle. The bolt had evidently broken. "What's the matter?" asked Joe, dismounting. "Who's that?" quickly asked Darrell. "I'm Joe Matson," was the answer. "I know you. I'm in the junior high class." "Oh, yes. Matson, I think I heard Tom Davis speak of you. Well, I've had an accident. I was out driving when all at once one side of the shafts fell down. It's a bad break I'm afraid; bolt sheared off." "It's a wonder your horse didn't run away." "Oh, Prince is pretty steady; aren't you Prince old fellow?" and Darrell patted the animal's nose. "But what the mischief am I to do? It's too far to go to the next town and leave Prince here, and I can't ride him, for he isn't used to it and might throw me off." "Can I help you?" asked Joe. "I might ride to the nearest place and get a bolt, if you told me what kind." "All the places would be closed by this time I guess," was the rueful answer. "Much obliged to you just the same. I certainly am in a pickle! Next time I go out driving I'll bring part of a hardware store along." "What sort of a bolt is it?" asked Joe. "Oh, just an ordinary carriage one, flat headed. Bring your light here, if you don't mind, and I'll take a look at it. I could only tell it was broken by feeling in the dark." In the glow of the bicycle lamp it could be seen that the bolt had broken squarely in two in the middle, and could not be used again. But at the sight of it, as Darrell held the two parts in his hand, Joe uttered an exclamation. "What's the matter?" asked the manager of the Silver Stars. "I think I have the very thing!" said Joe quickly. "I've got some spare bolts in my tool bag. They may not be the same size, but they'll hold the shaft in until you get home I think. I'll take a look." "Good for you!" cried Darrell. "Most anything will do in a pinch. Even a piece of wire, but I can't find any along the road in the dark. I hope you have something," and while Joe opened his tool bag Darrell patted the somewhat restive horse. CHAPTER VI JOE HAS HOPES "Yes, here's the very thing, I guess!" said Joe, after rummaging about in his leather tool case. He produced a short but heavy bolt with a nut. "It isn't exactly the same thing," remarked Darrell, after looking at it carefully, "but it will do, if it's long enough. Would you mind holding Prince's head while I try it? He might start up, just as I got the shaft in place, and hurt my fingers, if he didn't make me drop the bolt. Then we'd have a sweet time hunting for it in the dark." Joe went to the animal's head and patted the cold, velvety nose while the other lad lifted up the dropped shaft and fitted it in place. He was fumbling about in the flickering light of the bicycle lantern which he had temporarily fastened to the dashboard. "Will it do?" asked Joe. "Yes, it's just the cheese. Lucky I met you, or, rather that you met me, or I don't know what I would have done. The bolt is just long enough. Now if I can get the nut on----" "There's a wrench in my tool bag," interrupted Joe. "Shall I get it for you?" "No, thanks, you stay by Prince. I can find it. You haven't been in town long, have you?" asked Darrell, as he was working away over the nut, which was a little tight. "No, about a week. I was at the Resolute ball game though." "You were? It was a shame it broke up the way it did, but I don't think it was our fault, though Sam Morton is pretty quick tempered." Joe had good reason to know that. "No," he answered from the darkness near the horse's head, "it was the fault of the Resolutes all right. They ought to have been satisfied after pulling the game out of the fire the way they did." "I should say so! They never ought to have won it, and they wouldn't have, only Sam sort of--well they got his 'goat' I guess." "Yes," assented Joe, while Darrell went on fumbling with the wrench and nut. "Do you play at all?" came the manager's voice from the vicinity of the flickering light. "Oh, yes," and Joe's tone was eager while his heart was strangely beating. It was a chance he had never dared hope for, to have the manager of the Silver Stars ask him that. "Where?" came the next inquiry. "In Bentville, where I used to live." "Oh. Have a good team?" "Pretty fair." "Where'd you play?" "I used to pitch." There was a pause and then, emboldened by what had happened, Joe went on. "I don't suppose there's a vacancy in your nine, is there?" and he laughed half whimsically. "No, hardly, that is, not in the box," said Darrell slowly. "Sam has his faults, but he's the best pitcher we've had in a long time and I guess we'll keep him. There, that's fixed," he went on, tapping the bolt to see that it was firmly in place. "Now I can go on, I guess. I'm a thousand times obliged to you. I don't know what I'd have done only for you. After this I'm going to carry a light, and some spare bolts." He handed Joe back the wrench and took the lamp off the dashboard. "I'll give you a bolt in place of this the next time I see you," the manager went on, as he held the lamp out to our hero. "Oh, it isn't necessary. I don't need it for my wheel. It was just one of some odds and ends that I carry with me." Darrell stood looking at Joe, whose face was illuminated brightly by the full focus of the lamp. The manager seemed struck by something. "I say!" he exclaimed, "you look as if you were built to play ball. Were you at it long?" "Oh, a couple of years." "Pitch all that time?" "Oh, no, only just the last few months of the season. Our regular pitcher left and I filled in." "I see. Hum, well, as I said we haven't any vacancy in the box, but by Jove! come to think of it I might give you a chance!" Joe's heart leaped wildly and he could hardly answer. "Can you, really?" he asked. "Yes, but not as a regular, of course--at least that is not right off the bat. But if you'd like to try for place at centre field I believe I can manage it." Joe's heart was a little despondent. Centre field was not a very brilliant place in which to shine with the Stars, but it was a start and he realized that. "I'd be glad of the chance," he managed to say. "All right, I'll keep you in mind. You see our regular centre fielder, Jed McGraw, is going to leave. His folks are moving out west and we'll have to have some one in his place. I don't know when he's going, but it's this week or next. I'd like to do something for you, to sort of pay you for what you did for me to-night, and----" "Oh, I don't want anything for this!" exclaimed Joe. "I know you don't, but it just happened so. I might not have known you except for this accident, and as I said we will need some one to fill in at centre field. Len Oswald is the regular substitute, but he doesn't practice much, and he's got a job over at Fordham so he can't always be sure of getting off Saturday afternoons, which is when we mostly play. So I'll put you down as sub now and perhaps as regular--it depends on Len." "Thanks!" Joe managed to say and he found himself hoping that Len would have to work every Saturday during the season. "We need some one with experience," went on Darrell, "and I'm glad I could give you the chance. Tom Davis was saying you got mixed up in the row the other day." "Yes. I seem to be getting the habit," replied Joe with a laugh. "I had one with Sam Morton on this road a little while ago." "You don't say so! How did it happen?" Joe gave all the details. "Hum! Well, Sam sure has a quick temper," went on the young manager. "But he's all right soon after it," he added in extenuation. "He'll be friendly with you in a few days and forget all about it. I wouldn't hold a grudge against him, if I were you." "Oh, I shan't. It was both our faults." "Well, I'll be getting on," remarked Darrell, after a pause. "Come and see me sometime. I'll see you at school to-morrow, and if there's anything doing I'll let you know." The two boys' hands met in a friendly clasp and then the manager, getting into his carriage, drove off. A little later, his heart filled with hope, Joe, having put back his lantern and tool bag pedaled toward home. "This was a lucky day for me, even if it did look bad after that crash with Sam Morton," he said to himself. "I'm going to play ball, after all!" There was rather a grave look on Mr. Matson's face when Joe handed him the reply from Mr. Holdney, and told of his interview. "So he can't help me--Oh, well, never mind," and Mr. Matson turned aside and went into the room where he kept a desk. Mrs. Matson followed, closing the door after her, and for some time the voices of the two could be heard in low but earnest conversation. "What's the matter; nothing wrong I hope?" asked Clara. "Oh, I guess not," answered Joe, though he was vaguely uneasy himself. Then came the thought of his talk with the baseball manager and his heart was light again. Supper was rather a quiet affair that night, and Mr. Matson spoke but little, quite in contrast to his usual cheerful flow of conversation. Mrs. Matson, too, seemed preoccupied. "I think I'm going to get on the Stars!" exclaimed Joe, when he got a chance to tell of his experiences that day. "That's good," said Mr. Matson heartily. "There's no game like baseball." "But it doesn't fit a boy for anything," complained Mrs. Matson. "It doesn't help in any of the professions." "It's a profession in itself!" declared Joe stoutly. "I hope you don't intend to adopt it," spoke his sister. "Oh, I don't know. I might do worse. Look at some of those big New York players getting thousands of dollars a year." "But look how long it takes them to get to that place," objected Clara, who liked to argue. "Oh, well, I'm young yet," laughed Joe. In his room that night, while preparing for bed Joe got to thinking of the possibility mentioned by Darrell Blackney. "I'm going to play my head off in centre field," said Joe, "and I'm going to practice batting, too. Stick work counts. I'm going to practice pitching, also. Who knows, maybe I'll get a chance in the box if Sam ever slumps. "Wow! If I ever do!" and standing before an imaginary batter Joe flung out his arm as if delivering a swift curve. With a crash his fist hit a picture on the wall and brought it clattering down to the floor. "What's that?" called Clara sharply from the next room. "Oh, I was just practicing pitching," answered Joe sheepishly, as he picked up the picture, the glass of which had fortunately not broken. "Well, you'd better practice going to sleep," responded his sister with a laugh. Joe smiled. He had great hopes for the future. CHAPTER VII LAUGHED AT "What's that in your pocket, Joe?" "Which pocket?" "Your coat. I declare, you've got something in both pockets," and Clara approached her brother as if with the intention of making a personal inspection of two big bulges on either side of his coat. "What are they?" she persisted, as Joe backed away. Brother and sister had just gotten up from the breakfast table, and were about to start to school. "Oh, never mind!" exclaimed Joe hastily, as he looked for his cap. "Got your lessons, Clara?" "Of course I have. But I'm curious to know what makes your pockets bulge out so. Don't you know it will spoil your coat?" "I don't care," and Joe made another hasty move to get out of reach of Clara's outstretched hand. But he was not successful, and, with a laugh, his sister caught hold of the bulging pocket on his left side. "A ball!" she declared. "A baseball upon my word! Two of them! Oh, Joe, are you really going to play on the nine Saturday?" "I don't know. Maybe I'll get a chance if Jed McGraw leaves in time. But I'm taking a couple of old balls to practice throwing this afternoon when I come from school." "You're starting in early," commented Clara. "I hope you don't sleep with a baseball under your pillow the way we girls do with pieces of wedding cake," and she laughed merrily. "I'd be willing to sleep with a ball and a bat under my pillow if I thought I'd get in the game by it," admitted Joe frankly. "But I'm not hoping too much. Well, I'm going. Good-bye momsey," and he stopped to kiss his mother before he hastened away to school. He looked at her closely to discover whether there was any trace of worry, but she smiled at him. "I may not be home early," he told her. "I'm going down to the fairgrounds." "What for?" she asked quickly. "There isn't a show there, is there?" "No, but I want to do a little baseball practicing, and that place is well out of the way." "Baseball practice on the fairgrounds. How----" But she did not wait to finish her question for she exclaimed: "My cake is burning in the oven. Good-bye, Joe!" and she ran to the kitchen. "I wonder what Sam Morton will say?" Joe reflected as he walked along. "I certainly hope his arm isn't lame, even if it was as much his fault as mine. I don't want him to tell the fellows I'm to blame for him losing a game--if he should." Fearing that the same thing might happen to him as when Clara laughed at him for having the two baseballs in his pockets, Joe slipped to his desk as soon as he reached the school, and hid the balls away back among his books. The balls were two old ones he had used when on the Bentville nine, and they were still in fair condition. "I'm not going to let the fellows get on to the fact that I'm practicing, until there's more of a chance for me than there is now," thought our hero, as he went out on the school grounds to watch the lads at play. An impromptu game was going on, but Joe did not join. Darrell Blackney passed him, and in answer to Joe's nod of greeting asked: "Did you get home all right?" "Oh, yes. How about you?" "Fine. The bolt was all right. I haven't forgotten. I'll see McGraw to-day and find out when he's going to leave. Then if Oswald can't say for sure whether he'll be with us, you'll go in at centre field." "Good!" exclaimed Joe, his eyes bright with anticipation. As Darrell passed on, Joe saw Sam Morton approaching. At first he had a notion of turning away and avoiding what he felt would be an unpleasant scene. But Joe was nothing of a coward and he realized that, sooner or later, he would have to meet the pitcher with whom he had had the collision. So he stood his ground. "How's your arm?" he asked pleasantly, as Sam approached. "Hu! None the better for what you did to it." "What _I_ did?" and Joe's voice took on a surprised tone. "Do you still insist it was my fault?" "Pretty near," went on Sam, but Joe noticed that he was not quite so vindictive as before. "It isn't as stiff as I thought it would be, though." "I hope you can pitch all right Saturday," went on Joe. He wanted very much to hint at the fact that he, too, might be in the game, but Sam was not a lad to invite confidences, especially after what had taken place. Joe liked comradeship. He liked the company of boys of his own age and he was just "hungry" to talk baseball. But, aside from Tom Davis, as yet he had no chums with whom he could gossip about the great pastime. In Bentville he was looked up to as one of the nine, and, though the team was not as good a one as was the Silver Stars, still it was a team, and Joe was one of the principal players. Coming to a strange town, and being distinctly out of the game, made him feel like a "cat in a strange garret," as he said afterward. But with a grim tightening of his lips he made up his mind not to give way to gloomy thoughts, and he determined that he would be on the town team and one of the best players. As the warning bell rang, Tom Davis came hurrying across the school campus. "I called for you!" he shouted to Joe who, with a crowd of other lads, was going in the building, "but you'd gone." "Thanks," replied Joe, grateful for the friendly spirit shown. "I'll wait next time." He liked Tom, and was glad to have him for a chum. Joe thought lessons would never be finished that day, but the classes were finally dismissed and then, without waiting for Tom, though he thought this might be construed as rather unfriendly, our hero hastened off in the direction of the fairgrounds. There was a high wooden fence around this plot, and it gave Joe just the chance he wanted, for he was going to practice pitching, and he didn't want any witnesses. "I wish I had half a dozen balls," he murmured as he went in through one of the gates which was unlocked. "I wouldn't have to chase back and forth so often. But two will do for a while." He laid his books down on the grass, took out the horsehide spheres and, measuring a distance from the fence about equal to the space from the pitcher's box to home plate, he began to pitch the balls. With dull thuds the balls struck the fence, one after the other, and fell to the ground. Joe picked them up, took his place again in the imaginary box, and repeated the performance. His arm, that was a bit stiff at first, from lack of practice since coming to Riverside, gradually became limber. He knew that his speed, too, was increasing. He could not judge of his curves, and, truth to tell he did not have very good ones as yet, for he had only recently learned the knack. But he had the right ideas and a veteran professional pitcher, who was a friend of one of the Bentville nine's members, had showed Joe the proper manner to hold and deliver the ball. "I wish I had some one back there to give me a line on myself," thought Joe, as he pitched away, a solitary figure on the grounds. "I don't know whether I'm getting them over the plate, or a mile beyond," for he had laid down a flat stone to serve as "home." "Anyhow this will improve my speed," he reasoned, "and speed is needed now-a-days as much as curves." Time and again he pitched his two horsehides, ran to pick them up as they dropped at the foot of the fence, and then he raced back to his "box" to repeat the performance. He was rather tiring of it, and his arm was beginning to feel numb in spite of his enthusiasm, when he heard some one laughing. The sound came from behind him, and, turning quickly, Joe saw Sam Morton standing leaning up against his wheel, and contemplating him with mirth showing on his face. "Well, well!" exclaimed Sam. "This is pretty good. What are you trying to do, Matson, knock the fence down? If you are, why don't you take a hammer or some stones instead of baseballs? This is rich! Ha! Ha!" For a moment Joe was tempted to make an angry answer, for the hot blood of shame mounted to his cheeks. Then he said quietly, and with as much good-nature as he could summon on the spur of the moment: "I'm practicing, that's all. I came here as I didn't want to lose the balls, and the fence makes a good backstop." "Practicing, eh? What for?" and once more Sam laughed in an insulting manner. "To improve my pitching. There may be a chance to get on the team, I understand." "What team; the Silver Stars?" Sam's voice had a harsh note in it. "Yes." And Joe nodded. "So you're practicing pitching, eh? And you hope to get on our nine. Well let me tell you one thing, Matson; you won't pitch on the Silver Stars as long as I'm on deck, and I intend to remain for quite a while yet. Pitching practice, eh? Ho! That's pretty good! What you'd better practice is running bases. We may let you run for some of the fellows, if you're real good. Or how would you like to carry the bats or be the water boy? I understand there's a vacancy there. Pitcher! Ha! Ha!" and Sam doubled up in mirth. Joe's face flushed, but he said nothing. CHAPTER VIII A MEAN PROTEST Finally Sam ceased his laughter, straightened up and prepared to ride out of the fairgrounds on his wheel. "I was just going past," he said, in needless explanation, "when I heard something banging against the fence. First I thought it might be one of the cattle left over from the last show, but when I saw it was you, Matson--Oh, my! It's too rich! I'll have to tell the boys." "Look here!" exclaimed Joe, who disliked as much as any one being laughed at, "what have you got against me, anyhow? Are you afraid I'll displace you as pitcher?" "What's that? Not much. You couldn't do that you know," and Sam laughed again. "Then what do you want to be so mean for?" asked Joe. "None of your business, if you want to know," snapped Sam. "But if you think you're going to get on our team you've got another think coming. Look out, now, don't break the fence with those balls, or the fair committee might make you pay for it," and with this parting insult Sam rode out of the grounds. Joe's heart was beating fast, and he clenched his hands. He would liked to have gone after Sam and given him a well deserved thrashing, but he knew that would never do. "I've just got to grin and bear it!" murmured Joe through his clenched teeth. "If the fellows laugh at me I'll have to let 'em laugh. After all I can stand it, and I _do_ want to get on the team. "Queer why Sam Morton should be so down on me. I don't see his reason unless it's jealousy, or because he's mad at me for running into him. Maybe it's both. "Well, there's no use practicing any longer. My arm is tired, and besides he might be hiding behind the fence to laugh some more. I'll have to find a different place if I want to practice getting up my speed and curves." Picking up the balls and his books Joe slowly made his way out of the grounds. Sam Morton was nowhere in sight, for which the young ball player was glad. "Maybe this will end it," thought Joe. "He just wanted to amuse himself at my expense." But our hero was soon to find that the vindictive spirit of the pitcher was not quelled. "Coming out to see us practice this afternoon?" asked Tom Davis of Joe several days later. "We're getting ready to play the Red Stockings of Rutherford, Saturday." "Sure I'll come," answered Joe. "Will it be a good game?" "It ought to. The Red Stockings used to have a good nine but they struck a slump and lately we've been beating them. But I hear they have a new pitcher and they may make it hard for us. Say, what's this yarn Sam is telling about you practicing down on the fairgrounds." "Oh, it's true enough," answered Joe with a flush. "I thought I'd get up some speed. I've got a chance to get on the nine." "Is that so; I hadn't heard it. Gee! I hope you do. How you going to manage it?" "Well, I don't know as Darrell wants it known," was the answer, "but I'll tell you," and Joe proceeded to relate his talk with the manager, about the prospective leaving of McGraw. "That's so, Jed is going away," admitted Tom. "I had forgotten about that. Say, I hope he leaves before Saturday and then you can get a chance to play." "What about Len Oswald, the substitute centre fielder?" "Oh, Len is practically out of it. He can't get off Saturday afternoons any more. Too much business in that Fordham grocery where he works. That's a good thing for you. I'm real glad of it, Joe. But say, if you want to practice pitching, why didn't you ask me to catch for you?" "I didn't want to bother you?" "Aw, get out. I'd be glad to do it. Next time you want to try it tip me off and we'll go some place where Sam can't bother us. He's a mean chap sometimes. I don't like him, but some of the fellows think he's all there. He sure can pitch, and I guess that's why we keep him. But come on, let's go to practice. There may be a scrub game and you can get in on it." Joe and Tom found quite a crowd assembled on the Riverside diamond when they arrived. The nine and the substitutes were in uniforms, and Darrell Blackney and George Rankin were talking to the team, giving them some points about the coming game with the Red Stockings. "I guess we've got enough for a scrub game," announced the captain, as Joe and Tom strolled up. "Tom, you play first on the scrub. And let's see--what's your name?" and he turned to Joe, who introduced himself. "He's a friend of mine," added Tom, "so treat him right." "Good!" exclaimed the captain. "Well, he can play on the scrub if he wants to. Out in the field," he added. "Oh, yes, that's Matson, whom I was telling you about," put in the manager, and then he added something in a low voice which Joe could not catch. "Play ball!" called the umpire, and the impromptu contest was underway. Joe narrowly watched Sam's pitching and even though he regarded the lad as unfriendly to him, our hero could not but admit that his rival in the box was doing good work. "But I think I can equal him if I have a chance," thought Joe, and he was not given to idle boasting, either. "Oh, if I only get the chance!" he exclaimed in a whisper. Then a high fly came his way and he had to get down to business and stop his day-dreaming. He ran back to get under the ball, and made a pretty one-handed catch. There was some applause from the little group of spectators. "Good eye!" yelled Tom Davis. "That's the stuff!" cried some one else, and Joe felt a warm thrill of pleasure as he threw the ball in. Of course the first team won, for the scrub was composed of odds and ends, with some substitutes from the Silver Stars, but Joe had done his best to hold down the score. "Good work, Matson," complimented Darrell, when the contest was over. "By the way, I've about decided in your case. You can get ready to play centre field Saturday. McGraw can't be with us, and we can't count on Oswald. Have you a uniform?" "Yes," said Joe eagerly. "A uniform; what for?" asked Sam Morton quickly. He had come up behind Joe and Darrell, and had heard the last part of the conversation. "Oh, I forgot to tell you fellows that Matson is our new member of the team," went on the manager. "Shake hands with him, boys. I've been watching him play to-day and I think with a little practice he'll make good." "Where's he going to play?" demanded Sam roughly, while the lads crowded around Joe, congratulating him, asking him questions as to where he had played ball before, and shaking hands with him. "Where's he going to play?" and Sam pointed what seemed like an accusing finger at Joe. "Centre field--McGraw's place," answered the manager briefly. "Regular or substitute?" demanded Sam. "Practically a regular," replied Darrell. "We can't count on Oswald any more, now that his busy season has begun." Every member of the Silver Stars save Sam had shaken hands with Joe. The pitcher now stood facing our hero. "I want to protest!" suddenly exclaimed Sam, looking Joe full in the face. "Why?" asked Darrell. "What business is it of yours, anyhow, Sam?" asked the captain. "Darrell and I have settled this. Matson plays." "Then I want my protest noted!" went on Sam angrily. "We're supposed to be a local team--every one on it belongs in town." "So does Joe Matson!" broke in Tom Davis. "Well, he's only just moved in, and how do we know but what he'll move out again?" demanded Sam. "I protest against him being a regular, or even a substitute, member of the Silver Stars!" CHAPTER IX JOE IN THE GAME There was a period of silence following Sam's unfair protest. Then could be heard a low murmur from some of his mates. "Oh, what's eating him, anyhow?" "What's he got against Matson?" "Something has Sam by the ear all right." "Yes, guess he didn't like the way the scrub batted him around." These were some of the comments made, not loud enough for Sam to hear, for he was a power in the nine, and none of the lads wanted to get on bad terms with him. For a moment all eyes were turned on Sam and then toward Joe who, it can easily be imagined, was much embarrassed. "I don't think your protest is a fair one," said Darrell at length. "I don't think so either," added Captain George Rankin. "Just because Matson is a newcomer in town is no reason why he can't play with us." "Sure, that's right!" put in Seth Potter. "You weren't born here yourself, Sam, and neither were lots of us. We moved here." "I've lived in Riverside nearly all my life," snapped the pitcher, "and I like to see a representative team. If we need a new member why not pick one who has been living here longer than a couple of weeks?" "Look here!" exclaimed Darrell. "I don't think this is fair to me." "How do you mean?" asked Sam, for the manager had spoken with some warmth. "Just this much. You elected me manager and the captain and I were to select the players. Now, when we make our choice, there comes a kick. It isn't right. Rankin and I decided to give Matson a chance, and he gets it. That goes, too!" and the manager looked straight at Sam. "Oh, well, if you put it that way I suppose I might as well keep still about it," and Sam, shrugging his shoulders, turned away. He had not yet shaken hands with Joe. "As for there being other players just as good and who have lived here longer, that may be true," went on Darrell. "I'm not saying Matson is the only fellow I could pick for centre field, and I'm not saying anything against any of the fellows on the scrub when I don't take them. We want the best team we can get to represent the Silver Stars and Matson is my choice for the place. If you want to go over my head----" "No! No!" came a chorus of objections. "It's all right!" "Then Matson plays Saturday," concluded the manager. "All of you be out for practice to-morrow afternoon again. Matson, report in uniform." "All right," and Joe's heart was fairly thumping under his coat. The chance he had longed for had come at last. As Sam was walking away Joe resolved on a bold stroke, rather a grandstand play as he confessed to himself afterward, but he could not forego it. Striding up to the disgruntled pitcher Joe held out his hand and asked: "Won't you shake?" Sam turned and faced him. For several seconds he stood staring Joe straight in the eyes while the crowd of boys looked on. Then with a sneer, and ignoring the proffered hand, Sam said: "I prefer to pick my own friends. I don't want them made for me." He turned on his heel and walked off. There was another period of silence like that following his protest. Then some one said: "Well, I'm glad I haven't got _his_ disposition." "What's that?" cried Sam angrily, and turning back he seemed about to rush at the throng he faced. "There now, that'll do!" exclaimed Darrell, who was anxious to avoid a scene. "Forget it, fellows. Sam, you get your arm good and limber for Saturday. We want to beat the Red Stockings by a big score to make up for what the Resolutes did to us last Saturday. I'm going to arrange for another game with them soon, and maybe we can turn the tables." "Sure we can!" cried several. "So limber up, Sam," the manager went on, "and have your arm in good shape." "It will be in bad shape if I get run down by any more amateur cyclists," sneered Sam as he looked meaningly at Joe, but no one made any further reference to the recent collision. At practice the next day Joe took his place with the regular Silver Star team, and he showed up well in the impromptu contest against the scrubs. He made several good catches, and though his stick work might have been improved, still it was pretty good, for the scrub pitcher was not to be despised. "I guess you'll do," complimented Darrell, at the close of the contest. "Keep it up, don't get rattled, and you'll be all right. I can see you've played before." "I guess I've got lots to learn yet," admitted Joe cheerfully. "Oh, we all have," assented the manager with a laugh. On the Saturday of the game with the Red Stockings, Joe was up early. He had overhauled his old uniform and gotten Clara to put a few needed stitches in it. He had it out on the clothes line in the back yard, beating some of the dust and dirt from it to freshen it up, when Tom hailed him from over the fence. "I say, Joe, what sort of a shirt have you got?" "Same one I used on the Bentville Boosters; that was the name of our nine." "I see. A good name all right, but it will look funny to see that in among the uniforms of the Silver Stars. Your stockings and pants will do, but the shirt----" and Tom paused suggestively. "That's so," admitted Joe. "I didn't think about that. It's a different color from yours, and I haven't time to get another." "Never mind!" called Tom. "I tell you what you can do. Use my shirt. It's the regular Star one, with the name on." "Won't you want it?" "No, I don't think I'm going to get a chance to play. Darrell will probably hold down first all through the game. If I have to go in I can borrow some other fellow's. But I want you to look right from the start." "Thanks," called Joe as Tom disappeared in the house to get his shirt. It fitted Joe well, and he arranged to get his own in time for the next game. "Say, there's a big crowd here all right!" exclaimed Joe, as he and Tom neared the enclosed diamond that afternoon, and saw the stands well filled. "Yes, so much the better. The Red Stockings always draw well. I hope we beat. Do your prettiest." "Sure I will. There's Sam warming up." "Yes, I hope he doesn't go up in the air. Better hurry up and get in practice." Joe ran out on the diamond, which was thronged with the home team and visiting players. Balls were being caught and batted about, and the new player was soon doing his share. "Now keep cool," Darrell advised him, "and above all don't have a row with Sam. I can't understand why he has such a grudge against you, but he has and there's no use letting it be known any more than it is." "I won't do or say anything if he doesn't," promised Joe. "But I'm not going to let him knock me down and then wipe his feet on me." "Of course not. I'll see that he's decent, anyhow. Well, I guess it's time we started. I see they have some new players. Maybe we won't beat them as easily as I hoped." The practice balls were called in, players were selecting their sticks, the batting order had been decided on, and the final arrangements made. "Play ball!" called the umpire, and the Silver Stars took the field. Joe walked out to centre. His heart was beating high. It was his first chance to show what he could do in a match game with his new team and he wanted to make good. But oh! how he longed to be in the pitching box occupied by Sam Morton! "Play ball!" called the umpire again, and Sam, "winding up," let fly a swift white ball toward the expectant batter. CHAPTER X A TIGHT CONTEST "Strike one!" yelled the young umpire, as the ball landed with a resounding thud in Bart Ferguson's big mitt. "That's the stuff!" called several in the crowd. "Send back the Reds with a whitewash brush," added another enthusiast. "I guess Sam's in form to-day," remarked Tom Davis to Rodney Burke near whom he sat. Tom was not playing, for Darrell was holding down the initial bag. "Wait a bit and see what happens along about the seventh inning," said Rodney. "Sam generally falls down then if he's going to." "Well, I hope he doesn't, that's all," said Tom, and then he gave all his attention to watching the game. "Ball one," was the next decision of the umpire. "Aw what's the matter with you?" cried Sam, starting toward home where Bart stood holding the ball. "That clipped the plate as good as any one would want. You'd better get a pair of glasses, Kern. You can't see straight." "I can see as well as you!" retorted Frank Kern, the umpire. "It wasn't anywhere near over the plate," retorted Jack King, the batter. "Aw, you don't know a good ball when you get one," snapped Sam. "I guess----" "That'll do now!" called Darrell sharply from first. "This isn't a kid game. Play ball. Don't be always kicking, Sam." "Who is always kicking?" demanded the pitcher, and it was evident to all that he was in unusually bad temper. "I hope it isn't on my account," thought Joe who, from his position in deep centre, was waiting for anything that might come his way. He had been told to play far out, for King was known as a heavy hitter. Sam received the ball from Bart with a scowl and wound up for the next delivery. Sam was a natural pitcher. That is, he had good control, as a rule, and he made his shoulder and back do most of the work of the pitching arm, as all professionals do. Still his unpleasant temper often made his efforts go to waste. "Strike two!" called the umpire this time, and there was no doubt about it for King had swung viciously at the ball. But Sam had sent in a puzzling little drop, and the knowledge that he had fooled a good batter brought a smile to his otherwise scowling face. "Here's where I get you!" he predicted. But alas for his hopes! The bat met the ball squarely and Sam had made the mistake of sending a fast ball to a heavy hitter enabling King to knock out a pretty three bagger. Far back as Joe had stationed himself he was not far enough and he had to turn and run after the horsehide. And how he did run! He was thinking desperately what would happen if he missed it! He made up his mind that he would not, yet it was not within the power of any one to get to the spot before the ball fell. Joe felt it graze the tips of his fingers as it rushed downward but that was all. He heard himself groan involuntarily in anguish as the ball hit the ground with a thud. He lost no time in idle regrets however, but picked it up and made a throw to third in time to hold King there, for the doughty player had a notion of continuing on home. "Good try old man!" yelled some spectators on the benches nearest Joe. He felt that his effort was somewhat appreciated but he wondered what Darrell would think of it. Sam was scowling again, whether at Joe's perfectly natural miss, or the fact that he was hit for three bases was impossible to guess. "Try for the next one," called Darrell cheerfully, and Sam did with such success that Bigney, who was second up for the Red Stockings, only pounded out a little drizzler that Sam quickly gathered in and threw to first. King was still held on third. Smart fanned out, and then came Steel, who, after knocking a couple of fouls, was fooled on a little in-shoot which made three out, King dying on third and the side being retired with no runs. "Oh, not so bad," said Sam as he walked in to the bench. "I guess we've got their number all right," assented Darrell. He saw Joe coming in from centre and the manager stopped to speak to him. "Nobody could have gotten that ball," he said, for he realized that the new player might blame himself unjustly. "I didn't think King had it in him, or I'd have told you to play out to the limit. He won't get you that way again." "I guess not!" exclaimed Joe heartily. The make up and batting order of the Silver Stars was the same as in the game with the Resolutes save that Joe was in Jed McGraw's place, and this brought him second to the bat. Potter was up first and managed to get a single. "Now, bring him in," commanded Darrell with a smile at Joe, as the latter picked out a bat. He was very nervous, as any lad would have been, playing his first game with a new team. He did want to make good! "I'll try," he said simply. Painter, the Red Stocking pitcher, had no phenomenal speed and his curves could not be depended on to break at the right places. Still he was a good "bluffer" and he made many a batter think that he was getting a very swift ball. Often it would look as though it was going to hit the man at the plate and he would instinctively step back, disconcerting his own aim. Joe let the first ball pass, and was somewhat surprised to have a strike called on him. But he did not kick, for, as a matter of fact, the horsehide had clipped the plate. "I'll get the next one," thought Joe grimly. Then Painter worked his usual trick, of throwing a ball close in, and Joe bent his body like a bow. "Strike two!" yelled the umpire and Joe felt a flash of anger. But he said nothing, and when the next ball came he swung viciously at it. He heard the heart-stirring ping! and, dropping his bat, he legged it for first as Potter darted to second. But Joe had not hit the ball nearly as hard as he thought he had, and the result was that the shortstop gathered it in, and, by a quick throw to first, caught our hero there. "Quick, to second!" yelled the coacher, but Potter dropped and slid, being counted safe. "One down, only two more!" yelled Murphy, captain and catcher of the "Reds," as they were called for short. Joe felt his face burning with shame as he walked back to the bench. "Humph! I thought we were going to see some wonders!" murmured Sam Morton sarcastically. "It's all right, Matson--it was an even chance, and you found the ball," said Darrell quickly. He knew the danger of a new player becoming discouraged. "Thanks," said Joe quietly. Lantry got a single which sent Potter to third, but the next two men struck out and with two men left on bases the Silver Stars had to take the field again with only a goose egg to their credit. The game ran along to the ending of the third inning with neither side getting a run. Each team made some scattering hits but the fielding was evenly good, and no one crossed the home plate. Joe made one fine catch in the beginning of the third and received a round of applause that did his heart good. Sam was pitching pretty good ball, occasionally being found for a two bagger, but any short-comings in this line were more than made up in the support he received from his mates. "It's going to be a tighter game than I thought it was," murmured Darrell, at the close of the fourth inning, when his side had managed to get in one run to tie the tally which the Reds had secured. "They've got a better team than I gave them credit for." "You don't think they're going to beat us, do you?" asked Sam anxiously. "I--well--I hope not," was the hesitating answer. "Does that mean you don't think I'm doing all I ought to?" demanded the pitcher defiantly. "Of course not. I know you wouldn't throw the game. Only I wish we could strike more of them out," and the manager looked anxiously over the field as his players were stationing themselves. "Wait and see what I do this inning," invited Sam. "Perhaps you want that new fellow to go in the box in my place." His voice was sneering now. "Who, Joe Matson?" asked Darrell quickly. "That's who I mean," replied Sam surlily. "Don't be foolish," was the manager's quiet answer. "You know he hasn't had any experience in the box--or at least enough to play on our team, though I think he'll make a good fielder. Now do your prettiest Sam. You can, you know." "All right," assented the pitcher, and once more the game was underway. The fifth inning was productive of one run for the Silver Stars and this after they had retired their rivals hitless, for Sam did some excellent pitching. There was a howl of delight as the first tally came in, making the score two to one in favor of our friends. And there was none out. "Now we ought to walk away from them," called Darrell to his players. Joe came up to bat and to his delight he got a single. He was advanced to second when the next player connected with the ball, and then followed some see-sawing on the part of the pitcher and the second baseman, in an endeavor to catch Joe napping. Once our hero thought he saw a good chance to steal third and he was about to take it when something warned him to come back. He did, and only just in time, for the pitcher threw to second. It was a close shave. Joe slid head foremost and as his fingers touched the bag the second baseman leaped up in the air to catch the ball which the pitcher had wildly thrown high. When the baseman came down, making a wild effort to touch Joe, the iron cleat of one shoe caught the little finger of Joe's left hand and cut it cruelly. The plucky centre fielder tried to stifle the groan of anguish that rose to his lips, but it was impossible. The baseman was aware of the accident. Dropping the ball he knelt over Joe. "I'm mighty sorry, old man!" he exclaimed. "Are you hurt much?" "No--no. I--I guess not," murmured Joe, and then all got black before his eyes, and there was a curious roaring in his ears. CHAPTER XI JOE'S RUN "Water here! Bring some water!" yelled Smart, who was holding down second base for the Reds. "He's fainted I guess." There was a rush of players toward Joe, and Darrell was the first to reach him. "What's the matter, old man?" he asked sympathetically. "I'm afraid I spiked him," answered Smart, ruefully. "I jumped for the ball, and came down on his hand I guess." "Too bad," murmured Darrell. They turned Joe over, for he was lying on his face, and saw his left hand covered with blood. "Where's that first-aid kit?" called Tom Davis, who had rushed on the field on seeing his friend hurt. "Here it is," answered Rodney Burke, who acted as the amateur surgeon on the few times his services had been required. "I'll bandage it up. Had we better get a doctor?" Meanwhile some water had been sprinkled in Joe's face and some forced between his lips. He opened his eyes as the others were washing the blood from his hand. "I--I'm all right," he murmured, as he strove to rise. "Now that's all right--you just lie still," commanded Darrell. "Look at it Rod, and see how bad it is." Fortunately the wound was not as serious as had at first seemed and when cleansed of dirt and blood it was seen to be a long cut, lengthwise of the finger. "I'll have that done up in a jiffy," remarked Rodney, who was not a little proud of his skill. His father was a physician, and had shown the son how to make simple bandages. The wound was cleansed with an antiseptic solution and wrapped in the long narrow strips of bandage cloth. Joe got to his feet while this was being done, and, after a little water containing aromatic spirits of ammonia had been given to him, he declared that he was all right. "Are you sure?" asked Darrell anxiously. "Sure, I'll bring in a run yet if some one knocks the ball far enough," said Joe with a smile, though it was rather a feeble one. "Nonsense, you can't run after that," exclaimed Murphy, the Red captain. "Give him a man," he added generously to his rival. "We don't care." "I think I had better send Newton down to run for you," said Captain Rankin. "But I'm going to play," insisted Joe. "Yes, next inning," he was assured, and the game went on. However, even the substitution of a runner in Joe's place availed nothing, as the side was soon afterward retired with the men expiring on bases, and the one run was all the Silver Stars could gather in. Still that made the score two to one in their favor. There was a big surprise in the next inning. The Reds came to bat full of confidence, and the first man up rapped out as pretty a three bagger as had been pulled off that day. It went to deep right field, for which Joe was thankful, as even with his finger protected by a bandage and a heavy glove on his hand, he felt that he would wince at catching a swift ball, and might possibly muff it. That was what the right fielder did, though he managed to pick it up quickly enough to prevent the player from going on in to home. Whether the fact of being hit for a long poke made Sam lose his temper, or the knowledge that part of his support consisted of a wounded player made him nervous, was not manifest, but the fact remains that the pitcher "went up in the air" after that. He gave one man his base on balls, and when the next player came up, and rapped out a two bagger the man at third went on in, and there was a man holding down third while one on second nearly made the bases full. "Easy now," cautioned Darrell to Sam. "Hold 'em down." "Um!" grunted Sam, and what he meant by it might be imagined, but he _did_ strike out the next two men. Then came a single which resulted in a tally being made, being the second run of the inning. Sam shut his teeth grimly. There were now two out and two men on bases and Sam felt his nerve leaving him. But by a strong effort he braced himself, and did the trick to the next man, stopping the winning streak of the Reds just in time. "Three to two against us," murmured Darrell as he looked at the score board when he and his mates came in for their turn at the bat. "That isn't going as I'd like to see it. Say, fellows, we've got to knuckle down if we want to pull this game out of the fire." "That's what," murmured George Rankin, and, perhaps involuntarily, he glanced at Sam. "Oh, I know what you fellows mean without you saying so!" snapped the pitcher. "I wish you'd keep your remarks to yourselves. I can pitch all right." "No one said you couldn't," declared Darrell gently. But it was very little that the Silver Stars could accomplish. Two men went down to inglorious defeat. The third knocked a nice single but died on first when the Red pitcher with seeming ease struck out the fourth batter. And it was not due so much that the visiting boxman had speed or curves, as to the fact that he could fool the batters with easy balls. "We seem to have struck a hoodoo," said Darrell in despairing tones as they took the field again. "Sam, our only hope is in you. Not a run for us this inning and they got two." "They won't get any more!" declared Sam savagely. He made good his boast, for not a man got beyond second, and of those who performed this feat there was but one. A big circle went up in the Red's frame for the ending of the first half of the seventh inning. But the Silver Stars fared no better, and for the next inning the result was the same, neither side being able to score. The tally was three runs to two in favor of the visitors when the ninth inning opened. The Silver Stars didn't like to think of that inning afterward. There were numerous errors, wild throws and muffs. Joe let a ball slip through his fingers when by holding it he might have prevented a run, but it happened to hit on the cut place, and the agony was such that he let out an exclamation of pain. But he was not the only one who sinned. Sam was "rotten," to quote Tom Davis, and "issued a number of passes." One man got to first by virtue of being hit and when the inning was over there were three runs in the Red's box. "Six to two against us," murmured Darrell. "It looks bad, fellows--it looks bad." Joe was first up to the bat. "Do you think you can hit?" asked the captain anxiously. "Oh, yes. I can hold my little finger away from the bat and I'll be all right." "Then hit for all you're worth," begged Darrell. "We need all we can get." Joe clenched his teeth grimly and made up his mind he would not be fooled as he had been several times before. The Red pitcher was smiling in a tantalizing way and Joe felt himself almost hating him for it. "I'm going to hit you! I'm going to hit you!" he found himself murmuring over and over again in his mind. And hit Joe did. The first delivery was a ball, but the second Joe knew was just where he wanted it. With all his force he swung at it and as he sped away toward first, with all the power of his legs he saw the horsehide sailing on a clean hit in a long, low drive over the centre fielder's head. Joe heard the ball strike the farther fence and a wild hope came into his heart that he might make a home run. "I'm going to do it! I'm going to do!" he whispered to himself as he turned first and sped like the wind for second base. Could he beat the ball in? That was what he was asking himself. That was what hundreds of frantic fans were asking themselves. CHAPTER XII DISCONTENT "Leg it, Joe! Leg it!" "Keep on! Keep on!" "He can't get you in time!" "A home run! A homer, old man!" "Keep a-going! Keep a-going!" These and other frantic appeals and bits of advice were hurled at Joe as he dashed madly on. He had a glimpse of the centre fielder racing madly after the ball, and then he felt for the first time that he really had a chance to make a home run. Still he knew that the ball travels fast when once thrown, and it might be relayed in, for he saw the second baseman running back to assist the centre fielder. "But I'm going to beat it!" panted Joe to himself. The grandstand and bleachers were now a mass of yelling excited spectators. There was a good attendance at the game, many women and girls being present, and Joe could hear their shrill voices mingling with the hoarser shouts of the men and boys. "Keep on! Keep on!" he heard yelled encouragingly at him. "That's the stuff, old man!" shouted Darrell, who was coaching at the third base line. "Shall I go in?" cried Joe as he turned the last bag. Darrell took a swift glance toward the field. He saw what Joe could not. The centre fielder instead of relaying in the ball by the second baseman (for the throw was too far for him), had attempted to get it to third alone. Darrell knew it would fall short. "Yes! Yes!" he howled. "Go on in, Joe! Go on in!" And Joe went. Just as the manager had anticipated, the ball fell short, and the pitcher who had run down to cover second had to run out of the diamond to get it. It was an error in judgment, and helped Joe to make his sensational run. He was well on his way home now, but the pitcher had the ball and was throwing it to the catcher. "Slide, Joe! Slide!" yelled Darrell above the wild tumult of the other players and the spectators. Joe kept on until he knew a slide would be effective and then, dropping like a shot, he fairly tore through the dust, feet first, toward home plate. His shoes covered it as the ball came with a thud into the outstretched hands of the catcher. "Safe!" yelled the umpire, and there was no questioning his decision. "Good play!" yelled the crowd. "That's the stuff, old man!" exclaimed Darrell, rushing up and clapping Joe on the back. "A few more like that and the game will either go ten innings or we'll have it in the ice-box for ourselves," commented Captain Rankin gleefully. But the hopes of the Silver Stars were doomed to disappointment. Try as the succeeding men did to connect with the ball, the best that could be knocked out was a single, and that was not effective, for the man who did it was caught attempting to steal second and two others were struck out. That ended the game, Joe's solitary run being the only one tallied up, and the final score was three to six in favor of the Red Stockings. "Three cheers for the Silver Stars!" called the captain of the successful nine and they were given with right good feeling. "Three cheers for the Red Stockings," responded Darrell. "They were too much for us," and the cheers of the losers were none less hearty than those of their rivals. "And three cheers for the fellow who made the home run!" added a Red Stocking player, and our hero could not help blushing as he was thus honored. "It was all to the pepper-castor, old man," complimented Darrell. "We didn't put up a very good game, but you sort of stand out among the other Stars." "And I suppose the rest of us did rotten!" snarled Sam Morton as he walked past. "Well, to be frank, I think we _all_ did," spoke Darrell. "I'm not saying that Joe didn't make any errors, for he did. But he made the only home run of the game, and that's a lot." "Oh, yes, I suppose so," sneered the disgruntled pitcher. "You'll be blaming me next for the loss of the game." "Nothing of the sort!" exclaimed Darrell quickly. "I think we've all got to bear our share of the defeat. We ought to have played better, and we've got to, if we don't want to be at the tail end of the county league." "And that means that I've got to do better pitching, I suppose?" sneered Sam. "It means we've _all_ got to do better work," put in Captain Rankin. "You along with the rest of us, Sam. You know you were pretty well batted to-day." "Any fellow is likely to be swatted once in a while. Look at some of the professionals." "I'm not saying they're not," admitted the captain. "What I do say is that we've all got to perk up. We've got to take a brace, and I'm not sparing myself. We're not doing well." "No, that's right," admitted several other players. In fact there was a general feeling of discontent manifested, and it was very noticeable. Darrell Blackney was aware of it, and he hoped it would not spread, for nothing is so sure to make a team slump as discontent or dissatisfaction. "Oh, Joe!" exclaimed a girl's voice, and he turned to see his sister walking toward him over the field. "That was a fine run you made." She had two other girls with her and Joe, who was a bit bashful, turned to execute a retreat. "I believe you never met my brother," went on Clara, and there was a trace of pride in her tone. "Miss Mabel Davis," said Clara, presenting her to Joe, "and Miss Helen Rutherford." "I've heard my sister speak of you," murmured the young centre fielder. "And I've heard my brother speak of _you_," said Mabel, and Joe was conscious that he was blushing. "I've got to wash up now," he said, not knowing what to talk about when two pretty girls, to say nothing of his own sister, were staring at him. "Does your hand hurt you much?" asked Mabel. "No--it's only a scratch," said Joe, not with a strict regard for the truth. "Oh, I thought I'd faint when I saw you lying there so still," spoke Clara with a little shudder. "So did I," added Helen, and then Joe made his escape before they could "fuss" over him any more. There was considerable talk going on in the dressing room when Joe entered. He could hear the voice of Sam Morton raised in high and seemingly angry tones. "Well, I'm not going to stand for it!" the pitcher said. "Stand for what?" asked Darrell in surprise. "Being accused of the cause for the loss of this game!" "No one accuses you," put in the captain. "You might as well say it as look it," retorted Sam. "I tell you I won't stand for it. Just because that new fellow made a home run you're all up in the air about him, and for all the hard work I do, what do I get for it? Eh? Nothing, that's what!" "Now, look here," said Darrell soothingly, "you know you're talking foolishly, Sam." "I am not!" cried the pitcher petulantly. "Either Joe Matson leaves the team or I do, and you can have my resignation any time you want it!" CHAPTER XIII SCIENTIFIC PRACTICE There was a period of silence following Sam's offer of his resignation, and no one seemed to know just what to say. Several of the lads glanced at Joe, as if expecting him to say something in his own defense. In fact the young centre fielder was about to speak but he did not get the chance, for Sam exclaimed again: "Well, do you want my resignation, Darrell?" "You know I don't!" declared the manager. "Then things have got to be changed!" "Look here!" burst out Darrell. "I've stood about all I'm going to from you, Sam Morton. There has got to be a change in this team." "That's just what I'm giving you a chance to make," the pitcher fairly sneered. "You can fill my place any time you like." "But I'm not going to," and though Darrell spoke pleasantly there was a sternness in his words. "Fellows, it's like this," he went on. "The Silver Stars are a good team and you know it. So does every one in this town, but the last two games we've played in hard luck, and----" "Do you mean to say it was my pitching?" demanded Sam. "No more than it was the way we all played. As I said, we've got to take a brace. I don't know what's gotten into you, Sam, to say you'll resign if Joe Matson plays. What have you against him?" "Well, I hate to see a newcomer made so much of. Here we fellows have worked hard all season, and----" "And you're going to work hard the _rest_ of the season!" exclaimed Darrell. "Let me tell you that! I'm not going to hear any more talk of resignations, and this bickering has got to stop. Otherwise we'll be the laughing stock of the county. You all played pretty well to-day, but you all need to do better." "All but Matson; I suppose he's the star," sneered Sam. "Look here," burst out Joe, unable to stand the taunts of the pitcher any longer, "if you think----" "Now, go easy," advised Darrell with a smile. "I'm giving this little lecture. I give Matson due credit for one of the three runs we got," he went on, "but that's not saying that he didn't make errors. We all did. "Oh, fellows!" he pleaded and they could see that he was very much in earnest, "let's get together and wallop every nine we play against from now on! Take a brace. Forget all this feeling and get together. Matson and Morton, I want you to shake hands, will you?" "I'm willing," assented Joe eagerly, advancing toward Sam. The latter hesitated a moment and then, feeling the eyes of all in the dressing room on him, he mumbled: "Well, as long as you don't think he's the star of the Stars, I'll shake. Maybe I was a bit hasty," he went on, and this was a great deal for Sam Morton to admit. He and Joe shook hands, though it cannot be said that there was any warmth on the part of the pitcher. Still it was better than open enmity, though Joe wondered if Sam would be really friendly. "That's better," commented the manager with something like a sigh of relief. "And don't let this go any further," suggested the captain. "We don't want it known that there came near being a break in the Stars. Now get together, fellows. Show up at practice strong next time, and we'll win our next game!" "That's the way to talk!" cried Tom Davis, and the crisis was passed--for a time. And, to the delight of Joe, he found that he had made many new friends, chiefly because of his sensational run. The members of the team, of course, crowded around him congratulating him, and asking him how he did it. But, in addition, there now flocked into the dressing room a crowd of lads who had witnessed the game. Some of them were high school pupils who knew Joe, at least by sight, but they now came up and spoke to him. Other town lads did the same thing. "Gee! It's great to be popular!" exclaimed Tom, with a mock sigh. "Why wasn't I born a home-run hitter instead of good looking, I wonder?" "Get out!" laughed Joe. "Don't make me get a swelled head." "No danger, I guess," retorted Tom. Darrell and the captain strolled up to Joe, who had finished dressing. "Well, that's over, for a while," said Darrell in a low voice, evidently referring to the unpleasant little incident. "I want to ask you to do some practicing, Matson. You need to try throwing a bit, for it's a long heave in from centre field and, to be frank, you aren't any too good at it." "I'll practice every day," exclaimed our hero eagerly. "And I'll coach him," added Tom. "Get out, you lobster, you need coaching yourself," said the captain with a laugh. "You'll get rusty if Darrell doesn't get off first and give you a chance." "I'll do it more often now," said the manager. "I want to be more on the coaching line. Two wallops in two weeks is more than the Stars can stand." "Who do we play next week?" asked Tom. "The Denville Whizzers, but I don't imagine we'll have much trouble with them," said the manager. "However, it won't do to take any chances. Practice hard, fellows," and with that he left the dressing room. Sam Morton had gone out some time before and Joe and Tom soon followed. As they strolled down the street toward their homes Tom said: "Say Joe, I was in earnest in saying I'd coach you. I believe you do need practice in throwing, and if you haven't given up the idea of pitching some day----" "I'll never give up the idea until I'm knocked out of the box," declared Joe. "Good! Then I'll help coach you. I was going to say it wasn't much fun practicing alone, and as a matter of fact it doesn't do much good." "What do you mean?" "Well, I've been reading up about baseball lately. I got a book on pitching, and----" "Say, will you lend it to me?" asked Joe eagerly. "Or tell me where I can buy one?" "Sure I will. I was going to say that it has articles in it by star professional pitchers and a lot of them agree that it isn't much use just to go out and throw a ball at a spot on the backstop or the fence." "What's the best way then?" asked Joe, who had supposed from his limited knowledge that to practice at hitting a certain spot with the ball was about the best he could do. "Why, they say the best is to get something like a home plate--a flat stone say--and pitch over it with some one to catch for you." "I suppose that would be a good way," began Joe doubtfully, "but who's going to catch for me?" "I am!" exclaimed Tom quickly. "I said just now that I'd coach you. I'll do more than that, I'll catch for you. And the book I spoke of has other tricks of practice, so a fellow can get good control of a ball. That's the thing pitchers need it says--control. Say, we'll have some fun, you and I, down in a vacant lot practicing. When can you come?" "How about Monday afternoon?" "Suits me first rate." "All right, we'll make it then, and we'll get in some scientific practice for you. Maybe after all, you'll pitch in Sam's place before the season is over." "I wouldn't want to do it, if it's going to make a row in the team." "Oh, don't let that worry you. Lots of the fellows don't like Sam any too well. They'd as soon have some one else in the box if he could deliver the goods. Well, so long; see you Monday, if not before." "I guess I'm glad dad moved to Riverside after all," mused Joe as he walked toward home. "I was afraid I wouldn't like it at first, but now I'm on the team it's all right. I hope dad doesn't have any business troubles though. I wonder what is wrong for I'm sure something is. I hope it doesn't prevent me from going to boarding school next year," and with this reflection Joe went in the house. CHAPTER XIV A KETTLE OF APPLE SAUCE "Well, Joe, are you all ready?" It was Tom Davis, and he had called at Joe's house on his way from school, as Tom had to remain in physics class to finish an experiment, and Joe had gone on ahead. "I sure am, Tom. Where are we going to practice? Over on the fairgrounds?" "No, that's too far. We'll go down in the vacant lots back of Mrs. Peterkin's house. There's a high fence back of her house and that will be a good backstop, in case I can't hold your hot ones." "Oh, I guess you can all right," replied Joe with a laugh, "though I wish I did have lots of speed." "Say now, don't make that mistake," said Tom earnestly, as Joe came out to join him, having picked up some old balls and a pitcher's glove. "What mistake?" "Trying for speed before you have control. I saw an article about that in the pitching book last night. I brought it along. Here it is," and both boys looked eagerly over the book as they walked along. As Tom had said, some of the best authorities on pitching did advocate the trying for control before a prospective boxman endeavored to get either speed or curves. "The thing seems to be," remarked Joe, "to get a ball just where you want it, ten times out of ten if you can, and then when you can do that, try for the in and out shoots and the drop." "That's it," agreed Tom. "Are you any good at throwing stones?" "I don't know. Why?" "Well, one fellow says that the lad who can throw a stone straight can generally throw a ball straight. We'll have a contest when we get down to the lots. Nobody will see us there." "I hope not," remarked Joe. "I don't want to be laughed at the way I was when Sam caught me down at the fairgrounds. I guess he thought I was trying for his place then, and that's what made him mad." The two friends were soon down behind the high board fence that marked the boundaries of the Peterkin property. It was rather a large place--the Peterkin one--and was occupied by an aged couple. Mrs. Alvirah Peterkin was quite a housewife, always engaged in some kitchen or other household duties, while Ebenezer, her husband "puttered" around the garden, as the folks of Riverside expressed it. "Well, I guess we're all ready," remarked Tom, when he had picked out a large flat stone to represent home plate. He took his position behind it, with his back to the fence, so that if any balls got by him they would hit the barrier and bound back. Joe began to pitch, endeavoring to bear in mind what the book had said about getting the balls where he wanted them. "That was pretty far out from the plate," called Tom dubiously, after one effort on the part of his chum. "I know it was. Here's a better one." "Good! That's the stuff. It was a strike all right--right over the middle. Keep it up." For a time Joe kept this up, pitching at moderate speed, and then the temptation to "cut loose" could not be resisted. He "wound up" as he had seen professional pitchers do and let the ball go. With considerable force it went right through Tom's hands and crashed up against the fence with a resounding bang. It was the first ball Tom had let get past him. "That was a hot one all right!" the catcher called, "but it was away out." "All right, I'll slow down again," said Joe. He was a little disappointed that he could not combine speed and accuracy. The boys were about to resume their practice when a face, fringed with a shock of white hair on top, and a little ring of whiskers encircling it below, was raised over the edge of the fence, and a mild voice demanded: "What you boys up to now--tryin' to knock down my fence?" "Oh, hello, Mr. Peterkin," called Tom. "We're just playing baseball--that's all." "Where's the rest of ye?" the old man wanted to know. "This is all there are of us," replied Tom, waving his hand toward Joe. "Humph! Fust time I ever heard of two boys playin' a ball game all by themselves," commented the aged man with a chuckle. "But I s'pose it's one of them new-fangled kind. Land sakes, what th' world a-comin' t' anyhow, I'd like t' know? Wa'al, keep on, only don't knock any boards offen my fence," he stipulated as he resumed the making of his garden. The boys laughingly promised and resumed their practice. Tom was a good catcher and he had an accurate eye. He did not hesitate to tell Joe when the balls were bad and he was a severe critic, for he had taken an honest liking to the newcomer, and wanted to see him succeed. "Just try for control," was the gist of his advice. "The rest if it will take care of itself." "Don't you want to pitch and let me catch for you?" asked Joe after a bit, fearing that he was somewhat selfish. "No, I don't specially need any practice at throwing," said Tom. "First is my position. I like it better than any other, and catching is the best practice I can have for that. Keep it up." So Joe kept on, using moderate speed after the warning of Mr. Peterkin, so that no more balls struck the fence. But then again came the almost irresistible desire to put on "steam," and indulging in this Joe sent in another "hot one." Almost the instant it left his hand Joe realized that he had lost control of the ball and that it was going wild. He instinctively reached out to pull it back, but it was too late. "Grab it!" he yelled to Tom. The plucky little first baseman made a magnificent jump up in the air, but the ball merely grazed the tip of his up-stretched glove. Then it went on over the fence at undiminished speed. An instant later there was the cry of alarm. "Who did that?" demanded the voice--a voice full of anger. "Who threw that ball? Oh! Oh! Of all things! I demand to know who did it?" Joe and Tom were silent--looking blankly one at the other. Up over the fence rose the mild and bewhiskered face of Mr. Peterkin. "Boys," asked the aged man gently. "Did anything happen? It sounds like it to me." "I--I threw the ball over the fence," admitted Joe. "Hum! Then I'm afraid something _did_ happen," went on Mr. Peterkin still more gently. "Yes, I'm _sure_ of it," he added as the sound of some one coming down the garden path could be heard. "Here comes Alvirah. Something has happened. Do--do you want to run?" he asked, for rumor had it that Mrs. Peterkin was possessed of no gentle temper and Mr. Peterkin--well, he was a very mild-mannered man, every one knew that. "Do you want to run?" he asked again. "No," said Tom. "Of course not," added Joe. "If we broke a window we'll pay for it--I'll pay for it," he corrected himself, for he had thrown the ball. Mrs. Peterkin advanced to where her husband was working in the garden. The boys could not see the lady but they could hear her. "You didn't throw that ball, did you, Ebenezer?" she asked. "If you did--at your age--cutting up such foolish tricks as playing baseball--I--I'll----" "No, Alvirah, I didn't do it, of course not," Mr. Peterkin hastened to say. "It was a couple of boys. Tom Davis and a friend of his. They were playing ball back of the fence and----" "And they've run off now, I'll venture!" exclaimed the rasping voice of Mrs. Peterkin. "No--no, I don't think so, Alvirah," said Mr. Peterkin mildly. "I--I rather think they're there yet. I asked 'em if they didn't want to run and----" "You--asked them--if--they--didn't--want--to--run?" gasped Mrs. Peterkin, as if unable to believe his words. "Why, the very--idea!" "Oh, I knew they'd pay for any damage they did," said her husband quickly, "and I--er--I sort of thought--well, anyhow they're over there," and he pointed to the fence. "Let me see them! Let me talk to them!" demanded Mrs. Peterkin. "Stand on that soap box an' ye kin see over the fence," said Mr. Peterkin. "But look out. The bottom is sort of soft an' ye may----" He did not finish his sentence. The very accident he feared had happened. Mrs. Peterkin, being a large and heavy woman, had stepped in the middle of the box. The bottom boards, being old, had given way and there she was--stuck with both feet in the soap box. "Ebenezer!" she cried. "Help me! Don't you know any better than to stand there staring at me? Haven't you got any senses?" "Of course I'll help you, Alvirah," he said. "I rather thought you'd go through that box." "Then you'd no business to let me use it!" she snapped. "It allers held _me_ up when I wanted to look over the fence," he said mildly. "But then of course I never stepped in the middle of it," he added as he helped his wife pull aside the broken boards so she could step out. "I kept on the edges." "Have those boys gone?" she demanded when free. "I don't think so. I'll look," he volunteered as he turned the soap box up on edge and peered over the fence. "No, they're here yet," he answered as he saw Joe and Tom standing there, trying their best not to laugh. "Was you wantin' to speak with 'em, Alvirah?" "Speak with them! Of course I do!" she cried. "Tell them to come around to the side gate. I'll _speak_ to them," and she drew herself up like an angry hen. "Did--did they smash a window?" asked Mr. Peterkin. "Smash a window? I only wish it was no worse than that!" cried his wife. "They threw their nasty baseball into a kettle of apple sauce that was stewing on the stove, and the sauce splashed all over my clean kitchen. Tell them to come around. I'll _speak_ to them!" "I--I guess you'd better come in, boys," said Mr. Peterkin softly, as he delivered the message over the fence. Then he added--but to himself--"Maybe you might better have run while you had the chance." "We're in for it I guess," murmured Tom, as he and Joe went around to the side gate. CHAPTER XV JOE OVERHEARS SOMETHING "Are you the boys who threw the baseball through my kitchen window into my kettle of apple sauce?" demanded Mrs. Peterkin, as she confronted the two culprits. "I threw it," admitted Joe. "But we didn't know it went into the apple sauce," added Tom. "Nor through the window," spoke Joe for want of something better to say. "It was a wild throw." "Humph!" exclaimed the irate lady. "I don't know what kind of a throw it was but I know _I_ was wild when I saw my kitchen. I never saw such a sight in all my born days--never! You come and look at it." "If--if you please I'd rather not," said Joe quickly. "I'll pay you whatever damages you say, but I--I----" "I just want you to see that kitchen!" insisted Mrs. Peterkin. "It's surprising how mischievous boys can be when they try." "But we didn't try," put in Tom. "This was an accident." "Come and see my kitchen!" repeated Mrs. Peterkin firmly and she seemed capable of taking them each by an ear and leading them in. "You--you'd better go," advised Mr. Peterkin gently. So they went, and truly the sight that met their eyes showed them that Mrs. Peterkin had some excuse for being angry. On the stove there had been cooking a large kettle of sauce made from early apples. The window near the stove had been left open and through the casement the ball, thrown with all Joe's strength, had flown, landing fairly into the middle of the soft sauce. The result may easily be imagined. It splattered all over the floor, half way up on the side walls, and there were even spots of the sauce on the ceiling. The top of the stove was covered with it, and as the lids were hot they had burned the sugar to charcoal, while the kitchen was filled with smoke and fumes. "There!" cried Mrs. Peterkin, as she waved her hand at the scene of ruin. "Did you ever see such a kitchen as that? And it was clean scrubbed only this morning! Did you ever see anything like that? Tell me!" Joe and Tom were both forced to murmur that they had never beheld such a sight before. And they added with equal but unexpressed truth that they hoped they never would again. "I'm willing to pay for the damage," said Joe once more, and his hand went toward his pocket. "It was an accident." "Maybe it was," sniffed Mrs. Peterkin. "I won't say that it wasn't, but that won't clean my kitchen." Joe caught at these words. "I'm willing to help you clean up!" he exclaimed eagerly. "I often help at home when my mother is sick. Let me do it, and I'll pay for the apple sauce I spoiled." "I'll help," put in Tom eagerly. "Who is your mother?" asked Mrs. Peterkin, looking at Joe. "Mrs. Matson," he replied. "Oh, you're the new family that moved into town?" and there was something of a change in the irate lady's manner. "Yes, we live in the big yellow house near----" "It's right back of our place, Mrs. Peterkin," put in Tom eagerly. "Hum! I've been intending to call on your mother," went on Mrs. Peterkin, ignoring Tom. "I always call on all the new arrivals in town, but I've been so busy with my housework and Spring cleaning----" She paused and gazed about the kitchen. _That_, at least, would need cleaning over again. "Yes," she resumed, "I always call and invite them to join our Sewing and Dorcas Societies." "My mother belonged to both!" exclaimed Joe eagerly. "That is in Bentville where we lived. I heard her saying she wondered if there was a society here." "There is," answered Mrs. Peterkin majestically, "and I think I shall call soon, and ask her to join. You may tell her I said so," she added as if it was a great honor. "I will," answered Joe. "And now if you'll tell me where I can get some old cloths I'll help clean up this muss." "Oh, I don't know," said Mrs. Peterkin slowly. Clearly her manner had undergone a great change. "I suppose boys must have their fun," she said with something like a sigh. "I know you didn't mean to do it, but my apple sauce is spoiled." "I'll pay for it," offered Joe eagerly. He was beginning to see a rift in the trouble clouds. "No," said Mrs. Peterkin, "it's all right. I have plenty more apples." "Then let us help clean the place?" asked Tom. "No, indeed!" she exclaimed, with as near a laugh as she ever indulged. "I don't want any men folks traipsing around my kitchen. I'll clean it myself." "Well, let us black the stove for you," offered Tom. "That's it, Alvirah," put in Mr. Peterkin quickly. He rather sided with the boys, and he was glad that the mention of Joe's mother, and the possibility of Mrs. Peterkin getting a new member for the societies, of both of which she was president, had taken her mind off her desire for revenge. "Let the boys black the stove. You know you always hate that work." "Well, I suppose they could do _that_," she admitted somewhat reluctantly. "But don't splatter it all over, though the land knows this kitchen can't be worse." Behold then, a little later, two of the members of the Silver Star nine industriously cleaning hardened apple sauce off the Peterkin kitchen stove, and blackening it until it shone brightly. "I'm glad Sam Morton can't see us," spoke Tom in a whisper. "Yes; we'd never hear the last of it," agreed Joe. They finished the work and even Mrs. Peterkin, careful housekeeper that she was, admitted that the stove "looked fairly good." "And be sure and tell your mother that I'm coming to call on her," she added, as Joe and Tom were about to leave. "Yes, ma'am," answered the centre fielder, and then he paused on the threshold of the kitchen. "Have you forgotten something?" asked Mrs. Peterkin, who was preparing to give the place a thorough scrubbing. "We--er--that is----" stammered Joe. "It's their baseball, I guess," put in Mr. Peterkin. "It is in the kettle of apple sass, Alvirah." "Oh, yes; so it is," she agreed, and this time she really laughed. "Well, you may have it," she added. "I don't want it." With a dipper she fished it up from the bottom of the kettle, put it under the water faucet to clean it, and held it out to Joe. "Thanks," he said as he took it and hurried off with Tom, before anything more could be said. "Whew!" exclaimed Tom, when they were out in the lots again. "That was a hot time while it lasted. And we got out of it mighty lucky, thanks to your mother. Mrs. Peterkin is great on the society business, and I guess she thought if she gave it to us too hot your mother wouldn't call on her. Yes, we were lucky all right. Want to practice some more?" "Not to-day," replied Joe with a smile. "I've had enough. Besides, this ball is all wet and slippery. Anyhow there's lots more time, and I guess the next day we do it we'll go down to the fairgrounds." "Yes, there's more room there, and no kettles of apple sauce," agreed Tom, with a laugh. As Tom had an errand to do down town for his father he did not accompany Joe back to their respective homes. "I'll see you to-night," he called to his chum, as they parted, "and we'll arrange for some more practice. I think it's doing you good." "I know my arm is a bit sore," complained Joe. "Then you want to take good care of it," said Tom quickly. "All the authorities in the book say that a pitching arm is too valuable to let anything get the matter with it. Bathe it with witch hazel to-night." "I will. So long." As Joe had not many lessons to prepare that night, and as it was still rather early and he did not want to go home, he decided to take a little walk out in the country for a short distance. As he trudged along he was thinking of many things, but chief of all was his chances for becoming at least a substitute pitcher on the Silver Stars. "If I could get in the box, and was sure of going to boarding school, I wouldn't ask anything else in this world," said Joe to himself. Like all boys he had his ambitions, and he little realized how such ambitions would change as he became older. But they were sufficient for him now. Before he knew it he had covered several miles, for the day was a fine Spring one, just right for walking, and his thoughts, being subject to quick changes, his feet kept pace with them. As he made a turn in the road he saw, just ahead of him, an old building that had once, so some of the boys had told him, been used as a spring-house for cooling the butter and milk of the farm to which it belonged. But it had now fallen into disuse, though the spring was there yet. The main part of it was covered by the shed, but the water ran out into a hollowed-out tree trunk where a cocoanut shell hung as a dipper. "Guess I'll have a drink," mused Joe. "I'm as dry as a fish and that's fine water." He had once taken some when he and Tom Davis took a country stroll. As he was sipping the cool beverage he heard inside the old shed the murmur of voices. "Hum! Tramps I guess," reasoned Joe to himself. But a moment later he knew it could not be tramps for the words he heard were these: "And do you think you can get control of the patents?" "I'm sure of it," was the answer. "He doesn't know about the reverting clause in his contract, and he's working on a big improvement in a corn----" Then the voice died away, though Joe strained his ears in vain to catch the other words. Somehow he felt vaguely uneasy. "Where have I heard that first voice before?" he murmured, racking his brains. Then like a flash it came to him. The quick, incisive tones were those of Mr. Rufus Holdney, of Moorville, to whom he had once gone with a letter from Mr. Matson. "And if you can get the patents," went on Mr. Holdney, "then it means a large sum of money." "For both of us," came the eager answer, and Joe wondered whom the other man could be. "You are sure there won't be any slip-up?" asked Mr. Holdney. "Positively. But come on. We've been here long enough and people might talk if they saw us here together. Yet I wanted to have a talk with you in a quiet place, and this was the best one I could think of. I own this old farm." "Very well, then I'll be getting back to Moorville. Be sure to keep me informed how the thing goes." "I will." There was a movement inside the shed as if the men were coming out. "I'd better make myself scarce," thought Joe. He had just time to drop down behind a screen of bushes when the two men did emerge. Joe had no need to look to tell who one was, but he was curious in regard to the other. Cautiously he peered up, and his heart almost stopped beating as he recognized Mr. Isaac Benjamin, the manager of the Royal Harvester Works where the boy's father was employed. "There's some crooked work on hand, I'll bet a cookie!" murmured Joe, as he crouched down again while the two men walked off up the country road. CHAPTER XVI MR. MATSON IS ALARMED Joe Matson did not know what to do. He wanted to rush away from where he was concealed, get home as quickly as possible, and tell his father what he had overheard. While Mr. Matson's name had not been mentioned, knowing, as Joe did, that his parent was engaged on some patents, seeing Mr. Benjamin, manager of the Harvester works, and having heard the conversation between him and Mr. Holdney, the lad was almost certain that some danger threatened his father. "And yet I can't get away from here until they're well out of sight," reasoned Joe. "If I go now they'll see or hear me, and they'll be bound to suspect something. Yet I'd like to warn dad as soon as I can. There's no telling when they may put up some job against him." But Joe could only crouch down there and wait. At length he could stand it no longer. He reasoned that the men must be far enough away by this time to make it safe for him to emerge. "They're on the road to Riverside," thought Joe, "and I may run into them, but if I see them I can slip into the fields and go around. Mr. Benjamin doesn't know me, for he's hardly ever noticed me when I've been to the Harvester works to see dad. But Mr. Holdney might remember me. I can't take any chances." Cautiously he emerged from the bushes, and looked as far down the road as he could. There was no one in sight, and he started off. A little distance farther on, the road made a sharp turn and, just at the angle stood an old barn which hid the rest of the highway from sight until one was right at the turn. It was a dangerous place for vehicles, but the owner of the barn had refused to set it back. No sooner had Joe turned this corner than he came full upon Mr. Benjamin and Mr. Holdney standing just around the barn, apparently in deep conversation. At the sight of Joe they looked up quickly, and Mr. Benjamin exclaimed: "Ha! Perhaps this lad can tell us. We want to hire a carriage. Do you know any one around here who would let us take one for a short time?" Joe, who had started back at the unexpected sight of the two men, took courage on hearing this, and realizing that he had not yet been recognized. "I don't know any one around here," he said. "I'm pretty much of a stranger myself, but have you tried at this farmhouse?" and he pointed toward the one where the owner of the barn lived. "Oh, we don't want a farm horse!" exclaimed Mr. Holdney. "We want something that has some speed." Then, as he looked more fully at Joe he exclaimed: "Haven't I seen you somewhere before, my lad? I'm sure I have!" He took a step toward our hero, and Joe's heart gave a flutter. He was almost certain that Mr. Holdney would recognize him and then the next step would be to ask where he had been. The men might at once suspect that he had at least come past the place where they had been talking in secret, and they might even suspect that he had listened to them. Joe was in a predicament. "I'm sure I've met you somewhere before," went on Mr. Holdney, in his quick, nervous tones. "Do you live around here?" "Yes," answered Joe vaguely. "But I don't know where you could get a fast horse unless it's in town--in Riverside." He was about to pass on, hoping the men would not further bother him, when Mr. Holdney, coming a step nearer, said with great firmness: "I'm sure I've seen you before. What's your name?" Like a flash a way out of it came to Joe, and that without telling an untruth. "I play on the Silver Stars," he said quickly. "You may have seen me at some of the games," which was perfectly possible. "That's it!" exclaimed Mr. Holdney. "I knew it was somewhere. Now----" "I'm going into Riverside," went on Joe quickly. "If you like I'll stop at the livery stable and tell them to send out a rig for you if you want to wait here for it." "The very thing!" exclaimed Mr. Benjamin. "Let him do that, Rufus. Here's a quarter to pay for your trouble, my lad." "No, thank you!" exclaimed Joe with a laugh. "I'm glad to do you a favor." "All right," assented Mr. Benjamin. "If you'll send out a two-seated carriage and a man to drive it we'll be obliged to you. Then we can drive over and see Duncan," he added to Mr. Holdney. "We'll fix this thing all up now." "Yes, and if it's my father you're trying to 'fix,'" mused Joe, "I'll do my best to put a stop to it. Now, it's up to me to hurry home," and telling the men that he would do the errand for them, the lad hastened off down the road, leaving the two conspirators in earnest conversation. The livery stable keeper readily agreed to send out the carriage, and then Joe lost no time in hurrying to his house. "Has father come home yet?" he asked of his mother, for sometimes Mr. Matson came from the harvester works earlier than the regular stopping time. "No," answered Mrs. Matson, "why, what is the matter, Joe? Has anything happened?" for she noticed by his face that something out of the usual had occurred. "Oh, I don't know," he answered slowly. He was revolving in his mind whether or not he ought to tell his mother. Then, as he recollected that his father always consulted her on business matters, he decided that he would relate his experience. "Mother," he said, "isn't father interested in some sort of a patent about corn?" "About corn? Oh, I know what you mean. Yes, he is working on an improvement to a corn reaper and binder. It is a machine partly owned by the harvester people, but he expects to make considerable money by perfecting the machine. It is very crude now, and doesn't do good work." "And if he does perfect it, and some one gets the patents away from him, he _won't_ make the money!" exclaimed Joe. "Joe, what do you mean?" cried his mother in alarm. "I am sure something has happened. What is it?" "It hasn't happened yet, but it may any time," answered the lad, and then he told of what he had overheard, and his ideas of what was pending. "That's why I wanted to see father in a hurry, to warn him," he concluded. "Joe, I believe you're right!" exclaimed Mrs. Matson. "Your father ought to be told at once. I don't know what he can do--if anything--to prevent these men getting ahead of him. Oh, it's too bad! I know he always suspected Mr. Benjamin of not being strictly honest, but Mr. Holdney used to be his friend and on several occasions has loaned your father money. Oh, this is too bad, but perhaps it isn't too late. If I were you I'd go down toward the harvester works and you may meet father coming home. Then you can tell him all about it, and he may want to go back and get some of his papers, or parts of the machine, from his office so those men can't take them." "That's the very thing, mother!" cried Joe. "You ought to have been a man--or a boy and a baseball player! You can think so quickly. That reminds me; I had quite an experience to-day. Just say 'apple sauce' to me when I get back, and I'll tell you all about it." "It can't be possible!" exclaimed Mr. Matson, when Joe, having met him just outside the harvester works, told him of what he had heard. "It hardly seems possible that they would do such a thing. But I'm glad you told me, Joe." "Do you think they meant you, dad? I didn't hear them mention your name." "Of course they meant me!" declared Mr. Matson. "The warning came just in time, too, for only to-day I finished an important part of the machinery and the pattern of it is in my office now. I must go back and get it. Wait here for me." As Joe stood at the outer gate of the big harvester plant he heard the sound of a carriage approaching, and turning around he saw Mr. Benjamin and Mr. Holdney coming along in the rig Joe had had sent out to them only a little while before. "I thought better to drive back here first, and go see Duncan later," Mr. Benjamin was saying, and then both men caught sight of our hero. CHAPTER XVII A THROWING CONTEST "Ha!" exclaimed Mr. Benjamin. "There's that same lad again!" "What lad?" quickly demanded Mr. Holdney. "Oh, the one who sent us out this rig. I wonder----" "Did you want to see any one around the works?" interrupted Mr. Benjamin. "I don't want to seem impolite, after the service you rendered, but we don't allow loiterers here." A number of thoughts passed rapidly through Joe's mind. He realized that his father might come out at any moment and be seen by the manager carrying off the valuable patterns. Mr. Matson ought to be warned, for Joe realized that if they were to frustrate the conspiracy it would be best that the men did not know that they were on the verge of discovery. "I want to take a message to Mr. Matson," said Joe boldly, for this was the truth. He had quickly formed a plan in his mind, and he hoped that it would not be discovered that he was Mr. Matson's son. It was this very trick of quick thinking that afterward became of so much service to Joe in his notable career on the diamond. "Oh, then it's all right," said Mr. Benjamin. "You may go in. You'll find Mr. Matson in his office, I dare say." He smiled at Joe in what he doubtless meant to be a friendly fashion, but the young baseball player could not help but see the hypocrisy in it. Not pausing to exchange any other talk, Joe slipped in through the big iron gate and made his way to his father's office. He had been there before. Just as he reached it the heavy whistle blew, announcing closing time, and hundreds of hands began pouring from the various machine and casting shops. "Hello, Joe!" called Seth Potter, who played left field for the Silver Stars. "What you doing here, looking for a job?" Seth was employed in one of the offices, and was considered a valuable young man. "Yes, I want to learn how to make a machine so I don't miss any flies that come my way," laughed Joe. "That's right! Going to play with us Saturday?" "I hope so," and then, with a few other pleasant words, Seth hurried on, and Joe sought his father. He found Mr. Matson wrapping up some models. "Quick dad!" he exclaimed. "Mr. Benjamin and Mr. Holdney are out at the gate. They just drove up. I slipped in to warn you!" "Good, Joe! I'm glad you did. I wouldn't want them to see me taking these things away, for it would tell them that their game was discovered, and I want to find out more of what their plans are before they are aware of it." "But how you going to get out?" asked his son. "They're there yet," he added, for he could look from a window and see the carriage still at the gate. "Oh, you and I can slip out the back way. It's lucky you told me. There, I'm ready," and having locked his desk, Mr. Matson took his package and with Joe went out of a rear exit, going home by a roundabout way so that the conspirators did not see them. "My! I wish this thing hadn't happened, or that it was postponed for a while," said Mr. Matson thoughtfully as he walked along. "Why, is it likely to be serious, dad?" "I'm afraid so. You see I have a peculiar arrangement with the harvester concern in regard to things that I might invent. It is too complicated to go into all the details, but I have to trust to their honor to give me my rights in certain matters. If they wanted to they could deprive me of the benefits of my patents and the law could not help me. So I have to be very careful. Up to now I have trusted Mr. Benjamin implicitly, but now--now I will be on my guard. It is a lucky thing you overheard that talk." There was an earnest consultation between Mr. and Mrs. Matson that night, to which Joe and his sister were not admitted, for it was business they would not have understood. But at the close they were told to say nothing of what had happened that day. "I will keep right on at the harvester works as if nothing had occurred," said Mr. Matson, "and then they will not get suspicious. But I will do the most important and secret work on my invention here at home." "Now that it is all settled," said Clara, "I'm going to say 'apple sauce' to you, Joe. What does it mean?" "Oh, yes," and the young baseball player laughed. "Well I guess you've got to join the Dorcas and Sewing societies, mother, to keep me out of a scrape," and with many funny touches Joe told about his wild throw that day, making an amusing story of it. "Oh, I would have given anything if some of the girls and I could have been there when you and Tom were blacking the stove!" exclaimed Clara with a laugh. "I'm glad you weren't," declared Joe, "though it's lucky we didn't have to mop up the floor. After this I'm going to go a mile away from her house when I want to practice throwing." "I should think you would," agreed Mr. Matson. "But you'll join those societies; won't you mother?" asked Joe. "Oh, I suppose I'll have to, in order to keep you out of prison," she agreed with a laugh. "But please don't make any more engagements for me, as my time is pretty well occupied." It was two days after this when Tom Davis, coming out of school, caught up with Joe who was a little in advance of him. "Got anything special to do?" asked the substitute first baseman. "No, why?" "I thought maybe you'd like to go out in the lot again, and have some more practice." "Back of Mrs. Peterkin's house?" asked Joe with a smile. "I should say not! But I've got a new scheme. I read about it in that baseball book. We'll have a contest for long distance throwing and accuracy." "How do you mean?" "Why you and I'll go down in the same lots but we'll throw in the other direction. Then we can't hit anything. We'll see who can throw the farthest. You'll need to practice that if you are to play centre field." "What's the other contest?" "For straight aim. I'll get an old basket, and we'll see who can land the most balls in it. Want to try?" "Sure. Anything to improve myself," said Joe earnestly. A little later he and his chum were on their way to the vacant lots. As they walked along they met several other lads, some of whom played on the regular team, a few from the High School nine, and some from the Silver Star scrub. "What's doing?" demanded Rodney Burke. "We're going to see who is the best thrower," answered Tom. "Give us a show at it?" requested Ford Wilson. "Sure," assented Joe. "The more, the merrier." Soon a jolly crowd of youngsters were taking turns at the long distance throwing. After several tries the record lay between Joe and Rodney Burke, and they played off a tie, Joe winning by about seven feet. "That's a good throw all right," complimented the loser. "A fellow who's playing centre field needs to have a pretty good heave," said Joe. "Especially if he's up against a heavy-hitting team." "And that's been our luck for some time past," spoke Tom. "Well, now for the basket test." This was more difficult than straight throwing for distance and several of the lads dropped out, being disqualified by failures. But Tom, Joe and Rodney remained in, and for a time it was pretty even between them. Finally it narrowed down to Tom and Joe, and they were just ready to throw the deciding round when a new voice called out: "Any objections to me joining?" Joe and the others turned, to see the half-mocking face of Sam Morton. CHAPTER XVIII ANOTHER DEFEAT For a moment there was some embarrassment, as Sam was not in the habit of mingling with this crowd of boys. He had his own friends, not very many, to tell the truth, but he was usually with them. The lads did not know exactly how to take his request, but Joe came to the rescue. "Sure you can come in," he said heartily. "We're just seeing who can put the most balls in the basket." "What good do you think that does?" asked Sam. "Well, doesn't it help a fellow to get a straight aim?" asked Tom, half defiantly. "Oh, I don't know," was the rather sneering answer. "It might, if you kept at it long enough." "Let's see you try it," suggested Rodney Burke, who did not hold Sam in much awe. Carelessly the Silver Star pitcher accepted a ball that Joe obligingly held out. He threw quickly and the ball landed squarely in the basket. Then he did the trick again, and there was a little murmur of applause, for only a few of the boys had "two straight" to their credit. "Joe did three straight a while ago," said Tom proudly. "He and I are playing off a tie." Sam did not answer but threw again, and the ball went wide of the basket by two feet at least. Rodney laughed. "You're not such a much, even if you are the pitcher," he declared. "Who asked you anything about it?" demanded Sam savagely. He darted a look of anger at the lad, but as Rodney was well built and had a reputation for "scrappiness" Sam concluded not to tackle him just then. "I'll show you how to throw!" he exclaimed the next moment, and two balls went squarely in the basket. "Now, let's see you and Matson play it off," commanded Sam to Tom as though he was in the habit of having his wishes complied with. Whether it was nervousness or not, or whether he wanted to see his chum do well when Sam was present, was not made manifest, but Tom did not come up to his previous record, and Joe easily won. In fact Joe made a much better score than Sam, and there were several curious glances directed at the pitcher. "Don't you want to try it some more?" asked Rodney Burke, and there was mockery in his voice. "No!" half-growled Sam. "I've got to save my arm for the next game. We're going to win that sure. So long," and with that he turned and strode away. "As cheerful as a bear with a sore nose," remarked Rodney. Ordinarily but little importance would have been attached to the coming game with the Denville Whizzers, but on account of two previous defeats, Darrell Blackney and George Rankin had several conferences concerning it. The captain and manager were plainly worried. "Do you wish you had some one else to put in the box?" asked Rankin. "Well, not exactly," was the answer. "I haven't lost faith in Sam, but I do wish we could depend more on him. He'll pitch fine for several innings and then go to pieces. He tries to use too much speed and too many varieties of curves, I think." "By the way, what do you think of young Matson?" asked the captain. "I think a good deal of him. He doesn't amount to much as yet, but he's in earnest and he's got grit. In time I think he'll make a player." "He wants to pitch." "I know he does, but it's out of the question yet. Have you any line on him?" "Not yet," answered Rankin, "but I'll keep my eyes open. He's a good fielder all right, now that he isn't so nervous. He wants to play his head off. But Sam--well, we can't do any better right away, and--well, I guess we'll win this game." "We've got to!" insisted the manager earnestly, "if we want the people of Riverside to support us. They won't come to see a losing home team all the while." The game with the Whizzers was to take place on their grounds, and early on that morning the Silver Stars, some substitutes, and a crowd of "rooters" got ready for the trip. Denville was about seven miles from Riverside, back from the stream, and could be reached by trolley. A special car had been engaged for the team. The game started off well, and the Silver Stars got three runs in their half of the first inning. The home team was blanked and for a time it looked as if there would be an easy victory for the visitors. Sam was pitching in good form, and had struck several men out. For three innings the home team did not get a run, and there was only one to their credit in the fourth. There was gloom and despair among their supporters while the "rooters" of the visiting team were happy singing songs and yelling. Joe played well and had two outs to his credit on long flies, with no errors to mar his record. But he noticed that as the home team came to the bat in their half of the fifth, in which the Silver Stars had made two runs, that Darrell and the captain were in earnest consultation with Sam. They seemed to be remonstrating with him, and Joe heard the manager say: "Take it easy now; we have the game on ice." "Oh, I know how to play ball," retorted the pitcher. Then began a series of happenings. With a lead of four runs when the last half of the fifth started it would have seemed that the Stars might have won out. But Sam fell a prey to the applause of the crowd and began to do "grandstand" work. He contorted his body unnecessarily in winding up for a delivery. He hopped about before pitching the ball and he failed to study the batters, though he had had plenty of chance to do so. The result was that he went to pieces through sheer weariness and began giving balls. Then the home team, realizing what was happening, began to pound him, and to steal bases. In their half of the fifth the home team made six runs, putting them two ahead. "We've got to stop that!" said Darrell, with a shake of his head. "We sure have," agreed the captain. There was somewhat of a brace on the part of the Stars and they made one run in their part of the sixth. But the Whizzers kept pace with them. The seventh inning resulted in one run for the visitors and none for the home team and that made only a lead of one for the home nine. Joe brought in a run in the eighth, but as if it had been prearranged the home team duplicated so the score at the beginning of the ninth stood eight to nine in favor of the home team. "We need two runs to win, if we can serve them goose eggs for lunch," said the Silver Star captain grimly. "Go to it, boys; beat 'em out." "Sure we will," said Sam airily, and he brought in one of the needed two runs. Darrell contributed the other, and when the visiting team took the field they were one ahead. "Don't let a man get to first!" cried Captain Rankin. But it was not to be. Sam gave the first man his base on balls and there was a groan of anguish from his fellows and the Riverside crowd. Then the second man whacked out what appeared to be a pretty three bagger, scoring the runner from first. The batter slipped on his way from second to third, however, and was put out when Joe made a magnificent throw in from deep centre. With one out Sam gathered himself together and struck out the next man. Then came to the bat the mightiest walloper of the rival team. "Wait for a good one. Make him give you what you want," advised the coacher to the batter. And the latter did wait, for when he got what he wanted he "slammed it" away out in centre field. "A home run! A home run!" yelled the frantic crowd. "And win the game!" shouted a score of the players' friends. "Come on, baby-mine!" Joe was madly racing after the ball, which had gone away beyond him. He got it and hurled it to second for a relay home, as a quick glance had shown him the man rounding third. Straight and true the ball went and the baseman had it. Then he sent it to Catcher Ferguson as the runner was racing in. Sam had run from his box and stood watching and expectant near home plate. The runner dropped and slid and Bart Ferguson, as the ball landed in his mitt, reached over to touch him. "Safe!" howled the umpire, and it meant the defeat of the Silver Stars. For a moment there was silence and then Sam, stepping up to the umpire, a lad smaller than himself, said: "Safe, eh? Not in a thousand years! You don't know how to umpire a game. Safe! I guess not!" and drawing back his fist Sam sent it crashing into the face of the other lad. CHAPTER XIX JOE IS WATCHED There was an uproar in an instant. Players started for Sam and the unoffending lad whom he had struck. There were savage yells, calling for vengeance. Even Sam's mates, used as they were to his fits of temper, were not prepared for this. The Whizzer players were wild to get at him, but, instinctively Darrell, Joe, Rankin, and some of the others of the Silver Stars formed a protecting cordon about their pitcher. "Are you crazy, Sam? What in the world did you do that for?" demanded the manager. "He made a rank decision, an unfair one!" cried Sam, "and when I called him down he was going to hit me. I got in ahead of him--that's all." "That's not so!" cried the Whizzer captain. "I saw it all." "That's right!" chimed in some of his mates. "Farson never raised his hand to him!" declared another lad, who had been standing near the umpire. "You're a big coward to hit a chap smaller than you are!" he called tauntingly to Sam. "Well, I'm not afraid to hit you!" cried the pitcher, who seemed to have lost control of himself. "And if you want anything you know how to get it." "Yes, and I'm willing to take it right now," yelled the other, stepping up to Sam. There might have been another fight then and there, for both lads were unreasonable with anger, but Darrell quickly stepped in between them. "Look here!" burst out the Stars' manager, in what he tried to make a good-natured and reasoning voice, "this has got to stop. We didn't come here to fight, we came to play baseball and you trimmed us properly." "Then why don't you fellows take your medicine?" demanded the home captain. "What right has he got to tackle our umpire?" "No right at all," admitted Darrell. "Sam was in the wrong and he'll apologize. He probably thought the man was out." "And he _was_ out!" exploded the unreasonable pitcher. "I'll not apologize, either." "Wipe up the field with 'em!" came in murmurs from the home players. Several of the lads had grasped their bats. It was a critical moment and Darrell felt it. He pulled Sam to one side and whispered rapidly and tensely in his ear: "Sam, you've got to apologize, and you've got to admit that the runner was safe. There's no other way out of it." "Suppose I won't?" There was defiance in Sam's air. Darrell took a quick decision. "Then I'll put you out of the team!" was his instant rejoinder, and it came so promptly that Sam winced. Now it is one thing to resign, but quite another to be read out of an organization, whether it be a baseball team or a political society. Sam realized this. He might have, in his anger, refused to belong to the Silver Stars and, later on he could boast of having gotten out of his own accord. But to be "fired" carried no glory with it, and Sam was ever on the lookout for glory. "Do you mean that?" he asked of Darrell. "Won't you fellows stick up for me?" He looked a vain appeal to his mates. "I mean every word of it," replied the manager firmly. "We fellows would stick up for you if you were in the right, but you're dead wrong this time. It's apologize or get out of the team!" Once more Sam paused. He could hear the angry murmurs of the home players as they watched him, waiting for his decision. Even some of his own mates were regarding him with unfriendly eyes. He must make a virtue of necessity. "All right--I--I apologize," said Sam in a low voice. "The runner was safe I guess." "You'd better be sure about it," said the captain of the Whizzers, in a peculiar tone as he looked at Sam. "Oh, I'm sure all right." "And you're sorry you hit our umpire?" persisted the captain, for Sam's apology had not been very satisfactory. "Yes. You needn't rub it in," growled the pitcher. "Then why don't you shake hands with him, and tell him so like a man?" went on the home captain. "I won't shake hands with him!" exclaimed the small umpire. "I don't shake hands with cowards!" There was another murmur, and the trouble that had been so nearly adjusted threatened to break out again. But Darrell was wise in his day. "That's all right!" he called, more cheerily than he felt. "You fellows beat us fairly and on the level. We haven't a kick coming, but we may treat you to a dose of the same medicine when we have a return game; eh, old man?" and he made his way to the opposing captain and the manager and cordially shook hands with them. There was a half cheer from the Whizzers. They liked a good loser. "Yes, maybe you can turn the tables on us," admitted the other manager, "but I hope when we do come to Riverside you'll have a different pitcher," and he glanced significantly at Sam. "No telling," replied Darrell with a laugh. "Come on, fellows. We'll give three cheers for the team that beat us and then we'll beat it for home." It was rather a silent crowd of the Silver Stars that rode in the special trolley. Following them was another car containing some of the "rooters." They made up in liveliness what the team members lacked in spirits, for there were a number of girls with the lads, Joe's sister and Tom's being among them, and they started some school songs. And the gloom that seemed to hang over the Stars was not altogether because of their defeat. It was the remembrance of Sam's unsportsmanlike act, and it rankled deep. On his part it is doubtful if Sam felt any remorse. He was a hot-tempered lad, used to having his own way, and probably he thought he had done just right in chastising the umpire for what he regarded as a rank decision. Darrell, Rankin and some of the others tried to be jolly and start a line of talk that would make the lads forget the unpleasant incident, but it is doubtful if they succeeded to any great extent. The manager was seriously considering the future of the team. Was it wise to go on with such a pitcher as Sam who, though talented, could not be relied upon and who was likely to make "breaks" at unexpected times? "Yet what can we do?" asked Darrell of the captain. "Is there another man we could put in or get from some other team?" "I don't believe any other team would part with a good pitcher at this time of the season," replied Rankin. "Surely not if he was a real good one, and we want one that _is_ good. As for using some of the other fellows in Sam's place, I don't know of any one that's anywhere near as good as he is." "How about Percy Parnell? He's pitched some, hasn't he?" "Yes, but you know what happened. He was knocked out of the box and we were whitewashed that game." "Say!" exclaimed Darrell. "I just happened to think of it. That new fellow--Joe Matson. He told me he used to pitch in his home town--Bentville I think it was. I wonder if he'd be any good?" "Hard telling," replied the captain, somewhat indifferently. "We ought to do something, anyhow." "I tell you what I'm going to do," went on Darrell. "I'm going to write to some one in Bentville. I think I know an old baseball friend there, and I'll ask him what Matson's record was. If he made good at all we might give him a tryout." "And have Sam get on his ear?" "I don't care whether he does or not. Things can't be much worse; can they?" "No, I guess not. Go ahead. I'm with you in anything you do. Three straight wallops in three weeks have taken the heart out of me." "Same here. Well, we'll see what we can do." Joe reached home that night rather tired and discouraged. He felt the defeat of his team keenly, and the more so as the nine he had played with in Bentville had had a much better record than that of the Silver Stars--at least so far, though the Silver Stars were an older and stronger team. "I wonder if I'm the hoodoo?" mused Joe. "They lost the first game I saw them play, and the next one I played in they lost, and here's this one. I hope I'm not a jinx." Then he reviewed his own playing in the two games where he had had a chance to show what he could do, and he had no fault to find with his efforts. True, he had made errors; but who had not? "I'm going to keep on practicing," mused Joe. "If I can work up in speed and accuracy, and keep what curving power I have already, I may get a chance to pitch. Things are coming to a head with Sam, and, though I don't wish him any bad luck, if he _does_ get out I hope I get a chance to go in." Following this plan, Joe went off by himself one afternoon several days later to practice throwing in the empty lot. He used a basket to hold the balls he pitched and he was glad to find that he had not gone back any from the time when he and Tom, with the other lads, had had their contest. "If I can only keep this up," mused the lad, "I'll get there some day. Jove! If ever I should become one of the big league players! Think of taking part in the World's series! Cracky! I'd rather be in the box, facing the champions, than to be almost anything else I can think of. Forty thousand people watching you as you wind up and send in a swift one like this!" And with that Joe let fly a ball with all his speed toward the basket. He was not so much intent on accuracy then as he was in letting off some surplus "steam," and he was not a little surprised when the ball not only went _into_ the basket but _through_ it, ripping out the bottom. "Wow!" exclaimed Joe. "I'm throwing faster than I thought I was. That basket is on the fritz. But if I'd been sending a ball over the plate it would have had some speed back of it, and it would have gone to the right spot." As Joe went to pick up the ball and examine the broken basket more closely a figure peered out from a little clump of trees on the edge of the field where the lad was practicing. The figure watched the would-be pitcher closely and then murmured: "He certainly has _speed_ all right. I'd like to be back of the plate and watch him throw them in. I wonder if he has anything in him after all? It's worth taking a chance on. I'll wait a bit longer." The figure dodged behind the trees again as Joe once more took his position. He had stuffed some grass in the hole in the peach basket he was using, and again he threw in it. He was just as accurate as before, and, now and then, when he cut loose, he sent the ball with unerring aim and with great force into the receptacle, several times knocking it down off the stake on which it was fastened. "I don't know as there's much use in writing to Bentville to find out about him," mused the figure hidden by the trees. "If he's got that speed, and continues to show the control he has to-day, even without any curves he'd be a help to us. I'm going to speak to Rankin about it," and with that the figure turned away. Had Joe looked he would have seen Darrell Blackney, manager of the Silver Stars, who had been playing the innocent spy on him. CHAPTER XX "WOULD YOU LIKE TO PITCH?" "Come now, fellows, let's get into practice. Are all the scrub here?" Darrell Blackney looked around over the diamond, where about twenty lads were assembled one fine afternoon. "I don't know about the scrub, but all our fellows are on hand," replied Rankin. "Is it all arranged about the game Saturday?" "Yes, we're to play the Fayetteville Academy lads on their grounds." "A trip out of town, eh? That's two in two weeks." "Well it gives our fellows experience in playing on some other diamond than their own." "Oh, it doesn't much matter. The Fayettevilles will be easy fruit for us." "Don't be too sure. They're a younger team, that's true, and they haven't been doing well this season, but neither have we of late." "Oh, we'll beat 'em," declared the captain confidently. "I think so myself, but I don't want you to take too many chances. Here comes Sam. You and he get in for some warm-up work, Bart, and I'll get the scrub together." Darrell went about the diamond, calling to the various members of the "scrub," or second team. "We haven't any pitcher," remarked Blake Carrington, who acted as captain of the scrub organization. "What's the matter with Slater?" "He hasn't showed up, and none of the other fellows feel like getting in the box against you boys. You'll have to find us a pitcher before we can play." A sudden idea came to Darrell. "All right," he answered. "I guess I can. Wait a minute." He ran over to where Rankin was talking to some of his players. "Can you play Tom Davis in centre field for to-day?" asked the manager. "Yes, I guess so. Why?" "I'm going to have Joe Matson pitch on the scrub. It will be a good time to get a line on him, and I'll see if he shapes up as well as the day he did when I watched him practice." "All right; maybe it will be a good idea." Joe hardly knew what to say when Darrell, as calmly as if he had done it several times before, asked him to go in the box for the scrub and pitch against the Silver Stars. "And do your best," added Darrell. "I don't care how many of our fellows you strike out. Every one, if you can." Joe's heart gave a bound of delight. It might be the beginning of the very chance he had been waiting for so long. He calmed himself with an effort for he did not want to get "rattled." "All right," he answered as though he had been used to such sudden emergency calls all season. "I'll see what I can do. I'd like a chance to warm up, though." "Sure. You and Jake Bender go over there and practice for five minutes. Then we'll play a five-inning game." The Stars were to bat first, and there was a mocking smile on the face of Sam Morton as he watched his rival go to the box. "Don't strike us all out," called Sam. "We've had hard luck enough lately." The game began, and it was for "blood" from the very start. Joe was a trifle nervous, especially when he had two balls called on his first two efforts. Then he braced himself, and, not trying for speed, sent in a slow, easy ball that completely fooled the batter, who eventually struck out. "Pretty good for a starter," complimented Darrell. Sam Morton scowled. The next batter hit an easy fly which was so promptly gathered in by the shortstop that there was little use in the player starting for first. Then Joe struck out the next lad after he had hit a couple of fouls. "That's the stuff!" cried Tom Davis, as he patted his chum on the back. "You'll be in the box for the Stars yet." "Don't get me all excited," begged Joe with a smile. Yet he could not help feeling elated. There was a viciousness in the pitching of Sam when he toed the plate that showed how his feelings had been stirred. He was evidently going to show how much superior he was. He did strike out two men, and then came Joe's turn at the bat. Our hero thought he detected a gleam of anger in Sam's eyes. "He'd just as soon hit me with a ball as not," thought Joe, "and if he does it will hurt some. And he may be trying to bluff me so that I won't stand up to the plate. I'll see what I can do to him." Consequently, instead of waiting for the ball to get to him Joe stepped up and out to meet it before the curve "broke." He "walked right into it," as the baseball term has it, and the result was that he whacked out a pretty two-bagger that brought his mates to their feet with yells. Sam bit his lips in anger, but he kept his temper by an effort and struck out the next man so that Joe's effort resulted in nothing. The game went on, and when Sam at bat faced Joe, our hero could not help feeling a trifle nervous. He had sized up Sam's style of batting, however, and was prepared. "I'm going to give him a slow ball with an in-shoot to it," decided Joe. "He keeps back from the plate and this will make him get still farther back. I'm going to strike him out." And strike him out Joe did, though not until after Sam had hit one foul that was within a shade of being fair. But when on his next two strikes he fanned the wind, there was a look of wonder and gratification on the face of Darrell. "I believe Joe is going to make good," he said to Rankin. "It sure looks so. What about it?" "You'll see in a minute. I'm going to give him a chance to pitch part of the game against the Fayetteville Academy nine--that is if you agree to it." "Sure, go as far as you like." At the close of the game, which was won by the Stars, though by a small margin, Darrell approached Joe. "Well?" asked the new pitcher diffidently. "You did first rate. How would you like to pitch part of the game Saturday?" "Do you mean it?" was the eager question. "Certainly. I'll put you in for a few innings toward the end, after we've cinched it, for I think it will be easy for us." It was not the highest honor that could have come to Joe, but he realized what it meant. "I'd like it immensely," he said, "but won't Sam--what about him?" "I don't care anything about him," said Darrell quickly. "I'm running this team. Will you pitch?" "I sure will!" and Joe's heart beat high with hope. CHAPTER XXI TO THE RESCUE Joe Matson felt as though he was walking in the air when he went home that afternoon following the scrub game. That his ambition was about to be realized, and so soon after joining the team, was almost unbelievable. "Why, what's the matter, Joe?" asked Clara, as her brother fairly pranced into the house, caught her around the waist and swung her in the start of a waltz. "Matter? Plenty's the matter! I'm going to pitch on the Stars Saturday. Hurray!" "My! Any one would think you were going to pitch up _to_ the stars the way you're going on. Let go of me; you'll have my hair all mussed up!" "That's easily fixed. Yes, I'm going to pitch." "Against whom?" "The Fayetteville Academy, on their grounds. It won't be much of a game, and I'm not to go in until it's in the ice box----" "In the ice box?" "Yes, the refrigerator you know--safe. Then I'm to try my hand at putting 'em over. Of course I'd like to go the whole nine innings but I can't have everything at the start. It's mighty decent of Darrell to give me this chance. Aren't you glad, sis?" "Yes, of course I am. I'd like to see the game, but I've used up all of my allowance for this week, and----" "Here!" and Joe held out a dollar. "Blow yourself, sis." "Oh, what horrid slang!" "I mean go to the game on me. I'll stand treat. Take a girl if you want to and see yours truly do himself proud." Joe hunted up his mother to tell her the good news. He found her in the room which his father had fitted up as a workshop since the suspicious actions of Mr. Benjamin at the harvester factory. Mrs. Matson was looking over some papers, and there was on her face the same worried look Joe had seen there before. "Has anything happened, mother?" he asked quickly, his own good news fading away as he thought of the trouble that might menace his father. "No, only the same trouble about the patent," she said. "There is nothing new, but your father thinks from the recent actions of Mr. Benjamin that the manager suspects something. Your father is getting some papers ready to go to Washington, and I was looking them over for him. I used to work in a lawyer's office when I was a girl," she went on with a smile, "and I know a little about the patent business so I thought I would help your father if I could." "Then there's nothing wrong?" "Not exactly, and if all goes right he will soon have his patent granted, and then those men can not harm him. But you look as though you had good news." "I have," and the lad fairly bubbled over in telling his mother of the chance that had so unexpectedly come to him. Mr. Matson was quite enthusiastic about Joe's chance when he came home from work, and together they talked about it after supper. "I wish I could go see the game," said Mr. Matson, "but I am too busy." "How is the patent coming on?" asked Joe. "Oh, pretty good. Thanks to you I was warned in time. If I had left my drawings, patterns and other things in the shop I'm afraid it wouldn't be going so well. Mr. Benjamin evidently suspects something. Only to-day he asked me how I was coming on with it, and he wanted to know why I wasn't working on it any more. I had to put him off with some excuse and he acted very queer. Right after that I heard him calling up Mr. Holdney on the telephone." "But your worry will be over when your application is allowed," suggested Mrs. Matson. Joe went to his baseball practice with a vim in the days that intervened before the game that was to be so important to him. Tom Davis helped him, and several times cautioned his chum about overdoing himself. "If your arm gets stiff--it's good-night for you," he declared, in his usual blunt way. "You've got to take care of yourself, Joe." "I know it, but I want to get up more speed." "That's all right. Speed isn't everything. Practice for control, and that won't be so hard on you." And, as the days went on, Joe realized that he was perfecting himself, though he still had much to learn about the great game. It was the day before the contest when our hero was to occupy the box for the first time for the Stars. He and Tom had practiced hard and Joe knew that he was "fit." Joe wondered how Sam Morton had taken the news of his rival's advance, but if Sam knew he said nothing about it, and in the practice with the scrub he was unusually friendly to Joe. For Darrell decided not to have the new pitcher go into the box for the Stars until the last moment. He did not want word of it to get out, and Joe and the catcher did some practice in private with signals. The last practice had been held on the afternoon prior to the game, and arrangements completed for the team going to Fayetteville. Joe was on his way home on a car with Tom Davis, for Riverside boasted of a trolley system. "How do you feel?" asked Tom of his chum. "Fine as a fiddle." "Your arm isn't lame or sore?" "Not a bit, I can----" Joe was interrupted by a cry from two ladies who sat in front of them, the only other occupants of the vehicle save themselves. The car was going down hill and had acquired considerable speed--dangerous speed Joe thought--and the motorman did not seem to have it well under control. But what had caused the cry of alarm was this. Driving along the street, parallel with the tracks, and about three hundred feet ahead of the car, was a boy in an open delivery wagon. He was going in the same direction as was the electric vehicle. Suddenly his horse stumbled and fell almost on the tracks, the wagon sliding half over the animal while the boy on the seat was hemmed in and pinned down by a number of boxes and baskets that slid forward from the rear of the wagon. "Put on your brakes! Put on your brakes!" yelled the conductor to the motorman. "You'll run him down!" The motorman ground at the handle, and the brake shoes whined as they gripped the wheels, but the car came nearer and nearer the wagon. The conductor on the rear platform was also putting on the brakes there. Suddenly the horse kicked himself around so that he was free of the tracks, lying alongside them, and far enough to one side so that the car would safely pass him. There was a sigh of relief from the two women passengers, but a moment later it changed to a cry of alarm, for the boy on the seat suddenly fell to one side, and hung there with his head so far over that the car would hit him as it rushed past. The lad was evidently pinned down by the boxes and baskets on his legs. "Stop! Stop the car!" begged one of the ladies. The other had covered her eyes with her hands. "I--I can't!" cried the motorman. "It's got too much speed! I can't stop it." Joe sprang to his feet and made his way along the seat past Tom, to the running board of the car, for the vehicle was an open one. "Where are you going?" cried Tom. "To save that lad! He'll be killed if the car strikes him!" "Let the motorman do it!" "He can't! He's grinding on the brakes as hard as he can and so is the conductor. I've got to save him--these ladies can't! I can lean over and pull him aboard the car." "But your arm! You'll strain your arm and you can't pitch to-morrow." For an instant Joe hesitated, but only for an instant. He realized that what Tom said was true. He saw a vision of himself sitting idly on the bench, unable to twirl the ball because of a sprained arm. Then Joe made up his mind. "I'm going to save him!" he cried as he hurried to the front end of the running board. Then, clinging to the upright of the car with his left arm, he stretched out his other to save the lad from almost certain death, the conductor and motorman unable to lend aid and the women incapable. There was not room on the running board for Tom to help Joe. CHAPTER XXII A DELAYED PITCHER The motorman was grinding away at the brakes but the heavy car continued to slide on, for the hill was steep. The horse lay quiet now, for a man had managed to get to him and sit on his head, so the animal could not kick and thresh about with the consequent danger of getting his legs under the trolley. The car would pass the horse and the wagon by a good margin, but the boy, leaning far over, was sure to be hit unless Joe saved him, and no one in the street seemed to think of the boy's danger. He said later that he did not realize it himself. The lad was struggling to free himself but could not, and he did not seem to be able to raise himself to an upright position on the seat, in which case he would have been safe. "Steady now!" called Joe, and he braced himself for the shock he knew would come. The next instant, as the car kept on, Joe found himself opposite the lad and reaching forward his right hand he grasped him by the collar, shoving him away so the car would not strike him. Then, holding on in grim despair Joe pulled the youth toward him, aided by the momentum of the vehicle. His idea was to get him aboard the car to prevent his being struck by it, and in this he succeeded. There was a ripping sound, for some part of the lad's clothing was caught on the seat and tore loose. A shower of boxes and baskets followed the body as it slid forward, and a moment later Joe had the lad on the foot board beside him, safe and sound, but very much astonished by his sudden descent from the wagon seat. Joe felt an excruciating pain shoot through his arm--his pitching arm. It was numb from the shock but even yet he did not dare let go, for the lad was on uncertain footing. The pain increased. It was like being kicked by the back-fire of an auto or motor boat. For a moment there was a dull sensation and then the outraged nerves and muscles seemed to cry out in agony. "There--there!" murmured Joe between his clenched teeth to the lad he had saved. "You're all right I guess. Will--will somebody----" He did not finish, but turned to the conductor, who had rushed toward him on the running board, ready to relieve him of the lad's weight. But the boy was able to look after himself now, for the vehicle was almost at a standstill, and the motorman had it under control. "Much--much obliged to you," the boy stammered his thanks to Joe who was slowly making his way back to where Tom awaited him. Joe did not know whether he could get there or not, passing himself along by clinging with his left hand to the successive car uprights. "He saved your life all right," said the conductor, who had hold of the delivery wagon lad. "That's what!" chimed in several other men from the street, as they crowded up around the car. By this time the motorman had succeeded in bringing the vehicle to a full stop and Joe, fearing he might fall, for the pain was very severe, got off. Tom hurried up to him. "Did it strain you much?" he asked eagerly. "A little--yes; considerable I guess," admitted Joe, making a wry face. "But it will be all right--I guess." His right arm--the arm he hoped to use in the game on the morrow--the first game with him in the box--hung limp at his side. Tom Davis saw and knew at once that something serious was the matter. He realized what it meant to Joe, and he lost no time in useless talk. "You come with me!" he commanded, taking hold of Joe's left arm. "Where are you going?" demanded our hero. "To our old family doctor. That arm of yours will need attention if you're going to pitch to-morrow." "I don't know that I can pitch, Tom." "Yes you can--you've _got_ to. Dr. Pickett will give you something to fix it up. You can't let this chance slip. I was afraid this would happen when I saw what you were going to do." "Yes," said Joe simply, "but I couldn't let him be hit by the car." "No, I suppose not, and yet--well, we'll see what Dr. Pickett says. Come on," and Tom quickly improvised a sling from his own and Joe's handkerchiefs, and was about to lead his chum away. "Oh, are you hurt? I'm sorry!" exclaimed the lad whom Joe had saved. "It's only a strain," said the pitcher, but he did not add what it might mean to him. The lad thanked Joe again, earnestly, for his brave act and then hastened to look after his horse, that had been gotten to its feet. The motorman, too, thanked Joe for, though had an accident resulted it would not have been his fault, yet he was grateful. "Oh, come on!" exclaimed Tom impatiently as several others crowded up around Joe. "Every minute's delay makes it worse. Let's get a move on," and he almost dragged his chum to the doctor's office. Dr. Pickett looked grave when told of the cause of the injury. "Well, let's have a look at the arm," he suggested, and when he saw a slight swelling he shook his head. "I'm afraid you can't pitch to-morrow," he said. "I've _got_ to," replied Joe simply. "Can't you give him some liniment to rub on to take the stiffness out, doctor?" asked Joe. "Hum! Nature is something that doesn't like to be hurried, young man," responded the physician. "However, it might be worse, and perhaps if that arm is massaged half the night and up to the time of the game to-morrow, he might pitch a few innings." "That's good!" exclaimed Joe. "And it's me for the massage!" cried Tom. "Now give us some stuff to rub on, doctor." Dr. Pickett showed Tom how to rub the arm, and how to knead the muscles to take out the soreness, and gave the boys a prescription to get filled at the drug store. "Come on!" cried Tom again. He seemed to have taken charge of Joe as a trainer might have done. "I must get you home and begin work on you." And Tom did. He installed himself as rubber-in-chief in Joe's room, and for several hours thereafter there was the smell of arnica and pungent liniment throughout the house. Tom was a faithful massage artist, and soon some of the soreness began to get out of the wrenched arm. "Let me try to throw a ball across the room," the pitcher begged of Tom about nine o'clock. "I want to see if I can move it." "Not a move!" sternly forbade the nurse. "You just keep quiet. If you can pitch in the morning you'll be lucky." At intervals until nearly midnight Tom rubbed the arm and then, knowing that Joe must have rest, he installed himself on a couch in his chum's room, and let Joe go to sleep, with his arm wrapped in hot towels saturated with witch hazel, a warm flat iron keeping the heat up. "Well, how goes it?" Joe heard some one say, as he opened his eyes to find the sun streaming in his room. The young pitcher tried to raise his arm but could not. It seemed as heavy as lead and a look of alarm came over his face. "That's all right," explained Tom. "Wait until I get off some of the towels. It looks like an Egyptian mummy now." Tom loosed the wrappings and then, to Joe's delight, he found that he could move his arm with only a little pain resulting. He was about to swing it, as he did when pitching, but Tom called out: "Hold on now! Wait until I rub it a bit and get up the circulation." The rubbing did good, and Joe found that he had nearly full control of the hand and arm. They were a bit stiff to be sure, but much better. "Now for a good breakfast, some more rubbing, then some more, and a little light practice," decided Tom, and Joe smiled, but he gave in and ate a hearty meal. Once more faithful Tom massaged the arm, and rubbed in a salve designed to make the sore muscles and tendons limber. Not until then would he allow Joe to go down in the yard and throw a few balls. The delivery of the first one brought a look of agony on the pitcher's face, but he kept at it until he was nearly himself again. Then came more rubbing and another application of salve and liniment, until Joe declared that there wouldn't be any skin left on his arm, and that he'd smell like a walking drug store for a week. "Don't you care, as long as you can pitch," said Clara. "I'm going to the game and I'm going to take Mabel Davis and Helen Rutherford. They both want to see you pitch, Joe." "That's good," said her brother with a smile. "Now we'll take another trip to the doctor's and see what he says," was Tom's next order. The physician looked gratified when he saw the arm. "Either it wasn't as badly strained as I thought it," he said, "or that medicine worked wonders." "It was my rubbing," explained Tom, puffing out his chest in pretended pride. "Well, that certainly completed the cure," admitted the physician. "And I can pitch?" asked Joe anxiously. "Yes, a few innings. Have your arm rubbed at intervals in the game, and wear a wrist strap. Good luck and I hope you'll win," and with a smile he dismissed them. Wearing a wrist strap helped greatly, and when it was nearly time to leave for Fayetteville Joe found that his arm was much better. "I don't know how long I can last," he said to Darrell, "and maybe I'll be batted out of the box." "It's too bad, of course," replied the manager, when the accident had been explained to him, "but we won't work you very hard. I want you to get your chance, though." And Joe felt his heart beat faster as he thought how nearly he had lost his chance. Yet he could not have done otherwise, he reflected. "I don't see what's keeping Sam Morton," mused Captain Rankin, as the team prepared to take the special trolley car. "He met me a little while ago and said he'd be on hand." "It's early yet," commented the manager. "I guess he'll be on hand. I told him Joe was going to pitch a few innings." "What did he say?" "Well, he didn't cut up nearly as much as I thought he would. He said it was only fair to give him a show, but I know Sam is jealous and he won't take any chances on not being there." All of the players, save the regular pitcher, were on hand now and they were anxiously waiting for Sam. One of the inspectors of the trolley line came up to where the boys stood about the special car that was on a siding. "Say," began the inspector, "I'll have to send you boys on your way now." "But our special isn't due to leave for half an hour," complained Darrell. "We're waiting for Sam Morton." "Can't help that. I've got to start you off sooner than I expected. There's been a change in the schedule that I didn't expect, and if I don't get you off now I can't for another hour, as the line to Fayetteville will be blocked." "That means we'll be half an hour later than we expected," said Darrell. "Well, I suppose we'd better go on. Sam can come by the regular trolley, I guess." "Sure, he'll be in Fayetteville in plenty of time," suggested the inspector. "I'll be here and tell him about it." There was no other way out of it, and soon the team and the substitutes, with the exception of Sam, were on their way. There was quite a crowd already gathered on the Academy grounds when they arrived and they were noisily greeted by their opponents as well as by some of their own "rooters." The Academy lads were at practice. "They're a snappy lot of youngsters," commented Darrell, as he watched them. "Yes, we won't have any walk-over," said the captain. The Silver Star lads lost no time in getting into their uniforms. Tom gave Joe's arm a good rubbing and then he caught for him for a while until Joe announced that, aside from a little soreness, he was all right. "Try it with Ferguson now," ordered Darrell, motioning to the regular catcher, and Joe did so, receiving compliments from the backstop for his accuracy. "A little more speed and you'll have 'em guessing," said the catcher genially. "But don't strain yourself." The minutes ticked on. Several of the regular cars had come in from Riverside but there was no sign of Sam Morton. Darrell and Captain Rankin held an earnest conversation. "What do you suppose is keeping him?" asked the manager. "I can't imagine. Unless he is deliberately staying away to throw the game." "Oh, Sam wouldn't do that. He's too anxious to pitch. We'll wait a few more cars." "And if he doesn't come?" Darrell shrugged his shoulders and looked over to where Joe was practicing with Bart Ferguson. CHAPTER XXIII JOE IN THE BOX "Well, when are you fellows going to start?" asked Tony Johnson, captain of the Academy nine, as he ceased his catching practice with Ed. Wilson, the pitcher. "The game ought to have been called ten minutes ago." "Our pitcher isn't here," said Darrell anxiously. "We're expecting him every minute. If you could wait a little longer----" "Haven't you any one else you can put in?" asked Ferd Backus, the manager. "I saw some one practicing a while ago." "He isn't our regular pitcher," said George Rankin, "but if Sam doesn't come we'll have to lead off with him." Joe had been aware that Sam was not on hand. He looked up as car after car passed the grounds, thinking to see Sam enter, for the electric vehicles from Riverside ran close to the Academy diamond. "I suppose they'll put Parnell in at the start," Joe mused, naming the second baseman who sometimes acted as pitcher for the Stars. Joe did not dare hope that he himself would be chosen. "Well, how much longer?" demanded Johnson, when two more cars had passed and Sam was on neither of them. "We want to finish this game before dark." "All right," assented Darrell briskly. "Get your men ready, Rankin." "But who will pitch?" "Joe Matson, of course. It's the only thing we can do. Take the field, fellows. Joe, take your place in the box!" "Who--me?" gasped our hero, unable to believe the words. "Yes, you," and Darrell smiled. "Do your prettiest now. You're going in at the beginning instead of at the end. It's different from what I planned, but I guess I can depend on you. Hold 'em down!" "I will!" cried Joe fiercely and he forgot his injured arm. "Play ball!" ordered the umpire and Joe took his place as pitcher for the Silver Stars for the first time. No wonder his heart beat faster than usual. The Stars were to bat last, Rankin having won the toss. It must be remembered that these boys were amateur players and did not always follow league rules of having the home team up last. The usual number of practice balls were allowed between Joe and the catcher at the plate and Bart noted with satisfaction that Joe was cool and steady and that he did not try for speed. Then the first man for the Academy--their best hitter--faced our hero. Bart gave the signal for a slow straight ball over the plate at an angle. It was the beginning of a cross-fire which he and Joe had quickly agreed upon, and, as is well known, the ability of a pitcher to deliver a good cross-fire wins many games. Cross-firing is merely sending the ball first over one side of the plate then the other and then right over centre. Joe had done it in practice. Could he do it in the game? "Strike one!" called the umpire, when the first ball found lodgment in Bart's big glove. There was a little gasp of protest from the Academy crowd, but they said nothing. Their man had not struck at the ball, but it had been in the right place and Joe knew he had a fair umpire with whom to deal. His next delivery was a ball, but the third was a strike though the man had not moved his bat. "Hit it--hit it!" pleaded his friends. The batter swung fiercely at the next ball and knocked a little pop fly which Bart gathered in and one man was down. "Do it again!" called Darrell to his pitcher, and Joe smiled. His arm pained him a little, but he gritted his teeth and delivered the next man a strike, for the batter missed it cleanly. He was not so lucky in his following trial, for the batter got to first mainly because of an error in the play of Fred Newton, at short, who fumbled the pick-up and delayed in getting the ball to Darrell. Joe succeeded in striking out the third man up, though the one who had gone to first managed to steal second. There were now two out and a man on the middle bag when Joe faced his fourth opponent. He tried for a slow out but something went wrong and the man hit for two sacks, bringing in the run. But that was all, for the next batter fell for some slow, easy balls and fanned the air. The Academys had one run and it looked a trifle disheartening to the Silver Stars until they came up and found that the pitcher opposed to them was very weak. They hammered him pretty badly in the last half of the first, and three runs were credited to them ere they had to take the field again. "Not so bad; eh?" asked Rankin of Darrell. "Fine, if Joe can only keep it up. How's your arm?" he asked him. "Fine!" exclaimed our hero, but in truth it pained him considerably in spite of the treatment Tom Davis gave it. The Academy team didn't get a run in the second inning though Joe was found for some short, scattering hits. A man got to second and one to third, mainly through errors in the outfield force, one bad one being furnished by Tom, who was at centre in Joe's place. "But we'll forgive you for getting Joe's arm in shape," said the manager with a smile. In their half of the second the Stars got two runs, and succeeded in forcing another goose egg on their opponents in the home team's half of the third. Joe did not do so well this time, for he was beginning to tire and only a brace on the part of his supporting players saved him from having a number of runs come in on his errors. One run for the Stars marked their efforts in the third and when the fourth inning began it looked as if it was a foregone conclusion that the visiting team would go home with the scalp of their enemy. But Joe could not keep up the pace he had set for himself. No young and inexperienced pitcher could, much less one with a sore arm. The muscles ached very much in spite of all Tom could do with rubbing in the liniment, but Joe gritted his teeth and keep his place in the pitcher's box. He knew he dared not give in. Only two runs were earned, however, though he was pretty badly pounded, and this only made the score three to six in favor of the Stars, when their half of the fourth came. But they were unable to better it for the Academy lads took a brace after an earnest appeal by their captain and manager. "Make 'em take a goose egg!" yelled the student lads to their friends, and the Stars were forced to be content with this. In the fifth inning neither side scored, Joe holding his own well, and only allowing one hit, which amounted to nothing. And in the sixth when, with only three scattered hits, not a run was chalked up for the home team, Darrell ran over to Joe and cried: "Fine, old man! Can you keep it up?" "I--I'm going to!" burst out Joe, though he had to grit his teeth to keep back an expression of pain when he moved his pitching arm. CHAPTER XXIV SAM ARRIVES Whether the Stars were determined to show their opponents what they could do when they tried or whether it was because they wanted to show their confidence in Joe, or even whether it was due to a slump in the playing of the Academy team, was not made manifest, but at any rate in their half of the sixth inning our friends gathered in four runs, making the score ten to three in their favor. "Oh, it's a walk-over," boasted Tom Davis as he did an impromptu war dance. "Yes, we've got 'em beat a mile," added Seth Potter. "Don't be too sure," commented the Academy captain. "No game is won until it's over and we've got three more innings yet. The seventh is always our lucky number." "You're welcome to all you can get," rejoined Captain Rankin with a laugh. "Seven is where we always eat pie, too." The Stars were about to take the field for the beginning of the seventh when there was a commotion over at one entrance gate. A lad came running through the crowd. "Hold on!" he cried. "Wait! I'm going to play. Let me pitch!" "Sam Morton!" burst out Tom Davis. "Why couldn't he stay away until we had the game won? I'll bet we slump as soon as he goes in the box." Sam came on running. He was panting and out of breath. "What's the matter? Where were you?" demanded Darrell. "I got on--the wrong car. I thought it--came here. They--took me off--in the woods--somewhere. I've had an awful time--getting here. Is the game--over?" "No, we're just starting the seventh." "Can't I pitch?" Darrell hesitated. It was a perfectly natural request for Sam and yet Joe had been doing so well that both the manager and the captain disliked to take him off the mound. "Can't I pitch?" again demanded Sam. "You don't mean to tell me that Joe Matson has----" "Joe hasn't done anything but what we wanted him to," put in Rankin quickly, "and he's made a good record." "Oh, I suppose so," sneered Sam. "Well, if you don't want me to----" "Of course you can pitch," said Darrell quietly. It was unquestioningly Sam's right and though he was in rather an exhausted condition still the manager and captain knew that he was at his best early in his game. "What are you going to do; change pitchers?" demanded the manager of the Academy team, striding up to Darrell and Captain Rankin. "Yes." "You can't do it now." "Why not?" "It's against the rules. You've got to have some one bat for him first. You can't change until next inning." There was quite a mix-up, and rules were quoted and mis-quoted back and forth, for, as I have said, the lads were far from being professional or even college players. The upshot of it was that Sam was allowed to go in, whether or not in accordance with the rules the boys did not decide, and the little feeling that had been raised soon subsided, for they were all true sportsmen. As for Joe, at first he felt humiliated that he was displaced but he realized that he had had more honor that he had at first expected, and his arm was beginning to pain him very much. So, on the whole, he was glad Sam had arrived when he did. Not so the captain, manager and other Star players, however, for Sam allowed two runs while he occupied the box, and the Academy team and their friends were jubilant. The Stars managed to get two runs in their half of the seventh. Joe did not play, his place at centre field continuing to be filled by Tom. Joe was glad of the rest and he watched the efforts of his rival closely. In the eighth Sam did not seem able to pull himself together and three runs were due to his poor pitching. "Say, if we play innings enough we'll beat 'em even with their new pitcher!" called some one in the crowd, anxious to get Sam's "goat," or nerve. And this seemed likely. In their half of the eighth the Stars only got one run, and when the ninth inning opened there were some anxious hearts among the members of the visiting team. And then came a terrible slump. Sam grew wild, allowed bases on balls, struck one man and muffed an easy fly. When the route and riot were over there were five runs to the credit of the schoolboy players and they had tied the score, pulling up from a long way in the rear. The crowd went wild for them. "Fellows, we've got to make our half of this inning count," said Darrell earnestly. "They're making fools of us and they're not in our class at all. We've got to beat them! Sam, wake up!" he said sharply. "I'm not asleep!" retorted the pitcher. "If you think I am why don't you send that Matson in again?" "Easy now, easy," spoke Rankin. "You can pitch if you pull yourself together, and if we can't make a run this inning and it goes to the tenth you'll have to unwind some curves." "I will, but it won't go to the tenth." It didn't, for the Stars took a brace and pulled off one run, winning the game by a score of fourteen to thirteen. But it had been a close call. "Well, you beat us," acknowledged the Academy manager as the winning run came in. "But it took two pitchers to do it, and you'd have done better if you'd stuck to the first one." "Perhaps," admitted Darrell. "You played better than I gave you credit for." "Why don't you use that first pitcher regularly?" the home captain wanted to know. "Oh, maybe----" began Darrell, and then he saw Sam standing close beside him, and he did not finish. "What were you going to say?" demanded Sam roughly. "Nothing," answered the manager in some confusion. He was saved a further reply by the approach of a boy who held a note in his hand. "Is Joe Matson here?" the lad asked. "Right over there," said Darrell, pointing to where the young pitcher was talking to Tom Davis. "I've got a letter for him," the messenger went on. Joe rapidly tore open the envelope and read the few words the note contained. "I've got to leave here," he said to Tom. "Why? What's the matter? Nothing wrong I hope." "I don't know," answered Joe. "The note says I'm to come home at once. They've sent a carriage for me. I hope nothing has happened to--to anybody," and gulping down a suspicious lump in his throat Joe followed the lad off the diamond. CHAPTER XXV JOE FOILS THE PLOTTERS There was a carriage waiting just outside the ball grounds, a carriage drawn by one horse. A man whom Joe had never seen before, so far as he knew, held the reins. "There's the man who wants you," explained the lad who had acted as messenger. "Who is he?" asked the young pitcher quickly. "I don't know him. Where did he come from? Where did you meet him?" "I guess he'll tell you all you want to know," said the lad. "All I know is that I was standing outside the ball grounds after the game, and he give me that note to bring in to you. I didn't come with him." "Oh, I see," replied Joe, but he was wondering who the man was, and how the fellow came to know that he was in Fayetteville. "Hope I didn't take you away from the game," began the man with what he evidently meant for a pleasant smile. Yet, somehow Joe did not like that smile. The man seemed to have a shifty glance and Joe mistrusted him. "Oh, the game is over," answered the young pitcher. "I didn't play in the last part. But what is the matter? Is my mother or father ill?" "It's nothing serious," spoke the man. "No one is ill. I came to get you about your father's patents." "Oh!" exclaimed Joe. He felt a sensation of relief until he realized the danger that threatened his father's inventions. Then he asked: "What's wrong? Is Mr.----" Then he stopped for he did not know whether or not to mention names to this stranger. "I can't give you any particulars," said the man with another smile. "All I can say is that they engaged me to come and get you to save time." "Who engaged you?" asked Joe. "Your father," replied the man. "He sent me off in a hurry and said I'd find you at this game. I sent you in the note by the lad. Your father had no time to write one, but you are to go to him at once. He wants you to help him about the patent models I think. We'd better hurry." Joe's suspicions vanished at once. He knew his father was preparing to send on some models to Washington and now probably some need of haste had arisen necessitating his aid. He climbed up into the carriage, and though he noted at the time that the rig did not seem to be from the local livery stable, which had only a few, he thought nothing of it then. The man flicked the horse with the whip and the animal started off on the jump. Just outside the ball grounds there was a private road leading into the main one. On reaching the chief thoroughfare the man turned north whereas, to reach Riverside, he should have gone south. "Hold on!" cried Joe, "you're going the wrong way." "Be easy. It's all right," answered the man with a smile. "Your father has taken all his things to a little shop in Denville. He had to have some changes made in the models I believe, and he wanted to be in a machine shop where he could work quietly. He told me to bring you there." Joe remembered that on one or two occasions Mr. Matson had had some work done in Denville, and once more the suspicions that had arisen were lulled. Joe sank back on the cushions and began thinking of the game just played. His arm was getting quite stiff. "I'll have to attend to it as soon as I get home," he mused. "It won't do to have it go back on me just when things are in such good shape. If they keep on I may become the regular pitcher. Sam certainly did poorly in his part of the game, and I'm not getting a swelled head, either, when I say that." Joe knew he had done good work, considering his sore arm, and he made up his mind to do still better. The man drove along rapidly, and in about an hour had reached the outskirts of Denville. He turned down a road that was evidently little used, to judge by the grass growing in it, and halted the horse in front of a small building. It did not look like a place where inventors' models would be made. In fact the shack had a forlorn and forsaken air about it, and Joe looked curiously at it. His suspicions were coming back. "Where is my father?" he demanded. "I don't see him." "It's all right now--it's all right," said the man quickly. "Hello in there!" he called. The next instant Joe saw a face at the window. Then it disappeared, but that momentary glance had showed him it was the face of Mr. Isaac Benjamin. In a second it was all clear to him. He had been trapped. He attempted to spring from the carriage seat. "I'm on to your game!" he exclaimed to the man. "Oh, are you? Well, you're not going to get away!" and with that the man grabbed Joe around the waist, pinning his arms to his sides. Then from the little building came running Mr. Benjamin and Mr. Holdney. "Did you get him all right?" asked the manager of the harvester works eagerly. "I certainly did," panted the other man, for Joe was struggling to get loose. "Didn't give me any trouble either, until just now." "Well, I'll make lots of trouble for you, if you don't let me go!" cried Joe. "Now, young man, take it easy," advised Mr. Benjamin. "We don't intend to do you a bit of harm, and we only brought you to this place to have a quiet talk with you. It's in your father's interest and I hope you'll overlook the unconventional way we took to get you here. Bring him in," he added to the man in the carriage and, despite Joe's struggles he was lifted out and carried into the little building. The door was shut and locked, and he was alone with his three captors. "What do you want of me?" hotly demanded the lad. "Now don't get excited and we'll tell you," said Mr. Benjamin. "It's about your father's patents." "Yes," broke in Mr. Holdney, "we want to know where they are. He had no right to take the papers and models away from the harvester works. Those inventions are the property of the company and aren't your father's at all. We want----" "Better let me talk to him," advised Mr. Benjamin. "Now Joe, you can't understand all the ins and outs of this business, for it's very complicated. You know that your father is working on certain patents about a corn reaper and binder; don't you?" "Yes," admitted Joe cautiously, "but I'm not going to tell you anything about it." "Perhaps you will after you hear all I have to say," went on Mr. Benjamin. "Now, it's like this: Your father is unduly alarmed about the safety of his rights in the patents, and I will admit that he has some rights. For some reason he saw fit to take his models and papers away from the shop at the harvester works where he was engaged on them." Joe smiled--well he knew why his father had removed the valuable models and papers. "What we want," said Mr. Benjamin, "is to get access to those models. We want to see them for a short time, and also look over the papers. Now you can fix that for us if you will." "Why don't _you_ ask my father?" inquired Joe. "We have, but----" began Mr. Holdney. "He won't listen to reason," put in Mr. Benjamin. "He thinks we would deprive him of his rights." Joe thought so too, but he said nothing. "Now if you can quietly get those models and papers and let us have a look at them they will be returned to you without fail," said the manager. "Your father's rights will be fully protected. It may seem strange to you for us to make this proposition in this way, and bring you here as we have done, but it was necessary." "Suppose I refuse?" asked Joe. "Then we'll----" began Mr. Holdney, in blustering tones. "Now, now, easy," cautioned Mr. Benjamin. "The consequences may be disastrous for your father," he said quietly. "I am doing this for his own good. He will not hear of showing the models, but if you can get them for us it will save much trouble and annoyance for--well, for all of us. If you don't, your father may lose all he possesses and be without a position. I know what inventors are. They can only see one thing at a time. It is a simple thing that we ask of you. Will you do it? Now, you needn't answer at once. Take a little time to think it over. Go in that room there and wait. We'll give you half an hour. If by that time you don't decide to help us we'll----" "We'll _make_ you!" exclaimed Mr. Holdney. "I've got too much money tied up in this to see it lost by the obstinacy of a boy." "Well, if you refuse, we will have to take other measures," said Mr. Benjamin, with a shrug of his shoulders. Joe's heart was beating fast. He did not know what to do. Being practically kidnapped after he had worked so hard in the game, his fears for his father aroused, it is no wonder that he could not think clearly. He welcomed the chance to go off quietly by himself, but never for a moment did he think of betraying his father. Only for an instant did he place any confidence in what the wily manager had said. Then he knew there must be a trick in it all. "But if I let them trap me it's my own fault," thought Joe. "I've got to think up some way of escape." "Well?" asked the manager as Joe hesitated. "I--I'll think it over," answered the young pitcher. "All right. You can go in that room," and Mr. Benjamin opened the door of an apartment leading out of the main one. Joe cast a quick glance about it as the door closed behind him. He noted that it was not locked, but that with three men in the outer room the boy knew he could not escape that way. "And I'm going to escape if I can," he told himself. "I don't need any more time to think over what I'm going to do. They shan't have a glance at dad's models and papers." A rapid survey of the room showed him that it had but one window and that was heavily barred. He raised the sash softly and tried the bars. They were rusty but held firmly in the wood. "No use trying that way," murmured Joe. He heard the hum of voices in the outer room and listened at the keyhole. "Don't you think he can get away?" he heard the man who had brought him to the place ask the others. "I don't believe he'll try," was the answer from Mr. Benjamin. "After all, we couldn't hope to keep him a prisoner long. There would be too much hue and cry over it. All I expect is that he'll be so worried and frightened that he'll tell us what we want to know." "Oh, you've got another think coming," whispered Joe. He walked back to the window once more and, as he crossed the room he saw what looked like a trap door in the floor. Kneeling down he applied his nose to the crack. There came up the damp, musty smell of a cellar. "That's it!" cried Joe. "If I can get that door up I can drop into the cellar even if there aren't any stairs, and I guess I can get out of the cellar. But can I get that door up?" There was no ring to lift it by, and no handle, but Joe was a resourceful lad and in an instant his knife was out. With the big blade inserted in the crack he managed to raised the door a trifle. He endeavored to hold the advantage he had gained until he could take out the knife blade and insert it again farther down, but the door slipped through his fingers. "I've got to get some way of holding it up after each time I pry," he thought. A hurried search through his pockets brought to light part of a broken toe plate. He had had a new one put on for the Academy game, and had thrust the broken piece in the pocket of his trousers. "This ought to do it," he reasoned, and it did, for with the aid of that Joe was able to hold up and raise the trap door. The damp, musty smell was stronger now, and Joe was glad to see, in the dim darkness of the cellar, a flight of steps. "They're pretty rotten, but I guess they'll hold me," he murmured. The next instant he was going down them, and he let the trap door fall softly into place over his head. It was so dark in the cellar now that he could see nothing, but when his eyes became accustomed to the blackness he saw the dim light of an outer window. It was the work of but a moment to scramble through it, and a few seconds later Joe was running away from the place of his brief captivity. "I guess I won't give you an answer to-day," he murmured as he looked back. He heard a shout and saw Mr. Benjamin rush out. Then our hero caught sight of the horse and carriage and like a flash he made for it. Jumping in he called to the animal and was soon galloping down the road while the shouts behind him became fainter and fainter. "This is the time I fooled you!" cried Joe exultantly, as he urged on the horse. CHAPTER XXVI SAM RESIGNS "Those desperate men! You must have them arrested at once!" exclaimed Mrs. Matson when Joe, a little later, had reached home, having left the horse and carriage at the local livery stable to be claimed. "You ought to go to the police at once, John! Why think of what might have happened to Joe," for the boy had told the whole story. "Oh, it wasn't so bad," said Joe who, now that the excitement was over, and he had so completely turned the tables on the plotters, was rather inclined to laugh at the experience. "There are worse things than that done to get possession of valuable patents," said Mr. Matson. "Those men are evidently desperate, though why Mr. Holdney should turn against me I cannot understand. But I would rather wait, and take no action right away. My work is almost finished and if all goes well I shall soon be independent of the harvester people. If, however, there is a slip-up I will be dependent on my position for a living. I think I will wait and see what develops." But in the morning there was a new turn to affairs. It was announced at the harvester factory that Mr. Benjamin had gone away for an indefinite stay, and a new manager had his place. This made it unnecessary for Mr. Matson to say anything. He wrote a strong letter of protest to Mr. Holdney, and then worked harder than ever to get his patents in shape so he would be fully protected in them. As for Joe he said nothing to any of his chums about his experience. The rig was claimed later by a man who would not give his name, and who drove off hurriedly, as if he feared arrest. "And now I'm going to get back to baseball," announced the young pitcher. His arm got better rapidly after the Academy game, and he was soon pitching in practice with his former vim and vigor. He was now regarded as the regular substitute twirler for the Silver Stars. Sam Morton, too, was regular in his practice, and there seemed to be something different about him. He was more careful in his conduct, and not as surly as he had been. He accepted criticism in a better spirit, and in one game against the scrub he did such unusually excellent work that the manager complimented him. "Just keep that up on Saturday," said Darrell, "and we won't let the Fairdale Blues have a run." "Oh, I'll be there with the goods all right," boasted Sam. He glanced at Joe as he said this as much as to intimate that his rival would not get a chance in the box. The Fairdale Blues were a strong team, and, as they had beaten the Stars several times, and had also won from the Resolutes, who were considered the strongest team in the county, more than the usual interest attached to the coming contest. It was to be played on the Stars' grounds, and early on the day of the game the grandstand and bleachers began to fill. The Blues arrived in several big carryalls with a noisy crowd of "rooters" carrying horns, bells and clappers--anything with which to make a racket. "They'll get Sam's goat if he isn't careful," observed Rodney Burke, when the Stars went out to practice. "Don't you fool yourself," retorted Sam. "I'm going to pitch a no-hit no-run game to-day." "That's like Sam--boasting as usual," commented Rodney. "Well, I think he'll make good," said an admirer of the pitcher. "Wait until you see what kind of hitters the Blues have," cautioned Rodney. "They may knock Sam out of the box. Then if Joe goes in----" "Aw, Joe won't get a chance to-day," was the retort. "He hasn't had enough practice." "Look what he did to the Academy team," reminded Rodney. And then further talk was stopped, for the gong rang to clear the diamond. The game was about to begin. The Stars took the field, for they were to bat last, and Sam faced his first opponent with a smile of confidence on his face. It faded away a moment later, however, as the lad knocked as pretty a three bagger as had been seen on the grounds in many a day. "That's the stuff!" "Line 'em out!" "Oh, we're on to his curves all right!" yelled the crowd. Joe, who was on the bench as a reserve pitcher, jumped to his feet and watched the ball roll past Tom who was playing centre. It looked almost as if the batter would come on home, but he held third and the fears of the Stars subsided. "Fool him now, Sam," called Darrell to the pitcher. "Make him give you a nice one," was the advice the next batter got from his friends. And he did, though it was only good for one bag. However, the run came in, and there were gloomy hearts in the camp of the Silver Stars. Sam managed to strike out the next man, and his confidence came back. But it was only for a short time. The crowd of Blue "rooters" was making a terrific racket and this may have gotten on Sam's nerves, at any rate he gave the next man his base on balls and was later hit for two two baggers. "Oh, we've got his goat! We've got 'em going! Everybody take a run!" yelled the visiting captain, jumping up and down at the third base coaching line. Darrell ran over to Sam. "You've got to pull yourself together," he said quickly. "We can't afford to lose this game." "I'm doing the best I can," retorted Sam. "The ball slips." "Don't let it slip--slips are dangerous," said the manager sharply. "You've got to do better or----" "Play ball!" yelled the umpire and Darrell ran back to his place at first base. Sam scowled at him, and then wound up for his next delivery. Somehow they managed to get three out, but there were five runs in the Blue frame when that inning ended, and only two for the Stars. "We can't stand this," said Rankin to the manager. "No, if Sam doesn't improve this inning I'm going to put in Joe." "Sam will raise a row." "I don't care if he does. Why doesn't he pitch decent ball if he wants to hold his place? They're laughing at the Stars now, and they didn't used to." "I know it. Well, maybe he'll improve." But Sam didn't. He could not seem to control the ball, his curves broke just about where the batters wanted them and they knocked out three runs that inning. "Matson bats for Morton!" announced the umpire when it came the turn of the Stars and the change had been mentioned to the score keepers by Darrell. "What does that mean?" cried Sam, striding to where the captain and manager sat. "It means that Joe is going to pitch the rest of this game," was the quiet answer. "He is?" Sam's voice rose high in anger. "He certainly is. You can't seem to do it, Sam. I'm sorry, but we can't afford to lose. We're near the tail end of the league now." Sam shot a look at the captain. Rankin nodded his head to confirm what the manager had said. Then the deposed pitcher strode over to where the score keepers sat. Taking up a piece of paper and a pencil he rapidly wrote something and handed it to Darrell. "What's this?" asked the manager. "My resignation from the Silver Star Baseball Club," snapped Sam. "I'm done pitching for you. It was all a put-up job to get me out, and that Matson lad in. I'm through," and he turned aside. "Very well," assented Darrell quietly. "If you feel that way about it perhaps it is better that you quit. But I'm sorry." "Play ball!" yelled the umpire. "Joe, bat for Sam and then take the box," said the manager, and there was a little subdued applause from the other Star players on the bench. It was their way of congratulating Joe. CHAPTER XXVII BAD NEWS Joe was plainly nervous. Being called on so suddenly had its effect as did the unexpected action of Sam in resigning because Joe had supplanted him. But the young pitcher knew that he must pull himself together. The game was slipping away from the Stars and the crowd of shouters that accompanied the Blues would redouble their efforts to get Joe's "goat" as soon as he got in the box. He had a foretaste of what they would do when he got up to bat in Sam's place and struck out. It was no discredit to Joe, for the Blues had a fine pitcher, still it added to his nervousness. "If that's a sample of what your new pitcher can do we'll take a few more runs!" yelled a Blue sympathizer. "Oh, he only did that for fun!" yelled Rodney. "Yes," added Tom Davis. "He's saving his arm to strike you fellows out. Go to it, Joe! Don't let 'em rattle you." The Stars took a brace, whether it was the knowledge that Joe was to pitch or not, but they certainly braced, and in that inning got enough runs to make the score six to eight in favor of the visiting team. "Now, Joe, hold 'em down!" pleaded Darrell, "and we can do the rest, I think." "I'll try," answered our hero. It would be too much to expect Joe to do wonders, but he did very well. He only allowed two hits in the inning when he first pitched and only one run came in, chiefly through an error on the part of the third baseman. "I guess we've got their number now," exulted Darrell, when it came the turn of the Stars to bat. "Keep up the good work, boys. We've got 'em going." The Stars managed to knock out two runs in their half of the third inning and that made the score eight to nine--one extra tally only against them. And then began what was really a remarkable game for one played between amateur nines. For the next four innings neither side got a run. Talk of a "pitchers' battle" began to be whispered, and for the credit of the visitors be it said that they no longer tried to get Joe's "goat." Both pitchers were on their mettle. Of course they were not perfect and probably some deliveries that the umpire called strikes were balls, just as some that he designated as balls were good strikes. But it was all in the game. Joe was doing good work. There were only a few scattered hits off him and these were easily taken care of by the in or out fielders. In this the Blues rather excelled, however, there being more errors charged up against the home team than to them. But the Stars had this in their favor; that, while there were a number of good stick men among the visitors, they were not speedy base-runners and thus a number of men were nabbed on the sacks, through playing off too far, or not connecting in time, who otherwise might have brought in runs. "Oh, fellows, we've got to do something!" cried the captain at the close of the usual lucky seventh, when no runs had been registered for either side. "Can't some of you pull off a run?" But it was the Blue team who scored first, getting one run on a ball hit by the first man up. It was manifestly a foul, but the umpire called it fair and the man held his base. Then Joe's arm gave him a twinge and he was hit for a three bagger by the next man up, scoring the player preceding him. But that was all. With grimly tightened lips Joe faced his next opponent and after that not a man got to first, and the player on third dared not steal home, so keenly was he watched. With the score eight to ten against them the Stars came in more confidently than might have been expected. And when they had hammered out two runs, tieing the score, there was wild enthusiasm. "Here's where we walk away from them!" yelled Rodney, as the second run came in, and with only one man out. But there came a slump and the opposing pitcher braced up, striking out two men in succession. The ninth inning saw a single run tallied up for the visitors, and in this connection Joe did some great work, pulling down a fly that was well over his head and receiving a round of applause for his pluck, for it was a "hot" one. The unexpected happened in the ending of the ninth, when the visitors were one ahead. Seth Potter, never reckoned as a heavy hitter brought in a home run, and the score was once more a tie for no one else crossed home plate. "Ten innings!" was the cry and the spectators began "sitting up and taking notice" as Rodney Burke said. "Now, Joe, it's up to you to shut them out," advised the captain. The young pitcher nodded and then he cut loose. His arm was paining him very much for by a sudden twist he had wrenched the muscles injured in saving the lad from the trolley car. But Joe would not give up, and he struck out three men neatly, only one, the second up, getting any kind of a hit, and that only good for the initial bag. "A goose egg!" yelled Rodney Burke. "Now one run will do the trick!" "Snow 'em under!" cried Darrell. And the Stars did, for they rapped out the necessary run amid a jubilant riot of cheers, making the final score twelve to eleven. "Oh, I knew you could do it! I knew you could!" cried the captain, trying to embrace all his lads at once. They had won handily though at one time it looked like defeat. "Good work, Joe," complimented Darrell. "You're the regular pitcher from now on." "But if Sam reconsiders his resignation?" "He can't," rejoined the manager. "He's out for good." Joe could hardly wait to get home and tell the good news. He fairly raced into the house, but he stopped short at the sight of his father and mother in the dining room. They were seated at the table and a look of anxiety was on their faces. "What's the matter?" gasped Joe, all his joy in the victory and his new position leaving him as he looked at his parents. On the table between them lay a number of papers. "I've been served with a summons from the court," said Mr. Matson slowly. "It's a move on the part of Benjamin and Holdney. The court has taken my patent models and documents away from me, and I may lose everything. It's hard, just as I was about to succeed--very hard." "And you may lose everything, dad?" asked Joe huskily. "Yes--everything son--I may have to start all over again. I'm out of the harvester works now." For a moment one disappointing thought came to Joe. He would not be able to go to a boarding school as he had hoped. Then the look of trouble on his father's face drove all other thoughts from his mind. "Don't you care, dad!" he exclaimed stepping close to him. "You can beat those fellows yet. We whipped the Blues to-day, and I'm the regular pitcher for the Stars!" CHAPTER XXVIII THE FIGHT There was a moment of silence following Joe's remark about being made regular pitcher. Then Clara laughed and it was almost a laugh of relief, for she had been under quite a strain since she came in and heard the bad news. "Oh, you silly boy!" cried Clara. "Just as if your being made pitcher was going to help. I suppose you'll turn all your salary in to help out now; won't you?" but there was no sting intended in her words and, fearing there might have been just the touch of it, she crossed the room and tried to slip her arm up around Joe's neck. "No, you don't!" he cried as gaily as possible under the circumstances, "fen on kissing. But say, dad, is it as bad as all that? Have Benjamin and his crowd beaten you?" "I'm afraid so, son. At least they've won the first skirmish in the battle. Now it's up to the courts, and it may take a year or more to settle the question of whether or not I have any rights in the inventions I originated. But don't let that worry you," he went on more cheerfully. "We'll make out somehow. I'm glad you got the place you wanted. How was the game?" "Pretty good. It was so tight we had to play ten innings. But can't I do something to help you, dad?" "We can't do anything right away," rejoined Mr. Matson. "We can only wait. I shall have to see a lawyer, and have him look after my interests. I never thought that Mr. Benjamin and Mr. Holdney would treat me this way. "But don't worry. Perhaps we shall come out all right, and in the end this may be a good thing. It will teach me a lesson never again to trust any one where patents are concerned. I should have had a written contract and not taken their mere word that they would treat me right." "And you are out of the harvester works?" asked Joe. "Out completely," and Mr. Matson smiled. "I have a holiday, Joe, and I'm coming to see you pitch some day." "But--but," ventured Clara, "if you haven't any work, dad, you won't get any money and----" "Oh, so that's what is worrying you!" cried her father with a laugh as he placed his arm around her. "Well, have no fears. There are still a few shots in the locker, and we're not going to the poorhouse right away. Now, Joe, tell us all about the ball game." Which the young pitcher did with great enthusiasm. "But won't this Sam Morton be angry with you?" asked Mrs. Matson, who was a gentle woman, always in fear of violence. "Oh, I don't suppose he'll be very _friendly_ toward me," replied Joe. "Then he may do you some injury." "Well, I guess I can take care of myself. I'm not afraid of him, mother, and if it comes to a fight----" "Oh, you horrid boys--always thinking about fighting!" interrupted Clara. "Don't you fight, Joe!" "I won't if I can help it, sis." Next morning, Joe was in two states of mind. He was delighted at being the regular pitcher for the Stars, but he was downcast when he thought that to go to the boarding school was now out of the question. And that it would be impossible for him to think of it under the present financial state of the family was made plain to him when he spoke of the matter to his mother. "I'm sorry, Joe," she said, "but you'll have to give up the idea." "All right," he answered, as cheerfully as he could, but he went out of the house quickly for there was a suspicious moisture in his eyes, and a lump in his throat that would not seem to go down, no matter how hard he swallowed. "Oh, I'm a chump!" he finally exclaimed. "I shouldn't want to go to an expensive boarding school when dad is in such trouble. And yet--and yet--Oh! I _do_ want to get on a big team and pitch!" In the days that followed Joe saw little of his father, for Mr. Matson was out of town trying to get matters in shape for the court proceedings. But Joe was kept busy at practice with the Stars, and in playing games. The season was in full swing and the Silver Stars seemed to have struck a streak of winning luck. Some said it was Joe's pitching, for really he was doing very well. Others laid it just to luck and talked darkly of a "slump." "There won't be any slump if you fellows keep your eyes open, and hit and run," said the manager. The county league season was drawing to a close, and as it stood now the championship practically lay between the Stars and their old enemies the Resolutes. There was some talk of playing off a tie, if it should come to that, but when Darrell mentioned this to the Resolute manager he was told that the latter team had all dates filled to the end of the season. "We can't give you a game," he announced. "It's too bad," said Darrell, "for we ought to decide which is the best team." "Oh, ours is, of course. Didn't we wallop you once?" "Well, you can't do it again," was the quick retort. It was several days after this when Joe was coming home from afternoon practice in preparation for a game Saturday with the Red Stockings. As he took a short cut over the fields to get home more quickly, he was aware of a figure coming toward him. When too late to turn back he saw it was Sam Morton. Sam saw Joe and came to a halt. "Well," asked Sam with a sneer, "how is the high-and-mighty pitcher? I suppose you've been doing nothing else but handing out no-hit and no-run games?" "Not quite as good as that," admitted Joe with what he meant for a friendly smile. "Who you laughing at?" demanded Sam fiercely. "I wasn't laughing," replied Joe. "Yes, you were! You were laughing at me and I won't stand it. You worked and schemed to get me out of the nine so you could go in, and now you're making fun of me, I won't stand it, I tell you. You think you're a pitcher! Well you're not, and you'll never be. I won't be made fun of!" All the pent-up anger--unreasoning as it was,--all the hate that had been accumulating for weeks in Sam, burst out at once. He made a spring for Joe, but the pitcher stepped back. Not in time, however, for he received a blow on the chest. Now I am not defending Joe for what he did. I am only telling of what happened. Joe was a manly lad yet he had all the instincts and passions that normal lads have. When he was hit his first instinct was to hit back, and he did it in this case. His left fist shot forward and clipped Sam on the chin. The blow was a staggering one and for a moment the former pitcher reeled. Then with a roar of rage he came back at Joe, and the pair were at it hammer and tongs. "I'll show you that you can't come sneaking around here and steal my place!" blubbered Sam, as he aimed a blow at Joe's face. "I didn't sneak!" retorted Joe, as he dodged the blow and got a right-hander near Sam's solar plexus. Both lads were evenly matched and the fight might have gone on for some time but for Sam's rage which made him reckless. He left unguarded openings of which Joe took quick advantage, and finally, with a straight left, he sent Sam to the grass. "I--I'll fix you for that!" yelled the former pitcher as he rushed at Joe. It was easy to step aside and avoid the clumsy blow, and once more Sam went down. This time he did not get up so quickly, and there was a dazed look on his face. "See here!" cried Joe, stepping over to him. "This has gone far enough. I didn't want to fight, but you made me. I can beat you and you know it. If you don't stop now I'll knock you down every time you get up until you've had enough." It was brutal talk, perhaps, but it was well meant. For a moment Sam looked up at his antagonist. Then he murmured: "I've had enough--for the present." CHAPTER XXIX THE CHALLENGE The fight was over. Sam arose and started away. Joe called after him: "Won't you shake hands? I'm sorry this happened, but can't we be friends after this?" "No!" snarled Sam. "I don't want anything to do with you." There was nothing more to be said, and Joe walked away. He was somewhat stiff and sore, for a number of Sam's blows had landed with telling effect. One in particular, on the muscles of his right forearm, made that member a bit stiff and numb. "I've got to take care of that," thought Joe, "or I can't pitch Saturday." He had only a few marks of the fight on his face and he was glad of it, for he did not want his mother or sister to know. Joe's mother did not ask embarrassing questions. In fact she was thinking of other things, for she had received a letter from her husband that day, sent from a distant city. Matters it appeared were not going as well as they might, but Mr. Matson had hopes that all would come out right in the end. Joe rubbed his sore arm well that night, and when Saturday came he pitched a great game against the Red Stockings, allowing only a few scattered hits. The Stars took the contest by a big margin. "Now, if we could wind up with a game against the Resolutes and wallop them we'd finish out the season in great shape," commented Captain Rankin, as he followed his lads off the diamond. "I'm going to make another try to get them to play us," said Darrell. "I'm going to send a challenge, and intimate that they're afraid to tackle us since we've got our new pitcher." It was several days later when the nine was at practice and Darrell had not come out. Tom Davis was in his place at first and Rodney Burke was in centre field. "I wonder what's keeping Darrell?" said the captain. "He hardly ever misses practice." "Here he comes now," announced Joe, "and he's got a letter," for Darrell was waving a paper as he ran across the field. "Good news, boys!" he cried. "The Resolutes will play us. I just got word in a special delivery letter. That's what kept me. Hurray! Now we'll show 'em what's what. It will be a grand wind-up for the season and will practically decide the county championship." "That's the stuff!" cried the lads. "When do we play?" asked Joe. "This coming Saturday." "I thought they said all their dates were filled," commented Tom Davis. "They were, but some team they counted on busted up and that left an opening. Then, too, I fancy that little dig I gave them about being afraid had its effect. Joe, it's up to you now." "All right!" and our hero accepted the responsibility with a smile. There was considerable excitement among the Silver Stars over the prospective game. They were almost too excited to keep on with the practice against the scrub, but Darrell talked like a "Dutch uncle" to them, to quote Rodney Burke, and they went at their work with renewed vigor. When Joe got home that evening after some hard practice there was another letter from his father. It was brief, merely saying: "In a few days I will know all. My next will contain good news--or bad." "Oh, this suspense is terrible," complained Mrs. Matson. The day of the game between the Silver Stars and their old enemies drew nearer. Joe had practiced hard and he knew he was in good shape to pitch. In fact the Stars were much improved by their season's work, and they were as good an amateur nine in their class as could be found in the country. Word came to them, however, that the Resolutes were trained to the minute, and were going to put up a stiff fight for the county championship. "Let 'em," said Darrell briefly. "We don't want a walk-over." "Well," remarked Clara to her brother, on the Saturday of the game, "isn't it almost time for you to start if you're going to Rocky Ford?" "Yes, I guess I had better be going," answered Joe. "I want to put a few stitches in my glove. It's ripped." "I'll do it," offered Clara and she had just finished when the door bell rang. "I'll go," volunteered Joe, and when he saw a messenger boy standing there, with a yellow envelope in his hands somehow the heart of the young pitcher sank. Quickly he took the telegram to his mother, to whom it was addressed. "You open it, Joe," she said. "I can't. I'm afraid it's bad news. My hand trembles so." Joe tore open the telegram. It was from his father. "I'm afraid it's all up," the message read. "I have practically lost my case, and it looks as if I'd have to start all over again. But don't worry. I'm coming home." A silence followed Joe's reading of the few words aloud. Then indeed it was all over. He could not go to boarding school after all. He looked at his mother. There were tears in her eyes but she bore the shock bravely. Clara was very pale. "Well, it might be worse!" said Joe philosophically. "There is just a bare chance--but it's mighty slim." And then from outside came the hail of Tom Davis: "Come on, Joe! Come on! It's time you started for Rocky Ford. We're going to wallop the Resolutes!" and with the freedom of an old friend, Joe's chum burst into the room. CHAPTER XXX THE WINNING THROW--CONCLUSION For a moment Tom stood there a bit embarrassed, for he saw that something unusual had happened. "I--I hope I'm not intruding," he stammered. "I didn't think--I came right in as I always do. Has anything----" "It's all right!" exclaimed Joe quickly. "We just got word that dad has lost his patent case." "Gee! That's too bad!" exclaimed Tom, who knew something of the affair. "What are you going to do?" "I'm going to pitch against the Resolutes, the first thing I do!" cried Joe. "After that I'll decide what's next. But is my glove mended, Clara? Come on, Tom, we mustn't be late. We're going to wallop them--just as you said." "I hope you do!" burst out Clara. "Play a good game and--and--don't worry," whispered Mrs. Matson to her son as he kissed her good-bye. The team and substitutes were to go to Rocky Ford in two big stages, in time to get in some practice on the grounds that were none too familiar to them. A crowd of Silver Star "rooters" were to follow on the trolley. The captain and managers of the rival teams watched their opponents practice with sharp eyes. "They're snappier than when they beat us before," was Darrell's conclusion. "They've got a heap sight better pitcher in Joe than Sam Morton ever was," concluded Captain Hen Littell of the Resolutes, who twirled for his team. "I shouldn't wonder but what we'd have a mighty close game." The last practice was over. The scattered balls had been collected, the batting list made out and final details arranged. Once more came the thrilling cry of the umpire: "Play ball!" The Resolutes were to bat last, and Seth Potter went up to bat first for the Stars. "Swat it," pleaded the crowd, and Seth smiled. But he fanned the air successively as well as successfully and soon went back to the bench. Then came Fred Newton's turn and he knocked a little pop fly that was easily caught before he reached first. Captain Rankin himself was up next and managed to get to first on a swift grounder that got past the shortstop. But he died on second, for the next man up fanned. No runs for the Stars. The Resolutes were jubilant, thinking this augured well for them, but they looked a little blank when Joe retired their first two men hitless. For Joe had started off in good form. With the first ball he delivered he knew that he was master of the horsehide--at least for a time. "But oh! I hope I don't slump!" and he almost found himself praying that such a thing would not happen. He was in an agony of fear when he heard the crack of the bat on the ball when the third man came up. The spheroid went shooting off in centre field, but by a magnificent stop Percy Parnell gathered it in and the side was retired runless. Things were not so bad for the Stars. For the next two innings neither side got a run, though there were some scattered hits. Again was there talk of a pitchers' battle, though in the strict sense of the word this was not so, as both Joe and Hen Littell were hit occasionally, and for what would have been runs only for the efficient fielding on both sides. "See if we can't do something this inning!" pleaded Rankin when his side came up in their half of the fourth. The lads all tried hard and Joe knocked a pretty one that was muffed by the second baseman. However, he quickly picked it up and hurled it to first. Joe got there about the same time as the ball did, and to many he seemed safe, but he was called out. "Aw, that's rotten!" cried Tom Davis. "Let it go!" said Darrell sharply, and Tom subsided. The Stars got another goose egg--four straight--and in their half of the fourth the Resolutes got their first run. The crowd went wild and Joe found himself clenching his hands, for the run came in because he had given a man his base on balls. The runner had successively stolen second and third, and went home on a nice fly. "I hope I'm not going to slump!" thought Joe and there was a lump in his throat. For an instant he found himself thinking of his father's troubles, and then he firmly dismissed them from his mind. "I've got to pitch!" he told himself fiercely. "We've got him going!" chanted the Resolute "rooters." Joe shut his teeth grimly and struck out the next man. Then he nipped the runner stealing second and threw him out with lightning speed. That somewhat silenced the jubilant cries and when Joe managed to retire one of the Resolute's heaviest hitters without even a bunt a big crowd rose up and cheered him. "They're only one ahead," said Rankin as his lads came in to bat. "Let's double it now." And double it they did, the Star boys playing like mad and getting enough hits off Littell to make two runs. "That's the way to wallop 'em!" sang some one in the visiting crowd and the song composed for the occasion was rendered with vim. Desperately as the Resolutes tried in their half of the fifth to catch up to their rivals, they could not do it. Joe was at his best and in that half inning did not allow a hit. He had almost perfect control, and his speed was good. Only once or twice did he pitch at all wild and then it did no harm as there was no one on base. The sixth inning saw a run chalked up for each team, making the score three to two in favor of the Stars. "Oh, if we can only keep this up!" exclaimed Darrell, "we'll have them. Can you do it, Joe?" "I guess so--yes, I can!" he said with conviction. Then came the lucky seventh, in which the Stars pounded out three runs, setting the big crowd wild with joy, and casting corresponding gloom over the cohorts of the Resolutes. The Stars now had six runs and their rivals were desperate. They even adopted unfair tactics, and several decisions of the umpire were manifestly in their favor. The crowd hooted and yelled, but the young fellow who was calling strikes and balls held to his opinion, and the Resolutes closed their half of the seventh with two runs. "Six to four in our favor," murmured the Stars' manager. "If we can only keep this lead the game is ours." "That word 'if' is a big one for only two letters," spoke Captain Rankin grimly. "But maybe we can." Neither side scored in the eighth and then came the final trial of the Stars unless there should be a tie, which would necessitate ten innings. Joe was to the bat in this inning, and oh! how hard he tried for a run! He knocked a two bagger and stole third. There was one out when Bart Ferguson came up, and Bart was a heavy hitter. But somehow he did not make good this time. He managed to connect with the ball, however, and as soon as Joe heard the crack he started for home. But there was brilliant playing on the part of the Resolutes. With a quick throw to home the shortstop nipped Joe at the plate, and then the catcher, hurling the ball to first, got the horsehide into the baseman's hands before Bart arrived. It was a pretty double play and retired the Stars with a goose egg. Still they had a lead of two runs and they might be able to hold their rivals down. It was a critical point in the game. As Joe took his place and faced the batter he felt his heart wildly throbbing. He knew he must hold himself well in hand or he would go to pieces. The crowd of Resolute sympathizers was hooting and yelling at him. Darrell saw how things might go and ran out to the pitcher. "Hold hard!" he whispered. "Just take it easy. Pitch a few balls to Bart and your nerve will come back. We've _got_ to win." "And we will!" exclaimed Joe. The delivery of a few balls, while the batter stepped away from the plate, showed Joe that he still had his speed and control. He was going to be wary what kind of curves he delivered. He struck out the first man up with an ease that at first caused him wild elation, and then he calmed himself. "There are two more," he reasoned. "I've got to get two more--two more." He was almost in despair when he was hit for a two bagger by the next player, and he was in a nervous perspiration about the man stealing to third. Then Darrell signalled him to play for the batter, and Joe did, getting him out with an easy fly. Then there was a mix-up when the next man hit, and by an error of the left fielder the man on second, who had stolen to third, went home with a run, while the man who had brought him in got to the last bag. "That's the stuff!" yelled the crowd. "Now one more to make it a tie and another to win!" "Steady, boys! Steady!" called Darrell, as he saw his team on the verge of a breakdown. "We can beat 'em!" There were now two out, one run was in, a man was on third and a heavy batter was up--one of the best of the Resolutes. "Swat it, Armstrong! Swat it!" cried the crowd, and the big left fielder smiled confidently. "Ball one!" cried the umpire, after Joe's first delivery. There was a gasp of protest from Bart behind the plate, for the sphere had come over cleanly. Darrell signalled to the catcher to make no protest. Joe felt a wave of anger, but he endeavored to keep cool. But when the second ball was called on him he wanted to run up and thrash the umpire. The latter was grinning derisively. "Here's a strike!" cried Joe, in desperation and he was gratified when Armstrong struck at it and missed. "Why didn't you call that a ball?" asked Bart of the umpire. The latter did not answer. Another ball was called and then a strike. Now came the supreme moment. Two men out, a man on third waiting to rush in with the tieing run, a heavy hitter at bat and three balls and two strikes called on him. No wonder Joe's hand trembled a little. "Easy, old man!" called Darrell to him. "You can make him fan." Joe thought rapidly. He had studied the batter and he thought that by delivering a swift in-shoot he could fool Armstrong. It was his last chance, for another ball meant that the batter would walk, and there was even a better stick-man to follow. Joe wound up, and sent in a swift one. His heart was fluttering, he could hardly see, there was a roaring in his ears. And then he dimly saw Armstrong strike at the ball desperately. Almost at the same moment Joe knew he would miss it. The ball landed in the centre of Bart's big glove with a resounding whack. He held it exactly where he had caught it. Joe had delivered the winning throw. "Strike three--batter's out!" howled the umpire, and then his voice was drowned in a yell of joy from the sympathizers of the Stars. For their team had won! The Resolutes were retired with but one run in the ninth and the final score was five to six in favor of our friends. They had beaten their old rivals on their own grounds and they had won the county championship! "Great work, old man! Great!" yelled Darrell in Joe's ear. "You saved the day for us." "Nonsense!" exclaimed Joe modestly. "Three cheers for Baseball Joe!" yelled Tom Davis, and how those cheers did ring out. "Three cheers for the Stars--they beat us fair and square!" called Captain Littell, and this was quite a different ending than that which had marked the previous game. Some wanted to carry Joe around on their shoulders but he slipped away, and got off his uniform. Soon the team was on its way back to Riverside. "You ought to be in a bigger team," Darrell told Joe. "You've got the making of a great pitcher in you." "Well, I guess I'll have to stick around here for a while yet," replied our hero, as he thought of the fallen finances of his father. Never in all his life had he so longed for the chance to go to boarding school, and thence to college. But he knew it could not be, chiefly through the treachery of Benjamin and Holdney. Joe felt a wave of resentment against them sweep over him, and his thoughts were black and bitter. Tom walked as far as Joe's street with him. He had a silent sympathy that spoke more than mere words could have done. "So long," he said softly as they parted. "It was a great game, Joe, and I'm almost glad you've got to stay with the Stars." "Well, did you win?" asked his mother, as Joe entered the house--entered it more listlessly than winning a big game would seem to warrant. "Did you beat the Resolutes, Joe?" "Yes, we did--why, mother, what's the matter?" cried the young pitcher, for there was a look of joy and happiness on her face, a look entirely different than when he had left her after the bad news. "Has anything--anything good happened?" he asked. "Yes!" she exclaimed, "there has. I just had another telegram from your father. Everything is all right. He gets back his patents." "No!" cried Joe, as if unable to believe the news. "But I tell you yes!" repeated Mrs. Matson, and there was joy in her voice. "At first your father believed that all was lost, just as he wired us. Then, most unexpectedly he tells me, they were able to obtain some evidence from outside parties which they had long tried for in vain. "It seems that a witness for Mr. Benjamin and his side, on whom they very much depended, deserted them, and went over to your father and his lawyer, and----" "Hurray for that witness, whoever he was!" cried Joe. "Be quiet," begged Clara, "and let mother tell." "There isn't much to tell," went on Mrs. Matson. "With the unexpected evidence of this witness your father's lawyer won the case, almost at the last moment. In fact your father had given up, and was about ready to leave the court when the man sent in word that he would testify for them. That was after your father sent the telegram that came just before you went off to the game, Joe." "Oh, I'm so glad!" cried Clara. "Now it's your turn to be quiet and listen," admonished Joe, with a smile at his sister. "I have about finished," went on their mother. "The judge decided in your father's favor, and he doesn't even have to share the profits of the invention with the harvester company or with Mr. Rufus Holdney, as he at one time thought he would, for they have violated their contract. So we won't be poor, after all, children. Aren't you glad?" "You bet!" exploded Joe, throwing his arms around his mother's neck. "And we won't have to leave this nice house," added Clara, looking around the comfortable abode. "Then I can go to boarding school--and pitch on the school nine; can't I mother?" cried Joe, throwing his arms around her. "Oh, yes; I suppose so," she answered, with half a sigh. "But I do wish you'd do something else besides play baseball." "Something else besides baseball, mother! Why, there's nothing to be compared to it. Hurray! I'm going to boarding school! I'm going to boarding school!" and Joe, catching Clara around the waist, waltzed her around the room. Then he caught his mother on his other arm--the arm that won the victory for the Stars that day--and her, too, he whirled about until she cried for mercy. "Oh, but this is great!" Joe cried when he stopped for breath. "Simply great! I must go and tell Tom. Maybe he can go to boarding school with me." And whether Tom did or not, and what were our hero's further fortunes on the diamond, will be related in the next volume, to be called: "Baseball Joe on the School Nine; or, Pitching for the Blue Banner." There was an impromptu feast that night for the victorious Silver Stars and Joe was the hero of the occasion. He was toasted again and again, and called upon to make some remarks, which he did in great confusion. But his chums thought it the best speech they had ever heard. "Three cheers for Baseball Joe!" called Tom Davis, and the room rang with them, while Joe tried to hide his blushes by drinking glass after glass of lemonade. And now, for a time, we will take leave of him, crying as his chums did after the great victory on the diamond: "Hurrah for Baseball Joe!" THE END _Dear Reader_: If you enjoyed Baseball Joe and wish to follow his further adventures see the books listed on the following page. THE BASEBALL JOE SERIES By LESTER CHADWICK _12mo. Illustrated. Price 50 cents per volume. Postage 10 cents additional._ [Illustration] 1. BASEBALL JOE OF THE SILVER STARS _or The Rivals of Riverside_ 2. BASEBALL JOE ON THE SCHOOL NINE _or Pitching for the Blue Banner_ 3. BASEBALL JOE AT YALE _or Pitching for the College Championship_ 4. BASEBALL JOE IN THE CENTRAL LEAGUE _or Making Good as a Professional Pitcher_ 5. BASEBALL JOE IN THE BIG LEAGUE _or A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles_ 6. BASEBALL JOE ON THE GIANTS _or Making Good as a Twirler in the Metropolis_ 7. BASEBALL JOE IN THE WORLD SERIES _or Pitching for the Championship_ 8. BASEBALL JOE AROUND THE WORLD _or Pitching on a Grand Tour_ 9. BASEBALL JOE: HOME RUN KING _or The Greatest Pitcher and Batter on Record_ 10. BASEBALL JOE SAVING THE LEAGUE _or Breaking Up a Great Conspiracy_ 11. BASEBALL JOE CAPTAIN OF THE TEAM _or Bitter Struggles on the Diamond_ 12. BASEBALL JOE CHAMPION OF THE LEAGUE _or The Record that was Worth While_ 13. BASEBALL JOE CLUB OWNER _or Putting the Home Town on the Map_ 14. BASEBALL JOE PITCHING WIZARD _or Triumphs Off and On the Diamond_ _Send for Our Free Illustrated Catalogue._ CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York THE BOMBA BOOKS By ROY ROCKWOOD _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. With Colored jacket._ _Price 50 cents per volume. Postage 10 cents additional._ [Illustration] _Bomba lived far back in the jungles of the Amazon with a half-demented naturalist who told the lad nothing of his past. The jungle boy was a lover of birds, and hunted animals with a bow and arrow and his trusty machete. He had only a primitive education, and his daring adventures will be followed with breathless interest by thousands._ 1. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY 2. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AT THE MOVING MOUNTAIN 3. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AT THE GIANT CATARACT 4. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY ON JAGUAR ISLAND 5. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY IN THE ABANDONED CITY 6. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY ON TERROR TRAIL 7. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY IN THE SWAMP OF DEATH 8. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AMONG THE SLAVES 9. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY ON THE UNDERGROUND RIVER 10. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AND THE LOST EXPLORERS 11. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY IN A STRANGE LAND 12. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AMONG THE PYGMIES 13. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AND THE CANNIBALS 14. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AND THE PAINTED HUNTERS 15. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AND THE RIVER DEMONS 16. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AND THE HOSTILE CHIEFTAIN These books may be purchased wherever books are sold _Send for Our Free Illustrated Catalogue_ CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York CHAMPION SPORTS STORIES By NOEL SAINSBURY, JR. [Illustration] _Every boy enjoys sport stories. Here we present three crackerjack stories of baseball, football, and basketball, written in the vernacular of the boy of to-day, full of action, suspense and thrills, in language every boy will understand, and which we know will be enthusiastically endorsed by all boys._ _Large 12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in color. Price 50 cents per volume._ _Postage 10 cents additional._ 1. CRACKER STANTON _Or The Making of a Batsman_ Ralph Stanton, big, rawboned and serious, is a product of the backwoods and a crack rifle shot. Quick thinking and pluck bring him a scholarship to Clarkville School where he is branded "grind" and "dub" by classmates. How his batting brings them first place in the League and how he secures his appointment to West Point make CRACKER STANTON an up-to-the-minute baseball story no lover of the game will want to put down until the last word is read. 2. GRIDIRON GRIT _Or The Making of a Fullback_ A corking story of football packed full of exciting action and good, clean competitive rivalry. Shorty Fiske is six-foot-four and the product of too much money and indulgence at home. How Clarkville School and football develop Shorty's real character and how he eventually stars on the gridiron brings this thrilling tale of school life and football to a grandstand finish. 3. THE FIGHTING FIVE _Or the Kidnapping of Clarkville's Basketball Team_ Clarkville School's basketball team is kidnapped during the game for the State Scholastic Championship. The team's subsequent adventures under the leadership of Captain Charlie Minor as he brings them back to the State College Gymnasium where the two last quarters of the Championship game are played next evening, climaxes twenty-four pulsating hours of adventure and basketball in the FIGHTING FIVE.... CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York SORAK JUNGLE SERIES By HARVEY D. RICHARDS _The name Sorak means War Cry in the Malay country. He grows up among the most primitive of the Malay aborigines, and learns to combat all the terrors of the jungle with safety. The constant battle with nature's forces develop Sorak's abilities to such an extent that he is acknowledged the chief warrior in all his section of the jungle._ _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in color. Price 50 cents per volume._ _Postage 10 cents additional._ [Illustration] 1. SORAK OF THE MALAY JUNGLE _or How Two Young Americans Face Death and Win a Friend_ Two boys, Dick and Jack Preston are shipwrecked off the Malay Peninsula and are rescued by Sorak. Their adventures in trying to get back to civilization make an absorbing story. 2. SORAK AND THE CLOUDED TIGER _or How the Terrible Ruler of the North Is Hunted and Destroyed_ A huge clouded tiger, almost human, leads a pack of red dholes into Sorak's country, and it takes all of Sorak's ingenuity, and the aid of his friends to exterminate the pack. 3. SORAK AND THE SULTAN'S ANKUS _or How a Perilous Journey Leads to a Kingdom of Giants_ Sorak and his friends are trapped by a herd of elephants, and finally run away with by the leader to an unknown valley where a remnant of Cro-Magnon race still exists. Their exciting adventures will hold the reader enthralled until the last word. 4. SORAK AND THE TREE-MEN _or the Rescue of the Prisoner Queen_ Captured by a band of Malay slavers, Sorak and his friends are wrecked on an island off the coast of Burma in the Mergui Archipelago. Their escape from the island with the Prisoner Queen after a successful revolution brings the fourth book of this series to an exciting and unusual conclusion. CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York TOP NOTCH DETECTIVE STORIES By WILLIAM HALL [Illustration] _Each story complete in itself_ _A new group of detective stories carefully written, with corking plots; modern, exciting, full of adventure, good police and detective work._ _Large 12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in color. Price 50 cents per volume._ _Postage 10 cents additional._ 1. SLOW VENGEANCE _or the Mystery of Pete Shine_ A young newspaper man, whose brother is on the police force, becomes strangely involved in the mysterious killing of an Italian bootblack. Suspicion points to a well-known politician but he proves that it was impossible for him to have done the deed. Then the reporter, who for a time turns detective, gets a clue revolving about a startling, ancient method of combat. He follows this up, watches a masked duelist and, with the help of a girl, catches the murderer who justifies his deed on the plea of Slow Vengeance. You will be interested in reading how the reporter got out of a tight corner. 2. GREEN FIRE _or Mystery of the Indian Diamond_ A golf caddy who has a leaning toward amateur detective work, together with his younger cousin, are accidentally mixed up in the strange loss, or theft, of a valuable diamond, known as Green Fire. It was once the eye of an East Indian idol. To clear his young cousin of suspicion, the older boy undertakes to solve the mystery which deepens when one man disappears and another is found murdered on the golf course. But, by a series of clever moves on the part of the young sleuth, the crime is solved and the diamond found in a most unusual hiding place. A rapidly moving, exciting tale. You will like it. 3. HIDDEN DANGER _or The Secret of the Bank Vault_ A young detective, who, in his private capacity, has solved several mysteries, decides to open an office in another city. He meets a young bank clerk and they become partners just when the clerk's bank is mysteriously bombed and the cashier is reported missing. It is not until next day that it is discovered that the bank vault has been entered in some secret manner and a large sum stolen. The regular detectives declared "spirits" must have robbed the bank but the two young detectives prove that a clever gang did it and also kidnapped the aged cashier. Not a dull page from first to last. A clever story. CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York NORTHWEST STORIES By LeROY W. SNELL [Illustration] _A new group of stories laid in the Canadian Northwest by Mr. Snell, a master writer of the glories and the thrilling adventures of the Canadian Northwest Mounted Police. Each book is an individual story, well written, beautifully bound, and contains a story that all boys will enjoy._ _Large 12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in color. Price 50 cents per volume._ _Postage 10 cents additional._ 1. THE LEAD DISK Tom Baley, leaving college goes north into Canada, hoping to join the Northwest Mounted Police. His application is turned down by his own uncle, an officer on the force, but after many thrilling adventures and encounters with the Disk Gang he is able to win the coveted uniform. 2. SHADOW PATROL Luke Myers is sent into the Caribou Mountains to solve the mystery of The Shadow, about whom many conflicting stories are told. There are struggles with the outlaws, and finally a great running battle down the fog-obscured mountain trails ... at the end of which the outlaws are captured and the mystery of The Shadow is solved. 3. THE WOLF CRY Donald Pierce is sent to solve the mystery of his father's disappearance, into the unmapped barrens where King Stively weaves his web of wickedness, and rules a territory the size of a small empire with a ruthlessness and cunning that baffles the best of the Mounted Police. Behind all is the dread Wolf Cry which causes brave men to shudder.... 4. THE SPELL OF THE NORTH Sergeant David Stanlaw, stationed at Spirit River, is puzzled by a local killing, the disappearance of the body, the finding of a code message, and by the mystery of the "Listening Forest," which casts a shadow of dread over the little town of Wiggin's Creek. With the help of Jerry Bartlett they capture the leaders of the gang and solve the mystery of the "Listening Forest." 5. THE CHALLENGE OF THE YUKON Robert Wade whose patrol runs from Skagway on Chattam Strait north into the Yukon country follows in the wake of a stampede to a new gold strike. With the aid of his friend, Jim MacPhail, Wade frustrates the outlaws, who try to trap the whole town behind the "Pass of the Closing Door," and then races them to and across the breaking ice floes of the Yukon. A strong adventure story all boys will enjoy. CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York Transcriber's Notes: --Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). --Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected. --Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved. --Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved. 
19246	----	The Young Pitcher By Zane Grey 1911 CONTENTS I. The Varsity Captain II. A Great Arm III. Prisoner of the Sophs IV. The Call for Candidates V. The Cage VI. Out on the Field VII. Annihilation VIII. Examinations IX. President Halstead on College Spirit X. New Players XI. State University Game XII. Ken Clashes with Graves XIII. Friendship XIV. The Herne Game XV. A Matter of Principle XVI. The First Place Game XVII. Ken's Day XVIII. Breaking Training I THE VARSITY CAPTAIN Ken Ward had not been at the big university many days before he realized the miserable lot of a freshman. At first he was sorely puzzled. College was so different from what he had expected. At the high school of his home town, which, being the capital of the State, was no village, he had been somebody. Then his summer in Arizona, with its wild adventures, had given him a self-appreciation which made his present situation humiliating. There were more than four thousand students at the university. Ken felt himself the youngest, the smallest, the one of least consequence. He was lost in a shuffle of superior youths. In the forestry department he was a mere boy; and he soon realized that a freshman there was the same as anywhere. The fact that he weighed nearly one hundred and sixty pounds, and was no stripling, despite his youth, made not one whit of difference. Unfortunately, his first overture of what he considered good-fellowship had been made to an upper-classman, and had been a grievous mistake. Ken had not yet recovered from its reception. He grew careful after that, then shy, and finally began to struggle against disappointment and loneliness. Outside of his department, on the campus and everywhere he ventured, he found things still worse. There was something wrong with him, with his fresh complexion, with his hair, with the way he wore his tie, with the cut of his clothes. In fact, there was nothing right about him. He had been so beset that he could not think of anything but himself. One day, while sauntering along a campus path, with his hands in his pockets, he met two students coming toward him. They went to right and left, and, jerking his hands from his pockets, roared in each ear, "How dare you walk with your hands in your pockets!" Another day, on the library step, he encountered a handsome bareheaded youth with a fine, clean-cut face and keen eyes, who showed the true stamp of the great university. "Here," he said, sharply, "aren't you a freshman?" "Why--yes," confessed Ken. "I see you have your trousers turned up at the bottom." "Yes--so I have." For the life of him Ken could not understand why that simple fact seemed a crime, but so it was. "Turn them down!" ordered the student. Ken looked into the stern face and flashing eyes of his tormentor, and then meekly did as he had been commanded. "Boy, I've saved your life. We murder freshmen here for that," said the student, and then passed on up the steps. In the beginning it was such incidents as these that had bewildered Ken. He passed from surprise to anger, and vowed he would have something to say to these upper-classmen. But when the opportunity came Ken always felt so little and mean that he could not retaliate. This made him furious. He had not been in college two weeks before he could distinguish the sophomores from the seniors by the look on their faces. He hated the sneering "Sophs," and felt rising in him the desire to fight. But he both feared and admired seniors. They seemed so aloof, so far above him. He was in awe of them, and had a hopeless longing to be like them. And as for the freshmen, it took no second glance for Ken to pick them out. They were of two kinds--those who banded together in crowds and went about yelling, and running away from the Sophs, and those who sneaked about alone with timid step and furtive glance. Ken was one of these lonesome freshmen. He was pining for companionship, but he was afraid to open his lips. Once he had dared to go into Carlton Hall, the magnificent club-house which had been given to the university by a famous graduate. The club was for all students--Ken had read that on the card sent to him, and also in the papers. But manifestly the upper-classmen had a different point of view. Ken had gotten a glimpse into the immense reading-room with its open fireplace and huge chairs, its air of quiet study and repose; he had peeped into the brilliant billiard-hall and the gymnasium; and he had been so impressed and delighted with the marble swimming-tank that he had forgotten himself and walked too near the pool. Several students accidentally bumped him into it. It appeared the students were so eager to help him out that they crowded him in again. When Ken finally got out he learned the remarkable fact that he was the sixteenth freshman who had been accidentally pushed into the tank that day. So Ken Ward was in a state of revolt. He was homesick; he was lonely for a friend; he was constantly on the lookout for some trick; his confidence in himself had fled; his opinion of himself had suffered a damaging change; he hardly dared call his soul his own. But that part of his time spent in study or attending lectures more than made up for the other. Ken loved his subject and was eager to learn. He had a free hour in the afternoon, and often he passed this in the library, sometimes in the different exhibition halls. He wanted to go into Carlton Club again, but his experience there made him refrain. One afternoon at this hour Ken happened to glance into a lecture-room. It was a large amphitheatre full of noisy students. The benches were arranged in a circle running up from a small pit. Seeing safety in the number of students who were passing in, Ken went along. He thought he might hear an interesting lecture. It did not occur to him that he did not belong there. The university had many departments and he felt that any lecture-room was open to him. Still, caution had become a habit with him, and he stepped down the steep aisle looking for an empty bench. How steep the aisle was! The benches appeared to be on the side of a hill. Ken slipped into an empty one. There was something warm and pleasant in the close contact of so many students, in the ripple of laughter and the murmur of voices. Ken looked about him with a feeling that he was glad to be there. It struck him, suddenly, that the room had grown strangely silent. Even the shuffling steps of the incoming students had ceased. Ken gazed upward with a queer sense of foreboding. Perhaps he only imagined that all the students above were looking down at him. Hurriedly he glanced below. A sea of faces, in circular rows, was turned his way. There was no mistake about it. He was the attraction. At the same instant when he prayed to sink through the bench out of sight a burning anger filled his breast. What on earth had he done now? He knew it was something; he felt it. That quiet moment seemed an age. Then the waiting silence burst. "_Fresh on fifth!_" yelled a student in one of the lower benches. "FRESH ON FIFTH!" bawled another at the top of his lungs. Ken's muddled brain could make little of the matter. He saw he was in the fifth row of benches, and that all the way around on either side of him the row was empty. The four lower rows were packed, and above him students were scattered all over. He had the fifth row of benches to himself. "Fresh on fifth!" Again the call rang up from below. It was repeated, now from the left of the pit and then from the right. A student yelled it from the first row and another from the fourth. It banged back and forth. Not a word came from the upper part of the room. Ken sat up straight with a very red face. It was his intention to leave the bench, but embarrassment that was developing into resentment held him fast. What a senseless lot these students were! Why could they not leave him in peace? How foolish of him to go wandering about in strange lecture-rooms! A hand pressed Ken's shoulder. He looked back to see a student bending down toward him. "_Hang, Freshie!_" this fellow whispered. "What's it all about?" asked Ken. "What have I done, anyway? I never was in here before." "All Sophs down there. They don't allow freshmen to go below the sixth row. There've been several rushes this term. And the big one's coming. Hang, Freshie! We're all with you." "Fresh on fifth!" The tenor of the cry had subtly changed. Good-humored warning had changed to challenge. It pealed up from many lusty throats, and became general all along the four packed rows. "_Hang, Freshie!_" bellowed a freshman from the topmost row. It was acceptance of the challenge, the battle-cry flung down to the Sophs. A roar arose from the pit. The freshmen, outnumbering the sophomores, drowned the roar in a hoarser one. Then both sides settled back in ominous waiting. Ken thrilled in all his being. The freshmen were with him! That roar told him of united strength. All in a moment he had found comrades, and he clenched his fingers into the bench, vowing he would hang there until hauled away. "Fresh on fifth!" shouted a Soph in ringing voice. He stood up in the pit and stepped to the back of the second bench. "Fresh on fifth! Watch me throw him out!" He was a sturdily built young fellow and balanced himself gracefully on the backs of the benches, stepping up from one to the other. There was a bold gleam in his eyes and a smile on his face. He showed good-natured contempt for a freshman and an assurance that was close to authority. Ken sat glued to his seat in mingled fear and wrath. Was he to be the butt of those overbearing sophomores? He thought he could do nothing but hang on with all his might. The ascending student jumped upon the fourth bench and, reaching up, laid hold of Ken with no gentle hands. His grip was so hard that Ken had difficulty in stifling a cry of pain. This, however, served to dispel his panic and make him angry clear through. The sophomore pulled and tugged with all his strength, yet he could not dislodge Ken. The freshmen howled gleefully for him to "Hang! hang!" Then two more sophomores leaped up to help the leader. A blank silence followed this move, and all the freshmen leaned forward breathlessly. There was a sharp ripping of cloth. Half of Ken's coat appeared in the hands of one of his assailants. Suddenly Ken let go his hold, pushed one fellow violently, then swung his fists. It might have been unfair, for the sophomores were beneath him and balancing themselves on the steep benches, but Ken was too angry to think of that. The fellow he pushed fell into the arms of the students below, the second slid out of sight, and the third, who had started the fray, plunged with a crash into the pit. The freshmen greeted this with a wild yell; the sophomores answered likewise. Like climbing, tumbling apes the two classes spilled themselves up and down the benches, and those nearest Ken laid hold of him, pulling him in opposite directions. Then began a fierce fight for possession of luckless Ken. Both sides were linked together by gripping hands. Ken was absolutely powerless. His clothes were torn to tatters in a twinkling; they were soon torn completely off, leaving only his shoes and socks. Not only was he in danger of being seriously injured, but students of both sides were handled as fiercely. A heavy trampling roar shook the amphitheatre. As they surged up and down the steep room benches were split. In the beginning the sophomores had the advantage and the tug-of-war raged near the pit and all about it. But the superior numbers of the freshmen began to tell. The web of close-locked bodies slowly mounted up the room, smashing the benches, swaying downward now and then, yet irresistibly gaining ground. The yells of the freshmen increased with the assurance of victory. There was one more prolonged, straining struggle, then Ken was pulled away from the sophomores. The wide, swinging doors of the room were knocked flat to let out the stream of wild freshmen. They howled like fiends; it was first blood for the freshman class; the first tug won that year. Ken Ward came to his senses out in the corridor surrounded by an excited, beaming, and disreputable crowd of freshmen. Badly as he was hurt, he had to laugh. Some of them looked happy in nothing but torn underclothes. Others resembled a lot of ragamuffins. Coats were minus sleeves, vests were split, shirts were collarless. Blood and bruises were much in evidence. Some one helped Ken into a long ulster. "Say, it was great," said this worthy. "Do you know who that fellow was--the first one who tried to throw you out of number five?" "I haven't any idea," replied Ken. In fact, he felt that his ideas were as scarce just then as his clothes. "That was the president of the Sophs. He's the varsity baseball captain, too. You slugged him!... Great!" Ken's spirit, low as it was, sank still lower. What miserable luck he had! His one great ambition, next to getting his diploma, had been to make the varsity baseball team. II A GREAT ARM The shock of that battle, more than the bruising he had received, confined Ken to his room for a week. When he emerged it was to find he was a marked man; marked by the freshmen with a great and friendly distinction; by the sophomores for revenge. If it had not been for the loss of his baseball hopes, he would have welcomed the chance to become popular with his classmates. But for him it was not pleasant to be reminded that he had "slugged" the Sophs' most honored member. It took only two or three meetings with the revengeful sophomores to teach Ken that discretion was the better part of valor. He learned that the sophomores of all departments were looking for him with deadly intent. So far luck had enabled him to escape all but a wordy bullying. Ken became an expert at dodging. He gave the corridors and campus a wide berth. He relinquished his desire to live in one of the dormitories, and rented a room out in the city. He timed his arrival at the university and his departure. His movements were governed entirely by painfully acquired knowledge of the whereabouts of his enemies. So for weeks Ken Ward lived like a recluse. He was not one with his college mates. He felt that he was not the only freshman who had gotten a bad start in college. Sometimes when he sat near a sad-faced classmate, he knew instinctively that here was a fellow equally in need of friendship. Still these freshmen were as backward as he was, and nothing ever came of such feelings. The days flew by and the weeks made months, and all Ken did was attend lectures and study. He read everything he could find in the library that had any bearing on forestry. He mastered his text-books before the Christmas holidays. About the vacation he had long been undecided; at length he made up his mind not to go home. It was a hard decision to reach. But his college life so far had been a disappointment; he was bitter about it, and he did not want his father to know. Judge Ward was a graduate of the university. Often and long he had talked to Ken about university life, the lasting benefit of associations and friendships. He would probably think that his son had barred himself out by some reckless or foolish act. Ken was not sure what was to blame; he knew he had fallen in his own estimation, and that the less he thought of himself the more he hated the Sophs. On Christmas day he went to Carlton Hall. It was a chance he did not want to miss, for very few students would be there. As it turned out he spent some pleasant hours. But before he left the club his steps led him into the athletic trophy room, and there he was plunged into grief. The place was all ablaze with flags and pennants, silver cups and gold medals, pictures of teams and individuals. There were mounted sculls and oars, footballs and baseballs. The long and proud record of the university was there to be read. All her famous athletes were pictured there, and every one who had fought for his college. Ken realized that here for the first time he was in the atmosphere of college spirit for which the university was famed. What would he not have given for a permanent place in that gallery! But it was too late. He had humiliated the captain of the baseball team. Ken sought out the picture of the last season's varsity. What a stocky lot of young chaps, all consciously proud of the big letter on their shirts! Dale, the captain and pitcher, was in the centre of the group. Ken knew his record, and it was a splendid one. Ken took another look at Dale, another at the famous trainer, Murray, and the professional coach, Arthurs--men under whom it had been his dream to play--and then he left the room, broken-hearted. When the Christmas recess was over he went back to his lectures resigned to the thought that the athletic side of college life was not for him. He studied harder than ever, and even planned to take a course of lectures in another department. Also his adeptness in dodging was called upon more and more. The Sophs were bound to get him sooner or later. But he did not grow resigned to that; every dodge and flight increased his resentment. Presently he knew he would stop and take what they had to give, and retaliate as best he could. Only, what would they do to him when they did catch him? He remembered his watch, his money, and clothes, never recovered after that memorable tug-of-war. He minded the loss of his watch most; that gift could never be replaced. It seemed to him that he had been the greater sufferer. One Saturday in January Ken hurried from his class-room. He was always in a hurry and particularly on Saturdays, for that being a short day for most of the departments, there were usually many students passing to and fro. A runaway team clattering down the avenue distracted him from his usual caution, and he cut across the campus. Some one stopped the horses, and a crowd collected. When Ken got there many students were turning away. Ken came face to face with a tall, bronze-haired, freckle-faced sophomore, whom he had dodged more than once. There was now no use to dodge; he had to run or stand his ground. "Boys, here's that slugging Freshie!" yelled the Soph. "We've got him now." He might have been an Indian chief so wild was the whoop that answered him. "Lead us to him!" "Oh, what we won't do to that Freshie!" "Come on, boys!" Ken heard these yells, saw a number of boys dash at him, then he broke and ran as if for his life. The Sophs, a dozen strong, yelling loudly, strung out after him. Ken headed across the campus. He was fleet of foot, and gained on his pursuers. But the yells brought more Sophs on the scene, and they turned Ken to the right. He spurted for Carlton Hall, and almost ran into the arms of still more sophomores. Turning tail, he fled toward the library. When he looked back it was to see the bronze-haired leader within a hundred yards, and back of him a long line of shouting students. If there was a place to hide round that library Ken could not find it. In this circuit he lost ground. Moreover, he discovered he had not used good judgment in choosing that direction. All along the campus was a high iron fence. Ken thought desperately hard for an instant, then with renewed speed he bounded straight for College Hall. This was the stronghold of the sophomores. As Ken sped up the gravel walk his pursuers split their throats. "Run, you Freshie!" yelled one. "The more you run--" yelled another. "The more we'll skin you!" finished a third. Ken ran into the passageway leading through College Hall. It was full of Sophs hurrying toward the door to see where the yells came from. When Ken plunged into their midst some one recognized him and burst out with the intelligence. At the same moment Ken's pursuers banged through the swinging doors. A yell arose then in the constricted passageway that seemed to Ken to raise College Hall from its foundation. It terrified him. Like an eel he slipped through reaching arms and darted forward. Ken was heavy and fast on his feet, and with fear lending him wings he made a run through College Hall that would have been a delight to the football coach. For Ken was not dodging any sophomores now. He had played his humiliating part of dodger long enough. He knocked them right and left, and many a surprised Soph he tumbled over. Reaching the farther door, he went through out into the open. The path before him was clear now, and he made straight for the avenue. It was several hundred yards distant, and he got a good start toward it before the Sophs rolled like a roaring stream from the passage. Ken saw other students running, and also men and boys out on the avenue; but as they could not head him off he kept to his course. On that side of the campus a high, narrow stairway, lined by railings, led up to the sidewalk. When Ken reached it he found the steps covered with ice. He slipped and fell three times in the ascent, while his frantic pursuers gained rapidly. Ken mounted to the sidewalk, gave vent to a gasp of relief, and, wheeling sharply, he stumbled over two boys carrying a bushel basket of potatoes. When he saw the large, round potatoes a daring inspiration flashed into his mind. Taking the basket from the boys he turned to the head of the stairway. The bronze-haired Soph was half-way up the steps. His followers, twelve or more, were climbing after him. Then a line of others stretched all the way to College Hall. With a grim certainty of his mastery of the situation Ken threw a huge potato at his leading pursuer. Fair and square on the bronze head it struck with a sharp crack. Like a tenpin the Soph went down. He plumped into the next two fellows, knocking them off their slippery footing. The three fell helplessly and piled up their comrades in a dense wedge half-way down the steps. If the Sophs had been yelling before, it was strange to note how they were yelling now. Deliberately Ken fired the heavy missiles. They struck with sodden thuds against the bodies of the struggling sophomores. A poor thrower could not very well have missed that mark, and Ken Ward was remarkably accurate. He had a powerful overhand swing, and the potatoes flew like bullets. One wild-eyed Soph slipped out of the tangle to leap up the steps. Ken, throwing rather low, hit him on the shin. He buckled and dropped down with a blood-curdling yell. Another shook himself loose and faced upward. A better-aimed shot took him in the shoulder. He gave an exhibition of a high and lofty somersault. Then two more started up abreast. The first Ken hit over the eye with a very small potato, which popped like an explosive bullet and flew into bits. As far as effect was concerned a Martini could not have caused a more beautiful fall. Ken landed on the second fellow in the pit of the stomach with a very large potato. There was a sound as of a suddenly struck bass-drum. The Soph crumpled up over the railing, slid down, and fell among his comrades, effectually blocking the stairway. For the moment Ken had stopped the advance. The sophomores had been checked by one wild freshman. There was scarcely any doubt about Ken's wildness. He had lost his hat; his dishevelled hair stood up like a mane; every time he hurled a potato he yelled. But there was nothing wild about his aim. All at once he turned his battery on the students gathering below the crush, trying to find a way through the kicking, slipping mass on the narrow stairs. He scattered them as if they had been quail. Some ran out of range. Others dove for cover and tried to dodge. This dodging brought gleeful howls from Ken. "Dodge, you Indian!" yelled Ken, as he threw. And seldom it was that dodging was of any use. Then, coming to the end of his ammunition, he surveyed the battle-field beneath him and, turning, ran across the avenue and down a street. At the corner of the block he looked back. There was one man coming, but he did not look like a student. So Ken slackened his pace and bent his steps toward his boarding-house. "By George! I stole those potatoes!" he exclaimed, presently. "I wonder how I can make that good." Several times as he turned to look over his shoulder he saw the man he had noticed at first. But that did not trouble him, for he was sure no one else was following him. Ken reached his room exhausted by exertion and excitement. He flung himself upon his bed to rest and calm his mind so that he could think. If he had been in a bad light before, what was his position now? Beyond all reasoning with, however, was the spirit that gloried in his last stand. "By George!" he kept saying. "I wouldn't have missed that--not for anything. They made my life a nightmare. I'll have to leave college--go somewhere else--but I don't care." Later, after dinner as he sat reading, he heard a door-bell ring, a man's voice, then footsteps in the hall. Some one tapped on his door. Ken felt a strange, cold sensation, which soon passed, and he spoke: "Come in." The door opened to admit a short man with little, bright eyes sharp as knives. "Hello, Kid," he said. Then he leisurely removed his hat and overcoat and laid them on the bed. Ken's fear of he knew not what changed to amazement. At least his visitor did not belong to the faculty. There was something familiar about the man, yet Ken could not place him. "Well up in your studies?" he asked, cordially. Then he seated himself, put a hand on each knee, and deliberately and curiously studied Ken. "Why, yes, pretty well up," replied Ken. He did not know how to take the man. There was a kindliness about him which relieved Ken, yet there was also a hard scrutiny that was embarrassing. "All by your lonely here," he said. "It is lonely," replied Ken, "but--but I don't get on very well with the students." "Small wonder. Most of 'em are crazy." He was unmistakably friendly. Ken kept wondering where he had seen him. Presently the man arose, and, with a wide smile on his face, reached over and grasped Ken's right arm. "How's the whip?" "What?" asked Ken. "The wing--your arm, Kid, your arm." "Oh--Why, it's all right." "It's not sore--not after peggin' a bushel of potatoes on a cold day?" Ken laughed and raised his arm up and down. "It's weak to-night, but not sore." "These boys with their India-rubber arms! It's youth, Kid, it's youth. Say, how old are you?" "Sixteen." "What! No more than that?" "No." "How much do you weigh?" "About one hundred and fifty-six." "I thought you had some beef back of that stunt of yours to-day. Say, Kid, it was the funniest and the best thing I've seen at the university in ten years--and I've seen some fresh boys do some stunts, I have. Well... Kid, you've a grand whip--a great arm--and we're goin' to do some stunts with it." Ken felt something keen and significant in the very air. "A great arm! For what?... who are you?" "Say, I thought every boy in college knew me. I'm Arthurs." "The baseball coach! Are you the baseball coach?" exclaimed Ken, jumping up with his heart in his throat. "That's me, my boy; and I'm lookin' you up." Ken suddenly choked with thronging emotions and sat down as limp as a rag. "Yes, Kid, I'm after you strong. The way you pegged 'em to-day got me. You've a great arm!" III PRISONER OF THE SOPHS "But if--it's really true--that I've a great arm," faltered Ken, "it won't ever do me any good. I could never get on the varsity." "Why not?" demanded the coach. "I'll make a star of a youngster like you, if you'll take coachin'. Why not?" "Oh, you don't know," returned Ken, with a long face. "Say, you haven't struck me as a kid with no nerve. What's wrong with you?" "It was I who slugged Captain Dale and caused that big rush between the freshmen and sophomores. I've lived like a hermit ever since." "So it was you who hit Dale. Well--that's bad," replied Arthurs. He got up with sober face and began to walk the floor. "I remember the eye he had. It was a sight.... But Dale's a good fellow. He'll--" "I'd do anything on earth to make up for that," burst out Ken. "Good! I'll tell you what we'll do," said Arthurs, his face brightening. "We'll go right down to Dale's room now. I'll fix it up with him somehow. The sooner the better. I'm goin' to call the baseball candidates to the cage soon." They put on coats and hats and went out. Evidently the coach was thinking hard, for he had nothing to say, but he kept a reassuring hand on Ken's arm. They crossed the campus along the very path where Ken had fled from the sophomores. The great circle of dormitories loomed up beyond with lights shining in many windows. Arthurs led Ken through a court-yard and into a wide, bright hallway. Their steps sounded with hollow click upon the tiled floor. They climbed three flights of stairs, and then Arthurs knocked at a door. Ken's heart palpitated. It was all so sudden; he did not know what he was going to say or do. He did not care what happened to him if Arthurs could only, somehow, put him right with the captain. A merry voice bade them enter. The coach opened the door and led Ken across the threshold. Ken felt the glow of a warm, bright room, colorful with pennants and posters, and cozy in its disorder. Then he saw Dale and, behind him, several other students. There was a moment's silence in which Ken heard his heart beat. Dale rose slowly from his seat, the look on his frank face changing from welcome to intense amazement and then wild elation. "Whoop!" he shouted. "Lock the door! Worry Arthurs, this's your best bet ever!" Dale dashed at the coach, hugged him frantically, then put his head out of the door to bawl: "Sophs! Sophs! Sophs! Hurry call! Number nine!... Oh, my!" Then he faced about, holding the door partially open. He positively beamed upon the coach. "Say, Cap, what's eatin' you?" asked Arthurs. He looked dumfounded. Ken hung to him desperately; he thought he knew what was coming. There were hurried footsteps in the corridor and excited voices. "Worry, it's bully of you to bring this freshman here," declared the captain. "Well, what of it?" demanded the coach. "I looked him up to-night. He's got a great arm, and will be good material for the team. He told me about the little scrap you had in the lecture-room. He lost his temper, and no wonder. Anyway, he's sorry, Cap, and I fetched him around to see if you couldn't make it up. How about it, Kid?" "I'm sorry--awfully sorry, Captain Dale," blurted out Ken. "I was mad and scared, too--then you fellows hurt me. So I hit right out.... But I'll take my medicine." "So--oh!" ejaculated Dale. "Well, this beats the deuce! _That's_ why you're here?" The door opened wide to admit half a dozen eager-faced youths. "Fellows, here's a surprise," said Dale. "Young Ward, the freshman! the elusive slugging freshman, fast on his feet, and, as Worry here says, a lad with a great arm!" "WARD!" roared the Sophs in unison. "Hold on, fellows--wait--no rough-house yet--wait," ordered Dale. "Ward's here of his own free will!" Silence ensued after the captain spoke. While he turned to lock the door the Sophs stared open-mouthed at Ken. Arthurs had a worried look, and he kept his hand on Ken. Dale went to a table and began filling his pipe. Then he fixed sharp, thoughtful eyes upon his visitors. "Worry, you say you brought this freshman here to talk baseball?" he asked. "Sure I did," blustered Arthurs. It was plain now where he got the name that Dale called him. "What's in the wind, anyhow?" Dale then gravely spoke to Ken. "So you came here to see me? Sorry you slugged me once? Want to make up for it somehow, because you think you've a chance for the team, and don't want me to be sore on you? That it?" "Not exactly," replied Ken. "I'd want to let you get square with me even if you weren't the varsity captain." "Well, you've more than squared yourself with me--by coming here. You'll realize that presently. But don't you know what's happened, what the freshmen have done?" "No; I don't." "You haven't been near the university since this afternoon when you pulled off the potato stunt?" "I should say I haven't." This brought a laugh from the Sophs. "You were pretty wise," went on Dale. "The Sophs didn't love you then. But they're going to--understand?" Ken shook his head, too bewildered and mystified to reply. "Well, now, here's Giraffe Boswick. Look what you did to him!" Ken's glance followed the wave of Dale's hand and took in the tall, bronze-haired sophomore who had led the chase that afternoon. Boswick wore a huge discolored bruise over his left eye. It was hideous. Ken was further sickened to recollect that Boswick was one of the varsity pitchers. But the fellow was smiling amiably at Ken, as amiably as one eye would permit. The plot thickened about Ken. He felt his legs trembling under him. "Boswick, you forgive Ward, don't you--now?" continued Dale, with a smile. "With all my heart!" exclaimed the pitcher. "To see him here would make me forgive anything." Coach Arthurs was ill at ease. He evidently knew students, and he did not relish the mystery, the hidden meaning. "Say, you wise guys make me sick," he called out, gruffly. "Here's a kid that comes right among you. He's on the level, and more'n that, he's game! Now, Cap, I fetched him here, and I won't stand for a whole lot. Get up on your toes! Get it over!" "Sit down Worry, here's a cigar--light up," said Dale, soothingly. "It's all coming right, lovely, I say. Ward was game to hunt me up, a thousand times gamer than he knows.... See here, Ward, where are you from?" "I live a good long day's travel from the university," answered Ken, evasively. "I thought so. Did you ever hear of the bowl-fight, the great event of the year here at Wayne University?" "Yes, I've heard--read a little about it. But I don't know what it is." "I'll tell you," went on Dale. "There are a number of yearly rushes and scrapes between the freshmen and sophomores, but the bowl-fight is the one big meeting, the time-honored event. It has been celebrated here for many years. It takes place on a fixed date. Briefly, here's what comes off: The freshmen have the bowl in their keeping this year because they won it in the last fight. They are to select one of their number, always a scrappy fellow, and one honored by the class, and they call him the bowl-man. A week before the fight, on a certain date, the freshmen hide this bowl-man or protect him from the sophomores until the day of the fight, when they all march to Grant field in fighting-togs. Should the sophomores chance to find him and hold him prisoner until after the date of the bowl-fight they win the bowl. The same applies also in case the bowl is in possession of the sophomores. But for ten years neither class has captured the other's bowl-man. So they have fought it out on the field until the bowl was won." "Well, what has all that got to do with me?" asked Ken. He felt curiously light-headed. "It has a _little_ to do with you--hasn't it, fellows?" said Dale, in slow, tantalizing voice. Worry Arthurs lost his worried look and began to smile and rub his hands. "Ward, look here," added Dale, now speaking sharply. "You've been picked for the bowl-man!" "Me--me?" stammered Ken. "No other. The freshmen were late in choosing a man this year. To-day, after your stunt--holding up that bunch of sophomores--they had a meeting in Carlton Club and picked you. Most of them didn't even know your name. I'll bet the whole freshman class is hunting for you right now." "What for?" queried Ken, weakly. "Why, I told you. The bowl-fight is only a week off--and here you are. _And here you'll stay until that date's past!_" Ken drew a quick breath. He began to comprehend. The sudden huzzahs of Dale's companions gave him further enlightenment. "But, Captain Dale," he said, breathlessly, "if it's so--if my class has picked me--I can't throw them down. I don't know a soul in my class. I haven't a friend. But I won't throw them down--not to be forever free of dodging Sophs--not even to square myself with you." "Ward, you're all right!" shouted Dale, his eyes shining. In the quiet moment that followed, with all the sophomores watching him intently, Ken Ward instinctively felt that his measure had been taken. "I won't stay here," said Ken, and for the first time his voice rang. "Oh yes, you will," replied Dale, laughing. Quick as a cat Ken leaped for the door and got it unlocked and half open before some one clutched him. Then Dale was on him close and hard. Ken began to struggle. He was all muscle, and twice he broke from them. "His legs! Grab his legs! He's a young bull!" "We'll trim you now, Freshie!" "You potato-masher!" "Go for his wind!" Fighting and wrestling with all his might Ken went down under a half dozen sophomores. Then Dale was astride his chest, and others were sitting on his hands and feet. "Boys, don't hurt that arm!" yelled Worry Arthurs. "Ward, will you be good now and stop scrapping or shall we tie you?" asked Dale. "You can't get away. The thing to do is to give your word not to try. We want to make this easy for you. Your word of honor, now?" "Never!" cried Ken. "I knew you wouldn't," said Dale. "We'll have to keep you under guard." They let him get up. He was panting, and his nose was bleeding, and one of his knuckles was skinned. That short struggle had been no joke. The Sophs certainly meant to keep him prisoner. Still, he was made to feel at ease. They could not do enough for him. "It's tough luck, Ward, that you should have fallen into our hands this way," said Dale. "But you couldn't help it. You will be kept in my rooms until after the fifteenth. Meals will be brought you, and your books; everything will be done for your comfort. Your whereabouts, of course, will be a secret, and you will be closely watched. Worry, remember you are bound to silence. And Ward, perhaps it wasn't an ill wind that blew you here. You've had your last scrap with a Soph, that's sure. As for what brought you here--it's more than square; and I'll say this: if you can play ball as well as you can scrap, old Wayne has got a star." IV THE CALL FOR CANDIDATES There were five rooms in Dale's suite in the dormitory, and three other sophomores shared them with him. They confined Ken in the end room, where he was safely locked and guarded from any possible chance to escape. For the first day or two it was irksome for Ken; but as he and his captors grew better acquainted the strain eased up, and Ken began to enjoy himself as he had not since coming to the university. He could not have been better provided for. His books were at hand, and even notes of the lectures he was missing were brought to him. The college papers and magazines interested him, and finally he was much amused by an account of his mysterious disappearance. All in a day he found himself famous. Then Dale and his room-mates were so friendly and jolly that if his captivity had not meant the disgrace of the freshman class, Ken would have rejoiced in it. He began to thaw out, though he did not lose his backwardness. The life of the great university began to be real to him. Almost the whole sophomore class, in squads of twos and threes and sixes, visited Dale's rooms during that week. No Soph wanted to miss a sight of a captive bowl-man. Ken felt so callow and fresh in their presence that he scarcely responded to their jokes. Worry Arthur's nickname of "Kid" vied with another the coach conferred on Ken, and that was "Peg." It was significant slang expressing the little baseball man's baseball notion of Ken's throwing power. The evening was the most interesting time for Ken. There was always something lively going on. He wondered when the boys studied. When some of the outside students dropped in there were banjo and guitar playing, college songs, and college gossip. "Come on, Peg, be a good fellow," they said, and laughed at his refusal to smoke or drink beer. "Molly!" mocked one. "Willy-boy!" added another. Ken was callow, young, and backward; but he had a temper, and this kind of banter roused it easily. The red flamed into his cheeks. "I promised my mother I wouldn't smoke or drink or gamble while I was in college," he retorted, struggling with shame and anger. "And I--I won't." Dale stopped the good-natured chaff. "Fellows, stop guying Ward; cut it out, I tell you. He's only a kid freshman, but he's liable to hand you a punch, and if he does you'll remember it. Besides, he's right.... Look here, Ward, you stick to that promise. It's a good promise to stick to, and if you're going in for athletics it's the best ever." Worry Arthurs happened to be present on this evening, and he seconded Dale in more forceful speech. "There's too much boozin' and smokin' of them coffin nails goin' on in this college. It's none of my affair except with the boys I'm coachin', and if I ketch any one breakin' my rules after we go to the trainin'-table he'll sit on the bench. There's Murray; why, he says there are fellows in college who could break records if they'd train. Half of sprintin' or baseball or football is condition." "Oh, Worry, you and Mac always make a long face over things. Wayne has won a few championships, hasn't she?" "The varsity ball team will be a frost this year, that's sure," replied Arthurs, gloomily. "How do you make that out?" demanded Dale, plainly nettled. "You've hinted it before to me. Why won't we be stronger than last season? Didn't we have a crackerjack team, the fastest that ever represented old Wayne? Didn't we smother the small college teams and beat Place twice, shut out Herne the first game, and play for a tie the second?" "You'll see, all right, all right," replied Arthurs, gloomier than ever; and he took his hat and went out. Dale slammed his cards down on the table. "Fellows, is it any wonder we call him Worry? Already he's begun to fuss over the team. Ever since he's been here he has driven the baseball captains and managers crazy. It's only his way, but it's so irritating. He's a magnificent coach, and Wayne owes her great baseball teams to him. But he's hard on captains. I see my troubles. The idea of this year's team being a frost--with all the old stars back in college--with only two positions to fill! And there are half a dozen cracks in college to fight for these two positions--fellows I played against on the summer nines last year. Worry's idea is ridiculous." This bit of baseball talk showed Ken the obstacles in the way of a freshman making the varsity team. What a small chance there would be for him! Still he got a good deal of comfort out of Arthurs' interest in him, and felt that he would be happy to play substitute this season, and make the varsity in his sophomore year. The day of the bowl-fight passed, and Ken's captivity became history. The biggest honor of the sophomore year went to Dale and his room-mates. Ken returned to his department, where he was made much of, as he had brought fame to a new and small branch of the great university. It was a pleasure to walk the campus without fear of being pounced upon. Ken's dodging and loneliness--perhaps necessary and curbing nightmares in the life of a freshman--were things of the past. He made acquaintances, slowly lost his backwardness, and presently found college life opening to him bright and beautiful. Ken felt strongly about things. And as his self-enforced exile had been lonely and bitter, so now his feeling that he was really a part of the great university seemed almost too good to be true. He began to get a glimmering of the meaning of his father's love for the old college. Students and professors underwent some vague change in his mind. He could not tell what, he did not think much about it, but there was a warmer touch, a sense of something nearer to him. Then suddenly a blow fell upon the whole undergraduate body. It was a thunderbolt. It affected every student, but Ken imagined it concerned his own college fortunes more intimately. The athletic faculty barred every member of the varsity baseball team! The year before the faculty had advised and requested the players not to become members of the summer baseball nines. Their wishes had not been heeded. Captain Dale and his fast players had been much in demand by the famous summer nines. Some of them went to the Orange Athletic Club, others to Richfield Springs, others to Cape May, and Dale himself had captained the Atlantic City team. The action of the faculty was commended by the college magazine. Even the students, though chafing under it, could not but acknowledge its justice. The other universities had adopted such a rule, and Wayne must fall in line. The objections to summer ball-playing were not few, and the particular one was that it affected the amateur standing of the college player. He became open to charges of professionalism. At least, all his expenses were paid, and it was charged that usually he was paid for his services. Ken's first feeling when he learned this news was one of blank dismay. The great varsity team wiped off the slate! How Place and Herne would humble old Wayne this year! Then the long, hard schedule, embracing thirty games, at least one with every good team in the East--how would an untried green team fare against that formidable array? Then Ken suddenly felt ashamed of a selfish glee, for he was now sure of a place on the varsity. For several days nothing else was talked about by the students. Whenever Dale or his players appeared at Carlton Hall they were at once surrounded by a sympathetic crowd. If it was a bitter blow to the undergraduates, what was it to the members of the varsity? Their feeling showed in pale, stern faces. It was reported about the campus that Murray and Arthurs and Dale, with the whole team, went to the directors of the athletic faculty and besought them to change or modify the decision. Both the trainer and the coach, who had brought such glory to the university, threatened to resign their places. The disgrace of a pitiably weak team of freshmen being annihilated by minor colleges was eloquently put before the directors. But the decision was final. One evening early in February Worry Arthurs called upon Ken. His face was long, and his mustache drooped. "Kid, what do you think of 'em fat-heads on the faculty queerin' my team?" he asked. "Best team I ever developed. Say, but the way they could work the hit-and-run game! Any man on the team could hit to right field when there was a runner goin' down from first." "Maybe things will turn out all right," suggested Ken, hopefully. Worry regarded his youthful sympathizer with scorn. "It takes two years to teach most college kids the rudiments of baseball. Look at this year's schedule." Worry produced a card and waved it at Ken. "The hardest schedule Wayne ever had! And I've got to play a kid team." Ken was afraid to utter any more of his hopes, and indeed he felt them to be visionary. "The call for candidates goes out to-morrow," went on the coach. "I'll bet there'll be a mob at the cage. Every fool kid in the university will think he's sure of a place. Now, Ward, what have you played?" "Everywhere; but infield mostly." "Every kid has played the whole game. What position have you played most?" "Third base." "Good! You've the arm for that. Well, I'm anxious to see you work, but don't exert yourself in the cage. This is a tip. See! I'll be busy weedin' out the bunch, and won't have time until we get out on the field. You can run around the track every day, get your wind and your legs right, hold in on your arm. The cage is cold. I've seen many a good wing go to the bad there. But your chance looks good. College baseball is different from any other kind. You might say it's played with the heart. I've seen youngsters go in through grit and spirit, love of playin' for their college, and beat out fellows who were their superiors physically. Well, good-night.... Say, there's one more thing. I forgot it. Are you up in your subjects?" "I surely am," replied Ken. "I've had four months of nothing but study." "The reason I ask is this: That faculty has made another rule, the one-year residence rule, they call it. You have to pass your exams, get your first year over, before you can represent any athletic club. So, in case I can use you on the team, you would have to go up for your exams two months or more ahead of time. That scare you?" "Not a bit. I could pass mine right now," answered Ken, confidently. "Kid, you and me are goin' to get along.... Well, good-night, and don't forget what I said." Ken was too full for utterance; he could scarcely mumble good-night to the coach. He ran up-stairs three steps to the jump, and when he reached his room he did a war dance and ended by standing on his head. When he had gotten rid of his exuberance he sat down at once to write to his brother Hal about it, and also his forest-ranger friend, Dick Leslie, with whom he had spent an adventurous time the last summer. At Carlton Hall, next day, Ken saw a crowd of students before the bulletin-board and, edging in, he read the following notice: BASEBALL! CALL FOR CANDIDATES FOR THE VARSITY BASEBALL TEAM The Athletic Directors of the University earnestly request every student who can play ball, or who thinks he can, to present himself to Coach Arthurs at the Cage on Feb. 3rd. There will be no freshman team this year, and a new team entirely will be chosen for the varsity. Every student will have a chance. Applicants are requested to familiarize themselves with the new eligibility rules. V THE CAGE Ken Ward dug down into his trunk for his old baseball suit and donned it with strange elation. It was dirty and torn, and the shoes that went with it were worn out, but Ken was thinking of what hard ball-playing they represented. He put his overcoat on over his sweater, took up his glove and sallied forth. A thin coating of ice and snow covered the streets. Winter still whistled in the air. To Ken in his eagerness spring seemed a long way off. On his way across the campus he saw strings of uniformed boys making for Grant Field, and many wearing sweaters over their every-day clothes. The cage was situated at one end of the field apart from the other training-quarters. When Ken got there he found a mob of players crowding to enter the door of the big barn-like structure. Others were hurrying away. Near the door a man was taking up tickets like a doorkeeper of a circus, and he kept shouting: "Get your certificates from the doctor. Every player must pass a physical examination. Get your certificates." Ken turned somewhat in disgust at so much red tape and he jostled into a little fellow, almost knocking him over. "Wull! Why don't you fall all over me?" growled this amiable individual. "For two cents I'd hand you one." The apology on Ken's lips seemed to halt of its own accord. "Sorry I haven't any change in these clothes," returned Ken. He saw a wiry chap, older than he was, but much smaller, and of most aggressive front. He had round staring eyes, a protruding jaw, and his mouth turned down at the corners. He wore a disreputable uniform and a small green cap over one ear. "Aw! don't get funny!" he replied. Ken moved away muttering to himself: "That fellow's a grouch." Much to his amazement, when he got to the training-house, Ken found that he could not get inside because so many players were there ahead of him. After waiting an hour or more he decided he could not have his physical examination at that time, and he went back to the cage. The wide door was still blocked with players, but at the other end of the building Ken found an entrance. He squeezed into a crowd of students and worked forward until stopped by a railing. Ken was all eyes and breathless with interest. The cage was a huge, open, airy room, lighted by many windows, and, with the exception of the platform where he stood, it was entirely enclosed by heavy netting. The floor was of bare ground well raked and loosened to make it soft. This immense hall was full of a motley crowd of aspiring ball-players. Worry Arthurs, with his head sunk in the collar of his overcoat, and his shoulders hunched up as if he was about to spring upon something, paced up and down the rear end of the cage. Behind him a hundred or more players in line slowly marched toward the slab of rubber which marked the batting position. Ken remembered that the celebrated coach always tried out new players at the bat first. It was his belief that batting won games. "Bunt one and hit one!" he yelled to the batters. From the pitcher's box a lanky individual was trying to locate the plate. Ken did not need a second glance to see that this fellow was no pitcher. "Stop posin', and pitch!" yelled Arthurs. One by one the batters faced the plate, swung valiantly or wildly at balls and essayed bunts. Few hit the ball out and none made a creditable bunt. After their turn at bat they were ordered to the other end of the cage, where they fell over one another trying to stop the balls that were hit. Every few moments the coach would yell for one of them, any one, to take a turn at pitching. Ken noticed that Arthurs gave a sharp glance at each new batter, and one appeared to be sufficient. More and more ambitious players crowded into the cage, until there were so many that batted balls rarely missed hitting some one. Presently Ken Ward awoke from his thrilling absorption in the scene to note another side of it. The students around him were making game of the players. "What a bunch!" "Look at that fuzzy gosling with the yellow pants!" "Keep your shanks out of the way, Freshie!" "Couldn't hit a balloon!" Whenever a batter hit a ball into the crowd of dodging players down the cage these students howled with glee. Ken discovered that he was standing near Captain Dale and other members of the barred varsity. "Say, Dale, how do the candidates shape up?" asked a student. "This is a disgrace to Wayne," declared Dale, bitterly. "I never saw such a mob of spindle-legged kids in my life. Look at them! Scared to death! That fellow never swung at a ball before--that one never heard of a bunt--they throw like girls--Oh! this is sickening, fellows. I see where Worry goes to his grave this year and old Wayne gets humbled by one-horse colleges." Ken took one surprised glance at the captain he had admired so much and then he slipped farther over in the crowd. Perhaps Dale had spoken truth, yet somehow it jarred upon Ken's sensitive nature. The thing that affected Ken most was the earnestness of the uniformed boys trying their best to do well before the great coach. Some were timid, uncertain; others were rash and over-zealous. Many a ball cracked off a player's knee or wrist, and more than once Ken saw a bloody finger. It was cold in the cage. Even an ordinarily hit ball must have stung the hands, and the way a hard grounder cracked was enough to excite sympathy among those scornful spectators, if nothing more. But they yelled in delight at every fumble, at everything that happened. Ken kept whispering to himself: "I can't see the fun in it. I can't!" Arthurs dispensed with the bunting and ordered one hit each for the batters. "Step up and hit!" he ordered, hoarsely. "Don't be afraid--never mind that crowd--step into the ball and swing natural.... Next! Hurry, boys!" Suddenly a deep-chested student yelled out with a voice that drowned every other sound. "Hard luck, Worry! No use! You'll never find a hitter among those misfits!" The coach actually leaped up in his anger and his face went from crimson to white. Ken thought it was likely that he recognized the voice. "You knocker! You knocker!" he cried. "That's a fine college spirit, ain't it? You're a fine lot of students, I don't think. Now shut up, every one of you, or I'll fire you out of the cage.... And right here at the start you knockers take this from me--I'll find more than one hitter among those kids!" A little silence fell while the coach faced that antagonistic crowd of spectators. Ken was amazed the second time, and now because of the intensity of feeling that seemed to hang in the air. Ken felt a warm rush go over him, and that moment added greatly to his already strong liking for Worry Arthurs. Then the coach turned to his work, the batting began again, and the crack of the ball, the rush of feet, the sharp cries of the players mingled once more with the laughter and caustic wit of the unsympathetic audience. Ken Ward went back to his room without having removed his overcoat. He was thoughtful that night and rebellious against the attitude of the student body. A morning paper announced the fact that over three hundred candidates had presented themselves to Coach Arthurs. It went on to say that the baseball material represented was not worth considering and that old Wayne's varsity team must be ranked with those of the fifth-rate colleges. This, following Ken's experience at the cage on the first day, made him angry and then depressed. The glamour of the thing seemed to fade away. Ken lost the glow, the exhilaration of his first feelings. Everybody took a hopeless view of Wayne's baseball prospects. Ken Ward, however, was not one to stay discouraged long, and when he came out of his gloom it was with his fighting spirit roused. Once and for all he made up his mind to work heart and soul for his college, to be loyal to Arthurs, to hope and believe in the future of the new varsity, whether or not he was lucky enough to win a place upon it. Next day, going early to the training-quarters, he took his place in a squad waiting for the physical examination. It was a wearisome experience. At length Ken's turn came with two other players, one of whom he recognized as the sour-complexioned fellow of the day before. "Wull, you're pretty fresh," he said to Ken as they went in. He had a most exasperating manner. "Say, I don't like you a whole lot," retorted Ken. Then a colored attendant ushered them into a large room in which were several men. The boys were stripped to the waist. "Come here, Murray," said the doctor. "There's some use in looking these boys over, particularly this husky youngster." A tall man in a white sweater towered over Ken. It was the famous trainer. He ran his hands over Ken's smooth skin and felt of the muscles. "Can you run?" he asked. "Yes," replied Ken. "Are you fast?" "Yes." Further inquiries brought from Ken his name, age, weight, that he had never been ill, had never used tobacco or intoxicating drinks. "Ward, eh? 'Peg' Ward," said Murray, smiling. "Worry Arthurs has the call on you--else, my boy, I'd whisper football in your ear. Mebbe I will, anyhow, if you keep up in your studies. That'll do for you." Ken's companions also won praise from the trainer. They gave their names as Raymond and Weir. The former weighed only one hundred and twenty-two, but he was a knot of muscles. The other stood only five feet, but he was very broad and heavy, his remarkably compact build giving an impression of great strength. Both replied in the negative to the inquiries as to use of tobacco or spirits. "Boys, that's what we like to hear," said the doctor. "You three ought to pull together." Ken wondered what the doctor would have said if he had seen the way these three boys glared at each other in the dressing-room. And he wondered, too, what was the reason for such open hostility. The answer came to him in the thought that perhaps they were both trying for the position he wanted on the varsity. Most likely they had the same idea about him. That was the secret of little Raymond's pugnacious front and Weir's pompous air; and Ken realized that the same reason accounted for his own attitude toward them. He wanted very much to tell Raymond that he was a little grouch and Weir that he looked like a puffed-up toad. All the same Ken was not blind to Weir's handsome appearance. The sturdy youngster had an immense head, a great shock of bright brown hair, flashing gray eyes, and a clear bronze skin. "They'll both make the team, I'll bet," thought Ken. "They look it. I hope I don't have to buck against them." Then as they walked toward the cage Ken forced himself to ask genially: "Raymond, what're you trying for? And you, Weir?" "Wull, if it's any of your fresh business, I'm not _trying_ for any place. I'm going to play infield. You can carry my bat," replied Raymond, sarcastically. "Much obliged," retorted Ken, "I'm not going to substitute. I've a corner on that varsity infield myself." Weir glanced at them with undisguised disdain. "You can save yourselves useless work by not trying for my position. I intend to play infield." "Wull, puff-up, now, puff-up!" growled Raymond. Thus the three self-appointed stars of the varsity bandied words among themselves as they crossed the field. At the cage door they became separated to mingle with the pushing crowd of excited boys in uniforms. By dint of much squeezing and shoulder-work Ken got inside the cage. He joined the squad in the upper end and got in line for the batting. Worry Arthurs paced wildly to and fro yelling for the boys to hit. A dense crowd of students thronged the platform and laughed, jeered, and stormed at the players. The cage was in such an uproar that Arthurs could scarcely be heard. Watching from the line Ken saw Weir come to bat and stand aggressively and hit the ball hard. It scattered the flock of fielders. Then Raymond came along, and, batting left-handed, did likewise. Arthurs stepped forward and said something to both. After Ken's turn at bat the coach said to him: "Get out of here. Go run round the track. Do it every day. Don't come back until Monday." As Ken hurried out he saw and felt the distinction with which he was regarded by the many players whom he crowded among in passing. When he reached the track he saw Weir, Raymond, and half a dozen other fellows going round at a jog-trot. Weir was in the lead, setting the pace. Ken fell in behind. The track was the famous quarter-mile track upon which Murray trained his sprinters. When Ken felt the spring of the cinder-path in his feet, the sensation of buoyancy, the eager wildfire pride that flamed over him, he wanted to break into headlong flight. The first turn around the track was delight; the second pleasure in his easy stride; the third brought a realization of distance. When Ken had trotted a mile he was not tired, he still ran easily, but he began to appreciate that his legs were not wings. The end of the second mile found him sweating freely and panting. Two miles were enough for the first day. Ken knew it and he began to wonder why the others, especially Weir, did not know it. But Weir jogged on, his head up, his hair flying, as if he had not yet completed his first quarter. The other players stretched out behind him. Ken saw Raymond's funny little green cap bobbing up and down, and it made him angry. Why could not the grouch get a decent cap, anyway? At the end of the third mile Ken began to labor. His feet began to feel weighted, his legs to ache, his side to hurt. He was wringing wet; his skin burned; his breath whistled. But he kept doggedly on. It had become a contest now. Ken felt instinctively that every runner would not admit he had less staying power than the others. Ken declared to himself that he could be as bull-headed as any of them. Still to see Weir jogging on steady and strong put a kind of despair on Ken. For every lap of the fourth mile a runner dropped out, and at the half of the fifth only Weir, Raymond, and Ken kept to the track. Ken hung on gasping at every stride. He was afraid his heart would burst. The pain in his side was as keen as a knife thrust. His feet were lead. Every rod he felt must be his last, yet spurred on desperately, and he managed to keep at the heels of the others. It might kill him, but he would not stop until he dropped. Raymond was wagging along ready to fall any moment, and Weir was trotting slowly with head down. On the last lap of the fifth mile they all stopped as by one accord. Raymond fell on the grass; Ken staggered to a bench, and Weir leaned hard against the fence. They were all blowing like porpoises and regarded each other as mortal enemies. Weir gazed grandly at the other two; Raymond glowered savagely at him and then at Ken; and Ken in turn gave them withering glances. Without a word the three contestants for a place on the varsity then went their several ways. VI OUT ON THE FIELD When Ken presented himself at the cage on the following Monday it was to find that Arthurs had weeded out all but fifty of the candidates. Every afternoon for a week the coach put these players through batting and sliding practice, then ordered them out to run around the track. On the next Monday only twenty-five players were left, and as the number narrowed down the work grew more strenuous, the rivalry keener, and the tempers of the boys more irascible. Ken discovered it was work and not by any means pleasant work. He fortified himself by the thought that the pleasure and glory, the real play, was all to come as a reward. Worry Arthurs drove them relentlessly. Nothing suited him; not a player knew how to hold a bat, to stand at the plate, to slide right, or to block a ground ball. "Don't hit with your left hand on top--unless you're left-handed. Don't grip the end of the bat. There! Hold steady now, step out and into the ball, and swing clean and level. If you're afraid of bein' hit by the ball, get out of here!" It was plain to Ken that not the least of Arthurs' troubles was the incessant gibing of the students on the platform. There was always a crowd watching the practice, noisy, scornful, abusive. They would never recover from the shock of having that seasoned champion varsity barred out of athletics. Every once in a while one of them would yell out: "Wait, Worry! oh! Worry, wait till the old varsity plays your yanigans!" And every time the coach's face would burn. But he had ceased to talk back to the students. Besides, the athletic directors were always present. They mingled with the candidates and talked baseball to them and talked to Arthurs. Some of them might have played ball once, but they did not talk like it. Their advice and interference served only to make the coach's task harder. Another Monday found only twenty players in the squad. That day Arthurs tried out catchers, pitchers, and infielders. He had them all throwing, running, fielding, working like Trojans. They would jump at his yell, dive after the ball, fall over it, throw it anywhere but in the right direction, run wild, and fight among themselves. The ever-flowing ridicule from the audience was anything but a stimulus. So much of it coming from the varsity and their adherents kept continually in the minds of the candidates their lack of skill, their unworthiness to represent the great university in such a popular sport as baseball. So that even if there were latent ability in any of the candidates no one but the coach could see it. And often he could not conceal his disgust and hopelessness. "Battin' practice!" he ordered, sharply. "Two hits and a bunt to-day. Get a start on the bunt and dig for first. Hustle now!" He placed one player to pitch to the hitters, another to catch, and as soon as the hitters had their turn they took to fielding. Two turns for each at bat left the coach more than dissatisfied. "You're all afraid of the ball," he yelled. "This ain't no dodgin' game. Duck your nut if the ball's goin' to hit you, but stop lookin' for it. Forget it. Another turn now. I'm goin' to umpire. Let's see if you know the difference between a ball and a strike." He changed the catcher and, ordering Ken to the pitcher's box, he stepped over behind him. "Peg," he said, speaking low, "you're not tryin' for pitcher, I know, but you've got speed and control and I want you to peg 'em a few. Mind now, easy with your arm. By that I mean hold in, don't whip it. And you peg 'em as near where I say as you can; see?" As the players, one after another, faced the box, the coach kept saying to Ken: "Drive that fellow away from the plate... give this one a low ball... now straight over the pan. Say, Peg, you've got a nice ball there... put a fast one under this fellow's chin." "Another turn, now, boys!" he yelled. "I tell you--_stand up to the plate!_" Then he whispered to Ken. "Hit every one of 'em! Peg 'em now, any place." "Hit them?" asked Ken, amazed. "That's what I said." "But--Mr. Arthurs--" "See here, Peg. Don't talk back to me. Do as I say. We'll peg a little nerve into this bunch. Now I'll go back of the plate and make a bluff." Arthurs went near to the catcher's position. Then he said: "Now, fellows, Ward's pretty wild and I've told him to speed up a few. Stand right up and step into 'em." The first batter was Weir. Ken swung easily and let drive. Straight as a string the ball sped for the batter. Like a flash he dropped flat in the dust and the ball just grazed him. It was a narrow escape. Weir jumped up, his face flaring, his hair on end, and he gazed hard at Ken before picking up the bat. "Batter up!" ordered the coach. "Do you think this's a tea-party?" Weir managed by quick contortions to get through his time at bat without being hit. Three players following him were not so lucky. "Didn't I say he was wild?" yelled the coach. "Batter up, now!" The next was little Raymond. He came forward cautiously, eying Ken with disapproval. Ken could not resist putting on a little more steam, and the wind of the first ball whipped off Raymond's green cap. Raymond looked scared and edged away from the plate, and as the second ball came up he stepped wide with his left foot. "Step into the ball," said the coach. "Don't pull away. Step in or you'll never hit." The third ball cracked low down on Raymond's leg. "Oh!--Oh!--Oh!" he howled, beginning to hop and hobble about the cage. "Next batter!" called out Arthurs. And so it went on until the most promising player in the cage came to bat. This was Graves, a light-haired fellow, tall, built like a wedge. He had more confidence than any player in the squad and showed up well in all departments of the game. Moreover, he was talky, aggressive, and more inclined to be heard and felt. He stepped up and swung his bat at Ken. "You wild freshman! If you hit me!" he cried. Ken Ward had not fallen in love with any of his rivals for places on the team, but he especially did not like Graves. He did not stop to consider the reason of it at the moment, still he remembered several tricks Graves had played, and he was not altogether sorry for the coach's order. Swinging a little harder, Ken threw straight at Graves. "_Wham!_" The ball struck him fair on the hip. Limping away from the plate he shook his fist at Ken. "Batter up!" yelled Arthurs. "A little more speed now, Peg. You see it ain't nothin' to get hit. Why, that's in the game. It don't hurt much. I never cared when I used to get hit. Batter up!" Ken sent up a very fast ball, on the outside of the plate. The batter swung wide, and the ball, tipping the bat, glanced to one side and struck Arthurs in the stomach with a deep sound. Arthurs' round face went red; he gurgled and gasped for breath; he was sinking to his knees when the yelling and crowing of the students on the platform straightened him up. He walked about a few minutes, then ordered sliding practice. The sliding-board was brought out. It was almost four feet wide and twenty long and covered with carpet. "Run hard, boys, and don't let up just before you slide. Keep your speed and dive. Now at it!" A line of players formed down the cage. The first one dashed forward and plunged at the board, hitting it with a bang. The carpet was slippery and he slid off and rolled in the dust. The second player leaped forward and, sliding too soon, barely reached the board. One by one the others followed. "Run fast now!" yelled the coach. "Don't flinch.... Go down hard and slide... light on your hands... keep your heads up... slide!" This feature of cage-work caused merriment among the onlookers. That sliding-board was a wonderful and treacherous thing. Most players slid off it as swift as a rocket. Arthurs kept them running so fast and so close together that at times one would shoot off the board just as the next would strike it. They sprawled on the ground, rolled over, and rooted in the dust. One skinned his nose on the carpet; another slid the length of the board on his ear. All the time they kept running and sliding, the coach shouted to them, and the audience roared with laughter. But it was no fun for the sliders. Raymond made a beautiful slide, and Graves was good, but all the others were ludicrous. It was a happy day for Ken, and for all the candidates, when the coach ordered them out on the field. This was early in March. The sun was bright, the frost all out of the ground, and a breath of spring was in the air. How different it was from the cold, gloomy cage! Then the mocking students, although more in evidence than before, were confined to the stands and bleachers, and could not so easily be heard. But the presence of the regular varsity team, practising at the far end of Grant Field, had its effect on the untried players. The coach divided his players into two nines and had them practise batting first, then fielding, and finally started them in a game, with each candidate playing the position he hoped to make on the varsity. It was a weird game. The majority of the twenty candidates displayed little knowledge of baseball. School-boys on the commons could have beaten them. They were hooted and hissed by the students, and before half the innings were played the bleachers and stands were empty. That was what old Wayne's students thought of Arthurs' candidates. In sharp contrast to most of them, Weir, Raymond, and Graves showed they had played the game somewhere. Weir at short-stop covered ground well, but he could not locate first base. Raymond darted here and there quick as a flash, and pounced upon the ball like a huge frog. Nothing got past him, but he juggled the ball. Graves was a finished and beautiful fielder; he was easy, sure, yet fast, and his throw from third to first went true as a line. Graves's fine work accounted for Ken Ward's poor showing. Both were trying for third base, and when Ken once saw his rival play out on the field he not only lost heart and became confused, but he instinctively acknowledged that Graves was far his superior. After all his hopes and the kind interest of the coach it was a most bitter blow. Ken had never played so poor a game. The ball blurred in his tear-wet eyes and looked double. He did not field a grounder. He muffed foul flies and missed thrown balls. It did not occur to him that almost all of the players around him were in the same boat. He could think of nothing but the dashing away of his hopes. What was the use of trying? But he kept trying, and the harder he tried the worse he played. At the bat he struck out, fouled out, never hit the ball square at all. Graves got two well-placed hits to right field. Then when Ken was in the field Graves would come down the coaching line and talk to him in a voice no one else could hear. "You've got a swell chance to make this team, you have, _not!_ Third base is my job, Freshie. Why, you tow-head, you couldn't play marbles. You butter-finger, can't you stop anything? You can't even play sub on this team. Remember, Ward, I said I'd get you for hitting me that day. You hit me with a potato once, too. I'll chase you off this team." For once Ken's spirit was so crushed and humbled that he could not say a word to his rival. He even felt he deserved it all. When the practice ended, and he was walking off the field with hanging head, trying to bear up under the blow, he met Arthurs. "Hello! Peg," said the coach, "I'm going your way." Ken walked along feeling Arthurs' glance upon him, but he was ashamed to raise his head. "Peg, you were up in the air to-day--way off--you lost your nut." He spoke kindly and put his hand on Ken's arm. Ken looked up to see that the coach's face was pale and tired, with the characteristic worried look more marked than usual. "Yes, I was," replied Ken, impulsively. "I can play better than I did to-day--but--Mr. Arthurs, I'm not in Graves's class as a third-baseman. I know it." Ken said it bravely, though there was a catch in his voice. The coach looked closely at him. "So you're sayin' a good word for Graves, pluggin' his game." "I'd love to make the team, but old Wayne must have the best players you can get." "Peg, I said once you and me were goin' to get along. I said also that college baseball is played with the heart. You lost your heart. So did most of the kids. Well, it ain't no wonder. This's a tryin' time. I'm playin' them against each other, and no fellow knows where he's at. Now, I've seen all along that you weren't a natural infielder. I played you at third to-day to get that idea out of your head. To-morrow I'll try you in the outfield. You ain't no quitter, Peg." Ken hurried to his room under the stress of a complete revulsion of feeling. His liking for the coach began to grow into something more. It was strange to Ken what power a few words from Arthurs had to renew his will and hope and daring. How different Arthurs was when not on the field. There he was stern and sharp. Ken could not study that night, and he slept poorly. His revival of hope did not dispel his nervous excitement. He went out into Grant Field next day fighting himself. When in the practice Arthurs assigned him to a right-field position, he had scarcely taken his place when he became conscious of a queer inclination to swallow often, of a numbing tight band round his chest. He could not stand still; his hands trembled; there was a mist before his eyes. His mind was fixed upon himself and upon the other five outfielders trying to make the team. He saw the players in the infield pace their positions restlessly, run without aim when the ball was hit or thrown, collide with each other, let the ball go between their hands and legs, throw wildly, and sometimes stand as if transfixed when they ought to have been in action. But all this was not significant to Ken. He saw everything that happened, but he thought only that he must make a good showing; he must not miss any flies, or let a ball go beyond him. He absolutely must do the right thing. The air of Grant Field was charged with intensity of feeling, and Ken thought it was all his own. His baseball fortune was at stake, and he worked himself in such a frenzy that if a ball had been batted in his direction he might not have seen it at all. Fortunately none came his way. The first time at bat he struck out ignominiously, poking weakly at the pitcher's out-curves. The second time he popped up a little fly. On the next trial the umpire called him out on strikes. At his last chance Ken was desperate. He knew the coach placed batting before any other department of the game. Almost sick with the torture of the conflicting feelings, Ken went up to the plate and swung blindly. To his amaze he cracked a hard fly to left-centre, far between the fielders. Like a startled deer Ken broke into a run. He turned first base and saw that he might stretch the hit into a three-bagger. He knew he could run, and never had he so exerted himself. Second base sailed under him, and he turned in line for the third. Watching Graves, he saw him run for the base and stand ready to catch the throw-in. Without slacking his speed in the least Ken leaped into the air headlong for the base. He heard the crack of the ball as it hit Graves's glove. Then with swift scrape on hands and breast he was sliding in the dust. He stopped suddenly as if blocked by a stone wall. Something hard struck him on the head. A blinding light within his brain seemed to explode into glittering slivers. A piercing pain shot through him. Then from darkness and a great distance sounded a voice: "Ward, I said I'd get you!" VII ANNIHILATION That incident put Ken out of the practice for three days. He had a bruise over his ear as large as a small apple. Ken did not mind the pain nor the players' remarks that he had a swelled head anyway, but he remembered with slow-gathering wrath Graves's words: "I said I'd get you!" He remembered also Graves's reply to a question put by the coach. "I was only tagging him. I didn't mean to hurt him." That rankled inside Ken. He kept his counsel, however, even evading a sharp query put by Arthurs, and as much as it was possible he avoided the third-baseman. Hard practice was the order of every day, and most of it was batting. The coach kept at the candidates everlastingly, and always his cry was: "Toe the plate, left foot a little forward, step into the ball and swing!" At the bat Ken made favorable progress because the coach was always there behind him with encouraging words; in the field, however, he made a mess of it, and grew steadily worse. The directors of the Athletic Association had called upon the old varsity to go out and coach the new aspirants for college fame. The varsity had refused. Even the players of preceding years, what few were in or near the city, had declined to help develop Wayne's stripling team. But some of the older graduates, among them several of the athletic directors, appeared on the field. When Arthurs saw them he threw up his hands in rage and despair. That afternoon Ken had three well-meaning but old-fashioned ball-players coach him in the outfield. He had them one at a time, which was all that saved him from utter distraction. One told him to judge a fly by the sound when the ball was hit. Another told him to play in close, and when the ball was batted to turn and run with it. The third said he must play deep and sprint in for the fly. Then each had different ideas as to how batters should be judged, about throwing to bases, about backing up the other fielders. Ken's bewilderment grew greater and greater. He had never heard of things they advocated, and he began to think he did not know anything about the game. And what made his condition of mind border on imbecility was a hurried whisper from Arthurs between innings: "Peg, don't pay the slightest attention to 'em fat-head grad. coaches." Practice days succeeding that were worse nightmares to Ken Ward than the days he had spent in constant fear of the sophomores. It was a terribly feverish time of batting balls, chasing balls, and of having dinned into his ears thousands of orders, rules of play, talks on college spirit in athletics--all of which conflicted so that it was meaningless to him. During this dark time one ray of light was the fact that Arthurs never spoke a sharp word to him. Ken felt vaguely that he was whirling in some kind of a college athletic chaos, out of which he would presently emerge. Toward the close of March the weather grew warm, the practice field dried up, and baseball should have been a joy to Ken. But it was not. At times he had a shameful wish to quit the field for good, but he had not the courage to tell the coach. The twenty-fifth, the day scheduled for the game with the disgraced varsity team, loomed closer and closer. Its approach was a fearful thing for Ken. Every day he cast furtive glances down the field to where the varsity held practice. Ken had nothing to say; he was as glum as most of the other candidates, but he had heard gossip in the lecture-rooms, in the halls, on the street, everywhere, and it concerned this game. What would the old varsity do to Arthurs' new team? Curiosity ran as high as the feeling toward the athletic directors. Resentment flowed from every source. Ken somehow got the impression that he was blamable for being a member of the coach's green squad. So Ken Ward fluctuated between two fears, one as bad as the other--that he would not be selected to play, and the other that he would be selected. It made no difference. He would be miserable if not chosen, and if he was--how on earth would he be able to keep his knees from wobbling? Then the awful day dawned. Coach Arthurs met all his candidates at the cage. He came late, he explained, because he wanted to keep them off the field until time for practice. To-day he appeared more grave than worried, and where the boys expected a severe lecture, he simply said: "I'll play as many of you as I can. Do your best, that's all. Don't mind what these old players say. They were kids once, though they seem to have forgotten it. Try to learn from them." It was the first time the candidates had been taken upon the regular diamond of Grant Field. Ken had peeped in there once to be impressed by the beautiful level playground, and especially the magnificent turreted grand-stand and the great sweeping stretches of bleachers. Then they had been empty; now, with four thousand noisy students and thousands of other spectators besides, they stunned him. He had never imagined a crowd coming to see the game. Perhaps Arthurs had not expected it either, for Ken heard him mutter grimly to himself. He ordered practice at once, and called off the names of those he had chosen to start the game. As one in a trance Ken Ward found himself trotting out to right field. A long-rolling murmur that was half laugh, half taunt, rose from the stands. Then it quickly subsided. From his position Ken looked for the players of the old varsity, but they had not yet come upon the field. Of the few balls batted to Ken in practice he muffed only one, and he was just beginning to feel that he might acquit himself creditably when the coach called the team in. Arthurs had hardly given his new players time enough to warm up, but likewise they had not had time to make any fumbles. All at once a hoarse roar rose from the stands, then a thundering clatter of thousands of feet as the students greeted the appearance of the old varsity. It was applause that had in it all the feeling of the undergraduates for the championship team, many of whom they considered had been unjustly barred by the directors. Love, loyalty, sympathy, resentment--all pealed up to the skies in that acclaim. It rolled out over the heads of Arthurs' shrinking boys as they huddled together on the bench. Ken Ward, for one, was flushing and thrilling. In that moment he lost his gloom. He watched the varsity come trotting across the field, a doughty band of baseball warriors. Each wore a sweater with the huge white "W" shining like a star. Many of those players had worn that honored varsity letter for three years. It did seem a shame to bar them from this season's team. Ken found himself thinking of the matter from their point of view, and his sympathy was theirs. More than that, he gloried in the look of them, in the trained, springy strides, in the lithe, erect forms, in the assurance in every move. Every detail of that practice photographed itself upon Ken Ward's memory, and he knew he would never forget. There was Dale, veteran player, captain and pitcher of the nine, hero of victories over Place and Herne. There was Hogan, catcher for three seasons, a muscular fellow, famed for his snap-throw to the bases and his fiendish chasing of foul flies. There was Hickle, the great first-baseman, whom the professional leagues were trying to get. What a reach he had; how easily he scooped in the ball; low, high, wide, it made no difference to him. There was Canton at second, Hollis at short, Burns at third, who had been picked for the last year's All-American College Team. Then there was Dreer, brightest star of all, the fleet, hard-hitting centre-fielder. This player particularly fascinated Ken. It was a beautiful sight to see him run. The ground seemed to fly behind him. When the ball was hit high he wheeled with his back to the diamond and raced out, suddenly to turn with unerring judgment--and the ball dropped into his hands. On low line hits he showed his fleetness, for he was like a gleam of light in his forward dash; and, however the ball presented, shoulder high, low by his knees, or on a short bound, he caught it. Ken Ward saw with despairing admiration what it meant to be a great outfielder. Then Arthurs called "Play ball!" giving the old varsity the field. With a violent start Ken Ward came out of his rhapsody. He saw a white ball tossed on the diamond. Dale received it from one of the fielders and took his position in the pitcher's box. The uniform set off his powerful form; there was something surly and grimly determined in his face. He glanced about to his players, as if from long habit, and called out gruffly: "Get in the game, fellows! No runs for this scrub outfit!" Then, with long-practised swing, he delivered the ball. It travelled plateward swift as the flight of a white swallow. The umpire called it a strike on Weir; the same on the next pitch; the third was wide. Weir missed the fourth and was out. Raymond followed on the batting list. To-day, as he slowly stepped toward the plate, seemingly smaller and glummer than ever, it was plain he was afraid. The bleachers howled at the little green cap sticking over his ear. Raymond did not swing at the ball; he sort of reached out his bat at the first three pitches, stepping back from the plate each time. The yell that greeted his weak attempt seemed to shrivel him up. Also it had its effect on the youngsters huddling around Arthurs. Graves went up and hit a feeble grounder to Dale and was thrown out at first. Ken knew the half-inning was over; he saw the varsity players throw aside their gloves and trot in. But either he could not rise or he was glued to the bench. Then Arthurs pulled him up, saying, "Watch sharp, Peg, these fellows are right-field hitters!" At the words all Ken's blood turned to ice. He ran out into the field fighting the coldest, most sickening sensation he ever had in his life. The ice in his veins all went to the pit of his stomach and there formed into a heavy lump. Other times when he had been frightened flitted through his mind. It had been bad when he fought with Greaser, and worse when he ran with the outlaws in pursuit, and the forest fire was appalling. But Ken felt he would gladly have changed places at that moment. He dreaded the mocking bleachers. Of the candidates chosen to play against the varsity Ken knew McCord at first, Raymond at second, Weir at short, Graves at third. He did not know even the names of the others. All of them, except Graves, appeared too young to play in that game. Dreer was first up for the varsity, and Ken shivered all over when the lithe centre-fielder stepped to the left side of the plate. Ken went out deeper, for he knew most hard-hitting left-handers hit to right field. But Dreer bunted the first ball teasingly down the third-base line. Fleet as a deer, he was across the bag before the infielder reached the ball. Hollis was next up. On the first pitch, as Dreer got a fast start for second, Hollis bunted down the first-base line. Pitcher and baseman ran for the bunt; Hollis was safe, and the sprinting Dreer went to third without even drawing a throw. A long pealing yell rolled over the bleachers. Dale sent coaches to the coaching lines. Hickle, big and formidable, hurried to the plate, swinging a long bat. He swung it as if he intended to knock the ball out of the field. When the pitcher lifted his arm Dreer dashed for home-base, and seemed beating the ball. But Hickle deftly dumped it down the line and broke for first while Dreer scored. This bunt was not fielded at all. How the bleachers roared! Then followed bunts in rapid succession, dashes for first, and slides into the bag. The pitcher interfered with the third-baseman, and the first-baseman ran up the line, and the pitcher failed to cover the bag, and the catcher fell all over the ball. Every varsity man bunted, but in just the place where it was not expected. They raced around the bases. They made long runs from first to third. They were like flashes of light, slippery as eels. The bewildered infielders knew they were being played with. The taunting "boo-hoos" and screams of delight from the bleachers were as demoralizing as the illusively daring runners. Closer and closer the infielders edged in until they were right on top of the batters. Then Dale and his men began to bunt little infield flies over the heads of their opponents. The merry audience cheered wildly. But Graves and Raymond ran back and caught three of these little pop flies, thus retiring the side. The old varsity had made six runs on nothing but deliberate bunts and daring dashes around the bases. Ken hurried in to the bench and heard some one call out, "Ward up!" He had forgotten he would have to bat. Stepping to the plate was like facing a cannon. One of the players yelled: "Here he is, Dale! Here's the potato-pegger! Knock his block off!" The cry was taken up by other players. "Peg him, Dale! Peg him, Dale!" And then the bleachers got it. Ken's dry tongue seemed pasted to the roof of his mouth. This Dale in baseball clothes with the lowering frown was not like the Dale Ken had known. Suddenly he swung his arm. Ken's quick eye caught the dark, shooting gleam of the ball. Involuntarily he ducked. "Strike," called the umpire. Then Dale had not tried to hit him. Ken stepped up again. The pitcher whirled slowly this time, turning with long, easy motion, and threw underhand. The ball sailed, floated, soared. Long before it reached Ken it had fooled him completely. He chopped at it vainly. The next ball pitched came up swifter, but just before it crossed the plate it seemed to stop, as if pulled back by a string, and then dropped down. Ken fell to his knees trying to hit it. The next batter's attempts were not as awkward as Ken's, still they were as futile. As Ken sat wearily down upon the bench he happened to get next to coach Arthurs. He expected some sharp words from the coach, he thought he deserved anything, but they were not forthcoming. The coach put his hand on Ken's knee. When the third batter fouled to Hickle, and Ken got up to go out to the field, he summoned courage to look at Arthurs. Something in his face told Ken what an ordeal this was. He divined that it was vastly more than business with Worry Arthurs. "Peg, watch out this time," whispered the coach. "They'll line 'em at you this inning--like bullets. Now try hard, won't you? _Just try!_" Ken knew from Arthurs' look more than his words that _trying_ was all that was left for the youngsters. The varsity had come out early in the spring, and they had practised to get into condition to annihilate this new team practically chosen by the athletic directors. And they had set out to make the game a farce. But Arthurs meant that all the victory was not in winning the game. It was left for his boys to try in the face of certain defeat, to try with all their hearts, to try with unquenchable spirit. It was the spirit that counted, not the result. The old varsity had received a bitter blow; they were aggressive and relentless. The students and supporters of old Wayne, idolizing the great team, always bearing in mind the hot rivalry with Place and Herne, were unforgiving and intolerant of an undeveloped varsity. Perhaps neither could be much blamed. But it was for the new players to show what it meant to them. The greater the prospect of defeat, the greater the indifference or hostility shown them, the more splendid their opportunity. For it was theirs to try for old Wayne, to try, to fight, and never to give up. Ken caught fire with the flame of that spirit. "Boys, come on!" he cried, in his piercing tenor. "_They can't beat us trying!_" As he ran out into the field members of the varsity spoke to him. "You green-backed freshman! Shut up! You scrub!" "I'm not a varsity has-been!" retorted Ken, hurrying out to his position. The first man up, a left-hander, rapped a hard twisting liner to right field. Ken ran toward deep centre with all his might. The ball kept twisting and curving. It struck squarely in Ken's hands and bounced out and rolled far. When he recovered it the runner was on third base. Before Ken got back to his position the second batter hit hard through the infield toward right. The ball came skipping like a fiendish rabbit. Ken gritted his teeth and went down on his knees, to get the bounding ball full in his breast. But he stopped it, scrambled for it, and made the throw in. Dale likewise hit in his direction, a slow low fly, difficult to judge. Ken over-ran it, and the hit gave Dale two bases. Ken realized that the varsity was now executing Worry Arthurs' famous right-field hitting. The sudden knowledge seemed to give Ken the blind-staggers. The field was in a haze; the players blurred in his sight. He heard the crack of the ball and saw Raymond dash over and plunge down. Then the ball seemed to streak out of the grass toward him, and, as he bent over, it missed his hands and cracked on his shin. Again he fumbled wildly for it and made the throw in. The pain roused his rage. He bit his lips and called to himself: "I'll stop them if it kills me!" Dreer lined the ball over his head for a home-run. Hollis made a bid for a three-bagger, but Ken, by another hard sprint, knocked the ball down. Hickle then batted up a tremendously high fly. It went far beyond Ken and he ran and ran. It looked like a small pin-point of black up in the sky. Then he tried to judge it, to get under it. The white sky suddenly glazed over and the ball wavered this way and that. Ken lost it in the sun, found it again, and kept on running. Would it never come down? He had not reached it, he had run beyond it. In an agony he lunged out, and the ball fell into his hands and jumped out. Then followed a fusillade of hits, all between second base and first, and all vicious-bounding grounders. To and fro Ken ran, managing somehow to get some portion of his anatomy in front of the ball. It had become a demon to him now and he hated it. His tongue was hanging out, his breast was bursting, his hands were numb, yet he held before him the one idea to keep fiercely trying. He lost count of the runs after eleven had been scored. He saw McCord and Raymond trying to stem the torrent of right-field hits, but those they knocked down gave him no time to recover. He blocked the grass-cutters with his knees or his body and pounced upon the ball and got it away from him as quickly as possible. Would this rapid fire of uncertain-bounding balls never stop? Ken was in a kind of frenzy. If he only had time to catch his breath! Then Dreer was at bat again. He fouled the first two balls over the grand-stand. Some one threw out a brand-new ball. Farther and farther Ken edged into deep right. He knew what was coming. "Let him--hit it!" he panted. "I'll try to get it! This day settles me. I'm no outfielder. But I'll try!" The tired pitcher threw the ball and Dreer seemed to swing and bound at once with the ringing crack. The hit was one of his famous drives close to the right-field foul-line. Ken was off with all the speed left in him. He strained every nerve and was going fast when he passed the foul-flag. The bleachers loomed up indistinct in his sight. But he thought only of meeting the ball. The hit was a savage liner, curving away from him. Cinders under his flying feet were a warning that he did not heed. He was on the track. He leaped into the air, left hand outstretched, and felt the ball strike in his glove. Then all was dark in a stunning, blinding crash-- VIII EXAMINATIONS When Ken Ward came fully to his senses he was being half carried and half led across the diamond to the players' bench. He heard Worry Arthurs say: "He ain't hurt much--only butted into the fence." Ken tried manfully to entertain Worry's idea about it, but he was too dazed and weak to stand alone. He imagined he had broken every bone in his body. "Did I make the catch--hang to the ball?" he asked. "No, Peg, you didn't," replied the coach, kindly. "But you made a grand try for it." He felt worse over failing to hold the ball than he felt over half killing himself against the bleachers. He spent the remainder of that never-to-be-forgotten game sitting on the bench. But to watch his fellow-players try to play was almost as frightful as being back there in right field. It was no consolation for Ken to see his successor chasing long hits, misjudging flies, failing weakly on wicked grounders. Even Graves weakened toward the close and spoiled his good beginning by miserable fumbles and throws. It was complete and disgraceful rout. The varsity never let up until the last man was out. The team could not have played harder against Place or Herne. Arthurs called the game at the end of the sixth inning with the score 41 to 0. Many beaten and despondent players had dragged themselves off Grant Field in bygone years. But none had ever been so humiliated, so crushed. No player spoke a word or looked at another. They walked off with bowed heads. Ken lagged behind the others; he was still stunned and lame. Presently Arthurs came back to help him along, and did not speak until they were clear of the campus and going down Ken's street. "I'm glad that's over," said Worry. "I kicked against havin' the game, but 'em fat-head directors would have it. Now we'll be let alone. There won't be no students comin' out to the field, and I'm blamed glad." Ken was sick and smarting with pain, and half crying. "I'm sorry, Mr. Arthurs," he faltered, "we were--so--so--rotten!" "See here, Peg," was the quick reply, "that cuts no ice with me. It was sure the rottenest exhibition I ever seen in my life. But there's excuses, and you can just gamble I'm the old boy who knows. You kids were scared to death. What hurts me, Peg, is the throw-down we got from my old team and from the students. We're not to blame for rules made by fat-head directors. I was surprised at Dale. He was mean, and so were Hollis and Hickle--all of 'em. They didn't need to disgrace us like that." "Oh, Mr. Arthurs, what players they are!" exclaimed Ken. "I never saw such running, such hitting. You said they'd hit to right field like bullets, but it was worse than bullets. And Dreer!... When he came up my heart just stopped beating." "Peg, listen," said Worry. "Three years ago when Dreer came out on the field he was greener than you, and hadn't half the spunk. I made him what he is, and I made all of 'em--I made that team, and I can make another." "You are just saying that to--to encourage me," replied Ken, hopelessly. "I can't play ball. I thought I could, but I know now. I'll never go out on the field again." "Peg, are you goin' to throw me down, too?" "Mr. Arthurs! I--I--" "Listen, Peg. Cut out the dumps. Get over 'em. You made the varsity to-day. Understand? You earned your big W. You needn't mention it, but I've picked you to play somewhere. You weren't a natural infielder, and you didn't make much of a showin' in the outfield. But it's the spirit I want. To-day was a bad day for a youngster. There's always lots of feelin' about college athletics, but here at Wayne this year the strain's awful. And you fought yourself and stage-fright and the ridicule of 'em quitter students. You _tried_, Peg! I never saw a gamer try. You didn't fail me. And after you made that desperate run and tried to smash the bleachers with your face the students shut up their guyin'. It made a difference, Peg. Even the varsity was a little ashamed. Cheer up, now!" Ken was almost speechless; he managed to mumble something, at which the coach smiled in reply and then walked rapidly away. Ken limped to his room and took off his baseball suit. The skin had been peeled from his elbow, and his body showed several dark spots that Ken knew would soon be black-and-blue bruises. His legs from his knees down bore huge lumps so sore to the touch that Ken winced even at gentle rubbing. But he did not mind the pain. All the darkness seemed to have blown away from his mind. "What a fine fellow Worry is!" said Ken. "How I'll work for him! I must write to brother Hal and Dick Leslie, to tell them I've made the varsity.... No, not yet; Worry said not to mention it.... And now to plug. I'll have to take my exams before the first college game, April 8th, and that's not long." In the succeeding days Ken was very busy with attendance at college in the mornings, baseball practice in the afternoons, and study at night. If Worry had picked any more players for the varsity, Ken could not tell who they were. Of course Graves would make the team, and Weir and Raymond were pretty sure of places. There were sixteen players for the other five positions, and picking them was only guesswork. It seemed to Ken that some of the players showed streaks of fast playing at times, and then as soon as they were opposed to one another in the practice game they became erratic. His own progress was slow. One thing he could do that brought warm praise from the coach--he could line the ball home from deep outfield with wonderful speed and accuracy. After the varsity had annihilated Worry's "kids," as they had come to be known, the students showed no further interest. When they ceased to appear on the field the new players were able to go at their practice without being ridiculed. Already an improvement had been noticeable. But rivalry was so keen for places, and the coach's choice so deep a mystery, that the contestants played under too great a tension, and school-boys could have done better. It was on the first of April that Arthurs took Ken up into College Hall to get permission for him to present himself to the different professors for the early examinations. While Ken sat waiting in the office he heard Arthurs talking to men he instantly took to be the heads of the Athletic Association. They were in an adjoining room with the door open, and their voices were very distinct, so that Ken could not help hearing. "Gentlemen, I want my answer to-day," said the coach. "Is there so great a hurry? Wait a little," was the rejoinder. "I'm sorry, but this is April 1st, and I'll wait no longer. I'm ready to send some of my boys up for early exams, and I want to know where I stand." "Arthurs, what is it exactly that you want? Things have been in an awful mess, we know. State your case and we'll try to give you a definite answer." "I want full charge of the coachin'--the handlin' of the team, as I always had before. I don't want any grad coaches. The directors seem divided, one half want this, the other half that. They've cut out the trainin' quarters. I've had no help from Murray; no baths or rub-downs or trainin' for my candidates. Here's openin' day a week off and I haven't picked my team. I want to take them to the trainin'-table and have them under my eye all the time. If I can't have what I want I'll resign. If I can I'll take the whole responsibility of the team on my own shoulders." "Very well, Arthurs, we'll let you go ahead and have full charge. There has been talk this year of abolishing a private training-house and table for this green varsity. But rather than have you resign we'll waive that. You can rest assured from now on you will not be interfered with. Give us the best team you can under the circumstances. There has been much dissension among the directors and faculty because of our new eligibility rules. It has stirred everybody up, and the students are sore. Then there has been talk of not having a professional coach this year, but we overruled that in last night's meeting. We're going to see what you can do. I may add, Arthurs, if you shape up a varsity this year that makes any kind of a showing against Place and Herne you will win the eternal gratitude of the directors who have fostered this change in athletics. Otherwise I'm afraid the balance of opinion will favor the idea of dispensing with professional coaches in the future." Ken saw that Arthurs was white in the face when he left the room. They went out together, and Worry handed Ken a card that read for him to take his examinations at once. "Are you up on 'em?" asked the coach, anxiously. "I--I think so," replied Ken. "Well, Peg, good luck to you! Go at 'em like you went at Dreer's hit." Much to his amazement it was for Ken to discover that, now the time had come for him to face his examinations, he was not at all sanguine. He began to worry. He forgot about the text-books he had mastered in his room during the long winter when he feared to venture out because of the sophomores. It was not very long till he had worked himself into a state somewhat akin to his trepidation in the varsity ball game. Then he decided to go up at once and have it done with. His whole freshman year had been one long agony. What a relief to have it ended! Ken passed four examinations in one morning, passed them swimmingly, smilingly, splendidly, and left College Hall in an ecstasy. Things were working out fine. But he had another examination, and it was in a subject he had voluntarily included in his course. Whatever on earth he had done it for he could not now tell. The old doctor who held the chair in that department had thirty years before earned the name of Crab. And slowly in the succeeding years he had grown crabbier, crustier, so student rumor had it. Ken had rather liked the dry old fellow, and had been much absorbed in his complex lectures, but he had never been near him, and now the prospect changed color. Foolishly Ken asked a sophomore in what light old Crab might regard a student who was ambitious to pass his exams early. The picture painted by that sophomore would have made a flaming-mouthed dragon appear tame. Nerving himself to the ordeal, Ken took his card and presented himself one evening at the doctor's house. A maid ushered him into the presence of a venerable old man who did not look at all, even in Ken's distorted sight, like a crab or a dragon. His ponderous brow seemed as if it had all the thought in the world behind it. He looked over huge spectacles at Ken's card and then spoke in a dry, quavering voice. "Um-m. Sit down, Mr. Ward." Ken found his breath and strangely lost his fear and trembling. The doctor dryly asked him why he thought he knew more than the other students, who were satisfied to wait months longer before examination. Ken hastened to explain that it was no desire of his; that, although he had studied hard and had not missed many lectures, he knew he was unprepared. Then he went on to tell about the baseball situation and why he had been sent up. "Um-m." The professor held a glass paperweight up before Ken and asked a question about it. Next he held out a ruler and asked something about that, and also a bottle of ink. Following this he put a few queries about specific gravity, atomic weight, and the like. Then he sat thrumming his desk and appeared far away in thought. After a while he turned to Ken with a smile that made his withered, parchment-like face vastly different. "Where do you play?" he asked. "S-sir?" stammered Ken. "In baseball, I mean. What place do you play? Catch? Thrower? I don't know the names much." Ken replied eagerly, and then it seemed he was telling this stern old man all about baseball. He wanted to know what fouls were, and how to steal bases, and he was nonplussed by such terms as "hit-and-run." Ken discoursed eloquently on his favorite sport, and it was like a kind of dream to be there. Strange things were always happening to him. "I've never seen a game," said the professor. "I used to play myself long ago, when we had a yarn ball and pitched underhand. I'll have to come out to the field some day. President Halstead, why, he likes baseball, he's a--a--what do you call it?" "A fan--a rooter?" replied Ken, smiling. "Um-m. I guess that's it. Well, Mr. Ward, I'm glad to meet you. You may go now." Ken got up blushing like a girl. "But, Doctor, you were to--I was to be examined." "I've examined you," he drawled, with a dry chuckle, and he looked over his huge spectacles at Ken. "I'll give you a passing mark. But, Mr. Ward, you know a heap more about baseball than you know about physics." As Ken went out he trod upon air. What a splendid old fellow! The sophomore had lied. For that matter, when had a sophomore ever been known to tell the truth? But, he suddenly exclaimed, he himself was no longer a freshman. He pondered happily on the rosy lining to his old cloud of gloom. How different things appeared after a little time. That old doctor's smile would linger long in Ken's memory. He felt deep remorse that he had ever misjudged him. He hurried on to Worry Arthurs' house to tell him the good news. And as he walked his mind was full with the wonder of it all--his lonely, wretched freshman days, now forever past; the slow change from hatred; the dawning of some strange feeling for the college and his teachers; and, last, the freedom, the delight, the quickening stir in the present. IX PRESIDENT HALSTEAD ON COLLEGE SPIRIT Wayne's opening game was not at all what Ken had dreamed it would be. The opposing team from Hudson School was as ill-assorted an aggregation as Ken had ever seen. They brought with them a small but noisy company of cheering supporters who, to the shame of Ken and his fellows, had the bleachers all to themselves. If any Wayne students were present they either cheered for Hudson or remained silent. Hudson won, 9 to 2. It was a game that made Arthurs sag a little lower on the bench. Graves got Wayne's two tallies. Raymond at second played about all the game from the fielding standpoint. Ken distinguished himself by trying wildly and accomplishing nothing. When he went to his room that night he had switched back to his former spirits, and was disgusted with Wayne's ball team, himself most of all. That was on a Wednesday. The next day rain prevented practice, and on Friday the boys were out on the field again. Arthurs shifted the players around, trying resignedly to discover certain positions that might fit certain players. It seemed to Ken that all the candidates, except one or two, were good at fielding and throwing, but when they came to play a game they immediately went into a trance. Travers College was scheduled for Saturday. They had always turned out a good minor team, but had never been known to beat Wayne. They shut Arthurs' team out without a run. A handful of Wayne students sat in the bleachers mocking their own team. Arthurs used the two pitchers he had been trying hard to develop, and when they did locate the plate they were hit hard. Ken played or essayed to play right field for a while, but he ran around like a chicken with its head off, as a Travers player expressed it, and then Arthurs told him that he had better grace the bench the rest of the game. Ashamed as Ken was to be put out, he was yet more ashamed to feel that he was glad of it. Hardest of all to bear was the arrogant air put on by the Travers College players. Wayne had indeed been relegated to the fifth rank of college baseball teams. On Monday announcements were made in all the lecture-rooms and departments of the university, and bulletins were posted to the effect, that President Halstead wished to address the undergraduates in the Wayne auditorium on Tuesday at five o'clock. Rumor flew about the campus and Carlton Club, everywhere, that the president's subject would be "College Spirit," and it was believed he would have something to say about the present condition of athletics. Ken Ward hurried to the hall as soon as he got through his practice. He found the immense auditorium packed from pit to dome, and he squeezed into a seat on the steps. The students, as always, were exchanging volleys of paper-balls, matching wits, singing songs, and passing time merrily. When President Halstead entered, with two of his associates, he was greeted by a thunder of tongues, hands, and heels of the standing students. He was the best-beloved member of the university faculty, a distinguished, scholarly looking man, well-stricken in years. He opened his address by declaring the need of college spirit in college life. He defined it as the vital thing, the heart of a great educational institution, and he went on to speak of its dangers, its fluctuations. Then he made direct reference to athletics in its relation to both college spirit and college life. "Sport is too much with us. Of late years I have observed a great increase in the number of athletic students, and a great decrease in scholarship. The fame of the half-back and the short-stop and the stroke-oar has grown out of proportion to their real worth. The freshman is dazzled by it. The great majority of college men cannot shine in sport, which is the best thing that could be. The student's ideal, instead of being the highest scholarship, the best attainment for his career, is apt to be influenced by the honors and friendships that are heaped upon the great athlete. This is false to university life. You are here to prepare yourselves for the battle with the world, and I want to state that that battle is becoming more and more intellectual. The student who slights his studies for athletic glory may find himself, when that glory is long past, distanced in the race for success by a student who had not trained to run the hundred in ten seconds. "But, gentlemen, to keep well up in your studies and _then_ go in for athletics--that is entirely another question. It is not likely that any student who keeps to the front in any of the university courses will have too much time for football or baseball. I am, as you all know, heartily in favor of all branches of college sport. And that brings me to the point I want to make to-day. Baseball is my favorite game, and I have always been proud of Wayne's teams. The new eligibility rules, with which you are all familiar, were brought to me, and after thoroughly going over the situation I approved of them. Certainly it is obvious to you all that a university ball-player making himself famous here, and then playing during the summer months at a resort, is laying himself open to suspicion. I have no doubt that many players are innocent of the taint of professionalism, but unfortunately they have become members of these summer teams after being first requested, then warned, not to do so. "Wayne's varsity players of last year have been barred by the directors. They made their choice, and so should abide by it. They have had their day, and so should welcome the opportunity of younger players. But I am constrained to acknowledge that neither they nor the great body of undergraduates welcomed the change. This, more than anything, proves to me the evil of championship teams. The football men, the baseball men, the crew men, and all the student supporters want to win _all_ the games _all_ the time. I would like to ask you young gentlemen if you can take a beating? If you cannot, I would like to add that you are not yet fitted to go out into life. A good beating, occasionally, is a wholesome thing. "Well, to come to the point now: I find, after studying the situation, that the old varsity players and undergraduates of this university have been lacking in--let us be generous and say, college spirit. I do not need to go into detail; suffice it to say that I know. I will admit, however, that I attended the game between the old varsity and the new candidates. I sat unobserved in a corner, and a more unhappy time I never spent in this university. I confess that my sympathies were with the inexperienced, undeveloped boys who were trying to learn to play ball. _Put yourselves in their places._ Say you are mostly freshmen, and you make yourselves candidates for the team because you love the game, and because you would love to bring honor to your college. You go out and try. You meet, the first day, an implacable team of skilled veterans who show their scorn of your poor ability, their hatred of your opportunity, and ride roughshod--I should say, run with spiked shoes--over you. You hear the roar of four thousand students applauding these hero veterans. You hear your classmates, your fellow-students in Wayne, howl with ridicule at your weak attempts to compete with better, stronger players.... Gentlemen, how would you feel? "I said before that college spirit fluctuates. If I did not know students well I would be deeply grieved at the spirit shown that day. I know that the tide will turn.... And, gentlemen, would not you and the old varsity be rather in an embarrassing position if--if these raw recruits should happen to develop into a team strong enough to cope with Place and Herne? Stranger things have happened. I am rather strong for the new players, not because of their playing, which is poor indeed, but for the way they _tried_ under peculiarly adverse conditions. "That young fellow Ward--what torture that inning of successive hard hits to his territory! I was near him in that end of the bleachers, and I watched him closely. Every attempt he made was a failure--that is, failure from the point of view of properly fielding the ball. But, gentlemen, that day was not a failure for young Ward. It was a grand success. Some one said his playing was the poorest exhibition ever seen on Grant Field. That may be. I want to say that to my mind it was also the most splendid effort ever made on Grant Field. For it was made against defeat, fear, ridicule. It was elimination of self. It was made for his coach, his fellow-players, his college--that is to say, for the students who shamed themselves by scorn for his trial. "Young men of Wayne, give us a little more of such college spirit!" X NEW PLAYERS When practice time rolled around for Ken next day, he went upon the field once more with his hopes renewed and bright. "I certainly do die hard," he laughed to himself. "But I can never go down and out now--never!" Something seemed to ring in Ken's ears like peals of bells. In spite of his awkwardness Coach Arthurs had made him a varsity man; in spite of his unpreparedness old Crab had given him a passing mark; in spite of his unworthiness President Halstead had made him famous. "I surely am the lucky one," said Ken, for the hundredth time. "And now I'm going to force my luck." Ken had lately revolved in his mind a persistent idea that he meant to propound to the coach. Ken arrived on the field a little later than usual, to find Arthurs for once minus his worried look. He was actually smiling, and Ken soon saw the reason for this remarkable change was the presence of a new player out in centre field. "Hello, Peg! things are lookin' up," said the coach, beaming. "That's Homans out there in centre--Roy Homans, a senior and a crackerjack ball-player. I tried to get him to come out for the team last year, but he wouldn't spare the time. But he's goin' to play this season--said the president's little talk got him. He's a fast, heady, scientific player, just the one to steady you kids." Before Ken could reply his attention was attracted from Homans to another new player in uniform now walking up to Arthurs. He was tall, graceful, powerful, had red hair, keen dark eyes, a clean-cut profile and square jaw. "I've come out to try for the team," he said, quietly, to the coach. "You're a little late, ain't you?" asked Worry, gruffly; but he ran a shrewd glance over the lithe form. "Yes." "Must have been stirred up by that talk of President Halstead's, wasn't you?" "Yes." There was something quiet and easy about the stranger, and Ken liked him at once. "Where do you play?" went on Worry. "Left." "Can you hit? Talk sense now, and mebbe you'll save me work. Can you hit?" "Yes." "Can you throw?" "Yes." He spoke with quiet assurance. "Can you run?" almost shouted Worry. He was nervous and irritable those days, and it annoyed him for unknown youths to speak calmly of such things. "Run? Yes, a little. I did the hundred last year in nine and four-fifths." "What! You can't kid me! Who are you?" cried Worry, getting red in the face. "I've seen you somewhere." "My name's Ray." "Say! Not _Ray_, the intercollegiate champion?" "I'm the fellow. I talked it over with Murray. He kicked, but I didn't mind that. I promised to try to keep in shape to win the sprints at the intercollegiate meet." "Say! Get out there in left field! Quick!" shouted Worry.... "Peg, hit him some flies. Lam 'em a mile! That fellow's a sprinter, Peg. What luck it would be if he can play ball! Hit 'em at him!" Ken took the ball Worry tossed him, and, picking up a bat, began to knock flies out to Ray. The first few he made easy for the outfielder, and then he hit balls harder and off to the right or left. Without appearing to exert himself Ray got under them. Ken watched him, and also kept the tail of his eye on Worry. The coach appeared to be getting excited, and he ordered Ken to hit the balls high and far away. Ken complied, but he could not hit a ball over Ray's head. He tried with all his strength. He had never seen a champion sprinter, and now he marvelled at the wonderful stride. "Oh! but his running is beautiful!" exclaimed Ken. "That's enough! Come in here!" yelled Worry to Ray.... "Peg, he makes Dreer look slow. I never saw as fast fieldin' as that." When Ray came trotting in without seeming to be even warmed up, Worry blurted out: "You ain't winded--after all that? Must be in shape?" "I'm always in shape," replied Ray. "Pick up a bat!" shouted Worry. "Here, Duncan, pitch this fellow a few. Speed 'em, curve 'em, strike him out, hit him--anything!" Ray was left-handed, and he stood up to the plate perfectly erect, with his bat resting quietly on his shoulder. He stepped straight, swung with an even, powerful swing, and he hit the first ball clear over the right-field bleachers. It greatly distanced Dreer's hit. "What a drive!" gasped Ken. "Oh!" choked Worry. "That's enough! You needn't lose my balls. Bunt one, now." Ray took the same position, and as the ball came up he appeared to drop the bat upon it and dart away at the same instant. Worry seemed to be trying to control violent emotion. "Next batter up!" he called, hoarsely, and sat down on the bench. He was breathing hard, and beads of sweat stood out on his brow. Ken went up to Worry, feeling that now was the time to acquaint the coach with his new idea. Eager as Ken was he had to force himself to take this step. All the hope and dread, nervousness and determination of the weeks of practice seemed to accumulate in that moment. He stammered and stuttered, grew speechless, and then as Worry looked up in kind surprise, Ken suddenly grew cool and earnest. "Mr. Arthurs, will you try me in the box?" "What's that, Peg?" queried the coach, sharply. "Will you give me a trial in the box? I've wanted one all along. You put me in once when we were in the cage, but you made me hit the batters." "Pitch? you, Peg? Why not? Why didn't I think of it? I'm sure gettin' to be like 'em fat-head directors. You've got steam, Peg, but can you curve a ball? Let's see your fingers." "Yes, I can curve a ball round a corner. Please give me a trial, Mr. Arthurs. I failed in the infield, and I'm little good in the outfield. But I know I can pitch." The coach gave Ken one searching glance. Then he called all the candidates in to the plate, and ordered Dean, the stocky little catcher, to don his breast-protector, mask, and mitt. "Peg," said the coach, "Dean will sign you--one finger for a straight ball, two for a curve." When Ken walked to the box all his muscles seemed quivering and tense, and he had a contraction in his throat. This was his opportunity. He was not unnerved as he had been when he was trying for the other positions. All Ken's life he had been accustomed to throwing. At his home he had been the only boy who could throw a stone across the river; the only one who could get a ball over the high-school tower. A favorite pastime had always been the throwing of small apples, or walnuts, or stones, and he had acquired an accuracy that made it futile for his boy comrades to compete with him. Curving a ball had come natural to him, and he would have pitched all his high-school games had it not been for the fact that no one could catch him, and, moreover, none of the boys had found any fun in batting against him. When Ken faced the first batter a feeling came over him that he had never before had on the ball field. He was hot, trembling, hurried, but this new feeling was apart from these. His feet were on solid ground, and his arm felt as it had always in those throwing contests where he had so easily won. He seemed to decide from McCord's position at the plate what to throw him. Ken took his swing. It was slow, easy, natural. But the ball travelled with much greater speed than the batter expected from such motion. McCord let the first two balls go by, and Arthurs called them both strikes. Then Ken pitched an out-curve which McCord fanned at helplessly. Arthurs sent Trace up next. Ken saw that the coach was sending up the weaker hitters first. Trace could not even make a foul. Raymond was third up, and Ken had to smile at the scowling second-baseman. Remembering his weakness for pulling away from the plate, Ken threw Raymond two fast curves on the outside, and then a slow wide curve, far out. Raymond could not have hit the first two with a paddle, and the third lured him irresistibly out of position and made him look ridiculous. He slammed his bat down and slouched to the bench. Duncan turned out to be the next easy victim. Four batters had not so much as fouled Ken. And Ken knew he was holding himself in--that, in fact, he had not let out half his speed. Blake, the next player, hit up a little fly that Ken caught, and Schoonover made the fifth man to strike out. Then Weir stood over the plate, and he was a short, sturdy batter, hard to pitch to. He looked as if he might be able to hit any kind of a ball. Ken tried him first with a straight fast one over the middle of the plate. Weir hit it hard, but it went foul. And through Ken's mind flashed the thought that he would pitch no more speed to Weir or players who swung as he did. Accordingly Ken tried the slow curve that had baffled Raymond. Weir popped it up and retired in disgust. The following batter was Graves, who strode up smiling, confident, sarcastic, as if he knew he could do more than the others. Ken imagined what the third-baseman would have said if the coach had not been present. Graves always ruffled Ken the wrong way. "I'll strike him out if I break my arm!" muttered Ken to himself. He faced Graves deliberately and eyed his position at bat. Graves as deliberately laughed at him. "Pitch up, pitch up!" he called out. "Right over the pan!" retorted Ken, as quick as an echo. He went hot as fire all over. This fellow Graves had some strange power of infuriating him. Ken took a different swing, which got more of his weight in motion, and let his arm out. Like a white bullet the ball shot plateward, rising a little so that Graves hit vainly under it. The ball surprised Dean, knocked his hands apart as if they had been paper, and resounded from his breast-protector. Ken pitched the second ball in the same place with a like result, except that Dean held on to it. Graves had lost his smile and wore an expression of sickly surprise. The third ball travelled by him and cracked in Dean's mitt, and Arthurs called it a strike. "Easy there--that'll do!" yelled the coach. "Come in here, Peg. Out on the field now, boys." Homans stopped Ken as they were passing each other, and Ken felt himself under the scrutiny of clear gray eyes. "Youngster, you look good to me," said Homans. Ken also felt himself regarded with astonishment by many of the candidates; and Ray ran a keen, intuitive glance over him from head to foot. But it was the coach's manner that struck Ken most forcibly. Worry was utterly unlike himself. "Why didn't you tell me about this before--you--you--" he yelled, red as a beet in the face. He grasped Ken with both hands, then he let him go, and picking up a ball and a mitt he grasped him again. Without a word he led Ken across the field and to a secluded corner behind the bleachers. Ken felt for all the world as if he was being led to execution. Worry took off his coat and vest and collar. He arranged a block of wood for a plate and stepped off so many paces and placed another piece of wood to mark the pitcher's box. Then he donned the mitt. "Peg, somethin's comin' off. I know it. I never make mistakes in sizin' up pitchers. But I've had such hard luck this season that I can't believe my own eyes. We've got to prove it. Now you go out there and pitch to me. Just natural like at first." Ken pitched a dozen balls or more, some in-curves, some out-curves. Then he threw what he called his drop, which he executed by a straight overhand swing. "Oh--a beauty!" yelled Worry. "Where, Peg, where did you learn that? Another, lower now." Worry fell over trying to stop the glancing drop. "Try straight ones now, Peg, right over the middle. See how many you can pitch." One after another, with free, easy motion, Ken shot balls squarely over the plate. Worry counted them, and suddenly, after the fourteenth pitch, he stood up and glared at Ken. "Are you goin' to keep puttin' 'em over this pan all day that way?" "Mr. Arthurs, I couldn't miss that plate if I pitched a week," replied Ken. "Stop callin' me Mister!" yelled Worry. "Now, put 'em where I hold my hands--inside corner... outside corner... again... inside now, low... another... a fast one over, now... high, inside. Oh, Peg, this ain't right. I ain't seein' straight. I think I'm dreamin'. Come on with 'em!" Fast and true Ken sped the balls into Worry's mitt. Seldom did the coach have to move his hands at all. "Peg Ward, did you know that pitchin' was all control, puttin' the ball where you wanted to?" asked Worry, stopping once more. "No, I didn't," replied Ken. "How did you learn to peg a ball as straight as this?" Ken told him how he had thrown at marks all his life. "Why didn't you tell me before?" Worry seemed not to be able to get over Ken's backwardness. "Look at the sleepless nights and the gray hairs you could have saved me." He stamped around as if furious, yet underneath the surface Ken saw that the coach was trying to hide his elation. "Here now," he shouted, suddenly, "a few more, and _peg_ 'em! See? Cut loose and let me see what steam you've got!" Ken whirled with all his might and delivered the ball with all his weight in the swing. The ball seemed to diminish in size, it went so swiftly. Near the plate it took an upward jump, and it knocked Worry's mitt off his hand. Worry yelled out, then he looked carefully at Ken, but he made no effort to go after the ball or pick up the mitt. "Did I say for you to knock my block off?... Come here, Peg. You're only a youngster. Do you think you can keep that? Are you goin' to let me teach you to pitch? Have you got any nerve? Are you up in the air at the thought of Place and Herne?" Then he actually hugged Ken, and kept hold of him as if he might get away. He was panting and sweating. All at once he sat down on one of the braces of the bleachers and began mopping his face. He seemed to cool down, to undergo a subtle change. "Peg," he said, quietly, "I'm as bad as some of 'em fat-head directors.... You see I didn't have no kind of a pitcher to work on this spring. I kept on hopin'. Strange why I didn't quit. And now--my boy, you're a kid, but you're a natural born pitcher." XI STATE UNIVERSITY GAME Arthurs returned to the diamond and called the squad around him. He might have been another coach from the change that was manifest in him. "Boys, I've picked the varsity, and sorry I am to say you all can't be on it. Ward, Dean, McCord, Raymond, Weir, Graves, Ray, Homans, Trace, Duncan, and Schoonover--these men will report at once to Trainer Murray and obey his orders. Then pack your trunks and report to me at 36 Spring Street to-night. That's all--up on your toes now.... The rest of you boys will each get his uniform and sweater, but, of course, I can't give you the varsity letter. You've all tried hard and done your best. I'm much obliged to you, and hope you'll try again next year." Led by Arthurs, the players trotted across the field to Murray's quarters. Ken used all his eyes as he went in. This was the sacred precinct of the chosen athletes, and it was not open to any others. He saw a small gymnasium, and adjoining it a large, bright room with painted windows that let in the light, but could not be seen through. Around the room on two sides were arranged huge box-like bins with holes in the lids and behind them along the wall were steam-pipes. On the other two sides were little zinc-lined rooms, with different kinds of pipes, which Ken concluded were used for shower baths. Murray, the trainer, was there, and two grinning negroes with towels over their shoulders, and a little dried-up Scotchman who was all one smile. "Murray, here's my bunch. Look 'em over, and to-morrow start 'em in for keeps," said Arthurs. "Well, Worry, they're not a bad-looking lot. Slim and trim. We won't have to take off any beef. Here's Reddy Ray. I let you have him this year, Worry, but the track team will miss him. And here's Peg Ward. I was sure you'd pick him, Worry. And this is Homans, isn't it? I remember you in the freshmen games. The rest of you boys I'll have to get acquainted with. They say I'm a pretty hard fellow, but that's on the outside. Now, hustle out of your suits, and we'll give you all a good stew and a rub-down." What the stew was soon appeared plain to Ken. He was the first player undressed, and Murray, lifting up one of the box-lids, pushed Ken inside. "Sit down and put your feet in that pan," he directed. "When I drop the lid let your head come out the hole. There!" Then he wrapped a huge towel around Ken's neck, being careful to tuck it close and tight. With that he reached round to the back of the box and turned on the steam. Ken felt like a jack-in-the-box. The warm steam was pleasant. He looked about him to see the other boys being placed in like positions. Raymond had the box on one side, and Reddy Ray the one on the other. "It's great," said Ray, smiling at Ken. "You'll like it." Raymond looked scared. Ken wondered if the fellow ever got any enjoyment out of things. Then Ken found himself attending to his own sensations. The steam was pouring out of the pipe inside the box, and it was growing wetter, thicker, and hotter. The pleasant warmth and tickling changed to a burning sensation. Ken found himself bathed in a heavy sweat. Then he began to smart in different places, and he was hard put to it to keep rubbing them. The steam grew hotter; his body was afire; his breath labored in great heaves. Ken felt that he must cry out. He heard exclamations, then yells, from some of the other boxed-up players, and he glanced quickly around. Reddy Ray was smiling, and did not look at all uncomfortable. But Raymond was scarlet in the face, and he squirmed his head to and fro. "_Ough!_" he bawled. "Let me out of here!" One of the negro attendants lifted the lid and helped Raymond out. He danced about as if on hot bricks. His body was the color of a boiled lobster. The attendant put him under one of the showers and turned the water on. Raymond uttered one deep, low, "O-o-o-o!" Then McCord begged to be let out; Weir's big head, with its shock of hair, resembled that of an angry lion; little Trace screamed, and Duncan yelled. "Peg, how're you?" asked Murray, walking up to Ken. "It's always pretty hot the first few times. But afterward it's fine. Look at Reddy." "Murray, give Peg a good stewin'," put in Arthurs. "He's got a great arm, and we must take care of it." Ken saw the other boys, except Ray, let out, and he simply could not endure the steam any longer. "I've got--enough," he stammered. "Scotty, turn on a little more stew," ordered Murray, cheerfully; then he rubbed his hand over Ken's face. "You're not hot yet." Scotty turned on more steam, and Ken felt it as a wet flame. He was being flayed alive. "Please--please--let me out!" he implored. With a laugh Murray lifted the lid, and Ken hopped out. He was as red as anything red he had ever seen. Then Scotty shoved him under a shower, and as the icy water came down in a deluge Ken lost his breath, his chest caved in, and he gasped. Scotty led him out into the room, dried him with a towel, rubbed him down, and then, resting Ken's arm on his shoulder, began to pat and beat and massage it. In a few moments Ken thought his arm was a piece of live India rubber. He had never been in such a glow. When he had dressed he felt as light as air, strong, fresh, and keen for action. "Hustle now, Peg," said Arthurs. "Get your things packed. Supper to-night at the trainin'-house." It was after dark when Ken got an expressman to haul his trunk to the address on Spring Street. The house was situated about the middle of a four-storied block, and within sight of Grant Field. Worry answered his ring. "Here you are, Peg, the last one. I was beginnin' to worry about you. Have your trunk taken right up, third floor back. Hurry down, for dinner will be ready soon." Ken followed at the heels of the expressman up to his room. He was surprised and somewhat taken back to find Raymond sitting upon the bed. "Hello! excuse me," said Ken. "Guess I've got the wrong place." "The coach said you and I were to room together," returned Raymond. "Us? Room-mates?" ejaculated Ken. Raymond took offence at this. "Wull, I guess I can stand it," he growled. "I hope I can," was Ken's short reply. It was Ken's failing that he could not help retaliating. But he was also as repentant as he was quick-tempered. "Oh, I didn't mean that.... See here, Raymond, if we've got to be room-mates--" Ken paused in embarrassment. "Wull, we're both on the varsity," said Raymond. "That's so," rejoined Ken, brightening. "It makes a whole lot of difference, doesn't it?" Raymond got off the bed and looked at Ken. "What's your first name?" queried he. "I don't like 'Peg.'" "Kenneth. Ken, for short. What's yours?" "Mine's Kel. Wull, Ken--" Having gotten so far Raymond hesitated, and it was Ken who first offered his hand. Raymond eagerly grasped it. That broke the ice. "Kel, I haven't liked your looks at all," said Ken, apologetically. "Ken, I've been going to lick you all spring." They went down-stairs arm in arm. It was with great interest and curiosity that Ken looked about the cozy and comfortable rooms. The walls were adorned with pictures of varsity teams and players, and the college colors were much in evidence. College magazines and papers littered the table in the reading-room. "Boys, we'll be pretty snug and nice here when things get to runnin' smooth. The grub will be plain, but plenty of it." There were twelve in all at the table, with the coach seated at the head. The boys were hungry, and besides, as they had as yet had no chance to become acquainted, the conversation lagged. The newness and strangeness, however, did not hide the general air of suppressed gratification. After dinner Worry called them all together in the reading-room. "Well, boys, here we are together like one big family, and we're shut in for two months. Now, I know you've all been fightin' for places on the team, and have had no chance to be friendly. It's always that way in the beginnin', and I dare say there'll be some scraps among you before things straighten out. We'll have more to say about that later. The thing now is you're all varsity men, and I'm puttin' you on your word of honor. Your word is good enough for me. Here's my rules, and I'm more than usually particular this year, for reasons I'll tell later. "You're not to break trainin'. You're not to eat anything anywhere but here. You're to cut out cigarettes and drinks. You're to be in bed at ten o'clock. And I advise, although I ain't insistin', that if you have any leisure time you'll spend most of it here. That's all." For Ken the three days following passed as so many hours. He did not in the least dread the approaching game with State University, but his mind held scarcely anything outside of Arthurs' coaching. The practice of the players had been wholly different. It was as if they had been freed from some binding spell. Worry kept them at fielding and batting for four full hours every afternoon. Ken, after pitching to Dean for a while, batted to the infield and so had opportunity to see the improvement. Graves was brilliant at third, Weir was steady and sure at short, Raymond seemed to have springs in his legs and pounced upon the ball with wonderful quickness, and McCord fielded all his chances successfully. On the afternoon of the game Worry waited at the training-house until all the players came down-stairs in uniform. "Boys, what's happened in the past doesn't count. We start over to-day. I'm not goin' to say much or confuse you with complex team coachin'. But I'm hopeful. I sort of think there's a nigger in the woodpile. I'll tell you to-night if I'm right. Think of how you have been roasted by the students. Play like tigers. Put out of your mind everything but tryin'. Nothin' counts for you, boys. Errors are nothin'; mistakes are nothin'. Play the game as one man. Don't think of yourselves. You all know when you ought to hit or bunt or run. I'm trustin' you. I won't say a word from the bench. And don't underrate our chances. Remember that I think it's possible we may have somethin' up our sleeves. That's all from me till after the game." Worry walked to Grant Field with Ken. He talked as they went along, but not on baseball. The State team was already out and practising. Worry kept Ken near him on the bench and closely watched the visitors in practice. When the gong rang to call them in he sent his players out, with a remark to Ken to take his warming-up easily. Ken thought he had hardly warmed up at all before the coach called him in. "Peg, listen!" he whispered. His gaze seemed to hypnotize Ken. "Do you have any idea what you'll do to this bunch from State?" "Why--no--I--" "Listen! I tell you I know they won't be able to touch you.... Size up batters in your own way. If they look as if they'd pull or chop on a curve, hand it up. If not, peg 'em a straight one over the inside corner, high. If you get in a hole with runners on bases use that fast jump ball, as hard as you can drive it, right over the pan.... Go in with perfect confidence. I wouldn't say that to you, Peg, if I didn't feel it myself, honestly. I'd say for you to do your best. But I've sized up these State fellows, and they won't be able to touch you. Remember what I say. That's all." "I'll remember," said Ken, soberly. When the umpire called the game there were perhaps fifty students in the bleachers and a few spectators in the grand-stand, so poor an attendance that the State players loudly voiced their derision. "Hey! boys," yelled one, "we drew a crowd last year, and look at that!" "It's Wayne's dub team," replied another. They ran upon the field as if the result of the game was a foregone conclusion. Their pitcher, a lanky individual, handled the ball with assurance. Homans led off for Wayne. He stood left-handed at the plate, and held his bat almost in the middle. He did not swing, but poked at the first ball pitched and placed a short hit over third. Raymond, also left-handed, came next, and, letting two balls go, he bunted the third. Running fast, he slid into first base and beat the throw. Homans kept swiftly on toward third, drew the throw, and, sliding, was also safe. It was fast work, and the Wayne players seemed to rise off the bench with the significance of the play. Worry Arthurs looked on from under the brim of his hat, and spoke no word. Then Reddy Ray stepped up. "They're all left-handed!" shouted a State player. The pitcher looked at Reddy, then motioned for his outfielders to play deeper. With that he delivered the ball, which the umpire called a strike. Reddy stood still and straight while two more balls sped by, then he swung on the next. A vicious low hit cut out over first base and skipped in great bounds to the fence. Homans scored. Raymond turned second, going fast. But it was Ray's speed that electrified the watching players. They jumped up cheering. "Oh, see him run!" yelled Ken. He was on third before Raymond reached the plate. Weir lifted a high fly to left field, and when the ball dropped into the fielder's hands Ray ran home on the throw-in. Three runs had been scored in a twinkling. It amazed the State team. They were not slow in bandying remarks among themselves. "Fast! Who's that red-head? Is this your dub team? Get in the game, boys!" They began to think more of playing ball and less of their own superiority. Graves, however, and McCord following him, went out upon plays to the infield. As Ken walked out toward the pitcher's box Homans put a hand on his arm, and said: "Kid, put them all over. Don't waste any. Make every batter hit. Keep your nerve. We're back of you out here." Then Reddy Ray, in passing, spoke with a cool, quiet faith that thrilled Ken, "Peg, we've got enough runs now to win." Ken faced the plate all in a white glow. He was far from calmness, but it was a restless, fiery hurry for the action of the game. He remembered the look in Worry's eyes, and every word that he had spoken rang in his ears. Receiving the ball from the umpire, he stepped upon the slab with a sudden, strange, deep tremor. It passed as quickly, and then he was eying the first batter. He drew a long breath, standing motionless, with all the significance of Worry's hope flashing before him, and then he whirled and delivered the ball. The batter struck at it after it had passed him, and it cracked in Dean's mitt. "Speed!" called the State captain. "Quick eye, there!" The batter growled some unintelligible reply. Then he fouled the second ball, missed the next, and was out. The succeeding State player hit an easy fly to Homans, and the next had two strikes called upon him, and swung vainly at the third. Dean got a base on balls for Wayne, Trace went out trying to bunt, and Ken hit into short, forcing Dean at second. Homans lined to third, retiring the side. The best that the State players could do in their half was for one man to send a weak grounder to Raymond, one to fly out, and the other to fail on strikes. Wayne went to bat again, and Raymond got his base by being hit by a pitched ball. Reddy Ray bunted and was safe. Weir struck out. Graves rapped a safety through short, scoring Raymond, and sending Ray to third. Then McCord fouled out to the catcher. Again, in State's inning, they failed to get on base, being unable to hit Ken effectively. So the game progressed, State slowly losing its aggressive playing, and Wayne gaining what its opponents had lost. In the sixth Homans reached his base on an error, stole second, went to third on Raymond's sacrifice, and scored on Reddy's drive to right. State flashed up in their half, getting two men to first on misplays of McCord and Weir, and scored a run on a slow hit to Graves. With the bases full, Ken let his arm out and pitched the fast ball at the limit of his speed. The State batters were helpless before it, but they scored two runs on passed strikes by Dean. The little catcher had a hard time judging Ken's jump ball. That ended the run-getting for State, though they came near scoring again on more fumbling in the infield. In the eighth Ken landed a safe fly over second, and tallied on a double by Homans. Before Ken knew the game was half over it had ended--Wayne 6, State 3. His players crowded around him and some one called for the Wayne yell. It was given with wild vehemence. From that moment until dinner was over at the training-house Ken appeared to be the centre of a humming circle. What was said and done he never remembered. Then the coach stopped the excitement. "Boys, now for a heart-to-heart talk," he said, with a smile both happy and grave. "We won to-day, as I predicted. State had a fairly strong team, but if Ward had received perfect support they would not have got a man beyond second. That's the only personal mention I'll make. Now, listen...." He paused, with his eyes glinting brightly and his jaw quivering. "I expected to win, but before the game I never dreamed of our possibilities. I got a glimpse now of what hard work and a demon spirit to play together might make this team. I've had an inspiration. We are goin' to beat Herne and play Place to a standstill." Not a boy moved an eyelash as Arthurs made this statement, and the sound of a pin dropping could have been heard. "To do that we must pull together as no boys ever pulled together before. We must be all one heart. We must be actuated by one spirit. Listen! If you will stick together and to me, I'll make a team that will be a wonder. Never the hittin' team as good as last year's varsity, but a faster team, a finer machine. Think of that! Think of how we have been treated this year! For that we'll win all the greater glory. It's worth all there is in you, boys. You would have the proudest record of any team that ever played for old Wayne. "I love the old college, boys, and I've given it the best years of my life. If it's anything to you, why, understand that if I fail to build up a good team this year I shall be let go by those directors who have made the change in athletics. I could stand that, but--I've a boy of my own who's preparin' for Wayne, and my heart is set on seein' him enter--and he said he never will if they let me go. So, you youngsters and me--we've much to gain. Go to your rooms now and think, think as you never did before, until the spirit of this thing, the possibility of it, grips you as it has me." XII KEN CLASHES WITH GRAVES Two weeks after the contest with State University four more games with minor colleges had been played and won by Wayne. Hour by hour the coach had drilled the players; day by day the grilling practice told in quickening grasp of team-play, in gradual correction of erratic fielding and wild throwing. Every game a few more students attended, reluctantly, in half-hearted manner. "We're comin' with a rush," said Worry to Ken. "Say, but Dale and the old gang have a surprise in store for 'em! And the students--they're goin' to drop dead pretty soon.... Peg, Murray tells me he's puttin' weight on you." "Why, yes, it's the funniest thing," replied Ken. "To-day I weighed one hundred and sixty-four. Worry, I'm afraid I'm getting fat." "Fat, nothin'," snorted Worry. "It's muscle. I told Murray to put beef on you all he can. Pretty soon you'll be able to peg a ball through the back-stop. Dean's too light, Peg. He's plucky and will make a catcher, but he's too light. You're batterin' him all up." Worry shook his head seriously. "Oh, he's fine!" exclaimed Ken. "I'm not afraid any more. He digs my drop out of the dust, and I can't get a curve away from him. He's weak only on the jump ball, and I don't throw that often, only when I let drive." "You'll be usin' that often enough against Herne and Place. I'm dependin' on that for those games. Peg, are you worryin' any, losin' any sleep, over those games?" "Indeed I'm not," replied Ken, laughing. "Say, I wish you'd have a balloon ascension, and have it quick. It ain't natural, Peg, for you not to get a case of rattles. It's comin' to you, and I don't want it in any of the big games." "I don't want it either. But Worry, pitching is all a matter of control, you say so often. I don't believe I could get wild and lose my control if I tried." "Peg, you sure have the best control of any pitcher I ever coached. It's your success. It'll make a great pitcher out of you. All you've got to learn is where to pitch 'em to Herne and Place." "How am I to learn that?" "Listen!" Worry whispered. "I'm goin' to send you to Washington next week to see Place and Herne play Georgetown. You'll pay your little money and sit in the grand-stand right behind the catcher. You'll have a pencil and a score card, and you'll be enjoyin' the game. But, Peg, you'll also be usin' your head, and when you see one of 'em players pull away on a curve, or hit weak on a drop, or miss a high fast one, or slug a low ball, you will jot it down on your card. You'll watch Place's hard hitters with hawk eyes, my boy, and a pitcher's memory. And when they come along to Grant Field you'll have 'em pretty well sized up." "That's fine, Worry, but is it fair?" queried Ken. "Fair? Why, of course. They all do it. We saw Place's captain in the grand-stand here last spring." The coach made no secret of his pride and faith in Ken. It was this, perhaps, as much as anything, which kept Ken keyed up. For Ken was really pitching better ball than he knew how to pitch. He would have broken his arm for Worry; he believed absolutely in what the coach told him; he did not think of himself at all. Worry, however, had plenty of enthusiasm for his other players. Every evening after dinner he would call them all about him and talk for an hour. Sometimes he would tell funny baseball stories; again, he told of famous Wayne-Place games, and how they had been won or lost; then at other times he dwelt on the merits and faults of his own team. In speaking of the swift development of this year's varsity he said it was as remarkable as it had been unforeseen. He claimed it would be a bewildering surprise to Wayne students and to the big college teams. He was working toward the perfection of a fast run-getting machine. In the five games already played and won a good idea could be gotten of Wayne's team, individually and collectively. Homans was a scientific short-field hitter and remarkably sure. Raymond could not bat, but he had developed into a wonder in reaching first base, by bunt or base on balls, or being hit. Reddy Ray was a hard and timely batter, and when he got on base his wonderful fleetness made him almost sure to score. Of the other players Graves batted the best; but taking the team as a whole, and comparing them with Place or Herne, it appeared that Reddy and Homans were the only great hitters, and the two of them, of course, could not make a great hitting team. In fielding, however, the coach said he had never seen the like. They were all fast, and Homans was perfect in judgment on fly balls, and Raymond was quick as lightning to knock down base hits, and as to the intercollegiate sprinter in left field, it was simply a breath-taking event to see him run after a ball. Last of all was Ken Ward with his great arm. It was a strangely assorted team, Worry said, one impossible to judge at the moment, but it was one to watch. "Boys, we're comin' with a rush," he went on to say. "But somethin's holdin' us back a little. There's no lack of harmony, yet there's a drag. In spite of the spirit you've shown--and I want to say it's been great--the team doesn't work together as one man _all_ the time. I advise you all to stick closer together. Stay away from the club, and everywhere except lectures. We've got to be closer 'n brothers. It'll all work out right before we go up against Herne in June. That game's comin', boys, and by that time the old college will be crazy. It'll be _our_ turn then." Worry's talks always sank deeply into Ken's mind and set him to thinking and revolving over and over the gist of them so that he could remember to his profit. He knew that some of the boys had broken training, and he pondered if that was what caused the drag Worry mentioned. Ken had come to feel the life and fortunes of the varsity so keenly that he realized how the simplest deviations from honor might affect the smooth running of the team. It must be perfectly smooth. And to make it so every player must be of one mind. Ken proved to himself how lack of the highest spirit on the part of one or two of the team tended toward the lowering of the general spirit. For he began to worry, and almost at once it influenced his playing. He found himself growing watchful of his comrades and fearful of what they might be doing. He caught himself being ashamed of his suspicions. He would as lief have cut off his hand as break his promise to the coach. Perhaps, however, he exaggerated his feeling and sense of duty. He remembered the scene in Dale's room the night he refused to smoke and drink; how Dale had commended his refusal. Nevertheless, he gathered from Dale's remark to Worry that breaking training was not unusual or particularly harmful. "With Dale's team it might not have been so bad," thought Ken. "But it's different with us. We've got to make up in spirit what we lack in ability." Weir and McCord occupied the room next to Ken's, and Graves and Trace, rooming together, were also on that floor. Ken had tried with all his might to feel friendly toward the third-baseman. He had caught Graves carrying cake and pie to his room and smoking cigarettes with the window open. One night Graves took cigarettes from his pocket and offered them to Kel, Trace, and Ken, who all happened to be in Ken's room at the time. Trace readily accepted; Kel demurred at first, but finally took one. Graves then tossed the pack to Ken. "No, I don't smoke. Besides, it's breaking training," said Ken. "You make me sick, Ward," retorted Graves. "You're a wet blanket. Do you think we're going to be as sissy as that? It's hard enough to stand the grub we get here, without giving up a little smoke." Ken made no reply, but he found it difficult to smother a hot riot in his breast. When the other boys had gone to their rooms Ken took Kel to task about his wrong-doing. "Do you think that's the right sort of thing? What would Worry say?" "Ken, I don't care about it, not a bit," replied Kel, flinging his cigarette out of the window. "But Graves is always asking me to do things--I hate to refuse. It seems so--" "Kel, if Worry finds it out you'll lose your place on the team." "No!" exclaimed Raymond, staring. "Mark what I say. I wish you'd stop letting Graves coax you into things." "Ken, he's always smuggling pie and cake and candy into his room. I've had some of it. Trace said he'd brought in something to drink, too." "It's a shame," cried Ken, in anger. "I never liked him and I've tried hard to change it. Now I'm glad I couldn't." "He doesn't have any use for you," replied Kel. "He's always running you down to the other boys. What'd you ever do to him, Ken?" "Oh, it was that potato stunt of mine last fall. He's a Soph, and I hit him, I guess." "I think it's more than that," went on Raymond. "Anyway, you look out for him, because he's aching to spoil your face." "He is, is he?" snapped Ken. Ken was too angry to talk any more, and so the boys went to bed. The next few days Ken discovered that either out of shame or growing estrangement Raymond avoided him, and he was bitterly hurt. He had come to like the little second-baseman, and had hoped they would be good friends. It was easy to see that Graves became daily bolder, and more lax in training, and his influence upon several of the boys grew stronger. And when Dean, Schoonover, and Duncan appeared to be joining the clique, Ken decided he would have to talk to some one, so he went up to see Ray and Homans. The sprinter was alone, sitting by his lamp, with books and notes spread before him. "Hello, Peg! come in. You look a little glum. What's wrong?" Reddy Ray seemed like an elder brother to Ken, and he found himself blurting out his trouble. Ray looked thoughtful, and after a moment he replied in his quiet way: "Peg, it's new to you, but it's an old story to me. The track and crew men seldom break training, which is more than can be said of the other athletes. It seems to me baseball fellows are the most careless. They really don't have to train so conscientiously. It's only a kind of form." "But it's different this year," burst out Ken. "You know what Worry said, and how he trusts us." "You're right, Peg, only you mustn't take it so hard. Things will work out all right. Homans and I were talking about that to-day. You see, Worry wants the boys to elect a captain soon. But perhaps he has not confided in you youngsters. He will suggest that you elect Homans or me. Well, I won't run for the place, so it'll be Homans. He's the man to captain us, that's certain. Graves thinks, though, that he can pull the wires and be elected captain. He's way off. Besides, Peg, he's making a big mistake. Worry doesn't like him, and when he finds out about this break in training we'll have a new third-baseman. No doubt Blake will play the bag. Graves is the only drag in Worry's baseball machine now, and he'll not last.... So, Peg, don't think any more about it. Mind you, the whole team circles round you. You're the pivot, and as sure as you're born you'll be Wayne's captain next year. That's something for you to keep in mind and work for. If Graves keeps after you--hand him one! That's not against rules. Punch him! If Worry knew the truth he would pat you on the back for slugging Graves. Cheer up, Peg! Even if Graves has got all the kids on his side, which I doubt, Homans and I are with you. And you can just bet that Worry Arthurs will side with us.... Now run along, for I must study." This conversation was most illuminating to Ken. He left Reddy's room all in a quiver of warm pleasure and friendliness at the great sprinter's quiet praise and advice. To make such a friend was worth losing a hundred friends like Graves. He dismissed the third-baseman and his scheming from mind, and believed Reddy as he had believed Arthurs. But Ken thought much of what he divined was a glimmering of the inside workings of a college baseball team. He had one wild start of rapture at the idea of becoming captain of Wayne's varsity next year, and then he dared think no more of that. The day dawned for Ken to go to Washington, and he was so perturbed at his responsibilities that he quite forgot to worry about the game Wayne had to play in his absence. Arthurs intended to pitch Schoonover in that game, and had no doubt as to its outcome. The coach went to the station with Ken, once more repeated his instructions, and saw him upon the train. Certainly there was no more important personage on board that Washington Limited than Ken Ward. In fact, Ken was so full of importance and responsibility that he quite divided his time between foolish pride in his being chosen to "size up" the great college teams and fearful conjecture as to his ability. At any rate, the time flew by, the trip seemed short, and soon he was on the Georgetown field. It was lucky that he arrived early and got a seat in the middle of the grand-stand, for there was a throng in attendance when the players came on the diamond. The noisy bleachers, the merry laughter, the flashing colors, and especially the bright gowns and pretty faces of the girls gave Ken pleasurable consciousness of what it would mean to play before such a crowd. At Wayne he had pitched to empty seats. Remembering Worry's prophecy, however, he was content to wait. From that moment his duty absorbed him. He found it exceedingly fascinating to study the batters, and utterly forgot his responsibility. Not only did he jot down on his card his idea of the weakness and strength of the different hitters, but he compared what he would have pitched to them with what was actually pitched. Of course, he had no test of his comparison, but he felt intuitively that he had the better of it. Watching so closely, Ken had forced home to him Arthurs' repeated assertion that control of the ball made a pitcher. Both pitchers in this game were wild. Locating the plate with them was more a matter of luck than ability. The Herne pitcher kept wasting balls and getting himself in the hole, and then the heavy Georgetown players would know when he had to throw a strike, if he could, and accordingly they hit hard. They beat Herne badly. The next day in the game with Place it was a different story. Ken realized he was watching a great team. They reminded him of Dale's varsity, though they did not play that fiendish right-field-hitting game. Ken had a numbness come over him at the idea of facing this Place team. It soon passed, for they had their vulnerable places. It was not so much that they hit hard on speed and curves, for they got them where they wanted them. Keene flied out on high fast balls over the inside corner; Starke bit on low drops; Martin was weak on a slow ball; MacNeff, the captain, could not touch speed under his chin, and he always struck at it. On the other hand, he killed a low ball. Prince was the only man who, in Ken's judgment, seemed to have no weakness. These men represented the batting strength of Place, and Ken, though he did not in the least underestimate them, had no fear. He would have liked to pitch against them right there. "It's all in control of the ball," thought Ken. "Here are seventeen bases on balls in two games--four pitchers. They're wild.... But suppose I got wild, too?" The idea made Ken shiver. He travelled all night, sleeping on the train, and got home to the training-house about nine the next morning. Worry was out, Scotty said, and the boys had all gone over to college. Ken went up-stairs and found Raymond in bed. "Why, Kel, what's the matter?" asked Ken. "I'm sick," replied Kel. He was pale and appeared to be in distress. "Oh, I'm sorry. Can't I do something? Get you some medicine? Call Murray?" "Ken, don't call anybody, unless you want to see me disgraced. Worry got out this morning before he noticed my absence from breakfast. I was scared to death." "Scared? Disgraced?" "Ken, I drank a little last night. It always makes me sick. You know I've a weak stomach." "Kel, you didn't drink, _say_ you didn't!" implored Ken, sitting miserably down on the bed. "Yes, I did. I believe I was half drunk. I can't stand anything. I'm sick, sick of myself, too, this morning. And I hate Graves." Ken jumped up with kindling eyes. "Kel, you've gone back on me--we'd started to be such friends--I tried to persuade you--" "I know. I'm sorry, Ken. But I really liked you best. I was--you know how it is, Ken. If only Worry don't find it out!" "Tell him," said Ken, quickly. "What?" groaned Kel, in fright. "Tell him. Let me tell him for you." "No--no--no. He'd fire me off the team, and I couldn't stand that." "I'll bet Worry wouldn't do anything of the kind. Maybe he knows more than you think." "I'm afraid to tell him, Ken. I just can't tell him." "But you gave your word of honor not to break training. The only thing left is to confess." "I won't tell, Ken. It's not so much my own place on the team--there are the other fellows." Ken saw that it was no use to argue with Raymond while he was so sick and discouraged, so he wisely left off talking and did his best to make him comfortable. Raymond dropped asleep after a little, and when he awakened just before lunch-time he appeared better. "I won't be able to practise to-day," he said; "but I'll go down to lunch." As he was dressing the boys began to come in from college and ran whistling up the stairs. Graves bustled into the room with rather anxious haste. "How're you feeling?" he asked. "Pretty rocky. Graves--I told Ward about it," said Raymond. Upon his hurried entrance Graves had not observed Ken. "What did you want to do that for?" he demanded, arrogantly. Raymond looked at him, but made no reply. "Ward, I suppose you'll squeal," said Graves, sneeringly. "That'll about be your speed." Ken rose and, not trusting himself to speak, remained silent. "You sissy!" cried Graves, hotly. "Will you peach on us to Arthurs?" "No. But if you don't get out of my room I'll hand you one," replied Ken, his voice growing thick. Graves's face became red as fire. "What? Why, you white-faced, white-haired freshman! I've been aching to punch you!" "Well, why don't you commence?" With the first retort Ken had felt a hot trembling go over him, and having yielded to his anger he did not care what happened. "Ken--Graves," pleaded Raymond, white as a sheet. "Don't--please!" He turned from one to the other. "Don't scrap!" "Graves, it's up to some one to call you, and I'm going to do it," said Ken, passionately. "You've been after me all season, but I wouldn't care for that. It's your rotten influence on Kel and the other boys that makes me wild. You are the drag in this baseball team. You are a crack ball-player, but you don't know what college spirit means. You're a mucker!" "I'll lick you for that!" raved Graves, shaking his fists. "You can't lick me!" "Come outdoors. I dare you to come outdoors. I dare you!" Ken strode out of the room and started down the hall. "Come on!" he called, grimly, and ran down the stairs. Graves hesitated a moment, then followed. Raymond suddenly called after them: "Give it to him, Ken! Slug him! Beat him all up!" XIII FRIENDSHIP A half-hour or less afterward Ken entered the training-house. It chanced that the boys, having come in, were at the moment passing through the hall to the dining-room, and with them was Worry Arthurs. "Hello! you back? What's the matter with you?" demanded the coach. Ken's lips were puffed and bleeding, and his chin was bloody. Sundry red and dark marks disfigured his usually clear complexion. His eyes were blazing, and his hair rumpled down over his brow. "You've been in a scrap," declared Worry. "I know it," said Ken. "Let me go up and wash." Worry had planted himself at the foot of the stairway in front of Ken. The boys stood silent and aghast. Suddenly there came thumps upon the stairs, and Raymond appeared, jumping down three steps at a time. He dodged under Worry's arm and plunged at Ken to hold him with both hands. "Ken! You're all bloody!" he exclaimed, in great excitement. "He didn't lick you? Say he didn't! He's got to fight me, too! You're all bunged up!" "Wait till you see him!" muttered Ken. "A-huh!" said Worry. "Been scrappin' with Graves! What for?" "It's a personal matter," replied Ken. "Come, no monkey-biz with me," said the coach, sharply. "Out with it!" There was a moment's silence. "Mr. Arthurs, it's my fault," burst out Raymond, flushed and eager. "Ken was fighting on my account." "It wasn't anything of the kind," retorted Ken, vehemently. "Yes it was," cried Raymond, "and I'm going to tell why." The hall door opened to admit Graves. He was dishevelled, dirty, battered, and covered with blood. When he saw the group in the hall he made as if to dodge out. "Here, come on! Take your medicine," called Worry, tersely. Graves shuffled in, cast down and sheepish, a very different fellow from his usual vaunting self. "Now, Raymond, what's this all about?" demanded Worry. Raymond changed color, but he did not hesitate an instant. "Ken came in this morning and found me sick in bed. I told him I had been half drunk last night--and that Graves had gotten me to drink. Then Graves came in. He and Ken had hard words. They went outdoors to fight." "Would you have told me?" roared the coach in fury. "Would you have come to me with this if I hadn't caught Peg?" Raymond faced him without flinching. "At first I thought not--when Ken begged me to confess I just couldn't. But now I know I would." At that Worry lost his sudden heat, and then he turned to the stricken Graves. "Mebbe it'll surprise you, Graves, to learn that I knew a little of what you've been doin'. I told Homans to go to you in a quiet way and tip off your mistake. I hoped you'd see it. But you didn't. Then you've been knockin' Ward all season, for no reason I could discover but jealousy. Now, listen! Peg Ward has done a lot for me already this year, and he'll do more. But even if he beats Place, it won't mean any more to me than the beatin' he's given you. Now, you pack your things and get out of here. There's no position for you on this varsity." Without a word in reply and amid intense silence Graves went slowly up-stairs. When he disappeared Worry sank into a chair, and looked as if he was about to collapse. Little Trace walked hesitatingly forward with the manner of one propelled against his will. "Mr. Arthurs, I--I," he stammered--"I'm guilty, too. I broke training. I want to--" The coach waved him back. "I don't want to hear it, not another word--from anybody. It's made me sick. I can't stand any more. Only I see I've got to change my rules. There won't be any rules any more. You can all do as you like. I'd rather have you all go stale than practise deceit on me. I cut out the trainin' rules." "_No!_" The team rose up as one man and flung the refusal at the coach. "Worry, we won't stand for that," spoke up Reddy Ray. His smooth, cool voice was like oil on troubled waters. "I think Homans and I can answer for the kids from now on. Graves was a disorganizer--that's the least I'll say of him. We'll elect Homans captain of the team, and then we'll cut loose like a lot of demons. It's been a long, hard drill for you, Worry, but we're in the stretch now and going to finish fast. We've been a kind of misfit team all spring. You've had a blind faith that something could be made out of us. Homans has waked up to our hidden strength. And I go further than that. I've played ball for years. I know the game. I held down left field for two seasons on the greatest college team ever developed out West. That's new to you. Well, it gives me license to talk a little. I want to tell you that I can _feel_ what's in this team. It's like the feeling I have when I'm running against a fast man in the sprints. From now on we'll be a family of brothers with one idea. And that'll be to play Place off their feet." Coach Arthurs sat up as if he had been given the elixir of life. Likewise the members of the team appeared to be under the spell of a powerful stimulus. The sprinter's words struck fire from all present. Homans' clear gray eyes were like live coals. "Boys! One rousing cheer for Worry Arthurs and for Wayne!" Lusty, strained throats let out the cheer with a deafening roar. It was strange and significant at that moment to see Graves, white-faced and sullen, come down the stairs and pass through the hall and out of the door. It was as if discord, selfishness, and wavering passed out with him. Arthurs and Homans and Ray could not have hoped for a more striking lesson to the young players. Dave, the colored waiter, appeared in the doorway of the dining-room. "Mr. Arthurs, I done call yo' all. Lunch is sho' gittin' cold." That afternoon Wayne played the strong Hornell University nine. Blake, new at third base for Wayne, was a revelation. He was all legs and arms. Weir accepted eight chances. Raymond, sick or not, was all over the infield, knocking down grounders, backing up every play. To McCord, balls in the air or at his feet were all the same. Trace caught a foul fly right off the bleachers. Homans fielded with as much speed as the old varsity's centre and with better judgment. Besides, he made four hits and four runs. Reddy Ray drove one ball into the bleachers, and on a line-drive to left field he circled the bases in time that Murray said was wonderful. Dean stood up valiantly to his battering, and for the first game had no passed balls. And Ken Ward whirled tirelessly in the box, and one after another he shot fast balls over the plate. He made the Hornell players hit; he had no need to extend himself to the use of the long swing and whip of his arm that produced the jump ball; and he shut them out without a run, and gave them only two safe hits. All through the game Worry Arthurs sat on the bench without giving an order or a sign. His worried look had vanished with the crude playing of his team. That night the Hornell captain, a veteran player of unquestionable ability, was entertained at Carlton Club by Wayne friends, and he expressed himself forcibly: "We came over to beat Wayne's weak team. It'll be some time till we discover what happened. Young Ward has the most magnificent control and speed. He's absolutely relentless. And that frog-legged second-baseman--oh, say, can't he cover ground! Homans is an all-round star. Then, your red-headed Ray, the sprinter--he's a marvel. Ward, Homans, Ray--they're demons, and they're making demons of the kids. I can't understand why Wayne students don't support their team. It's strange." What the Hornell captain said went from lip to lip throughout the club, and then it spread, like a flame in wind-blown grass, from club to dormitory, and thus over all the university. "Boys, the college is wakin' up," said Worry, rubbing his hands. "Yesterday's game jarred 'em. They can't believe their own ears. Why, Hornell almost beat Dale's team last spring. Now, kids, look out. We'll stand for no fussin' over us. We don't want any jollyin'. We've waited long for encouragement. It didn't come, and now we'll play out the string alone. There'll be a rush to Grant Field. It cuts no ice with us. Let 'em come to see the boys they hissed and guyed early in the spring. We'll show 'em a few things. We'll make 'em speechless. We'll make 'em so ashamed they won't know what to do. We'll repay all their slights by beatin' Place." Worry was as excited as on the day he discovered that Ken was a pitcher. "One more word, boys," he went on. "Keep together now. Run back here to your rooms as quick as you get leave from college. Be civil when you are approached by students, but don't mingle, not yet. Keep to yourselves. Your reward is comin'. It'll be great. Only wait!" And that was the last touch of fire which moulded Worry's players into a family of brothers. Close and warm and fine was the culmination of their friendship. On the field they were dominated by one impulse, almost savage in its intensity. When they were off the field the springs of youth burst forth to flood the hours with fun. In the mornings when the mail-man came there was always a wild scramble for letters. And it developed that Weir received more than his share. He got mail every day, and his good-fortune could not escape the lynx eyes of his comrades. Nor could the size and shape of the envelope and the neat, small handwriting fail to be noticed. Weir always stole off by himself to read his daily letter, trying to escape a merry chorus of tantalizing remarks. "Oh! Sugar!" "Dreamy Eyes!" "Gawge, the pink letter has come!" Weir's reception of these sallies earned him the name of Puff. One morning, for some unaccountable reason, Weir did not get down-stairs when the mail arrived. Duncan got the pink letter, scrutinized the writing closely, and put the letter in his coat. Presently Weir came bustling down. "Who's got the mail?" he asked, quickly. "No letters this morning," replied some one. "Is this Sunday?" asked Weir, rather stupidly. "Nope. I meant no letters for you." Weir looked blank, then stunned, then crestfallen. Duncan handed out the pink envelope. The boys roared, and Weir strode off in high dudgeon. That day Duncan purchased a box of pink envelopes, and being expert with a pen, he imitated the neat handwriting and addressed pink envelopes to every boy in the training-house. Next morning no one except Weir seemed in a hurry to answer the postman's ring. He came in with the letters and his jaw dropping. It so happened that his letter was the very last one, and when he got to it the truth flashed over him. Then the peculiar appropriateness of the nickname Puff was plainly manifest. One by one the boys slid off their chairs to the floor, and at last Weir had to join in the laugh on him. Each of the boys in turn became the victim of some prank. Raymond betrayed Ken's abhorrence of any kind of perfume, and straightway there was a stealthy colloquy. Cheap perfume of a most penetrating and paralyzing odor was liberally purchased. In Ken's absence from his room all the clothing that he did not have on his back was saturated. Then the conspirators waited for him to come up the stoop, and from their hiding-place in a window of the second floor they dropped an extra quart upon him. Ken vowed vengeance that would satisfy him thrice over, and he bided his time until he learned who had perpetrated the outrage. One day after practice his opportunity came. Raymond, Weir, and Trace, the guilty ones, went with Ken to the training quarters to take the steam bath that Murray insisted upon at least once every week. It so turned out that the four were the only players there that afternoon. While the others were undressing, Ken bribed Scotty to go out on an errand, and he let Murray into his scheme. Now, Murray not only had acquired a strong liking for Ken, but he was exceedingly fond of a joke. "All I want to know," whispered Ken, "is if I might stew them too much--really scald them, you know?" "No danger," whispered Murray. "That'll be the fun of it. You can't hurt them. But they'll think they're dying." He hustled Raymond, Weir, and Trace into the tanks and fastened the lids, and carefully tucked towels round their necks to keep in the steam. "Lots of stew to-day," he said, turning the handles. "Hello! Where's Scotty?... Peg, will you watch these boys a minute while I step out?" "You bet I will," called Ken to the already disappearing Murray. The three cooped-in boys looked askance at Ken. "Wull, I'm not much stuck--" Raymond began glibly enough, and then, becoming conscious that he might betray an opportunity to Ken, he swallowed his tongue. "What'd you say?" asked Ken, pretending curiosity. Suddenly he began to jump up and down. "Oh, my! Hullabelee! Schoodoorady! What a chance! You gave it away!" "Look what he's doing!" yelled Trace. "Hyar!" added Weir. "Keep away from those pipes!" chimed in Raymond. "Boys, I've been laying for you, but I never thought I'd get a chance like this. If Murray only stays out three minutes--just three minutes!" "Three minutes! You idiot, you won't keep us in here that long?" asked Weir, in alarm. "Oh no, not at all.... Puff, I think you can stand a little more steam." Ken turned the handle on full. "Kel, a first-rate stewing will be good for your daily grouch." To the accompaniment of Raymond's threats he turned the second handle. "Trace, you little poll-parrot, you will throw perfume on me? Now roast!" The heads of the imprisoned boys began to jerk and bob around, and their faces to take on a flush. Ken leisurely surveyed them and then did an Indian war-dance in the middle of the room. "Here, let me out! Ken, you know how delicate I am," implored Raymond. "I couldn't entertain the idea for a second," replied Ken. "I'll lick you!" yelled Raymond. "My lad, you've got a brain-storm," returned Ken, in grieved tones. "Not in the wildest flights of your nightmares have you ever said anything so impossible as that." "Ken, dear Ken, dear old Peggie," cried Trace, "you know I've got a skinned place on my hip where I slid yesterday. Steam isn't good for that, Worry says. He'll be sore. You must let me out." "I intend to see, Willie, that you'll be sore too, and skinned all over," replied Ken. "Open this lid! At once!" roared Weir, in sudden anger. His big eyes rolled. "Bah!" taunted Ken. Then all three began to roar at Ken at once. "Brute! Devil! Help! Help! Help! We'll fix you for this!... It's hotter! it's fire! Aghh! Ouch! Oh! Ah-h-h!... O-o-o-o!... Murder! MURDER-R!" At this juncture Murray ran in. "What on earth! Peg, what did you do?" "I only turned on the steam full tilt," replied Ken, innocently. "Why, you shouldn't have done that," said Murray, in pained astonishment. "Stop talking about it! Let me out!" shrieked Raymond. Ken discreetly put on his coat and ran from the room. XIV THE HERNE GAME On the morning of the first of June, the day scheduled for the opening game with Herne, Worry Arthurs had Ken Ward closeted with Homans and Reddy Ray. Worry was trying his best to be soberly calculating in regard to the outcome of the game. He was always trying to impress Ken with the uncertainty of baseball. But a much younger and less observing boy than Ken could have seen through the coach. Worry was dead sure of the result, certain that the day would see a great gathering of Wayne students, and he could not hide his happiness. And the more he betrayed himself the more he growled at Ken. "Well, we ain't goin' to have that balloon-ascension to-day, are we?" he demanded. "Here we've got down to the big games, and you haven't been up in the air yet. I tell you it ain't right." "But, Worry, I couldn't go off my head and get rattled just to please you, could I?" implored Ken. To Ken this strain of the coach's had grown to be as serious as it was funny. "Aw! talk sense," said Worry. "Why, you haven't pitched to a college crowd yet. Wait! Wait till you see that crowd over to Place next week! Thousands of students crazier 'n Indians, and a flock of girls that'll make you bite your tongue off. Ten thousand yellin' all at once." "Let them yell," replied Ken; "I'm aching to pitch before a crowd. It has been pretty lonesome at Grant Field all season." "Let 'em yell, eh?" retorted Worry. "All right, my boy, it's comin' to you. And if you lose your nut and get slammed all over the lot, don't come to me for sympathy." "I wouldn't. I can take a licking. Why, Worry, you talk as if--as if I'd done something terrible. What's the matter with me? I've done every single thing you wanted--just as well as I could do it. What are you afraid of?" "You're gettin' swelled on yourself," said the coach, deliberately. The blood rushed to Ken's face until it was scarlet. He was so astounded and hurt that he could not speak. Worry looked at him once, then turning hastily away, he walked to the window. "Peg, it ain't much wonder," he went on, smoothly, "and I'm not holdin' it against you. But I want you to forget yourself--" "I've never had a thought of myself," retorted Ken, hotly. "I want you to go in to-day like--like an automatic machine," went on Worry, as if Ken had not spoken. "There'll be a crowd out, the first of the season. Mebbe they'll throw a fit. Anyway, it's our first big game. As far as the university goes, this is our trial. The students are up in the air; they don't know what to think. Mebbe there won't be a cheer at first.... But, Peg, if we beat Herne to-day they'll tear down the bleachers." "Well, all I've got to say is that you can order new lumber for the bleachers--because we're going to win," replied Ken, with a smouldering fire in his eyes. "There you go again! If you're not stuck on yourself, it's too much confidence. You won't be so chipper about three this afternoon, mebbe. Listen! The Herne players got into town last night, and some of them talked a little. It's just as well you didn't see the morning papers. It came to me straight that Gallagher, the captain, and Stern, the first-baseman, said you were pretty good for a kid freshman, but a little too swelled to stand the gaff in a big game. They expect you to explode before the third innin'. I wasn't goin' to tell you, Peg, but you're so--" "They said that, did they?" cried Ken. He jumped up with paling cheek and blazing eye, and the big hand he shoved under Worry's nose trembled like a shaking leaf. "What I won't do to them will be funny! Swelled! Explode! Stand the gaff! Look here, Worry, maybe it's true, but I don't believe it.... _I'll beat this Herne team!_ Do you get that?" "Now you're talkin'," replied Worry, with an entire change of manner. "You saw the Herne bunch play. They can field, but how about hittin'?" "Gallagher, Stern, Hill, and Burr are the veterans of last year's varsity," went on Ken, rapidly, as one who knew his subject. "They can hit--if they get what they like." "Now you're talkin'. How about Gallagher?" "He hits speed. He couldn't hit a slow ball with a paddle." "Now you're talkin'. There's Stern, how'd you size him?" "He's weak on a low curve, in or out, or a drop." "Peg, you're talkin' some now. How about Hill?" "Hill is a bunter. A high ball in close, speedy, would tie him in a knot." "Come on, hurry! There's Burr." "Burr's the best of the lot, a good waiter and hard hitter, but he invariably hits a high curve up in the air." "All right. So far so good. How about the rest of the team?" "I'll hand them up a straight, easy ball and let them hit. I tell you I've got Herne beaten, and if Gallagher or any one else begins to guy me I'll laugh in his face." "Oh, you will?... Say, you go down to your room now, and stay there till time for lunch. Study or read. Don't think another minute about this game." Ken strode soberly out of the room. It was well for Ken that he did not see what happened immediately after his exit. Worry and Homans fell into each other's arms. "Say, fellows, how I hated to do it!" Worry choked with laughter and contrition. "It was the hardest task I ever had. But, Cap, you know we had to make Peg sore. He's too blamed good-natured. Oh, but didn't he take fire! He'll make some of those Herne guys play low-bridge to-day. Wouldn't it be great if he gave Gallagher the laugh?" "Worry, don't you worry about that," said Homans. "And it would please me, too, for Gallagher is about as wordy and pompous as any captain I've seen." "I think you were a little hard on Ken," put in Reddy. His quiet voice drew Worry and Homans from their elation. "Of course, it was necessary to rouse Ken's fighting blood, but you didn't choose the right way. You hurt his feelings. You know, Worry, that the boy is not in the least swelled." "'Course I know it, Reddy. Why, Peg's too modest. But I want him to be dead in earnest to-day. Mind you, I'm thinkin' of Place. He'll beat Herne to a standstill. I worked on his feelin's just to get him all stirred up. You know there's always the chance of rattles in any young player, especially a pitcher. If he's mad he won't be so likely to get 'em. So I hurt his feelin's. I'll make it up to him, don't you fear for that, Reddy." "I wish you had waited till we go over to Place next week," replied Ray. "You can't treat him that way twice. Over there's where I would look for his weakening. But it may be he won't ever weaken. If he ever does it'll be because of the crowd and not the players." "I think so, too. A yellin' mob will be new to Peg. But, fellows, I'm only askin' one game from Herne and one, or a good close game, from Place. That'll give Wayne the best record ever made. Look at our standin' now. Why, the newspapers are havin' a fit. Since I picked the varsity we haven't lost a game. Think of that! Those early games don't count. We've had an unbroken string of victories, Peg pitchin' twelve, and Schoonover four. And if wet grounds and other things hadn't cancelled other games we'd have won more." "Yes, we're in the stretch now, Worry, and running strong. We'll win three out of these four big games," rejoined Reddy. "Oh, say, that'd be too much! I couldn't stand it! Oh, say, Cap, don't you think Reddy, for once, is talkin' about as swift as he sprints?" "I'm afraid to tell you, Worry," replied Homans, earnestly. "When I look back at our work I can't realize it. But it's time to wake up. The students over at college are waking up. They will be out to-day. You are the one to judge whether we're a great team or not. We keep on making runs. It's runs that count. I think, honestly, Worry, that after to-day we'll be in the lead for championship honors. And I hold my breath when I tell you." It was remarkably quiet about the training-house all that morning. The coach sent a light lunch to the boys in their rooms. They had orders to be dressed, and to report in the reading-room at one-thirty. Raymond came down promptly on time. "Where's Peg?" asked Worry. "Why, I thought he was here, ahead of me," replied Raymond, in surprise. A quick survey of the uniformed players proved the absence of Ken Ward and Reddy Ray. Worry appeared startled out of speech, and looked helplessly at Homans. Then Ray came down-stairs, bat in one hand, shoes and glove in the other. He seated himself upon the last step and leisurely proceeded to put on his shoes. "Reddy, did you see Peg?" asked Worry, anxiously. "Sure, I saw him," replied the sprinter. "Well?" growled the coach. "Where is he? Sulkin' because I called him?" "Not so you'd notice it," answered Reddy, in his slow, careless manner. "I just woke him up." "What!" yelled Arthurs. "Peg came to my room after lunch and went to sleep. I woke him just now. He'll be down in a minute." Worry evidently could not reply at the moment, but he began to beam. "What would Gallagher say to that?" asked Captain Homans, with a smile. "Wayne's varsity pitcher asleep before a Herne game! Oh no, I guess that's not pretty good! Worry, could you ask any more?" "Cap, I'll never open my face to him again," blurted out the coach. Ken appeared at the head of the stairs and had started down, when the door-bell rang. Worry opened the door to admit Murray, the trainer; Dale, the old varsity captain, and the magnificently built Stevens, guard and captain of the football team. "Hello! Worry," called out Murray, cheerily. "How're the kids? Boys, you look good to me. Trim and fit, and all cool and quiet-like. Reddy, be careful of your ankles and legs to-day. After the meet next week you can cut loose and run bases like a blue streak." Dale stepped forward, earnest and somewhat concerned, but with a winning frankness. "Worry, will you let Stevens and me sit on the bench with the boys to-day?" Worry's face took on the color of a thunder-cloud. "I'm not the captain," he replied. "Ask Homans." "How about it, Roy?" queried Dale. Homans was visibly affected by surprise, pleasure, and something more. While he hesitated, perhaps not trusting himself to reply quickly, Stevens took a giant stride to the fore. "Homans, we've got a hunch that Wayne's going to win," he said, in a deep-bass voice. "A few of us have been tipped off, and we got it straight. But the students don't know it yet. So Dale and I thought we'd like them to see how we feel about it--before this game. You've had a rotten deal from the students this year. But they'll more than make it up when you beat Herne. The whole college is waiting and restless." Homans, recovering himself, faced the two captains courteously and gratefully, and with a certain cool dignity. "Thank you, fellows! It's fine of you to offer to sit with us on the bench. I thank you on behalf of the varsity. But--not to-day. All season we've worked and fought without support, and now we're going to beat Herne without support. When we've done that you and Dale--all the college--can't come too quick to suit us." "I think I'd say the same thing, if I were in your place," said Dale. "And I'll tell you right here that when I was captain I never plugged any harder to win than I'll plug to-day." Then these two famous captains of championship teams turned to Homans' players and eyed them keenly, their faces working, hands clenched, their powerful frames vibrating with the feeling of the moment. That moment was silent, eloquent. It linked Homans' team to the great athletic fame of the university. It radiated the spirit to conquer, the glory of past victories, the strength of honorable defeats. Then Dale and Stevens went out, leaving behind them a charged atmosphere. "I ain't got a word to say," announced Worry to the players. "And I've very little," added Captain Homans. "We're all on edge, and being drawn down so fine we may be over-eager. Force that back. It doesn't matter if we make misplays. We've made many this season, but we've won all the same. At the bat, remember to keep a sharp eye on the base-runner, and when he signs he is going down, bunt or hit to advance him. That's all." Ken Ward walked to the field between Worry Arthurs and Reddy Ray. Worry had no word to say, but he kept a tight grip on Ken's arm. "Peg, I've won many a sprint by not underestimating my opponent," said Reddy, quietly. "Now you go at Herne for all you're worth from the start." When they entered the field there were more spectators in the stands than had attended all the other games together. In a far corner the Herne players in dark-blue uniforms were practising batting. Upon the moment the gong called them in for their turn at field practice. The Wayne team batted and bunted a few balls, and then Homans led them to the bench. Upon near view the grand-stand and bleachers seemed a strange sight to Ken Ward. He took one long look at the black-and-white mass of students behind the back-stop, at the straggling lines leading to the gates, at the rapidly filling rows to right and left, and then he looked no more. Already an immense crowd was present. Still it was not a typical college baseball audience. Ken realized that at once. It was quiet, orderly, expectant, and watchful. Very few girls were there. The students as a body had warmed to curiosity and interest, but not to the extent of bringing the girls. After that one glance Ken resolutely kept his eyes upon the ground. He was conscious of a feeling that he wanted to spring up and leap at something. And he brought all his will to force back his over-eagerness. He heard the crack of the ball, the shouts of the Herne players, the hum of voices in the grand-stand, and the occasional cheers of Herne rooters. There were no Wayne cheers. "Warm up a little," said Worry, in his ear. Ken peeled off his sweater and walked out with Dean. A long murmur ran throughout the stands. Ken heard many things said of him, curiously, wonderingly, doubtfully, and he tried not to hear more. Then he commenced to pitch to Dean. Worry stood near him and kept whispering to hold in his speed and just to use his arm easily. It was difficult, for Ken felt that his arm wanted to be cracked like a buggy-whip. "That'll do," whispered Worry. "We're only takin' five minutes' practice.... Say, but there's a crowd! Are you all right, Peg--cool-like and determined?... Good! Say--but Peg, you'd better look these fellows over." "I remember them all," replied Ken. "That's Gallagher on the end of the bench; Burr is third from him; Stern's fussing over the bats, and there's Hill, the light-headed fellow, looking this way. There's--" "That'll do," said Worry. "There goes the gong. It's all off now. Homans has chosen to take the field. I guess mebbe you won't show 'em how to pitch a new white ball! Get at 'em now!" Then he called Ken back as if impelled, and whispered to him in a husky voice: "It's been tough for you and for me. Listen! Here's where it begins to be sweet." Ken trotted out to the box, to the encouraging voices of the infield, and he even caught Reddy Ray's low, thrilling call from the far outfield. "Play!" With the ringing order, which quieted the audience, the umpire tossed a white ball to Ken. For a single instant Ken trembled ever so slightly in all his limbs, and the stands seemed a revolving black-and-white band. Then the emotion was as if it had never been. He stepped upon the slab, keen-sighted, cool, and with his pitching game outlined in his mind. Burr, the curly-haired leader of Herne's batting list, took his position to the left of the plate. Ken threw him an underhand curve, sweeping high and over the inside corner. Burr hit a lofty fly to Homans. Hill, the bunter, was next. For him Ken shot one straight over the plate. Hill let it go by, and it was a strike. Ken put another in the same place, and Hill, attempting to bunt, fouled a little fly, which Dean caught. Gallagher strode third to bat. He used a heavy club, stood right-handed over the plate, and looked aggressive. Ken gave the captain a long study and then swung slowly, sending up a ball that floated like a feather. Gallagher missed it. On the second pitch he swung heavily at a slow curve far off the outside. For a third Ken tried the speedy drop, and the captain, letting it go, was out on strikes. The sides changed. Worry threw a sweater around Ken. "The ice's broke, Peg, and you've got your control. That settles it." Homans went up, to a wavering ripple of applause. He drew two balls and then a strike from Murphy, and hit the next hard into short field. Frick fumbled the ball, recovered it, and threw beautifully, but too late to catch Homans. Raymond sacrificed, sending his captain to second. Murphy could not locate the plate for Reddy Ray and let him get to first on four balls. Weir came next. Homans signed he was going to run on the first pitch. Weir, hitting with the runner, sent a double into right field, and Homans and Ray scored. The bleachers cheered. Homans ran down to third base to the coaching lines, and Ray went to first base. Both began to coach the runner. Dean hit into short field, and was thrown out, while Weir reached third on the play. "Two out, now! Hit!" yelled Homans to Blake. Blake hit safely over second, scoring Weir. Then Trace flied out to left field. "Three runs!" called Homans. "Boys, that's a start! Three more runs and this game's ours! Now, Peg, now!" Ken did not need that trenchant thrilling _now_. The look in Worry's eyes had been enough. He threw speed to Halloway, and on the third ball retired him, Raymond to McCord. Stern came second to bat. In Ken's mind this player was recorded with a weakness on low curves. And Ken found it with two balls pitched. Stern popped up to Blake. Frick, a new player to Ken, let a strike go by, and missed a drop and a fast ball. "They can't touch you, Ken," called Raymond, as he tossed aside his glove. Faint cheers rose from scattered parts of the grand-stand, and here and there shouts and yells. The audience appeared to stir, to become animated, and the Herne players settled down to more sober action on the field. McCord made a bid for a hit, but failed because of fast work by Stern. Ken went up, eager to get to first in any way. He let Murphy pitch, and at last, after fouling several good ones, he earned his base on balls. Once there, he gave Homans the sign that he would run on the first pitch, and he got a fair start. He heard the crack of the ball and saw it glinting between short and third. Running hard, he beat the throw-in to third. With two runners on bases, Raymond hit to deep short. Ken went out trying to reach home. Again Reddy Ray came up and got a base on balls, filling the bases. The crowd began to show excitement, and seemed to be stifling cheers in suspense. Weir hurried to bat, his shock of hair waving at every step. He swung hard on the first ball, and, missing it, whirled down, bothering the catcher. Homans raced home on a half-passed ball. Then Weir went out on a fly to centre. "Peg, keep at them!" called Reddy Ray. "We've got Murphy's measure." It cost Ken an effort to deliberate in the box, to think before he pitched. He had to fight his eagerness. But he wasted few balls, and struck Mercer out. Van Sant hit to Weir, who threw wild to first, allowing the runner to reach third. Murphy, batting next, hit one which Ken put straight over the plate, and it went safe through second, scoring Van Sant. The Herne rooters broke out in loud acclaim. Burr came up, choking his bat up short. Again Ken gave him the high, wide curve. He let it pass and the umpire called it a strike. Ken threw another, a little outside this time. Evidently Burr was trying out Ken's control. "He can't put them over!" yelled Gallagher, from the coaching line. "Here's where he goes up! Wait him out, Burr. Good eye, old man! Here's where we explode the freshman!" Ken glanced at Gallagher and laughed. Then he sped up another high curve, which the umpire called a strike. "That's the place, Peg! Put another there!" floated from Reddy in the outfield. Burr swung viciously, hitting a bounder toward second base. Raymond darted over, went down with his bird-like quickness, came up with the ball, and then he touched the bag and threw to first. It was a play in which he excelled. The umpire called both runners out, retiring the side. A short, sharp yell, like a bark, burst from the bleachers. Worry was smilingly thoughtful as his boys trotted in to bat. "Say, if you get a couple of runs this time we'll be _It_. Look at the students. Ready to fall out of the stands.... Peg, I'm glad Herne got a run. Now we won't think of a shut-out. That'll steady us up. And, boys, break loose now, for the game's ours." Dean started off with a clean single. On the first pitch he broke for second, and had to slide to make it, as Blake missed the strike. Then Blake went out to first. Trace walked. McCord poked a little fly over the infield, scoring Dean. Ken fouled out. The unerring Homans again hit safely, sending Trace in. With two out and McCord on third and Homans on second, Raymond laid down a beautiful bunt, tallying McCord. And when the Herne catcher tried to head Homans from making third Raymond kept on toward second. It was a daring dash, and he dove to the bag with a long slide, but the decision was against him. The coach called Homans, Ward, and Ray to him and gathered them close together. "Boys, listen!" he said, low and tense. "MacNeff and Prince, of Place, are in the grand-stand just behind the plate. They're up there to get a line on Peg. We'll fool 'em, and make 'em sick in the bargain. Peg, you let out this innin' and show up the first three hitters. Then I'll take you out and let Schoonover finish the game. See?" "Take me--out?" echoed Ken. "That's it, if you make these next three hitters look like monkeys. Don't you see? We've got the Herne game cinched. We don't need to use our star twirler. See? That'll be a bone for Place to chew on. How about it, Cap? What do you think, Reddy?" "Oh, Worry, if we dared to do it!" Homans exclaimed, under his breath. "Herne would never get over it. And it would scare Place to death.... But, Worry, Reddy, dare we risk it?" "It's playin' into our very hands," replied Worry. His hazel eyes were afire with inspiration. Reddy Ray's lean jaw bulged. "Homans, it's the trick, and we can turn it." "What's the score--7 to 1?" muttered Homans. It was a tight place for him, and he seemed tortured between ambition and doubt. "That fellow Murphy hasn't got one in my groove yet," said Reddy. "I'm due to lace one. We're good for more runs." That decided Homans. He patted Ken on the shoulder and led him out to the box, but he never spoke a word. Ken felt like a wild colt just let loose. He faced Hill with a smile, and then, taking his long, overhand swing, he delivered the jump ball. Hill made no move. The umpire called strike. The crowd roared. Ken duplicated the feat. Then Hill missed the third strike. Gallagher walked up doggedly, and Ken smiled at him, too. Then using three wicked, darting drops, Ken struck Gallagher out. "That's twice!" called Reddy's penetrating voice from the outfield. "Give him a paddle!" Halloway drew two balls and then three strikes. Ken ran for the bench amid an uproar most strange and startling to his untried ear. The long, tardy, and stubborn students had broken their silence. Dale leaped out of the grand-stand to lead the cheering. The giant Stevens came piling out of the bleachers to perform a like office. And then they were followed by Bryan, captain of the crew, and Hilbrandt, captain of the track team. Four captains of Wayne teams inspiriting and directing the cheering! Ken's bewildered ears drank in one long, thundering "_Ward! Ward! Ward!_" and then his hearing seemed drowned. The whole mass of students and spectators rose as one, and the deafening stamp of feet only equalled the roar of voices. But now the volume of sound was regular and rhythmic. It was like the approach of a terrible army. For minutes, while the umpire held play suspended, the Wayne supporters in hoarse and stamping tumult came into their own again. It was a wild burst of applause, and as it had been long delayed, so now it was prolonged fiercely to the limit of endurance. When those waves of sound had rolled away Ken Ward felt a difference in Grant Field, in the varsity, in himself. A different color shone from the sky. Ken saw Reddy Ray go to bat and drive the ball against the right-field fence. Then as the sprinter got into his wonderful stride once more the whole audience rose in yelling, crashing clamor. And when on Weir's fly to the outfield Reddy raced in to the plate, making the throw-in look feeble, again the din was terrific. As one in a glorious dream, Ken Ward crouched upon the bench and watched the remainder of that game. He grasped it all as if baseball was all that made life worth living, and as if every moment was his last. He never thought of himself. He was only a part of the team, and that team, every moment, grew sharper, faster, fiercer. He revelled in the game. Schoonover was hit hard, but fast play by Raymond and Weir kept Herne's score down. The little second-baseman was here, there, everywhere, like a glint of light. Herne made runs, but Wayne also kept adding runs. Blake caught a foul fly off the bleachers; Trace made a beautiful catch; McCord was like a tower at first base, and little Dean went through the last stages of development that made him a star. Once in the eighth inning Ken became aware that Worry was punching him in the back and muttering: "Look out, Peg! Listen! Murphy'll get one in Reddy's groove this time.... Oh-h!" The crack of the ball, as well as Worry's yell, told Ken what had happened. Besides, he could see, and as the ball lined away for the fence, and the sprinter leaped into action, Ken jumped up and screamed: "Oh, Reddy, it's over--over! No! Run! Run! Oh-h-h!" In the shrill, piercing strife of sound Ken's scream seemed only a breath at his ears. He held to it, almost splitting his throat, while the sprinter twinkled round third base and came home like a thunderbolt. Another inning passed, a confusion of hits, throws, runs, and plays to Ken, and then Worry was pounding him again. "Dig for the trainin'-house!" yelled Worry, mouth on his ear. "The students are crazy! They'll eat us alive! They're tearin' the bleachers down! Run for it, Peg!" XV A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE Ken found himself running across Grant Field, pursued by a happy, roaring mob of students. They might have been Indians, judging from the way Ken and his fellow-players fled before them. The trained athletes distanced their well-meaning but violent pursuers and gained the gate, but it was a close shave. The boys bounded up the street into the training-house and locked the door till the puffing Arthurs arrived. They let him in and locked the door again. In another moment the street resounded with the rush of many feet and the yells of frantic students. Murray, the trainer, forced a way through the crowd and up the stoop. He closed and barred the outside door, and then pounded upon the inside door for admittance. Worry let him in. "They'd make a bowl-fight or a football rush look tame," panted Murray. "Hey! Scotty--lock up tight down in the basement. For Heaven's sake don't let that push get in on us! Lock the windows in the front." "Who's that poundin' on the door?" yelled Worry. He had to yell, for the swelling racket outside made ordinary conversation impossible. "Don't open it!" shouted Murray. "What do we care for team-captains, college professors, athletic directors, or students? They're all out there, and they're crazy, I tell you. I never saw the like. It'd be more than I want to get in that jam. And it'd never do for the varsity. Somebody would get crippled sure. I'm training this baseball team." Murray, in his zealous care of his athletes, was somewhat overshooting the mark, for not one of the boys had the slightest desire to be trusted to the mob outside. In fact, Ken looked dazed, and Raymond scared to the point of trembling; Trace was pale; and all the others, except Homans and Reddy Ray, showed perturbation. Nor were the captain and sprinter deaf to the purport of that hour; only in their faces shone a kindling glow and flush. By-and-by the boys slipped to their rooms, removed their uniforms, dressed and crept down-stairs like burglars and went in to dinner. Outside the uproar, instead of abating, gathered strength as time went by. At the dinner-table the boys had to yell in each other's ears. They had to force what they ate. No one was hungry. When Worry rose from the table they all flocked after him. It was growing dark outside, and a red glow, brightening upon the windows, showed the students had lighted bonfires. "They're goin' to make a night of it," yelled Worry. "How'll my boys be able to sleep?" shouted Murray. Both coach and trainer were as excited as any of the boys. "The street's packed solid. Listen!" The tramp, tramp, tramp of thousands of feet keeping time was like the heavy tread of a marching multitude. Then the tramp died away in a piercing cheer, "_Wayne!_" nine times, clear and sustained--a long, beautiful college cheer. In the breathing spell that followed, the steady tramp of feet went on. One by one, at intervals, the university yells were given, the broken rattling rally, the floating melodious crew cheer, and the hoarse, smashing boom of football. Then again the inspiriting "_Wayne!_" nine times. After that came shrill calls for the varsity, for Homans, Reddy Ray, Raymond, and Peggie Ward. "Come up-stairs to the windows, boys!" shouted Worry. "We've got to show ourselves." Worry threw up the windows in Weir's room, and the boys gingerly poked their heads out. A roar greeted their appearance. The heads all popped in as if they had been struck. "Homans, you'll have to make a speech," cried the coach. "I will not!" "You've got to say somethin'. We can't have this crazy gang out here all night." Then Worry and Murray coaxed and led Homans to the window. The captain leaned out and said something that was unintelligible in the hubbub without. The crowd cheered him and called for Reddy, Ward, and Raymond. Worry grasped the second-baseman and shoved him half over the sill. Raymond would have fallen out but for the coach's strong hold. "Come on, Peg!" yelled Worry. "Not on your life!" cried Ken, in affright. He ran away from the coach, and dived under the bed. But Reddy Ray dragged him out and to the window, and held him up in the bright bonfire glare. Then he lifted a hand to silence the roaring crowd. "Fellows, here he is--Worry's demon, Wayne's pitcher!" called Reddy, in ringing, far-reaching voice. "Listen! Peggie didn't lose his nerve when he faced Herne to-day, but he's lost it now. He's lost his voice, too. But he says for you to go away and save your cheers for this day two weeks, when we meet Place. Then, he says, you'll have something to cheer for!" The crafty sprinter knew how to appeal to the students. All of voice and strength and enthusiasm left in them went up in a mighty bawl that rattled the windows and shook the house. They finished with nine "_Waynes!_" and a long, rousing "_Peggie Ward!_" and then they went away. "By George! look here, Peg," said Reddy, earnestly, "they gave you Wayne's Nine! _Wayne's Nine!_ Do you hear? I never knew a freshman varsity man to get that cheer." "You've got to beat Place now, after tellin' 'em you'd do it," added Worry. "But, Worry, I didn't say a word--it was Reddy," replied Ken, in distress. "Same thing," rejoined the coach. "Now, boys, let's quiet down and talk over the game. I won't waste any time jollyin' you. I couldn't praise you enough if I spent the rest of the season tryin' to. One and all, by yourselves and in a bunch, you played Herne off their feet. I'll bet MacNeff and Prince are dizzy figurin' what'll happen Saturday week. As to the score, why, scores don't mean much to us--" "What was the score, anyway?" asked Ken. The boys greeted this with shouts of doubtful laughter, and Worry glanced with disapproval at his star. "Peg, you keep me guessin' a lot. But not to know how much we beat Herne would be more 'n I could stand. On the level, now, don't you know the score?" "Fair and square, I don't, Worry. You never would let me think of how many runs we had or needed. I can count seven--yes, and one more, that was Reddy's home-run." "Peg, you must have been up in the air a little; 14 to 4, that's it. And we didn't take our bat in the last of the ninth." Then followed Worry's critical account of the game, and a discussion in which the boys went over certain plays. During the evening many visitors called, but did not gain admission. The next morning, however, Worry himself brought in the newspapers, which heretofore he had forbidden the players to read, and he told them they were now free to have any callers or to go where they liked. There was a merry scramble for the papers, and presently the reading-room was as quiet as a church. The account that held Ken Ward in rapt perusal was the _Morning Times-Star's_. At first the print blurred in Ken's sight. Then he read it over again. He liked the glowing praise given the team, and was shamefully conscious of the delight in his name in large letters. A third time he read it, guiltily this time, for he did not dream that his comrades were engrossed in like indulgence. WAYNE OUTCLASSES HERNE ARTHURS DEVELOPS ANOTHER GREAT TEAM. PEGGIE WARD AND REDDY RAY STARS. Wayne defeated Herne yesterday 14 to 4, and thereby leaped into the limelight. It was a surprise to every one, Herne most of all. Owing to the stringent eligibility rules now in force at Wayne, and the barring of the old varsity, nothing was expected of this season's team. Arthurs, the famous coach, has built a wonderful nine out of green material, and again establishes the advisability of professional coaches for the big universities. With one or two exceptions Wayne's varsity is made up of players developed this year. Homans, the captain, was well known about town as an amateur player of ability. But Arthurs has made him into a great field captain and a base-getter of remarkable skill. An unofficial computing gives him the batting average of .536. No captain or any other player of any big college team in the East ever approached such percentage as that. It is so high that it must be a mistake. Reddy Ray, the intercollegiate champion in the sprints, is the other seasoned player of the varsity, and it is safe to say that he is the star of all the college teams. A wonderful fielder, a sure and heavy hitter, and like a flash on the bases, he alone makes Homans' team formidable. Then there is Peg Ward, Worry Arthurs' demon pitcher, of freshman bowl-fight fame. This lad has been arriving since spring, and now he has arrived. He is powerful, and has a great arm. He seems to pitch without effort, has twice the speed of Dale, and is as cool in the box as a veteran. But it is his marvellous control of the ball that puts him in a class by himself. In the fourth inning of yesterday's game he extended himself, probably on orders from Coach Arthurs, and struck out Herne's three best hitters on eleven pitched balls. Then he was taken out and Schoonover put in. This white-headed lad is no slouch of a pitcher, by-the-way. But it must have been a bitter pill for Herne to swallow. The proud Herne varsity have been used to knocking pitchers out of the box, instead of seeing them removed because they were too good. Also, MacNeff and Prince, of Place, who saw the game, must have had food for reflection. They did not get much of a line on young Ward, and what they saw will not give them pleasant dreams. We pick Ward to beat the heavy-hitting Place team. Other youngsters of Arthurs' nine show up well, particularly Raymond and Weir, who have springs in their feet and arms like whips. Altogether Arthurs' varsity is a strangely assorted, a wonderfully chosen group of players. We might liken them to the mechanism of a fine watch, with Ward as the mainspring, and the others with big or little parts to perform, but each dependent upon the other. Wayne's greatest baseball team! Ken read it all thirstily, wonderingly, and recorded it deep in the deepest well of his memory. It seemed a hundred times as sweet for all the misery and longing and fear and toil which it had cost to gain. And each succeeding day grew fuller and richer with its meed of reward. All the boys of the varsity were sought by the students, Ken most of all. Everywhere he went he was greeted with a regard that made him still more bashful and ashamed. If he stepped into Carlton Club, it was to be surrounded by a frankly admiring circle of students. He could not get a moment alone in the library. Professors had a smile for him and often stopped to chat. The proudest moment of his college year was when President Halstead met him in the promenade, and before hundreds of students turned to walk a little way with him. There seemed not to be a single student of the university or any one connected with it, who did not recognize him. Bryan took him to watch the crew practise; Stevens played billiards with him at the club; Dale openly sought his society. Then the fraternities began to vie with one another for Ken. In all his life he had not imagined a fellow could be treated so well. It was an open secret that Ken Ward was extremely desired in the best fraternities. He could not have counted his friends. Through it all, by thinking of Worry and the big games coming, he managed to stay on his feet. One morning, when he was at the height of this enjoyable popularity, he read a baseball note that set him to thinking hard. The newspaper, commenting on the splendid results following Wayne's new athletic rules, interpreted one rule in a way astounding to Ken. It was something to the effect that all players who had been _on_ a team which paid any player or any expenses of any player were therefore ineligible. Interpretation of the rules had never been of any serious moment to Ken. He had never played on any but boy teams. But suddenly he remembered that during a visit to the mountains with his mother he had gone to a place called Eagle's Nest, a summer hotel colony. It boasted of a good ball team and had a rival in the Glenwoods, a team from an adjoining resort. Ken had been in the habit of chasing flies for the players in practice. One day Eagle's Nest journeyed over to Glenwood to play, and being short one player they took Ken to fill in. He had scarcely started in the game when the regular player appeared, thus relieving him. The incident had completely slipped Ken's mind until recalled by the newspaper note. Whereupon Ken began to ponder. He scouted the idea of that innocent little thing endangering his eligibility at Wayne. But the rule, thus made clear, stood out in startlingly black-and-white relief. Eagle's Nest supported a team by subscription among the hotel guests. Ken had ridden ten miles in a 'bus with the team, and had worn one of the uniforms for some few minutes. Therefore, upon a technicality, perhaps, he had been _on_ a summer nine, and had no right to play for Wayne. Ken went to Homans and told him the circumstance. The captain looked exceedingly grave, then getting more particulars he relaxed. "You're safe, Peg. You're perfectly innocent. But don't mention it to any one else, especially Worry. He'd have a fit. What a scare you'd throw into the varsity camp! Forget the few minutes you wore that Eagle's Nest suit." For the time being this reassured Ken, but after a while his anxiety returned. Homans had said not to mention it, and that bothered Ken. He lay awake half of one night thinking about the thing. It angered him and pricked his conscience and roused him. He wanted to feel absolutely sure of his position, for his own sake first of all. So next morning he cornered Worry and blurted out the secret. "Peg, what're you givin' me!" he ejaculated. Ken repeated his story, somewhat more clearly and at greater length. Worry turned as white as a ghost. "Good gracious, Peg, you haven't told anybody?" "No one but Homans." Worry gave a long sigh of relief, and his face regained some of its usual florid color. "Well, that's all right then.... Say, didn't I tell you once that I had a weak heart? Peg, of course you're an amateur, or there never was one. But 'em fat-head directors! Why, I wouldn't have 'em find that out for a million dollars. They're idiots enough to make a shinin' example of you right before the Place games. Keep it under your hat, see!" This last was in the nature of a command, and Ken had always religiously obeyed Worry. He went to his room feeling that the matter had been decided for him. Relief, however, did not long abide with him. He began to be torn between loyalty to Worry and duty to himself. He felt guiltless, but he was not sure of it, and until he was sure he could not be free in mind. Suddenly he thought of being actually barred from the varsity, and was miserable. That he could not bear. Strong temptation now assailed Ken and found him weak. A hundred times he reconciled himself to Worry's command, to Homan's point of view, yet every time something rose within him and rebelled. But despite the rebellion Ken almost gave in. He fought off thought of his new sweet popularity, of the glory of being Wayne's athletic star. He fought to look the thing fairly in the face. To him it loomed up a hundredfold larger than an incident of his baseball career. And so he got strength to do the thing that would ease the voice of conscience. He went straight to the coach. "Worry, I've got to go to the directors and tell them. I--I'm sorry, but I've got to do it." He expected a storm of rage from Worry, but never had the coach been so suave, so kindly, so magnetic. He called Homans and Raymond and Weir and others who were in the house at the moment and stated Ken's case. His speech flowed smooth and rapid. The matter under his deft argument lost serious proportions. But it seemed to Ken that Worry did not tell the boys the whole truth, or they would not have laughed at the thing and made him out over-sensitive. And Ken was now growing too discouraged and bewildered to tell them. Moreover, he was getting stubborn. The thing was far from a joke. The cunning of the coach proved that. Worry wound the boys round his little finger. At this juncture Reddy Ray entered the training-house. More than once Ken had gone to the great sprinter with confidences and troubles, and now he began impulsively, hurriedly, incoherently, to tell the story. "And Reddy," concluded Ken, "I've got to tell the directors. It's something--hard for me to explain. I couldn't pitch another game with this hanging over me. I must--tell them--and take my medicine." "Sure. It's a matter of principle," replied Reddy, in his soft, slow voice. His keen eyes left Ken's pale face and met the coach's. "Worry, I'll take Peg up to see the athletic faculty. I know Andrews, the president, and he's the one to hear Peg's story." Worry groaned and sank into a chair crushed and beaten. Then he swore, something unusual in him. Then he began to rave at the fat-headed directors. Then he yelled that he would never coach another ball team so long as he lived. Ken followed Reddy out of the training-house and along the street. The fact that the sprinter did not say a word showed Ken he was understood, and he felt immeasurably grateful. They crossed the campus and entered College Hall, to climb the winding stairway. To Ken that was a long, hateful climb. Andrews, and another of the directors whom Ken knew by sight, were in the office. They greeted the visitors with cordial warmth. "Gentlemen," began Reddy, "Ward thinks he has violated one of the eligibility rules." There was no beating about the bush with Reddy Ray, no shading of fact, no distortion of the truth. Coolly he stated the case. But, strangely to Ken, the very truth, told by Reddy in this way, somehow lost its terrors. Ken's shoulders seemed unburdened of a terrible weight. Andrews and his colleague laughed heartily. "You see--I--I forgot all about it," said Ken. "Yes, and since he remembered he's been worrying himself sick," resumed Reddy. "Couldn't rest till he'd come over here." "Ward, it's much to your credit that you should confide something there was never any chance of becoming known," said the president of the athletic faculty. "We appreciate it. You may relieve your mind of misgivings as to your eligibility. Even if we tried I doubt if we could twist a rule to affect your standing. And you may rest assured we wouldn't try in the case of so fine a young fellow and so splendid a pitcher for Wayne." Then Andrews courteously shook hands with Ken and Reddy and bowed them out. Ken danced half-way down the stairway and slid the rest on the bannister. "Reddy, wasn't he just fine?" cried Ken, all palpitating with joy. "Well, Peg, Andrews is a nice old thing if you approach him right," replied Reddy, dryly. "You wouldn't believe me, would you, if I said I had my heart in my throat when we went in?" "No, I wouldn't," replied Ken, bluntly. "I thought not," said Reddy. Then the gravity that had suddenly perplexed Ken cleared from the sprinter's face. "Peg, let's have some fun with Worry and the boys." "I'm in for anything now." "We'll go back to the training-house with long faces. When we get in you run up-stairs as if you couldn't face any one, but be sure to sneak back to the head of the stairs to see and hear the fun. I'll fix Worry all right. Now, don't flunk. It's a chance." Ken could not manage to keep a straight face as they went in, so he hid it and rushed up-stairs. He bumped into Raymond, knocking him flat. "Running to a fire again?" growled Raymond. "Got a fire-medal, haven't you? Always falling over people." Ken tried to simulate ungovernable rage and impotent distress at once. He waved one fist and tore his hair with the other hand. "Get out of my way!" roared Ken. "What'll you say when I tell you I'm barred from the varsity!" "Oh! Ken! No, no--don't say it," faltered Raymond, all sympathy in an instant. Ken ran into his room, closed the door and then peeped out. He saw Raymond slowly sag down-stairs as if his heart was broken. Then Ken slipped out and crawled down the hall till he could see into the reading-room. All the boys were there, with anxious faces, crowded round the coach. Worry was livid. Reddy Ray seemed the only calm person in the room and he had tragedy written all over him. "Out with it!" shouted Worry. "Don't stand there like a mournful preacher. What did 'em fat-heads say?" Reddy threw up his hands with a significant gesture. "I knew it!" howled Worry, jumping up and down. "I knew it! Why did you take the kid over there? Why didn't you let me and Homans handle this thing? You red-headed, iron-jawed, cold-blooded wind-chaser! You've done it now, haven't you? I--Oh--" Worry began to flounder helplessly. "They said a few more things," went on Reddy. "Peg is barred, Raymond is barred, I am barred. I told them about my baseball career out West. The directors said some pretty plain things about you, Worry, I'm sorry to tell. You're a rotten coach. In fact, you ought to be a coach at an undertaker's. Homans gets the credit for the work of the team. They claim you are too hard on the boys, too exacting, too brutal, in fact. Andrews recited a record of your taking sandwiches from us and aiding and abetting Murray in our slow starvation. The directors will favor your dismissal and urge the appointment of Professor Rhodes, who as coach will at least feed us properly." Reddy stopped to catch his breath and gain time for more invention. Of all the unhappy mortals on earth Worry Arthurs looked the unhappiest. He believed every word as if it had been gospel. And that about Professor Rhodes was the last straw. Ken could stand the deception no longer. He marvelled at Reddy's consummate lying and how he could ever stand that look on Worry's face. Bounding down-stairs four steps at a jump, Ken burst like a bomb upon the sad-faced group. "Oh, Worry, it's all a joke!" XVI THE FIRST PLACE GAME Rain prevented the second Herne game, which was to have been played on the Herne grounds. It rained steadily all day Friday and Saturday, to the disappointment of Wayne's varsity. The coach, however, admitted that he was satisfied to see the second contest with Herne go by the board. "I don't like big games away from home," said Worry. "It's hard on new teams. Besides, we beat Herne to death over here. Mebbe we couldn't do it over there, though I ain't doubtin'. But it's Place we're after, and if we'd had that game at Herne we couldn't have kept Place from gettin' a line on us. So I'm glad it rained." The two Place games fell during a busy week at Wayne. Wednesday was the beginning of the commencement exercises and only a comparatively few students could make the trip to Place. But the night before the team left, the students, four thousand strong, went to the training-house and filled a half-hour with college songs and cheers. Next morning Dale and Stevens, heading a small band of Wayne athletes and graduates, met the team at the railroad station and boarded the train with them. Worry and Homans welcomed them, and soon every Wayne player had two or more for company. Either by accident or design, Ken could not tell which, Dale and Stevens singled him out for their especial charge. The football captain filled one seat with his huge bulk and faced Ken, and Dale sat with a hand on Ken's shoulder. "Peg, we're backing you for all we're worth," said Stevens. "But this is your first big game away from home. It's really the toughest game of the season. Place is a hard nut to crack any time. And her players on their own backyard are scrappers who can take a lot of beating and still win out. Then there's another thing that's no small factor in their strength: They are idolized by the students, and rooting at Place is a science. They have a yell that beats anything you ever heard. It'll paralyze a fellow at a critical stage. But that yell is peculiar in that it rises out of circumstances leading to almost certain victory. That is, Place has to make a strong bid for a close, hard game to work up that yell. So if it comes to-day you be ready for it. Have your ears stuffed with cotton, and don't let that yell blow you up in the air." Dale was even more earnest than Stevens. "Peg, Place beat me over here last year, beat me 6-3. They hit me harder than I ever was hit before, I guess. You went down to Washington, Worry said, to look them over. Tell me what you think--how you sized them up." Dale listened attentively while Ken recited his impressions. "You've got Prince and MacNeff figured exactly right," replied Dale. "Prince is the football captain, by-the-way. Be careful how you run into second base. If you ever slide into him head first--good-bye! He's a great player, and he can hit any kind of a ball. MacNeff now, just as you said, is weak on a high ball close in, and he kills a low ball. Kills is the word! He hits them a mile. But, Peg, I think you're a little off on Keene, Starke, and Martin, the other Place cracks. They're veterans, hard to pitch to; they make you cut the plate; they are as apt to bunt as hit, and they are fast. They keep a fellow guessing. I think Starke pulls a little on a curve, but the others have no weakness I ever discovered. But, Peg, I expect you to do more with them than I did. My control was never any too good, and you can throw almost as straight as a fellow could shoot a rifle. Then your high fast ball, that one you get with the long swing, it would beat any team. Only I'm wondering, I'm asking--can you use it right along, in the face of such coaching and yelling and hitting as you'll run against to-day? I'm asking deliberately, because I want to give you confidence." "Why, yes, Dale, I think I can. I'm pretty sure of it. That ball comes easily, only a little longer swing and more snap, and honestly, Dale, I hardly ever think about the plate. I know where it is, and I could shut my eyes and throw strikes." "Peg, you're a wonder," replied Dale, warmly. "If you can do that--and hang me if I doubt it--you will make Place look like a lot of dubs. We're sure to make a few runs. Homans and Ray will hit Salisbury hard. There's no fence on Place Field, and every ball Reddy hits past a fielder will be a home-run. You can gamble on that. So set a fast clip when you start in, and hang." Some time later, when Ken had changed seats and was talking to Raymond, he heard Worry say to somebody: "Well, if Peg don't explode to-day he never will. I almost wish he would. He'd be better for it, afterward." This surprised Ken, annoyed him, and straightway he became thoughtful. Why this persistent harping on the chance of his getting excited from one cause or another, losing his control and thereby the game? Ken had not felt in the least nervous about the game. He would get so, presently, if his advisers did not stop hinting. Then Worry's wish that he might "explode" was puzzling. A little shade of gloom crept over the bright horizon of Ken's hopes. Almost unconsciously vague doubts of himself fastened upon him. For the first time he found himself looking forward to a baseball game with less eagerness than uncertainty. Stubbornly he fought off the mood. Place was situated in an old college town famed for its ancient trees and quaint churches and inns. The Wayne varsity, arriving late, put on their uniforms at the St. George, a tavern that seemed never to have been in any way acquainted with a college baseball team. It was very quiet and apparently deserted. For that matter the town itself appeared deserted. The boys dressed hurriedly, in silence, with frowning brows and compressed lips. Worry Arthurs remained down-stairs while they dressed. Homans looked the team over and then said: "Boys, come on! To-day's our hardest game." It was only a short walk along the shady street to the outskirts of the town and the athletic field. The huge stands blocked the view from the back and side. Homans led the team under the bleachers, through a narrow walled-in aisle, to the side entrance, and there gave the word for the varsity to run out upon the field. A hearty roar of applause greeted their appearance. Ken saw a beautiful green field, level as a floor, with a great half-circle of stands and bleachers at one end. One glance was sufficient to make Ken's breathing an effort. He saw a glittering mass, a broad, moving band of color. Everywhere waved Place flags, bright gold and blue. White faces gleamed like daisies on a golden slope. In the bleachers close to the first base massed a shirt-sleeved crowd of students, row on row of them, thousands in number. Ken experienced a little chill as he attached the famous Place yell to that significant placing of rooters. A soft breeze blew across the field, and it carried low laughter and voices of girls, a merry hum, and subdued murmur, and an occasional clear shout. The whole field seemed keenly alive. From the bench Ken turned curious, eager eyes upon the practising Place men. Never had he regarded players with as sharp an interest, curiosity being mingled with admiration, and confidence with doubt. MacNeff, the captain, at first base, veteran of three years, was a tall, powerful fellow, bold and decisive in action. Prince, Place's star on both gridiron and diamond, played at second base. He was very short, broad and heavy, and looked as if he would have made three of little Raymond. Martin, at short-stop, was of slim, muscular build. Keene and Starke, in centre and left, were big men. Salisbury looked all of six feet, and every inch a pitcher. He also played end on the football varsity. Ken had to indulge in a laugh at the contrast in height and weight of Wayne when compared to Place. The laugh was good for him, because it seemed to loosen something hard and tight within his breast. Besides, Worry saw him laugh and looked pleased, and that pleased Ken. "Husky lot of stiffs, eh, Peg?" said Worry, reading Ken's thought. "But, say! this ain't no football game. We'll make these heavyweights look like ice-wagons. I never was much on beefy ball-players. Aha! there goes the gong. Place's takin' the field. That suits me.... Peg, listen! The game's on. I've only one word to say to you. _Try to keep solid on your feet!_" A short cheer, electrifying in its force, pealed out like a blast. Then Homans stepped to the plate amid generous hand-clapping. The Place adherents had their favorites, but they always showed a sportsmanlike appreciation of opponents. Salisbury wound up, took an enormous stride, and pitched the ball. He had speed. Homans seldom hit on the first pitch, and this was a strike. But he rapped the next like a bullet at Griffith, the third-baseman. Griffith blocked the ball, and, quickly reaching it, he used a snap underhand throw to first, catching Homans by a narrow margin. It was a fine play and the crowd let out another blast. Raymond, coming up, began his old trick of trying to work the pitcher for a base. He was small and he crouched down until a wag in the bleachers yelled that this was no kindergarten game. Raymond was exceedingly hard to pitch to. He was always edging over the plate, trying to get hit. If anybody touched him in practice he would roar like a mad bull, but in a game he would cheerfully have stopped cannon-balls. He got in front of Salisbury's third pitch, and, dropping his bat, started for first base. The umpire called him back. Thereupon Raymond fouled balls and went through contortions at the plate till he was out on strikes. When Reddy Ray took his position at bat audible remarks passed like a wave through the audience. Then a long, hearty cheer greeted the great sprinter. When roar once again subsided into waiting suspense a strong-lunged Wayne rooter yelled, "_Watch him run!_" The outfielders edged out deeper and deeper. MacNeff called low to Salisbury: "Don't let this fellow walk! Keep them high and make him hit!" It was evident that Place had gotten a line on one Wayne player. Salisbury delivered the ball and Reddy whirled with his level swing. There was a sharp crack. Up started the crowd with sudden explosive: "Oh!" Straight as a bee-line the ball sped to Keene in deep centre, and Reddy was out. Wayne players went running out and Place players came trotting in. Ken, however, at Worry's order, walked slowly and leisurely to the pitcher's box. He received an ovation from the audience that completely surprised him and which stirred him to warm gratefulness. Then, receiving the ball, he drew one quick breath, and faced the stern issue of the day. As always, he had his pitching plan clearly defined in mind, and no little part of it was cool deliberation, study of the batter to the point of irritating him, and then boldness of action. He had learned that he was not afraid to put the ball over the plate, and the knowledge had made him bold, and boldness increased his effectiveness. For Keene, first batter up, Ken pitched his fast ball with all his power. Like a glancing streak it shot over. A low whistling ran through the bleachers. For the second pitch Ken took the same long motion, ending in the sudden swing, but this time he threw a slow, wide, tantalizing curve that floated and waved and circled around across the plate. It also was a strike. Keene had not offered to hit either. In those two balls, perfectly controlled, Ken deliberately showed the Place team the wide extremes of his pitching game. "Keene, he don't waste any. Hit!" ordered MacNeff from the bench. The next ball, a high curve, Keene hit on the fly to Homans. The flaxen-haired Prince trotted up with little, short steps. Ken did not need the wild outburst from the crowd to appreciate this sturdy hero of many gridiron and diamond battles. He was so enormously wide, almost as wide as he was long, that he would have been funny to Ken but for the reputation that went with the great shoulders and stumpy legs. "Ward, give me a good one," said Prince, in a low, pleasant voice. He handled his heavy bat as if it had been light as a yardstick. It was with more boldness than intention of gratifying Prince that Ken complied, using the same kind of ball he had tried first on Keene. Prince missed it. The next, a low curve, he cracked hard to the left of Raymond. The second-baseman darted over, fielded the ball cleanly, and threw Prince out. Then the long, rangy MacNeff, home-run hitter for Place, faced Ken. His position at bat bothered Ken, for he stood almost on the plate. Remembering MacNeff's weakness, Ken lost no time putting a swift in-shoot under his chin. The Place captain lunged round at it, grunting with his swing. If he had hit the ball it would have been with the handle of his bat. So Ken, knowing his control, and sure that he could pitch high shoots all day over the incomer of the plate, had no more fear of the Place slugger. And it took only three more pitches to strike him out. From that on the game see-sawed inning by inning, Ken outpitching Salisbury, but neither team scored. At intervals cheers marked the good plays of both teams, and time and again the work of the pitchers earned applause. The crowd seemed to be holding back, and while they waited for the unexpected the short, sharp innings slipped by. Trace for Wayne led off in the seventh with a safe fly over short. Ken, attempting to sacrifice, rolled a little bunt down the third-base line and beat the throw. With no one out and the head of the batting list up, the Wayne players awoke to possibilities. The same fiery intensity that had characterized their play all season now manifested itself. They were all on their feet, and Weir and McCord on the coaching lines were yelling hoarsely at Salisbury, tearing up the grass with their spikes, dashing to and fro, shouting advice to the runners. "Here's where we score! Oh! you pitcher! We're due to trim you now! Steady, boys, play it safe, play it safe!--don't let them double you!" Up by the bench Homans was selecting a bat. "Worry, I'd better dump one," he whispered. "That's the trick," replied the coach. "Advance them at any cost. There's Reddy to follow." The reliable Salisbury rolled the ball in his hands, feinted to throw to the bases, and showed his steadiness under fire. He put one square over for Homans and followed it upon the run. Homans made a perfect bunt, but instead of going along either base line, it went straight into the pitcher's hands. Salisbury whirled and threw to Prince, who covered the bag, and forced Trace. One out and still two runners on bases. The crowd uttered a yell and then quickly quieted down. Raymond bent low over the plate and watched Salisbury's slightest move. He bunted the first ball, and it went foul over the third-base line. He twisted the second toward first base, and it, too, rolled foul. And still he bent low as if to bunt again. The infield slowly edged in closer. But Raymond straightened up on Salisbury's next pitch and lined the ball out. Prince leaped into the air and caught the ball in his gloved hand. Homans dove back into first base; likewise Ken into second, just making it in the nick of time, for Martin was on the run to complete a possible double play. A shout at once hoarse and shrill went up, and heavy clattering thunder rolled along the floor of the bleachers. Two out and still two men on bases. If there was a calm person on Place Field at that moment it was Reddy Ray, but his eyes glinted like sparks as he glanced at the coach. "Worry, I'll lace one this time," he said, and strode for the plate. Weir and McCord were shrieking: "Oh, look who's up! Oh-h! Oh-h! Play it safe, boys!" "_Watch him run!_" That came from the same deep-chested individual who had before hinted of the sprinter's fleetness, and this time the Wayne players recognized the voice of Murray. How hopeful and thrilling the suggestion was, coming from him! The Place infield trotted to deep short-field; the outfielders moved out and swung around far to the right. Salisbury settled down in the box and appeared to put on extra effort as he delivered the ball. It was wide. The next also went off the outside of the plate. It looked as if Salisbury meant to pass Reddy to first. Then those on the bench saw a glance and a nod pass between Reddy Ray and Coach Arthurs. Again Salisbury pitched somewhat to the outside of the plate, but this time Reddy stepped forward and swung. _Crack!_ Swift as an arrow and close to the ground the ball shot to left field. Starke leaped frantically to head it off, and as it took a wicked bound he dove forward head first, hands outstretched, and knocked it down. But the ball rolled a few yards, and Starke had to recover from his magnificent effort. No one on the field saw Ward and Homans running for the plate. All eyes were on the gray, flitting shadow of a sprinter. One voice only, and that was Murray's, boomed out in the silence. When Reddy turned second base Starke reached the ball and threw for third. It was a beautiful race between ball and runner for the bag. As Reddy stretched into the air in a long slide the ball struck and shot off the ground with a glancing bound. They reached the base at the same time. But Griffith, trying to block the runner, went spinning down, and the ball rolled toward the bleachers. Reddy was up and racing plateward so quickly that it seemed he had not been momentarily checked. The few Wayne rooters went wild. "Three runs!" yelled the delirious coaches. Weir was so overcome that he did not know it was his turn at bat. When called in he hurried to the plate and drove a line fly to centre that Keene caught only after a hard run. Ken Ward rose from the bench to go out on the diamond. The voices of his comrades sounded far away, as voices in a dream. "Three to the good now, Ward! It's yours!" said Captain Homans. "Only nine more batters! Peg, keep your feet leaded!" called Reddy Ray. "It's the seventh, and Place hasn't made a safe hit! Oh, Ken!" came from Raymond. So all the boys vented their hope and trust in their pitcher. There was a mist before Ken's eyes that he could not rub away. The field blurred at times. For five innings after the first he had fought some unaccountable thing. He had kept his speed, his control, his memory of batters, and he had pitched magnificently. But something had hovered over him, and had grown more tangible as the game progressed. There was a shadow always before his sight. In the last of the seventh, with Keene at bat, Ken faced the plate with a strange unsteadiness and a shrinking for which he hated himself. What was wrong with him? Had he been taken suddenly ill? Anger came to his rescue, and he flung himself into his pitching with fierce ardor. He quivered with a savage hope when Keene swung ineffectually at the high in-shoot. He pitched another and another, and struck out the batter. But now it meant little to see him slam down his bat in a rage. For Ken had a foreboding that he could not do it again. When Prince came up Ken found he was having difficulty in keeping the ball where he wanted it. Prince batted a hot grounder to Blake, who fumbled. MacNeff had three balls and one strike called upon him before he hit hard over second base. But Raymond pounced upon the ball like a tiger, dashed over the bag and threw to first, getting both runners. "Wull, Ken, make them hit to me," growled Raymond. Ken sat down upon the bench far from the coach. He shunned Worry in that moment. The warm praise of his fellow-players was meaningless to him. Something was terribly wrong. He knew he shrank from going into the box again, yet dared not admit it to himself. He tried to think clearly, and found his mind in a whirl. When the Wayne batters went out in one, two, three order, and it was time for Ken to pitch again, he felt ice form in his veins. "Only six more hitters!" called Reddy's warning voice. It meant cheer and praise from Reddy, but to Ken it seemed a knell. "Am I weakening?" muttered Ken. "Am I going up in the air? _What_ is wrong with me?" He was nervous now and could not stand still and he felt himself trembling. The ball was wet from the sweat in his hands; his hair hung damp over his brow and he continually blew it out of his eyes. With all his spirit he crushed back the almost overwhelming desire to hurry, hurry, hurry. Once more, in a kind of passion, he fought off the dreaded unknown weakness. With two balls pitched to Starke he realized that he had lost control of his curve. He was not frightened for the loss of his curve, but he went stiff with fear that he might lose control of his fast ball, his best and last resort. Grimly he swung and let drive. Starke lined the ball to left. The crowd lifted itself with a solid roar, and when Homans caught the hit near the foul flag, subsided with a long groan. Ken set his teeth. He knew he was not right, but did any one else know it? He was getting magnificent support and luck was still with him. "Over the pan, Peg! Don't waste one!" floated from Reddy, warningly. Then Ken felt sure that Reddy had seen or divined his panic. How soon would the Place players find it out? With his throat swelling and his mouth dry and his whole body in a ferment Ken pitched to Martin. The short-stop hit to Weir, who made a superb stop and throw. Two out! From all about Ken on the diamond came the low encouraging calls of his comrades. Horton, a burly left-hander, stepped forward, swinging a wagon-tongue. Ken could no longer steady himself and he pitched hurriedly. One ball, two balls, one strike, three balls--how the big looming Horton stood waiting over the plate! Almost in despair Ken threw again, and Horton smote the ball with a solid rap. It was a low bounder. Raymond pitched forward full length toward first base and the ball struck in his glove with a crack, and stuck there. Raymond got up and tossed it to McCord. A thunder of applause greeted this star play of the game. The relief was so great that Ken fairly tottered as he went in to the bench. Worry did not look at him. He scarcely heard what the boys said; he felt them patting him on the back. Then to his amaze, and slowly mounting certainty of disaster, the side was out, and it was again his turn to pitch. "Only three more, Peg! The tail end of the batting list. _Hang on!_" said Reddy, as he trotted out. Ken's old speed and control momentarily came back to him. Yet he felt he pitched rather by instinct than intent. He struck Griffith out. "Only two more, Peg!" called Reddy. The great audience sat in depressed, straining silence. Long since the few Wayne rooters had lost their vocal powers. Conroy hit a high fly to McCord. "Oh, Peg, _only one more!_" came the thrilling cry. No other Wayne player could speak a word then. With Salisbury up, Ken had a momentary flash of his old spirit and he sent a straight ball over the plate, meaning it to be hit. Salisbury did hit it, and safely, through short. The long silent, long waiting crowd opened up with yells and stamping feet. A horrible, cold, deadly sickness seized upon Ken as he faced the fleet, sure-hitting Keene. He lost his speed, he lost his control. Before he knew what had happened he had given Keene a base on balls. Two on bases and two out! The Place players began to leap and fling up their arms and scream. When out of their midst Prince ran to the plate a piercing, ear-splitting sound pealed up from the stands. As in a haze Ken saw the long lines of white-sleeved students become violently agitated and move up and down to strange, crashing yells. Then Ken Ward knew. That was the famed Place cheer for victory at the last stand. It was the trumpet-call of Ken's ordeal. His mind was as full of flashes of thought as there were streaks and blurs before his eyes. He understood Worry now. He knew now what was wrong with him, what had been coming all through that terrible game. The whole line of stands and bleachers wavered before him, and the bright colors blended in one mottled band. Still it was in him to fight to the last gasp. The pain in his breast, and the nausea in his stomach, and the whirling fury in his mind did not make him give up, though they robbed him of strength. The balls he threw to Prince were wide of the plate and had nothing of his old speed. Prince, also, took his base on balls. Bases full and two out! MacNeff, the captain, fronted the plate, and shook his big bat at Ken. Of all the Place hitters Ken feared him the least. He had struck MacNeff out twice, and deep down in his heart stirred a last desperate rally. He had only to keep the ball high and in close to win this game. Oh! for the control that had been his pride! The field and stands seemed to swim round Ken and all he saw with his half-blinded eyes was the white plate, the batter, and Dean and the umpire. Then he took his swing and delivered the ball. It went true. MacNeff missed it. Ken pitched again. The umpire held up one finger of each hand. One ball and one strike. Two more rapid pitches, one high and one wide. Two strikes and two balls. Ken felt his head bursting and there were glints of red before his eyes. He bit his tongue to keep it from lolling out. He was almost done. That ceaseless, infernal din had benumbed his being. With a wrenching of his shoulder Ken flung up another ball. MacNeff leaned over it, then let it go by. Three and two! It was torture for Ken. He had the game in his hands, yet could not grasp it. He braced himself for the pitch and gave it all he had left in him. "_Too low!_" he moaned. MacNeff killed low balls. The big captain leaped forward with a terrific swing and hit the ball. It lined over short, then began to rise, shot over Homans, and soared far beyond, to drop and roll and roll. Through darkening sight Ken Ward saw runner after runner score, and saw Homans pick up the ball as MacNeff crossed the plate with the winning run. In Ken's ears seemed a sound of the end of the world. He thought himself the centre of a flying wheel. It was the boys crowding around him. He saw their lips move but caught no words. Then choking and tottering, upheld by Reddy Ray's strong arm, the young pitcher walked off the field. XVII KEN'S DAY The slow return to the tavern, dressing and going to the station, the ride home, the arrival at the training-house, the close-pressing, silent companionship of Reddy Ray, Worry, and Raymond--these were dim details of that day of calamity. Ken Ward's mind was dead--locked on that fatal moment when he pitched a low ball to MacNeff. His friends left him in the darkness of his room, knowing instinctively that it was best for him to be alone. Ken undressed and crawled wearily into bed and stretched out as if he knew and was glad he would never move his limbs again. The silence and the darkness seemed to hide him from himself. His mind was a whirling riot of fire, and in it was a lurid picture of that moment with MacNeff at bat. Over and over and over he lived it in helpless misery. His ears were muffled with that huge tide of sound. Again and again and again he pitched the last ball, to feel his heart stop beating, to see the big captain lunge at the ball, to watch it line and rise and soar. But gradually exhaustion subdued his mental strife, and he wandered in mind and drifted into sleep. When he woke it was with a cold, unhappy shrinking from the day. His clock told the noon hour; he had slept long. Outside the June sunlight turned the maple leaves to gold. Was it possible, Ken wondered dully, for the sun ever to shine again? Then Scotty came bustling in. "Mr. Wau-rd, won't ye be hovin' breakfast?" he asked, anxiously. "Scotty, I'll never eat again," replied Ken. There were quick steps upon the stairs and Worry burst in, rustling a newspaper. "Hello, old man!" he called, cheerily. "Say! Look at this!" He thrust the paper before Ken's eyes and pointed to a column: Place Beat Wayne by a Lucky Drive. Young Ward Pitched the Greatest Game Ever Pitched on Place Field and Lost It in the Ninth, with Two Men Out and Three and Two on MacNeff Ken's dull, gloom-steeped mind underwent a change, but he could not speak. He sat up in bed, clutching the paper, and gazing from it to the coach. Raymond came in, followed by Homans, and, last, Reddy Ray, who sat down upon the bed. They were all smiling, and that seemed horrible to Ken. "But, Worry--Reddy--I--I lost the game--threw it away!" faltered Ken. "Oh no, Peg. You pitched a grand game. Only in the stretch you got one ball too low," said Reddy. "Peg, you started to go up early in the game," added Worry, with a smile, as if the fact was amusing. "You made your first balloon-ascension in the seventh. And in the ninth you exploded. I never seen a better case of up-in-the-air. But, Peg, in spite of it you pitched a wonderful game. You had me guessin'. I couldn't take you out of the box. Darn me if I didn't think you'd shut Place out in spite of your rattles!" "Then--after all--it's not so terrible?" Ken asked, breathlessly. "Why, boy, it's all right. We can lose a game, and to lose one like that--it's as good as winnin'. Say! I'm a liar if I didn't see 'em Place hitters turnin' gray-headed! Listen! That game over there was tough on all the kids, you most of all, of course. But you all stood the gaff. You've fought out a grillin' big game away from home. That's over. You'll never go through that again. But it was the makin' of you.... Here, look this over! Mebbe it'll cheer you up." He took something from Raymond and tossed it upon the bed. It looked like a round, red, woolly bundle. Ken unfolded it, to disclose a beautiful sweater, with a great white "W" in the centre. "The boys all got 'em this mornin'," added Worry. It was then that the tragedy of the Place game lost its hold on Ken, and retreated until it stood only dimly in outline. "I'll--I'll be down to lunch," said Ken, irrelevantly. His smiling friends took the hint and left the room. Ken hugged the sweater while reading the _Times-Star's_ account of the game. Whoever the writer was, Ken loved him. Then he hid his face in the pillow, and though he denied to himself that he was crying, when he arose it was certain that the pillow was wet. An hour later Ken presented himself at lunch, once more his old amiable self. The boys freely discussed baseball--in fact, for weeks they had breathed and dreamed baseball--but Ken noted, for the first time, where superiority was now added to the old confidence. The Wayne varsity had found itself. It outclassed Herne; it was faster than Place; it stood in line for championship honors. "Peg, you needn't put on your uniform to-day," said the coach. "You rest up. But go over to Murray and have your arm rubbed. Is it sore or stiff?" "Not at all. I could work again to-day," replied Ken. That afternoon, alone in his room, he worked out his pitching plan for Saturday's game. It did not differ materially from former plans. But for a working basis he had self-acquired knowledge of the Place hitters. It had been purchased at dear cost. He feared none of them except Prince. He decided to use a high curve ball over the plate and let Prince hit, trusting to luck and the players behind him. Ken remembered how the Place men had rapped hard balls at Raymond. Most of them were right-field hitters. Ken decided to ask Homans to play Reddy Ray in right field. Also he would arrange a sign with Reddy and Raymond and McCord so they would know when he intended to pitch speed on the outside corner of the plate. For both his curve and fast ball so pitched were invariably hit toward right field. When it came to MacNeff, Ken knew from the hot rankling deep down in him that he would foil that hitter. He intended to make the others hit, pitching them always, to the best of his judgment and skill, those balls they were least likely to hit safely, yet which would cut the corners of the plate if let go. No bases on balls this game, that he vowed grimly. And if he got in a pinch he would fall back upon his last resort, the fast jump ball; and now that he had gone through his baptism of fire he knew he was not likely to lose his control. So after outlining his plan he believed beyond reasonable doubt that he could win the game. The evening of that day he confided his plan to Reddy Ray and had the gratification of hearing it warmly commended. While Ken was with Reddy the coach sent word up to all rooms that the boys were to "cut" baseball talk. They were to occupy their minds with reading, study, or games. "It's pretty slow," said Reddy. "Peg, let's have some fun with somebody." "I'm in. What'll we do?" "Can't you think? You're always leaving schemes to me. Use your brains, boy." Ken pondered a moment and then leaped up in great glee. "Reddy, I've got something out of sight," he cried. "Spring it, then." "Well, it's this: Kel Raymond is perfectly crazy about his new sweater. He moons over it and he carries it around everywhere. Now it happens that Kel is a deep sleeper. He's hard to wake up. I've always had to shake him and kick him to wake him every morning. I'm sure we could get him in that sweater without waking him. So to-morrow morning you come down early, before seven, and help me put the sweater on Kel. We'll have Worry and the boys posted and we'll call them in to see Kel, and then we'll wake him and swear he slept in his sweater." "Peg, you've a diabolical bent of mind. That'll be great. I'll be on the job bright and early." Ken knew he could rely on the chattering of the sparrows in the woodbine round his window. They always woke him, and this morning was no exception. It was after six and a soft, balmy breeze blew in. Ken got up noiselessly and dressed. Raymond snored in blissful ignorance of the conspiracy. Presently a gentle tapping upon the door told Ken that Reddy was in the hall. Ken let him in and they held a whispered consultation. "Let's see," said Reddy, picking up the sweater. "It's going to be an all-fired hard job. This sweater's tight. We'll wake him." "Not on your life!" exclaimed Ken. "Not if we're quick. Now you roll up the sweater so--and stretch it on your hands--so--and when I lift Kel up you slip it over his head. It'll be like pie." The operation was deftly though breathlessly performed, and all it brought from Raymond was a sleepy: "Aw--lemme sleep," and then he was gone again. Ken and Reddy called all the boys, most of whom were in their pajamas, and Worry and Scotty and Murray, and got them all up-stairs in Raymond's room. Raymond lay in bed very innocently asleep, and no one would have suspected that he had not slept in his sweater. "Well, I'll be dog-goned!" ejaculated Worry, laughing till he cried. Murray was hugely delighted. These men were as much boys as the boys they trained. The roar of laughter awakened Raymond, and he came out of sleep very languid and drowsy. "Aw, Ken, lemme sleep s'more." He opened his eyes and, seeing the room full of boys and men, he looked bewildered, then suspicious. "Wull, what do all you guys want?" "We only came in to see you asleep in your new varsity sweater," replied Ken, with charming candor. At this Raymond discovered the sweater and he leaped out of bed. "It's a lie! I never slept in it! Somebody jobbed me! I'll lick him!... It's a lie, I say!" He began to hop up and down in a black fury. The upper half of him was swathed in the red sweater; beneath that flapped the end of his short nightgown; and out of that stuck his thin legs, all knotted and spotted with honorable bruises won in fielding hard-batted balls. He made so ludicrous a sight that his visitors roared with laughter. Raymond threw books, shoes, everything he could lay his hands upon, and drove them out in confusion. Saturday seemed a long time in arriving, but at last it came. All morning the boys kept close under cover of the training-house. Some one sent them a package of placards. These were round, in the shape of baseballs. They were in the college colors, the background of which was a bright red, and across this had been printed in white the words: "_Peg Ward's Day!_" "What do you think of that?" cried the boys, with glistening eyes. But Ken was silent. Worry came in for lunch and reported that the whole west end of the city had been placarded. "The students have had millions of 'em cards printed," said Worry. "They're everywhere. Murray told me there was a hundred students tackin' 'em up on the stands and bleachers. They've got 'em on sticks of wood for pennants for the girls.... 'Peg Ward's Day!' Well, I guess!" At two-thirty o'clock the varsity ran upon the field, to the welcoming though somewhat discordant music of the university band. What the music lacked in harmony it made up in volume, and as noise appeared to be the order of the day, it was most appropriate. However, a great booming cheer from the crowded stands drowned the band. It was a bright summer day, with the warm air swimming in the thick, golden light of June, with white clouds sailing across the blue sky. Grant Field resembled a beautiful crater with short, sloping sides of white and gold and great splashes of red and dots of black all encircling a round lake of emerald. Flashes of gray darted across the green, and these were the Place players in practice. Everywhere waved and twinkled and gleamed the red-and-white Wayne placards. And the front of the stands bore wide-reaching bands of these colored cards. The grand-stand, with its pretty girls and gowns, and waving pennants, and dark-coated students, resembled a huge mosaic of many colors, moving and flashing in the sunlight. One stand set apart for the Place supporters was a solid mass of blue and gold. And opposite to it, in vivid contrast, was a long circle of bleachers, where five thousand red-placarded, red-ribboned Wayne students sat waiting to tear the air into shreds with cheers. Dale and Stevens and Bryan, wearing their varsity sweaters, strode to and fro on the cinder-path, and each carried a megaphone. Cheers seemed to lurk in the very atmosphere. A soft, happy, subdued roar swept around the field. Fun and good-nature and fair-play and love of college pervaded that hum of many voices. Yet underneath it all lay a suppressed spirit, a hidden energy, waiting for the battle. When Wayne had finished a brief, snappy practice, Kern, a National League umpire, called the game, with Place at bat. Ken Ward walked to the pitcher's slab amid a prolonged outburst, and ten thousand red cards bearing his name flashed like mirrors against the sunlight. Then the crashing Place yell replied in defiance. Ken surveyed his fellow-players, from whom came low, inspiriting words; then, facing the batter, Keene, he eyed him in cool speculation, and swung into supple action. The game started with a rush. Keene dumped the ball down the third-base line. Blake, anticipating the play, came rapidly in, and bending while in motion picked up the ball and made a perfect snap-throw to McCord, beating Keene by a foot. Prince drove a hot grass-cutter through the infield, and the Place stand let out shrill, exultant yells. MacNeff swung powerfully on the first ball, which streaked like a flitting wing close under his chin. Prince, with a good lead, had darted for second. It was wonderful how his little, short legs carried him so swiftly. And his slide was what might have been expected of a famous football player. He hit the ground and shot into the bag just as Raymond got Dean's unerring throw too late. Again the Place rooters howled. MacNeff watched his second strike go by. The third pitch, remorselessly true to that fatal place, retired him on strikes; and a roll of thunder pealed from under the Wayne bleachers. Starke struck at the first ball given him. The Place waiters were not waiting on Ken to-day; evidently the word had gone out to hit. Ken's beautiful, speedy ball, breast high, was certainly a temptation. Starke lifted a long, lofty fly far beyond Homans, who ran and ran, and turned to get it gracefully at his breast. Worry Arthurs sat stern and intent upon the Wayne bench. "Get that hit back and go them a run better!" was his sharp order. The big, loose-jointed Salisbury, digging his foot into the dirt, settled down and swung laboriously. Homans waited. The pitch was a strike, and so was the next. But strikes were small matters for the patient Homans. He drew three balls after that, and then on the next he hit one of his short, punky safeties through the left side of the infield. The Wayne crowd accepted it with vigor of hands and feet. Raymond trotted up, aggressive and crafty. He intended to bunt, and the Place infield knew it and drew in closer. Raymond fouled one, then another, making two strikes. But he dumped the next and raced for the base. Salisbury, big and slow as he was, got the ball and threw Raymond out. Homans over-ran second, intending to go on, but, halted by Weir's hoarse coaching, he ran back. When Reddy Ray stepped out it was to meet a rousing cheer, and then the thousands of feet went crash! crash! crash! Reddy fouled the first ball over the grand-stand. Umpire Kern threw out a new one, gleaming white. The next two pitches were wide; the following one Reddy met with the short poke he used when hitting to left field. The ball went over Martin's head, scoring Homans with the first run of the game. That allowed the confident Wayne crowd to get up and yell long and loud. Weir fouled out upon the first ball pitched, and Blake, following him, forced Reddy out at second on an infield hit. Place tied the score in the second inning on Weir's fumble of Martin's difficult grounder, a sacrifice by Horton, and Griffith's safe fly back of second. With the score tied, the teams blanked inning after inning until the fifth. Wayne found Salisbury easy to bat, but a Place player was always in front of the hit. And Place found Peg Ward unsolvable when hits meant runs. Ken kept up his tireless, swift cannonading over the plate, making his opponents hit, and when they got a runner on base he extended himself with the fast raise ball. In the first of the fifth, with two out, Prince met one of Ken's straight ones hard and fair and drove the ball into the bleachers for a home-run. That solid blue-and-gold square of Place supporters suddenly became an insane tossing, screeching mêlée. The great hit also seemed to unleash the fiery spirit which had waited its chance. The Wayne players came in for their turn like angry bees. Trace got a base on balls. Dean sacrificed. Ken also essayed to bunt and fouled himself out on strikes. Again Homans hit safely, but the crafty Keene, playing close, held Trace at third. "We want the score!" Crash! crash! crash! went the bleachers. With Raymond up and two out, the chance appeared slim, for he was not strong at batting. But he was great at trying, and this time, as luck would have it, he hit clean through second. Trace scored, and Homans, taking desperate risk, tried to reach home on the hit and failed. It was fast, exciting work, and the crowd waxed hotter and hotter. For Place the lumbering Horton hit a twisting grounder to McCord, who batted it down with his mitt, jumped for it, turned and fell on the base, but too late to get his man. Griffith swung on Ken's straight ball and, quite by accident, blocked a little bunt out of reach of both Dean and Ken. It was a safe hit. Conroy stepped into Ken's fast ball, which ticked his shirt, and the umpire sent him down to first amid the vociferous objections of the Wayne rooters. Three runners on bases and no one out. How the Place students bawled and beat their seats and kicked the floor! Ken took a longer moment of deliberation. He showed no sign that the critical situation unnerved him. But his supple shoulders knit closer, and his long arm whipped harder as he delivered the ball. Salisbury, a poor batter, apparently shut his eyes and swung with all his might. All present heard the ringing crack of the bat, but few saw the ball. Raymond leaped lengthwise to the left and flashed out his glove. There was another crack, of different sound. Then Raymond bounded over second base, kicking the bag, and with fiendish quickness sped the ball to first. Kern, the umpire, waved both arms wide. Then to the gasping audience the play became clear. Raymond had caught Salisbury's line hit in one hand, enabling him to make a triple play. A mighty shout shook the stands. Then strong, rhythmic, lusty cheers held the field in thrall for the moment, while the teams changed sides. In Wayne's half of the sixth both Weir and McCord hit safely, but sharp fielding by Place held them on base. Again the formidable head of Place's batting order was up. Keene lined to right field, a superb hit that looked good for a triple, but it had not the speed to get beyond the fleet sprinter. Ken eyed the curly-haired Prince as if he was saying to himself: "I'm putting them over to-day. Hit if you can!" Prince appeared to jump up and chop Ken's first pitch. The ball struck on fair ground and bounded very high, and was a safe hit. Prince took a long lead off first base, and three times slid back to the bag when Ken tried to catch him. The fast football man intended to steal; Ken saw it, Dean saw it; everybody saw it. Whereupon Ken delivered a swift ball outside of the plate. As Prince went down little Dean caught the pitch and got the ball away quick as lightning. Raymond caught it directly in the base-line, and then, from the impact of the sliding Prince, he went hurtling down. Runner, baseman, and ball disappeared in a cloud of dust. Kern ran nimbly down the field and waved Prince off. But Raymond did not get up. The umpire called time. Worry Arthurs ran out, and he and Weir carried Raymond to the bench, where they bathed his head and wiped the blood from his face. Presently Raymond opened his eyes. "Wull, what struck me?" he asked. "Oh, nothin'. There was a trolley loose in the field," replied Worry. "Can you get up? Why did you try to block that football rusher?" Raymond shook his head. "Did I tag the big fat devil?" he queried, earnestly. "Is he out?" "You got him a mile," replied Worry. After a few moments Raymond was able to stand upon his feet, but he was so shaky that Worry sent Schoonover to second. Then the cheering leaders before the bleachers bellowed through their megaphones, and the students, rising to their feet, pealed out nine ringing "_Waynes!_" and added a roaring "Raymond!" to the end. With two out, Kern called play. Once again MacNeff was at bat. He had not made a foul in his two times up. He was at Ken's mercy, and the Wayne rooters were equally merciless. "Ho! the slugging captain comes!" "Get him a board!" "Fluke hitter!" "Mac, that was a lucky stab of yours Wednesday! Hit one _now_!" No spectator of that game missed Ken's fierce impetuosity when he faced MacNeff. He was as keen strung as a wire when he stood erect in the box, and when he got into motion he whirled far around, swung back bent, like a spring, and seemed to throw his whole body with the ball. One--two--three strikes that waved up in their velocity, and MacNeff for the third time went out. Clatter and smash came from the bleachers, long stamping of feet, whistle and bang, for voices had become weak. A hit, an error, a double play, another hit, a steal, and a forced out--these told Wayne's dogged, unsuccessful trial for the winning run. But Worry Arthurs had curtly said to his pitcher: "Peg, cut loose!" and man after man for Place failed to do anything with his terrific speed. It was as if Ken had reserved himself wholly for the finish. In the last of the eighth Dean hit one that caromed off Griffith's shin, and by hard running the little catcher made second. Ken sent him to third on a fielder's choice. It was then the run seemed forthcoming. Salisbury toiled in the box to coax the wary Homans. The Wayne captain waited until he got a ball to his liking. Martin trapped the hit and shot the ball home to catch Dean. It was another close decision, as Dean slid with the ball, but the umpire decided against the runner. "Peg, lam them over now!" called Reddy Ray. It was the first of the ninth, with the weak end of Place's hitting strength to face Ken. Griffith, Conroy, Salisbury went down before him as grass before a scythe. To every hitter Ken seemed to bring more effort, more relentless purpose to baffle them, more wonderful speed and control of his fast ball. Through the stands and bleachers the word went freely that the game would go to ten innings, eleven innings, twelve innings, with the chances against the tiring Salisbury. But on the Wayne bench there was a different order of conviction. Worry sparkled like flint. Homans, for once not phlegmatic, faced the coaching line at third. Raymond leaned pale and still against the bench. Ken was radiant. Reddy Ray bent over the row of bats and singled out his own. His strong, freckled hands clenched the bat and whipped it through the air. His eyes were on fire when he looked at the stricken Raymond. "Kel, something may happen yet before I get up to the plate," he said. "But if it doesn't--" Then he strode out, knocked the dirt from his spikes, and stepped into position. Something about Reddy at that moment, or something potent in the unforeseen play to come, quieted the huge crowd. Salisbury might have sensed it. He fussed with the ball and took a long while to pitch. Reddy's lithe form whirled around and seemed to get into running motion with the crack of the ball. Martin made a beautiful pick-up of the sharply bounding ball, but he might as well have saved himself the exertion. The championship sprinter beat the throw by yards. Suddenly the whole Wayne contingent arose in a body, a tribute to what they expected of Reddy, and rent Grant Field with one tremendous outburst. As it ceased a hoarse voice of stentorian volume rose and swelled on the air. "_Wayne wins!_ WATCH HIM RUN!" It came from Murray, who loved his great sprinter. Thrice Salisbury threw to MacNeff to hold Reddy close to first base, but he only wasted his strength. Then he turned toward the batter, and he had scarcely twitched a muscle in the beginning of his swing, when the keen sprinter was gone like a flash. His running gave the impression of something demon-like forced by the wind. He had covered the ground and was standing on the bag when Prince caught Conroy's throw. Pandemonium broke out in the stands and bleachers, and a piercing, continuous scream. The sprinter could not be stopped. That was plain. He crouched low, watching Salisbury. Again and again the pitcher tried to keep Reddy near second base, but as soon as Martin or Prince returned the ball Reddy took his lead off the bag. He meant to run on the first pitch; he was on his toes. And the audience went wild, and the Place varsity showed a hurried, nervous strain. They yelled to Salisbury, but neither he nor any one else could have heard a thunderbolt in that moment. Again Salisbury toed the rubber, and he hesitated, with his face turned toward second. But he had to pitch the ball, and as his elbow trembled the sprinter shot out of his tracks with the start that had made him famous. His red hair streaked in the wind like a waving flame. His beautiful stride swallowed distance. Then he sailed low and slid into the base as the ball struck Griffith's hands. Reddy was on third now, with no one out, with two balls upon Weir and no strikes. In the fury of sound runner and batter exchanged a glance that was a sign. The sprinter crouched low, watching Salisbury. For the third time, as the pitcher vibrated with the nervous force preceding his delivery, Reddy got his start. He was actually running before the ball left Salisbury's hand. Almost it seemed that with his marvellous fleetness he was beating the ball to the plate. But as the watchers choked in agony of suspense Weir bunted the ball, and Reddy Ray flashed across the plate with the winning run. Then all that seemed cheering, din, and stamping roar deadened in an earth-shaking sound like an avalanche. The students piled out of the bleachers in streams and poured on the field. An irresistible, hungry, clamoring flood, they submerged the players. Up went Ken upon sturdy shoulders, and up went Reddy Ray and Kel and Homans and Dean--all the team, and last the red-faced Worry Arthurs. Then began the triumphant march about Grant Field and to the training-house. It was a Wayne day, a day for the varsity, for Homans and Raymond, and for the great sprinter, but most of all it was Peg Ward's day. XVIII BREAKING TRAINING The Wayne varsity was a much-handled, storm-tossed team before it finally escaped the clutches of the students. Every player had a ringing in his ears and a swelling in his heart. When the baseball uniforms came off they were carefully packed in the bottoms of trunks, and twelve varsity sweaters received as tender care as if they were the flimsy finery dear to the boys' sisters. At six the players were assembled in the big reading-room, and there was a babel of exultant conversation. Worry suddenly came in, shouting to persons without, who manifestly wanted to enter. "Nothin' doin' yet! I'll turn the boys over to you in one hour!" Then he banged the door and locked it. Worry was a sight to behold. His collar was unbuttoned, and his necktie disarranged. He had no hat. His hair was damp and rumpled, and his red face worked spasmodically. "Where's Peg?" he yelled, and his little bright eyes blinked at his players. It was plain that Worry could not see very well then. Some one pushed Ken out, and Worry fell on his neck. He hugged him close and hard. Then he dived at Reddy and mauled him. Next he fell all over little crippled Raymond, who sat propped up in an arm-chair. For once Raymond never murmured for being jumped on. Upon every player, and even the substitutes, Worry expressed his joy in violent manner, and then he fell down himself, perspiring, beaming, utterly exhausted. This man was not the cold, caustic coach of the cage-days, nor the stern, hard ruler from the bench, nor the smooth worker on his players' feelings. This was Worry Arthurs with his varsity at the close of a championship season. No one but the boys who had fought at his bidding for Wayne ever saw him like that. "Oh, Peg, it was glorious! This game gives us the record and the championship. Say, Peg, this was the great game for you to win. For you made Place hit, and then when they got runners on bases you shut down on 'em. You made MacNeff look like a dub. You gave that home-run to Prince." "I sure was after MacNeff's scalp," replied Ken. "And I put the ball over for Prince to hit. What else could I do? Why, that little chunky cuss has an eye, and he can sting the ball--he's almost as good as Reddy. But, Worry, you mustn't give me the credit. Reddy won the game, you know." "You talk like a kid," replied Reddy, for once not cool and easy. "I cut loose and ran some; but, Peg, you and Raymond won the game." "Wull, you make me sick," retorted Raymond, threatening to get up. "There wasn't anything to this day but Peg Ward." Ken replied with more heat than dignity, and quick as a flash he and Reddy and Raymond were involved in a wordy war, trying to place the credit for winning the game. They dragged some of the other boys into the fierce argument. Worry laughed and laughed; then, as this loyal bunch of players threatened to come to blows, he got angry. "_Shut up!_" he roared. "I never seen such a lot of hot-headed kids. Shut up, and let me tell you who won this Place game. It'll go down on record as a famous game, so you'll do well to have it straight. Listen! The Wayne varsity won this game. Homans, your captain, won it, because he directed the team and followed orders. He hit and run some, too. Reddy Ray won this game by bein' a blue streak of chain lightnin' on the bases. Raymond won it by makin' a hit when we all expected him to fall dead. He won it twice, the second time with the greatest fieldin' play ever pulled off on Grant Field. Dean won the game by goin' up and hangin' onto Peg's jump ball. McCord won it by diggin' low throws out of the dirt. Weir was around when it happened, wasn't he--and Blake and Trace? Then there was Peg himself. He won the game a _little_. Say! he had Place trimmed when he stepped on the slab in the first innin'. So you all won the big Wayne-Place game." Then Worry advanced impressively to the table, put his hand in his breast pocket and brought forth a paper. "You've won this for me, boys," he said, spreading the paper out. "What is it?" they asked, wonderingly. "Nothin' of much importance to you boys as compared with winnin' the game, but some to Worry Arthurs." He paused with a little choke. "It's a five-year contract to coach Wayne's baseball teams." A thundering cheer attested to the importance of that document to the boys. "Oh, Worry, but I'm glad!" cried Ken. "Then your son Harry will be in college next year--will be on the team?" "Say, he'll have to go some to make next year's varsity, with only two or three vacancies to fill. Now, fellows, I want to know things. Sit down now and listen." They all took seats, leaving the coach standing at the table. "Homans, is there any hope of your comin' back to college next year?" "None, I'm sorry to say," replied the captain. "Father intends to put me in charge of his business." "Reddy, how about a post-graduate course for you? You need that P.G." "Worry, come to think of it, I really believe my college education would not be complete without that P.G.," replied Reddy, with the old cool speech, and a merry twinkle in his eye. At this the boys howled like Indians, and Worry himself did a little war-dance. "Raymond, you'll come back?" went on the coach. The second-baseman appeared highly insulted. "Come back? Wull, what do you take me for? I'd like to see the guy who can beat me out of my place next season." This brought another hearty cheer. Further questioning made clear that all the varsity except Homans, Blake, and McCord would surely return to college. "Fine! Fine! Fine!" exclaimed Worry. Then he began to question each player as to what he intended to do through the summer months, and asked him to promise not to play ball on any summer nines. "Peg, you're the one I'm scared about," said Worry, earnestly. "These crack teams at the seashore and in the mountains will be hot after you. They've got coin too, Peg, and they'll spend it to get you." "All I've got to say is they'll waste their breath talking to me," replied Ken, with a short laugh. "What are you goin' to do all summer?" asked Worry, curiously. "Where will you be?" "I expect to go to Arizona." "Arizona? What in the deuce are you goin' way out there for?" Ken paused, and then when about to reply Raymond burst out. "Worry, he says it's forestry, but he only took up that fool subject because he likes to chase around in the woods. He's nutty about trees and bears and mustangs. He was in Arizona last summer. You ought to hear some of the stories he's told me. Why, if they're true he's got Frank Nelson and Jim Hawkins skinned to a frazzle." "For instance?" asked Worry, very much surprised and interested. "Why stories about how he was chased and captured by outlaws, and lassoed bears, and had scraps with Mexicans, and was in wild caves and forest fires, and lots about a Texas ranger who always carried two big guns. I've had the nightmare ever since we've been in the training-house. Oh, Ken can tell stories all right. He's as much imagination as he's got speed with a ball. And say, Worry, he's got the nerve to tell me that this summer he expects to help an old hunter lasso mountain-lions out there in Arizona. What do you think of that?" "It's straight goods!" protested Ken, solemnly facing the bright-eyed boys. "We want to go along!" yelled everybody. "Say, Peg, I ain't stuck on that idee, not a little bit," replied the coach, dubiously. "Worry has begun to worry about next season. He's afraid Peg will get that arm chewed off," put in Reddy. "Well, if I've got to choose between lettin' Peg chase mountain-lions and seein' him chased by 'em fat-head directors, I'll take my chances with the lions." Then all in a moment Worry became serious. "Boys, it's time to break trainin'. I ain't got much to say. You're the best team I ever developed. Let it go at that. In a few minutes you are free to go out to the banquets and receptions, to all that's waitin' for you. And it will be great. To-morrow you will be sayin' good-bye to me and to each other and scatterin' to your homes. But let's not forget each other and how we plugged this year. Sure, it was only baseball, but, after all, I think good, hard play, on the square and against long odds, will do as much for you as your studies. Let the old baseball coach assure you of that." He paused, paced a few steps to and fro, hands behind his back, thoughtful and somewhat sad. The members of the varsity sat pale and still, faces straight before them, eyes shining with memory of that long up-hill struggle, and glistening, too, with the thought that the time had come for parting. "Homans, will you please see to the election of the new captain?" said Worry. Homans stepped out briskly and placed a hat, twelve folded slips of paper, and a pencil upon the table. "Fellows, you will follow me in our regular batting order," directed Homans. "Each man is to write his name on one side of a slip of paper and his choice for captain on the other side. Drop the paper in the hat." Homans seated himself at the table and quickly cast his vote. Raymond hobbled up next. Reddy Ray followed him. And so, in silence, and with a certain grave dignity of manner that had yet a suggestion of pleasure, the members of the varsity voted. When they had resumed their seats Homans turned the slips out of the hat and unfolded them. "These votes will be given to the athletic directors and kept on record," he said. "But we will never see but one side of them. That is Wayne's rule in electing captains, so the players will not know how each voted. But this is an occasion I am happy to see when we shall all know who voted for who. It shall be a little secret of which we will never speak." He paused while he arranged the slips neatly together. "There are here twelve votes. Eleven have been cast for one player--one for another player! Will you all please step forward and look?" In an intense stillness the varsity surrounded the table. There was a sudden sharp gasp from one of them. With a frank, glad smile Homans held out his hand. "CAPTAIN WARD!" THE END 
38897	----	[Illustration: THE NEXT MOMENT THE HORSEHIDE WENT SPEEDING TOWARD THE PLATE.] Baseball Joe on the School Nine OR Pitching _for the_ Blue Banner _By_ LESTER CHADWICK AUTHOR OF "BASEBALL JOE OF THE SILVER STARS," "THE RIVAL PITCHERS," "A QUARTER-BACK'S PLUCK," "BATTING TO WIN," ETC. _ILLUSTRATED_ [Illustration] NEW YORK CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY BOOKS BY LESTER CHADWICK THE BASEBALL JOE SERIES =12mo. Illustrated= BASEBALL JOE OF THE SILVER STARS Or The Rivals of Riverside BASEBALL JOE ON THE SCHOOL NINE Or Pitching for the Blue Banner (_Other Volumes in Preparation_) THE COLLEGE SPORTS SERIES =12mo. Illustrated= THE RIVAL PITCHERS A Story of College Baseball A QUARTER-BACK'S PLUCK A Story of College Football BATTING TO WIN A Story of College Baseball THE WINNING TOUCHDOWN A Story of College Football (_Other Volumes in Preparation_) CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, New York Copyright, 1912, by CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY =Baseball Joe on the School Nine= CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I HITTING A TEACHER 1 II PLANNING A BATTLE 12 III AN ANGRY BULLY 23 IV JOE LEARNS SOMETHING 31 V THE TABLES TURNED 40 VI THE BULLY SNEERS 52 VII A CLASH WITH LUKE 58 VIII "WHO WILL PITCH?" 68 IX TOM'S PLAN FAILS 74 X THE BANNER PARADE 82 XI JOE HOPES AND FEARS 92 XII ON THE SCRUB 98 XIII JOE'S GREAT WORK 106 XIV THE GAME AT MORNINGSIDE 115 XV A STRANGE DISCOVERY 124 XVI A HOT MEETING 130 XVII THE INITIATION 136 XVIII "FIRE!" 143 XIX A THRILLING RESCUE 150 XX THE WARNING 160 XXI BAD NEWS 167 XXII BITTER DEFEAT 173 XXIII HIRAM IS OUT 183 XXIV TWO OF A KIND 190 XXV BY A CLOSE MARGIN 198 XXVI THE OVERTURNED STATUE 211 XXVII ON PROBATION 218 XXVIII LUKE'S CONFESSION 224 XXIX A GLORIOUS VICTORY 233 XXX GOOD NEWS--CONCLUSION 240 BASEBALL JOE ON THE SCHOOL NINE CHAPTER I HITTING A TEACHER "Look out now, fellows; here goes for a high one!" "Aw come off; you can't throw high without dislocating your arm, Peaches. Don't try it." "You get off the earth; I can so, Teeter. Watch me." "Let Joe Matson have a try. He can throw higher than you can, Peaches," and the lad who had last spoken grasped the arm of a tall boy, with a very fair complexion which had gained him the nickname of "Peaches and Cream," though it was usually shortened to "Peaches." There was a crowd of lads on the school grounds, throwing snowballs, when the offer of "Peaches" or Dick Lantfeld was made. "Don't let him throw, Teeter," begged George Bland, jokingly. "I'll not," retorted "Teeter" Nelson, whose first name was Harry, but who had gained his appellation because of a habit he had of "teetering" on his tiptoes when reciting in class. "I've got Peaches all right," and there was a struggle between the two lads, one trying to throw a snowball, and the other trying to prevent him. "Come on, Joe," called Teeter, to a tall, good-looking, and rather quiet youth who stood beside a companion. "Let's see you throw. You're always good at it, and I'll keep Peaches out of the way." "Shall we try, Tom?" asked Joe Matson of his chum. "Might as well. Come on!" "Yes, let 'Sister' Davis have a whack at it too," urged George Bland. Tom Davis, who was Joe Matson's particular chum, was designated "Sister" because, in an incautious moment, when first coming to Excelsior Hall, he had shown a picture of his very pretty sister, Mabel. Tom and Joe, who had come upon the group of other pupils after the impromptu snowball throwing contest had started, advanced further toward their school companions. Peaches and Teeter were still engaged in their friendly struggle, until Peaches tripped over a stone, concealed under a blanket of snow, and both went down in a struggling heap. "Make it a touchdown!" yelled George Bland. "Yes, shove him over the line, Peaches!" cried Tom. "Hold him! Hold him!" implored Joe, and the little group of lads, which was increased by the addition of several other pupils, circled about the struggling ones, laughing at their plight. "D-d-down!" finally panted Peaches, when Teeter held his face in the soft snow. "Let me up, will you?" "Promise not to try to throw a high one?" asked Teeter, still maintaining his position astride of Peaches. "Yes--I--I guess so." "That doesn't go with me; you've got to be sure." "All right, let a fellow up, will you? There's a lot of snow down my neck." "That's what happened to me the last time you fired a high snowball, Peaches. That's why I didn't want you to try another while I'm around. You wait until I'm off the campus if you've got to indulge in high jinks. Come on now, fellows, since Peaches has promised to behave himself, let the merry dance go on. Have you tried a shot, Joe? Or you, Sister," and Teeter looked at the newcomers. "Not yet," answered Joe Matson with a smile. "Haven't had a chance." "That's right," put in Tom Davis. "You started a rough-house with Peaches as soon as we got here. What's on, anyhow?" "Oh, we're just seeing how straight we can aim with snowballs," explained Teeter. "See if you can hit that barrel head down there," and he pointed to the object in question, about forty yards away on the school campus. "See if you can hit the barrel, Joe," urged George Bland. "A lot of us have missed it, including Peaches, who seems to think his particular stunt is high throwing." "And so it is!" interrupted the lad with the clear complexion. "I can beat any one here at----" "Save that talk until the baseball season opens!" retorted Teeter. "Go ahead, Joe and Tom. And you other fellows can try if you like," he added, for several more pupils had joined the group. It might seem easy to hit the head of a barrel at that distance, but either the lads were not expert enough or else the snowballs, being of irregular shapes and rather light, did not carry well. Whatever the cause, the fact remained that the barrel received only a few scattering shots and these on the outer edges of the head. "Now we'll see what Sister Davis can do!" exclaimed Nat Pierson, as Joe's chum stepped up to the firing line. "Oh, I'm not so much," answered Tom with a half smile. "Joe will beat me all to pieces." "Joe Matson sure can throw," commented Teeter, in a low voice to George Bland. "I remember what straight aim he had the last time we built a fort, and had a snow fight." "I should say yes," agreed George. "And talk about speed!" he added. "Wow! One ball he threw soaked me in the ear. I can feel it yet!" and he rubbed the side of his head reflectively. The first ball that Tom threw just clipped the upper rim of the barrel head, and there were some exclamations of admiration. The second one was a clean miss, but not by a large margin. The third missile split into fragments on the rim of the head. "Good!" cried Peaches. "That's the way to do it!" "Wait until you see Joe plug it," retorted Tom with a smile. "Oh, I'm not such a wonder," remarked our hero modestly, as he advanced to the line. In his hand he held three very hard and smooth snowballs, which he spent some time in making in anticipation of his turn to throw. "I haven't had much practice lately," he went on, "though I used to throw pretty straight when the baseball season was on." Joe carefully measured with his eye the distance to the barrel. Then he swung his arm around a few times to "limber up." "That fellow used to pitch on some nine, I'll wager," said Teeter in a whisper to Peaches. "Yes, I heard something about him being a star on some small country team," was the retort. "But let's watch him." Joe threw. The ball left his hand with tremendous speed and, an instant later, had struck the head of the barrel with a resounding "ping!" "In the centre! In the centre!" yelled Peaches with enthusiasm as he capered about. "A mighty good shot!" complimented Teeter, doing his particular toe stunt. "Not exactly in the centre," admitted Joe. "Here goes for another." Once more he threw, and again the snowball hit the barrel head, close to the first, but not quite so near the middle. "You can do better than that, Joe," spoke Tom in a low voice. "I'm going to try," was all the thrower said. Again his arm was swung around with the peculiar motion used by many good baseball pitchers. Again the snowball shot forward, whizzing through the air. Again came that resounding thud on the hollow barrel, this time louder than before. "Right on the nose!" "A clean middle shot!" "A good plunk!" These cries greeted Joe's last effort, and, sure enough, when several lads ran to get a closer view of the barrel, they came back to report that the ball was exactly in the centre of the head. "Say, you're a wonder!" exclaimed Peaches, admiringly. "Who's a wonder?" inquired a new voice, and a tall heavily-built lad, with rather a coarse and brutal face, sauntered up to the group. "Who's been doing wonderful stunts, Peaches?" "Joe Matson here. He hit the barrel head three times out of three, and the best any of us could do was once. Besides, Joe poked it in the exact centre once, and nearly twice." "That's easy," spoke the newcomer, with a sneer in his voice. "Let's see you do it, Shell," invited George Bland. "Go on, Hiram, show 'em what you can do," urged Luke Fodick, who was a sort of toady to Hiram Shell, the school bully, if ever there was one. "Just watch me," requested Hiram, and hastily taking some hard round snowballs away from a smaller lad who had made them for his own use, the bully threw. I must do him the credit to say that he was a good shot, and all three of his missiles hit the barrel head. But two of them clipped the outer edge, and only one was completely on, and that nowhere near the centre. "Joe Matson's got you beat a mile!" exclaimed Peaches. "That's all right," answered Hiram with the easy superior air he generally assumed. "If I'd been practicing all day as you fellows have I could poke the centre every time, too." As a matter of fact, those three balls were the first Joe had thrown that day, but he did not think it wise to say so, for Hiram had mean ways about him, and none of the pupils at Excelsior Hall cared to rouse his anger unnecessarily. "Well, I guess we've all had our turns," spoke George Bland, after Hiram had thrown a few more balls so carelessly as to miss the barrel entirely. "I haven't," piped up Tommy Burton, one of the youngest lads. "Hiram took my snowballs." "Aw, what of it, kid?" sneered the bully. "There's lots more snow. Make yourself another set and see what you can do." But Tommy was bashful, and the attention he had thus drawn upon himself made him blush. He was a timid lad and he shrank away now, evidently fearing Shell. "Never mind," spoke Peaches kindly, "we'll have another contest soon and you can be in it." "Let's see who can throw the farthest," suggested Hiram. His great strength gave him a decided advantage in this, as he very well knew. The other boys also knew this, but did not like to refuse to enter the lists with him, so the long-distance throwing was started. Hiram did throw hard and far, but he met his match in Joe Matson, and the bully evidently did not like it. He sneered at Joe's style and did his best to beat him, but could not. "I ate too much dinner to-day," said Hiram finally, as an excuse, "so I can't throw well," and though there were covert smiles at this palpable excuse, no one said anything. Then came other contests, throwing at trees and different objects. Finally Hiram and Luke took themselves off, and everyone else was glad of it. "He's only a bluff, Shell is!" murmured Peaches. "And mean," added George. "Joe, I wonder if you can throw over those trees," spoke Tom, pointing to a fringe of big maples which bordered a walk that ran around the school campus. "That's something of a throw for height and distance. Want to try?" "Sure," assented our hero, "though I don't know as I can do it." "Wait, I'm with you," put in Peaches. "We'll throw together." They quickly made a couple of hard, smooth balls, and at the word from Tom, Joe and Peaches let go together, for it was to be a sort of contest in swiftness. The white missiles sailed through the air side by side, and not far apart. Higher and higher they went, until they both topped the trees, and began to go down on the other side. Joe's was far in advance of the snowball of Peaches, however, and went higher. As the balls descended and went out of sight, there suddenly arose from the other side of the trees a series of expostulating yells. "Stop it! Stop that, I say! How dare you throw snowballs at me? I shall report you at once! Who are you? Don't you dare to run!" "We--we hit some one," faltered Peaches, his fair complexion blushing a bright red. "I--I guess we did," admitted Joe. There was no doubt of it a moment later, for through the trees came running a figure whose tall hat was battered over his head by the snowballs, some fragments of the missiles still clinging to the tile. "You sure did," added Teeter, stifling a laugh. "And of all persons in the school but Professor Rodd. Oh my! Oh wow! You're in for it now! He won't do a thing to you fellows! Look at his hat! Here he comes!" Professor Elias Rodd, one of the strictest and certainly the "fussiest" instructor at Excelsior, was hurrying toward the group of boys. CHAPTER II PLANNING A BATTLE Professor Elias Rodd was rather elderly, and, as he never took much exercise, his sprinting abilities were not pronounced. So it took him about a minute and a half to cross the campus to where the little group of lads awaited him--anxious waiting it was too, on the part of Joe and Peaches. And in that minute and a half, before the excitement begins, I want to take the opportunity to tell you something about Joe Matson, and his chum Tom Davis, and how they happened to be at Excelsior Hall. Those of you who have read the first volume of this series entitled, "Baseball Joe of the Silver Stars," need no introduction to our hero. Sufficient to say that he was a lad who thought more of baseball than of any other sport. Joe was the son of Mr. and Mrs. John Matson, and he had a sister named Clara. Joe's father was an inventor of farming machinery and other apparatus, and had been employed by the Royal Harvester Works of Riverside, which was located on the Appleby River, in one of our New England States. Joe lived in Riverside, his family having moved there from Bentville. In the previous story I told how Joe made the acquaintance of Tom Davis, who lived in the house back of him. Joe became interested in the Silver Stars, the Riverside amateur nine, and through doing a favor for Darrell Blackney, the manager, was given a position in the field. But Joe wanted to become a pitcher, and, in fact, had pitched for the Bentville Boosters. He longed to fill the box for the Stars, and was finally given a chance. But he had incurred the enmity of Sam Morton, the regular pitcher, and there were several clashes between them. Finally Joe displaced Sam and won many games for the Stars. Mr. Matson had some trouble with his inventions, for Isaac Benjamin, manager of the harvester works, and Rufus Holdney, the latter once a friend of the inventor, determined to get certain valuable patents away from Mr. Matson. How they nearly succeeded, and how Joe foiled the plans of the plotters once, is told in the first book. Though Joe aided his father considerably, the young pitcher never lost his interest in baseball, and when, at the last moment, word came that Mr. Matson had seemingly lost everything, Joe hid his own feelings and went off to pitch the deciding championship game against the Resolutes of Rocky Ford, the bitter rivals of the Silver Stars. Joe's heart was heavy as he pitched, for he knew that if his father lost his money through the taking away of his patents there would be no chance of his going to boarding school, and Joe desired that above everything. But he pluckily pitched the game, which was a close and hot one. He won, making the Stars the champions of the county league; and then Joe hurried home. To his delight there was a message from his father, stating that at the last minute unexpected evidence had won the patent case for him, and he was now on the road to prosperity. So it was possible for Joe to go to boarding school after all, and, to his delight, Tom Davis prevailed upon his parents to send him. So Joe and Tom went off together to attend Excelsior Hall, just outside of Cedarhurst, and about a hundred miles from Riverside. Joe and Tom, who had each finished short courses in the Riverside High School, started for Excelsior Hall at the opening of the Fall term, and had spent the Winter, with the exception of the Christmas holidays, at the institution. They liked it very much, and made a number of friends as well as some enemies. Their chief foe, as well as that of nearly every other lad in Excelsior Hall, was Hiram Shell. The months passed, and with the waning of Winter, Joe began to feel the call of the baseball diamond. He and Tom got out some old gloves and balls and bats, and in the seclusion of their room they played over again, in imagination, some of the stirring games of the Silver Stars. As yet, however, there had been no baseball activity at Excelsior, and Joe was wondering what sort of team there would be, for that there must be one was a foregone conclusion. Joe knew that before he picked out Excelsior Hall as his particular boarding school. I might add that Dr. Wright Fillmore was the principal of Excelsior Hall. He was dubbed "Cæsar" because of his fondness for the character of that warrior, and because he was always holding him up as a pattern of some virtues to his pupils. Dr. Enos Rudden the mathematical teacher was one of the best-liked of all the instructors. He was fond of athletics, and acted as sort of head coach and trainer for the football and baseball teams. As much as Dr. Rudden was liked so was Professor Rodd disliked. Professor Rodd, who was privately termed "Sixteen and a Half" or "Sixteen" for short (because of the number of feet in a rod) was very exacting, fussy and a terror to the lads who failed to know their Latin lessons. And as we are at present immediately concerned with Professor Rodd, now I will go back to where we left him approaching the group of students, with wrath plainly written on his countenance. "Who--who threw that ball--that snowball?" the irate instructor cried. "I demand to know. Look at my hat! Look at it, I say!" and that there might be no difficulty in the boys seeing it Mr. Rodd endeavored to take off his head-piece. But he found this no easy matter, for the snowballs, hitting it with considerable force, had driven it down over his brow. He struggled to get it off and this only made him the more angry. "Who--who threw those balls at me?" again demanded Professor Rodd, and this time he managed to work off his hat. He held it out accusingly. "We--I--er--that is--we all were having a throwing contest," explained Teeter Nelson, diffidently, "and--er----" "You certainly _all_ didn't throw at me," interrupted the professor. "Only two balls struck me, and I demand to know who threw them. Or shall I report you all to Dr. Fillmore and have him keep you in bounds for a week; eh?" "Nobody meant to hit you, Professor," put in Tom. "You see----" "Will you or will you not answer my question?" snapped the instructor, in the same tone of voice he used in the classroom, when some luckless lad was stuttering and stammering over the difference between the _gerund_ and the _gerundive_. "Who threw the balls?" "I--I'm afraid I did," faltered Joe. "I threw one, and--and----" "I threw the other," popped out Peaches. "But it was an accident, Professor." "An accident! Humph!" "Yes," eagerly went on Peaches, who, having been longer at the school than Joe, knew better how to handle the irate instructor. "You see it was this way: We were having a contest, and wanted to see who could throw over the trees. Instead of throwing _primus_, _secondus_, and _tertius_ as we might have done, Joe and I threw together--um--er--ah _conjunctim_ so to speak," and Peaches managed to keep a straight face even while struggling to find the right Latin word. "Yes, we threw _conjunctim_--together--and we both wanted to see who could do the best--er--_supero_--you know, and--er we--well, it was an accident--_casus eventus_. We are awfully sorry, and----" Professor Rodd gave an audible sniff, but there was a marked softening of the hard lines about his face. He was an enthusiastic Latin scholar, and the trial of his life was to know that most of his pupils hated the study--indeed as many boys do. So when the teacher found one who took the trouble in ordinary conversation to use a few Latin words, or phrases, the professor was correspondingly pleased. Peaches knew this. "It was a _casus eventus_--an accident," the fair-cheeked lad repeated, very proud of his ability in the dead language. "We are very sorry," put in Joe, "and I'll pay for having your hat ironed." "We threw in _conjunctim_," murmured Peaches. "Ha! A very good attempt at the Latin--at least some of the words are," admitted Professor Rodd. "They do credit to your studying, Lantfeld, but how in the world did you ever get _casus eventus_ into accident?" "Why--er--it's so in the dictionary, Professor," pleaded Peaches. "Yes, but look up the substantive, and remember your endings. Here I'll show you," and, pulling from his pocket a Latin dictionary, which he was never without, Professor Rodd, sticking his battered hat back on his head, began to quote and translate and do all manner of things with the dead language, to show Peaches where he had made his errors. And Peaches, sacrificing himself on the altar of friendship, stood there like a man, nodding his head and agreeing with everything the instructor said, whether he understood it or not. "Your _conjunctim_ was not so bad," complimented the professor, "but I could never pass _casus eventus_. However, I am glad to see that you take an interest in your studies. I wish more of the boys did. Now take the irregular conjugation for instance. We will begin with the indicative mood and----" The professor's voice was droning off into his classroom tones. Peaches held his ground valiantly. "Come on, fellows, cut for it!" whispered Teeter hoarsely. "Leg it, Joe. Peaches will take care of him." "But the hat--I damaged it--I want to pay for it," objected our hero, who was square in everything. "Don't worry about that. When Old Sixteen gets to spouting Latin or Greek he doesn't know whether he's on his head or his feet, and as for a hat--say, forget it and come on. He'll never mention it again. Peaches knows how to handle him. Peaches is the best Latin lad in the whole school, and once Sixteen finds some one who will listen to his new theory about conjugating irregular verbs, he'll talk until midnight. Come on!" "Poor Peaches!" murmured Tom Davis. "Never mind, Sister," spoke George Bland, as he linked his arm in that of Joe. "Peaches seen his duty and he done it nobly, as the novels say. When Sixteen gets through with him we'll blow him to a feed to make it up to him. Come on while the going's good. He'll never see us." Thus the day--rather an eventful one as it was destined to become--came to an end. The boys filed into the big dining hall, and talk, which had begun to verge around to baseball, could scarcely be heard for the clatter of knives and forks and dishes. Some time later there came a cautious knock on the door of the room that Tom Davis and Joe Matson shared. The two lads were deep in their books. "Who's there?" asked Joe sharply. "It's me--Peaches," was the quick if ungrammatical answer. "The coast is clear--open your oak," and he rattled the knob of the door. Tom unlocked and swung wide the portal, and the hero of the Latin engagement entered. "Quick--anything to drink?" he demanded. "I'm a rag! Say, I never swallowed so much dry Latin in my life. My throat is parched. Don't tell me that all that ginger ale you smuggled in the other day is gone--don't you dare do it!" "Tom, see if there's a bottle left for the gentleman of thirst," directed Joe with a smile. Tom went to the window and pulled up a cord that was fastened to the sill. On the end of the string was a basket, and in it three bottles of ginger ale. "Our patent refrigerator," explained Joe, with a wave of his hand. "Do the uncorking act, Tom, and we'll get busy. You can go to sleep,"--this last to a book he had been studying, as he tossed it on a couch. "Oh, but that's good!" murmured Peaches as he drained his glass. "Now I can talk. I came in, Joe and Tom, to see if you didn't think it would be a good thing to have a fight." "A fight! For cats' sake, who with?" demanded Tom. "Are you spoiling for one?" asked Joe. "Oh, I mean a snowball fight. This is probably the last of the season, and I was thinking we could get a lot of fellows together, make a fort, and have a regular battle like we read about in Cæsar to-day. It would be no end of sport." "I think so myself," agreed Joe. "Bully!" exclaimed Tom sententiously, burying his nose in his ginger ale glass. "Go on, tell us some more." "Well, I was thinking," resumed Peaches, "that we----" He was interrupted by another tap on the door. In an instant Peaches had dived under the table. With one sweep of his arm Joe noiselessly collected the bottles, while Joe spread a paper over the glasses. The knock was repeated, and the two lads looked apprehensively at the door. CHAPTER III AN ANGRY BULLY "Well, why don't one of you fellows open the door?" demanded Peaches in a hoarse whisper from his point of vantage under the table. "If it's one of the 'profs.' or a monitor, he'll get wise if you wait all this while." It might be explained that there was a rule at Excelsior Hall against students visiting in their classmates' rooms at certain hours of the day, unless permission had been secured from the professor or monitor in charge of the dormitory. Needless to say Peaches had not secured any such permission--the lads seldom did. "Aren't you going to open it?" again demanded Peaches, from where he had taken refuge, so as to be out of sight, should the caller prove to be some one in authority. "Yes--certainly--of course," replied Joe. "Tom, you open the door." Once more came the knock. "Open it yourself," insisted Tom. "It's as much your room as it is mine. Go ahead." But there was no need for any one to first encounter the stern gaze of some professor, if such the unannounced caller should prove to be. The knock was repeated and then a voice demanded: "Say, you fellows needn't pretend not to be in there. I can hear you whispering. What's up?" and with that the portal swung open and Teeter Nelson entered. He advanced to the middle of the room and stood moving up and down on his tiptoes. "I like your nerve!" he went on. "Having a spread and not tipping a fellow off. Is it all gone?" and with a sweep of his arm he sent the paper cover flying from over the half-emptied ginger ale glasses. "Where's Peaches?" he demanded. "I know he's out, for I was at his den, and there's not a soul in. He's got a 'dummy' in the bed, but it's rank. Wouldn't fool anybody." "Then you must have spoiled it!" exclaimed Peaches, sticking his head out from beneath the table, the cloth draping itself around his neck like a lady's scarf. "I made a dandy figure. It would fool even Sixteen himself; and then I sneaked out. I made it look as natural as could be. I'll bet you did something to it." "Only punched it a couple of times to see if it was you," retorted Teeter. "But say, what's going on? Why didn't you open when I knocked?" "Thought it was a prof.," replied Joe. "Why didn't you give the code knock. Tat--rat-a-tat-tat--tat-tat--and the hiss." "That's right, I did forget it. But I got all excited when I found that Peaches had sneaked off without telling me. Say, what's on, anyhow? Where's the feed? Give me something good." "Nothing going but ginger ale," answered Joe, as Peaches crawled the rest of the way out from under the table. "And I don't know as there's any left." "Gee, you fellows have nerve!" complained the newcomer. "There's one bottle," said Tom, who had charge of the improvised refrigerator, and forthwith he hauled up the basket, at the sight of which Teeter laughed joyously, and proceeded to get outside of his share of the refreshments. "What's doing?" he demanded, after his thirst was quenched, and when they were all seated at the table. "We're going to have a snow battle," explained Peaches. "We were just talking about it when you gave us heart disease by pounding on the oak." "Heart disease; my eye!" exclaimed Teeter. "You should have a clear conscience such as I have, and nothing would worry you. That's good ale all right, Joe. Got any more?" and he finished his glass. "Nary a drop. But go on, Peaches. Tell us more about the snow fight." Whereupon the lad did, waxing enthusiastic, and causing his chums to get into the same state of mind. "It will be no end of fun!" declared Teeter. "We'll choose sides and see which one can capture the fort." "When can we do it?" asked Tom. "The sooner the quicker," was Joe's opinion. "The snow won't last long." "Then we ought to start on the fort to-morrow and have the battle the next day," was the opinion of Peaches. Permission to have the snow battle was obtained from Dr. Fillmore the next day, and the work of building the snow fort started soon after lessons were over. Fortunately the white flakes packed well, and with a foundation of a number of big snowballs the fort was shortly in process of construction. A better day for a snow battle could not have been desired. It was just warm enough so that the snow stuck, and yet cool enough so that the exertion would not be unpleasant. The fort was at the far end of the big school campus, and all about it the ground had been practically cleared of snow to build it. This made it necessary for the attacking party to carry their ammunition from afar. As for the defenders of the fort, they had plenty of snow inside, and, as a last resort they could use part of the walls of the structure itself to repel the enemy. The lads had made wooden shields for themselves, some using the heads of barrels, with leather loops for hand and arm. Others were content with something simpler, a mere board, or a barrel stave. Sides had been chosen, and, somewhat to his own surprise, Joe Matson was made captain of the attacking force. "We want you because you can throw straight and hard," explained Teeter, who was a sort of lieutenant of the attacking army. "Soak those fellows good!" pleaded Peaches. "We've got to look out for icy balls," cautioned Tom. "How so?" asked Joe, as he looked toward the fort where Frank Brown, as captain, was marshalling his lads. "I heard that Hiram Shell and Luke Fodick soaked a lot of snowballs in water last night, and let 'em freeze," went on Tom. "They're just mean enough to use them." "That's right," agreed Peaches, "and we made it up not to throw that kind. Well, if we catch Hiram or Luke using 'em we'll make a protest, that's all." "Say, are you fellows all ready?" asked Frank Brown at length, as he looked to see if he and his mates had a good supply of ammunition. "Sure," answered Joe. "Yell when you want us to come at you." "Any time now," replied Frank. "Get on the job, fellows!" he called to his force. The snow battle began. Joe and his lads had boxes and baskets of snowballs piled where they could easily get them. They took them with them, up to the very walls of the fort, certain boys being designated as ammunition carriers. The fight was fast and furious. The air was thick with flying balls; and the yells, shouts, cries, and laughter of the lads could be heard afar. Up to the fort swarmed Joe and his mates, only to be driven back by a withering fire. Then they came once more to the attack, pouring in a destructive rain of white balls on the defenders of the snow fort. But this resulted partly in disaster for the attacking foe, as several of their number were captured. "At 'em again!" ordered Joe, after a slight repulse. "We can capture that place!" Once more they swarmed to the attack, and with very good effect, delivering such a rattling volley of balls, that the defenders were thrown into confusion, and could not send back an answering fire quickly enough. "Swarm the walls! Swarm the walls!" yelled Joe. He and his lads scrambled up, their pockets filled with balls. Down upon the hapless foe they threw them, and in another moment the fort would have been theirs. "Repel boarders! Repel boarders!" sang out Hiram. "Come on, fellows, give 'em an extra dose!" Joe saw the bully, and Luke, his crony, rush to a corner of the fort and take something from a wooden box. The next instant several lads uttered cries of real pain, as they felt the missiles of almost solid ice hit them. Joe understood at once. "The mean, sneaking coward!" he cried. In his hand he held a large snowball. It was hard packed, but did not equal the ice balls in any particular. Yet it was effective. Joe saw the chance he wanted. Hiram had drawn back his hand to throw one of the missiles he and Luke had secretly made, when, with a suddenness that was startling, Joe threw his large snowball full in the bully's face. Hiram caught his breath. The ball he had intended throwing fell from his hand. He staggered back, his face a mass of snow. Then he recovered himself, cleared his eyes of the flakes and, with a yell of rage sprang forward. "I saw you throw that, Joe Matson!" he cried. "You had no right to pitch it with all your might at such close range." "I had as much right as you and Luke have to use iceballs," retorted our hero. "I--I'll fix you for that!" threatened Hiram, boiling over with wrath, as he scrambled up the inner walls of the fort and stood before Joe. "I'll knock you into the middle of next week! I'll teach you how to behave. I'm going to lick you good," and he drew back his fist, and aimed a mighty blow at our hero. CHAPTER IV JOE LEARNS SOMETHING Joe Matson had been in fights before. Some had been forced upon him, and he accepted the challenges for sufficient reasons, and had given a good account of himself in the battles. Other fistic encounters had been of his own seeking and for excellent reasons he had generally come out ahead. The prospective fight with the bully was very sudden. Joe had seen what he considered a mean trick on Hiram's part and had thrown on the impulse of the moment. He rather regretted his hasty action, but it was too late for regrets now, and he was willing to accept the outcome. "I'm going to make you wish you'd never come to Excelsior Hall!" cried Hiram, and with that he expected the blow which he had aimed at Joe to land on the countenance of our hero. But, like the celebrated flea of history, who, as the Dutchman said, "ven you put your finger on him, dot flea he aind't dere!" so it was with Joe. He cleverly ducked, and then waited for what would happen next. Something did happen with a vengeance. Hiram had rushed up the slippery, sloping, inner wall of the fort to get at Joe, and pummel him for sending the snowball smashing into his face, but when Joe turned aside, and Hiram's fist went through the air like a batter fanning over a swift ball, the bully was unable to recover himself. He overbalanced, clawed vainly at the atmosphere, made a grab for Joe, who took good care to keep well out of reach, and then Hiram Shell went slipping and sliding down the outside wall of the snow fort, turning over several times ere he landed at the bottom, amid a pile of the white flakes. [Illustration: HIRAM SHELL WENT SLIPPING AND SLIDING DOWN THE OUTSIDE WALL OF THE SNOW FORT.] In his descent he struck several lads who were swarming up to the attack, and these Hiram bowled over like tenpins, so that when he came to rest he was in the centre of a pile of heaving bodies, and of threshing and swaying arms and legs, like a football player downed after a long run. "Get off me, you fellows!" yelled Hiram, when he could get his breath. "I'll punch some of you good and hard for this!" "And you'll get punched yourself if you don't take your feet out of my face!" retorted Peaches, who was one of the few pupils not afraid of the bully. "Where's that Joe Matson? I've got a score to settle with him," went on Hiram, as he struggled to his feet, and disentangled himself from the mass of snow-warriors. "You'll have one to settle with me if you knock me down again!" cried Teeter Nelson, as he tried to shake some snow out from inside his collar. It was melting and running down his back in little cold streams. "What do you mean by playing that way?" demanded Teeter, who had not seen the impending fight between Joe and Hiram. "Why don't you stay inside your own fort, and not make a human battering ram of yourself?" "You mind your own business!" snapped Hiram with an ugly look. "I slipped and fell, or else Joe Matson pushed me. Wait until I get hold of him." With a look of anger on his face, Hiram turned and went swarming up the outer wall of the fort. At the top stood Joe, waiting, and the lad's face showed no signs of fear, though he was a trifle pale. Though Hiram was larger, and evidently stronger than Joe, our hero was not afraid. He was debating in his mind whether it would not be better to rush to the ground below, where he would have a better chance if it came to an out-and-out-fight. Yet Joe had a certain advantage on top of the snow wall, for he could easily push Hiram down. Yet this was not his idea of a contest of that kind. "I'll fix you, Matson!" muttered the bully. "I'll teach you to push me down! You might have broken my arm or leg," he added in an injured tone. "I didn't push you!" retorted our hero. "You tried to hit me and missed. Then you fell." "That's right!" chimed in Peaches, amid a silence, for the general snowball fight had ceased in anticipation of another kind of an encounter. Hiram balanced himself half way up the white wall. "What did you smash me in the face with a snowball for?" he demanded. "We made it up that no one was to aim at another fellow's face at close range, and you know it." "Of course I know it," answered Joe. "But that rule applied to hard balls, and I didn't use one. I threw a soft ball at you, and you know why I did it, too. I'll let Luke Fodick have one, too, if he does it again." "Does what again?" sneered the bully's crony. "Use icy balls. I saw you and Hiram take some frozen ones from that box," and Joe pointed to the secret supply of ammunition. "Some of our fellows were hit and that's why I threw in your face, Hiram. Now, if you want to fight I'm ready for you," and Joe stood well balanced on top of the wall, awaiting the approach of his enemy. Somehow the fighting spirit was oozing out of Hiram. He felt sure that he could whip Joe in a battle on level ground, but when his opponent stood above him, and when it was evident that Joe could deliver a blow before Hiram could, with the probability that it would send the attacker sliding down the wall again, the bully began to see that discretion was the better part of valor. "Do you want to fight?" demanded Hiram, in that tone which sometimes means that the questioner would be glad to get a negative answer. "I'm not aching for it," replied Joe slowly. "But I'm not going to run away. If you like I'll come down, but you can come up if you want to," and he smiled at Hiram. "You only got what you deserved, you know." "That's right," chimed in Teeter. "You hadn't any right to use frozen balls, Hiram." "Sure not!" came in a menacing chorus from Joe's crowd of lads. "Well, they weren't frozen very hard," mumbled Hiram. "I only threw a few, anyhow, and you've got more fellows than we have." "Because we captured some of yours--yes," admitted Joe. "Well, all right then," answered the bully with no good grace. "But if you throw at my face again, at such close range, Joe Matson, I'll give you the best licking you ever had." "Two can play at that game," was Joe's retort. "I'm ready any time you are." "Why don't you go at him now, and clean him up?" asked Luke Fodick, making his way to where Hiram stood. "If you don't he'll be saying he backed you to a standstill. Go at him, Hiram." "I've a good notion to," muttered the bully. He measured with his eye the distance between himself and Joe, and wondered if he could cover it in a rush, carry his opponent off his feet, and batter and pummel him as they rolled down the fort wall together. "Go on!" urged Luke. "I--I guess I will!" spoke Hiram desperately. Then from the outer fringe of the attacking crowd there arose a cautious warning. "Cheese it! Here comes old Sixteen!" Professor Rodd was approaching and the lads well knew that he was bitterly opposed to fights, and would at once report any who engaged in them. "Come on! Let's finish the snow fight!" cried Teeter. "Get back in your fort, Hiram, and the rest of you, and we'll soon capture it." "All right," said the bully in a low voice. Then looking at Joe he said: "This isn't the end of it; not by a long shot, Matson. I'll get square with you yet." "Just as you choose," answered Joe, as he rallied his lads to the attack again. Then the snow ball fight went on, with Professor Rodd an interested onlooker. Joe's boys finally won, capturing the fort; but the real zest had been taken out of the battle by the unpleasant incident, and the boys no longer fought with jolly good-will. "Ah, that is what I like to see," remarked the Latin professor, as the lads, having finished the game, strolled away from the fort which had been sadly battered and disrupted by the attack on it. "Nothing like good, healthy out-door exercise to fit the mind for the classics. I'm sure you will all do better in Latin and Greek for this little diversion." "He's got another think coming as far as I'm concerned," whispered Teeter to Joe. "I haven't got a line of my Cæsar." "This is certainly what I like to see," went on the instructor. "No hard feelings, yet I venture to say you all fought well, and hard. It is most delightful." "It wouldn't have been quite so delightful if you'd have come along a few minutes later and seen a real fight," murmured Peaches. "Would you have stood up to Hiram, Joe?" "I sure would. I was ready for him, though I don't want to be unfriendly to any of the fellows here. But I couldn't stand for what he did. Oh, I'd have fought him all right, even at the risk of a whipping, or of beating him, and having him down on me all the while I'm here." "I guess he's down on you all right as it is," ventured George Bland. "And it's too bad, too." "Oh, I don't know as I care particularly," spoke Joe. "I thought I heard you say you wanted to play ball when the Spring season opened," said George. "So I do, but what has Hiram Shell got to do with it?" "Lots, as you'll very soon learn," put in Teeter. "Hiram is the head of the ball club--the manager--I guess you forgot that, and he runs things. If he doesn't want a fellow to play--why, that fellow doesn't play--that's all. That's what George means." "Yes," assented George. "And Hiram is sure down on you after what you did to him to-day, Joe." The young pitcher stood still. Many thoughts came to him. He felt a strange sinking sensation, as if he had suddenly lost hope. He dwelt for a moment on his great ambition, to be the star pitcher on the school nine, as he had been on the nine at home. "Well, I guess it's too late to worry about it now," remarked Joe after a bit. "I'm sorry--no; I'm not either!" he cried, with sudden energy. "I'd do the same thing over again if I had to, and if Hiram Shell wants to keep me off the nine he can do it!" "That's the way to talk!" cried Teeter, clapping Joe on the back. CHAPTER V THE TABLES TURNED "Well, Joe, what do you think about it?" Tom Davis glanced at his chum across the room as he asked this question. It was several hours after the snow battle, and the two lads were studying, or making a pretense at it. "Think about what, Tom?" "Oh, you know what I mean--what happened to-day, and how it's going to affect your chances for the nine. They look rather slim, don't they?" "Well, Tom, I don't mind admitting that they do. I didn't know Hiram was such a high-mucky-muck in baseball here. But there's no use crying over spilled milk. He and I would have had a clash sooner or later, anyhow, and it might as well be first as last." "It's too blamed bad though," went on Tom. "Yes," agreed Joe, "especially as I picked out Excelsior Hall because their nine had so many victories to its credit, and because it had a good reputation. That's what partly induced you to come here, too, I guess." "Well, yes, in a way. Of course I like baseball, but I'm not so crazy after it as you are. Maybe that's why I'm not such a good player. If I can hold down first, or play out in the field, it suits me; but you----" "I want to be pitcher or nothing," interrupted Joe with a smile, "but I'm afraid I'm a long way from the box now." "Yes, from what I can hear, Hiram has the inside track in the baseball game. He's manager chiefly because he puts up a lot of money for the team, and because his friends, what few he has, are officers in the organization." "Who's captain?" asked Joe. "Maybe I could induce him to let me play even if Hiram is down on me." "Nothing doing there," replied Tom quickly. "Luke Fodick is captain, or, rather he was last year, I hear, and he's slated for the same position this season. Luke and Hiram are as thick as such fellows always are. When Hiram is hit Luke does the boo-hoo act for him. No, Luke will be down on you as much as his crony is. But maybe we can get up a second nine, and play some games on our own hook!" "None of that!" Joe exclaimed quickly. "I'm not an insurgent. I play with the regulars or not at all. They'd be saying all sorts of things against me if you and I tried to start an opposition team." "That's so. Still it mightn't be a bad idea, under the circumstances, to have another team, if it wasn't for what the school would say." "What do you mean?" "Why, Excelsior got dumped in the interscholastic league last season. They play for the blue banner you know--a sort of prize trophy--and it was won by Morningside Academy, which now holds it. That's why I say it might be a good thing to have some more ginger in the team here. I know you could put it in, after the way you pitched on the Silver Stars when they licked the Resolutes." "Well, it can't be done I'm afraid," Joe rejoined. "There can only be one first team in a school, and I don't want to disrupt things or play second fiddle. If I can't get on the nine I'll have to stay off, that's all. But it's going to be mighty tough to sit still and watch the other fellows play, and all the while just itching to get hold of the ball--mighty tough," and Joe gazed abstractedly about the room. "I wish I could help you, old man, but I can't," said Tom. "I suppose this clash with Hiram had to come but I do wish it had held off until after the season opened. Once you were on the nine you could show the fellows what stuff you had in your pitching arm, and then Hiram and Luke could do their worst, but they couldn't get you off the team." "That's nice of you to say, but I don't know about it," remarked Joe. "Well, I'm about done studying. I wish----" But he did not finish the sentence, for there came a knock on the door--a pre-arranged signal in a certain code of raps, showing that one of their classmates stood without. "Wait a minute," called Tom, as he went to open the door. His quick view through the crack showed the smiling faces of Teeter and Peaches, and there was an audible sigh of relief from Joe's roommate. For Tom had fallen behind in his studies of late, and had been warned that any infractions of the rules might mean his suspension for a week or two. "Gee, you took long enough to open the door," complained Teeter, "especially considering what we have with us." "Don't you mean 'whom' you have with you?" asked Joe, nodding toward Peaches. "No, I mean 'what,'" insisted Teeter with a grin as he unbuttoned his coat and brought into view several pies, and a couple of packages done up in paper. "Oh, that's the game, is it?" asked Joe with a laugh. "And there's more to it," added Peaches, as he produced two bottles from the legs of his trousers. "This is the best strawberry pop that can be bought. We'll have a feast as is a feast; eh, fellows?" "Lock the door!" exclaimed Tom, and he did it himself, being nearest to it. "There may be confiscating spirits abroad in the land to-night." "Old Sixteen is abroad, anyhow," spoke Teeter with a laugh, "but I guess we'll be safe. I have a scheme, if worst comes to worst." "What is it?" asked Joe. "You'll see when the time comes--if it does. 'Now, on with the dance--let joy be unconfined!' Open the pop, Peaches, and don't sample it until we're all ready. Got any glasses, you fellows? This is a return game for the treat you gave us the other night." "Then we'll find the glasses all right," spoke Joe with a laugh. "But what's your game, not to let old Sixteen catch us at this forbidden midnight feast? Have you dummies in your beds?" "Not a dum. But watch my smoke." From the parcels he carried, Teeter produced what looked to be books--books, as attested by the words on their covers--books dealing with Latin, and the science of physics. "There are our plates," he said as he laid the books down on the table. Then Joe and Tom saw that the books were merely covers pasted over a sort of box into which a whole pie could easily be put. "Catch the idea," went on Teeter. "We are eating in here, which is against the rules, worse luck. But, perchance, some monitor or professor knocks unexpectedly. Do we have to hustle and scramble to conceal our refreshments? Answer--we do not. What do we do?" "Answer," broke in Peaches. "We merely slip our pie or sandwiches or whatever it happens to be, inside our 'books,' and go right on studying. Catch on?" "I should say we did!" exclaimed Joe. "That's great!" "But what about the bottles of strawberry pop?" asked Tom. "We can't hide them in the fake books." "No, I've another scheme for that," went on Teeter. "Show 'em, Peaches." Thereupon Peaches proceeded to extract the corks from the bottles of liquid refreshment. From the packages Teeter had brought he took some other corks. They had glass tubes through them, two tubes for each cork. And on one tube in each cork was a small rubber hose. "There!" exclaimed Teeter as Peaches put the odd corks in the bottles. "We can pour out the pop with neatness and dispatch into our glasses and at the same time, should any one unexpectedly enter, why--we are only conducting an experiment in generating oxygen or hydrogen gas. The bottles are the retorts, and we can pretend our glasses are to receive the gas. How's that?" "All to the horse radish!" cried Joe in delight. "Then proceed," ordered Teeter with a laugh; and when all was in readiness each lad sat with a fake book near him, into which he could slip his piece of pie at a moment's warning, while on the table stood the bottles of pop with the tubes and hose extending from their corks--truly a most scientific-looking array of flasks and glassware. "Now let's talk," suggested Teeter, biting generously into a pie. "That was a great fight we had to-day, all right." "And there might have been one of a different kind," added Peaches. "Hear anything more from Hiram, Joe?" "No, I don't expect to--until the next time, and then I suppose we'll have it out." "I guess Joe's goose is cooked as far as getting on the nine is concerned," ventured Tom. "Sure thing," agreed Peaches. "Yet we're going to need a new pitcher," went on Teeter. "Probably two of 'em?" "How's that?" asked Tom interestedly. "Why Rutherford, our star man of last year, graduated, and he's gone to Princeton or Yale. Madison, the substitute who was pretty good in a pinch game, graduated, too; but we thought he was coming back for an extra course in Latin. I heard to-day that he isn't, and so that means we'll have to have two new box-men. There might be a show for Joe." "Forget it!" advised Peaches. "Not the way Hiram and Luke feel. They went off by themselves right after supper to-night, and I heard them saying something about Joe here, but I couldn't catch what it was. Oh, they're down on him all right, for Joe backed Hiram to a standstill to-day, and that hasn't happened to the bully in a blue moon." "Oh, well, I guess I can live if I don't get on the nine my first season here," spoke Joe. "I'll keep on trying though." Thus the talk went on, chiefly about baseball, and gradually the strawberry pop was lowered in the bottles, and the pie was nearly consumed. "Guess you had all your trouble for nothing, Teeter," remarked Tom. "We aren't going to be interrupted to-night." Hardly had he spoken than there was the faint rattle of the door knob. It was as if some one had tried it to see if the portal was unlocked before knocking. Slight as the noise was, the lads heard it. "Quick! On the job!" whispered Teeter. He crammed the rest of his pie into the fake book, as did the others. "Study like blazes!" was Teeter's next order. There came a knock at the door. "Young gentlemen have you any visitors?" demanded the ominous voice of Professor Rodd. Teeter placed the ends of the rubber tubes one in each of two glasses before Joe could answer. "I heard voices in there--more than two voices," went on the Latin instructor grimly, "and I demand that you open the door before I send for Dr. Fillmore and the janitor." Tom slid to the portal and unlocked it. Professor Rodd stepped into the room and his stern gaze took in the two visitors. But he also saw something else that surprised him. On the table was apparatus that very much resembled some used for experiments in the physics class. And, wonder of wonders, each of the four lads held a book in his hand--a book that the merest glance showed to be either a Latin grammar or a treatise on chemistry. "What--why----?" faltered the professor. "_Aliqui--aliquare--aliqua_," recited Teeter in a sing-song declension voice. "_Aliquorum--aliquarum--aliquorum._" Then he pretended to look up suddenly, as if just aware of the presence of the instructor. "Oh, good evening, Professor Rodd," said Teeter calmly. "What does this mean?" exclaimed the teacher. "Don't you know it is against the rules for students to visit in each others' rooms after hours without permission?" "I knew it was--that is for anything but study," replied Teeter frankly. "I didn't think you minded if we helped each other with our Latin." Oh! what an innocent look was on his face! "Oh!--er--um--and you are studying Latin?" asked the professor, while a pleased smile replaced his frown. "Yes, Professor," put in Peaches. "And I can't seem to remember, nor find, what the neuter plural accusative of 'some' is. I have gone as far as _aliquos--aliquas_, but----" "_Aliqua--aliqua!_" exclaimed the Professor quickly. "You ought not to forget that. We had it in class the other day." "Oh, yes, so we did!" exclaimed Teeter. "I just remember now; don't you, Joe?" "Yes," murmured Joe, wondering whether or not they had turned the tables on the teacher. "I am glad to see you so studious," went on Mr. Rodd. "And I see you do not neglect your physics, either. Ah--er--what is the red liquid in the bottles," and he looked at what remained of the strawberry pop. It was the question Tom and Joe had feared would be asked. But Teeter was equal to the emergency. "Professor," he asked innocently, "isn't there some rule regarding _quis_ used in the indefinite in connection with _aliquis_?" "Yes, and I am glad you spoke of that," said Mr. Rodd quickly, rubbing his hands, much pleased that he had a chance to impart some Latin information. "_Quis_ indefinite is found in the following compounds: _aliquis_--someone; _si quis_, if any; _ne quis_, lest any; _ecquis_, _num quis_, whether any. I am very glad you brought that up. I will speak of it in class to-morrow. But I must go now." The boys began to breathe easier and Teeter, who had been whispering declensions to himself, left off. "Oh, by the way," spoke the Professor, as if he had just thought of it: "I don't mind you boys studying together, if you don't stay up too late. But it is better to ask permission. However, I will speak to Dr. Fillmore about it, and it will be all right from now on. I am pleased that some of my students are so painstaking. I wish more were." With a bow he left them and they tried not to give way to their exultation until he was far down the corridor. "Say, talk about pulling off a stunt! We did it all right!" exclaimed Joe. "I should say yes," agreed the others. CHAPTER VI THE BULLY SNEERS "Well, you ought to get out a patent on this," remarked Joe, when they resumed the eating of the pie and the drinking of the pop, following the withdrawal of the professor. "You sure had," agreed Tom. "Let Joe give you some points. His father has taken out several patents." "Oh, I guess we'll make it free for all--any fellow is welcome to the idea," replied Teeter. "So your dad's an inventor, eh, Matson?" "Yes, harvester machinery--his latest was a corn reaper and binder, and he nearly lost it," and Joe briefly told how Isaac Benjamin and Rufus Holdney had nearly ruined his father, as related in detail in "Baseball Joe of the Silver Stars." "Ever hear anything more of those fellows?" asked Tom, following the recital of the schemes of the plotters. "No, they seem to have disappeared," answered Joe. "They cleared out after dad won his case in the courts. But he's on the watch for them, he told me. His business isn't all settled yet, and there is some danger. But I guess Benjamin or Holdney won't bother him, though some other rascals may." "Anything more to eat?" asked Peaches, during the pause that followed. "Say, what are you, a human refrigerator?" demanded Teeter. "I couldn't carry any more pie if I tried." "It'll be our treat next time," observed Joe. "Why didn't George Bland come with you?" "Had to bone on trigonometry, I guess," replied Peaches. "Does he play on the team?" Joe wanted to know. "Yes, we all do. George is short, I'm on third, and Teeter holds down first sometimes. But you never can tell what Hiram is going to do. He and Luke are always making shifts, and that's what lost us the Blue Banner last season. The fellows would no more than get familiar with their positions than Hiram would shift 'em. Oh, he runs things to suit himself." The hour of ten boomed out from the big school clock and the visitors left. "Spring fever!" exclaimed Joe one day, as he and Tom came from a physics lecture. "Yes, I've got it, too," admitted Tom. "It's in the air, and I'm glad of it. What's that Shakespeare says about 'now is the winter of our discontent?'" "Oh, cheese it! Don't begin spouting poetry. Besides I'm not sure it was Shakespeare, and I don't give a hang. All I know is that Spring is coming, and soon they'll begin getting the diamond in shape." "Precious lot of good that will do you--or me, either. Hiram is as down on me as he is on you." "I know it, and I was going to speak of that, Tom. There's no use in your losing a chance to play on the nine just because I'm on the outs. Why don't you cut loose from me? You can get another room, and maybe if you do----" "Hold on!" cried Tom quickly. "Do you want me to go, old man?" and he looked sharply at Joe. "Nonsense! Of course you know I don't." "Then drop that kind of talk, unless you want a fight on your hands. You and I stick together, Hiram Shell or no Hiram Shell--and Luke Fodick." "Well, I didn't know," spoke Joe softly. "Here, come on; let's have a catch," proposed Tom. "I've got an old ball that we used in one of the Star games. Get over there and sting some in to me. Wait until I get my glove on," and he adjusted his mitt. "Jove! This is like old times!" exclaimed Joe, as he lovingly fingered the horsehide--dirty and stained as it was from many a clouting and drive into the tall grass and daisies. "I wish we could go and see a game, even if we couldn't play." "Same here," came from Tom, as he crouched to receive the ball his chum was about to deliver. Joe wound up and sent in a "hot" one. It landed squarely in Tom's glove for the first-baseman (a position he sometimes had played on the Stars) was not a half bad catcher. "How was that?" asked Joe. "Pretty good. Not quite over the plate, but you can get 'em there. Let 'em come about so," and Tom indicated a stone that would serve for home. "Watch this," requested Joe as he wound up again and let drive. "A beaut!" cried Tom. "Give me some more that way, and you'll have the man out." "Say, what are you fellows doing?" demanded a voice, and the two chums looked up to see Hiram Shell gazing at them with mingled expressions on his fleshy face. "Oh, having a little practice," replied Joe easily. The feeling between himself and the bully had nearly worn off, and they were on speaking, if not on friendly terms. "Practice for what?" demanded Hiram. "Well, the baseball season opens pretty soon," went on Joe, "and Tom and I sort of felt the fever in our veins to-day. Want to have a catch?" "No," half snarled Hiram. "Say, did you fellows play ball before you came here?" he demanded. "Sure," put in Tom. "Joe was one of the best pitchers on the Silver Stars." "The Silver Stars? Never heard of 'em!" sneered Hiram. "Oh, it was only an amateur nine," Joe admitted modestly. "Tom here was first baseman, and we had some good country games." "Huh! Maybe you came _here_ to play baseball!" suggested Hiram with a leer. "Seems to me I heard that you had some such notion." "Well, I have," asserted Joe confidently. "I like the game, and I'd give a good deal to get on the nine. So would Tom, I guess." "First base is filled," snapped Hiram. "How about pitcher," asked Tom eagerly, anxious to put in a good word for his chum. "I hear you need a new pitcher." "Oh, you did; eh?" exclaimed the bully with an unpleasant laugh. "Well, you've got another 'hear' coming. Besides, if there wasn't another pitcher in the country, you wouldn't get a chance, Matson!" "No?" queried Joe easily. "No, and a dozen times no! What, you pitch? Say, you may have been all right on a sand-lots team, but there's some class to Excelsior Hall. We don't want any dubs on our nine. You think you might pitch on _my_ team? I guess nixy! We want some fellow who can deliver the goods." "Joe can!" exclaimed Tom eagerly. "Aw, forget it!" sneered Hiram. "Why, you'd be knocked out of the box first inning with some of the teams we play. You pitch! Ha! Ha! That's pretty rich. I'll have to tell the fellows about this!" "I didn't ask you to let me pitch," said Joe quietly though an angry spot burned in either cheek. "No, and you'd better not!" snapped Hiram. "You pitch! Ha! Ha! It makes me laugh," and with a sneering look at Joe the bully strode off, chuckling unpleasantly. CHAPTER VII A CLASH WITH LUKE For several minutes Joe stood staring after the baseball manager. The young pitcher's arm hung listlessly at his side. There was a look on his face that would have been sad, had Joe been that kind of a lad--showing his feelings needlessly. But our hero was full of spunk and grit, and, though Hiram's unnecessarily cruel words hurt him grievously, Joe shut his teeth with a firmer grip, squared his shoulders, drew himself up, and then he smiled at Tom. "Well, of all the mean, unmitigated, low-down, cantankerous, sneaking, bulldozing and----" sputtered the first baseman. "Hold on!" exclaimed his companion. "You'll blow up if you go on that way, Tom. Besides, save some of those big words for a time when you may need 'em." "Need 'em? Say if I don't need 'em now I never will. I wish I had thought to get rid of a few when that bully was here." "You'd only gotten into trouble. Better keep still about it." "I can't Joe. Just think of it! We came here to play ball, and the first crack out of the box that fellow goes and tells us we can't." "Well, I don't know as I have any particular right to play on the nine here." "Yes, you have, the best right in the world! I'll bet they haven't got a pitcher here who can stand up to you, and I'm going to tell that sneaking bully so, too," and Tom started off after the departing Hiram. "No, don't!" cried Joe quickly. "It will only make matters worse." "But you want to pitch; don't you?" "Sure, but that would be the best way in the world to insure that I wouldn't. Hiram Shell is just the kind of a fellow who, if he thinks a chap wants anything, is going to do his best--or worst--to stop him." "What are you going to do then?" "I'm going to lie low and saw wood. The baseball season hasn't opened yet. The team isn't made up. Nobody knows who is going to play and----" "Well, Hiram as good as told us two fellows who weren't going to play," interrupted Tom. "That's you and I." "Wait a bit," advised Joe. "I was going to say that when the season has started and several games have been played there may be a change. I may get a chance to play then, just as I did on the Stars. I'm willing to wait. The Summer is long, and there'll be more than one game. Just say nothing." "Well, if you say so, I suppose I'll have to," answered his chum, "but it's mighty hard to keep still when a fellow like Hiram Shell rubs your nose in the dirt, and then kicks you in the bargain. He'll have to ask me to play now. I won't volunteer!" and Tom shook his fist in the direction of the manager. "Yes, he'll have to get down on his knees and----" "Precious little danger of that," remarked Joe with a laugh. He was feeling more like himself now, though the memory of the bully's sneering words rankled. They had cut deep. "Guess there's no use catching any longer," resumed Tom after a pause. "I don't exactly feel like it." "Me either. I guess we've gotten over our touch of spring fever," and Joe's voice was a bit despondent. Really, he cared more about what Hiram had said than he liked to admit, even to himself. He had had high hopes when he left the Riverside High School to come to Excelsior Hall that he would at once become a member of the nine. His ambition, of course, was to pitch, but he would have accepted any position--even out in the field, for the sake of being on the school team. Now it seemed that he was fated not even to be one of the substitutes. "What are you fellows up to?" asked a voice suddenly, and the two chums turned to behold Peaches and Teeter walking toward them. "Oh, we were having a catch," replied Tom, "until we got called down for it. It seems you have to have a permit at Excelsior to indulge in a little private practice," he added sarcastically. "What's up your back now?" asked Teeter. "Yes, who's been rubbing your fur the wrong way?" Peaches wanted to know. "What's riled Sister?" "Who do you reckon would, if not Bully Shell?" asked Tom. "He's the limit," and he rapidly told how Hiram had sneered at Joe's efforts, and had said that he never would be on the team. "Well, it's too bad, for Hiram has the inside track," admitted Teeter. "I'm as sorry about it as you are, and so are a lot of the fellows. The trouble is that the athletic committee is too big. There are a lot of lads on it who don't care a rap for baseball or football, who don't even play tennis, yet they have a vote, and it's their votes that keep Hiram as manager, and Luke as captain." "Can't it be changed?" Tom wanted to know. Joe was maintaining a discrete silence, for he did not want to urge his own qualifications as a pitcher. Tom was eager to fight for his chum. "Well, it's been tried," spoke Peaches, "but Hiram has his own set with him--a set that isn't the sporting element of Excelsior by a good lot, and their votes keep him in. He spends his money freely and toadies to them, and they fairly black his shoes. Luke Fodick, too, helps out. He has his crowd and they're all with him. I tell you it's rotten, but what are you going to do?" "I know what I'm going to do if I stay here!" declared Tom. "What?" demanded Peaches and Teeter eagerly. "I'm not going to tell until I'm ready to spring it," said Tom, "and when I do I think you'll see some fur fly. How soon before the school team is picked?" "Well, they ought to get at it pretty soon now," answered Teeter. "There is a meeting of the athletic committee some time next week, and a manager and captain will be elected. It's always done that way here, though in some places they do it right at the close of the season. But it has always been a cut-and-dried affair as long as Hiram has been here. He got in--he and Luke--and they've stayed in ever since." "Can we go to that athletic meeting?" asked Tom. "Oh, yes," said Teeter quickly. "It's open to every lad in the school, but lots don't take the trouble to go,--they know how it will turn out." "Well, maybe there'll be a different turn to it this time," predicted Tom. "I'm afraid you've got another guess coming," was the retort of Peaches; and then the four friends strolled toward the school buildings. "What do you say to a scrub game?" asked Teeter. "I'm willing!" said Joe eagerly; and so it was arranged. The school diamond was not in very good shape, but two teams, of seven lads on a side, gathered for the first impromptu baseball game of the season the following afternoon. Tom, Joe, Peaches and Teeter tried to get more out, but there were various excuses, and it might be noted that aside from Teeter and Peaches not one of the former regular nine appeared. "I guess they're afraid Hiram will release them if they play with us," commented Tom. "Maybe so," admitted Teeter. "George Bland would come only he had some experimental work to finish. George isn't any more afraid of Hiram than we are." "Well, let's play ball," suggested Joe; and the game started. Joe occupied the box for his side, an honor that came easily to him since none of the others had had any experience as a twirler of the horsehide. Our hero felt a little nervous as he took his place, for he knew he was out of practice. Also he felt that he was being watched, not only by his particular friends, but by others. And some of them might not be friendly eyes--nay, some might be spying on behalf of Hiram Shell. But Joe pulled himself well together, laughed at his idle fears, and sent in a swift curve. It broke cleanly and completely fooled the batter. "Say, that's the way to get 'em over!" cried Teeter admiringly from behind the bat as the ball landed in his mitt. "Do it some more!" "I'll try," laughed Joe, and he repeated the trick. The man was easily struck out, and the next at the bat fell for a like fate, but the third found Joe's curve and swatted the ball for two bags. "Oh, well, Joe just allowed that so you fellows wouldn't get discouraged," exclaimed Teeter as an excuse for his pitcher. "Get ready to slaughter the next man, Joe." And Joe did. He was delighted to find that his ability to curve the ball, and send it swiftly in, had not deserted him during the long winter of comparative inactivity. He knew that he could "come back with the goods," and there was a feeling of hope welling up within him, that, after all, there might come a chance for him to pitch on the Excelsior nine. The game went on, not regular, nor played according to the rules by any means. But it was lots of fun, and some of the lads discovered their weak points, while others found themselves doing better than they expected. Joe's side won by a small margin, and just as the winning run came in our hero was aware of a figure walking toward the bench on which the side was sitting. "Huh! Starting off rather early, ain't you?" demanded a voice, and they turned to behold Luke Fodick. "Who said you fellows could use the diamond, anyhow?" "We didn't ask anybody," retorted Teeter with a snap. "Well, you want to--after this," was the surly command. "I'm captain of the nine and what I say goes. I'm not going to have the diamond all torn up before the season opens, see! I'm captain!" "Not yet," spoke Peaches quietly. "The election isn't until next week." "What's that got to do with it? You ain't thinking of running opposition to me; are you?" "No," and a bright spot burned on the fair cheeks of the light-complexioned lad. "Because if you are you'll have a fight on your hands," threatened Luke. "Who's been pitching?" he asked, his gaze roving over the crowd of lads. "I was for our side," replied Joe quietly. "Oh, you--yes I heard about you!" exclaimed Luke with a grating laugh. "You're the fellow who wants to pitch on the nine; ain't you? Well, you want to get that bee out of your bonnet, or you may get stung, see? Hiram told me about you. Why, you are only an amateur. We want the best here at Excelsior. By Jove, it's queer how tacky some of you high school kids get as soon as you come to a real institution. Talk about nerve, I----" Joe fairly leaped from the bench. In another stride he confronted Luke. "Look here!" cried our hero, anger getting the best of him for the time being. "I've taken all of that kind of talk I'm going to either from you or Bully Shell! Now you keep still or I'll make you. I'll give you the best licking you ever had; and I'll do it right here and now if you say another word about my pitching! I didn't come here to take any of your sneers, and I don't intend to. Now you put that in your pipe, and smoke it, and then close up and stay closed," and shaking his finger so close to the astonished Luke that it hit the buttons on his coat, Joe turned back and sat down. CHAPTER VIII "WHO WILL PITCH?" For a moment there was silence--a sort of awed silence--and Teeter uttered a faint cheer. "That's the way to talk!" he exclaimed. "You're all right!" declared Peaches. Luke turned and glared at them. Afterward several lads said the bully's toady looked dazed, as if he did not understand what had happened. "He'll go tell Hiram now, and he'll be laying for you, Joe," was Tom's opinion. "Let him. I'm ready to meet that bully whenever he is, and I'm not afraid, either." "That's the way to talk!" exclaimed Teeter admiringly. "If Hiram got one good licking he wouldn't be quite so uppish. But I'm afraid this will put you on the fritz for the nine, Joe." "I don't care if it does. I'm going to let 'em know what I think." Yet in the quietness of his room that night Joe rather regretted what he had done. He realized that he might have turned off Luke's insult with a laugh. "For if I had done so I'd stand a better chance of getting on the nine," mused Joe. Then a different feeling came to him. "No, I couldn't do that either," he reflected. "I'm not built that way. I'm not going to lie down and be walked on, nine or no nine, and I'm going to find some way to play ball, at that!" There was a determined look on Joe's face, and he squared his shoulders in a way that meant business. If Hiram and his crony could have seen our hero then they might not have been so sure of what they would do to him. "So that's how he acted, eh?" asked the bully, when his crony had reported to him what Joe had said. "Well, he'll get _his_ all right. He'll never play ball here as long as I am manager." "No, nor while I'm captain," added Luke. "Nor that friend of his either, Tom Davis." "That's right; we'll make it so hot here for both of 'em that they'll leave at the end of the term," predicted Hiram. What a pity he did not know that Joe and Tom were not of the "leaving" kind. The hotter it was the better they liked it, for they both came of fighting stock. But with all his nerve, and not regretting in the least what he had done, Joe was a bit uneasy as the time for the baseball organization meeting drew near. He hoped against hope that somehow he might get on the team, but he did not see how. He talked with other students, and they all told him that Hiram, Luke and their crowd ran things to suit themselves. "But I've got something up my sleeve," declared Tom. "There may be a surprise at the meeting." "What are you up to?" asked Joe. "Nothing rash, I hope." "You wait and see," his chum advised. "I'm not saying anything." As the days went by, Tom might have been seen talking in confidential whispers to many students. He made lots of new friends, and it was remarked that they were neither of the "sporting set," nor the crowd that trained with Hiram and Luke. To all questions Tom turned a deaf ear, and went on his way serenely. It was almost a foregone conclusion as to who would constitute the nine, with the exception of the pitchers. As already explained, the students who, as regular and substitute, had filled the box the previous season had left, and it was up to Hiram and Luke to find new pitchers. Hiram did not play on the nine, being content to manage it, but Luke was catcher and some of the friends of Joe and Tom filled regular places. "How do you dope it out?" asked Tom of Peaches one day, shortly before the organization meeting. "Well, it'll be about like this," was the reply. "We will all gather in the gymnasium--as many as want to--and Hiram will be in the chair. He'll call the meeting to order and state what we're there for, which everyone knows already, without being told. Then he'll ask for nominations for secretary, and one of his friends will go in. Then he'll spout about what we ought to do to win this season, and how to do it, and say we're sure to be at the head of the league and win the Blue Banner and all like that. "Then he'll ask for nominations for players and they'll be voted on; we'll have a little chinning about money matters, Hiram may say who the first few games will be with, and it will be all over but the shouting." "Well, won't lots of fellows have a chance to nominate players, or won't the players themselves ask to be given a chance?" "Oh, yes, but what's the use? It's all cut and dried." "Who'll be on the nine?" "I can pretty near tell you, all but the pitcher. And that will lay between Frank Brown and Larry Akers--both friends of Hiram. Luke will catch--that's a cinch. George Bland will be in centre-field. I may be at first, though I doubt it." "Why?" "Oh, because I dared to say Joe was right for answering Luke back that time. I'll probably be sent out in the daisies, but I don't care, for with Luke catching it's no easy matter to hold down the first bag. He throws so rotten high. Then Teeter will be on second. Nat Pierson on third, Harry Lauter in right, Jake Weston at short, and Charlie Borden in left. That's how it will be." "And no show for Joe?" "I can't see any, nor for you, either." "Oh, I don't care about myself, but I'm interested in Joe. I _do_ wish he could pitch." "I'm afraid he can't," answered Peaches with a sigh. "I'd almost be willing to give my place to him, but I'm not altogether sure that I'll get on the nine, though I'm going to make a big fight for it." "Oh, Joe wouldn't think of doing anything like that!" objected Tom. "But maybe my plan will work. If it does, Hiram won't have so much to say as he does now." "I hope to gracious you can work something. It's rotten the way things are now, and it is our own fault, too. But I'm afraid it's too late to change. No, you can figure that the nine is already made up between Hiram and Luke--that is, all but pitcher." "Then I think Joe has a chance!" exclaimed Tom. "I'm not going to give up until the last minute. I'm working hard for him, but don't say anything to him about it. I want to surprise him." "I'm afraid it will be a disagreeable surprise," commented Peaches, as he left his friend. The time for the meeting was at hand and on all sides there seemed to be but one question: "Who will pitch?" There were many shakes of heads and much speculation, but Hiram and Luke kept their own counsel. CHAPTER IX TOM'S PLAN FAILS "The meeting will come to order!" called Hiram. "I'll cuff some of you fellows over the head if you don't sit down." It was rather an unparliamentary way of doing things, but it proved effective, and at length quiet reigned. As Peaches had said, Hiram began by stating what they were there for, and by announcing that the make-up of the nine was in order. Some unimportant business was disposed of, there were remarks from several lads about what the season might have in store, there were many determinations expressed about how well the Excelsior team would play that season, and then Hiram said: "Nominations for the team are in order. Of course we expect that there will be a lot more fellows named than we can use, but there'll probably be a weeding-out when we get at practice. The team named to-night will only be a tentative one." "Like pie!" murmured Tom. "You and Luke have it all up your sleeves." "Has the nominating committee anything to report?" asked Hiram, looking over at Luke. His crony arose. Luke was chairman of the nominating committee, as well as chairman of the committee on membership. "Your committee would recommend the following names," said Luke, and then he read off most of those named by Peaches to Tom. He did not call off his own name, however, and there was a blank opposite the positions of pitcher and left field. "Say, what's the matter, don't I play?" demanded Peaches, jumping up. "Oh, yes," answered Luke quickly. "But we haven't just decided where. I'm going to leave that with Hiram, and also the position for left field." "Well, I'll settle it right now!" exclaimed the manager. "You'll play left field, Peaches, and Charlie Borden will move up from there to first base." "What did I tell you?" murmured Peaches to Tom. "What about the stunt you were going to pull off?" "It isn't time yet. See the gang I have with me?" and Tom motioned to a lot of lads in the rear of the hall. "What is it--a rough house?" asked Peaches, and then he noticed for the first time that the athletic meeting was much better attended than usual. "Those are new members," declared Tom in a whisper. "I'm counting on turning the balance of power away from Hiram and the crowd with him. I've been canvassing the last week, and I've got a lot of fellows to join who never took an interest in sports before." "Oh, ho! So that's your game!" exclaimed Peaches. "Well, it's a good one all right." "They'll all vote for Joe for pitcher," went on Tom. "I notice that there are still two vacancies in the team," spoke Jake Weston, who had been named as shortstop. "We had such success with Luke as catcher last year, that I move that he again go behind the bat." "Second it," sung out Harry Lauter. "It has been moved and seconded," began Hiram, and there came a shout of "ayes" before he had finished. "That's the way it always is," whispered Peaches. "Luke pretends he's too modest to name himself, and some one else does it for him. Oh, the cut-and-dried program is going through all right!" "Wait and see," suggested Tom with a wink. "Are the selections of the nominating committee sanctioned?" asked Hiram. Again came a chorus of "ayes." "What about the pitcher?" asked Luke. "Will you name him, Hiram?" "Yes!" said the manager and he looked about the room until his eyes lit on those of Joe. "I'll name Frank Brown as regular pitcher with Larry Akers as substitute." Again came the chorus of confirmation. "Just as I told you," murmured Peaches. Tom was on his feet as the murmurs died away. Hiram was speaking. "That completes the regular nine," the manager said, "and it only remains to name the substitutes. I think we will let them go until you fellows have had some practice, so we can get a line on you. There's time enough. We'll begin regular practice next week, if the weather permits, and then I'll arrange for games. I have some in prospect, and the Blue Banner----" "Mr. Chairman!" interrupted Tom. "Well, what is it?" snapped Hiram. "I'm talking, and I don't want anyone to butt in." "I rise to a point of order," went on Tom, in a loud voice. "The nominations have not been closed, and I want to put in nomination the name of a friend, who is one of the best pitchers that ever----" "None of that!" cried Hiram. "Get down to business. I'll allow your point of order. Who do you name?" "Joe Matson!" cried Tom, "and----" "You can't elect him, what's the use of trying?" sneered Luke. "Maybe I can't, with your crowd, but I came here to-night with some friends of mine, new members of the athletic committee, and they'll vote for Joe, and I think we can outvote you!" cried Tom defiantly. "That's right!" yelled the lads toward whom he waved his hand. "Joe Matson for pitcher." Luke turned pale. So did Hiram as they looked at each other. This was something they had not counted on--an effective trick. "For myself and for these new members I demand a vote on the name of Joe Matson!" went on Tom, ignoring Joe's efforts to stop him. "That's right--we're for Joe!" yelled the new crowd. There were many of them, and with the usual element always ready to break away from him, Hiram knew that he would lose on the combination. "One moment!" he shouted, banging his gavel. Then he hurried over to Luke and the two conferred excitedly, while there was a near-pandemonium in the gymnasium. "I have an announcement to make!" shouted Hiram after a bit, making his way back to the platform. "It is true that you have the right to nominate any one you please--that is, a member of the athletic committee has, and members have the right to vote as they please. But I have to inform this audience that Sister Davis is not yet a fully-qualified member of this committee. That is not just yet." Hiram sneered disagreeably. "Why not? I signed my application, was properly endorsed, and paid in my dues!" cried Tom. "And so did these other fellows." "That's right," shouted his crowd in a chorus. "Very true," went on Hiram coolly. He was master of the situation now, and he knew it. "But there is a rule of this organization, which states that at the discretion of the chairman, and the manager and captain of the team, or any two of them, new members may be taken on probation for three months, and during that term of probation they have no voting power, so you see----" "That's an old rule!" "It's never been enforced!" "It's rotten!" "That's only a trick!" These were some of the cries that greeted the announcement Hiram made. "It may never have been enforced, but it's going to be _now_!" he shouted. "It was made to cover just such snap cases as this. You tried to work a trick, Tom Davis, but you got left. You and those other lads can't vote for three months, and so the team stands as originally named." "But we have no captain--your rule won't work. You said the manager, chairman and captain could apply that rule. Who is the captain?" demanded Tom, as he saw his game blocked. "Luke Fodick is captain of this nine; isn't he?" shouted Hiram, closing the last loophole. "Aye!" yelled the bully's crowd. "No!" yelled Tom's. "The ayes have it," announced the chairman, "and Luke and I agreed on enforcing that rule at this time. Besides, I am acting as chairman in place of Henry Clay, who isn't present, and I have his voting proxy, so Henry and I also agree on it, if you question the election of Luke." "That ends it," murmured Peaches in Tom's ear. "Henry Clay never does preside as chairman. He's only a figurehead for Hiram, and that's well known. Hiram always votes for him. I guess you're beaten Tom." "I'm afraid so. I wish I'd known about that rule." "I'd forgotten it myself," admitted Peaches. "It's rotten, but you can't do anything unless you outvote Hiram." The bully was smiling mockingly at Tom and Joe. The young pitcher felt rather foolish, but he gave Tom credit for originating a bold move and one that, under ordinary circumstances, would have been effective. "You may renew your nomination in three months, if you like, Sister Davis," spoke Hiram sarcastically "as you and the others will then be voting members. I believe that is about all the business to come before us to-night." And he announced the adjournment of the meeting. CHAPTER X THE BANNER PARADE Instantly following Hiram's words a hub-bub burst out in the gymnasium. Everyone seemed to be talking at once, and the crowd of boys split up into two factions. There were those who were with Joe and Tom in their contention, and who thought that they had not been given a fair opportunity. Among these were, of course, the lads who had not hitherto belonged to the athletic committee, and who had been induced by Tom to put in their applications. On the other side were what might be called the "conservatives," those who, while not exactly favoring Hiram and his high-handed methods, preferred to take the easiest way and let the old order of things prevail. Then, too, was a smaller crowd of distinct "Shellites" as Peaches dubbed them--friends and close cronies of the manager who sided with him in all things and looked upon him as a sort of hero. Chief among them, of course, was Luke Fodick, and perhaps next in line stood Charlie Borden, who had replaced Peaches at first. "It's a rotten, mean shame!" burst out Teeter as he came over to where Tom, Joe and Peaches were standing. "I'm not going to stand for it, either!" "Well, what can you do?" asked the practical Peaches. "They have it on us good and proper. There's the rule." "Well, I don't like it, but I'm going to stay here just the same," snapped Tom. "And so am I," added Joe frankly. "There's no use saying I don't care, for I do. I'd like to get on the team. But if I can't--why I'll root for 'em, that's all." "Maybe you'll be picked as one of the subs," was what Charlie Borden said. "We always have lots of them to make up the scrub nine. But frankly, Matson, I don't think you'll pitch. Frank Brown is going to make good, and if he doesn't Larry Akers will." He turned to join some of his own particular crowd, and with them continued the discussion of the unexpected turn given to the athletic meeting. Hiram and Luke were surrounded by a throng of their cronies, and from time to time there could be heard from them such remarks as: "Serves 'em good and right for trying to butt in." "What right have new fellows to try to run our affairs for us, anyhow?" "You sat on 'em proper, Hiram." "Yes, Luke and I fixed up that scheme," answered the bully, with no little pride. Joe heard, and the thought came to him that possibly there might be a split in the ranks of the lads--a school divided against itself, and on his account. He took a quick resolve. Striding over to Hiram he held out his hand, saying with a frank smile: "Hiram, don't think for a minute I'm sore. It's all right, and I haven't a word to say. I did want to get on the nine, but I realize that I am a new lad here, and maybe next year things will be different. I'm for the team first, last and always. Will you shake on it--you and Luke?" For a moment the bully eyed our hero. Luke, too, gazed at him with a sneer on his face. Then as a little murmur of admiration for Joe's conduct arose--a murmur in which some of Hiram's own friends joined--the latter knew that it was the wisest policy to be at least outwardly friendly with Joe. "All right, Matson," replied Hiram. "I guess you can come in. I'm sorry if you feel hurt about the way we run things here at Excelsior Hall, but----" "Not at all--'to the victors belong the spoils,'" quoted Joe. "Maybe you'll let me play on the scrub." "Sure, if there's a chance," put in Luke eagerly. He, too, saw which way the wind was likely to blow, and noting that Hiram had changed his conduct toward Joe it was up to the bully's toady to do the same. "You can play on the scrub all you want to," Luke added. Hiram held out his hand and, though the clasp he gave Joe might have been more friendly, our hero took the will for the deed. Luke, also, shook hands, and thus, for the time being, the threatened breach was closed. But Joe knew, and Hiram knew, that never could there be real friendship between them. Some of the lads began leaving the gymnasium now. There was more talk about the coming ball season, and some still persisted in denouncing the high-handed methods of the manager and his crowd. But in the main the feeling was smothered, due chiefly to Joe's manly act. The young pitcher even remained for a while chatting with Hiram, Luke and some of their cronies. "Say, you sure did have your nerve with you, when you shook hands with those two sneaks," remarked Tom, when he and Joe reached their room, a little later. "Yes, it did take nerve, but it was the only thing to do. I'm a thousand times obliged to you, Tom, for what you did for me, and----" "For what I didn't do for you, I guess you mean," interrupted his chum with a smile. "Well, I meant all right, but they beat us out. But I'm not done trying. Joe, you're going to pitch on the first nine of Excelsior Hall before this season is over, or I'll eat my hat." "I wish I could believe so," replied Joe with a little sigh of longing. Baseball practice formally opened the next day, which proved unexpectedly warm and springlike. The diamond was in good shape, and a crowd of lads turned out. A host of candidates did their "stunts" and Luke and Hiram "sized them up." Joe wanted to pitch on the tentative scrub nine that was picked to play against the first team, but Luke, who seemed to manage the second squad as well as the first, sent our hero out in the field, as he also did Tom. "Never mind," consoled Peaches, who was on the first team. "Luke doesn't captain the scrub when it's formed regularly, and when the fellow is picked out who is to have charge I'll speak for you, Joe." "Thanks. I would like a chance to get in the box." That the first nine had many weak spots was soon made plain to captain and manager, and, to give them credit, they at once set at work correcting them. "I'll get Dr. Rudden out to give you fellows some pointers as soon as we're in a little better shape," said Hiram, referring to the instructor who usually acted as coach. "Yes, and you fellows need it all right," said Tom in a low voice. "Everybody in the gym right after the game," ordered Hiram, during a lull in the play. "We're going to arrange about the Blue Banner parade." "What's that," asked Joe of Teeter. "Oh, every year all the teams in the Interscholastic League meet and have a parade to sort of open the season. The nine that holds the banner marches at the head, we have a band, and after that a little feed and it's jolly fun. You'll like it." "Morningside holds the banner now, doesn't she?" "Yes, worse luck. It ought to come here, and would have if Hiram and Luke had run things differently last year. But they wouldn't listen to reason. Well, I've got to play ball. See you at the meeting." The regulars won the ball game by a small margin, and then the lads trooped off to the gymnasium to the meeting. It was much more friendly and enthusiastic than the organization session had been, and arrangements were quickly made for taking part in the annual parade. "As is the custom," said Hiram, "we will all meet on the grounds of the school that holds the Blue Banner--that's Morningside, I'm sorry to say, but next season will be different. We are going to win the Blue Banner this time." "That's what he always says," murmured Peaches in Tom's ear. "So we will meet on the Morningside diamond, do the regular marching stunt and have a feed there. It will be necessary for you fellows to chip in for part of the expenses as our treasury is low just now. It won't be much. Now the parade committee will meet to talk over details, and so will the rooting crowd. Get busy now, fellows; we want to make a good showing in the parade." The Interscholastic League, of which the Blue Banner was the trophy, consisted of these schools beside Morningside Academy and Excelsior Hall: Trinity School, Woodside Hall and the Lakeview Preparatory Institute--or, more briefly the Lakeview Prep., which I shall call it. In the parade of the nines of these institutions, and the followers of them, there were always some novel features, and the lads tried to outdo each other in singing, cheering or giving their school yells. A committee generally had charge of the cheering and yelling contingents, and this body of students for Excelsior now got busy making up new war-cries. The day of the parade was a glorious one. It was Saturday, naturally, as that was the only time the students could be free. Early in the afternoon a big crowd left Excelsior Hall, the nine and the substitutes, including Joe and Tom, in their uniforms, each carrying a bat as an insignia of office. Morningside Academy was about five miles from Excelsior, and could be reached by trolley. Several special cars carried our hero and his companions. All the other marching contingents save Trinity were on hand when the Excelsior lads arrived at Morningside, and they were noisily greeted. A few minutes later the Trinity lads arrived and then pandemonium broke loose. "Say, this is great!" cried Joe, as cheer after cheer, and school-yell after school-yell, rent the air. "I guess we'll have some fun after all, Tom." "Oh, sure. It's jolly." The managers of the parade were rushing wildly to and fro, trying to get things in shape for the start. Lads who had not seen each other for some time were exchanging greetings, and the members of the various nines were talking "shop" to their hearts' content. "Get in line! Get in line!" cried the marshals. "We're going to start." The lads were to parade around the Morningside diamond, as a sort of tribute to the winning team of the league, and then go down through the town to the public square, where the yelling, cheering and singing would take place. Then they were to come back to Morningside for the feast. The band struck up a lively air and a silence fell over the crowd. Then, out from the midst of the throng came the lads of Morningside. They were to lead the line, as was their right, by virtue of being champions, and as they swung into formation Joe looked at them with critical eyes. Here was the doughty foe of his school. His gaze fell upon one sturdy lad who carried a staff--carried it proudly--and no wonder, for, floating from it was the Blue Banner, glorious in gold embroidery and silver lace--the Blue Banner of the Interscholastic League--the trophy which meant so much. "'Rah! 'Rah! 'Rah!" yelled the lads. "Three cheers for the Blue Banner!" And how those cheers welled out! The lad carrying the banner dipped it in response to the salute. Joe felt his heart strangely beating. A mist of tears came into his eyes--not tears of regret, but rather tears of joy and pride, that he belonged to the school which had a right to fight for that banner. Ah, if he could but enter that struggle himself! Slowly the Morningside lads filed to their places. Louder played the band. There were more cheers, more salutes to the blue trophy, and then the banner parade was under way. CHAPTER XI JOE HOPES AND FEARS Around the Morningside diamond marched the singing, cheering and yelling lads. The Blue Banner fluttered in the Spring breeze, and not a student in the crowd but either hoped it would stay in the possession of the present owners, or would come to his school, the desires varying according to the allegiance of the wisher. [Illustration: AROUND THE MORNINGSIDE DIAMOND MARCHED THE SINGING, CHEERING AND YELLING LADS.] It was a gala occasion for the town of Morningside, this Blue Banner parade, and the people turned out in great numbers to watch the lads. Throngs came from neighboring towns and villages, and some even from a distant city, for the boys could always be depended on to make the occasion enjoyable. The Excelsior Hall crowd did some new "stunts." Under the leadership of Luke and Hiram they rendered some odd songs and yells, and then, as they passed around the public square, Hiram executed his main surprise. The leader of Excelsior, none other than Luke Fodick, had been carrying a pole, on the top of which was a canvas bundle. It was tied about with strings in such a manner that, by pulling on one cord the wrapping would fall off, as when a statue is unveiled. To all questions as to what was on the pole under the canvas Luke and Hiram returned only evasive replies. But on reaching the public square, when the cheering was at its height, Luke pulled the string. At once there floated from the staff an "effigy" of the Blue Banner. It was made of blue calico and worked on it in strands of yellow rope were the words: WE'LL HAVE THE REAL BANNER THIS YEAR! Surmounting the odd trophy was a stuffed eagle, rather the worse for being moth-eaten, and worn "to a frazzle," as Tom said. But it made a hit, and the yells of laughter bore evidence of how the crowd appreciated it. "Guess we've made good all right," said Hiram to his crony. "There's nothing else like it in the parade." "That's right," answered Luke. "Oh, it takes us to do things." "And sometimes _not_ do them," murmured Teeter. "We ought to have the real banner." "Maybe we will," spoke Joe. The other schools had their own specialties in singing, cutting queer capers, or in cheers, and made hits in their own way. Around the square marched the lads, and then, with a final chorus, rendered by all the students, the parade was over. Back to Morningside Academy they went, and sat down to what the papers described later as a "sumptuous repast; a feast of reason and a flow of soul." Jolly good fellowship prevailed at the board. Speeches were made, toasts responded to, and baseball talk flowed on all sides. Hiram and Luke made remarks, as did the managers and captains of the other nines. Predictions were freely expressed as to who would have the banner the next year, and then came more singing, more cheering and more yelling. The dinner broke up finally, and then the various managers and captains got together to arrange the Interscholastic League schedule of games. "Well, it was all right; wasn't it?" asked Tom of Joe, when they were on their way back to Excelsior Hall. "Fine and dandy," was the answer. "They're a nice lot of fellows--all of 'em." "Quite some class to those Trinity School lads," remarked Tom. "It's a swell place--a lot of millionaires' sons go there I understand." "Yes, but I hobnobbed with some of 'em, and they weren't a bit uppish. Right good fellows, I thought." "Oh, yes, all millionaire lads aren't cads though money sometimes makes a chap that way. Trinity must be quite a school." "I guess it is, but Excelsior is good enough for me. We're in with a dandy crowd of fellows, though, and that makes it nice if you've got to play a lot of games with 'em. Nothing like class when it comes to sport. We ought to have some corking good games this Summer." "I only wish you and I were more in it," went on Tom. "Wait until we see about the scrub," suggested him chum. "I'm not worrying as much as I was at first." But, though Joe thus lightly passed over the matter, deep down in his heart there was a great longing. To him baseball meant more than to the average player. From the time when he had seen his first game, as a little chap, our hero had fairly lived, eaten and slept in an atmosphere of the diamond. He had organized a team of lads when he was scarcely nine years old, and played those little chaps in a sort of improvised circuit. Then, as he grew, and developed, and found that he could pitch, the world seemed to hold something worth while for Joe Matson. "Baseball Joe," he had been dubbed, when as a small chap he shouldered his bat and started off across the lots to a game, and "Baseball Joe" he was yet. How he longed to be on the regular nine, even in the outfield, none but himself knew. And when he dreamed of the possibility that he might some time occupy the pitching mound--well, he had to stop short, for he found himself indulging in a too high flight of fancy. "Get back to earth, Joe," he told himself. "If you want to pitch for Excelsior you've got to do a heap of waiting, and you are pretty good at that game." And so Joe had hopes and fears--hopes that his dream might come true, and fears lest the enmity of Hiram and Luke would keep him one of the "scrubbiest of the scrubs." He was tired after the excitement of the parade, and so was Tom, but they were not too weary to accept an invitation to gather in the room of Teeter and Peaches that night for a surreptitious lunch of ginger snaps, cheese and bottled soda water, which had been smuggled in. And, as before, the lads took the same precautions with the fake books and the tubes, hose and bottles. But they were not disturbed. "Well, we'll have to get busy next week," remarked Teeter as he slowly sipped his glass. "How so?" asked Joe. "Hard practice against the scrub starts Monday." "Who's captain of the scrub; did you hear?" asked Peaches eagerly. "Yes, Ward Gerard--a nice fellow, too." "That's the stuff!" cried Peaches. "Now there's a chance for you, Joe. Ward's room is on this corridor. I'm going to see him." "You'll be caught," warned Teeter. "Caught nothing!" retorted his chum. "It's so late none of the profs. or monitors will think a fellow will dare go out. Ward isn't an early sleeper, and I'm going to see him and ask him to let Joe pitch on the scrub before some one else gets the place. I'll be back in a few minutes, fellows. Don't eat up all the grub," and with that Peaches slipped noiselessly from the room. CHAPTER XII ON THE SCRUB "It doesn't take Peaches long to make up his mind," remarked Tom. "No, he's always right on the job," agreed Teeter. "It's mighty good of him--and all of you--to go to all this trouble and fuss on my account," added Joe. "I appreciate it, too." "Nonsense!" exclaimed Teeter, as he balanced himself on his toes to see if it was safe to indulge in any more cheese and ginger snaps. "We're glad to do it. I only hope you do make the team, and pitch, at that." "If I can pitch on the scrub, I'll be satisfied for a while." "We want to make Excelsior the best nine in the league this year," went on Teeter. "We've got to have the Blue Banner, and one way we can cinch it is to have a good pitcher." "Thanks!" laughed Joe. "Well, I mean it," resumed Teeter, helping himself to a handful of the crisp snaps. "That's where our weak point was last season. Many a game we gave away after we had it practically won, just because our pitchers went up in the air. And I'm afraid it'll be the same now. Frank Brown isn't much, unless he's improved a whole lot over season, and I don't believe he has. And as for Larry Akers--well, he's only a makeshift. Now, I'd like to see----" But Teeter's little talk was interrupted by the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside. For a moment the lads gazed anxiously at each other, and Tom made a grab for one of the fake books, but a look of relief came over their faces when the door opened and Peaches entered, followed by some one. "I brought Ward with me," explained the lad with the fair complexion. "Thought it was the safest way. Come on in, Ward; I guess these Indians haven't scalped all the grub." "Yes, fall to," invited Teeter. "There's plenty." "Charmed, I'm sure," murmured Ward with an assumed society air. "You know Joe Matson, of course," went on Peaches. "Oh, sure. He beat me in physics class the other week and I haven't forgotten it." "He wants to pitch on the scrub," went on the originator of the scheme. "He's all to the mustard, too, and----" "Say, let me say a word for myself," put in Joe. "I'm not a political candidate in the hands of my friends. Is there a show for me on the scrub, Ward?" "Well, I haven't made up the team yet, and you're the first applicant for pitcher, so you'll have first choice." "Then it's as good as settled!" declared Peaches. "When do you make up the team, Ward?" "To-morrow, I guess. I'll put you down as first pitcher, Joe, and I hope you can throw a scare into the school team--not because I'm not on it myself, but the better opposition they have, the better they'll play for the banner." "What about Hiram?" asked Tom. "Won't he kick up a fuss if he knows you've got Joe? And what about Luke?" "Say, I'm running the scrub!" exclaimed Ward. "They haven't anything to say after I take charge. What I say goes!" "That's right," agreed Teeter. "I'll do Hiram that much justice. He never interferes with the scrub after the season starts. Neither does Luke. They have their hands full managing their own players." "Then I guess I'll get a chance to pitch," murmured Joe, and he was happier than he had been in some time. It was only a small beginning, but it was a start, and that meant a good deal. Ward Gerard, whom Joe and Tom did not know very well, turned out to be a good-natured and pleasant companion. He was one of the new arrivals at the school, but already stood well in his classes and on the athletic field. Football was his specialty, but he was none the less a good baseball player and might have made the first team had he tried harder. The boys talked of the diamond until the booming of the big school clock warned them that they had better get to bed; so with good-nights and a renewed promise on the part of Ward to place Joe in the box, the conference broke up. "Oh, things are coming your way slowly," remarked Tom, as he and Joe reached their room, having successfully dodged a prying monitor on the look-out for rule violators. "Yes, and now I've got to make good." "You can do that easily enough. You always have. And when the three months are up I'm going to make my motion over again, and I'll bet we'll elect you as regular pitcher." "I guess you forget that when the three months are up the Summer vacation will be here and the nine will be out of business," remarked Joe. "No, I've got to work my own way, I guess." There were some murmurs of surprise when it was announced the next day that Joe Matson was to be the scrub pitcher. Friends of rival candidates urged their claims on Ward, but he stuck to his promise and the place went to Joe. "Did Hiram or Luke say anything when you told them?" asked Tom of the scrub captain. "Oh, yes--a little." "What was it?" "Nothing very pleasant, so don't repeat it to Joe, but Hiram wanted to know why I didn't pick out a decent fellow to pitch against the first team, and Luke remarked that Joe would be knocked out of the box in the first practice game, and that I'd have to get some one else." "Oh, Luke said that, did he?" asked Tom, and there was a look of smothered anger in his eyes. "Yes, and then some more." "Just wait until the first game--that's all," requested Tom quietly. "If they knock Joe Matson out of the box it will be the first time it's happened since he found that he was a real pitcher." "There are some pretty good batters on the first team," warned Ward. "That's the kind Joe likes," replied his chum. "Just you wait; that's all." It was the day for the first regular practice between the scrub and first teams. For several afternoons Joe had been pitching to Bob Harrison, who often acted as the scrub catcher, and as there was so much other individual playing going on no one had paid much attention to the work of our hero. "Say, I think we've got a 'find' all right," announced Bob to Ward, just before the practice game was called. "How so?" asked the scrub captain. "Why, that Matson can sting 'em in for further orders, and he's got some of the prettiest curves that ever came over the plate. The Hiram-Luke crowd is going to sit up and take notice, take it from yours truly." "I'm glad of it!" declared Ward. "We'll do our best to beat 'em, and it will be for their own good. They're soft, naturally at the beginning of the season, and so are we, but if we can wallop 'em, so much the better. Have you and Joe got your signals down?" "Yes, he's better at that than I am. He must have played some pretty good games." "So Sister Davis says. Well, here they come. Now to see what we can do?" There was a conference between Luke and Ward, and in order to give his team the most severe kind of a try-out, Luke arranged to let the scrub bat last. The first practice game was important in more ways than one. Not only did it open the season for Excelsior Hall, but it would show up the weak players, and, while the first team was practically picked, there might be a change in it. At least so every lad who was not on it, but wanted to be, thought, and he hoped against hope that his playing might attract the attention of the manager. Another thing was that Dr. Rudden, the coach, sometimes took a hand in the baseball affairs and occasionally he had been known to over-ride the judgment of Hiram and Luke, insisting that some player whom they had not picked be allowed to show what he could do on the first team. So there were many hearts that beat high with hope, and among them was Joe's. And there were hearts that were a bit anxious--to wit, members of the first team who were not quite sure of themselves. There was a large crowd in the grandstand and on the bleachers when the gong rang to start the game--a throng of students mostly, for the general public was not admitted so early in the season. It was a good day for the game, albeit the ground was a trifle soft, and the Spring wind not as warm as might be. The boys in their spick and span new uniforms made a natty appearance as they trotted out on the diamond. According to custom, Dr. Fillmore, the venerable head of the school, pitched the first ball formally to open the season. It was a sort of complimentary ball, and was not expected to be struck at. "Play ball!" yelled the umpire as he took the new horsehide sphere from its tinfoil wrapping and handed it to Dr. Fillmore. The president bowed as though about to make a speech, and Joe, who was in the box, stepped back. Our hero's heart was thumping under his blouse, for at last he was about to pitch his first game at Excelsior Hall, even if it was but on the scrub. CHAPTER XIII JOE'S GREAT WORK "Let her go, Doctor!" "Make him hit it, Professor!" "Strike him out!" "Give him an old Greek curve!" These were some of the cries that reached Dr. Fillmore as he stood in Joe's place in the pitching box. The president of the faculty smiled pleasantly. He was used to this mild "joshing," which was always indulged in by the lads of Excelsior on the occasion of the opening of the season. Not that it was at all offensive; in fact, it rather showed the good feeling existing between the instructors and their pupils. "Are you all ready?" asked Dr. Fillmore, as though he was inquiring whether a student was prepared to recite, and as if he really expected to pitch a ball that was to be hit. "Play ball!" called Harvey Hallock, who was umpiring. "Not too swift now, if you please, Doctor," stipulated Nat Pierson, who was first up. Then the venerable president delivered the new, white horsehide sphere. He threw rather awkwardly, but with more accuracy than might have been expected from a man who had a ball in his hands but once a year. Right over the plate it went, and though usually the initial ball was never struck at, Nat could not resist the opportunity. He "bunted," and the ball popped up in the air and sailed back toward the pitcher's box. To the surprise of all, Dr. Fillmore stepped forward and neatly caught it. "Hurray!" "That's the stuff!" "Put him on the team!" "Why didn't you say you were a ball-player, Doctor?" "Let him play the game!" These and many other cries greeted the president's performance. He bowed again, gravely, and smiled genially as he tossed the ball to Joe, who was waiting for it. A little round of applause came from some members of the faculty who had accompanied the doctor to the grounds, and then the head of the school walked off the diamond amid a riot of cheers. The baseball season at Excelsior Hall had opened under auspicious occasions everyone thought, and more than one lad had great hopes that the Blue Banner would come back there to stay for a while. "Play ball!" called the umpire again, and this time the game was on in earnest. Joe dug a little hole for the toe of his shoe, revolved the ball in his hands a few times, and looked to get the signal from Bob Harrison, the scrub catcher. Bob, who knew the individual characteristics of each batter better than did Joe (though the latter was rapidly learning them) signalled for a high out, and our hero nodded his head in confirmation. The next instant he delivered the ball. There was a vicious swing of the bat, and there could almost be heard the swish as it cut the air. And that is all it did do, for the horsehide landed squarely in Bob's glove with a resounding ping! and there was one strike against Nat. "That's the way to do it!" cried Bob. "Say, what's the matter with you?" angrily demanded Luke Fodick of one of his best batters. "What do you want to fan for?" "Couldn't help it, I guess," answered Bob rather sheepishly. "It was a curve." "Well, don't you know how to handle them by this time?" fairly snarled Hiram, who was closely watching every player. "If you don't know how to hit out a hot one you'd better go back on the scrub. Don't do it again." "I'll kill the next ball!" declared Nat, but he did not like the looks of it as Joe delivered it, and did not swing his bat. "Strike!" called the umpire sharply. "Wha--what?" cried Nat. "I said strike. It was right over the plate." "Plate nothing!" "What's he doing, calling strikes on you?" demanded Hiram. "It looks that way," spoke Nat. "Well, say----" began the manager in his bullying manner, as he strode toward the umpire. "Hold on now!" interposed Luke, who sometimes had better judgment than Hiram. "It's all right. Don't get excited. It may have been a strike. The fellows haven't got on to all the points of the game yet this season. Go on." "All right," growled Hiram. "But don't you dare strike out, Nat." Joe's next delivery was called a ball, though it was rightly a strike. Joe said nothing, realizing that the umpire was naturally a bit afraid of offending Hiram and Luke too much. Then Nat knocked a little pop fly, which was easily taken care of by the second baseman, and the first man on the regular, or school team, as it was called, was out. "All ready for the next one!" called Catcher Bob. "Don't you fan!" warned Hiram to Jake Weston, who was next up. "Just watch me!" exulted Jake as he walked confidently to the plate. Joe sent in a puzzling drop, with considerable swiftness, but to his chagrin Jake "killed" it, landing on it squarely and lining it out for two bags. "That's the way to do it!" yelled Luke, capering about. "Now, where's your star pitcher?" inquired Hiram, and he looked toward Tom Davis, who was playing first. "I guess he isn't so much!" Tom said nothing. He realized that perhaps his advocacy of Joe's abilities had brought his friend and himself too much in the limelight. But he meant well. "Oh, well, we just let you hit that one to see how it felt," shouted Bob Harrison, and that brought back Joe's nerve, which, for the moment, had deserted him as he saw his effort go for naught. Jake was on second, but he only got one bag farther, stealing to third as Joe struck out the next man. The school nine members were now whispering uneasily among themselves. Never before, at the opening of the season had they had a scrub pitcher who did such things to them. They realized that they had to play the game for all it was worth. Luke and Hiram were whispering earnestly together and when Harry Lauter, whom Joe had struck out walked to the bench, Luke stepped up to the plate. "Hold on!" cried Ward Gerard quickly. "You are out of your turn, Luke." "How's that?" indignantly demanded the school captain. "George Bland is up next, according to the batting order you gave me." "Well, we've changed the batting order," put in Hiram quickly. The truth of the matter was that George was not a very good hitter, while Luke was, and both the latter and the manager had seen the necessity of making at least one run the first inning in order to inspire confidence in the school team. They had hoped to change the batting order unobserved, and bring up a good hitter when he was most needed. But the scrub captain had been too sharp for them. "Changed the batting order, eh?" asked Ward. "You can't do it now under the rules." "Oh, well, we ain't playing strictly according to rules yet," said Luke weakly. "I'm going to bat, anyhow. You can change your batting order if you like." "We don't have to," responded Ward. "But go ahead, we'll allow it." "Thanks--for nothing!" exclaimed Hiram sarcastically, and Luke held his place at home plate. The situation was now rather tense. There were two men out, a man was on third and the captain of the school team himself was at bat. It was up to Luke to bring in his man and save his side from a goose egg in the first inning. Luke fairly glared at Joe, as if daring our hero to strike him out, and Joe was no less determined to do that feat if possible. He looked at Bob for a signal, and got one that meant to deliver a swift in. Then Joe knew that Luke, for all his boasting was a bit afraid--afraid of being hit by the ball, and, being timid would involuntarily step back if the horsehide seemed to be coming too close to him. "Here goes!" murmured Joe, and he sent in one with all his force. As he had expected, the school captain did step back, and, an instant later, the umpire cried: "Strike!" "What?" fairly yelled Luke turning at him. There was a laugh from some of the scrubs, and it was joined in by a number of the other students--lads who were kept from the athletic committee by the snap ruling of Luke and Hiram. The captain realized that there was a feeling against him, and he quickly swallowed his wrath. "Watch what you're doing," warned Hiram. "Oh, that was only a fluke," declared Luke. Joe smiled. He was going to send in another "fluke," but not the same kind. He delivered a quick ball, with a peculiar upward twist to it, and, as Luke swung viciously at it, but too low, naturally his bat passed under the ball. "Strike two!" yelled the umpire, as the ball landed safely in Bob's big mitt. There was a murmur of astonishment from the school nine and its particular sympathizers, and a breath of delight from the despised scrubs. Hiram flushed angrily, yet he dared say nothing, for there was no doubt about this strike. As for Luke, he was too surprised to make any comment. "I'll get the next one!" he declared, as he tapped his bat on the home plate. He did hit it, but it was only a foul, and, being on the last strike, did not count against him. "That's the way to do it. You're finding his curves if he has any!" cried Hiram. "Swat it!" "Sure!" assented Luke. With all his might he hit at the next ball, only to fan the air. "Strike three--batter's out!" called the umpire amid a tense silence. Luke had done what he was seldom guilty of; he had struck out, and to a pitcher whom he not only hated but despised. Joe's great work had enabled the scrub to retire the school team without a run--a thing that had not been done at Excelsior in many years. "Wow! That's the stuff!" yelled Tom, as he raced in from first. "I knew you could do it, Joe." "Great work, old man!" complimented Ward. "Now we'll see what we can do." There were gloomy and dubious looks on the faces of Hiram and Luke as the school team filed out on the field. CHAPTER XIV THE GAME AT MORNINGSIDE Interest, especially for Joe, centered in what Frank Brown, the school pitcher, might do. So, as a matter of fact, was the attention of nearly all the players and spectators on him. For, to a large extent, the victories of the Excelsior team would depend on what their battery could do. Of course it was up to the other players to lend them support, but it was pretty well established that if the pitcher and catcher did well, support would not be lacking. At the catching end of it Luke Fodick could be depended on nearly every time. But Frank Brown had yet to show what he could do as a twirler. In practice he had made out fairly well, but now the real test was to come. Naturally he was a bit nervous as he walked to the box, to face his first opponent, none other than Ward Gerard, the scrub captain; and Ward was a good hitter. He managed to hit a two bagger. Luke and Hiram cast anxious looks at each other. Well they knew how much depended on the showing their pitcher would make. "Watch yourself, Frank," called Hiram--just the very advice to make poor Frank more nervous. But he braced up, struck out the next man, and managed to hold the succeeding one hitless. The school nine was now about in the same position as the scrub had been. Their opponents had a man on third and two out. It was a time when Frank needed to brace up, and repeat Joe's trick. But he could not do it. Joe himself came to the bat, and with watchful eyes picked out just the ball he wanted after two strikes had been called on him. He rapped out as pretty a single as had been seen on the diamond in many a long day, and brought in Ward with the first run. "Wow! Wow!" yelled the scrubs, capering about. "That's the way to do it!" Luke and Hiram were almost in a panic. They saw the team they had so carefully built up in danger of disintegration; and holding a hasty conference, warning was sent to every school player to do his very best to get the scrub side out without another run. Frank did it, for he struck out the next man, and Joe died at second. But the scrub had one run and the school nine nothing. It was a poor beginning for Excelsior's chances at the Blue Banner when the players realized what a strong team Morningside had, and how efficient were the other nines in the league. I am not going to describe that first school-scrub game in detail. I shall have other more important contests to tell you about, as the story goes on. Sufficient to say that after the ending of the first inning Hiram and Luke went at their lads in such a fierce spirit that there was a big improvement. Joe kept up his good work in the box, but he had not yet "found" himself that season. He was not hardened enough; he lacked practice, and his arm soon gave out. Then, too the fielding of the scrubs was ragged, after Joe once began to be hit. The result was that the school nine began to pile up runs, and Hiram and Luke were jubilant. "Now, where's your wonderful pitcher?" asked Luke of Ward. "Oh, he's coming on. No use to work him too hard at first," replied the scrub captain good naturedly. "Look out for your own." This advice was needed, for, after helping his team to get a good lead, Frank Brown also rather went to pieces and when the game was over the school team led by only two runs. "That's too close for comfort," observed Hiram to Luke, as they walked off the diamond. "Frank has got to do better than that." "Oh, he'll be all right after a little more practice," spoke the captain. "If he isn't Larry Akers will go in," warned the manager. "Sure. Well, we've got lots of time before the first Morningside game. We'll win that." "I hope we do," but Hiram's tone was not confident. Somehow he was worried over the way Joe Matson pitched. As for our hero, he was warmly congratulated by his friends. Tom Davis was particularly enthusiastic. "We'll have you in the box for the school nine before long," he predicted. "I don't know," answered Joe rather dubiously. "It's a close combination between Hiram and Luke, and they may get Frank Brown into shape." "Don't you believe it. He can't pitch as good as you in a thousand years." "That's right," chimed in Teeter. "Nothing like having good friends," remarked Joe laughingly. Now that the season was started the baseball practice went on with a vim. Luke and Hiram had some of their players out every day, batting or catching the ball. Others were sent around the track to improve their wind, and in the gymnasium others were set at work on the various machines, as Dr. Rudden found their weak spots. The school nine battled against the scrub, too, and though Joe improved in his pitching so did the members of the first team in their batting, so that there were no other contests as close as the first one. The time for the first Morningside game was approaching. It was the first regular contest of the season and as such was always quite an affair. This time it was to be played on the Morningside diamond, and Luke and Hiram were bending every effort to win the game. The nine picked to play was practically the same as the one that played the first game against the scrub. There had been some shifts, and then shifts back again, and under the urging of the coach, the captain and the manager, the lads had improved very much. The day of the first game came. In special cars or in stage coaches, for those who preferred that method of locomotion, while some of the more wealthy lads hired autos, the nine and its supporters made their way to Morningside. Hiram, Luke and a few of their cronies went in a big touring car that Spencer Trusdell, a millionaire's son, owned. "Some class to them," remarked Joe, as he and Tom with a squad of the scrub and substitutes, got aboard a trolley car. "They may have to walk back," predicted Tommy Barton, one of the scrub. "Why?" asked Joe. "Spencer may not have money enough left to buy gasolene. He's a sport, you know, and always betting." "Well, he'll bet on his own nine; won't he?" "Oh, yes--but----" and Tommy paused significantly. "You don't mean to say you think Morningside will win, do you?" asked Ward Gerard. "You old traitor, you!" "I shouldn't be surprised to see our side licked," replied Tommy calmly. "They're soft, and Morningside has already played one game with Trinity and trimmed them." And as Joe and Tom journeyed to the grounds they heard others say the same thing. Nevertheless, Luke, Hiram and their own particular crowd were very confident. There was a big attendance at the game. The stands were filled with a rustling, yelling, cheering and vari-colored throng--the colors being supplied by scores of pretty girls, whose brothers, or whose friends, played on either nine. "Jove! What wouldn't I give to be booked to pitch to-day!" exclaimed Joe, as he and Tom found their seats, for neither was on the list of substitutes. "I know how you feel, old man," sympathized Tom. "But just hang on, and things may come your way." "Play ball!" cried the umpire, and the first big game of the season for Excelsior Hall was underway. That contest is still talked about in the annals of the two schools. It started off well, and Excelsior, first to the bat, rapped out two runs before the side was retired. Then came the first real intimation that the opponents of Morningside were weak in several places, notably in the pitching box, and in fielding and stick-work. Frank Brown, after striking out two men in succession, and giving the impression to his mates that he was going to make good, and to his rivals that they had a strong boxman to fight against--Frank, I say, literally went up in the air. He was not used to being hooted at and jeered, and this is just what the Morningsideites did to him to get his "goat." They got it, for before the first inning closed he had been unmercifully pounded, and four runs were chalked up to the credit of the foes of Excelsior Hall. Still that score might not have been so bad had Hiram and Luke kept their heads. They changed their batting order, put in some substitutes, and Hiram used strong language to Frank. "You've got to do better!" insisted the bullying manager. This had the further effect of getting on Frank's nerves, and he did worse than ever. "Say, why don't you fellows get a real pitcher?" asked Halsted Hart, manager of the Morningsides. "This is too easy," added Ted Clay, the opposing pitcher with a laugh. In desperation Luke finally sent in Larry Akers to pitch. At first he tightened up and stopped the winning streak of Morningside, and then, he, too, fell by the wayside, and the hooting, yelling crowd had his "Angora," as Peaches dolefully remarked. It might be said in passing that both Peaches and Teeter did well, and George Bland not quite so well. But the rest of the Excelsior team made many errors. Even Luke was not exempt, and this had the further effect of worrying his players. It is no pleasure to write of that first game, and that is why I have not gone into details about it, for Excelsior Hall is a school dear to my heart, and I do not like to chronicle her defeats. When the ninth inning came the score stood fourteen to six. In desperation, Luke had sent in Ned Turton to replace Larry. Several of his own friends asked him to give Joe a chance, but neither he nor Hiram would listen. In fact, there was a disagreement between Hiram and Luke. The manager wanted to shift Peaches back to first base but Luke would not hear of it until Hiram threatened to resign as manager, and that so alarmed the captain that he let him have his way. That settled matters, not because Peaches went to first, though he did good service there, but it was too late to stem the losing tide. The Excelsior team could not get a run in their share of the ninth, and Morningside did not take the trouble to finish out, the final score being fourteen to six in their favor. The opponents of Excelsior had snowed them under. CHAPTER XV A STRANGE DISCOVERY "Three cheers for Excelsior Hall!" cried Captain Elmer Dalton of the Morningside team. "All ready boys, with a will!" The cheers were deafening and perhaps they were all the more hearty because it was the winning nine and its supporters who were giving them. The crowd swarmed over the diamond, players and spectators mingling. Everybody was talking at once, the losing side and their supporters trying to explain how the defeat had come about, and the victors exulting in their victory. "I don't see what's the matter with you fellows, anyhow," growled Hiram, as he strode over and joined the little group of disconsolate ones who were walking toward the dressing room. "You ought to have beaten 'em." "And so we would have if they'd given me decent support," broke in Luke. "There were too many changes on the team." "And I suppose you think I'm responsible for that," retorted Hiram quickly. "I didn't say so. One thing, though; there's got to be another change." "That's right," added the manager scowling at the team, but neither he nor Luke intimated where the change ought to be made. "They're right on that one point," said Peaches, "a big shift is needed, and I can tell 'em one place to make it, if not two." "Where?" asked Teeter. "Pitcher for one," replied Peaches quickly, "and catcher for the other. If we had two good men as a battery there would have been a different story to-day." "What's that?" quickly demanded Hiram, turning around, for Peaches had unconsciously spoken louder than he intended. "I said I agreed with you," spoke the lad diplomatically, "that if we'd had some changes the result would have been different to-day," but he did not mention the changes. "Well, it's all over," remarked Joe to Tom, as they descended from the grandstand. "Let's get back home. Jove! But it's too bad to start the season with a defeat." "Somebody had to lose," replied Tom philosophically. "We couldn't both win, and I didn't expect it would turn out much different when I heard the talk on the way to the game. But it will teach Luke and Hiram a lesson." "If they want to learn it--yes." "Oh, don't worry. They'll be only too anxious, after to-day. But I notice some of the Trinity Hall and Lakeview Prep. players here. Getting a line on us, I guess." "Shouldn't wonder. We play Trinity next week." "Well, we ought to win that game. Hurry up, Joe, and we can get the next trolley back. No autos for us." As the two chums hurried across the diamond they found themselves in the midst of a crowd of Morningside players and students. At the sight of one lad in the uniform of Morningside, a uniform not soiled by the dust and grime of the diamond, Tom plucked Joe by the sleeve. "For the love of Mike, look there!" exclaimed the former first baseman of the Silver Stars. "Where?" asked Joe, and Tom pointed to the player in the spick and span new uniform. "Sam Morton!" gasped Joe, as he recognized his former rival on the Stars and his sometime enemy. "Sam Morton! What's he doing here?" "Looks as if he was on the nine," replied Tom. "He's in one of the Morningside uniforms, but he didn't take part in the game." "Sam Morton here!" went on Joe, wonderingly. "It doesn't seem possible. I wonder why we didn't hear something about it? It sure is he, and yet----" "Wait, I'll ask some one," volunteered Tom, and tapping on the shoulder a Morningside player near him, he asked: "Is he one of your nine?" Tom pointed to Sam Morton, who had not yet observed our heroes. "What? Oh, yes; he's a newcomer here I believe, but he had quite a reputation, so Captain Dalton put him on as substitute pitcher." "Substitute pitcher!" gasped Joe. "Yes, he's rather good I believe. He hasn't had much practice with us as yet or we'd have played him part of the time against you fellows to-day. Why, do you know him?" "Yes. He used to be on the same town team with me," replied Joe. "He'll probably play next week," went on the Morningside lad, "and when we meet you fellows again he'll probably do what Ted Clay did to-day," and he grinned cheerfully--there is nothing like a cheerful enemy. "Sam Morton here," murmured Joe, as if unable to believe it, while his old enemy strode on without having seen him, and the Morningside lad, who had given them the information swung about on his way to the dressing rooms. "Say, that's going some!" exclaimed Joe, as he and Tom walked on. "Fancy meeting Sam Morton here. I didn't hear that he was going to boarding school." "Neither did I. He must have made up his mind lately. Probably he began right after the Easter vacation. I didn't spot him at the time of the banner parade." "Me, either. But there was such a mob of fellows that it was hard to find anyone. But if he's here and he makes good, and pitches in some of the games, and if----" "If you get the chance to pitch for the school nine, you and Sam may fight your old battles over again," finished Tom. "That's right," agreed Joe. It was a discouraged, disgruntled and altogether unhappy crowd of lads that returned to Excelsior Hall late that afternoon. Despondency perched like a bird of ill-omen on the big flagstaff; and a celebration that some of the lads had arranged for, in case of a victory, did not come off. Tom and Joe were seated in their room, talking over various matters, including the game of the day, when there came the usual signal on their door, indicating that a friend stood without. "That's Teeter," predicted Tom. "Peaches," was Joe's guess, but when he swung open the portal both lads stood there. On their faces were looks of suppressed excitement. "What's up?" demanded Joe. "Lots. Special meeting of the athletic committee called. In the gym. Come on!" panted Peaches. "We're going to protest against the way Hiram manages the team!" added Teeter. "Come on!" urged Peaches, recovering his breath. "We want you with us. There's a lot of feeling against Hiram and Luke. They practically lost the game for us to-day. The revolt is spreading. It's a chance for you, Joe. Come on." "There's going to be a hot time!" predicted Teeter. "We have permission to hold a meeting. All the fellows are coming. Get a move on." Joe and Tom grabbed up their caps and hurried after their chums, Joe with a wildly-beating heart. Had his chance come? CHAPTER XVI A HOT MEETING "The meeting will come to order!" Teeter was in the chair, looking over a talking, shifting, excited crowd of lads gathered in the school gymnasium. He had assumed the office, and no one had disputed him. "The meeting will come to order!" he cried again. "Order! Order!" begged George Bland and Peaches. "We can't do anything like this." "What are we going to do?" asked Tommy Barton. "Try and fix things so we can win ball games," answered Tom Davis. Joe did not say much. He realized that this was, in a measure, a meeting to aid him, and he felt it would be best to keep quiet. His friends were looking out for his interests. "Order! Order!" begged Teeter again, and after many repetitions, and bangings of his gavel, he succeeded in producing some semblance of quietness. "You all know what we're here for," went on Teeter. "No, we don't; tell us!" shouted some one. "We're here in the first place to make a protest against the way Hiram Shell and Luke Fodick managed the baseball team to-day," went on Teeter, "and then we'll consider what can be done to make things better. We ought to have won against Morningside to-day, and----" "That's the stuff!" "That's the way to talk!" "Hit 'em again!" These were a few of the cries that greeted Teeter's announcement. He was very much in earnest. "This isn't a regular session of the athletic committee at all," he resumed. "It's a protest meeting, and it's going to be sort of free and easy. Any fellow that wants to can speak his mind. I take it you all agree with me that we ought to do something." "That's right!" came in a chorus. "And we ought to protest against Hiram's high-handed method. What about that?" "That's right, too," responded several. Joe looked over the crowd. As far as he could see it was composed in the main of lads who were only probationary members of the school society--lads without voting power. Neither Hiram nor Luke was present, and Joe could not see any of their particular crowd. He was mistaken in thinking that Hiram had no friends there, however, for no sooner had Teeter asked the last question than Jake Weston arose and asked in rather sneering tones: "Do you call this giving a fellow a square deal?" "What do you mean?" inquired Teeter. The room was quiet enough now. "I mean just this," went on the lad who was perhaps the closest of all on the nine to Hiram save Luke. "I mean that Hiram Shell isn't here to defend himself, and you're saying all sorts of mean things against him." "We intend to have him here--if he'll come," spoke Teeter significantly. "Luke, too. We want them to hear what we say about them." "You're trying to disrupt the team!" yelled Jake, who had lost his temper. "I am not! I'm trying to do anything to better the team. We ought to have won that game to-day, and you know it." "I know that I played my best!" shouted Jake, "and if you accuse me of----" "Nobody's accusing you," put in Peaches. Several lads were on their feet, all seeking to be heard. Teeter was vainly rapping with his gavel. It looked for a few moments as if there would be several fights, for lads were shaking their fists in each other's faces. "Why don't you give Hiram a show?" demanded Jake. "Let him know this meeting is being held." "I sent word to him, but he didn't come," called Teeter, above the din. "Well, he's here now!" interrupted a sudden voice, and Hiram Shell fairly jumped into the room, followed by Luke and a score of their particular friends. "I just heard of this snap session, and I want to know what it's about. How dare you fellows hold a meeting of the athletic committee when I didn't call it?" "Say, you drop that kind of talk!" fairly yelled Teeter. "This isn't a meeting of the athletic committee!" "Come on down off that platform!" demanded the bully striding toward the chairman _pro tem_. "What right have you got there?" "Just as much right as you have, and I'm going to stick! This is just a meeting of the fellows of Excelsior Hall, and I've got just as much right to preside as you have." Perhaps it was the gavel which Teeter clenched in his hand, perhaps it was the fearless manner in which he faced Hiram, or perhaps it was the way in which Joe, Tom, Peaches and several of the larger students crowded up around Teeter, like a bodyguard, that caused Hiram to pause in his progress toward the chairman. Whatever it was, it proved effective and probably prevented a serious clash, for Hiram was in the mood to have struck Teeter, who surely would have retaliated. "Well, what's it all about?" asked the bully, after a pause. "What do you fellows want, anyhow?" "We want the ball team managed differently," retorted Teeter. "That's right!" came from a score of ringing voices. Hiram turned a bit pale. It was the first time he had ever witnessed an organized revolt against his authority. "Aren't you fellows satisfied with the way I manage things?" the bully sneered. "No, and not with the way Luke Fodick captains the team," went on the now fully aroused Teeter. "There's got to be a change." "Aw, you're sore because some of your friends can't play!" cut in Jake Weston. "Not at all," spoke Teeter. "Everyone knows we should have won to-day, and what a miserable exhibition of baseball we gave! It was rotten, and we want to protest. We're willing to let you continue as manager, Hiram, and have Luke for captain, only we fellows want to have more of a say in how the team is run." "Why, you fellows haven't any rights!" cried Hiram. "A lot of you are only probationary members, anyhow, and can't vote." "They don't need to vote," declared Teeter. "It isn't a question of voting. We're students at Excelsior--all of us--and we have a right to say what we think. We think things ought to be done differently." "That's right--we're with him," was shouted in such a volume of energy that it clearly showed to Hiram that, even though he held the balance of power in the committee proper, yet he did not in the whole school, and it was to the whole school that the team would have to look for support. It was a crisis in the affairs of Excelsior Hall. CHAPTER XVII THE INITIATION For a moment after the unexpected support of Teeter's ultimatum to Hiram there was a tense silence. The lads who had come in with the bully--his supporting army so to speak--remained grouped around him and Luke. On the other side stood Teeter, Peaches, Tom, Joe and their friends, and a number of the better players of the school nine. Included among them were a number of the substitutes. Hiram Shell looked around him. He must have been aware that his power might slip very easily from him now, unless something was done. It was no time to pursue his usual tactics. He must temporize, but he made up his mind that those who had revolted from his authority would pay dearly for it sooner or later. "Well, what do you fellows want?" he fairly growled. "I'll tell you what we want," said Teeter firmly. "In the first place we want this business of shifting players all about, stopped. A fellow gets used to playing in one position and he's best there. Then you or Luke change him." "Well, hasn't the captain the right to do that?" demanded Luke. "Sure, yes," spoke Peaches, "but when you get a good lad in a good place keep him there." "Is that all?" sneered Hiram. "No, we think there ought to be better pitching," went on the self-constituted chairman. "Ha! I guess that's where the whole trouble is!" cried Hiram quickly. "This meeting is for the benefit of Joe Matson." "Nothing of the sort!" exclaimed Joe quickly. "I knew nothing about it until Teeter told me. Of course I'd like to pitch; there's no use denying that, but I don't want any fellow to give way for me if he's making good." "That's the trouble--he isn't," put in Teeter. Hiram took a quick resolve. He could smooth matters over now, and later arrange them to suit himself and Luke. So he said: "All right, I admit that we didn't make a very good showing to-day. But it was our first game, and Brown and Akers didn't do very well in the box. But don't be too hasty. Now I'll tell you what I'll do," and he acted as though it was a big favor. "I'll let you fellows have a voice when I make changes after this. We'll do some harder practice. I'll make Brown and Akers pitch better----" "I don't believe he can," murmured Tom. "We won't make any more shifts--right away," went on Hiram. "Maybe you fellows were right. I haven't given as much time to the team as I should. But wait--we'll win the Blue Banner yet." "That's all we ask," said Teeter. "We just wanted you to know how we felt about it, and if things are better and our nine can win, we won't say another word." "All right, let it go at that," and Hiram affected to laugh, but there was not much mirth in it. "Might as well quit now, I guess. Everybody out for hard practice next week. I want to see some better stick-work, and as for pitching--where are Brown and Akers?" "Here!" cried the two boxmen. "You fellows will have to brush up a bit on your speed and curves," went on the bully manager. "Isn't that right, Luke?" "Sure," grunted the captain. There was more talk, but it was not of the fiery kind and, for the time, at least, the threatened disruption had passed. But there was still an undercurrent of dissatisfaction against Luke and Hiram. "Well, I don't see as it did an awful lot of good," remarked Tom Davis to Peaches and Teeter, as they walked out of the gymnasium with Joe, a little later. "I don't see that Joe is benefitted." "I didn't expect much," spoke our hero. "It was well meant and----" "And it did good, too," interrupted Teeter. "It's the first time any one ever talked to Hiram like a Dutch Uncle, and I guess it sort of jarred him. He'll sit up and take notice now, and it will be for the good of the team." "But where does Joe come in?" asked Peaches. "Well, I figure it out this way," replied Teeter. "Brown and Akers will try to make good but they can't. The fellows will see that we've got to have a new pitcher, and Hiram will have to give 'em one. Then Joe will step in." "There are others as good as I in the school," remarked Joe modestly. "Well, they haven't shown themselves if there are," was Teeter's retort. "No, Joe will be pitching before the season is over, you see if he isn't." The question was discussed pro and con, as they went to their rooms, and continued after they got there until a monitor warned them that though permission had been given to hold a meeting it did not extend to midnight lunch. It was one night, after a hard day on the diamond, that Joe and Tom, who were studying, or making a pretense at it, heard the usual knock on their door. "Teeter and Peaches--I wonder what's up now?" asked Tom. "Let 'em in and they'll tell us," suggested Joe, as his roommate went to the door. It was kept locked, for often some of the fun-loving students would come in unannounced to create a "rough-house," to the misery of the two chums. As the portal swung back, there was revealed to Joe and Tom several sheet-clad white figures, each one with a mask of black cloth over his head. The sight was rather a weird one, and for the moment Tom was nonplussed. "Shut the door," commanded Joe quickly. "They're up to some high jinks!" Tom hesitated for a moment. If it was Peaches, Teeter and their friends, he did not want to shut them out, but, on the contrary might want to join the fun. If, on the contrary, it was a hostile crowd there was no use getting into trouble. So Tom hesitated and was lost. For a moment later, the throng of white-clad and unrecognizable figures (because of the masks) stepped into the room. "We have come," announced one in a voice that sounded hollow and deep, "to initiate you into the Mystic and Sacred Order of the Choo-Choo!" "Get out, Peaches, I know your voice," said Joe, not quite sure whether he did or not. "Prepare to join the Mystic and Sacred Order of the Choo-Choo! Shall he not, comrades?" demanded a second figure. "Toot! Toot! He shall!" was the answer in a chorus. "That's Teeter all right," affirmed Tom. "Come!" commanded the first figure, advancing to take hold of Tom's arm. "Shall we go, Joe?" asked his chum. Joe thought a minute. There had been rumors in the school of late, that several initiations had been held into a newly-formed society. Reports differed as to what society it was, some lads stating that they had been made to join one and some another. But all agreed, though they did not go into particulars, that the initiations were anything but pleasant. Joe was as fond of fun as anyone but he did not like being mistreated--especially when it was not by his friends. "Don't go!" he called suddenly to Tom. "Then we'll make you!" said the disguised voice. "Grab 'em fellows!" Instantly there was a commotion in the room. Joe leaped back to get behind a sofa, but one of the black-masked figures was too quick for him and seized him around the neck. Our hero tried to tear the mask from the face to see who his assailant was, but other hands clasped his arms from behind and he was helpless. Tom, too, was having his own troubles. He was beset by two of the unknowns and held in such a way that he could do nothing. The struggle though sharp was a quiet one, for the students did not want to attract the attention of a monitor or prowling professor. "'Tis well," spoke the lad who was evidently the leader, when Tom and Joe were held safely, their hands having been tied behind their backs. "Away with them to the dungeon deep, and they will soon be good, faithful and true members of the Mystic and Sacred Order of the Choo-Choo!" Then, realizing that discretion was probably now the better part of valor, Joe and Tom meekly followed their captors. CHAPTER XVIII "FIRE!" "Where are you fellows taking us?" demanded Joe, as they walked softly down the corridor. "Toot-Toot!" was all the answer he received. "Say, we don't mind having fun," added Tom, "but if you fellows are going to cut up any, we want to know it." "Toot-Toot!" came again in imitation of a whistle. It was evident that this was a sort of signal or watchword among the members of the Order of Choo-Choo. "These aren't Peaches, Teeter, and our fellows," spoke Joe into Tom's ear as they were forced to descend a back and seldom used staircase. "That's right," agreed Tom. "I wonder who they are?" "Some of the seniors, maybe," suggested the young pitcher. "I wish I knew where they are taking us." "The candidates who are about to be initiated into the Mystic and Sacred Order of the Choo-Choo will kindly keep quiet!" came the quick command from the leader. "Silence is imperative to have the spell work." "Oh, you dry up!" retorted Joe. "Silence!" came the command again, emphasized this time by a dig in the ribs. "You quit----" began our hero, but his voice ended in a grunt, for some one had hit him in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him. He was indignant, and had half a mind to make a fight for it then and there. But he was practically helpless, and was descending a flight of stairs which made it dangerous to chance a scuffle. He made up his mind to fight when the time came. "If you fellows----" began Tom. "Silence over there!" hissed one of the white-robed figures. "If they talk any more, Master of Ceremonies, gag 'em." "Right, Chief Engineer," was the hollow answer. Tom thought it best to keep quiet. Silently the little crowd advanced. They halted at the door of one of the many store-rooms in the basement of the largest of the school dormitories. One of the lads opened the portals with a key. It was as black as pitch beyond. "Enter, timid and shrinking candidates," commanded some one. "Enter into the sacred precincts of the Choo-Choo." "Not much I won't!" declared Joe. "I can't see my hand before my face, and I'm not going into a dark room, not knowing what is there." "Me either!" declared Tom. "It is so ordered," came the deep voice of the leader. "Enter or be thrown in!" Joe turned, trying in vain to pierce the disguise of the black mask. He struggled to free his arms from the rope that bound them, but could not. He was half-minded to strike out with his feet, but he was now so surrounded by the initiators that he could not. Besides, if he did that he might lose his balance and fall hard. Tom was in like straits. "Forward, march!" came the command. "I'm not going in I tell you!" insisted Joe. "If he doesn't go in, shove him," came the command. Joe, as he felt that resistance was useless, started forward. It was better to keep his own footing, if he had to go in the room and not run the risk of being shoved down. Advancing cautiously, followed by Tom, the young pitcher stepped over the threshold. Almost instantly he felt cold water spurting up around his ankles, and he sought to draw back. He did not want to fall into a deep tank, with his arms bound. "Go on! Go on in!" was the command and he felt himself being shoved from behind. There was no help for it, but to his relief he found, as he advanced, that the water did not come higher than his knees. "Great Scott! What are we up against?" asked Tom. "Search me," responded Joe. "Silence! Blindfold 'em!" came a command, and before they could have prevented it, had they been able, Joe's and Tom's eyes were covered with big handkerchiefs. "Keep on!" was the order again, and the candidates did, soon stepping out of the water upon the solid floor. "Tie their feet," was the next order, and this was done. "Now, candidates," spoke the leader, "you have crossed the river of blood and the first part of your journey is over. But, to be good and loyal members of the Mystic and Sacred Order of Choo-Choo, it is necessary that you make a noise like a locomotive. Go ahead now, puff!" For a moment Joe and Tom hesitated and then, absurd as it was, they entered into the spirit of the affair and gave as good an imitation as possible of a steam locomotive in operation. "Very good! Very good," was the comment. "Now go up grade," and the blindfolded candidates were forced to go up a steep incline of boards, slipping and sliding back half the time. "They are coming on," commented some one. "At the next stop they take water. Hose-tender, get ready!" "Hold on! What are you going to do?" demanded Joe. "You'll see," was the answer. Joe and Tom were led to another part of the room. It was dimly lighted now, as they could see, for a faint glow came under the handkerchiefs. A moment later each of the luckless candidates felt a cold stream of water strike him full in the face. They tried to duck, and to turn their heads away, but the others held them until the upper part of their bodies were thoroughly soaked. "That's enough for steam," came the order from one of the party. "Now to see how they can carry passengers. Off with their bonds, but keep the blinders on." This was done. "Down on your hands and knees, candidates," came the order, and Joe and Tom had nothing for it but to obey. A moment later some one sat on each back and again came the order: "Forward march!" Now Joe, while liking fun as well as any lad, thought there was a limit to it, and to the indignities of the initiation, especially in a mythical society which they did not care about joining. When a heavy lad, therefore, sat down on our hero's back Joe made up his mind that matters had gone far enough. "Go ahead! Carry your passenger!" was the command. "Not by a jugful!" cried Joe, and with a quick motion he stood up, spilling off the lad on his back. The latter hit the floor with a resounding whack. The next instant Joe had torn off the blinding handkerchief, and made a grab for the lad whom he had upset. He tore off his mask and there was revealed the scowling face of Hiram Shell. At the same moment Tom had done the same to his tormentor, discovering Luke Fodick under the black mask. "Oh, so it's your crowd, is it Hiram?" asked Joe. "Yes, and by Jove, you'll suffer for this! Why aren't you sports enough to take your initiation as the others do?" "Because we don't choose to," replied our hero. "Then I'll make you!" cried Hiram, doubling up his fists and leaping at Joe. "Come on, Luke, give 'em what's coming to 'em!" "Two can play at that game," spoke Joe coolly. He noted that the room had been roughly fitted up as a sort of society meeting chamber. At the entrance was a long, narrow and shallow tank of water. It was through this that Joe and Tom had waded. "I'll fix you!" cried Hiram. "All right," agreed Joe easily. "As well here and now as anywhere, anytime." He threw himself into a position of defense as Hiram came on. Luke was advancing toward Tom, while the others, still wearing their masks, looked on in anticipation. There might have been two stiff fights the next moment had there not suddenly sounded from without a series of startled cries. Then came the clanging of bells, and above the riot of noise the lads heard some one shouting: "Fire! Fire! Fire!" CHAPTER XIX A THRILLING RESCUE "What's that?" asked half a dozen of the white-robed lads. "Fire, somewhere," answered Hiram, pausing in his rush toward Joe. "Come on, this can wait," added one of his companions. "We're through with this initiation, anyhow." "But I'm not through with him," snapped the bully with a glance of anger at the young pitcher. "I'll settle with him later." "Fire! Fire!" Again the cries rang out on the night air. "The school must be on fire!" yelled Luke Fodick. "Come on, fellows!" "Fire! Fire!" Many voices now took up the cry outside, and through a partially-curtained window could be seen the dancing light of flames. "Come on!" cried Joe to Tom. "We've got to be in on this, whatever it is!" "Surest thing you know," agreed his chum. They rushed from the room, following after Hiram and Luke. The others straggled out as fast as they disrobed, for they did not want to be seen in their regalia by any of the school authorities who might be on hand after the alarm of fire. "I hope it isn't any of the school buildings!" exclaimed Joe as he and Tom raced along. "That's right. So do I. Look, you can see the reflection from here." The boys were opposite a window in the corridor, and over the roof and spire of the school chapel could be seen a lurid glare in the sky, but what was burning could not be made out. "It's the gym!" gasped Tom. "Don't you dare say that!" cried Joe, "and with the baseball season just starting." "Well, it looks like it anyhow." Together they raced on until they came to a door that gave egress to the campus. Students were pouring out from their rooms in all directions, some eagerly questioning, and others joining in the cries of "Fire!" No one seemed to know where the blaze was. Professor Rodd came out with his precious tall hat in one hand and a bundle of books in the other. "Is the school doomed, boys?" he asked. "How did it start? Have I time to save anything else? I have some Latin books----" "I don't know where it is, Professor," answered Joe. "But it isn't this building, anyhow." "Good! I'm glad of it. I mean I'm sorry it's anywhere. Wait, and I'll be with you to help fight the flames." He ran back to his quarters to return quickly minus his silk hat and the books, and he wore an old fashioned night-cap. "There now, I'm ready," he announced, and he ran on as though he had donned a modern smoke helmet, used by the firemen. The boys laughed, serious and exciting as the situation was. Dr. Rudden saw our two friends hurrying across the campus together. "Why, boys!" cried the coach and athletic director. "You're all wet! How did it happen? Have you been playing the hose on the fire? Did it burst?" "No, we haven't been to the blaze yet," answered Joe. "We had----" "A sort of accident," finished Tom, as his chum hesitated for the right explanation. Then they avoided further conversation by racing toward the blaze, the light of which was becoming every minute more glaring. A stream of students and teachers was now hurrying across the campus, heading for the path around the chapel, which building hid the fire from sight. As Tom and Joe turned the corner they saw at a glance what was burning. It was an old disused factory about half a mile from the school, a building pretty much in ruins and of little value save as a sleeping place for tramps. Several times in the past there had been slight fires there but they had been quickly extinguished, though many said it would have been as well to let the old structure burn down. This time it seemed as if this would happen. The factory was of wood, and there had been no rain recently, so it was quite dry, and there was a brisk wind to fan the flames. "I guess it's a goner," panted Tom. "Looks that way," agreed his chum. "Here comes the fire department," went on the other, as they heard the clanging of a bell down the road. A little later they could see, by the glare of the fire, a crowd of village men and boys dragging, by the long rope attached to it, a combined chemical engine, and hook and ladder vehicle. It was a new acquisition in the town of Cedarhurst, and the citizens were very proud of it, though they had no horses to pull it. But everyone who could do so grabbed hold of the long rope. "They're making good time," commented Joe. "But they might as well save themselves. The old factory is better burned than standing. Guess some more tramps went in there." "Then they'd better be getting out by now," observed the young pitcher, "for it must be pretty hot." The lads ran on, and soon found themselves close to the burning structure. The heat of the flames could be felt, and Tom and Joe moved back into the crowd that had gathered. Up clattered the fire apparatus, and there was the usual excitement, with everyone giving orders, and telling how it ought to be done. Finally a chemical stream was turned on, the whitish foaming mixture of bicarbonate of soda, sulphuric acid and water spurting upon the flames. There was a hiss, and the part of the fire that was sprayed quickly died out. But it was evident that several chemical streams would be needed if the fire was to be completely extinguished, whereas two lines of hose were all that were available. In fact nothing but a smothering deluge of water would have been effective, and this was not obtainable. "They'll never get that fire out!" cried a man in the crowd. "Why don't you let it burn, Chief?" "Because we're here to put out fires. I'm going to----" But what the chief was going to do he never said, for at that moment, above the crackling of the fire and the shouts of the men and boys, there arose an agonized shout. "Help! Help! Save me!" All eyes turned instinctively upward, and there, perched on the ledge of what had once been the clock tower of the factory, high above the roaring, crackling flames, stood a man, wildly waving his arms and crying: "Help! Help! Save me!" "Look! A man! He'll be burned to death!" yelled a score of persons as they saw the danger. "That's about right, unless he gets down pretty soon," shouted Tom into Joe's ear. "Why doesn't he go down?" "Probably because the stairs are burned away," was Joe's shouted answer--everyone was shouting, partly to make themselves heard and partly because of the excitement, which was contagious. "Help! Help!" cried the man again. He gave one look below him and crowded closer to the outer edge of the tower. "Look out! Don't jump!" someone cried. "We'll save you!" shouted the chief. "Get the ladder, boys! Lively now!" Scores of willing ones raced to the wagon and began pulling out the ladders. They were the extension kind, and could be made quite long. Several men ran with one toward the building. "Not that side! The flames are too hot! You can't raise it there!" cried the chief. "Try around back!" The men obeyed but a moment later there came a disappointing shout: "Too short! The ladder's too short! Get a longer one!" "That's the longest we've got!" answered the chief. "Then splice two together!" urged some one, but the suggestion could hardly have been carried out with safety. No one knew what to do. The flames were mounting higher and higher, bursting out on all sides now, so that in a few moments, even had there been a ladder long enough to reach to the man, it could not have been raised against the building. "Help! Help!" continued to call the seemingly-doomed one. He moved still nearer to the edge of the tower. "Don't jump! Don't!" yelled the crowd. "You'll be killed!" "He might just as well be killed by the fall as burned to death," remarked one man grimly. "In fact I'd prefer it." "Can't someone do something?" begged a woman hysterically. The man held out his hands appealingly. "Oh, if we only had an airship, we could rescue him!" murmured Tom. "By Jove!" exclaimed Joe. "I have an idea. If I could only get a rope up to him he could slide down it, if we held the outer end away from the fire--a slanting cable you know." "That's it!" yelled his chum. "How are you going to get a rope up to him?" asked Luke Fodick, who was standing beside our hero. "No one could throw a rope up there." "No, perhaps not a rope," admitted Joe, "but if I could throw a string we could tie the rope to the string and he could haul it up and fasten it." "But you can't even throw a string up there," insisted Luke. "Of course not!" added Hiram, who had joined his crony. "Nobody could." "Yes they can--I can!" cried Joe. "I'll throw up this ball of cord. It will unwind on the way up if I keep hold of one end of it," and he pulled from his pocket a ball of light but strong cord. Joe used it to wind around split bats. "I'm going to throw this," cried the young pitcher. "Hey there!" he yelled to the man on the tower. "Catch this as it comes, and pull up the rope we're going to fasten on!" The man waved his hands helplessly. He could not hear. "Where you going to get the rope?" asked Tom. "Off the fire apparatus, of course. It's long and strong. Tom, you go get the rope off; I've got to make the man hear and understand before I can throw the cord." "That's the stuff! The rope from the engine!" cried the man near Joe. "That's the idea, young fellow!" Accompanied by Tom, the man raced to the engine. He quickly explained what the plan of rescue was, and others aided in taking from the reel the long rope by which the apparatus was pulled. Once more Joe shouted his instructions, while the fire raged and crackled and the crowd yelled. "Quiet! Quiet!" begged Joe. "I've got to make him hear!" "Make a megaphone--here's a newspaper," suggested a man. He quickly rolled it into a cone, tore off the small end to make a mouthpiece and Joe had an improvised megaphone. Through it he begged the crowd to keep silent, and at last they heard and understood. "I'm going to throw you a ball of cord!" called Joe through the paper cone to the man on the tower. "Catch it, and when I yell again, pull up the rope. Fasten it to the tower and we'll hold the ground end out and away from the flames. Then slide down." The man waved his hands to show that he understood. Then Joe got ready to throw up the cord. "He can't do it! He'll never be able to get that ball up to the man. It will fall short or go into the flames," said Luke Fodick. "He can't, eh?" asked Tom, who came back, helping to pull the long rope. "You don't know how Joe Matson can throw. Just watch him." And, amid a silence that was painfully tense, the young pitcher got ready to deliver a ball on which more depended than on any other he had ever thrown in all his life. CHAPTER XX THE WARNING Joe hesitated a moment. Everything would depend on his one throw, because there was no chance to get another ball of cord, and if this one went wide it would fall into the fire and be rendered useless. The fire was increasing, for all the chemicals in the tank on the wagon had been used, and no fresh supply was available. Below the tower on which the man stood, the flames raged and crackled. Even the tower itself was ablaze a little and at times the smoke hid the man from view momentarily. "I'll have to wait until it clears," murmured the young pitcher, when, just as he got ready to throw, a swirl of vapor arose. "You can't wait much longer," said Tom, in an ominously quiet voice. "I know it," agreed Joe desperately, and it was but too evident. The tower itself, weakened by the fire, would soon collapse, and would carry the man down with it into the seething fire below. "Throw! Throw!" urged several in the throng. Joe handed the loose end of the cord to Tom. He wanted to give all his attention to throwing the ball. He poised himself as if he was in the pitching box. It was like a situation in a game when his side needed to retire the other in order to win, as when two men were out, three on bases and the man at bat had two strikes and three balls. All depended on one throw. With a quick motion Joe drew back his arm. There was an intaking of breath on the part of the crowd that could be heard even above the crackling of the flames. All eyes were centered on the young pitcher. "He'll never do it," murmured Hiram Shell. "If he does he's a better pitcher than I'll ever be," admitted Frank Brown. Suddenly Joe threw. The white ball was plainly visible as it sailed through the air, unwinding as it mounted upward. On and on it went, Joe, no less than every one in the crowd, watching it with eager eyes. And as for the man on the tower he eagerly stretched out his hands to catch the ball of cord, on which his life now depended. [Illustration: THE WHITE BALL WAS PLAINLY VISIBLE AS IT SAILED THROUGH THE AIR.] Straight and true it went, as swift and as direct a ball as Baseball Joe had ever delivered. Straight and true--on and on and then---- Into the hands of the anxiously waiting man went the ball of cord. Eagerly he clutched it, while the crowd set up a great cheer. "That's the stuff!" yelled a man in Joe's ear. "You sure are one good pitcher, my boy!" "Never mind about that now," said the practical Joe. "Fasten on the rope. Quick!" Willing hands did this, and Joe looked to see if the knot would not slip. He seemed to have assumed charge of the rescue operations. "Haul up!" he yelled to the man through the newspaper megaphone. "Haul up the rope and make it fast. Then, when I give the signal, slide down." The man waved his hands to show that he understood, and the next moment he began pulling on the cord. The rope followed. Quickly it uncoiled from where the strands had been piled in readiness for just this. Up and up the man on the tower pulled it until he held the end of the heavy rope in his hands. There now extended from the tower to the ground a slanting pathway of rope, such as is sometimes seen leading down into a stone quarry. It was high enough above the flames to enable a man to swing himself along above them, though doubtless he would have to pass over a zone of fierce heat. "All ready! Come on down!" yelled Joe, and the man on the tower lost no time in obeying. He let go the rope as his feet touched the earth and then with a groan he collapsed. The crowd closed in around him, and two minutes later the tower, with a crash, toppled into the midst of the seething furnace of fire. The rescue had been made none too soon. "Don't crowd around him so!" shouted Joe, hurrying over to where the man lay. He pushed his way into the throng, followed by Tom, and the two lads actually forced the men and boys away from the man, who had evidently fainted. Joe whipped off his coat and made a pillow for the sufferer's head. As he bent over him, the man's face was illuminated by the glare from the burning factory, and our hero started back in astonishment. "Isaac Benjamin!" he exclaimed, as he recognized the former manager of the Royal Harvester works where Mr. Matson had been employed. Isaac Benjamin, the man who, with Mr. Rufus Holdney, had conspired to ruin Joe's father by getting his patents away from him. "Isaac Benjamin!" said Joe again. Mr. Benjamin opened his eyes. Into them came the light of recognition as he gazed into Joe's face. He struggled to a sitting position. "Joe--Joe Matson!" he murmured. "I--I hope your father will forgive me. I--I----" "There, don't think of that now," said Joe gently. "Are you hurt?" "No--nothing of any consequence. I'm not even burned, thanks to you. I climbed up into the tower when I found the place on fire. I--I--Joe, can you ever forgive me for trying to ruin your father?" "Yes, of course. But don't talk of that now," Joe said, while the crowd looked on and wondered at the man and boy knowing each other--wondered at their strange talk. "I--I must talk of that now--more--more danger threatens your father, Joe." Joe thought perhaps the man might be in a delirium of fright, and he decided it would be best to humor him. "That's all right," he said soothingly. "You'll be taken care of. We've sent for a doctor. How did you come to be in the old factory?" "I--I was sleeping there, Joe." Mr. Benjamin's tones did not indicate a raving mind. "Sleeping there?" There was surprise in the boy's voice. "Yes, Joe, I'm down and out. I've lost all my money, my friends have gone back on me--though it's my own fault--I have lost my home--my position--everything. I'm an outcast--a tramp--that's why I was sleeping there. There were some other tramps. They were smoking--I guess that's how the fire started. They got away but I couldn't." The man's voice was excited now, and Joe tried to calm him. But Mr. Benjamin continued. "Wait, Joe, I have something to tell you--something important--a warning to give you. If we--can we talk in private?" "Yes, later, when you are stronger," answered the lad soothingly. "Then it may be too late," went on Mr. Benjamin. "I am strong enough now. It was just a passing faintness. I--I am weak--haven't had much to eat--I'm hungry. But no matter. Here, come over here, I'll tell you." He struggled to his feet with Joe's aid and led the lad aside from the crowd, which parted to make way for them. "I'm down and out, Joe. Money and friends all gone." "What about Mr. Holdney?" "He too, has deserted me--turned against me, though I helped him in many schemes. I'm nothing but a tramp now, Joe." The young pitcher looked at the wreck of the man before him. Truly he was "down and out." His once fine and well-dressed appearance had given place to a slouchy attire. "But I must tell you, Joe. Your father's patent rights are again in danger. Rufus Holdney is going to try to get some valuable papers and models away from him. That's what he and I quarreled over. I'd do anything to spoil his plans, after he has thrown me off as he has. I left him, and since then I have had only bad luck. I don't know how I came to come here. I didn't know you were here. But warn your father, Joe, to look well after his new patents. Warn him before it is too late." "I will," promised Joe. "I will. Thank you for telling me. Now we must look after you." And indeed it was high time, for, as the young pitcher spoke Mr. Benjamin tottered and would have fallen had not our hero caught him. "Quick, get a doctor!" cried Joe, as the crowd surged up again around the unfortunate man, who had fainted. CHAPTER XXI BAD NEWS Attention was divided, on the part of the crowd, between the man who had been rescued, and the fire. The old factory was now burning fiercely and it was useless to try to save the structure. In fact, nearly everyone was glad that it had been destroyed, for it would harbor no more tramps. So the man who had been so thrillingly rescued was the greater attraction. Fortunately there was a doctor in the throng, and he gave Mr. Benjamin some stimulants which quickly brought him out of his faint. Then a carriage was secured, and the man was taken to the village hotel, Joe agreeing to be responsible for his board. Though Mr. Benjamin had treated Mr. Matson most unjustly, and had tried to ruin him, yet the son thought he could do no less than to give him some aid, especially after the warning. "Well, I guess it's all over but the shouting, as they say at the baseball games," remarked Tom to Joe. "Let's get home. I'm cold," for they had both been drenched over the upper part of their bodies by the initiation, and the night wind was cold, in spite of the fact that Spring was well advanced. "So am I," admitted Joe, as he watched the carriage containing Mr. Benjamin drive off. "I'd like some good hot lemonade." The fire now held little attraction for our friends and they hastened back to the dormitory, Joe explaining on the way how he had unexpectedly rescued a former enemy of his father's. "And aren't you going to send some word home about that warning he gave you?" asked Tom, as Joe finished. "That Holdney scoundrel may be working his scheme now." "Oh, yes, sure. I'm going to write to dad as soon as we get back to our room. Sure I'm going to warn him. I'm mighty sorry for Mr. Benjamin. He's a smart man, but he went wrong, and now he's down and out, as he says. But he did me a good service." "It doesn't even things up!" spoke Teeter. "He surely would have been a gone one but for you." "Oh, some one else might have thought of that way of getting him down if I hadn't," replied Joe modestly. "I remember a story I read in one of the books I had when I was a kid. A fellow was on a high chimney, and a rope he had used to haul himself up slipped down. A big crowd gathered and no one knew how to help him. His wife came to bring his dinner and she got onto a scheme right away. "'Hey, John!' she called 'unravel your sock. Begin at the toe!' You see he had on knitted socks. Well, he unravelled one, got a nice long piece of yarn and lowered it to the ground. He tied on his knife, or something for a weight. Then they fastened a cord to the yarn, and a rope to the cord, he pulled the rope up and got down off the chimney." "Your process, only reversed," commented Tom. "I say fellows," he added, "let's run and get warmed up. I'm shivering." "It was warm enough back there at the fire," said Teeter, as he looked to where the blaze was now dying out for lack of material on which to feed. "Beastly mean of Hiram and Luke," commented Peaches. "They're getting scared I guess. I hope we get 'em out of the nine before the season's over." Joe and Tom entertained their friends with crackers and hot lemonade, and none of the professors or monitors annoyed them with attentions. They must have known of it, when Peaches went to get the hot water in the dormitory kitchen, but it is something to have a hero in a school, and Joe was certainly the hero of the night. The two lads, who had been thoroughly soaked, stripped and took a good rub down, and this, with the hot lemonade, set them into a warm glow. Then they sat about and talked and talked until nearly midnight. Joe wrote a long letter to his father explaining all the circumstances and warned him to be on the lookout. One of the janitors who had to arise early to attend to his duties promised to see that the missive got off on the first morning mail. "There, now, I guess we'll go to bed," announced Joe. There was much subdued excitement in chapel the next morning, and Dr. Fillmore made a reference to the events of the night before. "I am very proud of the way you young gentlemen behaved at the fire," he said. "It was an exciting occasion, and yet you held yourselves well within bounds. We have reason to be very proud of one of our number who distinguished himself, and----" "Three cheers for Joe Matson!" yelled Peaches, and they were given heartily--something that had never before happened in chapel. Dr. Fillmore looked surprised, and Professor Rodd was evidently pained, but Dr. Rudden was observed to join in the ovation, over which Joe blushed painfully. Joe caught a cold from his wetting and exposure. It was nothing serious, but the school physician thought he had better stay in bed for a couple of days, and, much against his will the young pitcher did so. "How is baseball practice going on?" he asked Tom after the first day. "I wish I could get out and watch it." "Oh, it's going pretty good. We scrubs have a hard job holding the school nine down when you're not there to pitch. There's a game with Woodside Hall to-morrow, and I guess we'll win." Excelsior Hall did win that contest, but not by as big a score as they should have done. It was the old story of Hiram and Luke not managing things right, and having weak pitchers. Still it was a victory, and served to elate the bully and his crony. It was on the third day of Joe's imprisonment in his room, and his cold was much better. He had heard that Mr. Benjamin had recovered and left the hotel; no one knew for what place. He sent Joe a note of thanks, however, and it came in with some mail from home. Joe opened the home letters first. There was one from his father, enclosed in one from his mother and Clara. "Dear Joe," wrote Mr. Matson. "I got your warning, but it was too late. Why didn't you telegraph me? The night before your letter got here some valuable papers and models were stolen from my new shop. I have no doubt but that Holdney did it--he or some of his tools. It will cripple me badly, but I may be able to pull through. I appreciate what Benjamin did for us, and it was mighty smart of you to save him that way. But why didn't you telegraph me about the danger to my models?" "That's it!" exclaimed Joe bitterly to himself. "What a chump I was. Why didn't I telegraph dad, and then it would have been in time. Why didn't I?" CHAPTER XXII BITTER DEFEAT Joe's first act, after receiving the bad news from home, was to sit down and write his father a letter full of vain regrets, of self-accusation, upbraiding himself for having been so stupid as not to have thought of telegraphing. He hastened to post this, going out himself though barely over his cold. "I'm not going to take any more chances," he remarked to Tom. "Maybe that other letter wasn't mailed by the janitor, or it would have gotten to dad in time." "Hardly," remarked his chum. "Your father says the things were taken the night before your letter arrived, so you would have had to write the day before to have done any good. Only a telegram would have been of any use." "I guess so," admitted Joe sorrowfully. "I'm a chump!" "Oh, don't worry any more," advised his friend. "Let's get at some baseball practice. The school has two games this week." "Who with?" asked Joe. "Woodside Hall and the Lakeview Preps. We ought to win 'em both. They need you back on the scrub. The first nine has had it too easy." "And I'll be glad to get back," replied the young pitcher earnestly. "It seems as if I hadn't had a ball in my hands for a month." Joe mailed his letter and then, as the day was just right to go out on the diamond, he and Tom hastened there, finding plenty of lads awaiting them. A five-inning game between the scrub and school teams was soon arranged. "Now boys, go in and clean 'em up!" exclaimed Luke, as his men went to bat, allowing the scrub the advantage of being last up. This was done to make the first team strive exceptionally hard to pile up runs early in the practice. "Don't any of you fan out," warned Hiram. "I'm watching you." "And so am I," added Dr. Rudden, the coach, as he strolled up. "You first team lads want to look to your laurels. You have plenty of games to play before the finals to decide the possession of the Blue Banner, but remember that every league game counts. Your percentage is rather low for the start of the season." He was putting it mildly. The percentage of Excelsior Hall was exceedingly low. "Beat the scrub!" advised the coach-teacher. "They can't do it with Joe in the box!" declared Tom; and Luke and Hiram sneered audibly. Their feeling against our two heroes had not improved since the event of the initiation. The scrub nine was not noted for its heavy hitting, but in this practice game they outdid themselves, and when they came up for their first attempt they pulled down the lead of four runs which the school nine had, to one. There was an ominous look on the faces of Luke and Hiram as the first team went to bat for the second time. "Make 'em look like a plugged nickel," advised Tom to his pitching chum. "The worse you make 'em take a beating the more it will show against Hiram and Luke. We want to get 'em out of the game." "All right," assented Joe, and then he "tightened up," in his pitching, with the result that a goose egg went up in the second frame of the first team. Even Dr. Rudden looked grave over this. If the school nine could not put up a better game against their own scrub, all of whose tricks and mannerisms they knew, what could they do against the two regular nines with whom they were to cross bats during the week? When the scrubs got another run, Joe knocking a three bagger, and coming home on Tommy Barton's sacrifice, there was even a graver look on the face of the coach. As for Luke and Hiram, they held a consultation. "We'll have to make a shift somewhere," declared Hiram. "I'll just let Akers go in the box in place of Frank Brown," decided the captain. "No, that's not enough," insisted the manager. "You don't know how to play your own men." "I know as much as you do about it!" fired back Luke. Of late the bully and his crony had not agreed overwell. "No, you don't!" reaffirmed Hiram. "I tell you what you ought to do. You ought to get rid of Peaches, Teeter and George Bland." "Why, they're three of the best players on the nine." "No, they're not, and besides they're too friendly with Joe Matson and Sister Davis. They don't half play. They make errors on purpose, just to make the school team have a bad reputation." "Why should they do that?" "Don't you understand, you chump? They want to force you and me out. That's their game. They're sore about that meeting, and Matson and Davis are sore about lots of things. Peaches and the other two think if they get us out there'll be a chance for Joe to pitch." "So that's their game, is it?" exclaimed Luke. "Well, I'll put a stop to it. I'll make subs of Peaches, Bland and Teeter, and put in some other players. They can't come it over me that way." "Play ball!" called the umpire, for the talk between the captain and manager was delaying the game. "Oh, we'll play all right," snapped Luke, and he knew that he and his nine had to, for the score was now tie. "Peaches, Teeter, Bland, you can sit on the bench a while!" went on Luke. "Wilson, Natch and Gonzales, you'll take their places." "What's that for?" asked the innocent and unoffending Peaches. "Have we played so rotten?" Teeter wanted to know. "I made the changes because I wanted to," snapped Luke. "Go sit down with the other subs, and we'll see if we can't play a decent game." Perhaps Peaches and his chums may have understood the reason for Luke's act, but if they did, they did not say so. The game went on with the three new players, and the result may be imagined. The scrub continued to get ahead, and the school nine could not catch up because Joe was pitching in great form, and striking out man after man, though he was hit occasionally. "This is worse than ever," growled Hiram, when another inning passed and the scrub was five runs ahead. "Change back again, Luke." "Say, they'll think I'm crazy." "Can't help it. We'll be worse than crazy if we don't win this little measly game. And think what will happen Friday and Saturday. Change back." So Peaches, Teeter and George were called from the bench again, and they played desperately. There was a general tightening all along the line, and the school nine began to see victory ahead. Joe got a little wild occasionally, principally because he was out of practice, but the best the school nine could do was to tie the score in the fifth inning, and it had to go to seven before they could win, though they had planned to play only five. The school nine won by a margin of one. "That's too close for comfort, boys," said the coach. "Why didn't you have a little mercy, Joe?" he asked of the young scrub pitcher. "I will next time--maybe," was the laughing answer. Luke and Hiram scowled at him as they passed. They would have witnessed with pleasure his withdrawal from the school. But Joe was going to stick. "What are we going to do?" asked Luke of Hiram as they walked on. "About what?" "The nine. We've just _got_ to win these two games." "Well, we'll have to do some more shifting, I guess, and Brown and Akers have got to tighten up on their pitching. We'll try some more shifting." "Oh, you make me sick!" exclaimed the captain. "Always changing. What good does that do?" "Say, I'm manager of this nine!" declared the bully, "and if you don't like the way I run things, you know what you can do." Luke subsided after that. He was afraid of Hiram, and he wanted to remain as captain. The two discussed various plans, but could come to no decision. The inevitable happened. In the game with Woodside the Excelsiors managed to get a few runs in the early innings, but their opponents did likewise, because the Hall pitcher could not hold the batters in check. Then Woodside sent in another pitcher, better than the first, and the Excelsiors got only a few scattering hits, while, after shifting from Brown to Akers, Luke's nine did even worse, for Akers was pounded out of the box. The score was fifteen to six in favor of Woodside when the final inning ended, and the Excelsiors filed off the diamond in gloomy mood. "Well, it couldn't have been much worse," growled Luke to the manager. "Oh, it was pretty bad," admitted Hiram, "but we'll whitewash the Preps." The Excelsior Hall nine journeyed to the Lakeview school full of hope, for the lads there did not have a very good reputation as hitters, and their pitcher was not out of the ordinary. But it was the same old story--mismanagement, and a captain of the Excelsiors who didn't dare speak his own mind. If Luke had been allowed to run the team to suit himself he might have been able to do something with it, but Hiram insisted on having his way. The result can be imagined. Instead of beating the Lakeview boys by a large score, as they had done the previous year, Excelsior was beaten, nine to seven. "Well, it's not as bad as the last game," was all the consolation Hiram could find. "Say, don't talk to me!" snapped Luke. "Something's got to be done!" "That's right," put in Peaches, who came up just then. "Something has got to be done, Hiram Shell, and right away, too." He looked the bully squarely in the face. Behind Peaches came Teeter, George Bland and several of the subs. "What--what do you mean?" stammered Hiram. "I mean that it's either you or us," went on Peaches. "Either you get out as manager or we get out as players," added Teeter. "We're tired of playing on a nine that can't win a game. We can play ball, and we know it. But not with you, Hiram. What's it going to be--you or us?" "Say!" burst out the bully. "I'll have you know that----" A hand was placed on his shoulder. He wheeled about to confront Dr. Rudden. "I think something _must_ be done," said the coach quietly. "Call a meeting of the Athletic Committee, Shell." "What for?" asked the bully. "To discuss the situation. There has got to be a change if Excelsior Hall is to have a chance for the Blue Banner. If you don't call the meeting, Shell, I will." It was perhaps the best thing that could have happened, and to save friction among the students, many of whom were still for the manager, Hiram knew he had to give in to Dr. Rudden. "All right," he growled. "The meeting will take place to-night." Quickly the word went around through the precincts of Excelsior Hall. "There's going to be another hot meeting." "Hiram's on his last legs." "His game is up now." "This means that Joe Matson will pitch, sure, and we'll win some games now." "If Hiram goes, Luke will, too, and there'll be a new captain." These were only a few of the comments and predictions made by the players and other students as they got ready to attend the session. CHAPTER XXIII HIRAM IS OUT There was an ominous silence over the gathering in the gymnasium. It was entirely different from the former meeting which started in such a hub-bub, and which created such a stir. This time it meant "business," as Peaches said. Hiram called the session, but refused to preside. He wanted to be able to say what he thought from the floor, and from the manner in which he and Luke and one or two of their friends conferred before the session opened, it was evident that Hiram was going to make a fight to maintain his prestige. "Come to order, young gentlemen," suggested Dr. Rudden, when the gymnasium was well filled. It seemed as if every lad in Excelsior Hall was there. "You know what we are here for----" "To elect a new manager and captain!" shouted someone. "Stop!" commanded the coach, banging his gavel. "Who said that?" cried Hiram, springing to his feet. "If I find out----" "Silence!" commanded the chairman, while Luke pulled his crony to his seat. "This meeting will be conducted in a gentlemanly manner, or not at all," went on the professor quietly; but the boys knew what he meant. "We are here to discuss the baseball situation, and try to decide on some plan for bettering the team. I will hear suggestions." "I just want to say one thing," began Hiram. "I have managed this team for three seasons, and----" "Mis-managed it," murmured someone. "Why didn't we get the Blue Banner?" asked another voice. "Young gentlemen, you will have to keep from making side remarks, and interrupting the speakers," said Dr. Rudden. "Go on, Shell." "I never had any kicking on my management before," continued Hiram, glaring at those around him. "I can manage it all right now, and it's only some soreheads----" "Rather unparliamentary language," the chairman warned him. "If we had a few good players we could win every game," went on the bully. "But the season is young yet, and----" "I don't think that is a valid excuse," said the professor. "You had your choice of the whole school in picking the nine, so it is the fault of yourself and the captain if you haven't a good team. As for the earliness of the season, the boys have had plenty of practice and they ought to have struck their gait before this. I'm afraid something else is to blame." "We need better pitchers for one thing!" called someone. "That's right!" yelled a double score of voices, and Dr. Rudden, seeing the sway of sentiment, did not object. "We've got two good pitchers!" fairly yelled Hiram. "I know what this all means--that Joe Matson and his crowd----" "That will do," the chairman warned him. "It's true!" exclaimed Frank Brown, jumping to his feet. "I'm not a good pitcher, and I don't mind admitting it. I can't hold the other fellows down enough. If I could, we would have won these last two games, for our boys can bat when they haven't the heart taken out of them." "That's the way to talk!" cried Tom Davis. "Nothing like being honest about it," commented Dr. Rudden. "That statement does you credit, Brown. How many of you think the same--that a different pitcher would strengthen the team?" "I! I! I!" yelled scores. "It's not so! Our pitchers are good enough!" These cries came from Luke, Hiram and a few of their cronies. "There seems to be a division of opinion," began the chairman. "I think we had better vote on it." "There are a lot of fellows here who have no right to vote!" cried Hiram. "That won't do, Shell," said Dr. Rudden sternly. "This is a matter that concerns the entire school--to have a winning nine. Every student is entitled to vote." "Hurrah!" yelled Tom. "This is a victory all right. The end of Hiram, Luke and Company has come." "You'll pitch on the school team, Joe!" called Peaches in our hero's ear. "I'd like to," Joe answered back, "but I'm afraid----" "All in favor of having a change in pitchers, since Frank Brown has been good enough, and manly enough, to say that he knows his own weakness--all in favor of a change vote 'aye,'" directed the chairman. "Aye!" came in a thunderous chorus. "Contrary minded----" "No!" snapped Hiram. Luke and Jake Weston followed with feeble negatives. They, too, were beginning to see which way the wind blew. "Whom will you have for pitcher?" asked the Professor. "Can you decide now, or will you wait and----" "Decide now!" was yelled. "Joe Matson for pitcher! Baseball Joe. Joe Matson!" was cried in different parts of the room. "Very well," assented the chairman. "This may be a wise move. All in favor of Joe Matson as pitcher, since Frank Brown, the regular boxman, has practically resigned--all say 'aye.'" Again came the hearty assent, and again the feeble objection of Hiram. "Joe Matson is now the regular pitcher for the school nine," said Dr. Rudden. "And I want to say that I'm glad of the change," put in Larry Akers. "Hurray! Hurray!" yelled the now excited and enthusiastic students. Things seemed to be coming out right after all. "I want to say," exclaimed Joe, "that while I appreciate the honor done me, we may need substitute pitchers. In fact, I'm sure we will, and I wish Frank and Larry would remain to help me. I'll coach them all I can, and I know they both have pitching stuff in them. I've made quite a study of pitching as an amateur. Some day I hope to be a professional, and I'm willing to tell Frank and Larry all I know." "Good!" exclaimed the chairman. "I think they'll take your offer. Well, we have now made one change. Are there any more that you think necessary?" It was rather a delicate question, for everyone knew what was meant. But the lads were saved from doing what most of them knew ought to be done. "Do I understand that Joe Matson is the regular pitcher on the school team?" asked the manager, sourly. "That seems to be the sentiment of the students, Shell," answered Dr. Rudden. "And without me, or the captain, having anything to say about it?" "You were out-voted, Shell." "Well, then all I've got to say is that I don't manage this nine any more!" fairly yelled Hiram. "There's my resignation, and it takes effect at once!" and, walking down the aisle he threw a folded paper on the table at which the professor sat. "Shall this resignation be accepted?" asked the chairman, amid a rather tense silence. "Yes!" came so quickly and with such volume that there was no doubt about the sentiment of the crowd. Perhaps Hiram had hoped that he would be asked to reconsider it, but if so he was disappointed. He walked back to where Luke sat. He leaned over the captain and said something in a whisper. "I'm not going to," replied Luke, loudly enough for all in the room to hear. "Go on!" ordered the bully. "If you don't, I'll----" and then his voice sank to a whisper again. "All right," assented Luke, and walking forward as his crony had done, he, too, tossed a paper on the table. "There's my resignation as captain and a member of the Excelsior baseball nine!" he exclaimed. There was a gasp of surprise from the crowd. Hiram and Luke both out! It was rather unexpected, but Tom and his friends felt elated. Now they would have a chance to play. It looked like the dawn of a brighter day for Excelsior Hall. CHAPTER XXIV TWO OF A KIND "There is another resignation to act on," said Dr. Rudden, after a pause, and, somehow he did not seem half as worried over it as Luke had hoped he would be. "What shall we do with it?" "Take it!" exclaimed Tom, and it was accepted with a promptness that startled the former captain. "The action taken to-night makes it necessary to elect a new manager and a captain," went on the professor. "Perhaps the manager should be elected first. Whom will you have?" "Peaches Lantfeld," called some. "Teeter Nelson," said others. "George Bland! Sister Davis! Ward Gerard! Tommy Barton," called various lads. There were more nominations, but Peaches received the majority of votes, and was declared elected. Teeter was the first to congratulate him, and the others followed. "Now a captain," suggested the chairman. "Joe Matson!" yelled scores of voices. "No, I can't accept," cried Joe, jumping to his feet. "If I'm going to pitch I want to give all my time to that. I'm much obliged, but I decline." "I think it would not be wise to make your pitcher the captain, especially at this time," spoke Dr. Rudden. "The catcher is in a better position to captain a team, for he can see all the plays. You will have to have a new catcher, and----" "Ward Gerard!" called Joe. "He's caught for me on the scrub, and----" "Ward! Ward Gerard!" Scores of lads took up the calling of his name. He was very popular, and was elected in a minute, while Hiram and Luke, followed by Jake Weston, filed from the room in plainly-shown disgust, sneers on their faces. Nothing more remained to do save to have a conference of the new captain and manager, to arrange for future practice and playing. This was soon done, and Ward told the lads to report early the next Monday afternoon, when they would play the scrub, which organization had also to select a new captain and pitcher, as well as catcher. "Now, all I want is to get Tom Davis on the school nine, and I'll be happy," said Joe to Peaches and Teeter, as the meeting broke up. "I think you can," declared Teeter. "Jake Weston is going to get out, I hear, and Tom will fit in. Charlie Borden can take Jake's place at short and Tom can play first, which he's used to. Oh, I guess old Excelsior Hall has come into her own again, and we'll make some of these other teams sit up and take notice." And Jake did resign, following the example of his two cronies. This made a place for Tom, and he promptly filled it. There was a snap and a vim to the playing of the school nine when they first went at it with the changed players, that fairly took the breath out of the scrub. Of course that unfortunate collection of players was weakened by the withdrawal of Joe, Ward and Tom, but even with players of equal strength it is doubtful if they could have held the school nine down. Joe and his mates struck a winning streak, and the young pitcher never was better than in that practice game on Monday afternoon. "Joe's pitching his head off," observed Tom Davis, and when Ward missed holding one or two particular "hot" ones he thought the same thing. The school team won a decisive victory. "But that doesn't mean we will beat Trinity on Saturday," said Peaches, the new manager. "Don't begin to take it easy, fellows. And then follows the second game in the series with Morningside. We've got to get that or those boys will think they've gotten into the habit of beating us." "We'll trim 'em both!" cried Tom. "Sure," assented Joe. It was like old times now, he reflected, he and Tom together on a team as they had been on the Silver Stars. The only thing that worried Joe was the theft of his father's papers and patent models. He knew it would mean a serious loss to his parents, and Joe was rather in fear that he might have to leave boarding school. "If I have to go away, I hope it won't be until after I have helped win back the Blue Banner," he confided to Tom. "Oh, don't worry," advised his chum; and a few days later Joe received a letter from home, telling him the same thing. Mr. Matson wrote that whereas the loss would badly cripple him, yet he did not want Joe to worry. The game with Trinity was a source of delight to the Excelsior team. Their rivals came to the diamond battlefield eager for a victory, and they worked hard for it, but the new combination was too much for them. When the final run was chalked up the score stood: Excelsior Hall, 11; Trinity, 4. "That's what we want to do to Morningside," said Tom. "And we will!" predicted Joe. They had hard practice before the second game with their ancient rivals--for Morningside was a foe whom Excelsior Hall was always eager to beat. In the series for the possession of the Blue Banner she had three games with Morningside and a like number with the other teams in the league. It was the day of the second Morningside game, and it was to take place on the Excelsior diamond. The weather could not have been better. Spring was just merging into Summer, and the lads were on their mettle. There had been a big improvement in their playing, and they were ready to do battle to a finish. Luke and Hiram had not been much in evidence since their resignations. They occasionally came to a game, or to practice, but they made sneering remarks, and few of the students had anything to do with them. It was quite a jolt for Hiram, used as he was to running matters to suit himself. The crowd began arriving early at the Excelsior diamond, for word had gone around that it was to be a game for "blood," and both teams were on edge. If Excelsior had improved, so had Morningside. They had strengthened their men by long, hard practice, and they were confident of victory. Joe and Tom had expected before this to hear something about their old enemy, Sam Morton, at Morningside, but the former pitcher for the Silver Stars was seldom mentioned. However, it was learned that he was to substitute in the Morningside-Excelsior game. Out on the diamond trotted the renovated Excelsior nine. They were received with a burst of applause, and at once got to practice. A little later out came their rivals, and there was a cheer for them. Immediately the opposition cheering and shouting contingents got busy, and there was a riot of sound. "Going to stay and see the game?" asked Luke of Hiram, as they entered the gate. "Yes, might as well. Gee! But I hope our fellows lose!" Nice sentiments, weren't they for an Excelsior student? But then Hiram was very sore and angry. "So do I," added Luke. "It would show them what a mistake they made by dropping us." "That's right," agreed the conceited Hiram. "If they had only waited we'd have come out all right. It was all the fault of Joe Matson and Tom Davis. I'll get square with 'em yet." They strolled over the grounds, winding in and out amid the throngs. They almost collided with a Morningside player. "Beg your pardon," murmured Luke. "Oh, it's Sam Morton," he added, for he had met Sam in town a week or so previously. "Have you met Hiram Shell, Sam," and he introduced the two. "Oh, yes, you're the manager of the Excelsiors," said Sam. "Glad to know you. I think we'll beat you again. I may pitch after the fifth inning. I'm only the sub now, but I expect to be the regular soon." "I _was_ manager," replied Hiram bitterly, "but Joe Matson and his crowd put up a game on me, and I resigned." "Joe Matson, eh? He's the same fellow who made a lot of trouble for me." "Excuse me," murmured Luke. "I see a friend of mine. I'm going to leave you for a minute." "All right," assented Hiram. "So Joe Matson made trouble for you, too, eh?" he went on to Sam, curiously. "Yes, he played a mean trick on me, and took my place as pitcher," which wasn't exactly true, as my old readers know. "I'd like to get square with him some way," concluded Sam. "Say, so would I!" exclaimed Hiram eagerly. "Shake hands on that. He's a low sneak, and he played a mean trick on me. I'd do anything to get even." "Maybe we can," suggested Sam. "How?" "Oh, lots of ways. Come on over here where no one will hear us. Maybe we can fix up some scheme on him. I'd give a good deal to get even." "So would I," added Hiram. "I wish I could get him off the nine, and out of the school." "I'll help you," proposed Sam eagerly; and then the two, who were very much of a kind when it came to disliking our hero, walked off, whispering together. "Play ball!" came the distant cry of the umpire, and the great Excelsior-Morningside game was about to start. But the plotters did not turn back to watch it. CHAPTER XXV BY A CLOSE MARGIN "Whew!" whistled Captain Elmer Dalton of the Morningside nine, as he greeted some of the lads against whom his team was to play, "you fellows have been making a lot of changes, haven't you?" and he looked at the several new members of the school team, including Joe and Tom. "Yes, a bit of house cleaning," replied Ward Gerard. "I am captain now. Hiram and Luke got out." "Yes, I heard there was some sort of a row." "Oh, I suppose it's all over the league by this time," put in Peaches. "But it couldn't be helped. It was like a dose of bitter medicine, but we took it, and I think it's going to do us good." "You mean _we're_ going to do you good," laughed Elmer. "We're going to trim you again to-day." "Not much!" cried Ward. "We'll win. Come now, a little wager between you and me--for the sodas, say." "You're on!" agreed Elmer. "Where's your batting list?" The two captains walked over to the scoring bench to arrange the details of the game. The two teams were made up as follows, this being the batting order: EXCELSIOR-- George Bland centre field Dick Lantfeld left field Harry Nelson second base Nat Pierson third base Tom Davis first base Charles Borden shortstop Harry Lauter right field Joe Matson pitcher Ward Gerard catcher MORNINGSIDE-- Dunlap Spurr centre field Will Lee shortstop Wilson Carlburg left field Ted Clay pitcher Wallace Douglass catcher Elmer Dalton first base Walker Bromley third base Loftus Brown second base Harry Young right field The Excelsiors were to bat last, and while the rival crowds of school boys were singing, cheering and giving their class yells, Joe Matson walked to the box for the second time as pitcher on the school nine in a big school league game. No wonder he felt a trifle nervous, but he did not show it, not even when some one yelled: "Look at the new pitcher they've got! We'll get his number all right." "Yes, we'll have his goat in about a minute!" added another Morningside partizan. "Go as far as you like," answered Joe with a smile. "Play ball!" yelled the umpire, and Joe faced the first batter, Dunlap Spurr, who had the reputation of being a heavy hitter. Ward signalled for a low one, for he knew that Dunlap had a tendency to hit over such a ball. Joe nodded his head to show that he understood, and the next moment the horsehide went speeding toward the plate. The batter swung viciously at it but--missed. He had gone half a foot over it. "Strike!" cried the umpire. "Make him give you a pretty one!" called Elmer. "He will if you wait." "He won't have long to wait," retorted our hero. This time he decided to send one over the corner of the plate, as he noticed that Dunlap had a free swing. Joe hoped he would strike at it and miss, and that was exactly what happened. "Strike two!" howled the umpire, and there followed a gasp of dismay. Dunlap was not in the habit of doing this, and he rather scowled. Joe smiled. "One more and we'll have him down!" called the catcher. "Where'd you get the pitcher?" asked a Morningside wit. "Oh, we had him made to order," replied Tom Davis, who was anxiously waiting on first. Joe hoped he could make it three straight strikes, but his next was called a ball, and the Morningside supporters let out a yell of gratification. "There's his glass arm showing! He's going to pieces!" they yelled. Joe shut his jaw grimly. He was going to fool the batter if possible, and the next ball he sent in was a puzzling inshoot. Instinctively Dunlap started away from the plate, but he need not have moved, for the ball, with a neat little twist, passed him at a safe distance, and at a point where he could almost have hit it had he tried. But he did not move his bat, and an instant later the umpire called: "Three strikes--batter out!" Then indeed was there a gasp of dismay and protest from the big crowd of Morningside sympathizers, and the visiting nine. "Say," began Dunlap Spurr, "that was never----" "You dry up!" commanded his captain with a laugh. "It was a peach of a ball, and you ought to have hit it. Don't begin that way. We can beat 'em without that. Good work, Matson, but you can't keep it up. Come on, Lee; you're up next. Carlburg on deck." Joe was immensely pleased, but he knew it was only the beginning of the battle. He got two strikes on Lee and that player began to get worried. Then, after one ball, Lee hit the next one for a pop fly that Joe hardly had to step out of his box to get. "Two down, play for all you're worth, Joe," called Ward; but Joe needed no such urging. However, something went wrong. Either Joe did not have as good control, speed or curving ability as when he had started in, or the next players found him. At any rate Carlburg knocked a dandy two bagger, and Ted Clay, who followed, duplicated the trick. Carlburg came in with the first run of the game, amid a riot of noise, and when Wallace Douglass hit safely to first, Clay got to third, coming in with the second run a little later, when Captain Dalton also singled. "We've got 'em going! We've got 'em going!" yelled the delighted Morningside crowd, and it did seem so. Joe felt that he must tighten up, and strike out the next man, or all would be lost. He glanced at the bench, where the jubilant Morningside players were sitting, all regarding him sharply. It was a supreme test. Then Joe caught the eyes of some one else on him. The eyes of Sam Morton, his old enemy. It was like a dash of cold water. For the time being he had forgotten that Sam was the substitute pitcher on the visiting team, but had Joe seen him and Hiram in close consultation a little while previously, our hero would have had reason long to remember it. "I'll show 'em I am still in the ring!" Joe murmured, and when he wound up for his next delivery he knew that he had himself well in hand again. "Come on now, bring us all in!" urged Captain Dalton, when Walker Bromley got up to the plate. "He'll walk you, and then Loftus and Harry will have a show. We'll have the whole team up." It began to look so, for already seven of the nine had been at bat. Joe might have wasted time trying to nail some lad who was playing too far off base, but he did not. Instead he sized up Bromley and sent him a swift one. The batter struck at it and missed. The next ball was called a strike, and attention was at fever heat. Would Walker hit it? The question was answered in the negative a moment later, for he swung at it with all his force and fanned the air. "Out!" called the umpire, and the side was retired. But Morningside had two runs, and the way Joe had been hit by four men did not augur well for Excelsior's chances. "Oh, we'll do 'em!" said Ward, with more confidence than he felt. "I hope they pound Joe out of the box," murmured Hiram to Luke. "So do I," said the former catcher. Excelsior hoped for great things when it came her turn at stick-work, but alas for hopes! A series of happenings worked against her. George Bland rapped out as pretty a two bagger as one could wish, but he tried to steal third, slipped on a pebble when almost safe, and was thrown out. Peaches Lantfeld knocked a sharp grounder that looked almost certain to get past the shortstop; and it did, but the third baseman, who was a rattling good player, nabbed it and Peaches went down. "Now, Teeter!" called Ward. "See what you can do." Teeter got to first on a muffed fly, and it was Nat Pierson's turn. Nat could usually be depended on, but this time he could not. He fanned twice and the third time got two fouls in succession. "Well, we're finding the ball, anyhow," said Ward cheerfully. "Kill it next time, Nat, and give Sister Davis a show." Nat tried to, but he knocked an easy fly, which the pitcher gathered in, and the opportunity of the Excelsior nine was over for that inning. A big goose egg went up in their frame. Score: 2--0, in favor of the visitors. Joe took a long breath when he went into the box again, and facing Loftus Brown, struck him out in such short order that his friends began to breathe easier again. The game was far from lost, and as long as Joe did not allow his "goat" to be gotten, Excelsior might win yet. Then Harry Young, probably the poorest batter the visitors had, fanned thrice successively, and it was Dunlap Spurr's turn again. Joe knew just what to give him, and when he struck him out, after two foul strikes had been made, the crowd set up a yell. The visitors did not get a run in their half of the second, and once more Excelsior had a show. Tom Davis singled, got around to third when Charlie Borden knocked a two-bagger, and slid home in a close play when Harry Lauter was thrown out at first. There was only one gone when Joe came to bat, and one run had come in. Joe knocked a safety, or at least it looked as if it was going to be that, but the shortstop, by a magnificent jump into the air, nabbed it, and then came as pretty a double play as had ever taken place on that diamond. Joe was put out and Charlie Borden, who had been hugging third, was caught at home, for he was not a fast runner. That retired the side, and there was only one run to match the two which Morningside had. Still it was something, and the home team began to take heart. Then began what was one of the most remarkable games in the series. Joe did not allow a hit in the first half of the third inning and the Excelsiors got one run, tying the score. In the fourth the visitors pulled a single tally down, putting them one ahead, and then, just to show what they could do, the home team knocked out two, gaining an advantage of one. The crowd was wild with delight at the clean playing, for both teams were on their mettle, and the rival pitchers were delivering good balls. But the fifth inning nearly proved a Waterloo for our friends. The Morningsides got four runs, which made Joe groan inwardly in anguish, for he was severely pounded. "Maybe you'd better let Brown or Akers go in," he suggested to Ward. "Not on your life!" cried the captain. "You are all right. It was just a slip. Hold hard and we'll do 'em." Joe held hard, and there was a little encouragement when his team got one run, making the score at the ending of the fifth inning seven to five in favor of the Morningside team. Once more in the opening of the sixth Joe did the trick. He allowed but one single, and then three men fanned in succession, while, just to make things more than ever interesting, the Excelsiors got two runs, again tying the score. "Say, we'll have to wake up if we're going to wallop these fellows," confided the visiting captain to his lads. "They have certainly improved a lot by getting Hiram and Luke out." "Oh, we'll do 'em," predicted Ted Clay, the pitcher. From then on the Excelsiors fairly "played their heads off," and they ought to have done much better than they did when their hard work was taken into consideration. But there were many weak spots that might in the future be eliminated by good coaching, and Joe needed harder practice. But in every inning thereafter the home team got at least one run, save only in the seventh. In their half of the sixth they got two, as I have said, and though the visitors got one in their half of the seventh, again making the score one in their favor, in the eighth our friends got three, while the visitors got only two. So that at the close of the eighth the score was: Excelsior, 10; Morningside 10. "A tie! A tie!" cried hundreds of voices. Indeed it had pretty nearly been a tie game all the way through, and it might go to ten innings or more. "We've got to beat 'em!" declared Captain Ward. "Joe, whitewash 'em this inning, and in the next we'll get the winning run." "I'll do it!" confidently promised the young pitcher, and he did. He was tossing the ball according to his old form again, and not a man landed his stick on it during the first half of the ninth. Then, as the home team came up for their last whacks (except in the event of the score being a tie), they were wildly greeted by their schoolmates. "One run to beat 'em! Only one!" yelled the crowd. "I guess it's all up with us," remarked the visiting captain to his men, as they took the field. "They're bound to get that one." "Not if I can help it!" exclaimed the pitcher fiercely. And it looked as if he was going to make good his boast, for he struck out two men in quick order. And then up came Tom Davis. "Swat it, Tom. Swat it!" was the general cry. "Bring in a home run!" "Watch me," he answered grimly. Two strikes were called on him, and two balls. There was a nervous tension on everyone, for, unless Tom made good, the game would have to go another inning, when all sorts of possibilities might happen. Ping! That was the mighty sound of Tom's bat landing on the ball. Away sailed the horsehide--up and away, far over the head of the centre fielder, who raced madly after it. "Go on! Go on!" "Run, you swatter, run!" "A homer! A homer!" These cries greeted and encouraged Tom as he legged it for first base. On and on he went, faster and faster, rounding the initial bag, going on to second and then to third. The centre fielder had the ball now, but he would have to relay it in. He threw as Tom left third. "Come on! Come on!" yelled Joe, jumping up and down. "If you don't bring in that run I'll never speak to you again!" shouted Ward. The crowd was in a frenzy. Men and women were standing up on the seats, some jumping up and down, others yelling at the tops of their voices, and some pounding each other on the back in their excitement. On and on ran Tom, but he was getting weary now. The second baseman had the ball and was swinging his arm back to hurl it home. But Tom was almost there now, and he slid over the plate a full two seconds ere the ball landed in the catcher's big mitt. "Safe!" howled the umpire. "And we win the game!" yelled Joe, as he raced over to Tom and slapped him on the back, an example followed by so many others that poor Tom nearly lost his breath. "You won the game for us, Tom!" "Nonsense! If you hadn't held 'em down by your pitching, Joe, my run wouldn't have done any good." "That's right!" cried the others, and it was so. Excelsior Hall had won the second of the big games with her ancient rival, though it was by the narrow margin of one run. CHAPTER XXVI THE OVERTURNED STATUE "Three cheers for the Excelsiors!" cried the visiting captain, swinging his hat around in the air as a signal to his crowd, after the excitement had somewhat calmed. "Three good cheers, boys! They beat us fair and square! Three big cheers!" And how they rang out! And how also rang out the return cheers, which Joe and his mates rendered. Never had applause sounded sweeter in the ears of our hero, for it seemed that the school nine had now begun to live in better days, since the dismissal of Hiram and Luke. Joe kept at his pitching practice, and he himself knew, even had others, including Tom, not told him, that he was doing well. "You're better than when you pitched for the Silver Stars," said Tom, "and you were no slouch then." "Yes, I think I _am_ more sure of myself," admitted Joe. "And I've got more speed and better curves." It was natural that he should have. He was growing taller and stronger that Summer, and he had most excellent practice. He had not given up the idea of becoming a professional pitcher, and everything he could do tended that way for him. He had heard nothing more definite from home, but Mr. Matson said he was still trying to trace the stolen models and papers. "I'll help you when vacation time comes," said Joe in a letter. "But I'm playing ball for all I'm worth now." "Keep at it," his father wrote back. There were many games played that season by Excelsior Hall--many more than the previous Summer--for Spring had now given place to warm weather. The school term was drawing to a close, but there were still many more games to play in the league series. In succession Excelsior met and defeated Trinity, the Lakeview Preps. and Woodside Hall. She was near the top of the list now, though Morningside was quite a way in advance. It looked as if eventually there would be a tie for first place between the old rivals--a tie for the possession of the Blue Banner, and if there was it meant a great final game. Joe looked forward to it with mingled fear and hope. "How I hate him!" exclaimed Hiram to his crony, Luke, one day after a close game, when Joe's pitching had won again for Excelsior. "I wish I could get him out of the school, or off the nine, or something." "Why don't you? I thought you and Sam Morton had some scheme." "We thought so, too, but it fell through. But I've thought of something else, and if you and Sam will help me carry it out, I think we can put it all over that fresh guy." "Sure, I'll help; what is it?" "First we've got to get hold of something belonging to him--his knife, if it's got his name on; a letter addressed to him, that he's opened and read; a handkerchief with his name on; anything that would show he'd been in a certain place at a certain time." "Suppose we do?" "Leave the rest to Sam and me, if you can get us something." "I'll do it!" promised Luke. "I'm on the same corridor with Joe now; I changed my room, you know. I shouldn't wonder but what I could sneak in and get something belonging to him." "Do it, then. I've got a date with Sam, and I'll go see him. See if you can get something this afternoon or evening, and if you can we'll do it." "I will," and the two plotters parted, the chief one to keep an appointment with Joe's enemy. Sam's hatred against our hero was increased because Sam was not allowed to pitch for his own team. "I've got to keep Ted Clay in condition, so that when we meet Excelsior again he'll be on edge," said Captain Dalton of the Morningsides. "That Matson is a wonder and we can't take any chances. I don't dare risk letting you pitch." "That's another one I owe to Joe!" muttered Sam. "I must certainly get even with him. Hiram and I ought to pull off something," and then he sent word to the Excelsior bully. That afternoon the three conspirators, with guilty looks, met in a secluded place and talked over their plans. There was a knock on Joe's door. His chum Tom had gone out that evening to a lecture, and our hero was all alone. "Come!" called Joe, and from down the corridor Luke Fodick peered out of his slightly-opened door to see what was going on. "Here's a telegram for you," said one of the school messengers, handing in a yellow envelope. "A telegram for me," murmured Joe. "It must be from dad. I may have to send an answer. Did the messenger wait?" "No, he's gone." "All right, if I do have to wire, perhaps I can get permission to go in to town to do it." Quickly Joe tore open the message. It was brief, and it was from his father. "Understand Holdney is somewhere near Cedarhurst," the message read. "Keep a lookout, and if you get trace notify police there at once. Arrest on larceny charge." "Rufus Holdney near here," murmured Joe. "I must keep my eyes open. I'll wire dad at once, telling him I'm on the job." He hurried from his room, stuffing the telegram in his pocket as he went, and never noticing as he passed Luke's door that it fell out into the corridor. "I hope I can get permission to go to the telegraph office," mused Joe as he hastened to the office. "I guess the doctor will let me when I tell him what it's about." As Joe turned a corner out of sight, Luke sprang out, picked up the message and envelope, and exclaimed: "This will do the trick! Now to find Hiram and Sam." He hurried to tell his crony, who was being visited by Sam, and once more the three put their heads together, to work the ruin of our hero. Joe easily obtained permission to go to town to send his message. He was rather surprised on looking in his pocket for his father's telegram, not to find it, but concluded that he had left it in his room. He did not really need it, anyhow, as he knew the contents perfectly well. The telegraph office was closed when he reached it, but the operator lived near by, and agreed to open his place, and tick off the message. This delayed Joe, however, and he was rather late getting back to the school. He did not see a teacher to report to him, as he had been bidden to do, but hurried to his own room. He was tired and soon fell asleep, noting that Tom was already in bed and slumbering. Joe did not look for his lost message. There was a thundering knock at Joe's door the next morning. It awoke him and Tom. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Fire!" "Fire! No. Haven't you heard the news?" asked the voice of Peaches. "There's a big row on." "What's up?" demanded Tom, slipping out of bed, and opening the door. "The Founder Statue has been pulled from its base, and overturned!" said Teeter, who was with Peaches. "Look, you can see it from your window." Tom and Joe hastened to the casement to look. On the campus, not far from the school, stood a bronze statue of Dr. Theodore Whittleside, the original founder of the institution. It was a fine piece of work, the gift of several of the alumni societies, and was almost sacred. Now some ruthless hand had pulled it from its base, and part of one of the hands was broken off. For a moment Joe and Tom stood aghast, looking at it. Then the meaning of it came to them. Some sacrilegious student, or students, had done the deed. "There'll be a peach of a row over this!" declared Teeter. "Hurry up and get to chapel. Old Cæsar is sure to spout a lot about it. It's sure dismissal for whoever did it." "And it ought to be!" exclaimed Joe wrathfully. "If they catch them," added Tom, thoughtfully. "I wonder who did it?" CHAPTER XXVII ON PROBATION Joe did not get to chapel that morning. He was all ready to go with Tom and the others after making a hasty toilet, when a messenger came to the door. "Dr. Fillmore wants to see you in his office, Joe," said the messenger--a nice lad who did this work to help pay for his tuition. "Wants to see me--what for?" demanded our hero. "Are you sure that's right, Georgie?" "Sure, and a teacher's there with him. I'm not sure but I think it's something about the overthrown statue. I heard them mention it as they called me to go for you." "The overturned statue? I don't know anything about it!" exclaimed Joe. "I only just this moment saw it--from my window." "Well, the doctor wants you, anyhow," repeated the messenger lad. "You'd better go." "Oh, sure," assented Joe, and he started for the doctor's study with wonder in his heart and a puzzled and rather an ominous look on his face. His companions regarded him seriously. "What do you s'pose is in the wind?" asked Peaches. "Give it up," remarked Teeter. "Are _you_ on, Tom?" "Nary a bit. First I knew of it was when you fellows came and told me." "Was Joe out last night?" asked Peaches. "That's so, he did go into town," replied Tom. "He left a note to tell me--but that was all straight--he had permission. It can't be that." "Well, we'll hear in chapel," said Teeter. "Ah, it's you is it, Matson?" asked the doctor, as our hero entered the study. There was a curious note in the master's voice, and he glanced narrowly at Joe. "Come in. I am sorry to have to summon you on such an unpleasant and important matter, but I have no choice. As you probably know, the Founder's Statue was overturned last night." He looked questioningly at Joe. "I just saw it from my window," was the simple answer. "It was done last night," went on the doctor with a look at a teacher who acted as proctor. "It was a disgraceful, vile piece of vandalism. The guilty one will be severely punished. Doubtless you are wondering why we sent for you. It was on account of this, which was picked up by one of the janitors in front of the statue, when he discovered its fallen position this morning." Dr. Fillmore held out to Joe the telegram our hero had received from his father the night previous! "Is this yours?" asked the doctor. "Ye--yes, it came to me last night. It's from my father." "What did you do after you got it?" "Put it in my pocket and went out to answer it. I had permission from the proctor." "That is right," assented that official. "But I did not see you come in." "No, I was late. The telegraph office was not open, and I had to rouse the operator." "When did you last see this telegram?" asked the doctor. "I missed it soon after I started, but I concluded that I had dropped it," said Joe. Then it all came to him. The school authorities believed that the telegram had dropped out of his pocket when he was at the work of overturning the statue, in which vandalism he had no hand. "It was picked up near where the vile work went on," said the doctor bitterly. "It is evidence that even if you had no actual hand in the dastardly horseplay, that you might have witnessed it, and you can tell us who did it. That is what we now call on you to do, Matson. Tell us who did it." "But I don't know!" cried poor Joe. "I didn't see anything of it. I got in a little late, and went at once to my room. That telegram may have dropped from my pocket at any time, someone may have picked it up and put it--I mean dropped it--as they were passing the statue--either before or after it was pulled from the base." "That is hardly likely," said the doctor. "I am very sorry, Matson, but I must conclude that even if you had no hand in the vandalism, that you know who did it, or suspect." "But I don't!" cried Joe eagerly. "Someone may have put this telegram there to make it look----" He stopped in some confusion. He never had been a "squealer," and he was not going to begin now. "I think I know what you mean," said the proctor quietly. "You mean that some enemy of yours may have had an object in making it appear as if you had a hand in this work." He looked narrowly at Joe. "I--I, well, it might have happened that way." "And of the students here, whom would you regard as your enemy?" asked Dr. Fillmore quickly. "I--I--I must refuse to answer," said Joe firmly. "It would not be fair." "You mean you won't tell?" "I can't, Doctor. I haven't any right to assume that the telegram came there that way. I know that I didn't pass very near the statue, either on leaving or coming back to school. The message dropped from my pocket, I'm sure of that, but the wind may have blown it near the statue." "There was no wind last night," said the proctor severely. "Then--then----" stammered Joe. "That will do, Matson," said the doctor quietly, and there was sorrow in his voice. "I will not question you further. I am convinced that if you had no hand in the actual overturning of the statue, that you know something of how it was done, or who did it. Are you prepared to tell us?" "No, sir, I am not. I--can't." "I think I understand," said Dr. Fillmore. "Very well. Understand, we do not accuse you of anything, but under the circumstances I must put you on probation." "Probation?" murmured Joe. "Yes," added the proctor as the doctor turned away. "That means that you will not be allowed to leave the school grounds. You will report to your classes and lectures as usual, but you will not be allowed to take part in athletic contests." "Not--not baseball?" gasped Joe. "Not baseball," replied the proctor. "I am sorry, but that is the rule for one who is on probation. When you make up your mind to make a complete confession, and tell whom you saw at the work of tearing down the statue----" "But I didn't----" began Joe. "That will do," interrupted the proctor gently. "You are on probation until then. And you will not be allowed to play baseball." Joe felt his heart wildly thumping under his coat. Without a word he turned aside and went back to his room. And that is why he missed chapel that morning. CHAPTER XXVIII LUKE'S CONFESSION The anticipation of Teeter, Peaches and the others that there would be a sensation in chapel that morning was borne out. Never, in all their experience, had the boys recalled Dr. Fillmore being more bitter in his denunciation of what he characterized as "sensational vandalism." He liked boys to have good, clean healthy fun, he said, and an occasional prank was not out of order, but this pulling the statue from its base passed all bounds. More and more bitter the good doctor became. Perhaps part of his feeling was due to the fact that the Founder had written a book on Cæsar that the head of the school considered an authority, and you remember how fond Dr. Fillmore was of the writer of the "Commentaries." The boys looked at each other as the denunciation proceeded, and there were whispers of: "Who did it? Why doesn't he name some one?" The doctor came to that part in a moment. "We are unable to say who perpetrated this act of sensational vandalism," he went on, "but I may say that once the students are discovered they will be instantly dismissed from Excelsior Hall--this is no place for them. I say we do not know who did it, but we have reason to suspect----" Here the good doctor paused and there was an uneasy movement among several lads. "We have reason to suspect that some one knows who did it, but will not tell. I am sorry to say that we have been obliged to inflict the usual punishment on this--ahem--student and he is now on probation. The usual exercises will now be held." They went on, but it is doubtful if the lads were in a very devotional spirit. Joe's absence was at once noted, and of course it was guessed why he was not there, though being on probation did not bar one from chapel or classes. "By Jove!" exclaimed Tom, when they were on their way to first lectures. "It's Joe! Who'd ever dream it?" "So that's why he was wanted in the office," added Peaches. "I don't believe he had a thing to do with it!" declared Teeter vehemently. "Of course not!" chorused the other two. "But they evidently think he does," went on Tom. "Here he comes now; let's ask him." "Say, what does it all mean anyhow?" inquired Teeter when he had warmly clasped Joe's hand. The young pitcher told of the finding of the telegram, and its result. "But, hang it all, that's no evidence!" burst out Tom. "The doctor thinks so," replied Joe grimly. "Some one who has a grudge against you--Say!" exclaimed Teeter with a sudden change of manner. "I'll bet it was Luke or Hiram who did it--pulled the statue down and then tried to blame it on you." "Sure!" chorused Tom and Peaches. "Wait!" cried Joe. "It's bad enough for me to be suspected of knowing something that I don't, but we can't go to accusing even Hiram or Luke on mere guesswork. It won't do." "But hang it all, man!" cried Peaches. "You _can't play ball_." "No," answered Joe quietly. "And the league season is closing! How are we going to win without you in the box?" "You'll have to--that's all. Brown or Akers will have to twirl--they're pretty good at it now." There were sorrowful shakes of the heads, but so it had to be. It may well be imagined that there was a sensation in Excelsior Hall when it was known that Joe was the one on probation, and he was urged by more than one to tell all he knew, no matter on whose shoulders the guilt would fall. "But I don't know!" he insisted again and again. "And it wouldn't be fair to guess." The days went on. Frank Brown was tried out in the box and did fairly well, thanks to the efficient coaching Joe had given him. Excelsior even won a game with him twirling, though by a narrow margin, and against a weak team. But there were dubious shakes of the heads of the students--especially those on the team--when they thought of the games to come--the important final with Morningside. Still there was no help for it, and Brown and Akers redoubled their practice in anticipation. There was no objection to Joe practicing, or in coaching the two substitute pitchers, and he did this every day. Our hero did not write home about the disgrace that had come so undeservedly upon him, merely telling general news, and assuring his father that he had kept a lookout, and made inquiries, but had neither seen nor heard anything of Mr. Holdney. Meanwhile the affairs of Mr. Matson--due to the theft of the models--were in anything but good shape. Still nothing could be done. Joe bitterly felt his position. So did his chums, and they even tried their hand at amateur detective work, endeavoring to discover who had pulled down the statue and put Joe's telegram where it had been found. That it was put there was certain, for Joe, on the night in question, had not gone near the statue. In the meanwhile the bronze had been put back in place and repaired. Among the students there were those who thought they knew the guilty ones, but nothing definite was disclosed. The school term was drawing to an end. After the hard work of getting the ball team into shape for championship honors it was hard to see it begin to slip back. Yet this is what took place. Brown and Akers could not keep up the pace set by Joe, and several games were lost. By hard work, and more due to errors on the part of their opponents, Excelsior won victories over Trinity and the preparatory school. This made her percentage just high enough so that if she should win from Morningside in the final game the Blue Banner would come to her. But could Excelsior win? That was what every lad there asked himself. It was rumored that Morningside was never in better shape. Ted Clay, the pitcher, was twirling in great form it was said, and Sam Morton, as substitute, was sure to go in for several innings in the final contest. "They say he's a wonder for a short time," Peaches confided to Joe. "He is," frankly admitted our hero. "I know his style. He can't last, but he's good for part of a game. With him and Ted against us I'm afraid it's all up with our chances." "Oh, Joe, if you could only play!" "I want to as much as you want me, Peaches, but it's out of the question." "Maybe if we were to put it up to the doctor--that we would lose the Blue Banner without you--he'd let you play." "I couldn't play that way, Peaches--under a ban. I want vindication--or nothing." "Yes, I suppose so--only it's hard." At last came the night before the final game with Morningside. There was a spirit of unrest and a sense of impending disaster abroad in Excelsior. Every student was talking of it, even Hiram and Luke. The latter, for some days past had not been his usual self, and his crony could not understand it. "What's the matter with you, anyhow?" Hiram asked. "Aren't you glad we did that chump Matson up good and brown?" "Oh, well, I don't know," answered Luke slowly. "I didn't think it would mean that we'd lose the Blue Banner." "How do you know we are going to lose it?" "Of course we are. Morningside will win, with no good pitcher to hold her down, and Joe is a good pitcher, no matter what hand he had in getting us out of the nine. I'm sorry I got out anyhow. I'd like to be on it now." "You're sorry?" gasped Hiram. "Yes, I wouldn't have resigned only you made me." "_I_ made you! Say, what's eating you, anyhow? You were as hot against Matson and his crowd as I was." "No, I wasn't, and while we're on this subject I'll tell you another thing. I'm mighty sorry I had a hand in that statue business." "You didn't do anything--Sam and I yanked it down." "I know, but I put Joe's telegram there--I'm responsible for him being on probation, so he can't play to-morrow." "Oh, you are; eh?" sneered Hiram. "Then you'd better go tell the doctor that." "By Jove I will!" suddenly exclaimed Luke with a change of manner. "I haven't had a decent night's sleep since I did it. I am going to tell. I can't stand it any longer. I want to see Excelsior win the Blue Banner. I'm going to tell the doctor!" "Hold on!" Hiram fairly hissed. "If you squeal I'll make it so hot for you that you'll wish you'd never seen me--and so will Sam." "I'm not afraid! Besides I'm not going to tell on you--only on myself. I'll say I put the telegram there. The doctor can think what he likes about who pulled down the statue. He can put me on probation for I won't tell, but it doesn't matter, for I don't play ball. But that will let Joe play, and it's not too late for him to get in shape--in fact, he's at top notch, for I saw him practice to-day. I'm going to tell, and you can do as you like, Hiram." "I say you shan't tell. I'll----" But Luke slipped from Hiram's room, where the talk had been going on, and made his way to the doctor's office. Dr. Fillmore, as may well be imagined, was surprised to see Luke at that late hour, for it was past eleven. He laid aside a book on the immortal Cæsar, looked over his glasses at the conscience-stricken lad, and asked in his kind voice: "Well, Fodick, what is it?" "I--I--Doctor Fillmore, I've come to--confess. I put that telegram by the statue. Joe Matson didn't do it. He dropped it--I picked it up. He had nothing to do with pulling down the statue and doesn't know who did it. But he's got to play ball to-morrow or we'll lose the Blue Banner again. I'm the guilty one, Doctor--not of pulling the statue down--I won't tell who did that, no matter what you do to me. But I want Joe to play. Oh, I--I couldn't stand it any longer. I haven't slept, and--and----" Poor Luke burst into a fit of weeping--hot, passionate tears of real sorrow--the best thing he had done in many a long day--and Dr. Fillmore, understanding a boy's heart as few heads of schools do, put his big arm over Luke's shoulder. Thus was the confession made, and of its effect you shall soon hear. That night Luke slept soundly. CHAPTER XXIX A GLORIOUS VICTORY It was the morning of the day of the big game--the final contest between Morningside and Excelsior for the possession of the Blue Banner. So far the two nines were tied as regards their percentage of victories, and the banner would go to whoever won the diamond battle on this occasion. Dr. Fillmore, after hearing Luke's confession, had sent a messenger to Joe's room with instructions to see if our hero and Tom were asleep. The apartment was in darkness and quiet reigned when the messenger listened, so he reported that both lads were slumbering. But he was not altogether right, for Joe tossed restlessly on his pillow and thought bitterly of the morrow. "Well, as long as he is asleep," remarked the good doctor to the coach whom he had summoned, "we won't tell him the good news until to-morrow. He'll need his rest if he is to pitch against Morningside." "Then you're going to remove the probation ban, Dr. Fillmore?" asked Dr. Rudden eagerly. "Of course. I shall make the announcement at chapel, and wish Matson and the others of the nine all success." "And you don't yet know who pulled down the statue?" "No. It was manly of Fodick to confess, and though I shall have to suspend him, of course, I didn't even ask him to inform on the guilty ones. I really couldn't, you know." "No, I suppose not. But I'm glad Joe is going to play. I think we shall win." "I hope so," murmured Dr. Fillmore. The surprise and gratification of the students may easily be surmised when the next morning at chapel, Dr. Fillmore made his announcement, stating that Joe had been on probation under a misapprehension, and that now the ban was removed he could play ball. "And I hope that he and the others of the nine play their very best," concluded the head of the school, "and win!" There was a spontaneous cheer, and neither the doctor nor any of the teachers took the trouble to stop it. Joe's face was burning red, his heart was thumping like a trip hammer, but he was the happiest lad in school. "Oh, it's great! Glorious! I can't talk! Whoop!" yelled Teeter, once out of chapel, as he balanced himself on his toes. "Say, old man, it's too good to be true!" cried Peaches, yelling and capering about until his usually fair complexion was like that of a beet. "We'll make Morningside look like thirty cents!" declared Tom. "Come on, you and Ward get in all the practice you can," ordered Peaches. The game was to be played on the Morningside diamond, this having been decided by lot, the choice having fallen to the rivals of Excelsior. "Well, we'll beat 'em on their own grounds!" declared Peaches, when he and the others of the nine, with some substitutes, and a host of "rooters" and supporters, departed for the contest. What a crowd was there to see! What hosts of pretty girls! Men and women, too; old graduates, students from both schools, many from other schools in the league, for this was the wind-up of the season. Out on the diamond trotted the Morningside nine, to be greeted with a roar of cheers. They began practice at once, and it was noticed that Sam Morton was "warming up." "They're going to use two pitchers all right," observed Tommy Barton. "Guess they heard that Joe was going to be on deck again." A noisy welcome awaited the Excelsior nine as they trotted out, and they, too, began batting and catching practice. Then, after a little delay and the submitting of batting orders, the details were completed, and once again the umpire gave his stirring call: "Play ball!" Morningside was to bat last and so George Bland was the first of the Excelsior players to face Pitcher Clay. The two nines were the same as had met a few weeks previously. "Play ball!" called the umpire again, and the game was on. It was a memorable battle. They talk of it to this day at Excelsior and Morningside. For three innings neither side got a run, goose eggs going up in regular succession until, as is generally the case "pitchers' fight" began to be heard spoken on the stands and side lines. And truly it was rather that way. Both Joe Matson and Ted Clay were at their best, and man after man fanned the air helplessly, or stood while the umpire called strikes on them. But there had to be a break, and it came in the fourth inning. In their half of that Excelsior again had to retire without a run, and the four circles looked rather strange on the score board. Then something happened. Joe was delivering a puzzling drop, but his hand slipped, the curve broke at the wrong moment and the batter hit it for three bases. That looked like the beginning of the end for a little while, as the Morningside lads seemed to have struck a winning streak and they had three runs to their credit when Joe, after having struck two men out, caught a hot liner himself and retired the third man. "Three to nothing," murmured Captain Ward as his men came in to bat again. "It looks bad--looks bad." "That will only give us an appetite," declared Joe. "You'll see," and it did seem as if he were a prophet, for the rivals of Morningside, evidently on desperation bent, "found" Ted Clay, rapped out five runs, putting them two ahead, and then the crowd went wild. So did Joe and his mates. They fairly danced as they took the field again; danced and shouted, even jumping over each other in the exuberance of their joy. "We've got 'em going! We've got 'em going!" they yelled. Glumly, and almost in a daze, the Morningside players looked at the figures. Their rivals were two ahead in the fifth inning and Baseball Joe, the pitcher on whom so much depended, was "as fresh as a daisy," as Tom declared. "But we haven't won the game by a whole lot!" warned Captain Ward to his enthusiastic lads. "Play hard--play hard!" Morningside managed to get one run in their half of the fifth, but when Excelsior came up for her stick-work again she easily demonstrated her superiority over the other lads. Four runs went to her credit, and only one to the rival team, and then, as Peaches said, "it was all over but the shouting." "The game is in the ice box now, all right," Teeter added. And so it was. Two runs for Excelsior in the seventh to one for her opponent; four in the eighth, while Joe held the enemy hitless in their half of that inning, brought the score to the tally of fifteen to six in favor of our friends. "Let's make it an even 20 fellows!" proposed Teeter when they came to have their last raps in the ninth. "We can do it!" "Sure!" his mates assured him, and it did seem possible, for Morningside appeared to have gone to pieces. Ted Clay was being batted all over the field, his support was poor, while the Morningside lads could not seem to find the ball. In desperation, that last inning, Sam Morton was sent in, and he faced Joe with a scowl on his face. But Sam could not stem the winning tide, and he was batted for five runs, making the even twenty. "Now, hold 'em down, Joe--don't let 'em get a run!" urged Teeter, when Morningside prepared to take her last chance to retrieve her falling fortunes. And Joe did. Amid a riot of cheers he struck three men out in quick succession, and a final goose egg went up in the last frame, the score reading: Excelsior, 20; Morningside, 6. "The Blue Banner is ours! The Blue Banner comes back where it belongs!" yelled Joe, and then, amid a silence, the banner was taken from in front of the Morningside stand, where it had flaunted in the breeze, and presented to Captain Ward Gerard, who proudly marched about the diamond with it at the head of his victorious lads. CHAPTER XXX GOOD NEWS--CONCLUSION There were the usual cheers first by the victors and then by the vanquished, and it would be hard to say which were the heartiest. For Morningside was a good loser and next to a well-beaten rival, she loved a staunch victorious one. "You fellows certainly did us up good and proper--the worst beating we ever got," admitted Captain Dalton to Ward. "That's what we came here for," was the reply. "It was Joe's twirling that did it." "Get out!" cried the modest pitcher. "Yes, that certainly held us down," went on Dalton. "We couldn't seem to find you. I'll need some new pitchers next season, I guess, for you certainly batted Ted and Sam all over. But I'm not kicking. How are you fixed for next year, Joe? Don't you want to come to Morningside?" and he laughed. "I don't know," answered our hero. "I haven't quite made up my mind what I shall do. I'm going to play ball, I know that much, anyhow." "I should think you would--any fellow who can twirl the horsehide as you can. Well, might as well get off these togs," spoke Dalton. "I won't need 'em here any more this season, though I'm going to join some amateur team for the vacation if I can." The cheering and yelling kept up for some time; and then with the glorious Blue Banner, that meant so much to them in their possession, the Excelsior Hall lads started back for the school. "So you don't know what you are going to do next season, eh, Joe?" asked Tom, as he and his chum were riding back. "I thought you'd stick on here." "Well, I'd like to, first rate but I don't know how dad's business is going to be since this second robbery. I may have to leave school." "Oh, I hope not. So they haven't any trace of the missing papers and models?" "Not according to what I last heard. I'm going to get on the trail of that scamp, Holdney, this vacation, though." As might have been guessed, there was a big banquet for the baseball team that night. And such a spread as it was, held in the big gymnasium. Every player came in for his share of praise, and there was so much of it for Joe; and his health was drunk in soda and ginger ale so often that his complexion was like that of Peaches'--red and white by turns. But nearly everyone felt that he deserved all the nice things that were said about him, not only for his share in the victory, but for what he had suffered. There were two absentees at the banquet--and only two. One was Hiram Shell and the other Luke Fodick. Luke humbly told Dr. Fillmore that he thought it best to leave the school after what had happened. The good doctor thought so, too, for it would have been hard for Luke to live down what he had done. As for Hiram, he said nothing, but when he knew that Luke had made his confession, the bully, after using harsh language to his former crony, quietly packed his things and went also. He sent word to Sam, at Morningside, that "the jig" was up, and there was a pre-vacation vacancy on the books of that institution. It was never definitely stated who had pulled down the statue, but the withdrawal of Hiram, Luke and Sam was confession enough. It was in the midst of the banquet, when Joe had been called upon to respond to the toast, "The Baseball Nine," that a messenger was seen to enter with a telegram. "It's for Joe Matson," the boy announced loudly enough for all to hear. "Gee, but he's de stuff; eh? I'd like to shake hands wit a pitcher like dat! I'm goin' t' be one mysel' some day. Here's de tick-tick, sport," and he passed the message to Joe, at the same time regarding our hero with worshipful eyes. Joe read the message at a glance, and a change came over his face. "No bad news, I hope," murmured Tom, who stood near him. "No, it's the very best!" cried the young pitcher, and he showed Tom the telegram. "I wired dad that we'd won the game," Joe stated. Mr. Matson said in his telegram: "Best of congratulations. Models and papers recovered. Everything all right." "Hurray!" yelled Tom, waving the message above his head. "Three cheers for Baseball Joe!" and, when the cheers had subsided he briefly informed his mates what the telegram meant to our hero. Mr. Matson would still retain his fortune, and probably make more money than ever out of his patents. "Gee! Dis is great!" murmured the diminutive messenger, as he listened to the cheers and watched the jolly crowd of students. "I wish I was studyin' here!" Joe shook the messenger's hand and left in it a crisp bill, to show his appreciation of the good news the lad had brought. And the toasting, the cheering and singing went on again. "Now you can continue your studies," said Tom to Joe. "Yes, I suppose so," was the answer. "Maybe I'll even go to college." What were his further fortunes on the diamond I shall tell you in the next book of this series, to be called: "Baseball Joe at Yale; or Pitching for the College Championship." In that we shall see him in adventures as strenuous as any he had yet encountered. "One last song, fellows, and then we'll quit!" called Peaches. "I want you all to join with me in singing: 'For He's a Jolly Good Fellow,' and by '_He_' I mean Joe Matson--Baseball Joe!" And as the strains of that ever-jolly, and yet somewhat sad, song are dying away, we will take our leave for a time of Baseball Joe and his friends. THE END THE BASEBALL JOE SERIES BY LESTER CHADWICK _12mo. Illustrated. Price per volume, 75 cents, postpaid._ [Illustration] =BASEBALL JOE OF THE SILVER STARS= _or The Rivals of Riverside_ Joe is an everyday country boy who loves to play baseball and particularly to pitch. =BASEBALL JOE ON THE SCHOOL NINE= _or Pitching for the Blue Banner_ Joe's great ambition was to go to boarding school and play on the school team. =BASEBALL JOE AT YALE= _or Pitching for the College Championship_ Joe goes to Yale University. In his second year he becomes a varsity pitcher and pitches in several big games. =BASEBALL JOE IN THE CENTRAL LEAGUE= _or Making Good as a Professional Pitcher_ In this volume the scene of action is shifted from Yale college to a baseball league of our central states. =BASEBALL JOE IN THE BIG LEAGUE= _or A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles_ From the Central League Joe is drafted into the St. Louis Nationals. A corking baseball story all fans will enjoy. =BASEBALL JOE ON THE GIANTS= _or Making Good as a Twirler in the Metropolis_ How Joe was traded to the Giants and became their mainstay in the box makes an interesting baseball story. =BASEBALL JOE IN THE WORLD SERIES= _or Pitching for the Championship_ The rivalry was of course of the keenest, and what Joe did to win the series is told in a manner to thrill the most jaded reader. =BASEBALL JOE AROUND THE WORLD= (_New_) _or Pitching on a Grand Tour_ The Giants and the All-Americans tour the world, playing in many foreign countries. _Send For Our Free Illustrated Catalogue._ CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York THE Y. M. C. A. BOYS SERIES By BROOKS HENDERLEY =_12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Price per volume, 75 cents, postpaid._= _This new series relates the doings of a wide-awake boys' club of the Y. M. C. A., full of good times and every-day, practical Christianity. Clean, elevating and full of fun and vigor, books that should be read by every boy._ [Illustration] =THE Y. M. C. A. BOYS OF CLIFFWOOD= _or The Struggle for the Holwell Prize_ Telling how the boys of Cliffwood were a wild set and how, on Hallowe'en, they turned the home town topsy-turvy. This led to an organization of a boys' department in the local Y. M. C. A. When the lads realized what was being done for them, they joined in the movement with vigor and did all they could to help the good cause. =THE Y. M. C. A. BOYS ON BASS ISLAND= _or The Mystery of Russabaga Camp_ Summer was at hand, and at a meeting of the boys of the Y. M. C. A. of Cliffwood, it was decided that a regular summer camp should be instituted. This was located at a beautiful spot on Bass Island, and there the lads went boating, swimming, fishing and tramping to their heart's content. =THE Y. M. C. A. BOYS AT FOOTBALL= _or Lively Doings On and Off the Gridiron_ This volume will add greatly to the deserved success of this well-written series. The Y. M. C. A. boys are plucky lads--clean minded and as true as steel. They have many ups and downs, but in the end they "win out" in the best meaning of that term. _Send For Our Free Illustrated Catalogue._ CUPPLES & LEON CO. Publishers New York ALIVE, PATRIOTIC, ELEVATING BANNER BOY SCOUTS SERIES By GEORGE A. WARREN Author of the "Revolutionary Series" 12mo. Illustrated. Price per volume, 75 cents, postpaid. [Illustration] The Boy Scouts movement has swept over our country like wildfire, and is endorsed by our greatest men and leading educators. No author is better qualified to write such a series as this than Professor Warren, who has watched the movement closely since its inception in England some years ago. =THE BANNER BOY SCOUTS= _or The Struggle for Leadership_ This initial volume tells how the news of the scout movement reached the boys and how they determined to act on it. They organized the Fox Patrol, and some rivals organized another patrol. More patrols were formed in neighboring towns and a prize was put up for the patrol scoring the most points in a many-sided contest. =THE BANNER BOY SCOUTS ON A TOUR= _or The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain_ This story begins with a mystery that is most unusual. 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Beautiful jackets printed in colors. 75 Cents Per Volume, Postpaid._= [Illustration] The trials and triumphs of Harry Harding and Teddy Burke, two wide-awake boys who make a humble beginning on the messenger force of a great department store, with the firm resolve to become successful business men, form a series of narratives calculated to please the alert, progressive boys of today. =HARRY HARDING--_Messenger "45"_= When Harry Harding bravely decided to leave school in order to help his mother in the fight against poverty, he took his first long step towards successful manhood. How Harry chanced to meet mischievous, red-haired Teddy Burke who preferred work to school, how Teddy and Harry became messengers in Martin Brothers' Department store and what happened to them there, is a story that never flags in interest. =HARRY HARDING'S YEAR OF PROMISE= After a blissful two weeks' vacation, spent together, Harry Harding and Teddy Burke again take up their work in Martin Brothers' store. Their "year of promise" brings them many new experiences, pleasant and unpleasant, but more determined than ever to reach the goal they have set for themselves, they pass courageously and hopefully over the rough places, meeting with many surprises and exciting incidents which advance them far on the road to success. _Send For Our Free Illustrated Catalogue._ CUPPLES & LEON CO. Publishers New York THE WEBSTER SERIES By FRANK V. WEBSTER [Illustration] Mr. Webster's style is very much like that of the boys' favorite author, the late lamented Horatio Alger, Jr., but his tales are thoroughly up-to-date. Cloth. 12mo. Over 200 pages each. Illustrated. Stamped in various colors. Price per volume, 50 cents, postpaid. Only A Farm Boy _or Dan Hardy's Rise in Life_ The Boy From The Ranch _or Roy Bradner's City Experiences_ The Young Treasure Hunter _or Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska_ The Boy Pilot of the Lakes _or Nat Morton's Perils_ Tom The Telephone Boy _or The Mystery of a Message_ Bob The Castaway _or The Wreck of the Eagle_ The Newsboy Partners _or Who Was Dick Box?_ Two Boy Gold Miners _or Lost in the Mountains_ The Young Firemen of Lakeville _or Herbert Dare's Pluck_ The Boys of Bellwood School _or Frank Jordan's Triumph_ Jack the Runaway _or On the Road with a Circus_ Bob Chester's Grit _or From Ranch to Riches_ Airship Andy _or The Luck of a Brave Boy_ High School Rivals _or Fred Markham's Struggles_ Darry The Life Saver _or The Heroes of the Coast_ Dick The Bank Boy _or A Missing Fortune_ Ben Hardy's Flying Machine _or Making a Record for Himself_ Harry Watson's High School Days _or The Rivals of Rivertown_ Comrades of the Saddle _or The Young Rough Riders of the Plains_ Tom Taylor at West Point _or The Old Army Officer's Secret_ The Boy Scouts of Lennox _or Hiking Over Big Bear Mountain_ The Boys of the Wireless _or A Stirring Rescue from the Deep_ Cowboy Dave _or The Round-up at Rolling River_ Jack of the Pony Express _or The Young Rider of the Mountain Trail_ The Boys of the Battleship _or For the Honor of Uncle Sam_ CUPPLES & LEON CO., Publishers, NEW YORK THE BOYS' OUTING LIBRARY _12mo. 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JAMES CARSON The Saddle Boys of the Rockies The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon The Saddle Boys on the Plains The Saddle Boys at Circle Ranch The Saddle Boys on Mexican Trails =THE DAVE DASHAWAY SERIES= BY ROY ROCKWOOD Dave Dashaway the Young Aviator Dave Dashaway and His Hydroplane Dave Dashaway and His Giant Airship Dave Dashaway Around the World Dave Dashaway: Air Champion =THE SPEEDWELL BOYS SERIES= BY ROY ROCKWOOD The Speedwell Boys on Motorcycles The Speedwell Boys and Their Racing Auto The Speedwell Boys and Their Power Launch The Speedwell Boys in a Submarine The Speedwell Boys and Their Ice Racer =THE TOM FAIRFIELD SERIES= BY ALLEN CHAPMAN Tom Fairfield's School Days Tom Fairfield at Sea Tom Fairfield in Camp Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck Tom Fairfield's Hunting Trip =THE FRED FENTON ATHLETIC SERIES= BY ALLEN CHAPMAN Fred Fenton the Pitcher Fred Fenton in the Line Fred Fenton on the Crew Fred Fenton on the Track Fred Fenton: Marathon Runner _Send For Our Free Illustrated Catalogue._ CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York THE KHAKI BOYS SERIES BY CAPT. GORDON BATES _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in full color._ =_Price per volume, 50 cents, postpaid._= [Illustration] _All who love the experiences and adventures of our American boys, fighting for the freedom of democracy in the world, will be delighted with these vivid and true-to-life stories of the camp and field in the great war._ =THE KHAKI BOYS AT CAMP STERLING= _or Training for the Big Fight in France_ Two zealous young patriots volunteer and begin their military training. On the train going to camp they meet two rookies with whom they become chums. Together they get into a baffling camp mystery that develops into an extraordinary spy-plot. They defeat the enemies of their country and incidentally help one another to promotion both in friendship and service. =THE KHAKI BOYS ON THE WAY= _or Doing Their Bit on Sea and Land_ Our soldier boys having completed their training at Camp Sterling are transferred to a Southern cantonment from which they are finally sent aboard a troop-ship for France. On the trip their ship is sunk by a U-boat and their adventures are realistic descriptions of the tragedies of the sea. =THE KHAKI BOYS AT THE FRONT= _or Shoulder to Shoulder in the Trenches_ The Khaki Boys reach France, and, after some intensive training in sound of the battle front, are sent into the trenches. In the raids across No-Man's land, they have numerous tragic adventures that show what great work is being performed by our soldiers. It shows what makes heroes. _Send For Our Free Illustrated Catalogue._ CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York THE KHAKI GIRLS SERIES BY EDNA BROOKS _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors._ =_Price per volume, 50 cents, postpaid._= [Illustration] _When Uncle Sam sent forth the ringing call, "I need you!" it was not alone his strong young sons who responded. All over the United States capable American girls stood ready to offer their services to their country. How two young girls donned the khaki and made good in the Motor Corps, an organization for women developed by the Great War, forms a series of stories of signal novelty and vivid interest and action._ =THE KHAKI GIRLS OF THE MOTOR CORPS= _or Finding Their Place in the Big War_ Joan Mason, an enthusiastic motor girl, and Valerie Warde, a society debutante, meet at an automobile show. Next day they go together to the Motor Corps headquarters and in due time are accepted and become members of the Corps, in the service of the United States. The two girl drivers find motoring for Uncle Sam a most exciting business. Incidentally they are instrumental in rendering valuable service to the United States government by discovering and running down a secret organization of its enemies. =THE KHAKI GIRLS BEHIND THE LINES= _or Driving with the Ambulance Corps_ As a result of their splendid work in the Motor Corps, the Khaki Girls receive the honor of an opportunity to drive with the Ambulance Corps in France. After a most eventful and hazardous crossing of the Atlantic, they arrive in France and are assigned to a station behind the lines. Constantly within range of enemy shrapnel, out in all kinds of weather, tearing over shell-torn roads and dodging Boche patrols, all go to make up the day's work, and bring them many exciting adventures. _Send For Our Free Illustrated Catalogue._ CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York Transcriber's Notes: --Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). --Text in bold is enclosed by "equal" signs (=bold=). --Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected. --Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved. --Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved. --Normalized instances of "Lakeville" (p. 180, p. 181) to the more frequent "Lakeview" Preparatory Institute. 
40105	----	[Illustration: "GOOD-BYE, JOE!"] Baseball Joe at Yale OR Pitching _for the_ College Championship _By_ LESTER CHADWICK AUTHOR OF "BASEBALL JOE OF THE SILVER STARS," "BASEBALL JOE ON THE SCHOOL NINE," "THE RIVAL PITCHERS," "BATTING TO WIN," "THE WINNING TOUCHDOWN," ETC. _ILLUSTRATED_ [Illustration] NEW YORK CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY =BOOKS BY LESTER CHADWICK= =THE BASEBALL JOE SERIES= =12mo. Cloth. Illustrated= BASEBALL JOE OF THE SILVER STARS Or The Rivals of Riverside BASEBALL JOE ON THE SCHOOL NINE Or Pitching for the Blue Banner BASEBALL JOE AT YALE Or Pitching for the College Championship (_Other Volumes in Preparation_) =THE COLLEGE SPORTS SERIES= =12mo. Cloth. Illustrated= THE RIVAL PITCHERS A Story of College Baseball A QUARTER-BACK'S PLUCK A Story of College Football BATTING TO WIN A Story of College Baseball THE WINNING TOUCHDOWN A Story of College Football THE EIGHT-OARED VICTORS A Story of College Water Sports (_Other Volumes in Preparation_) =CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, New York= Copyright, 1913, by CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY =Baseball Joe at Yale= Printed in U. S. A. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I JUST IN TIME 1 II A HOME CONFERENCE 15 III ONE LAST GAME 23 IV A SNEERING LAUGH 30 V OFF FOR YALE 37 VI ON THE CAMPUS 48 VII A NEW CHUM 55 VIII AMBITIONS 66 IX THE SHAMPOO 73 X A WILD NIGHT 84 XI THE RED PAINT 93 XII JOE'S SILENCE 100 XIII EARLY PRACTICE 107 XIV THE SURPRISE 116 XV HIS FIRST CHANCE 126 XVI JOE MAKES GOOD 135 XVII ANOTHER STEP 144 XVIII PLOTTING 158 XIX THE ANONYMOUS LETTER 164 XX THE CORNELL HOST 170 XXI EAGER HEARTS 178 XXII THE CRIMSON SPOT 185 XXIII JOE'S TRIUMPH 193 XXIV HARD LUCK 200 XXV AT WEST POINT 210 XXVI A SORE ARM 216 XXVII THE ACCUSATION 223 XXVIII VINDICATION 230 XXIX BUCKING THE TIGER 236 XXX THE CHAMPIONSHIP 239 BASEBALL JOE AT YALE CHAPTER I JUST IN TIME "Joe Matson, I can't understand why you don't fairly jump at the chance!" "Because I don't want to go--that's why." "But, man alive! Half the fellows in Riverside would stand on their heads to be in your shoes." "Perhaps, Tom. But, I tell you I don't think I'm cut out for a college man, and I don't want to go," and Joe Matson looked frankly into the face of his chum, Tom Davis, as they strolled down the village street together that early September day. "Don't want to go to Yale!" murmured Tom, shaking his head as if unable to fathom the mystery. "Why I'd work my way through, if they'd let me, and here you've got everything comparatively easy, and yet you're balking like a horse that hasn't had his oats in a month. Whew! What's up, Joe, old man?" "Simply that I don't believe I'm cut out for that sort of life. I don't care for this college business, and there's no use pretending that I do. I'm not built that way. My mind is on something else. Of course I know a college education is a great thing, and something that lots of fellows need. But for yours truly--not!" "I only wish I had your chance," said Tom, enviously. "You're welcome to it," laughed Joe. "No," and the other spoke half sadly. "Dad doesn't believe in a college career any more than you do. When I'm through at Excelsior Hall he's going to take me into business with him. He talks of sending me abroad, to get a line on the foreign end of it." "Cracky!" exclaimed Joe. "That would suit me down to the ground--that is if I could go with a ball team." "So you haven't gotten over your craze for baseball?" queried Tom. "No, and I never shall. You know what I've always said--that I'd become a professional some day; and I will, too, and I'll pitch in the world series if I can last long enough," and Joe laughed. "But look here!" exclaimed his chum, as they swung down a quiet street that led out into the country; "you can play baseball at Yale, you know." "Maybe--if they'll let me. But you know how it is at those big universities. They are very exclusive--societies--elections--eating clubs--and all that sort of rot. A man has to be in with the bunch before he can get a show." "That's all nonsense, and you know it!" snapped Tom. "At Yale, I warrant you, just as at every big college, a man has to stand on his own feet. Why, they're always on the lookout for good fellows on the nine, crew or eleven, and, if you can make good, you'll be pitching on the 'varsity before the Spring term opens." "Maybe," assented Joe with rather a moody face. "Anyhow, as long as I've got to go to college I'm going to make a try for the nine. I think I can pitch a little----" "A little!" cried Tom. "Say, I'd like to know what sort of a showing we'd have made at Excelsior Hall if it hadn't been for your pitching! Didn't you win the Blue Banner for us when it looked as if we hadn't a show? Pitch! Say if those fellows at Yale----" "Spare my blushes," begged Joe, with a laugh. "Don't worry, I'm going to college for one reason, more than another, because mother wants me to. Dad is rather set on it, too, and so I've said I'll go. Between you and me," whispered Joe, as if he feared someone would overhear him, "I have a faint suspicion that my respected mother wants to make a sky pilot of me." "A minister!" cried Tom. "That's it." "Why--why----" "Oh, don't worry!" laughed Joe, and then his face grew a bit sober as he continued: "I'm not half good enough--or smart enough. I'm not cut out for that sort of life. All I want is baseball and all I can get of it. That's my one ambition." "Yes, it's easy to see that," agreed Tom. "I wonder you don't carry a horsehide about with you, and I do believe--what's this?" he demanded, pulling a bundle of papers from his chum's pocket. "Some dope on the world series, or I'm a June bug!" "Well, I was only sort of comparing batting averages, and making a list of the peculiarities of each player--I mean about the kind of balls it is best to serve up to him." "You're the limit!" exclaimed Tom, as he tried unsuccessfully to stop Joe from grabbing the papers away from him. "Do you think you might pitch to some of these fellows?" "I might," replied Joe calmly. "A professional ball player lasts for some time, and when I come up for my degree on the mound at some future world series I may face some of these same men." "Go to it, old man!" exclaimed Tom enthusiastically. "I wish I had your hopes. Well, I suppose I'll soon be grinding away with the old crowd at Excelsior, and you--you'll be at--Yale!" "Probably," admitted Joe, with something of a sigh. "I almost wish I was going back to the old school. We had good times there!" "We sure did. But I've got to leave you now. I promised Sis I'd go to the store for her. See you later," and Tom clasped his chum's hand. "That reminds me," spoke Joe. "I've got to go back home, hitch up the horse, and take some patterns over to Birchville for dad." "Wish I could go along, but I can't," said Tom. "It's a fine day for a drive. Come on over to-night." "Maybe I will--so long," and the two friends parted to go their ways, one to dream over the good fortune of the other--to envy him--while Joe himself--Baseball Joe as his friends called him--thought rather regretfully of the time he must lose at college when, if he had been allowed his own way, he would have sought admission to some minor baseball league, to work himself up to a major position. "But as long as the folks want me to have a college course I'll take it--and do my best," he mused. A little later, behind the old family horse, he was jogging over the country road in the direction of a distant town, where his father, an inventor, and one of the owners of the Royal Harvester Works, had been in the habit of sending his patterns from which to have models made. "Well, in a few weeks I'll be hiking it for New Haven," said Joe, half talking to himself. "It's going to be awful lonesome at first. I won't know a soul there. It isn't like going up from some prep school, with a lot of your own chums. Well, I've got to grin and bear it, and if I do get a chance for the 'varsity nine--oh, won't I jump at it!" He was lost in pleasant reflections for a moment, and then went on, still talking to himself, and calling to the horse now and then, for the steed, realizing that he had an easy master behind him, was inclined to slow down to a walk every now and then. "There are bound to be lessons, of course," said Joe. "And lectures on things I don't care any more about than the man in the moon does. I suppose, though, I've got to swallow 'em. But if I can get on the diamond once in a while it won't be so bad. The worst of it is, though, that ball playing won't begin until April at the earliest, and there's all winter to live through. I'm not going in for football. Well, I guess I can stand it." Once more Joe was off in a day-dream, in fancy seeing himself standing in the box before yelling thousands, winding up to deliver a swiftly-curving ball to the batter on whom "three and two" had been called, with the bases full, two men out and his team but one run ahead in the final inning. "Oh! that's what life is!" exclaimed Joe, half aloud, and at his words the horse started to trot. "That's what makes me willing to stand four years at Yale--if I have to. And yet----" Joe did not complete his sentence. As he swung around a bend in the road his attention was fully taken by a surprising scene just ahead of him. A horse, attached to a carriage, was being driven down the road, and, just as Joe came in sight, the animal, for some unaccountable reason, suddenly swerved to the left. One of the wheels caught in a rut, there was a snapping, cracking sound, the wheel was "dished," and the carriage settled down on one side. "Whoa! Whoa!" yelled Joe, fearing the horse would bolt and that perhaps a woman might be in the carriage, the top of which was up. The lad was about to spring from his own vehicle and rush to the aid of the occupant of the other, when he saw a man leap out. With one bound the man was at the head of his steed, holding him from running away, but there was no need, for the horse, after a calm look around, seemed to resign himself to his fate. "Jove!" ejaculated Joe. "That was quick work. That fellow is in training, whoever he is." Following his original plan, even though he saw no need of going to the rescue, Joe leaped from his seat. His steed, he knew, would stand without hitching. He approached the stranger. "A bad break," murmured Joe sympathetically. "Indeed it is, young man," replied the other in quick, tense accents. "And it comes at a particularly bad time, too." Joe looked at him. The man seemed about thirty-five, and his face, though stern, was pleasant, as though in the company of his friends he could be very jolly. He was of dark complexion, and there was that in the set of his figure, and his poise, as he stood at the head of the horse, that at once proclaimed him an athlete, at least if not one in active training, one who could get into condition quickly. "A bad break, and at a bad time, too," the man went on. "I never knew it to fail, when I was in a hurry." "I guess that wheel is past fixing," spoke Joe. "You might get one at the barn here," and he nodded toward a farmhouse not far distant. "I haven't time to make the try," said the man. "I'm in a great hurry. How far is it from here to Preston?" "About five miles," replied Joe. "Hum! I never could make that in time to catch the train for New York, though I might have run it at one time. A little too heavy now," and he seemed referring to himself. "I might ride the horse, I suppose," he went on dubiously. "He doesn't look much like a saddle animal," ventured Joe. "No, and there isn't a saddle, either. I must get to New York though--it's important. I don't suppose you are going to Preston; are you?" he asked of Joe quickly, referring to the nearest railroad station. "Well, I wasn't," replied the youth, "but if you're in a hurry----" "I am--in a very great hurry. I just had about time to get the New York train, when, most unfortunately, I got into that rut. At the same time the reins got caught, and I must have pulled on the wrong one. I'm not much of a horseman, I'm afraid. The animal turned too quickly, and the wheel collapsed." "It wasn't very strong, anyhow," remarked Joe, as he looked critically at it. "But if you want to get to Preston I can take you." "Can you--will you? It would be a very great accommodation. I really can't afford to miss that train. I came out here on some business, and hired this rig in Preston. I thought I would have ample time to get back, and I believe I would. But now, with this accident--I wonder if I could leave this outfit at the farmhouse, and hire another there?" he asked musingly. "I don't believe Mr. Murchison has a horse now," said Joe, nodding toward the farmhouse. "He has about given up working his place. But you could leave this rig here to be called for, and----" "Yes--yes!" interrupted the man, quite impatiently. "I beg your pardon," he added quickly. "I'm all upset over this accident, and I really must reach New York to-night." "I'll drive you in!" offered Joe. "But it will be out of your way, will it not?" "That doesn't matter. I'm in no hurry, and going to Preston will not take me many miles off my road. I'll be glad to help you." "Thank you. Then I'll take advantage of your offer. Shall I----?" he made a move as though to lead the horse up to the farmhouse. "I'll attend to that," spoke Joe. "Just get in my carriage, and I'll be with you in a few minutes." The stranger obeyed, and Joe, unhitching the horse from the broken carriage, quickly led the steed to the stable, stopping on his way to explain to Mrs. Murchison, whom he knew slightly, the circumstances. She readily agreed to let the animal stay in their stall. Then Joe pulled the tilted carriage to one side of the road, and a few minutes later was sending his steed ahead at a pace not hitherto attained that day. "Think we can make that train?" asked the man, who seemed immersed in his own thoughts. "I'm going to make a big try," answered Joe. "Do you live around here?" came the next question. "At Riverside--about eight miles away." The man lapsed into silence, and as Joe was rather diffident with strangers he did not press the conversation. They drove on for several miles, and suddenly the silence of the country was broken by a distant whistle. "Is that the train?" exclaimed the man nervously, looking at his watch. "Yes, but it's about three miles away. You can always hear it plainly here. We'll be in Preston in a few minutes now, and I'll have you at the station in time." "I hope so," murmured the man. "I must get to New York--it means a great deal to me." Joe urged the horse to even faster speed, and when he reached the quiet streets of Preston more than one person turned to look at the carriage, which went along faster than vehicles usually did in that quiet community. Once more the whistle sounded, and the man exclaimed: "We'll never make it!" "Yes, we will," said Joe quietly. "The station is only another block." "I'm sure I can't thank you enough," went on the man, and his hand sought his pocket. "You say you'll notify the livery keeper?" "Yes, I'll tell him where his horse is, and he can send for it." "That's very kind of you. I wish you'd let me give you something--reward you for this service." "No--no!" exclaimed Joe. "I couldn't think of it!" He saw a roll of bills in the man's hand. "But you don't know, young man, what it means for me to catch this train. I wish you'd let me pay for your time and trouble----" "No, indeed!" exclaimed the young pitcher. "I would do as much for anyone, and I hope he'd do the same for me." "That's a nice way of looking at it. But are you sure you won't let me make you----" The man again held out some bills, but the look on Joe's face must have told him he was getting on dangerous ground, for he suddenly withdrew them and said: "Well, I can't thank you enough. Some day--is that the train?" he cried, as a puffing was heard. "I mustn't miss it now." "Here we are!" cried Joe, swinging around a corner. Down a short street was the depot, and as they came in sight of it the train pulled in. "I--er--I wish--I must run for it!" exclaimed the man. "Wait. I'll drive you right up!" called Joe. "I'll take your valise. You get right out and run. Have you a ticket?" "Yes. This is exceedingly good of you. I----" But he did not finish. Joe drove the horse up to the platform edge as the train came to a stop with a grinding of the brake shoes. The man leaped out almost before the horse had ceased running, and Joe was not a second behind him with the valise. "Go on!" exclaimed the youth, as the man hesitated. He fairly flung himself up the car steps, and the train began to move, for Preston was little more than a flag station for the New York express. "Thank you a thousand times!" cried the man as Joe handed up the valise. "I wish--I didn't ask your name--mine is--I ought to have a card--I--er----" he began fumbling in his pocket, and Joe half feared he was going to offer money again. But the man seemed to be hunting for a card. However his search was unsuccessful. He waved his hand to Joe, and called: "Thank you once more. Perhaps I may meet you again. I meant to ask your name--too much occupied--mine is----" But just then the train gathered speed and the engineer, opening the exhaust, effectually drowned out all other sounds in the puffing of the locomotive. Joe saw the man's lips moving, and realized that he was calling out his name, but he could not hear it. Then, with a wave of his hand the stranger went inside the car. He had caught the train just in time. CHAPTER II A HOME CONFERENCE "Well, I wonder if I'll ever see him again," mused Joe, as the train swung out of sight around a curve in the track. "It sure was a hustling time. I wonder who he was? Seemed like some sort of an athlete, and yet he didn't talk sports--nor much of anything, for that matter. "I'm glad I could help him get his train. Funny he should want to pay me, and yet I suppose he isn't used to having favors done him. He seemed like a nice sort of fellow. Well, I've got to get over with these patterns. I'll be late getting home, I expect." Joe's first visit was to the livery stable, where he told the proprietor of the accident. "Hum! Well, I s'pose he was driving reckless like," said Mr. Munn, who hired out old horses and older vehicles to such few of the townspeople as did not have their own rigs. "No, he was going slowly," said Joe. "I guess that wheel was pretty well rotted." "Mebby so. I'm glad I charged him a good price, and made him pay in advance. Yes, I'll send out and get the rig. Much obliged to you, Joe. Did he pay ye for bringin' him back?" "No, I didn't want anything," and with this parting shot the young pitcher went on his way. And, while he is jogging along to Birchville, musing over the recent happenings, I will, in a paragraph or two, tell you something more about our hero, since he is to occupy that place in these pages. Those of you who have read the previous books in this series, need no introduction to the youth. But to those who pick up this volume to begin their acquaintance, I might state that in the initial book, called "Baseball Joe of the Silver Stars," I related how he first began his upward climb as a pitcher. Joe Matson lived with his father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. John Matson, in the town of Riverside, in one of our New England states. Mr. Matson was an inventor of farming machinery, and after a hard struggle was now doing well financially. Joe's ambition, ever since he began to play baseball, had been to become a pitcher, and how he made the acquaintance of Tom Davis, the boy living back of him; how they became chums, and how Joe became a member of the Silver Stars nine is told in my first book. The nine was a typical one, such as is found in many country towns, though they played good ball. After an upward struggle Joe was made pitcher, and helped to win some big games. He made many friends, and some enemies, as all boys will. In the second volume, called "Baseball Joe on the School Nine," I told how our hero and his chum, Tom Davis, went to Excelsior Hall, a boarding institution just outside of Cedarhurst, about a hundred miles from Riverside. At school Joe found that it was more difficult to get a chance at his favorite position than he had imagined it would be. There, too, he had his enemies; but Joe was a plucky fighter, and would not give up. How finally he was called on to pitch in a great game, and how he, more than anyone else, helped to win the Blue Banner, you will find set down in my second book. Three years passed, all too quickly, at Excelsior Hall, with Joe doing the twirling for the school nine at all the big games. And now, with the coming of Fall, and the beginning of the new term, he was not to go back, for, as I have intimated, he was to be sent to Yale University. The course at Excelsior Hall was four years, but it was found that at the end of the third Joe was able to take the Yale entrance examinations, which he had done successfully. He did not enter with flying colors, for Joe was no great scholar, but he was by no means at the foot of the ladder. So he was to plunge at once into the turmoil of university life--his one regret being, as I have said, that he could not join the ranks of the professional baseball players. But he was willing to bide his time. Another regret, too, was that he would be very much of a stranger at Yale. He did not know a soul there, and he wished with all his heart that Tom Davis could have gone with him, as he had to Excelsior Hall. But Tom's parents had other views of life for him. "It doesn't seem like three years ago that I first started for Excelsior," mused Joe, as he drove along. "I sure was nervous then, and I'm in a worse funk now. Well, there's no help for it. I've got to stick it out. No use disappointing dad and momsey. I only hope I make out half way decently." His errand accomplished, he drove back home, arriving rather late, and, to his mother's anxious inquiries as to what kept him, he related the happening of the broken carriage. "And you don't know who he was?" asked Clara, Joe's sister, curiously. "No, sis. Say, but you're looking pretty to-night! Got your hair fixed differently, somehow. Somebody coming?" and playfully he pinched her red cheeks. "Yes, Mabel Davis is coming to call," replied Clara, pretending to be very busy arranging some articles on the mantle. "Oh, ho! So that's how the wind blows!" exclaimed Joe, with a laugh. "But I'll wager someone besides Mabel is coming over. Tom Davis told me to come and see him, Mabel is going out, you're all togged up--say, sis, who's the lucky chap?" "Oh, don't bother me!" exclaimed the blushing girl. "That's all right. Tom and I will come around later and put a tic-tac on the window, when you and Mabel, and the two chaps, are in the parlor." "I thought you had gotten all over such childish tricks--and you a Yale Freshman!" exclaimed Clara, half sarcastically. "Well, I suppose I will have to pass 'em up--worse luck!" exclaimed her brother, with something like a groan. "Have your fun, sis. It'll soon be over." "Oh, my! What a mournful face!" laughed the girl. "There, run along now, little boy, and don't bother me." Joe looked at her for a moment, and the conviction grew on him that his sister was prettier than ever, with that blush on her face. "Little sister is growing up," thought Joe, as he turned away. "She'll be a young lady soon--she's growing up. Well, I guess we all are," and our hero sighed as though he could scarcely bear the weight of responsibility on his own shoulders. This was after supper, and as Joe left the room, and Clara hastened to her apartment, there to indulge in further "prinking," as Joe called it, Mr. and Mrs. Matson looked at each other. "What's getting into Joe, I wonder?" spoke his father. "He's acting rather strange of late." "Oh, I expect the responsibility of college life is making itself felt," said Mrs. Matson. "But I'm proud that I have a son who is going to Yale. It is good you can afford it, John." "Yes, Ellen, I am too. Education is a great thing, and a college course does a lot for a young fellow. I never had the chance myself, but perhaps it's just as well." "I am determined that Joe shall have all the advantages we can give him--and Clara, too," went on the wife. "I think Joe should be very proud and happy. In a short time he will be attending one of the best colleges in the world." "Yet he doesn't seem very happy," said Mr. Matson, musingly. "And I wonder why," went on his wife. "Of course I know he wasn't very keen about going, when I proposed it, but he gave in. I'm sure it's baseball that made him want to stay on at Excelsior Hall." "Probably. Joe eats, sleeps and dreams baseball." "I do wish he would get that idea of being a professional baseball player out of his mind," went on Mrs. Matson, and her tone was a trifle worried. "It is no career to choose for a young man." "No, I suppose not," said her husband slowly. "And yet there are many good men in professional baseball--some rich ones too, I guess," he added with a shrewd laugh. "As if money counted, John!" "Well, it does in a way. We are all working for it, one way or another, and if a man can earn it throwing a ball to another man, I don't see why that isn't as decent and honorable as digging sewers, making machinery, preaching, doctoring, being a lawyer or a banker. It all helps to make the world go round." "Oh, John! I believe you're as bad as Joe!" "No, Ellen. Though I do like a good game of baseball. I don't think it's the only thing there is, however, as Joe seems to, of late. I don't altogether uphold him in his wish to be a professional, but, at the same time, there's nothing like getting into the niche in life that you're just fitted for. "There are too many square pegs in round holes now. Many a poor preacher would be a first-class farmer, and lots of struggling lawyers or doctors would do a sight better in a shop, or, maybe even on the ball field. Those sentiments aren't at all original with me," he added modestly; "but they are true just the same. I'd like to see Joe do what he likes best, for then I know he'd do that better than anything else in the world." "Oh, John! surely you wouldn't want to see him a professional ball player?" "Well, I don't know. There are lots worse positions in life." "But I'm glad he's going to Yale!" exclaimed Mrs. Matson, as the little family conference came to an end. CHAPTER III ONE LAST GAME "Say, Tom, do you know what I've got a good notion to do?" "Indeed I haven't, Joe, unless you're going to go out West and shoot Indians, or some such crazy stunt as that." "Forget it! But you know I've got to start for Yale in about another week." "That's right. The time is getting short. Excelsior opens four days from now, but I'm not going to drill in with the first bunch. I don't have to report quite so soon. I'm a Senior now, you know." "So you are. I almost wish I was with you." "Oh, nonsense! And you going to Yale! But what was it you started to say?" "Oh, yes, I almost forgot. Say, why can't we have one last game before we have to leave town? One rattling good game of baseball to wind up the season! I'd just love to get into a uniform again, and I guess you would too. Can't we pick up enough of the old Silver Stars to make a nine, with what we can induce to play from among the lads in town?" "I guess so." "Then let's do it. The Resolute team is still in existence, isn't it?" "Yes, but I haven't kept much track of them. I've been away most all Summer, you know." "And so have I, but I think we could get up a game for Saturday. I believe we could get quite a crowd, but we wouldn't charge admission. What do you say?" "I'm with you. It would be sport to have a game. I wonder how we can arrange for it?" "I've got to go over to Rocky Ford for dad to-day," went on Joe, "and I'll see if I can't get in touch with some of the Resolutes. It may be that they have a game on, and, again, they may have disbanded. But it's worth trying. Then you see as many of the fellows here as you can, and get up a nine. There ought to be five or six of the old Silver Stars around." "I'll do it! Wow! It will be sport to get on the diamond again before we have to buckle down to the grind." "I hope I haven't forgotten how to pitch," went on Joe. "Let's get a ball and do a little practising out in the lots." The two chums, somewhat older, more experienced and certainly better players than when we first met them, three years before, were soon tossing the ball back and forth, Joe warming up to his accustomed work as a twirler. "That was a beaut!" exclaimed Tom, who was catching. "Did the curve break well?" "Couldn't have been better. You'll fool 'em all right with that twist." "I'm a little stiff yet. Well, let's see what we can do toward getting up a game." Joe went to Rocky Ford that afternoon, and was fortunate in finding the new manager of the Resolutes, the one-time rivals of the Silver Stars. The team had greatly changed, and had been strengthened by some new players. They had not yet broken up for the season, and, as they had no game on for Saturday, the manager readily agreed to come to Riverside with his lads, and take on the Silver Stars in a sort of exhibition contest. "I suppose you'll pitch?" spoke the manager, as Joe was about to leave for home. "Yes, I want to. Why?" "Nothing, only maybe we better handicap your team, or else you'd better allow us half a dozen runs to start with," was the laughing answer. "I'm not as formidable as all that," retorted Joe. "Are any of the old boys playing yet?" "Oh, yes, quite a few. There's Art Church, Lew Entry, Ted Neefus and Hank Armstrong." "I'll be glad to see 'em again," spoke Joe. When he reached Riverside late that afternoon Tom met him and gleefully informed his chum that he had been able to get up a nine. "Then we'll have a game!" cried Joe. "Will you catch for me?" "If you think I can." "Sure you can. Wow! We'll have some fun." The news of the coming game between the Silver Stars--or a team somewhat representing them--and the Resolutes aroused considerable enthusiasm in Riverside and the neighboring towns. There was a prospect of a large throng, and when Saturday came--with as fine a specimen of weather as heart could wish--there was a great outpouring of "fans." The Silver Stars were first on the field, and though the team as then constituted had never played together, still after a little practice they got acquainted with each other, and were soon working in unison. Joe and Tom formed the battery, and they seemed an effective combination as they warmed up outside the diamond. Then the Resolutes arrived and they, too, began their practice. "We're going to have a big crowd," remarked Joe, as he saw the stands filling, for Riverside boasted of a fairly good field, where the semi-professional team held forth in the Summer. But the season was about over now. "It's like old times," remarked Tom. "Come on, now some hot ones to finish up with, and then it'll be most time to call the game." The details were arranged, the umpire chosen, the batting orders submitted, and the teams came in off the field. The Silver Stars were to bat last, and as Joe walked out to the mound to do the twirling, he was greeted by many friends and acquaintances who had not seen him since the Summer vacation had started. Some news of his prospective leaving for Yale must have gotten around, for he was observed with curious, and sometimes envious eyes. "Joe's getting to be quite a boy," remarked Mr. Jacob Anderson, one of Riverside's enthusiastic baseball supporters, to his friend, Mr. James Blake. "Yes, he's a wonderful pitcher, I hear. Seems sort of queer how the boys grow up. Why, only a few years ago he was a small chap, playing around the vacant lots." "Yes, time does manage to scoot along," spoke the other. "Well, I guess we'll see a good game." As Joe and Tom paused for a brief consultation before opening the performance, the catcher, glancing toward the grandstand, uttered a surprised exclamation. "What's the matter?" asked Joe. "That fellow with my sister--I meant to tell you about him. He was over to your house the other night, when he and sis, and Charlie Masterford called on your sister." "Oh, ho! So it was Charlie that Clara was fixing up for!" exclaimed Joe. "I'll have some fun with her. I guess she's at the game to-day. But what about the fellow with your sister?" "He's a Yale man." "A Yale man--you mean a graduate?" "No, he goes there now--Sophomore I heard sis say. She was boasting about him, but I didn't pay much attention. I meant to tell you, but I forgot it." "A Yale man," mused Joe. "Yes, that's him, with the flower in his coat. Sort of a sport I guess. Sis said he was on the nine, but I don't know where he plays. Like to meet him? I don't know him myself, but I can get sis to present us. She met him at some dance this Summer, and found he had relatives here he intended to visit. She asked him to call--say, isn't it great how the girls do that?--and he did--the other night. Then he must have made a date with her. Like to meet him? Name's--let's see now--I did have it. Oh, I remember, it's Weston--Ford Weston. Want to meet him after the game?" "No--I--I don't believe I do," said Joe slowly. "He may think I am sort of currying favor. I'll wait until I get to Yale, and then, if I get the chance, I'll meet him. He looks like a decent chap." "Yes, Mabel is crazy about him," said Tom; "but all girls are that way I guess. None for mine! Well, shall we start?" The batter was impatiently tapping his stick on the home plate. "Play ball!" called the umpire, and, as Joe walked to his place he gave a glance toward where Mabel Davis sat with a tall, good-looking chap. "A Yale man," mused Joe, "and on the nine. I wonder what he'll think of my pitching?" and, somehow, our hero felt a bit nervous, and he wished he had not known of the presence of the collegian. As he began winding up to deliver the ball he fancied he detected an amused smile on the face of Ford Weston. CHAPTER IV A SNEERING LAUGH "Come on now, Art! Line one out!" "A home run, old man! You can do it!" "Slam one over the fence!" "Poke it to the icehouse and come walking!" "We've got the pitcher's goat already! Don't mind him, even if he is going to college!" These were only a few of the good-natured cries that greeted Art Church as he stood at the home plate, waiting for Joe Matson to deliver the ball. And, in like manner, Joe was gently gibed by his opponents, some of whom had not faced him in some time. To others he was an unknown quantity. But even those newest members of the Resolutes had heard of Joe's reputation, and there was not a little of the feeling in the visiting nine that they were doomed to defeat through the opposing pitcher. "Come on now, Art, it's up to you." "Give him a fair chance, Joe, and he'll knock the cover off!" "Play ball!" snapped the umpire, and Joe, who had been exchanging the regulation practice balls with the catcher signalled that he was ready to deliver the first one of the game. The catcher called for a slow out, but Joe shook his head. He knew Art Church of old, and remembered that this player fairly "ate 'em up." Joe gave the signal to Tom that he would send a swift in-shoot, and his chum nodded comprehendingly. "Ball one!" yelled the umpire, and Joe could not restrain a start of surprise. True, Art had not swung at the horsehide, but it had easily clipped the plate, and, Joe thought, should have been called a strike. But he said nothing, and, delivering the same sort of a ball the next time, he had the satisfaction of deceiving the batter, who swung viciously at it. "He's only trying you out!" was shouted at Joe. "He'll wallop the next one!" But Art Church did not, and waiting in vain for what he considered a good ball, he struck at the next and missed, while the third strike was called on him without his getting a chance to move his bat. "Oh, I guess the umpire isn't against us after all," thought Joe, as he threw the ball over to first while the next batter was coming up. "How's that?" yelled Tom in delight. "Guess there aren't going to be any home runs for you Resolutes." "Oh, it's early yet," answered the visiting captain. But the Resolutes were destined to get no runs in that half-inning. One man popped up a little fly, which was easily taken care of, and the next man Joe struck out cleanly. He was beginning to feel that he was getting in form again. All that Spring he had pitched fine games at Excelsior Hall, but, during the Summer vacation, at the close of the boarding school, he had gone a bit stale. He could feel it himself. His muscles were stiff from lack of use, and he had not the control of the ball, which was one of his strong points. Neither could he get up the speed which had always been part of his assets, and which, in after years, made him such a power in the big league. Still Joe felt that he was doing fairly well, and he knew that, as the game went on, and he warmed up, he would do better. "We ought to win," he told Tom Davis, as they walked to the bench. "That is if we get any kind of support, and if our fellows can hit their pitcher. What sort of a chap is he?" "Don't know much about him. He's been at it all Summer though, and ought to be in pretty good practice. We'll soon tell. Len Oswald is first up." But that was all Len did--get up. He soon sat down again, not having hit the ball. "Oh, I guess we've got some pitcher!" yelled the Resolutes. "Even if he isn't going to college!" added someone, and Joe felt his face burn. He was not at all puffed up over the fact that he was going to Yale, and he disliked exceedingly to get that reputation--so unjustly. But he did not protest. When the second man went out without getting to first base, it looked as if the contest was going to be a close one, and there began to be whispers of a "pitchers' battle." "'Pitchers' battle' nothing!" exclaimed Joe in a whisper to Tom. "That fellow can't curve a ball. I've been watching him. He's got a very fast straight delivery, and that's how he's fooling 'em. I'm going to hit him, and so can the rest of us if we don't let him bluff. Just stand close up to the plate and plug it. Who comes next?" "Percy Parnell." "Oh, wow! Well, unless he's improved a whole lot he won't do much." But Percy had, for the next moment he got the ball just where he wanted it, and slammed it out for a three bagger amid enthusiastic howls. Then the other Silver Star players became aware of the opposing pitcher's weakness and began hitting him, until three runs had come in. Then, in response to the frantic appeals of the "rooters" and their own captain, the Resolutes took a brace and halted the winning streak. But it had begun, and nothing could stop it. Joe, much elated that his diagnosis of his opponent had been borne out, again took his place in the box. He determined to show what he could do in the way of pitching, having done some warming-up work with Tom during the previous inning. He struck out the first man cleanly, and the second likewise. The third hit him for two fouls, and then, seeming to have become familiar with Joe's style, whacked out one that was good for two bases. "We're finding him! We're finding him!" yelled the excited Resolutes. "Only two down, and we've got a good hitter coming." Joe saw that his fellow players were getting a little "rattled," fearing perhaps that he was going to pieces, so, to delay the game a moment, and pull himself together, he walked toward home, and pretended to have a little conference with the catcher. In reality they only mumbled meaningless words, for Tom knew Joe's trick of old. But the little break seemed to have a good effect, for the young pitcher struck out the next man and no runs came in. "Oh, I guess yes!" cried the Silver Star crowd. The home team got two runs the next inning, and with goose eggs in their opponents' frame it began to look more like a one-sided contest. "Boys, we've got to wallop 'em!" exclaimed the visiting captain earnestly, as they once more came to bat. Joe's arm was beginning to feel the unaccustomed strain a trifle, and to limber up the muscles he "wound-up" with more motions and elaborateness than usual as he again took the mound. As he did so he heard from the grandstand a loud laugh--a laugh that fairly bubbled over with sneering, caustic mirth, and a voice remarked, loud enough for our hero to hear: "I wonder where he learned that wild and weird style of pitching? He'll fall all apart if he doesn't look out!" He cast a quick glance in the direction of the voice and saw Ford Weston, who sat beside Mabel Davis, fairly doubled up with mirth. Mabel seemed to be remonstrating with him. "Don't break your arm!" called Ford, laughing harder than before. "Hush!" exclaimed Mabel. Joe felt the dull red of shame and anger mounting to his cheeks. "So that's a Yale man," he thought. "And I'm going to Yale. I wonder if they're all like that there? I--I hope not." And, for the life of him, Joe could not help feeling a sense of anger at the youth who had so sneeringly laughed at him. "And he's a Yale man--and on the nine," mused Joe. CHAPTER V OFF FOR YALE "We've got the game in the refrigerator--on ice." "Take it easy now, Silver Stars." "Let 'em get a few runs if they want to." Thus spoke some of the spectators, and a number of the members of the home team, as the last half of the seventh inning started with the score ten to three in favor of the Silver Stars. It had not been a very tight contest on either side, and errors were numerous. Yet, in spite of the sneering laugh of the Yale man, Joe knew that he had pitched a good game. They had hit him but seldom, and one run was due to a muffed ball by the centre fielder. "Well, I guess you haven't forgotten how to pitch," exulted Tom, as he sat beside his chum on the bench. Behind them, and over their heads, sat the spectators in the grandstand, and when the applause at a sensational catch just made by the left fielder, retiring the third man, had died away the voices of many in comment on the game could be heard. "Oh, I'm not so very proud of myself," remarked Joe. "I can see lots of room for improvement. But I'm all out of practice. I think I could have held 'em down better if we'd had a few more games to back us up." "Sure thing. Well, this is a good way to wind up the season. I heard a little while ago that the Resolutes came over here to make mince-meat of us. They depended a whole lot on their pitcher, but you made him look like thirty cents." "Oh, I don't know. He's got lots of speed, and if he had the benefit of the coaching we got at Excelsior Hall he'd make a dandy." "Maybe. I'm going over here to have a chin with Rodney Burke. I won't be up for a good while." "And I guess I won't get a chance this inning," remarked Joe, as he settled back on the bench. As he did so he was aware of a conversation going on in the stand over his head. "And you say he's going to Yale this term?" asked someone--a youth's deep-chested tones. "I believe so--yes," answered a girl. Joe recognized that Mabel Davis was speaking. "He's a chum of my brother's," she went on. "They're talking of me," thought Joe, and he looked apprehensively at his companions on the bench, but they seemed to be paying no attention to him, for which he was grateful. They were absorbed in the game. "Going to Yale; eh?" went on the youth's voice, and Joe felt sure he was Ford Weston. "Well, we eat his kind up down there!" "Hush! You mustn't talk so of my friends," warned Mabel, and yet she laughed. "Oh, if he's a friend of yours, that's different," came the retort. "You're awful strong with me, Mabel, and I'd do anything you asked." The girl laughed in a pleased sort of way, and Joe, with a wild feeling in his heart, felt a certain scorn for both of them. "Yes, he and my brother are chums," resumed Mabel. "They went to boarding school together, but Joe is going to Yale. He is just crazy about baseball--in fact Tom is, too, but Joe wants to be a great pitcher." "Does he think he's going to pitch at Yale?" "I believe he does!" "Then he's got a whole lot more thinks coming!" laughed the Yale man. "He's about the craziest specimen of a tosser I ever stacked up against. He'll never make the Yale scrub!" "Hush! Haven't I told you not to talk so about my friend?" insisted the girl, but there was still laughter in her tones. "All right Miss Mabel. I'll do anything you say. Wow! That was a pretty hit all right. Go it, old man! A three-bagger!" and in the enthusiasm over the game the Yale man dropped Joe as a topic of conversation. Our hero, with burning cheeks, got up and strolled away. He had heard too much, but he was glad they did not know he had unintentionally been listening. The game ended with the Silver Stars winners, but the score was not as close as seemed likely in the seventh inning. For the Resolutes, most unexpectedly, began hitting Joe, though he managed to pull himself together in the ninth, and retired his opponents hitless. The last half of the ninth was not played, as the home team had a margin of two runs. "Well, we did 'em," remarked Tom, as he and Joe walked off the field. "But they sort of pulled up on us. Did they get on to your curves?" "No," spoke Joe listlessly. "I--er--I got a little tired I guess." "No wonder. You're not in trim. But you stiffened up at the last." "Oh, yes," but Joe knew it was not weariness that accounted for his being hit so often. It was because of an inward rage, a sense of shame, and, be it confessed, a bit of fear. For well he knew how little it would take, in such a college as Yale, to make or mar a man. Should he come, heralded perhaps by the unfriendly tongue of the lad who had watched him pitch that day--heralded as one with a "swelled head"--as one who thought himself a master-pitcher--Joe knew he could never live it down. "I'll never get my chance--the chance for the 'varsity--if he begins to talk," mused Joe, and for a time he was miserable. "Come on over to grub," invited Tom. "Sis and her latest find will be there--that Yale chap. Maybe you'd like to meet him. If you don't we can sneak in late and there'll be some eats left." "No, thanks, I don't believe I will," replied Joe listlessly. "Don't you want to meet that Yale fellow? Maybe he could give you some points." "No, I'd rather not." "All right," assented Tom quickly. Something in his chum's tones made him wonder what was the matter, but he did not ask. "I've got some packing to do," went on Joe, conscious that he was not acting very cordially toward his old schoolmate. "I may see you later." "Sure, any time. I'll be on hand to see you off for Yale, old man." "Yale!" whispered Joe, as he swung off toward his own home, half-conscious of the pointing fingers and whispered comments of a number of street urchins who were designating him as "dat's de pitchin' guy what walloped de Resolutes!" "Yale!" thought Joe. "I'm beginning to hate it!" And then a revulsion of feeling suddenly came over him. "Hang it all!" he exclaimed as he stumbled along. "This is no way for a fellow to feel if he's going to college. I've got to perk up. If I am to go to Yale, I'm going to do my best to be worth it!" But something rankled in his heart, and, try as he might he could not help clenching his teeth and gripping his hands as he thought of Ford Weston. "I--I'd like to fight him!" murmured Joe. "I wonder if they allow fights at Yale?" Several days later you might have heard this in the Matson home. "Well, Joe, have you got everything packed?" "Don't forget to send me a flag." "You've got your ticket all right, haven't you?" "Write as soon as you get there." "And whatever you do, don't go around with wet feet. It's coming on Winter now----" "Mother! Mother!" broke in Mr. Matson, with a laugh at his wife and daughter on either side of Joe, questioning and giving advice by turns. "You're like hens with one chicken. Don't coddle him so. He's been away before, and he's getting big enough to know his way around by this time." Well might he say so, for Joe had grown fast in the past three years, and, though but nineteen, was taller than his father, who was not a small man. "Of course he's been away," agreed Mrs. Matson, "but not as far as New Haven, and going to Yale is some different from Excelsior Hall, I guess." "I _know_ so," murmured Joe, with a wink at his father. "I'm going to the station with you," declared Clara. "Here comes Tom. I guess he's going, too." "Well, I'll say good-bye here," said Mrs. Matson, and her voice trembled a little. "Good-bye, my boy. I know you'll do what's right, and make us all proud of you!" Joe's answer was a kiss, and then, with her handkerchief much in evidence, Mrs. Matson left the room. "Come! Come!" laughed Mr. Matson. "You'll make Joe sorry he's going if you keep on." "The only thing I'm sorry about," replied the lad, "is that it'll be a good while until Spring." "Baseball; eh?" queried his father. "Well, I suppose you'll play if you get the chance. But, Joe, just remember that life isn't all baseball, though that has its place in the scheme of things. You're not going to Yale just to play baseball." "But, if I get a chance, I'm going to play my head off!" exclaimed the lad, and, for the first time in some days there came a fierce light of joy into his eyes. "That's the spirit, son," exclaimed Mr. Matson. "And just remember that, while you want to win, it isn't the only point in the game. Always be a gentleman--play hard; but play clean! That's all the advice I'm going to give you," and with a shake of his hand the inventor followed his wife from the room. "Well, I guess I'm going to be left alone to do the honors," laughed Clara. "Come on now, it's almost train time. Oh, hello, Tom!" she added, as Joe's chum entered. "Did you bring any extra handkerchiefs with you?" "Say I'll pull your hairpins out, Clara, if you don't quit fooling!" threatened her brother. Joe's baggage, save for a small valise, had been sent on ahead, and now, calling a good-bye to his parents, but not going to them, for he realized that it would only make his mother cry more, the young collegian, escorted by his sister and chum, started for the station. Our hero found a few of his friends gathered there, among them Mabel Davis. "And so you're off for Yale," she remarked, and Joe noticed that she too, like his sister, seemed to have "grown up" suddenly in the last year. Mabel was quite a young lady now. "Yes, I'm off," replied Joe, rather coldly. "Oh, I think it's just grand to go to a big college," went on Mabel. "I wish papa would let Tom go." "I wish so myself," chimed in her brother. "I know one Yale man," went on Mabel. "I met him this Summer. He was at the game the other day. I could write to him, and tell him you are coming." "Please don't!" exclaimed Joe so suddenly that Mabel drew back, a little offended. "Wa'al, I want to shake hands with you, an' wish you all success," exclaimed a voice at Joe's elbow. He turned to see Mr. Ebenezer Peterkin, a neighbor. "So you're off for college. I hear they're great places for football and baseball! Ha! Ha! 'Member th' time you throwed a ball through our winder, and splashed Alvirah's apple sass all over her clean stove? 'Member that, Joe?" "Indeed I do, Mr. Peterkin. And how you told Tom and me to hurry off, as your wife was coming after us." "That's right! Ha! Ha! Alvirah was considerable put out that day. She'd just got her stove blacked, an' that sass was some of her best. Th' ball landed plump into it! 'Member?" and again the old man chuckled with mirth. "I remember," laughed Joe. "And how Tom and I blackened the stove, and helped clean up the kitchen for your wife. I was practising pitching that day." "Oh, yes, you _pitched_ all right," chuckled the aged man. "Wa'al, Joe, I wish you all sorts of luck, an' if you do pitch down there at Yale, don't go to splattering no apple sass!" "I won't," promised the lad. There were more congratulations, more wishes for success, more hand shakings and more good-byes, and then the whistle of the approaching train was heard. Somehow Joe could not but remember the day he had driven the man to the station just in time to get his train. He wondered if he would ever see that individual again. "Good-bye, Joe!" "So long, old man!" "Don't forget to write!" "Play ball!" "Good-bye, Joe!" Laughter, cheers, some tears too, but not many, waving hands, and amid all this Joe entered the train. He waved back as long as he could see any of them, and then he settled back in his seat. He was off for Yale--for Yale, with all its traditions, its mysteries, its learning and wiseness, its sports and games, its joys and sorrows--its heart-burnings and its delights, its victories--and defeats! Off for Yale. Joe felt his breath choking him, and into his eyes there came a mist as he gazed out of the window. Off for Yale--and baseball! CHAPTER VI ON THE CAMPUS Joe Matson gazed about him curiously as the train drew into the New Haven station. He wondered what his first taste of Yale life was going to be like, and he could not repress a feeling of nervousness. He had ridden in the end car, and he was not prepared for what happened as the train drew to a slow stop. For from the other coaches there poured a crowd of students--many Freshmen like himself but others evidently Sophomores, and a sprinkling of Juniors and the more lordly Seniors. Instantly the place resounded to a din, as friends met friends, and as old acquaintances were renewed. "Hello, Slab!" "Where have you been keeping yourself, Pork Chops!" "By jinks! There's old Ham Fat!" "Come on, now! Get in line!" This from one tall lad to others, evidently from the same preparatory school. "Show 'em what we can do!" "Hi there, Freshies! Off with those hats!" This from a crowd of Sophomores who saw the newly-arrived first-year lads. "Don't you do it! Keep your lids on!" "Oh, you will!" and there was a scrimmage in which the offending headgear of many was sent spinning. Joe began to breathe deeply and fast. If this was a taste of Yale life he liked it. Somewhat Excelsior Hall it was, but bigger--broader. Gripping his valise, he climbed down the steps, stumbling in his eagerness. On all sides men crowded around him and the others who were alighting. "Keb! Carriage! Hack! Take your baggage!" Seeing others doing the same, Joe surrendered his valise to an insistent man. As he moved out of the press, wondering how he was to get to the house where he had secured a room, he heard someone behind him fairly yell in his ear: "Oh ho! Fresh.! Off with that hat!" He turned to see two tall, well-dressed lads, in somewhat "swagger" clothes, arms linked, walking close behind him. Remembering the fate of the others, Joe doffed his new derby, and smiled. "That's right," complimented the taller of the two Sophomores. "Glad you think so," answered Joe. "Well?" snapped the other Sophomore sharply. "Glad you think so," repeated our hero. "Well?" rasped out the first. Joe looked from one to the other in some bewilderment. He knew there was some catch, and that he had not answered categorically, but for the moment he forgot. "Put the handle on," he was reminded, and then it came to him. "Sir," he added with a smile. "Right, Freshie. Don't forget your manners next time," and the two went swinging along, rolling out the chorus of some class song. The confusion increased. More students poured from the train, overwhelming the expressmen with their demands and commands. The hacks and carriages were being rapidly filled. Orders were being shouted back and forth. Exuberance was on every side. "Oh ho! This way, Merton!" yelled someone, evidently a signal for the lads from that school to assemble. "Over here, Lisle!" "There's Perk!" "Yes, and who's he got with him?" "Oh, some Fresh. Come on, you goat. I'm hungry!" Joe felt himself exulting, after all, that he was to be a part of this throbbing, pulsating life--part of the great college. He hung back, friendless and alone, and it was borne on him with a rush just how friendless and alone he was when he saw so many others greeted by friends and mates. With all his heart Joe wished he had come up from some preparatory school, where he would have had classmates with him. But it was too late now. He made up his mind that he would walk to his rooming house, not because he wanted to save the carriage hire, but he would have to get in a hack all alone, and he was afraid of the gibes and taunts that might be hurled at the lone Freshman. He had engaged the room in advance, and knew it would be in readiness. Later he intended to join one of the many eating clubs for his meals, but for the present he expected to patronize a restaurant, for the rooming house did not provide commons. "I'll walk," decided Joe, and, inquiring the way from a friendly hackman, he started off. As he did so he was aware of a tall lad standing near him, and, at the mention of the street Joe designated, this lad started, and seemed about to speak. For a moment Joe, noticing that he, too, was alone, was tempted to address him. And then, being naturally diffident, and in this case particularly so, he held back. "He may be some stand-offish chap," reasoned Joe, "and won't like it. I'll go a bit slow." He swung away from the station, glad to be out of the turmoil, but for a time it followed him, the streets being filled with students afoot and in vehicles. The calling back and forth went on, until, following the directions he had received, Joe turned down a quieter thoroughfare. "That must be the college over there," he said after he had swung across the city common, and saw looming up in the half mist of the early September night, the piles of brick and stone. "Yale College--and I'm going there!" He paused for a moment to contemplate the structures, and a wave of sentimental feeling surged up into his heart. He saw the outlines of the elms--the great elms of Yale. Joe passed on, and, as he walked, wondering what lay before him, he could not help but think of the chances--the very small chances he had--in all that throng of young men--to make the 'varsity nine. "There are thousands of fellows here," mused Joe, "and all of them may be as good as I. Of course not all of them want to get on the nine--and fewer want to pitch. But--Oh, I wonder if I can make it? I wonder----" It was getting late. He realized that he had better go to his room, and see about supper. Then in the morning would come reporting at college and arranging about his lectures--and the hundred and one things that would follow. "I guess I've got time enough to go over and take a look at the place," he mused. "I can hike it a little faster to my shack after I take a peep," he reasoned. "I just want to see what I'm going to stack up against." He turned and started toward the stately buildings in the midst of the protecting elms. Other students passed him, talking and laughing, gibing one another. All of them in groups--not one alone as was Joe. Occasionally they called to him as they passed: "Off with that hat, Fresh.!" He obeyed without speaking, and all the while the loneliness in his heart was growing, until it seemed to rise up like some hard lump and choke him. "But I won't! I won't!" he told himself desperately. "I won't give in. I'll make friends soon! Oh, if only Tom were here!" He found himself on the college campus. Pausing for a moment to look about him, his heart welling, he heard someone coming from the rear. Instinctively he turned, and in the growing dusk he thought he saw a familiar figure. "Off with that hat, Fresh.!" came the sharp command. Joe was getting a little tired of it, but he realized that the only thing to do was to obey. "All right," he said, listlessly. "All right, what?" was snapped back at him. For a moment Joe did not answer. "Come on, Fresh.!" cried the other, taking a step toward him. "Quick--all right--what?" "Sir!" ripped out Joe, as he turned away. A moment later from a distant window there shone a single gleam of light that fell on the face of the other lad. Joe started as he beheld the countenance of Ford Weston--the youth who had laughed at his pitching. "That's right," came in more mollified tones from the Sophomore. "Don't forget your manners at Yale, Fresh.! Or you may be taught 'em in a way you won't like," and with an easy air of assurance, and an insulting, domineering swagger, Weston took himself off across the campus. CHAPTER VII A NEW CHUM For a moment Joe stood there, his heart pounding away under his ribs, uncertain what to do--wondering if the Sophomore had recognized him. Then, as the other gave no sign, but continued on his way, whistling gaily, Joe breathed easier. "The cad!" he whispered. "I'd like to--to----" He paused. He remembered that he was at Yale--that he was a Freshman and that he was supposed to take the insults of those above him--of the youth who had a year's advantage over him in point of time. "Yes, I'm a Freshman," mused Joe, half bitterly. "I'm supposed to take it all--to grin and bear it--for the good of my soul and conscience, and so that I won't get a swelled head. Well," he concluded with a whimsical smile, "I guess there's no danger." He looked after the retreating figure of the Sophomore, now almost lost in the dusk that enshrouded the campus, and then he laughed softly. "After all!" he exclaimed, "it's no more than I've done to the lads at Excelsior Hall. I thought it was right and proper then, and I suppose these fellows do here. Only, somehow, it hurts. I--I guess I'm getting older. I can't appreciate these things as I used to. After all, what is there to it? There's too much class feeling and exaggerated notion about one's importance. It isn't a man's game--though it may lead to it. I'd rather be out--standing on my own feet. "Yes, out playing the game with men--the real game--I want to get more action than this," and he looked across at the college buildings, now almost deserted save for a professor or two, or small groups of students who were wandering about almost as disconsolately as was Joe himself. "Oh, well!" he concluded. "I'm here, and I've got to stay at least for mother's sake, and I'll do the best I can. I'll grin and bear it. It won't be long until Spring, and then I'll see if I can't make good. I'm glad Weston didn't recognize me. It might have made it worse. But he's bound to know, sooner or later, that I'm the fellow he saw pitch that day, and, if he's like the rest of 'em I suppose he'll have the story all over college. Well, I can't help it." And with this philosophical reflection Joe turned and made his way toward his rooming house. It was a little farther than he had thought, and he was a bit sorry he had not selected one nearer the college. There were too many students to permit all of them to dwell in the dormitories proper, and many sought residences in boarding places and in rooming houses, and dined at students' clubs. "I suppose I'll have to hunt up some sort of an eating joint," mused Joe, as he plodded along. "I'd be glad to get in with some freshmen who like the baseball game. It'll be more sociable. I'll have to be on the lookout." As he rang the bell of the house corresponding in number to the one he had selected as his rooming place, the door was cautiously opened a trifle, the rattling of a chain showing that it was secure against further swinging. A rather husky voice asked: "Well?" Joe looked, and saw himself being regarded by a pair of not very friendly eyes, while a tousled head of hair was visible in the light from a hall lamp that streamed from behind it. "I--er--I believe I'm to room here," went on Joe. "Matson is my name. I'm a Freshman----" "Oh, that's all right. Come in!" and the tone was friendly at once. "I thought it was some of those sneaking Sophs., so I had the chain on. Come in!" and the portal was thrown wide, while Joe's hand was caught in a firm grip. "Are you--er--do you run this place?" asked Joe. "Not yet, but I'm going to do my best at it as soon as I get wise to the ropes. You can help--you look the right stuff." "Aren't you the--er--the proprietor?" asked our hero, rather puzzled for the right word. "Not exactly," was the reply, "but I'm going to be one of 'em soon. Hanover is my name--Ricky Hanover they used to call me at Tampa. I'll allow you the privilege. I'm a Fresh. like yourself. I'm going to room here. Arrived yesterday. I've got a room on the first floor, near the door, and it's going to be so fruity for those Sophs. to rout me out that I got a chain and put it on. The old man said he didn't care." "The old man?" queried Joe. "Yes, Hopkins, Hoppy for short--the fellow that owns this place--he and his wife." "Oh, yes, the people from whom I engaged my room," spoke Joe understandingly. "I think I'm on the second floor," he went on. "Wrong guess--come again," said Ricky Hanover with a grin, as he carefully replaced the chain. "There's been a wing shift, so Mrs. Hoppy told me. She's expecting you, but she's put you downstairs, in a big double room next to mine. Hope you won't mind. Your trunk is there, and your valise just came--at least I think it's yours--J. M. on it." "Yes, that's mine." "I had it put in for you." "Thanks." "Come on, and I'll show you the ropes. If those Sophs. come----" "Are they likely to?" asked Joe, scenting the joy of a battle thus early in his career. "They might. Someone tried to rush the door just before you came, but the chain held and I gave 'em the merry ha-ha! But they'll be back--we'll get ours and we'll have to take it." "I suppose so. Well, I don't mind. I've been through it before." "That so? Where are you from?" "Excelsior Hall." "Never heard of it. That's nothing. I don't s'pose you could throw a stone and hit Tampa School?" "Probably not," laughed Joe, forming an instinctive liking for this new chap. "Right. Tampa hardly knows it's on the map, but it isn't a half bad place. Ah, here's Mamma Hoppy now. You don't mind if I call you that; do you?" asked Ricky, as a motherly-looking woman advanced down the hall toward the two lads. "Oh, I guess I've been at this long enough not to mind a little thing like that," she laughed. "You college men can't bother me as long as you don't do anything worse than that. Let me see, this is----" "Matson, ma'am," spoke our hero. "Joe Matson. I wrote to you----" "Oh, yes, I remember. I have quite a number of new boys coming in. I'm sorry, but the room I thought I could let you have isn't available. The ceiling fell to-day, so I have transferred you downstairs. It's a double room, and I may have to put someone in with you. If you think----" "Oh, that's all right," interrupted Joe good-naturedly, "I don't mind. I'll be glad to have a room-mate." "Thank you," said Mrs. Hopkins, in relieved tones. "I can't say just now who it will be." "Never mind!" broke in Ricky. "Have you grubbed?" "No," replied the newcomer. "I was thinking of going to a restaurant." "Come along then. I'm with you. I haven't fed my face yet. We'll go down to Glory's place and see the bunch." Joe recognized the name as that of a famous New Haven resort, much frequented by the college lads, and, while I have not used the real designation, and while I shall use fictitious names for other places connected with the college, those who know their Yale will have no difficulty in recognizing them. "Come on to Glory's," went on Ricky. "It's a great joint." "Wait until I slip on a clean collar," suggested Joe, and a little later he and Ricky were tramping along the streets, now agleam with electric lights, on their way to the famous resort. It was filled with students, from lordly Seniors, who scarcely noticed those outside of their class, to the timid Freshmen. Joe looked on in undisguised delight. After all, Yale might be more to him than he had anticipated. "Like to go a rabbit?" suggested Ricky. "A rabbit?" asked Joe. "I didn't know they were in season?" "The Welsh variety," laughed Ricky. "They're great with a mug of ale, they say, only I cut out the ale." "Same here," admitted Joe. "Yes, I'll go one. It's made of cheese, isn't it?" "And other stuff. Great for making you dream. Come on, this is the Freshmen table over here. I was in this morning." "Do they have tables for each class." "They don't--I mean the management doesn't, but I guess it would be as much as your hair was worth to try to buck in where you didn't belong. Know anybody here?" "Not a soul--wish I did." "I didn't when I came this morning, but there are some nice fellows at the Red Shack." "Red Shack?" Joe looked puzzled. "Yes, that's our hang-out. It's painted red." "Oh, I see." "There are a couple of 'em now," went on Ricky, who seemed perfectly at ease in his comparatively new surroundings. He was a lad who made friends easily, Joe decided. "Hi, Heller, plow over here!" Ricky called to a tall lad who was working his way through the throng. "Bring Jones along with you. They're both at our shack," he went on in a low voice to Joe. "Shake hands with Matson--he's one of us chickens," he continued, and he presented the newcomers as though he had known them all their lives. "You seem at home," remarked Jones, who was somewhat remarkable for his thinness. "I am--Slim!" exclaimed Ricky. "I say, you don't mind if I call you that; do you?" he asked. "That's what the other fellows do; isn't it?" "Yes. How'd you guess it?" asked Jones, with a laugh. "Easy. I'm Ricky--Richard by rights, but I don't like it. Call me Ricky." "All right, I will," agreed Slim Jones. "I'm Hank Heller, if you're going in for names," came from the other youth, while Joe had to admit that his appellation was thus shortened from Joseph. "Well, now we know each other let's work our jaws on something besides words," suggested Ricky. "Here, do we get waited on, Alphonse?" he called to a passing waiter. Joe thought he had never been in such a delightful place, nor in such fine company. It was altogether different from life at Excelsior Hall, and though there were scenes that were not always decorous from a strict standpoint, yet Joe realized that he was getting farther out on the sea of life, and must take things as they came. But he resolved to hold a proper rein on himself, and, though deep in his heart he had no real love for college life, he determined to do his best at it. The meal was a delightful one. New students were constantly coming in, and the place was blue with smoke from many cigars, pipes and cigarettes. Ricky smoked, as did Hank Heller, but Slim Jones confessed that it was a habit he had not yet acquired, in which he was like Joe. "Say, we're going to have some fun at our joint," declared Ricky on their way back, at a somewhat late hour. "We'll organize an eating club, or join one, and we'll have some sport. We'll be able to stand off the Sophs. better, too, by hanging together. When the Red Shack gets full we'll do some organizing ourselves. No use letting the Sophs. have everything." "That's right," agreed Joe. As they passed along the now somewhat quiet streets they were occasionally hailed by parties of hilarious Sophomores with the command: "Take off your hats, Freshies!" They obeyed, perforce, for they did not want to get the name of insurgents thus early in the term. "Come in and have a talk," invited Ricky, as they entered the rooming house. "It's early yet." "Guess I'll turn in," confessed Hank. "I'm tired." "I'll go you for awhile," agreed Slim. "How about you, Joe?" "No, I want to unpack a bit. See you in the morning." "All right. We'll go to chapel together." As Joe entered his new room, and turned on the light, he saw a figure in one of the beds. For a moment he was startled, having forgotten that he was to share the room with someone. The youth turned over and gazed at Joe. "Oh!" he exclaimed with a rather pleasant laugh. "I meant to sit up until you came back, to explain, but I guess I fell asleep. Mrs. Hopkins said you had no objections to a partner, and this was the only place available." "Not at all!" exclaimed Joe cordially. "Glad you came in. It's lonesome rooming alone." "You're Matson; aren't you?" asked the youth in bed. "Yes." "My name is Poole--Burton Poole." Then, for the first time Joe recognized the lad he had seen standing all alone on the depot platform--the one to whom he had been inclined to speak--but from which impulse he had held himself back. CHAPTER VIII AMBITIONS "Shake hands!" exclaimed Joe, as he stepped over to the bed, on which the other raised himself, the clothes draping around him. Then Joe saw how well built his new room-mate was--the muscles of his arms and shoulders standing out, as his pajamas tightened across his chest. "Glad to know you," greeted Poole. "You are sure you don't mind my butting in?" "Not at all. Glad of your company. I hate to be alone. I wish you'd come in a bit earlier, and you could have gone down to Glory's with us." "Wish I had. I've heard of the place, but as a general rule I like a quieter shack to eat." "Same here," confessed Joe. "We're talking of starting a feeding joint of our own--the Freshmen here--or of joining one. Are you with us?" "Sure thing. Do you know any of the fellows here?" "Three--in our shack. I just met them to-night. They seem all to the good." "Glad to hear it. I'll fill in anywhere I can." "Well, I'm going to fill in bed--right now!" asserted Joe with a yawn. "I'm dead tired. It's quite a trip from my place, and we've got to go to chapel in the morning." "That's so. Are you a sound sleeper?" "Not so very. Why?" "I am, and I forgot to bring an alarm clock. I always need one to get me up." "I can fix you," replied Joe. "I've got one that would do in place of a gong in a fire-house. I'll set it going." And from his trunk, after rummaging about a bit, he pulled a large-sized clock, noiseless as to ticking, but with a resonant bell that created such a clamor, when Joe set it to tinkling, that Ricky Hanover came bursting in. "What's the joke?" he demanded, half undressed. "Let me in on it." "The alarm clock," explained Joe. "My new chum was afraid he'd be late to chapel. Ricky, let me make you acquainted with Mr. Poole." "Glad to know you," spoke Ricky. "Got a handle?" "A what?" "Nickname. I always think it's easier to get acquainted with a fellow if he's got one. It isn't so stiff." "Maybe you're right. Well, the fellows back home used to call me 'Spike'." "What for?" demanded Joe. "Because my father was in the hardware business." "I see!" laughed Ricky. "Good enough. Spike suits me. I say, you've got a pretty fair joint here," he went on admiringly. "And some stuff, believe me!" There was envy in his tones as he looked around the room, and noted the various articles Joe was digging out of his trunk--some fencing foils, boxing gloves, a baseball bat and mask, and a number of foreign weapons which Joe had begun to collect in one of his periodical fits and then had given up. "They'll look swell stuck around the walls," went on Ricky. "Yes, it sort of tones up the place, I guess," admitted Joe. "I've got a lot of flags," spoke Spike. "My trunk didn't come, though. Hope it'll be here to-morrow." "Then you will have a den!" declared Ricky. "Got any photos?" "Photos?" queried Joe wonderingly. "Yes--girls? You ought to see my collection! Some class, believe me; and more than half were free-will offerings," and Ricky drew himself up proudly in his role of a lady-killer. "Where'd you get the others?" asked Spike. "Swiped 'em--some I took from my sister. They'll look swell when I get 'em up. Well, I'm getting chilly!" he added, and it was no wonder, for his legs were partly bare. "See you later!" and he slid out of the door. "Nice chap," commented Joe. "Rather original," agreed Spike Poole. "I guess he's in the habit of doing things. But say, I'm keeping you up with my talk, I'm afraid." "I guess it's the other way around," remarked Joe, with a smile. "No, go ahead, and stick up all the trophies you like. I'll help out to-morrow." "Oh, well, I guess this'll do for a while," said Joe a little later, when he had partly emptied his trunk. "I think I'll turn in. I don't know how I'll sleep--that Welsh rabbit was a bit more than I'm used to. So if I see my grandmother in the night----" "I'll wake you up before the dear old lady gets a chance to box your ears," promised his room-mate with a laugh. And then our hero crawled into bed to spend his first night as a real Yale student. Joe thought he had never seen so perfect a day as the one to which the alarm clock awakened him some hours later. It was clear and crisp, and on the way to chapel with the others of the Red Shack, he breathed deep of the invigorating air. The exercises were no novelty to him, but it was very different from those at Excelsior Hall, and later the campus seemed to be fairly alive with the students. But Joe no longer felt alone. He had a chum--several of them, in fact, for the acquaintances of the night before seemed even closer in the morning. The duties of the day were soon over, lectures not yet being under way. Joe got his name down, learned when he was expected to report, the hours of recitation, and other details. His new chums did the same. "And now let's see about that eating club," proposed Ricky Hanover, when they were free for the rest of the day. "It's all right to go to Glory's once in a while--especially at night when the jolly crowd is there, and a restaurant isn't bad for a change--but we're not here for a week or a month, and we want some place that's a bit like home." The others agreed with him, and a little investigation disclosed an eating resort run by a Junior who was working his way through Yale. It was a quiet sort of a place, on a quiet street, not so far away from the Red Shack as to make it inconvenient to go around for breakfast. The patrons of it, besides Joe and his new friends, were mostly Freshmen, though a few Juniors, acquaintances of Roslyn Joyce, who was trying to pay his way to an education by means of it, ate there, as did a couple of very studious Seniors, who did not go in for the society or sporting life. "This'll be just the thing for us," declared Joe; and the others agreed with him. There was some talk of football in the air. All about them students were discussing the chances of the eleven, especially in the big games with Harvard and Princeton, and all agreed that, with the new material available, Yale was a sure winner. "What are you going in for?" asked Joe of Ricky, as the five of them--Joe, Ricky, Spike, Slim Jones and Hank Heller strolled across the campus. "The eleven for mine--if I can make it!" declared Ricky. "What's yours, Joe?" "Baseball. But it's a long while off." "That's right--the gridiron has the call just now. Jove, how I want to play!" and Ricky danced about in the excess of his good spirits. "What are you going in for?" asked Joe of Hank Heller. "I'd like to make the crew, but I don't suppose I have much chance. I'll have to wait, as you will." "If I can get on the glee club, I'm satisfied," remarked Slim Jones. "That's about all I'm fit for," he added, with a whimsical smile. "How about you, Spike? Can you play anything?" "The Jewsharp and mouthorgan. Have they any such clubs here?" "No!" exclaimed Ricky. "But what's the matter with you trying for the eleven? You've got the build." "It isn't in my line. I'm like Joe here. I like the diamond best." "Do you?" cried our hero, delighted to find that his room-mate had the same ambition as himself. "Where do you play?" "Well, I have been catching for some time." "Then you and Joe ought to hit it off!" exclaimed Ricky. "Joe's crazy to pitch, and you two can make up a private battery, and use the room for a cage." CHAPTER IX THE SHAMPOO Football was in the air. On every side was the talk of it, and around the college, on the streets leading to the gridiron, and in the cars that took the students out there to watch the practice, could be heard little else but snatches of conversation about "punts" and "forward passes," the chances for this end or that fullback--how the Bulldog sized up against Princeton and Harvard. Of course Joe was interested in this, and he was among the most loyal supporters of the team, going out to the practice, and cheering when the 'varsity made a touchdown against the luckless scrub. "We're going to have a great team!" declared Ricky, as he walked back from practice with Joe one day. "I'm sure I hope so," spoke our hero. "Have you had a chance?" "Well, I'm one of the subs, and I've reported every day. They kept us tackling the dummy for quite a while, and I think I got the eye of one of the coaches. But there are so many fellows trying, and such competition, that I don't know--it's a fierce fight," and Ricky sighed. "Never mind," consoled Joe. "You'll make good, I'm sure. I'll have my troubles when the baseball season opens. I guess it won't be easy to get on the nine." "Well, maybe not, if you insist on being pitcher," said Ricky. "I hear that Weston, who twirled last season, is in line for it again." "Weston--does he pitch?" gasped Joe. It was the first time he had heard--or thought to ask--what position the lad held who had sneered at him. "That's his specialty," declared Ricky. "They're depending on him for the Yale-Princeton game. Princeton took the odd game last year, and we want it this." "I hope we get it," murmured Joe. "And so Ford Weston pitches; eh? If it comes to a contest between us I'm afraid it will be a bitter one. He hates me already. I guess he thinks I've got a swelled head." "Say, look here, Joe!" exclaimed Ricky, with a curious look on his face, "you don't seem to know the ropes here. You're a Freshman, you know." "Sure I know that. What of it?" "Lots. You know that you haven't got the ghost of a show to be pitcher on the 'varsity; don't you?" "Know it? Do you mean that Weston can so work things as to keep me off?" "Not Weston; no. But the rules themselves are against you. It's utterly impossible that you should pitch this year." "Why? What rules? I didn't know I was ineligible." "Well, you are. Listen, Joe. Under the intercollegiate rules no Freshman can play on the 'varsity baseball nine, let alone being the pitcher." "He can't?" and Joe stood aghast. "No. It's out of the question. I supposed you knew that or I'd have mentioned it before." Joe was silent a moment. His heart seemed almost to stop beating. He felt as though the floor of the room was sinking from under his feet. "I--I never thought to ask about rules," said Joe, slowly. "I took it for granted that Yale was like other smaller universities--that any fellow could play on the 'varsity if he could make it." "Not at Yale, or any of the big universities," went on Ricky in softened tones, for he saw that Joe was much affected. "You see the rule was adopted to prevent the ringing in of a semi-professional, who might come here for a few months, qualify as a Freshman, and play on the 'varsity. You've got to be a Sophomore, at least, before you can hope to make the big team, and then of course, it's up to you to make a fight for the pitcher's box." Once more Joe was silent. His hopes had been suddenly crushed, and, in a measure, it was his own fault, for he had taken too much for granted. He felt a sense of bitterness--bitterness that he had allowed himself to be persuaded to come to Yale against his own wishes. And yet he knew that it would never have done to have gone against his parents. They had their hearts set on a college course for him. "Hang it all!" exclaimed Joe, as he paced up and down, "why didn't I think to make some inquiries?" "It would have been better," agreed Ricky. "But there's no great harm done. You can play on the Freshman team this coming season, and then, when you're a Soph., you can go on that team, and you'll be in line for the 'varsity. You can play on the Junior team, if you like, and they have some smashing good games once in a while." "But it isn't the 'varsity," lamented Joe. "No. But look here, old man; you've got to take things as they come. I don't want to preach, but----" "That's all right--slam it into me!" exclaimed Joe. "I need it--I deserve it. It'll do me good. I won't be so cock-sure next time. But I hoped to make the 'varsity this season." "It'll be better for you in the end not to have done so," went on his friend. "You need more practice, than you have had, to take your place on the big team. A season with the Freshmen will give it to you. You'll learn the ropes better--get imbued with some of the Yale spirit, and you'll be more of a man. It's no joke, I tell you, to pitch on the 'varsity." "No, I imagine not," agreed Joe, slowly. "Then, I suppose there's no use of me trying to even get my name down on a sort of waiting list." "Not until you see how you make out on the Freshman team," agreed Ricky. "You'll be watched there, so look out for yourself. The old players, who act as coaches, are always on the lookout for promising material. You'll be sized up when you aren't expecting it. And, not only will they watch to see how you play ball, but how you act under all sorts of cross-fire, and in emergencies. It isn't going to be any cinch." "No, I can realize that," replied Joe. "And so Weston has been through the mill, and made good?" "He's been through the mill, that's sure enough," agreed Ricky, "but just how good he's made will have to be judged later. He wasn't such a wonder last season." "There's something queer about him," said Joe. "How's that?" "Why, if he's only a Soph. this year he must have been a Freshman last. And yet he pitched on the 'varsity I understand." "Weston's is a peculiar case," said Ricky. "I heard some of the fellows discussing it. He's classed as a Soph., but he ought really to be a Junior. This is his third year here. He's a smart chap in some things, but he got conditioned in others, and in some studies he is still taking the Soph. lectures, while in others he is with the Juniors. He was partly educated abroad, it seems, and that put him ahead of lots of us in some things. So, while he was rated with the Freshmen in some studies last year, he was enough of a Sophomore to comply with the intercollegiate rules, and pitch on the 'varsity. He did well, so they said." "I wish fate handed me out something like that," mused Joe. "If I had known that I'd have boned away on certain things so as to get a Sophomore rating--at least enough to get on the big nine." "Why, don't you intend to stay at Yale?" asked Ricky. "A year soon passes. You'll be a Sophomore before you know it." "I wish I was in Weston's shoes," said Joe softly. Since that meeting on the campus, when the Sophomore had not recognized Joe, the two had not encountered each other, and Joe was glad enough of it. "I'm glad I didn't meet him in Riverside," thought Joe. "It won't make it so hard here--when it comes to a showdown. For I'm going to make the nine! The 'varsity nine; if not this year, then next!" and he shut his teeth in determination. Meanwhile matters were gradually adjusting themselves to the new conditions of affairs at Yale--at least as regards Joe and the other Freshmen. The congenial spirits in the Red Shack, increased by some newcomers, had, in a measure, "found" themselves. Recitations and lectures began their regular routine, and though some of the latter were "cut," and though often in the interests of football the report of "not prepared" was made, still on the whole Joe and his chums did fairly well. Joe, perhaps because of his lack of active interest in football, as was the case with his room-mate, Spike, did better than the others as regards lessons. Yet it did not come easy to Joe to buckle down to the hard and exacting work of a college course, as compared to the rather easy methods in vogue at Excelsior Hall. Joe was not a natural student, and to get a certain amount of comparatively dry knowledge into his head required hours of faithful work. "I'm willing to make a try of it--for the sake of the folks," he confided to Spike; "but I know I'm never going to set the river on fire with classics or math. I'm next door to hating them. I want to play baseball." "Well, I can't blame you--in a way," admitted his chum. "Of course baseball isn't all there is to life, though I do like it myself." "It's going to be my business in life," said Joe simply, and Spike realized then, if never before, the all-absorbing hold the great game had on his friend. To Joe baseball was as much of a business--or a profession if you like--as the pulpit was to a divinity student, or the courts to a member of the law school. The Yale football team began its triumphant career, and the expectations of the friends of the eleven were fully realized. To his delight Ricky played part of a game, and there was no holding him afterward. "I've got a chance to buck the Princeton tiger!" he declared. "The head coach said I did well!" "Good!" cried Joe, wondering if he would have such fine luck when the baseball season started. Affairs at the Red Shack went on smoothly, and at the Mush and Milk Club, which the Freshmen had dubbed their eating joint, there were many assemblings of congenial spirits. Occasionally there was a session at Glory's--a session that lasted far into the night--though Joe and his room-mate did not hold forth at many such. "It's bad for the head the next day," declared Spike, and he was strictly abstemious in his habits, as was Joe. But not all the crowd at the Red Shack were in this class, and often there were disturbances at early hours of the morning--college songs howled under the windows with more or less "harmony," and appeals to Joe and the others to "stick out their heads." "I think we'll get ours soon," spoke Spike one night, as he and Joe sat at the centre table of the room, studying. "Our what?" "Drill. I heard that a lot of the Freshmen were caught down the street this evening and made to walk Spanish. They're beginning the shampoo, too." "The shampoo--what's that?" "An ancient and honorable Yale institution, in which the candidate is head-massaged with a bucket of paste or something else." "Paste or what?" "You're allowed your choice, I believe. Paste for mine, it's easier to get out of your hair if you take it in time." "That's right. I'm with you--but--er--how about a fight?" "It's up to you. Lots of the Freshmen stand 'em off. It's allowed if you like." "Then I say--fight!" exclaimed Joe. "I'm not going to be shampooed in that silly fashion if I can help it." "Then we'll stand 'em off?" questioned Spike. "Sure--as long as we can," declared Joe. "Though if they bring too big a bunch against us we'll probably get the worst of it." "Very likely, but we can have the satisfaction of punching some of the Sophs. I'm with you." "Where'll they do it?" "No telling. They may catch us on the street, or they may come here. For choice----" Spike paused and held up his hand for silence. There was a noise in the hall, in the direction of the front door. Then came the voice of Ricky Hanover saying: "No, you don't! I've got the bulge on you! No monkey business here!" "Get away from that door, Fresh.!" shouted someone, half-angrily; "or we'll bust it in!" "Give him the shampoo--both of 'em!" yelled another. "You don't get in here!" cried Ricky. "I say----" His voice was drowned out in a crash, and a moment later there was the sound of a struggle. "Here they come," said Spike in a low voice. "Let's take off our coats," proposed Joe, in the same tone. "If we're going to fight I want to be ready." CHAPTER X A WILD NIGHT "Say, Ricky is sure putting up a great fight!" "Yes, and he's as wiry as they make 'em!" "He'll make 'em wish they'd let him alone--maybe." "And maybe not," returned Spike. He and Joe had passed these remarks after a grim silence, followed by a resumption of the crashing struggle in the hall near the front door. "There are too many of 'em for him," went on Joe's room-mate. "Wait until I take a peep," proposed the young pitcher. He advanced to the door, rolling up his sleeves as he went. "Don't!" snapped Spike. "They'll be here soon enough as it is, without us showing ourselves. I'd just as soon they'd pass us up this trip--it's an unpleasant mess." "That's right. Maybe we can stand 'em off." "No such luck. I think they're coming." The noise in the hall seemed redoubled. Ricky could be heard expostulating, and from that he changed to threats. "I'll make you wish you hadn't tried this on me!" he shouted. "I'll punch----" "Oh, dry up!" commanded someone. "Stuff some of that paste in his mouth!" ordered another voice. "A double shampoo for being too fresh!" "No, you don't! I won't stand----" "Then take it lying down. Here we go, boys!" "I--Oh----" and Ricky's voice trailed off into an indistinct murmur. "He's getting his," said Spike in a low tone. "And I guess here is where we get ours," said Joe, as the rush of feet sounded along the corridor, while someone called: "Come on, fellows. More work for us down here. There are some of the Freshies in their burrows. Rout 'em out! Smash 'em up!" The tramping of feet came to a pause outside the door of our two friends. "Open up!" came the command. "Come in!" invited Joe. They had not turned the key as they did not want the lock broken. Into the room burst a nondescript horde of students. They were wild and disheveled, some with torn coats and trousers, others with neckties and collars missing, or else hanging in shreds about their necks. "Ricky put up a game fight!" murmured Joe. "He sure did," agreed Spike. "Hello, Freshmen!" greeted the leader of the Sophomores. "Ready for yours?" "Sure," answered Spike with as cheerful a grin as he could muster. "Any time you say," added Joe. "The beggars were expecting us!" yelled a newcomer, crowding into the room. "Going to fight?" demanded someone. "Going to try," said Joe coolly. "Give 'em theirs!" was the yell. "What'll it be--paste or mush?" Joe saw that several of the Sophomores carried pails, one seemingly filled with froth, and the other with a white substance. Neither would be very pleasant when rubbed into the hair. "Maybe you'd better cut 'em both out," suggested Joe. "Not on your life! Got to take your medicine, kid!" declared a tall Sophomore. He made a grab for Joe, who stepped back. Someone swung at our hero, who, nothing daunted, dashed a fist into his antagonist's face, and the youth went down with a crash, taking a chair with him. "Oh, ho! Fighters!" cried a new voice. "Slug 'em, Sophs.!" Joe swung around, and could not restrain a gasp of astonishment, for, confronting him was Ford Weston, the 'varsity pitcher. On his part Weston seemed taken aback. "Jove!" he cried. "It's the little country rooster I saw pitch ball. So you came to Yale after all?" "I did," answered Joe calmly. It was the first he had met his rival face to face since that time on the campus when Weston had not known him. "Well, we're going to make you sorry right now," sneered Weston. "Up boys, and at 'em!" "Let me get another whack at him!" snarled the lad Joe had knocked down. There was a rush. Joe, blindly striking out, felt himself pulled, hauled and mauled. Once he went down under the weight of numbers, but he fought himself to a kneeling position and hit out with all his force. He was hit in turn. He had a glimpse of Spike hurling a tall Sophomore half way across the room, upon the sofa with a crash. Then with a howl the second-year men closed in on the two Freshmen again. Joe saw Weston coming for him, aiming a vicious blow at his head. Instinctively Joe ducked, and with an uppercut that was more forceful than he intended he caught the pitcher on the jaw. Weston went backward, and only for the fact that he collided with one of his mates would have fallen. He clapped his hand to his jaw, and as he glared at Joe he cried: "I'll settle with you for this!" "Any time," gasped Joe, and then his voice was stopped as someone's elbow caught him in the jaw. "Say, what's the matter with you fellows?" demanded a voice in the doorway. "Can't you do up two Freshmen? Come on, give 'em what's coming and let's get out of this. There's been too much of a row, and we've got lots to do yet to-night. Eat 'em up!" Thus urged by someone who seemed to be a leader, the Sophomores went at the attack with such fury that there was no withstanding them. The odds were too much for Joe and Spike, and they were borne down by the weight of numbers. Then, while some of their enemies held them, others smeared the paste over their heads, rubbing it well in. It was useless to struggle, and all the two Freshmen could do was to protect their eyes. "That's enough," came the command. "No, it isn't!" yelled a voice Joe recognized as that of Weston. "Where's that mush?" "No! No!" expostulated several. "They've had enough--the paste was enough." "I say no!" fairly screamed Weston. "Hand it here!" He snatched something from one of his mates, and the next instant Joe felt a stream of liquid mush drenching him. It ran into his eyes, smarting them grievously, and half blinding him. With a mad struggle he tore himself loose and struck out, but his fists only cleaved the empty air. "Come on!" was the order. There was a rush of feet, and presently the room cleared. "Next time don't be so--fresh!" came tauntingly from Weston, as he followed his mates. "Water--water!" begged Joe, for his eyes seemed on fire. "Hold on, old man--steady," came from Spike. "What is it?" "Something in my eyes. I can't see!" "The paste and mush I expect. Rotten trick. Wait a minute and I'll sponge you off. Oh, but we're sights!" Presently Joe felt the cooling liquid, and the pain went from him. He could open his eyes and look about. Their room was in disorder, but, considering the fierceness of the scrimmage, little damage had been done. But the lads themselves, when they glanced at each other, could not repress woeful expressions, followed by laughs of dismay, for truly they were in a direful plight. Smeared with paste that made their hair stand up like the quills of a fretful porcupine, their shirts streaked with it, they were indeed weird looking objects. Paste was on their faces, half covering their noses. It stuffed up their ears and their eyes stared out from a mask of it like burned holes in a blanket. "Oh, but you are a sight!" exclaimed Spike. "The same to you and more of it," retorted Joe. "Let's get this off." "Sure, before it hardens, or we'll never get it off," agreed Spike. Fortunately there was plenty of water in their room, and, stripping to their waists they scrubbed to such good advantage that they were soon presentable. The removal of their coats and vests had saved those garments. "They went for you fierce," commented Spike. "Who was that fellow who came in last?" "Weston--'varsity pitcher." "He had it in for you." "Seemed so, but I don't know why," and Joe related the little scene the day of the Silver Star-Resolute game. "Oh, well, don't mind him. I say, let's go out." "What for?" "It's going to be a wild night from the way it's begun. Let's see some of the fun. No use trying to study, I'm too excited." "I'm excited too. But if we go out they may pitch onto us again." "No, we can claim immunity. I want to see some of the other fellows get theirs. We'll get Ricky and the other bunch and have some fun." "All right; I'm with you." They dressed, and, having made their room somewhat presentable, they called for Ricky. He was busy trying to get rid of his shampoo, which had been unusually severe. He readily fell in with the notion of going out, and with Hank Heller and Slim Jones in the party the five set out. They swung out into Wall street, up College, and cut over Elm street to the New Haven Green, where they knew all sorts of tricks would be going on. For the Sophomores had started their hazing in earnest. It was indeed a wild night. The streets about the college buildings were thronged with students, and yells and class-rallying cries were heard on every side. "Let's go over to High street," proposed Joe, and they ran up Temple, to Chapel, and thence over to High, making their way through throngs. Several times they were halted by groups of Sophomores, with commands to do some absurdity, but an assertion that they had been shampooed, with the particulars, and the evidence yet remaining in spots, was enough to cause them to be passed. High street was filled with even a greater crowd as they reached it, a party of Freshman pouring out from the college campus endeavoring to escape from pursuing enemies. Through Library street to York they went, with shouts, yells and noises of rattles and other sound-producing instruments. "Let's follow and see what happens," proposed Ricky. "I want to see some other fellow get his as long as I had mine." Just then Joe saw several figures come quietly out from behind a building and start up York street, in an opposite direction from that taken by the throng. Under the glare of an electric light he recognized Weston and some of the crowd who had shampooed them. Some sudden whim caused Joe to say: "There's the fellows who shampooed us. Let's follow and maybe we can get back at 'em. There are only five--that's one apiece." "Right you are!" sang out Ricky. "I want to punch someone." "Come on then," signalled Spike. "I'm out for the night. It's going to be a wild one all right." And truly it seemed so. CHAPTER XI THE RED PAINT Pursuing those who had given them the shampoo, Joe and his chums found themselves trailing down a side street in the darkness. "I wonder what they're up to," ventured Spike. "Oh, some more monkey business," declared Ricky. "If they try it on any more Freshmen though, we'll take a hand ourselves; eh?" "Sure," assented the others. "There they go--around the corner--and on the run!" suddenly exclaimed Slim Jones. "Get a move on!" Our friends broke into a trot--that is, all but Joe. He tried to, but stepping on a stone it rolled over with him, and he felt a severe pain shoot through his ankle. "Sprained, by Jove!" he exclaimed. "I'm glad it isn't the baseball season, for I'm going to be laid up." He halted, and in those few seconds his companions, eager in the chase, drew ahead of him in the darkness, and disappeared around another corner. "I can't catch up to 'em," decided Joe. "Wonder if I can step on the foot?" He tried his weight on it, and to his delight found that it was not a bad sprain, rather a severe wrench that, while it lamed him, still allowed him to walk. "Guess I'll go back," he murmured. "If there's a row I can't hold up my end, and there's no use being a handicap. I'll go back and turn in. I can explain later." He turned about, walking slowly, the pain seeming to increase rather than diminish, and he realized that he was in for a bad time. "If I could see a hack I'd hail it," he thought, but the streets seemed deserted, no public vehicles being in sight. "I've got to tramp it out," Joe went on. "Well, I can take it slow." His progress brought him to Wall street, and he decided to continue along that to Temple, and thence to the modest side-thoroughfare on which the Red Shack was located. But he was not destined to reach it without further adventures. As he came around a corner he heard the murmur of low voices, and, being cautious by nature, he halted to take an observation. "If it's my own crowd--all right," he said. "But if it's a lot of Sophs., I don't want to run into 'em." He listened, and from among those whom he could not see he heard the murmur of voices. "That's the house over there," said someone. "Right! Now we'll see if he'll double on me just because I wasn't prepared. I'll make him walk Spanish!" "Got plenty of the magoozilum?" "Sure. We'll daub it on thick." "They can't be after Freshmen," mused Joe. "I wonder what's up?" He looked across the street in the direction where, evidently, the unseen ones were directing their attention. "A lot of the profs. live there," mused Joe. "I have it! Some one's going to play a trick on 'em to get even. I'll just pipe it off!" He had not long to wait. Out of the shadows stole two figures, and, even in the dimness he recognized one of them as Ford Weston. The other he did not know. "Come on!" hoarsely whispered the 'varsity pitcher to his chum. "I'll spread it on thick and then we'll cut for it. Separate streets. I'll see you in the morning, but keep mum, whatever happens." The two figures ran silently across the street, and paused in front of a detached house. One seemed to be actively engaged at the steps for a few minutes, and then both quickly ran off again, the two separating and diving down side streets. "Huh! Whatever it was didn't take them long," thought Joe. "I wonder what it was? Guess I'll----" But his half-formed resolution to make an investigation was not carried out. He heard shouting down the street, and thinking it might be a crowd of Sophomores, he decided to continue on to his room. "They might start a rough-house with me," mused Joe, "and then my ankle would be more on the blink than ever. I'll go home." He started off, rather excited over the events of the night, and found that even his brief spell of standing still had stiffened him so that he could hardly proceed. "Wow!" he exclaimed, as a particularly sharp twinge shot through him. He had gone about two blocks when he heard someone coming behind him. He turned in apprehension, but saw only a single figure. "Hello! What's the matter?" asked a young man as he caught up to Joe. "Twisted my ankle." "So? What's your name?" "Matson--I'm a Freshman." "Oh, yes. I think I saw you at Chapel. Kendall's my name." Joe recognized it as that of one of the Juniors and a member of the 'varsity nine. "How'd it happen?" "Oh, skylarking. The Sophs. were after us to-night." "So I heard. You'd better do something for that foot," he went on, as he noticed Joe's limp. "I'm going to as soon as I get to my room." "Say, I tell you what," went on Kendall. "My joint's just around the corner, and I've got a prime liniment to rub on. Suppose you come in and I'll give you some." "Glad to," agreed Joe. "I don't believe I've got a bit at my shack, and the drug stores are all closed." "Come along then--here, lean on me," and Kendall proffered his arm, for which Joe was grateful. "Here we are," announced Kendall a little later, as they turned into a building where some of the wealthier students had their rooms. "Sorry it's up a flight." "Oh, I can make it," said Joe, keeping back an exclamation of pain that was on his lips. "We'll just have a look at it," continued his new friend. "I've known a strain like that to last a long while if not treated properly. A little rubbing at the right time does a lot of good." Joe looked in delight at the room of his newly found friend. It was tastefully, and even richly, furnished, but with a quiet atmosphere differing from the usual college apartment. "You've got a nice place here," he remarked, thinking that, after all, there might be more to Yale life than he had supposed. "Oh, it'll do. Here's the stuff. Now off with your shoe and we'll have a look at that ankle. I'm a sort of doctor--look after the football lads sometimes. Are you trying for the eleven?" "No, baseball is my stunt." "Yes? So's mine." "You catch, don't you?" asked Joe. "I've heard of 'Shorty' Kendall." "That's me," came with a laugh. "Oh, that's not so bad," he went on as he looked at Joe's foot. "A little swelled. Here, I'll give it a rub," and in spite of Joe's half-hearted protests he proceeded to massage the ankle until it felt much better. "Try to step on it," directed Shorty Kendall. Joe did so, and found that he could bear his weight on it with less pain. "I guess you'll do," announced the Junior. "Cut along to your room now--or say--hold on, I can fix you up here for the night. I've got a couch----" "No, thank you," expostulated Joe. "The boys would worry if I didn't come back." "You could send word----" "No, I'll trot along. Much obliged." "Take that liniment with you," directed Kendall. "Won't you need it?" "Not until the diamond season opens, and that's some time off yet. Good night--can you make the stairs?" "Yes--don't bother to come down," and Joe limped out. As he reached the first hall he was made aware that someone was coming in the front door. Before he could reach it the portal opened and a student hurried in, making for a room near the main entrance. In the glare of the hall light Joe saw that the youth was Ford Weston. He also saw something else. On Weston's hand was a red smear--brilliant--scarlet. At first Joe thought it was blood, but a slight odor in the air told him it was paint. An instant later his eyes met those of the rival pitcher--at least Joe hoped to make him a rival--and Weston started. Then he thrust his smeared hand into his pocket, and, without a word, hurried into his room and slammed the door. CHAPTER XII JOE'S SILENCE "Rather queer," mused Joe, after a moment's silence. "I wonder he didn't say something to me after what happened. So he rooms here? It's a great shack. I suppose if I stay here the full course I'll be in one of these joints. But I don't believe I'm going to stay. If I get a chance on the 'varsity nine next year and make good--then a professional league for mine." He limped out of the dormitory, and the pain in his ankle made him keenly aware of the fact that if he did not attend to it he might be lame for some time. "Red paint," he murmured as he let himself out. "I wonder what Weston was doing with it? Could he---- Oh, I guess it's best not to think too much in cases like this." He reached his rooming place and trod along the hall, his injured foot making an uneven staccato tattoo on the floor. "Well, what happened to you?" "Where did you hike to?" "Were you down to Glory's all by your lonesome?" "What'd you give us the slip for?" "Come on; give an account of yourself." These were only a few of the greetings that welcomed him as he entered his apartment to find there, snugly ensconced on the beds, chair, sofa and table, his own room-mate and the other friends who had gone out that wild night. "What's the matter?" demanded Spike, in some alarm, as he saw his friend limping. "Oh, nothing much. Twisted ankle. I'll be all right in the morning. How did you fellows make out?" "Nothing doing," said Ricky. "The boobs that shampooed us split after we got on their trail, and we lost 'em. Did you see anything of 'em?" "Not much," said Joe, truthfully enough. "Then where did you go?" He explained how he had twisted on his ankle, and turned back, and how, in coming home, he had met Kendall. He said nothing of watching Weston and another chap do something to the stoop of the unknown professor's house. "Mighty white of Kendall," was Spike's opinion, and it was voiced by all. "Oh, what a night!" exclaimed Slim Jones. "Home was never like this!" "Well, you fellows can sit up the rest of the night if you want to," said Joe, after a pause; "but I'm going to put my foot to bed." "I guess that's the best place for all of us," agreed Ricky. "Come on, fellows; I have got some hard practice to-morrow. I may be called to the 'varsity." "Like pie!" jeered Slim Jones. "Oh, ho! Don't you worry," taunted Ricky. "I'll make it." There was a sensation the next morning. It seemed that a well-known and very literary professor, returning from a lecture from out of town, before a very learned society, had slipped and fallen on his own front porch, going down in some greasy red paint that had been smeared over the steps. The professor had sprained a wrist, and his clothing had been soiled, but this was not the worst of it. He had taken with him, on his lecture, some exceedingly rare and valuable Babylonian manuscripts to enhance his talk, and, in his fall these parchments had scattered from his portfolio, and several of them had been projected into the red paint, being ruined thereby. And, as the manuscripts had been taken from the Yale library, the loss was all the more keen. "I say, Joe, did you hear the news?" gasped Ricky, as he rushed into his friend's room, just before the chapel call. "No. Is there a row over the shampooing?" "Shampooing nothing! It's red paint, and some of those musty manuscripts that a prof. had," and he poured out the tale. "Red paint?" murmured Joe. "Yes. There's a fierce row over it, and the Dean has taken it up. If the fellows are found out they'll be expelled sure. Oh, but it was a night! But the red paint was the limit." Joe did not answer, but in a flash there came to him the scene where Weston had entered his room, thrusting his hand into his pocket--a hand smeared with red. "Fierce row," went on Ricky, who was a natural reporter, always hearing sensations almost as soon as they happened. "The prof. went sprawling on his steps, not knowing the goo was there and the papers---- Oh me! Oh my! I wonder who did it?" "Hard to tell I guess," answered Joe, "with the bunch that was out last night." "That's so. I'm glad it wasn't any of our fellows. We all stuck together--that is all but you----" and, as if struck by a sudden thought, he gazed anxiously at Joe. "Oh, I can prove an _alibi_ all right," laughed the pitcher. "Don't worry." "Glad of it. Well, let's hike. There goes the bell." There was indeed a "fierce row," over the spoiling of the rare manuscripts, and the Dean himself appealed to the honor of the students to tell, if they knew, who the guilty one was. But Joe Matson kept silent. There was an investigation, of course, but it was futile, for nothing of moment was disclosed. It was several days later when Joe, strolling across the college campus after a lecture, came face to face with Weston. For a moment they stood staring at one another. The hot blood welled up into the cheeks of the 'varsity pitcher, and he seemed to be trying to hide his hand--the hand that had held the red smear. Then, without a word, he passed on. And Joe Matson still maintained his silence. The Fall passed. The Yale eleven swept on to a glorious championship. The Christmas vacation came and went and Joe spent happy days at home. He was beginning to be more and more a Yale man and yet--there was something constrained in him. His parents noticed it. "I--I don't think Joe is very happy," ventured Clara, after he had gone back to college. "Happy--why not?" challenged her mother. "Oh, I don't know. He hasn't said much about baseball." "Baseball!" chuckled Mr. Matson, as he looked out of the window at the wintry New England landscape. "This is sleigh-riding weather--not baseball." "Oh, I do wish Joe would give up his foolish idea," sighed Mrs. Matson. "He can never make anything of himself at baseball. A minister now, preaching to a large congregation----" "I guess, mother, if you'd ever been to a big ball game, and seen thousands of fans leaning over their seats while the pitcher got ready to deliver a ball at a critical point in the contest, you'd think he had some congregation himself," said Mr. Matson, with another chuckle. "Oh, well, what's the use talking to you?" demanded his wife; and there the subject was dropped. Joe went back to Yale. He was doing fairly well in his lessons, but not at all brilliantly. Study came hard to him. He was longing for the Spring days and the green grass of the diamond. Gradually the talk turned from debating clubs, from glees and concerts, to baseball. The weather raged and stormed, but there began to be the hint of mildness in the wintry winds. In various rooms lads began rummaging through trunks and valises, getting out old gloves that needed mending. The cage in the gymnasium was wheeled out and some repairs made to it. "By Jove!" cried Joe one day, "I--I begin to feel as if I had the spring fever." "Baseball fever you mean," corrected Spike. "It's the same thing, old man." Jimmie Lee, a little Freshman who roomed not far from Joe's shack, came bursting in a little later. "Hurray!" he yelled, slapping our hero on the back. "Heard the news?" "What news?" asked Spike. "Have you been tapped for Skull and Bones, or Wolf's Head?" "Neither, you old iconoclast. But the notice is up." "What notice?" "Baseball candidates are to report in the gym. to-morrow afternoon. Hurray!" and he dealt Spike a resounding blow. Joe Matson's eyes sparkled. CHAPTER XIII EARLY PRACTICE "What are you going to try for?" "Have you played much before you came here?" "Oh, rats! I don't believe I'll have any show with all this bunch!" "Hey, quit shoving; will you?" "Oh, Rinky-Dink! Over here!" "Hi, Weston, we're looking for you." "There goes Shorty Kendall. He'll sure catch this year." "Hello, Mac! Think you'll beat Weston to it this year?" "I might," was the cool reply. The above were only a few of the many challenges, shouts, calls and greetings that were bandied from side to side as the students, who had been waiting long for this opportunity, crowded into the gymnasium. It was the preliminary sifting and weeding out of the mass of material offered on the altar of baseball. At best but a small proportion of the candidates could hope to make the 'varsity, or even a class team, but this did not lessen the throng that crowded about the captain, manager and coaches, eagerly waiting for favorable comment. "Well, we're here!" exulted Jimmie Lee, who had, the night before, brought to Joe the good news that the ball season had at least started to open. "Yes, we're here," agreed Joe. "And what will happen to us?" asked Spike Poole. "It doesn't look to me as if much would." "Oh, don't fool yourself," declared Jimmie, who, being very lively, had learned many of the ropes, and who, by reason of ferreting about, had secured much information. "The coaches aren't going to let anything good get by 'em. Did you see Benson looking at me! Ahem! And I think I have Whitfield's eye! Nothing like having nerve, is there? Joe, hold up your hand and wriggle it--they're trying to see where you're located," and, with a laugh at his conceit, Jimmie shoved into the crowd trying to get nearer the centre of interest--to wit, where the old players who served as coaches were conferring with the captain. The latter was Tom Hatfield, a Junior whose remarkable playing at short had won him much fame. Mr. William Benson and Mr. James Whitfield were two of the coaches. George Farley was the manager, and a short stocky man, with a genial Irish face, who answered to the name of Dick McLeary, was the well-liked trainer. "Well, if I can make the outfield I suppose I ought to be satisfied," spoke Jimmie Lee. "But I did want to get on a bag, or somewhere inside the diamond." "I'll take to the daisies and be thankful," remarked Spike; "though I would like to be behind the bat." "Carrying bats would do me for a starter," spoke a tall lad near Joe. "But I suppose I'll be lucky if they let me play on the Freshman team. Anyhow as long as I don't get left out of it altogether I don't mind. What are you going to try for?" he asked of our hero. "I would like to pitch. I twirled at Excelsior Hall, and I think I can play on the mound better than anywhere else, though that's not saying I'm such a muchness as a pitcher," added Joe, modestly. "I did hope to get on the 'varsity, but----" "Pitch!" exclaimed the other frankly. "Say, you've got as much chance to pitch on the 'varsity as I have of taking the Dean's place to-morrow. Pitch on the 'varsity! Say, I'm not saying anything against you, Matson, for maybe you can pitch, but Weston has the place cinched, and if he falls down there's Harry McAnish, a southpaw. He stands about second choice." "Oh, I've been disillusioned," said Joe frankly. "I know I can't get on the 'varsity this year. But don't they have more than one pitcher in reserve?" "Oh, yes, sure. But Bert Avondale comes next, and I have heard that he's even better than Weston, but Weston is steadier--in most games. I don't want to discourage you, but you'd better try for some other place than pitcher." "No, I'm going to try for there," said Joe in a low voice. "I may not make it, but if I get a chance to show what I can do, and then fall down, I won't kick. I mean next year, of course," he added. "Oh, you may get a chance all right. Every fellow does at Yale. But you're up against some of the best college baseball material that ever came over the pike. Sometimes I think I've got nerve even to dream of a class team. But listen--they're going to start the fun now." The manager was speaking, announcing more or less formally, that which everyone knew already--that they had reported to allow a sort of preliminary looking over of the candidates. There were several of the former ball team who would play, it was said, but there was always need and a chance, for new material. All save Freshmen would be given an opportunity, the manager said, and then he emphasized the need of hard work and training for those who were given the responsibility of carrying the blue of Yale to victory on the diamond. "And, no less does this responsibility rest on the scrub, or second team," went on Farley. "For on the efficiency of the scrub depends the efficiency of the 'varsity, since good opposition is needed in bringing out the best points of the first team." Farley, who was one of the old players, acting as a coach, went on to add: "I have used the word 'scrub' and 'second team,' though, as you well know, there is nothing like that here at Yale, that is as compared to football. When I say 'scrub' I mean one of the class teams, the Freshman, Sophomore or Junior, for, in a measure, while separate and distinct teams themselves, they will serve us the same purpose as a scrub or substitute team would in football. They will give us something to practice with--some opposition--for you've got to have two nines to make a ball game," and he smiled at the anxious ones looking at him. "So," he went on, "when I use the word 'scrub' after this, or when any of the other coaches do, I want you to understand that it will mean one of the class teams which, for the purpose of strengthening the 'varsity, and enabling it to practice, acts as opposition. "Sometimes the 'varsity will play one team, and sometimes another, for the class teams will have their own contests to look after, to win, we hope; to lose, we hope not. I wish I could give you Freshmen encouragement that you could make the 'varsity, but, under the rules, none of you can. Now we'll get down to business." He gave encouragement to many, and consoled those who might fail, or, at best, make only a class team. Then he introduced the captain--Tom Hatfield--who was received with a rousing cheer. "Well, fellows," said Hatfield, "I haven't much to say. This is my first experience at the head of a big college nine, though you know I've played with you in many games." "That's right--and played well, too!" yelled someone. "Three cheers for Hatfield!" They were given with a will, and the captain resumed. "Of course we're going to win this year, even if we didn't last." This was received in silence, for the losing of the championship to Princeton the previous season had been a sore blow to Yale. "We're going to win," went on Hatfield in a quiet voice; "but, just because we are, don't let that fool you into getting careless. We've all got to work hard--to train hard--and we've got to practice. I expect every man to report regularly whether he thinks he has a chance to make the 'varsity or not. It's part of the game, and we've all got to play it--scrub and 'varsity alike. "I guess that's all I've got to say, though I may have more later, after we get started. The coaches will take charge now and you'll have to do as they say. We won't do much to-day, just some catching and a bit of running to see how each fellow's wind is." He nodded to the coaches and trainer, and as he stepped back once more came the cry: "Three cheers for Hatfield. Good old Yale cheers!" The gymnasium rang with them, and then came the Boola song, after which the crowd formed in close line and did the serpentine dance. "Now then, get busy!" commanded Mr. Benson. "Old players over that side, and the new ones here. Give in your names, and say where you've played. Lively now!" He and Mr. Whitfield began circulating among the candidates, and, as they approached him, Joe felt his heart beginning to beat faster. Would he have a chance? And, if he got it, could he make good? These were the questions he asked him. "Name?" "Matson--Joe." "Hum. Yes. Ever played before?" "Yes, on a school nine." "Where?" "Excelsior Hall." "Hum! Yes. Never heard of it. Where did you play?" "I pitched." "Pitched. Hum! Yes. I never saw so many pitchers as we have this season. Well, I'll put you down for your Freshman class team, though I can't give you much encouragement," and Mr. Benson turned to the next lad. "Go over there and do some throwing, I'll watch you later," he concluded, and Joe's heart began to sink as he saw Spike motioning to him to come to one side and indulge in some practice balls. "How'd you make out?" asked his room-mate. "Oh, I'm engaged right off the bat," laughed Joe, but he could not conceal the anxiety in the voice that he strove to make indifferent. "So? Then you had better luck than I. Whitfield told me he didn't think I had the right build for a catcher." "Well, maybe we can both make our scrub class team," spoke Joe. "Say, it hasn't half begun yet," declared Jimmie Lee, who had a hankering to play first base. "Wait until the main coach gets here, and we'll have a shake-up that'll set some people on their ears." "What do you mean?" asked Joe wonderingly. "I mean that the main gazaboo isn't here yet: Mr. Forsythe Hasbrook--old Horsehide they call him. He's the main coach. These are only his assistants." "Is that so?" inquired Spike. "It sure is. He's the real thing in baseball--Horsehide is. An old Yale man, but up-to-date. Played ever since he was a baby, and knows the game from A to Z. He never gets here until the preliminary practice has begun on the field, and then it doesn't take him long to size a fellow up. Of course I only know what I've been told," he added, "but that goes all right." "Well, if we didn't get picked for the team now, I don't believe we'll have any chance after the main coach gets here," said Joe. "Guess not," assented Spike. "Here we go." And they started to practice. CHAPTER XIV THE SURPRISE "Oh, get a little more speed on! Don't run so much like an ice wagon. Remember that the object is to get to the base before the ball does!" "Lively now! Throw that in as if you meant it! We're not playing bean bag, remember!" "Oh, swing to it! Swing to it! Make your body do some of the work as well as your arms!" "Don't be afraid of the ball! It's hard, of course, that's the way it's made. But if you're going to flinch every time it comes your way you might as well play ping-pong!" "Stand up to the plate! What if you do get hit?" Thus the coaches were trying to instill into the new candidates for the 'varsity nine some rudiments of how they thought the game should be played. Sharp and bitter the words were sometimes, bitten off with a snap and exploded with cutting sarcasm, but it was their notion of how to get the best out of a man, and perhaps it was. "Remember we want to win games," declared Mr. Benson. "We're not on the diamond to give a ladies' exhibition. You've got to play, and play hard if you want to represent Yale." "That's right," chimed in Mr. Whitfield. "We've got to have the college championship this year. We've _GOT_ to have it. Now try that over," he commanded of Ford Weston, who had struck one man out in practice. "Do it again. That's the kind of playing we want." Joe, who had been catching with Spike, looked enviously at his rival, who was on the coveted mound, taking in succession many batters as they came up. Shorty Kendall was catching for the 'varsity pitcher, and the balls came into his big mitt with a resounding whack that told of speed. "I wonder if I'll ever get there," mused Joe, and, somehow he regretted, for the first time since coming to Yale, that he had consented to the college arrangement. It seemed so impossible for him to make way against the handicap of other players ahead of him. "If I'd finished at Excelsior," he told himself, "I think I'd have gotten into some minor league where good playing tells, and not class. Hang it all!" The practice went on. It was the first of the outdoor playing, and while the gymnasium work had seemed to develop some new and unexpectedly good material, the real test of the diamond sent some of the more hopeful candidates back on the waiting list. As yet Joe had been given scant notice. He had been told to bat, pitch, catch and run, but that was all. He had done it, but it had all seemed useless. The day was a perfect Spring one, and the diamond was in excellent condition. It had been rather wet, but the wind had dried it, and, though there were still evidences of frost in the ground, they would soon disappear under the influence of the warm sun. In various sorts of uniforms, scattered over the big field, the candidates went at their practice with devotion and zeal. Winning a baseball game may not be much in the eyes of the world, getting the college championship may seem a small matter to the man of affairs--to the student or the politician, intent on bigger matters. But to the college lads themselves it meant much--it was a large part of their life. And, after all, isn't life just one big game; and if we play it fairly and squarely and win--isn't that all there is to it? And, in a measure, doesn't playing at an athletic game fit one to play in life? It isn't always the winning that counts, but the spirit of fair play, the love for the square deal, the respect for a worthy foe, and the determination not to give up until you are fairly beaten--all these things count for much. So, after all, one can not blame the college lads for the intense interest they take in their games. It is the best kind of training for life, for it is clean and healthful. For a week or more this preliminary practice was kept up. The weather remained fine, and every afternoon the diamond was the scene of much excitement. The candidates reported faithfully, and worked hard. There were many shifts from some of the Sophomore or Junior nines to the 'varsity, and back again. Some who had been called to the "scrub," as I shall call the class nines when they practiced against the 'varsity, were sent back to the waiting list--at best to bunt balls to their fellows, to pitch or catch as suited the positions they hoped to fill. Nor was it all easy work, it was really hard toil. It is one thing to play ball without much care as to the outcome, to toss the horsehide back and forth, and, if it is missed, only to laugh. It is one thing to try to bat, to watch the ball coming toward you, wondering what sort of a curve will break, and whether you will hit it or miss it--or whether it will hit you--it is one thing to do that in a friendly little game, and laugh if you strike out. But when making a nine depends on whether your stick connects with the sphere--when getting the college letter for your sweater can be made, or unmade, by this same catching of the ball, then there is a different story back of it. There is a nervous tension that tires one almost as much as severe physical labor. And there is hard physical work, too. Of course it is a welcome change from the class-room work, or the lectures, to get out on the diamond, but it is work, none the less. Then there are the coaches to put up with. I never was a coach, though I have played under them, and I suppose there is some virtue in the method they use--that of driving the men. And when a lad has done his best, has stood up to the ball, and clouted at it for all he is worth, only to fan the yielding air, it is rather discouraging to hear the coach remark sarcastically: "You're not playing ping-pong, you know, Jones." Or to hear him say with vinegary sweetness: "Did you hurt yourself that time, Smith? It was a beautiful wind blow, but--er--pardon me if I mention, just for your benefit you know, that the object in this game is to _hit the ball_. You hit it, and then you run--run, understand, not walk. And another thing, don't be so afraid of it. "Of course this isn't a rubber ball, of the sort you probably used to play baby in the hole with--it's hard, and when it hits you it's going to hurt. But--don't let it hit you, and for cats' sake stand up to the plate!" It's a way coaches have, I suppose, and always will. Joe felt so, at any rate, and he had rather one would fairly howl at him, in all sorts of strenuous language, than use that sarcastic tone. And I think I agree with him. There is something you get at when a coach yells at you: "Come on there you snail! Are you going to hold that base all day? Someone else wants to get past you know. "Come on in! We need that run! Move as if you meant it! Don't fall asleep! Oh, for cats' sake, fanning the air again? Run now! That's it. Slide! Don't be afraid of soiling your clothes, we'll buy you another suit!" I hold this is preferable to the soft and sarcastic method, but they used both varieties at Yale, and Joe sometimes got so discouraged at times that he felt like resigning. It was harder than he had dreamed of, and he had not pictured a rosy time for himself. "I don't believe I'm ever going to make even the class scrub, Spike," said Joe to his room-mate one day, following some long practice, when he had not even been called on to bat. "Oh, yes you will," declared his friend. "You can pitch--you know it, and I know it. I haven't caught off you these two weeks for nothing. You can pitch, and they'll find it out sooner or later. Don't give up!" "I'm not going to. And say, come to think of it, you're no better off than I am. They haven't noticed you either, and yet I've never seen anyone who held the balls any better than you do. And, as for throwing to second--say, you've got Kendall beaten." "I'm glad you think so," murmured Spike. "I know it!" insisted Joe. "I've played in a few games. But what's the use of kicking? Maybe our chance will come." "I hope so," replied Spike. The practice went on, the elimination and weeding out process being carried on with firm hands, regardless of the heart-breaks caused. "First game to-morrow," announced Jimmie Lee, bursting into Joe's room one evening. "It's just been decided." "Who do we play?" asked Spike. Joe felt his heart sink down lower than ever, for he realized that if he had a chance he would have heard of it by this time. "Oh, it isn't a regular game," went on Jimmie, who was jubilant from having heard that he would at least start at first base for the class team. "The scrub, as they call it, and 'varsity will play the first regular contest. Horsehide is to be there for the first time. Then there'll be something doing. I only hope he sees me." "The first regular practice game to-morrow," mused Joe. "Well, it will be a good one--to watch." "Yes--to watch," joined in Spike, grimly. "But the season is early yet, Joe." As they were talking the door opened and Ricky Hanover came in. He was grinning broadly. "Let's go out and have some sport," he proposed. "It's as dull as ditch water around here. Come on out and raise a riot. I'll take you fellows down to Glory's, and you can have a rabbit." "Get out!" cried Spike. "We're in training, you heathen, and you're not." "A precious lot of good it will do you," commented the newcomer. "Why don't you chuck it all? You'll never make the team--I mean you and Joe, Spike. Jimmie here has had luck. Chuck it and come on out." "No," spoke Joe slowly. "I'm going to stick." "So am I," added his room-mate. "You never can tell when your chance will come. Besides, we owe it to Yale to stick." "All right--I suppose you're right," agreed Ricky, with a sigh. "I did the same thing at football. But I sure do want to start something." "Begin on that," laughed Joe passing him over the alarm clock. "It's run down. Wind it and start it going!" Ricky joined in the laugh against him, and soon took his departure. Joe heard him come in at an early morning hour, and wondered what "sport" Ricky had been up to. A large gathering turned out to see the first real baseball contest of the season. By it a line could be had on the sort of game the 'varsity would put up, and all the students were eager to see what sort of championship material they had. There was a conference between coaches and captains, and the 'varsity list was announced Weston was to pitch, and Kendall to catch. Neither Joe's name, nor those of any of his intimate chums were called off for a class team. Joe did have some hope of the scrub, but when the name of the last man there had been called off, Joe's was not mentioned. He moved off to the side, with bitterness in his heart. The game started off rather tamely, though the class pitcher--Bert Avondale--managed to strike out two of the 'varsity men, to the disgust of the coaches, who raced about, imploring their charges to hit the ball. At the same time they called on the scrub to do their best to prevent the 'varsity men from getting to the bases. It was playing one against the other, just as diamond dust is used to cut the precious stones of which it once formed a part. "Well, I haven't seen anything wonderful," remarked Joe to Spike, after the first inning. "No, they're a little slow warming up. But wait. Oh, I say, here he comes!" "Who?" "The head coach--Horsehide himself. I heard he was to be here to-day. It's his first appearance. Now they'll walk Spanish." Across the back-field a man was approaching--a man who was eagerly surrounded by many of the candidates, and he was cheered to the echo, while murmurs of his name reached Joe. "Let's go up and have a look at him," proposed Spike. "Go ahead," agreed Joe, for the game had momentarily stopped at the advent of the head coach. He was shaking hands all around, and, as Joe approached, Mr. Forsythe Hasbrook turned to greet someone behind him. Joe had a good look at his face, and to his great surprise he recognized it as that of the man whom he had driven to the depot in such a rush to catch a train. "And he's Yale's head coach!" murmured Joe. "I--I wonder if he'll remember me?" CHAPTER XV HIS FIRST CHANCE Joe Matson's hope of a quick recognition from the man he had helped that day, and who had turned out to be Yale's head coach, was doomed to disappointment, for Mr. Hasbrook--or, to give him the title lovingly bestowed on him by the players, "Horsehide"--had something else to do just then besides recognizing casual acquaintances. He wanted to watch the playing. After a brief conference between himself and the other two coaches, in which the 'varsity captain had a part, Horsehide motioned for the playing to be resumed. He said little at first, and then when Weston, who was pitching, made a partial motion to throw the ball to first base, to catch a man there, but did not complete his evident intention, Mr. Hasbrook called out: "Hold on there! Wait a minute, Weston. That was as near a balk as I've ever seen, and if this was a professional game you might lose it for us, just as one of the world series was, by a pitcher who did the same thing." "What do you mean?" asked Weston, slightly surprised. "I mean that pretending to throw a ball to first, and not completing the action, is a balk, and your opponents could claim it if they had been sharp enough. Where were your eyes?" he asked, of the scrub captain. "I--er--I didn't think----" "That's what your brains are for," snapped the head coach. "You can't play ball without brains, any more than you can without bases or a bat. Watch every move. It's the best general who wins battles--baseball or war. Now go on, and don't do that again, Weston, and, if he does, you call a balk on him and advance each man a base," ordered Horsehide. The 'varsity pitcher and the scrub captain looked crestfallen, but it was a lesson they needed to learn. "He's sharp, isn't he?" said Joe. "That's what makes him the coach he is," spoke Spike. "What's the use of soft-soap? That never made a ball nine." "No, I suppose not." Joe was wondering whether he ought to mention to his chum the chance meeting with Mr. Hasbrook, but he concluded that a wrong impression might get out and so he kept quiet, as he had done in the matter of the red paint on the porch. Nothing more had been heard about that act of vandalism, though the professor who had fallen and spoiled the valuable manuscripts was reported to be doing some quiet investigating. "I believe Weston had a hand in it," thought Joe, "but I'm not going to say anything. He had red paint on him, anyhow. I wonder what he has against me, and if he can do anything to keep me from getting a chance? If I thought so I'd--no, I can't do anything. I've just got to take it as it comes. If I do get a chance, though, I think I can make good." The practice game went on, developing weak spots in both nines, and several shifts were made. But the 'varsity pitcher remained the same, and Joe watched Weston narrowly, trying to find out his good points. For Weston had them. He was not a brilliant twirler, but he was a steady one, in the main, and he had considerable speed, but not much of a curve. Still he did manage to strike out a number of his opponents. The game was almost over, and the 'varsity had it safely in hand. They had not obtained it without hard work, however, and they had made many glaring errors, but in this they were not alone. "Though, for that matter," declared Joe, "I think the scrub pitcher did better, and had better support, than the 'varsity. I don't see why the scrubs didn't win." "It's just because they know they're playing against the 'varsity," declared Spike. "There's a sort of nervousness that makes 'em forget to do the things they could do if it was some other nine. Sort of over-awed I guess." "Maybe," assented Joe. "Well, here's the end," and the game came to a close. "Now for the post-mortem," remarked his room-mate. "The coaches and captain will get together and talk it over." "Then we might as well vamoose," said Joe. "They won't need us." "I guess not. Come on." The boys strolled from the diamond. As they passed a group of the 'varsity players surrounding the coaches, Joe saw Mr. Hasbrook step forward. He had a bat and seemed to be illustrating some of the weak points of the plays just made, or to be about to demonstrate how properly to swing at a ball. As Joe came opposite him the head coach stepped out a little and saw our hero. For a moment he stared unrecognizingly at him, and then a smile came over his rugged face. His eyes lighted up, and, stepping forward, he held out his hand. "Why, how do you do!" he exclaimed. "I know you--I'm sure I've seen you somewhere before, and under queer circumstances, too, but I can't just recall--hold on, wait a moment!" he exclaimed, as he saw Joe about to speak. "I like to make my brain work. "Ah! I have it! You're the young fellow who drove me to the station, in time to catch the New York train, the day my carriage wheel broke. Well, but I'm glad to see you again! That was a great service you did me, and I haven't forgotten it. Are you attending here?" "Yes," said Joe, glad that he had not been forgotten. "Good! Are you playing ball?" "Well--er--I--that is I haven't----" "Oh, I see. You're trying for your team. Good! I'm glad to hear it. It's a great game--the greatest there is. And so you are at Yale--Matson--you see I haven't forgotten your name. I never expected to meet you here. Do you know the other coaches?" "I've met them," murmured Joe, and he half smiled in a grim fashion, for that was about as far as his acquaintanceship had progressed. He had met them but they did not know him apart from many others. "Good!" exclaimed Mr. Hasbrook. "Well, I'll see you again. And so you're at Yale? Look me up when you get time," and he turned back to his instruction, murmuring to the other coaches: "He did me quite a service some time ago. I'm glad to see him again. Seems like a nice lad." The others murmured an assent, and then gave their whole attention to the man who had, more than anyone else, perhaps, mastered the science of baseball as it ought to be played. "Well, say, you've got a friend at court all right!" exclaimed Spike, as he and Joe strolled along. "If I had your chance I'd----" "Chance!" exclaimed Joe. "What better chance have I than I had before?" "Why, you know Horsehide! Why didn't you say so?" "I didn't know I did until a little while ago. I had no idea that the man I picked up and took to the station would turn out to be the Yale coach. But if you think he's going to put me in ahead of the others just on that account you're mistaken." "Oh, I don't say that." "It wouldn't be square," went on Joe. "Of course not. But as long as he does know you he might at least prevail on the other coaches to give you a better chance than you've had so far." "Well, maybe," laughed Joe. "But I'm not expecting anything like that." "Well, just remember me when your chance does come," begged Spike. "And remember that I told you." "I will," declared Joe, with a laugh, and then he added more earnestly: "If ever I do get on the mound, Spike, I'll try to have you catch for me." "I wish you would!" As they went off the field they saw the knot of players still gathered about the head, and other coaches, receiving instructions, and how Joe Matson wished he was there none but himself knew. In their rooms that afternoon and evening the ball players talked of little save the result of the first real clash between 'varsity and scrub, and the effect of the return of the head coach. It was agreed that the 'varsity, after all, had made a very creditable showing, while the upholders of the class team players gave them much praise. "But things will begin to hum now!" exclaimed Jimmie Lee, as he sat in Joe's room, while the beds, sofa and table, to say nothing of the floor, were encumbered with many lads of the Red Shack, and some visitors from other places. "Yes, sir! Horsehide won't stand for any nonsense. They'll all have to toe the line now." "Jove, weren't the other coaches stiff enough?" asked Clerkinwell De Vere, who aspired to right field. "They certainly laced into me for further orders when I muffed a ball." "And so they should," declared Spike. "That's what they're for." "Oh, but wait until you do that when Horsehide sees you," went on Jimmie. "That won't be a marker, will it, Shorty?" "I should say not. He'll make your hair curl all right. He's a terror." "Friend of Joe's here," put in Spike. "No! is he?" demanded Ricky Hanover, who had drifted in. "How's that?" "Oh, I just met him by accident," declared our hero. "It isn't worth mentioning." He told the incident after some urging. "I wish I stood in your shoes," said De Vere. "I'd be sure of my place then." "Nothing of the sort!" exclaimed Jimmie Lee. "If Horsehide played favorites that way, he wouldn't be the coach he is. That's one thing about him--he makes his friends work harder than anyone else. I know he did it other seasons--everyone says so." "Oh, he's square," chimed in another. "There's not a better coach living, and none you can depend on more. All he wants is to see good, clean playing, and Yale to win." Joe could not help thinking of the coincidence of meeting the head coach but, though he did have slight hopes that it might lead to something, he resolutely put them out of his mind. "I don't want to get on even the 'varsity that way!" he said to himself that night, when the visitors were gone, and he and Spike had turned in. "I want to win my way." Nevertheless, he could not help a feeling of slight nervousness the next day, when he reported for practice. "Well, same old gag over again I suppose," remarked Spike, as they went out to toss and catch. "I suppose so," agreed Joe. He passed Mr. Hasbrook, who was giving some instructions to the fielders just before the 'varsity-class game, but the head coach did not even notice Joe. After some batting and catching, and some warming-up work on the part of the pitchers, Mr. Benson called for a cessation of practice. "Here is the batting order and positions of the nines for to-day," he announced, producing a paper. He began to read off the names. For the 'varsity they were the same as the day before. Joe, who had permitted himself a faint hope, felt his heart sinking. "For the opposition, or scrub," announced the assistant coach, and he ran down the line, until there was but one place unfilled--that of pitcher. "Joe Matson!" he called, sharply. CHAPTER XVI JOE MAKES GOOD For a moment our hero could scarcely believe his good fortune. He had been called to pitch for the scrub! Once more as he stood there, scarcely comprehending, Mr. Benson called out sharply: "Didn't you hear, Matson? You're to pitch against the 'varsity, and I want you to beat 'em!" "Yes--yes, sir," answered Joe, in a sort of daze. "And, 'varsity, if you don't pound him all over the field you're no good! Eat 'em up!" snapped the assistant coach. "Don't let 'em win, scrub," insisted Mr. Whitfield, and thus it went on--playing one against the other to get the 'varsity to do its best. "Play ball!" called the umpire. "Get to work. Come in, you fellows," and he motioned to those who were out on the field warming up. "Congratulations, old man!" murmured Spike, as he shook Joe's hand. "You deserve it." "And so do you. I wish you were going to catch." "I wish so, too, but maybe my chance will come later. Fool 'em now." "I'll try." Joe had a vision of Bert Avondale, the regular scrub pitcher, moving to the bench, and for an instant his heart smote him, as he noted Bert's despondent attitude. "It's tough to be displaced," murmured Joe. "It's a queer world where your success has to be made on someone else's failure, and yet--well, it's all in the game. I may not make good, but I'm going to try awfully hard!" He wondered how his advancement had come about, and naturally he reasoned that his preferment had resulted from the words spoken in private by Mr. Hasbrook. "I wonder if I'd better thank him?" mused Joe. "It would be the right thing to do, and yet it would look as if he gave me the place by favor instead of because I've got a right to have it, for the reason that I can pitch. And yet he doesn't know that I can pitch worth a cent, unless some of the other coaches have told him. But they haven't watched me enough to know. However, I think I'll say nothing until I have made good." Had Joe only known it, he had been more closely watched since his advent on the diamond than he had suspected. It is not the coach who appears to be taking notes of a man's style of play who seems to find out most. Mr. Hasbrook, once he found that the lad who had rendered him such a service was at Yale, and had aspirations to the nine, made inquiries of the coaches who had done the preliminary work. "Oh, Matson. Hum, yes. He does fairly well," admitted Mr. Benson. "He has a nice, clean delivery. He isn't much on batting, though." "Few pitchers are," remarked the head coach. "I wonder if it would do to give him a trial?" "I should say so--yes," put in Mr. Whitfield. He was quick to see that his co-worker had a little prejudice in Joe's favor, and, to do the assistant coaches justice, they both agreed that Joe had done very well. But there were so many ahead of him--men who had been at Yale longer--that in justice they must be tried out first. "Then we'll try him on the scrub," decided Mr. Hasbrook; and so it had come about that Joe's name was called. In order to give the scrubs every opportunity to beat the 'varsity, and so that those players would work all the harder to clinch the victory, the scrubs were allowed to go to bat last, thus enhancing their chances. "Play ball!" yelled the umpire again. "It's getting late. Play ball!" Joe, a little nervous, walked to the box, and caught the new white ball which was tossed to him. As he was rubbing some dirt on it, to take off the smoothness of the horsehide, Mr. Hasbrook advanced toward him and motioned him to wait. "Matson," said the head coach, smiling genially. "You wouldn't let me reward you for the great favor you did me a while ago, though I wanted to. I hoped sometime to be able to reciprocate, but I never thought it would come in this way. I have decided to give you a chance to make good." "And I can't thank you enough!" burst out the young pitcher. "I feel that----" "Tut! Tut!" exclaimed Mr. Hasbrook, holding up his hand, "I wouldn't have done this if I didn't think you had pitching stuff in you. In a way this isn't a favor at all, but you're right though, it might not have come so quickly. I appreciate your feelings, but there are a few things I want to say. "At Yale every man stands on his own feet. There is no favoritism. Wealth doesn't count, as I guess you've found out. Membership in the Senior Societies--Skull and Bones, Scroll and Keys--Wolf's Head--doesn't count--though, as you will find, those exclusive organizations take their members because of what they have done--not of what they are. "And so I'm giving you a chance to see what is in you. I'd like to see you make good, and I believe you will. But--if you don't--that ends it. Every tub must stand on its own bottom--you've got to stand on your feet. I've given you a chance. Maybe it would have come anyhow, but, out of friendship to you, and because of the service you did me, I was instrumental in having it come earlier. That is not favoritism. You can't know how much you did for me that day when you enabled me to get the train that, otherwise, I would have missed. "It was not exactly a matter of life and death, but it was of vital importance to me. I would be ungrateful, indeed, if I did not repay you in the only way I could--by giving you the chance to which you are entitled. "But--this is important--you've got to show that you can pitch or you'll lose your place. I've done what I can for you, and, if you prove worthy I'll do more. I'll give you the best coaching I can--but you've got to have backbone, a strong arm, a level head, and grit, and pluck, and a lot of other things to make the Yale nine. If you do I'll feel justified in what I have done. Now, play ball!" and without giving him a chance to utter the thanks that were on his lips, Mr. Hasbrook left Joe and took a position where he could watch the playing. It is no wonder that our hero felt nervous under the circumstances. Anyone would, I think, and when he pitched a wild ball, that the catcher had to leap for, there were some jeers. "Oh, you've got a great find!" sneered Weston. "He's a pitcher from Pitchville!" Joe flushed at the words, but he knew he would have to stand more than that in a match game, and he did not reply. Other derogatory remarks were hurled at him, and the coaches permitted it, for a pitcher who wilts under a cross-fire is of little service in a big game, where everything is done to "get his goat," as the saying goes. "Ball two!" yelled the umpire, at Joe's second delivery, and the lad was aware of a cold feeling down his spine. "I've got to make good! I've got to make good!" fiercely he told himself over again. There seemed to be a mist before his eyes, but by an effort he cleared it away. He stooped over pretending to tie his shoe lace--an old trick to gain time--and when he rose he was master of himself again. Swiftly, cleanly, and with the curve breaking at just the right moment, his next delivery went over the plate. The batsman struck at it and missed by a foot. "Good work, old man!" called the catcher to him. "Let's have another." But the next was a foul, and Joe began to worry. "You're finding him," called the 'varsity captain to his man. "Line one out." But Joe was determined that this should not be, and it was not, for though the batter did not make a move to strike at the second ball after the foul, the umpire called sharply: "Strike--batter's out." There was a moment of silence, and then a yell of delight from the scrubs and their friends. "What's the matter with you?" angrily demanded Mr. Hasbrook of the batter. "Can't you hit anything?" The batsman shook his head sadly. "That's the boy!" "That's the way to do it!" "You're all right, Matson!" These were only a few cries that resounded. Joe felt a warm glow in his heart, but he knew the battle had only begun. If he had hoped to pitch a no-hit, no-run game he was vastly disappointed, for the batters began to find him after that for scattering pokes down the field. Not badly, but enough to show to Joe and the others that he had much yet to learn. I am not going to describe that practice game in detail, for there are more important contests to come. Sufficient to say that, to the utter surprise of the 'varsity, the scrub not only continued to hold them well down, but even forged ahead of them. In vain the coaches argued, stormed and pleaded. At the beginning of the ninth inning the scrubs were one run ahead. "Now if we can shut them out we'll win!" yelled Billy Wakefield, the scrub captain, clapping Joe on the back. "Can you do it?" "I'll try, old man," and the pitcher breathed a trifle faster. It was a time to try his soul. He was so nervous that he walked the first man, and the 'varsity began to jeer him. "We've got his goat! Play tag around the bases now! Everyone gets a poke at it!" they cried. Joe shut his lips firmly. He was holding himself well in, and Mr. Hasbrook, watching, murmured: "He's got nerve. He may do, if he's got the ability, the speed and the stick-to-it-iveness. I think I made no mistake." Joe struck out the next man cleanly, though the man on first stole to second. Then, on a puzzling little fly, which the shortstop, with no excuse in the world, missed, another man got to first. There was a double steal when Joe sent in his next delivery, and the catcher, in a magnificent throw to second, nearly caught his man. It was a close decision, but the umpire called him safe. There were now two on bases, the first sack being unoccupied, and only one out. "Careful," warned the catcher, and Joe nodded. Perhaps it was lucky that a not very formidable hitter was up next, for, after two balls had been called, Joe struck him out, making two down. "Now for the final!" he murmured, as the next batter faced him. There were still two on bases, and a good hit would mean two runs in, possibly three if it was a homer. "I'm going to strike him out!" thought Joe fiercely. But when two foul strikes resulted from balls that he had hoped would be missed he was not so sure. He had given no balls, however, and there was still a reserve in his favor. "Ball one!" yelled the umpire, at the next delivery. Joe could hear his mates breathing hard. He rubbed a little soil on the horsehide, though it did not need it, but it gave him a moment's respite. Then, swift and sure, he threw the bail. Right for the plate it went, and the batter lunged fiercely at it. But he did not hit it. "Striker out--side's out!" came from the umpire. Joe had made good. CHAPTER XVII ANOTHER STEP "'Varsity beaten! What do you know about that?" gasped Ricky Hanover, as the crowd that had watched the game swarmed out on the diamond. "And Joe Matson did it!" added Spike. "Jove! but I'm glad for his sake! And him only a Freshman, playing on a scrub class team. I'm glad!" "So am I," added Jimmie Lee, who joined them. "Will this get him a permanent place?" asked Ricky. "He's entitled to it." "Well, he's got his foot on the first rung of the ladder anyhow," was Jimmie's opinion. "But it'll be a good while before he pitches for the 'varsity. He's got to show the coaches that it was no freak work. Besides he's got a year to wait." "And he can do it!" declared Spike. "I haven't been catching him these last two weeks for nothing. Joe isn't a freak pitcher. He's got control, and that's better than speed or curves, though he has them, too." On all sides there was talk about the result of the practice game. Of course the second nine had, in times past, often beaten the 'varsity, for the element of luck played into the hands of the scrub as well as into those of its opponents. But the times were few and far between when the first nine had to go down to defeat, especially in the matter of a scrub Freshman pitcher administering it to them, and Joe's glory was all the greater. "Congratulations, old man!" exclaimed Avondale, the scrub twirler whom Joe had temporarily displaced. "You saw your duty and you done it nobly, as the poet says. You didn't let 'em fuss you when you were in a tight corner, and that's what tells in a ball game. Shake!" "Thanks!" exclaimed Joe. He knew just what it meant for his rival to do this, and he appreciated it. "You can have a whack at them next." "I'm afraid not," returned Avondale. "You did so well that they'll want to keep you at scrub, and you'll be on the 'varsity before you know it." "I wish I could think so," laughed Joe. As he spoke he saw Ford Weston passing behind him, and the 'varsity pitcher had heard what was said. A scowl passed over his face. He did not speak to Joe, but to Captain Hatfield, who was with him, the pitcher murmured, loudly enough to be heard: "It was just a fluke, that was all. We could have won only for the errors the fielders made." "Maybe--maybe not," agreed the captain. "I think we were outpitched, and I'm not afraid to acknowledge it. We've got to do better!" "Do you mean me?" There was challenge in Weston's tone. "I mean all of us," was the quiet answer. "Matson, you did us up brown, but you won't do it again," and the captain laughed frankly. "I'll try--if I get the chance," was the grim retort. Meanwhile the coaches had singled out some of the 'varsity members whose playing had shown faults, and were giving instructions how to correct them. Merky Bardine, who played on third, had sprained his leg slightly, and the trainer, McLeary, had taken him in hand to treat him. Mr. Hasbrook walked up to Joe. "You did very well," the chief coach was good enough to say, "and I'm glad you had your chance. You have a number of faults to correct, but I think you can master them. One is that you don't get enough into the game yourself. A pitcher must do more than merely deliver the ball. Twice in this game you didn't get after the bunts as you might have done." Joe felt a little discouraged. He had hoped for unqualified praise from the head coach, but he was sensible enough to realize that it was all said for his benefit, and he resolved to profit by it. In fact it was this quality and ability of Joe's--enabling him to receive advice graciously--that made him the wonderful pitcher he afterward became. "You must play into the game more," went on Mr. Hasbrook. "Outside of the catcher, you're the only man on the team who can handle certain bunts--I mean the pitcher. For that reason you want to study a style of delivery that won't leave you in a bad position to look after the ball if it is hit your way. You have the right idea now in throwing, but you can improve, I'm sure." "I'll try," spoke Joe. "I know you will, and that's why I'm taking the trouble to talk to you. Then you've got to be on the watch for base stealing. There are some catchers who can pretend to throw to second, and yet so suddenly change as to deliver the ball to the pitcher. This deceives the man on third, who starts for home, and if you have the ball you can nip him. So far we haven't had a catcher who can work this trick, but we may develop one before we get through." "Then Kendall isn't sure of his place?" asked Joe eagerly, thinking of the desire of his chum Spike to fill the position behind the plate later on. "Well, he's reasonably sure of it," went on the head coach cautiously. "But we never can tell what will develop after the season opens. Another point I'd like to impress on you is, that sometimes you've got to help out on first base. Particularly is this the case when a bunt comes that the first baseman can take care of. Then it's your duty to hustle over to first." "Yes, sir," answered Joe. It was all he could think of to say at the time. In fact he was rather dazed. There was a deal more to this baseball game than he had imagined. He was beginning to get an inkling of the difference between the amateur sport and the professional way of playing. "I don't want to burden you with too much advice at the start," went on Mr. Hasbrook, "for I want you to remember what I tell you. From time to time, as I see your weak points, I'm going to mention them to you." "I'll be glad if you will," spoke Joe earnestly. "On the whole you did very well to-day," concluded the head coach, "and I'm glad we gave you the chance. Report for light practice to-morrow, and the next day we'll try another game. Look after your arm. You used it a good bit this afternoon." Joe felt in rather better spirits after Mr. Hasbrook had finished than when he began. "I'm going to get a fair chance to show what I can do, anyhow," declared our hero, as he went to his room. On the way he was joined by Spike, who had dropped back when the head coach started his instructions. "Well?" asked Joe's room-mate. "Fairly well," was the answer. "Say, I believe you've got a chance, Spike." "Me? How?" "Why, it isn't settled that Kendall will catch all of next season." "Oh, I guess it is as much as anything is settled in this world. But I can wait. I've got four years here." Joe was elated at his triumph, and little was talked of in baseball circles that night but how the scrubs had "put one over" on the 'varsity. There was some disposition to criticize the first team for loose and too confident playing, but those who knew gave Joe credit for what he had done. And so the baseball season went on until the 'varsity was fully perfected and established, the class teams improved and the schedule made up. Then came hard and grilling work. Joe was doing his best on his Freshman class team, and often played against the college nine, either in conjunction with his mates, or, when it was desired to give one of the other Freshmen pitchers a chance, taking part with a mixed "scrub" team, composed of lads from various classes in order to give the 'varsity good opposition. And Yale swept on her way. Of course Joe bewailed the fact that he would have to lose a whole year before he could hope for a chance to be on the first team, but he bided his time. Weston was doing fairly well, and the feeling between him and our hero had not changed. The Spring term was drawing to a close. Yale and Princeton had met twice, and there was a game apiece. Yale had also played other colleges, losing occasionally, but winning often enough to entitle her to claim the championship if she took the odd game from the Tiger. But she did not, and though her players insisted, none the less, that Yale was at the top of the heap, and though the sporting writers conceded this, still Princeton won the third game. And Yale was bitter, though she stood it grimly,--as she always does. "Well, we'll see what next year will bring forth," said Spike to Joe, at the wind-up of the baseball season. "You're coming back; aren't you?" "I wouldn't miss it for anything now. Though, as a matter of fact, I didn't expect to. I thought I'd take one year here, and if I could get on the 'varsity nine long enough to say I had been on it, I'd quit, and go in for the professional end of it. But, since I can't, I'll come back and make another stab at it." "That's the way to talk. Well, I hope to be here, too." The Summer vacation came, and Joe had passed his examinations. Not brilliantly, but sufficiently well to enable him to enter the Sophomore class. "And if I don't make the 'varsity next Spring, it will be my own fault!" he cried, as he said good-bye to his chums and packed up for home. The Summer passed pleasantly enough. Joe's family took a cottage at a lake resort, and of course Joe organized a ball team among the temporary residents of the resort. A number of games were played, Joe pitching in fine style. One day a manager of one of the minor leagues attended a contest where Joe pitched, and when word of this was carried to our hero he had a nervous fit. But he pulled himself together, twirled magnificently, and was pleased to see the "magnate" nod approvingly. Though later, when someone offered to introduce Joe to him, the lad declined. "I'll wait until I've made a better reputation," he declared. "I want the Yale Y before I go looking for other honors;" and he stuck to that. "Joe seems to care more for college than you thought he would, father," said Mrs. Matson, when it came time for her son to go back as a Sophomore for the next Fall term. "I think he'll finish yet, and make us all proud of him." "Joe will never do anything that would not make us proud of him," said his father. "But I rather fancy the reason he is so willing to go back to Yale is that he didn't make the 'varsity baseball nine last season. There's a rule against Freshmen, you know." "Oh dear!" lamented Mrs. Matson. "I did hope he would like college for its own sake, and not for baseball." "It's hard to separate baseball and football from college likings, I guess," conceded her husband. And so Joe went back. It was quite different from entering New Haven as a Freshman, and even in the old elms he seemed to have a proprietary interest. He took his old room, because he liked it, and a number of his other Sophomore friends did likewise, though some Freshmen held forth there as usual. Then came the football season, and, though Joe took an interest in this, and even consented to try for the scrub, he was not cut out for that sort of work, and soon gave it up. Yale made her usual success on the gridiron, though the far-famed game with Princeton resulted in a tie, which made the baseball nine all the more anxious to win the championship. The Winter seemed endless, but soon there was the beginning of baseball talk, as before, and this was regarded as a sign of Spring. There was no question now but what Joe was eligible for the 'varsity, though that was far from saying that he would be picked for it. All his old friends had returned to the university, and there was little change in the baseball situation as regards new names. Most of the old ones kept their same places. Nothing definite had been learned about the red paint episode, and though it was mentioned occasionally, and often in a censorious manner as against the perpetrator of it, the latter was not discovered. Then there began to gather at Yale the oldtime players, who acted as coaches. Mr. Hasbrook, who from long familiarity with the game, and from his intense love of it, and for his _alma mater_, was again named as head coach. "Well, we've got a pretty good nine, I think," said Weston one day, after hard practice against the Freshmen. How Joe did thank his stars that he was not in the latter team, though he was first pitcher on the Sophomore team. "Yes, we have," admitted several. "It looks as if we could trim Princeton this time." Joe had pitched for the 'varsity in some informal practice games, though Weston was regarded still as first choice. And Joe was fearful that his cherished ambition was yet far from being realized. "We're playing good ball," said Weston. "I don't say that because I'm pitching," he added quickly, as he saw some looking at him curiously, "but because we have got a good team--mostly old players, too," and he glanced meaningly at Joe, as though he resented his entrance as an aspirant for the mound. "One thing--we've got to tighten up considerably," declared Captain Hatfield. "We'll play our first match game with Amherst in two weeks, and we want to swamp 'em." "Oh, we will," said Weston easily. "Not unless you pitch better--and we all play better," was the grim answer. "What do you mean?" "Just what I said. You've got to strike more men out, and play a livelier game." "Well, I guess I can," answered the pitcher, sullenly. There was only light practice the next day, and Joe was told to perfect himself in signals with the class captain. Then came another hard practice contest, and, somewhat to Joe's surprise, he was not called on to pitch, as he fully expected. But he resigned himself cheerfully when Avondale went to the mound. Had our hero but known it, Mr. Hasbrook had deliberately omitted to start Joe, wishing to discipline him, not, however, because of anything Joe had done. "I think there's championship material for one of the big leagues in that lad," mused the head coach, to justify himself, "and he's got a hard row ahead of him unless he learns to take disappointment. I'll start him on the right track, though I would like to pitch him steadily." And so Joe sat on the bench, while his rival pitched. Whether it was on this account, or because the 'varsity had tightened, was not at once apparent, but the fact was that the first team began to pound out runs, and the scrub did not. "That's the way!" exclaimed the enthusiastic assistant coaches. "Eat 'em up, 'varsity!" Mr. Hasbrook smiled, but said nothing. At the end of the seventh inning Joe was sent in to pitch, but it was too late for the scrubs to save the game for themselves, since the 'varsity had it by six runs. Nor did Joe escape hitless, though from the time he went in no runs were made by his opponents. "Joe, you're a better pitcher than I am," declared Avondale, frankly. "I can see where I've made mistakes." "Well, it isn't too late to fix 'em." "Yes, I'm afraid it is," and, as it developed, it was, for from then on Joe did most of the pitching for the scrub. Occasionally, when his arm was a bit lame, Avondale was sent in, or one of the other pitching candidates, but the result was nearly always disastrous for the scrub. Not that Joe always made good. He had his off days, when his curves did not seem to break right, and when his control was poor. But he was trying to carry out Mr. Hasbrook's instructions to get into more plays, and this handicapped him a bit at the start. The head coach saw this, and made allowances, keeping Joe on the mound when the assistants would have substituted someone else. "Wait," advised the head coach. "I know what I'm doing." The season was beginning to open. Schedules were being arranged, and soon Yale would begin to meet her opponents. The practice grew harder and more exacting. The voices of the coaches were more stern and sharp. No errors were excused, and the scrub was worked doubly hard to make the 'varsity that much better. Ford Weston had improved considerably and then one day he went to pieces in the box, when playing a particularly close and hard game with the scrub. There was surprise and consternation, and a hasty conference of the coaches. An attempt was made to stem the tide by putting in McAnish, the southpaw, and he did some excellent work, but the scrub seemed to have struck a winning streak and took everything that came their way. Joe was pitching, and held the first team well down. There was gloom in Yale that night, for the game with Amherst was not far off, and the Amherst lads were reported to be a fast and snappy lot. There was a day of rest, and then came the final practice against the scrub. There was a consultation among the coaches in which the first and second captains participated before the contest. Then Mr. Hasbrook separated himself from the others. "Matson!" he called sharply. "You and Kendall warm up a bit, and get a line on each other's signals. Matson, you're going to pitch for the 'varsity to-day!" CHAPTER XVIII PLOTTING Joe Matson was trembling when he went to his place, even after some lively warming-up practice with the catcher. The very thing he most wanted had come to him very unexpectedly. And yet he was sensible enough to realize that this was only a trial, and that it did not mean he would pitch against Amherst. But he had great hopes. "Come!" he exclaimed to himself, as he got ready for the opening of the game. "I've got to pull myself together or I'll go all to pieces. Brace up!" The sight of Weston glaring at him helped, in a measure, to restore Joe to himself. "He's hoping I won't make good," thought Joe. "But I will! I must!" It may have been because of Joe's natural nervousness, or because the scrub team was determined to show that they could bat even their own pitcher, that was the cause of so many runs coming in during the first inning. No one could rightly say, but the fact remained that the runs did come in, and it began to look bad for the 'varsity. "I told you how it would be--putting in a green pitcher," complained Mr. Benson. "Perhaps," admitted the head coach. "But wait a bit. Joe isn't as green as he looks. Wait until next inning." And he was justified, for Joe got himself well in hand, and the 'varsity, as if driven to desperation by another defeat staring them in the face so near to the Amherst game, batted as they never had before. Avondale was all but knocked out of the box, and the scrub captain substituted another pitcher, who did much better. Joe's former rival almost wept at his own inability. Meanwhile our hero was himself again, and though he did give three men their bases on balls, he allowed very few hits, so that the 'varsity took the game by a good margin, considering their bad start. "That's the way to do it!" cried Captain Hatfield, when the contest was over. "Do it to Amherst," was the comment of the head coach. "We will!" cried the members of the first team. "Good work, Matson," complimented Hatfield. "Can you do it again?" "Maybe--if I get the chance," laughed Joe, who was on an elevation of delight. "Oh, I guess you'll have to get the chance," spoke the captain. He did not notice that Weston was close behind him, but Joe did, and he saw the look of anger and almost hate that passed over the face of the pitcher. "He looks as though he'd like to bite me," murmured Joe. "And yet it's all a fair game. I may get knocked out myself. But even then I'm not going to give up. I'm in this to stay! If not at Yale, then somewhere else." If Joe imagined that his work that day had been without flaws he was soon to be disillusioned, for Mr. Hasbrook, coming up to him a little later, pointed out where he had made several bad errors in judgment, though they had not resulted in any gain for the scrub. "Still," said the head coach, "you don't want to make them, for with a sharp team, and some of the big college nines playing against you, those same errors would lose the game." And he proceeded to give Joe some good advice. When Avondale, the twice-humiliated pitcher, walked off the diamond that afternoon, he was joined by Weston, who linked his arm in that of the scrub twirler. "Well, we're both in the same boat," remarked Avondale. "A better man has ousted us." "Not at all--nothing of the sort!" cried Weston, and his voice showed how much he was nervously wrought up. "I don't admit for a minute that Matson can pitch better than I can." "Well, I do, in my own case, and the coaches seem to in yours." "I'm a little out of form to-day," admitted Weston, quickly. "I'll be all right to-morrow, and I'll pitch against Amherst." "It'll be a great game," spoke Avondale. "Maybe. But say, what do you think of a fellow like him--a regular country clod-hopper--coming here, anyhow?" "Who do you mean?" "Matson. What right has he got to butt in at a college like Yale, and displace the fellows who have worked hard for the nine?" "The right of ability, I suppose." "Ability nothing! He doesn't belong here, and he ought to be made to quit." "Well, I confess I don't like to lose the place I worked so hard for, and I don't see much chance of making the 'varsity now," admitted Avondale; "but at the same time I must give Matson credit for his work." "Bah! It's only a flash in the pan. He can't last. I think I could make him quit if I wanted to." "How?" "Would you join me in a little trick if we could?" "I don't know. What do you mean?" and Avondale looked curiously at his companion. "I mean that red paint business and the spoiling of the ancient manuscripts. If it was known who did it he'd get fired." "You don't mean to say Matson had a hand in that!" cried Avondale aghast. "I'm not saying anything. But if it could be shown that he did it, he'd not pitch for Yale--that's sure. Shall I say any more? Remember I'm making no cracks yet. But I know some things about Matson no one else knows." This was true enough, but Avondale did not take it in the sense in which it could have been truthfully said, but, rather, as Weston meant he should--wrongly. Now Avondale had one fault. He was too easily led. He was brilliant, full of promise, and a jolly chap--hail-fellow-well-met with everyone, and that is not the best thing in the world, though it makes for temporary popularity. Avondale was his own worst enemy, and many a time he had not the courage to say "no!" when the utterance of it would have saved him from trouble. So when Weston thus temptingly held out the bait, Avondale nibbled. "Shall I say any more?" went on the other. "Remember, you've got to be as tight as a drum on this." "Of course. I--er--I--that is----" "Come over here and I'll tell you something," went on the 'varsity pitcher, and the two were soon in close conversation. CHAPTER XIX THE ANONYMOUS LETTER "Have you seen the _News_?" gasped Jimmie Lee, bursting into the room of Joe and his chum one afternoon, following some baseball practice. "It's great!" "You mean have we _heard_ the news; don't you?" questioned Spike. "You can hear news, but not see it, that is unless the occurrence which makes news happens to come under your own observation. Where is your logic, you heathen? _Seen_ news!" "Yes, that's what I mean!" snapped Jimmie. "I mean have you seen the last copy of the Yale _News_?" "No; what is it?" asked Joe quickly. "Something about the baseball nine?" "No, it's about those musty old manuscripts that got spoiled the time Professor Hardee slipped on his doorsteps in the red paint." "What about 'em?" demanded Joe, thinking of the time he had seen Weston slipping into his room, trying to conceal his hand on which was a scarlet smear. "What's new?" "Why, it seems that some learned high-brow society wrote on to borrow them, to prove or disprove something that happened in the time of Moses, and they had to be refused as the sheepskins are illegible. The powers that be tried to clean off the paint, but it took some of the lettering with it, and Prof. Hardee and some of his friends are wild over the loss. The _News_ says it's irreparable, and there's even an editorial on it." "Well, that isn't much that's new," went on Joe, as he took the college paper which Jimmie held out to him. "It was known before that the parchments were pretty well on the blink. It's a shame, too, for they are the only ones in the world of that particular dynasty. What else?" "Lots," went on Jimmie. "The _News_ hints that a committee of Seniors is working with Professor Hardee and some of the faculty, trying to find out who was responsible. If they do find out they may make the joker's folks pay heavy damages." "Yes, if they find out," put in Spike. "But it happened some time ago, and they haven't got a hint of it yet. It was a mean trick--I'll say that--but there are no welchers or squealers at Yale." "I'm not so sure of that," murmured Jimmie. "What do you mean?" asked Joe quickly. "Why this screed goes on to hint that the investigators have a line on who did it. They have some clews, it seems, and an exposure is hinted at." "Get out!" cried Joe, thinking of the effect it would have on Weston should the truth--as Joe thought it--come out. He had half made up his mind to deny everything he had seen, even if questioned. "That's right," asserted Jimmie. "This article says it may soon be known who did the 'dastardly deed'--note the 'dastardly'--guess the editor dipped his pen in sulphuric acid. But it was a mean trick, and I guess we all feel the same way about it. The fellow who did it ought to be fired. Fun is fun, and I like it as much as anybody, but this passes the limits." "Right!" exclaimed Spike. "But does it say anything about who it might be--what class?" "Oh, it as much as says a Freshman did it, of course--as if we did everything last year. Anyhow, it's stirred up a lot of talk, I can tell you. I just came across the campus and the _News_ sold more copies than ever before, I guess. Everyone seems to have one, and they're all talking about it. I hope if they do find out who did it, that he won't happen to be any of our crowd--or on the ball nine." "Why?" asked Spike. "Why--he'd be expelled, of course, and if it was one of the 'varsity nine it might have a bad effect on winning the championship. We've got to win that this year." "Oh, I guess it's mostly talk," asserted Spike, as he read the article after Joe had finished. As for Joe he said little. But he thought much. "Maybe," agreed Jimmie. "And yet it looks as if there was something back of it all. I only hope there isn't. It would be tough for our class to have to stand for this." There was more talk along the same line, and, a little later, some other of the second-year class dropped in and continued the session. There were differences of opinion, as might have been expected. "Well, after all is said and done," came from Bert Fost, who by reason of weight was ineligible for the nine, but who was an enthusiastic supporter, "when it's all over, I think we'll wipe Amherst off the map." "We will--if the nine isn't broken up," declared Jimmie. "Broken up--what do you mean?" and Bert glared at the questioner. "I mean that if it's proved that some member of the team did this red paint business it's all off with him having a chance to play against Amherst." "Oh, piffle!" declared Bert. "That punk is written by some lad who's trying to make good on the _News_ so he'll get tapped for Scroll and Keys. Forget it." But it was not so easily forgotten, for the article seemed to have some definite knowledge behind it, and the editorial, though student-inspired, as all knew, was a sharp one. "If it really is Weston I'm sorry for him," thought Joe, little thinking how near he himself was to danger. There were new developments the next morning--a certain something in the air as the young men assembled for chapel told that there was about to be a break. And it came. "Here comes the Dean!" the whisper went round, when the exercises were nearly over. "Something's going to be cut loose." The Dean addressed the students. He began mildly, but soon he had almost worked himself up to a dramatic situation. In veiled terms he referred to the red paint outrage, and then, after telling what it meant to have the valuable manuscripts ruined, he added: "I assume that you have all seen the article which appears in the college paper. With that, though I might, I take no issue. On another phase I do. "I have received an anonymous letter, accusing a certain student of the outrage. I shall, in this matter, take the course I always do when I receive such a cowardly communication as an anonymous letter--I destroy it unread," and, as he spoke the Dean tore into fragments a piece of paper. The pieces he carefully put in his pocket, however, with the remark that they would be consigned to the fire unlooked at, as soon as possible. "I wonder who was accused?" said Spike. "I wonder?" added Joe. CHAPTER XX THE CORNELL HOST "That's the way to do it!" "Yale always can do it!" "Bull dog grit!" "The blue always wins!" "They came--they saw--but--we conquered!" It was the close of the Yale-Amherst baseball game, and the sons of Eli had gloriously triumphed. They had trailed the banners of their opponents in the dust, they had raced around the bases, they had batted the ball into the far corners of the field, and they had raced home with the runs. "I told you so!" chirped Jimmie Lee. "Hold on!" cried Slim Jones. "Didn't you start to be a calamity howler, and say Yale wouldn't win?" "Never!" asserted Jimmie. "Yes, you did!" "Well, I was only bluffing. I knew we could put it all over them." "And we did," said Spike in a low voice to Joe. "Only----" "Only I didn't have much share in it," interrupted the aspirant for pitching honors. There had indeed been a "shake-up" on the nine the day of the game. Until the last moment it was not definitely settled who would pitch, and there were many rumors current. It lay between Joe, Weston, and McAnish, the left-handed one, and on the morning of the game--the first important one of the season for Yale--the newspapers had various guesses as to who would be the twirler. Joe had hoped to go in at the start, but when the game was called, and Captain Hatfield submitted his list, it was seen that Weston had the coveted place. "Well, old man, you're back where you belong," said Avondale to him, as the name was called. "I suppose now, that little matter, which you were speaking to me about, can drop?" "It can--if I remain pitcher," answered Weston. "But I've got it all cocked and primed to explode if I have to. I'm not going to sit tight and let some country whipper-snapper put it all over me." "I don't know as I blame you--and yet he seems a pretty decent sort." "Oh, he's not in our class!" "Well, maybe not. Do your best!" And Weston did. Never had he pitched a better game--even his enemies, and he had not a few, admitted that. It was a "walkover" soon after the first few innings had demonstrated the superiority of Yale. Amherst was game, and fought to the last ditch, but neither in batting, fielding nor pitching was she the equal of the wearers of the blue. Joe, sitting on the bench, with the other substitutes, fretted his heart out, hoping for a chance to play, but he was not called on until the eighth inning. Then, after a conference of the coaches, during which the head one could be seen to gesticulate vigorously, Joe was called on to bat in place of another, which gave him the call to pitch the next inning. "What's the matter?" was asked on all sides. "Is Weston going stale?" "Glass arm," suggested some of his enemies. "No, they're saving him for the Harvard game," was the opinion of many. "They don't want to work him too hard." "And we have this game anyhow." "But what's the matter with McAnish?" "Oh, he's out of form." And so Joe had gone in at the eleventh hour, before that sitting on the bench, eating his heart out. "Show what you can do!" exclaimed the head coach to him as he took the mound. "And don't worry." "Don't worry?" repeated Joe. "That's what I said. Remember what I told you, and don't try to win the game by merely pitching." Joe recalled his instructions about backing up first base in an emergency, of taking care of the bunts, of watching the catcher, who might try to deceive the man on third. And it was well for Joe that he did. For, though he did well from the pitching end, there came several opportunities to distinguish himself in making infield plays. Once he made a fine stop of a bunt that, had it been a safety, would have done much to lower Yale's lead. Again he managed, by a quick play, on getting the ball from the catcher, to throw out the man at second, who was trying to steal third. There was applause for Joe Matson that day, though he did not pitch the team to victory. "Well?" asked Mr. Hasbrook of his colleagues, after the contest. "What did I tell you? Isn't he an all-around good player?" "He seems so," admitted Mr. Benson. "But I think Weston did most excellently." "Yes, he did," said the head coach, "but mark my words, he's overtrained or he hasn't the grit to stick it out. Here we are at the beginning of the season, and he has failed us several times. I don't want to force my judgment on you gentlemen, but I think we ought to give Matson a better trial." "All right, we'll send him in earlier in the Cornell game next week," suggested Mr. Whitfield, and to that the head coach agreed. There were all sorts of baseball politics discussed in the dormitories, on the campus, and at Glory's and other resorts that night. "It begins to look as if the coaches didn't quite know where they were at," declared Ricky Hanover. "They make a shift at the last minute." "A good shift--according to the way the game went," declared Hen Johnson, who held down second base. "That's yet to be seen," asserted Jimmie Lee. "Amherst was fruit for us to-day." The opinions went back and forth--_pro_ and _con_--and it was, after all, a matter of judgment. Yet back of it all was the indomitable Yale spirit that has often turned defeat into victory. This was to hearten up those who picked flaws in the playing of the blue, and who predicted a slump in the following week, when the strong Cornell team would be met. "Oh, Cornell may row us but she can't play ball us," declared Jimmie Lee. "We'll dump 'em." "We may--if Joe Matson pitches," spoke Spike, in a low voice. "Here! Cut that out," advised Joe, in a sharp whisper. Meanwhile no more had been heard about the red paint matter, and it looked to be but a flash in the pan--what the _News_ had printed. The Senior committee of investigation was not in evidence--at least as far as could be learned. Baseball practice went on, sometimes Joe pitching for the 'varsity, and again one of his rivals being called on. There was a tightening up on the part of the coaches--they were less tolerant--the errors were less excused. Bitter words were the portion of those who made mistakes, and Joe did not escape. "You must do a little better," the head coach urged him. "We're not playing school teams, remember, but teams that are but little removed from the professional class, as regards ability. Play harder--sharper--more accurately--don't get rattled." And Joe tried to tell himself that he would do or not do these things, but it was hard work. He had begun to realize what a career he had marked out for himself. "Well, are you going to spring it?" asked Avondale of Weston, a day or so before the Cornell game. "What about the red paint?" "Oh, I guess it will keep--if I pitch the game," was the answer. "Did you send the anonymous letter?" "Don't ask me," snapped Weston. The day of the next game came--one of the great battles of the diamond, on the winning or losing of which depended, in a measure, the gaining of the championship. The Cornell host, many strong, descended on New Haven, and made the air vibrant with their yells. They cheered Yale, and were cheered in turn. Out on the diamond they trotted--a likely looking lot of lads. "Husky bunch," commented Jimmie Lee. "They sure are," agreed Shorty Kendall. "Who'll pitch for you?" "Don't know. They're just going to announce it." The umpire, the captains, managers, and coaches were holding a conference. Joe, in spite of his seeming indifference, watched them narrowly. Over in their section the Cornell hosts were singing their songs and giving their cheers. The wearers of the blue had given their great cry--they had sung the Boola song--some had even done the serpentine dance. All was in readiness for the game. "If he doesn't pitch me," murmured Weston, "I'll be----" Mr. Hasbrook motioned to the umpire, who raised his megaphone to make the announcement. CHAPTER XXI EAGER HEARTS "The battery for Yale will be Weston and Kendall, and for Cornell----" But the last announcement was given no heed by the supporters of the blue--at least by the players themselves, the substitutes, and Joe Matson in particular. A murmur went around. "Weston! Weston's going to pitch!" "After the work Baseball Joe's done too!" "Why, Weston isn't in form." "Oh, he's practiced hard lately." "Yes, and he was doing some hot warming-up work a little while ago. I guess they'll pitch him all right." "He must have put up a kick, and Hasbrook gave in to him." "It looks so, and yet Horsehide generally doesn't play a man unless he can make good. That's Yale's way." These were only a few of the comments that were being heard on all sides. The Yale team looked somewhat amazed, and then, lest their enemies find out that they feared they had a weak spot, they braced up, smiled and acted as if it was a matter of course. And, as far as Cornell was concerned, they knew that there was rivalry between Weston and Joe, but as a pitcher is an uncertain quantity at best, they were not surprised that the 'varsity twirler whom they had faced the season before should again occupy the mound. It might be a part of the game to save Matson until later. "Tough luck, Joe," said Spike, as he passed his friend. "Yes--Oh, I don't know! I hadn't any right to expect to pitch!" Joe tried to be brave about it, but there was a sore feeling in his heart. He had hoped to go into the game. "Sure you had a right to expect it!" declared Spike. "You're the logical pitcher. There's been some funny work going on, I'm sure. Weston has pulled off something." "Be careful, Spike." "Oh, I'm sure of it. Why, look at Horsehide's face!" Joe glanced at the head coach. Indeed the countenance of Mr. Hasbrook presented a study. He seemed puzzled as he turned away from a somewhat spirited conversation with Mr. Benson. For an instant his eyes met those of Joe, and the young pitcher thought he read in them pity, and yet a trace of doubt. "I wonder if he has lost confidence in me?" thought Joe. "I wonder if he thinks I can't pitch in a big game?" Yet he knew in his own heart that he had not gone back--he was sure he could pitch better than he ever had before. The days at Yale, playing with young men who were well-nigh professionals, had given him confidence he had not possessed before, and he realized that he was developing good control of the ball, as well as speed and curves. "I wonder why he didn't pitch me?" mused Joe. "Play ball!" called the umpire, and the hearts of all were eager for the battle of stick and horsehide to begin. Cornell went to the bat first, and Weston faced his man. There was a smile of confidence on the pitcher's face, as he wound up, and delivered a few practice balls to Kendall. Then he nodded as if satisfied, and the batter stepped up to the plate. "Strike!" called the umpire, at the first delivery, and there was a murmur of amazement. The batter himself looked a bit confused, but made no comment. The ball had gone cleanly over the plate, though it looked as if it was going to shoot wide, and the player had thought to let it pass. Weston smiled more confidently. He was hit for a foul, but after getting three and two he struck the batter out, and there was a round of applause. "I couldn't have done it any better myself," said Joe, with honest praise for his rival. "Wait," advised Spike. "Weston's got to last over eight more innings to make good, and he'll never do it." But when he struck out the next man, and the third had retired on a little pop fly, Yale began to rise in her might and sing the beginning of a song of victory. "Oh, we've got the goods!" her sons yelled. "How's that for pitching?" demanded someone. Joe joined in the cheer that was called for Weston, but his heart was still sore, for he felt that those cheers might have been for him. But he was game, and smiled bravely. Yale managed to get one run during the last half of the first inning, and once more the sons of Eli arose and sent forth a storm of cheers, songs and college cries. "Go back home, Cornell!" they screamed. But the Cornell host smiled grimly. They were fighters from start to finish. Joe noticed that Weston did not seem quite so confident when he came to the mound the second time. There was an exchange of signals between him and the catcher, and Weston seemed to be refusing to do what was wanted. After getting three and two on his man, the batter sent out a high one that the left fielder was unable to connect with, and the runner reached second. "Never mind, play for the next one," advised Kendall, and though the runner stole third, Weston pitched the second man out. Then, whether it was nervousness or natural inability cropping out at the wrong time, was not known, but the pitcher "went up in the air." With only one out, and a man on third, he began to be hit for disastrous results. He made wild throws, and the whole team became so demoralized that costly errors were made. The result was that Cornell had four runs when the streak was stopped. "We've got to do better than this," declared the head coach, as the Yale men came in to bat. "Rap out a few heavy ones. Show 'em what Yale can do in a pinch." They tried, but Cornell was fighting mad now, with the scent of victory to urge her players on. The best Yale could do was two, leaving their opponents one ahead at the beginning of the third. And then Weston went to pieces more than ever, though in the interval his arm had been rubbed and treated by the trainer. He had complained that it was stiff. I shall not give all the details of that game. Yale wanted to forget it after it was over. But when, at the ending of the fifth inning, the score stood eight to four in favor of Cornell there was a quick consultation among the coaches. What was said could not be heard, but Mr. Hasbrook seemed to be insisting on something to which the other two would not agree. Finally Horsehide threw up his hands in a gesture of despair. "Avondale, take the mound!" he exclaimed. "Avondale!" gasped the players. The scrub pitcher to go in and Joe, who was his master, kept on the bench? It was incredible. "Well, what do you know about that?" demanded Spike. "I've a good notion to----" "Be quiet!" begged Joe. "They know what they're doing." But it seems they did not, for Avondale was worse by far than Weston had been. He was hit unmercifully, and three more runs came in. But he had to stick it out, and when the miserable inning for Yale ended he went dejectedly to the bench. Weston, who had been having his arm rubbed again, and who had been practicing with a spare catcher, looked hopeful. But this time, following another conference of coaches, Mr. Hasbrook evidently had his way. Fairly running over to where Joe sat the head coach exclaimed: "Quick--get out there and warm up. You'll pitch the rest of the game. It's a forlorn hope, but we'll take it!" Joe's face shone as he ripped off his sweater, grabbed up a ball and his mitt, and started for the practice stretch. His heart was in a tumult, but he calmed himself and began his work. But it was too much to expect to pull the contest out of the fire by such desperate and late-day methods. In the part of the game he pitched Joe allowed but one hit, and with howls of delight his friends watched him mow down the Cornell batters. Not another run came in, but the lead of the visitors was too big, and Yale could not overcome it, though her sons did nobly, rising to the support of Joe in great style. "Well, it's over," remarked Spike gleefully as he caught Joe's arm at the close of the contest. "You seem glad that Yale lost," said the pitcher. "Never! But I'm glad you showed 'em what you could do when you had the chance. If you'd gone in first Yale would have won!" "Oh, you think so--do you?" sneered a voice behind them. They turned quickly, to see Ford Weston, scowling with rage. "Yes, I do," declared Spike boldly. "Then you've got another think coming!" was the retort. "I'm the 'varsity pitcher, and I'm going to hold on to the job!" CHAPTER XXII THE CRIMSON SPOT "What do you think of him, anyhow?" asked Spike of his room-mate, as Weston passed on. "Isn't he the limit!" "He certainly doesn't seem to care much for me," replied Joe, with a grim smile. "But I suppose it's natural. Almost anyone would feel that way at the prospect of being replaced." "Oh, he makes me tired!" exclaimed Spike. "He ought to stand for Yale--not for Ford Weston. It's the first time in a good many years that any player has placed himself above the team." "But Weston hasn't done that yet." "No, but that's what he's scheming for. He as good as said that he'll pitch for the 'varsity no matter what happens." "Who's that? What's up?" asked another voice, and, turning, the two chums saw Ricky Hanover. "Oh, you're talking about Weston," he added, as he noted the defeated pitcher walking away. "What's he been saying?" They told him, and Ricky, making a wry face, went on: "So that's how things are; eh? Well, if Weston tries that sort of game, I can see the finish of the Yale nine. It'll be the tail end of the kite, and the championship will be in the soup. In fact it's beginning to gravitate that way now, with the loss of this Cornell game." "But where does Weston get his pull?" demanded Spike. "How is it that they put him in to-day, when it was almost known that he couldn't make good. And here was Joe all ready to go on the mound. You saw what he did when he got there and yet----" "Spare my blushes! I'm a modest youth!" laughed Joe. "That's all right, there's something back of all this," continued Spike, vigorous in defence of his chum. "Why should the coaches put Weston in, and then, when he slumped, call on Avondale before they did you, Joe? It isn't right, and I think Horsehide should have made a better fight for you. You claim he's a friend of yours, Joe." "Well, yes, in a way. And yet if I had to depend on his friendship to get on the mound I'd never go there. I want to stand on my own feet and have the right to pitch because I can do better than some other fellow. That's all I ask--a fair show. I don't want any favors, and Mr. Hasbrook isn't the man to give them to me, if I'd take them." "I guess you're right there," commented Ricky. "But what I can't understand," went on Spike, "is how Horsehide seemed to give in to the other two coaches. It was as plain as a flagpole that he didn't want to pitch Weston to-day, and yet he had to in spite of himself. Why was it?" "Do you really want to know?" asked Ricky, and his voice was lowered, while he glanced around as if to make sure that no one would hear him save his two friends. "Do you really want to know?" "Certainly," declared Spike, and Joe wondered what was coming. "Well, it's because Weston is a member of the Anvil Club," said Ricky. "It's a class secret society, and it has a lot of influence--more so than even some of the big Senior clubs. Weston belongs and so do Horsehide and the other two coaches. They were in college, and they still keep up their affiliations. Now you know why they pitched Weston to-day--because he demanded it as a part of his right as a member of the Anvil Club." "Do you mean to tell me," asked Spike, "that the secret society is bigger than Yale--that it could make her lose a ball game?" "No, not exactly," replied Ricky. "But it is powerful, and a member has an unwritten right to demand almost anything in reason of the other members, and by their promises made they are obliged to help him." "But this wasn't anything in reason," said Spike. "Joe should have pitched the game, and then we'd have won. It was unreasonable to let Weston go in." "Look here!" exclaimed Ricky. "I don't mean to say that Yale men would do any underhand work to make any athletic contest go by the board. But you can't say, right off the bat, that Weston's demand was unreasonable. He thought he could pitch to a victory, and he probably said as much, very forcibly. It was a chance that he might, and, when he appealed for a try, on the ground that he was an Anvil man--they had to give it to him, that's all. It was all they could do, though I guess Horsehide didn't want to." "But there's Avondale," went on Ricky. "What about him?" "He's an Anvil man, too." "And I'm not," broke in Joe. "Say," he asked with a laugh, "how do you join this society?" "You don't," spoke Ricky solemnly. "You have to be asked, or tapped for it, just as for Wolf's Head, or Skull and Bones. Oh, it's an exclusive society all right, and as secret as a dark cellar." "And you really know this to be so?" asked Spike, almost incredulously. "Well, no one says so out and out, but I've heard rumors before, and to-day they were strong enough to hear without a megaphone. Oh, Weston's got the thing cinched all right." "Then I haven't a chance," sighed Joe, and more than ever he regretted coming to Yale. Yet, deep in his heart, was a fierce desire to pitch the college to a championship. "Haven't a chance!" cried Spike, indignantly. "Do you mean to say, Ricky, that they'll let Weston go on losing games the way he did to-day?" "No, not exactly. But they'll pitch him because he will appeal to their society side, and bamboozle 'em into thinking that he has come back strong, and can sure win." "And if he doesn't--if he slumps as he did to-day?" "Then they'll put in Avondale or McAnish." "And Joe won't get a show until last?" asked Spike. "That's about the size of it." "I don't believe so." "All right. Just watch," said Ricky, with a shrug of his shoulders. "Of course," he went on, "the coaches may wake up to the fact before it's too late, or there may be such a howl made that they'll have to can the society plea. But it's a queer situation. Come on down to Glory's and we'll feed our faces." "Wait until we get un-togged," suggested Spike, for he, too, had on a uniform, hoping for a chance to play. But it had not come. It was late when Joe and his chum got back to their room. They had met congenial spirits at the popular resort, and a sort of post-mortem had been held over the game. But, though the faults of many players were pointed out, and though Joe received due praise for his work, little had been said of Weston's poor pitching. "It's just as I told you," declared Ricky. "There are too many members of the Anvil Club, and affiliated societies, and they hate to hurt Weston's feelings, I guess." The 'varsity pitcher was not present. "Well, it sure is a queer state of affairs," commented Spike, as he and Joe reached their apartment. "I wish we could do something. It's a shame, with a pitcher who has your natural abilities, Joe, that----" "Oh, forget it, old man, and go to sleep," advised Joe. "I'm much obliged for your interest in me, but maybe it will come out right after all." "Humph! It won't unless we make it," murmured Spike. The coaches tried some shifting about of players when the next practice came on, though Weston was still retained on the mound. Joe was told to go in at shortstop, and he made good there, more by hard work than natural ability, for he wanted to show that he would do his duty wherever he was placed. Weston seemed to be doing better, and he got into more plays, not being content to merely pitch. "We'll trim Harvard!" was the general opinion, and Yale stock, that had gone down, took an upward move. The Harvard game was soon to come--one of the contests in the championship series, though Yale generally regarded the fight with Princeton as the deciding test. It was one afternoon following some sharp practice, when the 'varsity seemed on edge, that Joe said to Spike: "Come on, let's take a walk. It's too nice to go back and bone." "All right--I'm with you. We'll get out in the country somewhere." Weston passed as this was said, and though he nodded to the two, there was no cordiality in it. Joe and Spike thoroughly enjoyed their little excursion, and it was almost dusk when they returned. As they entered their room, Ricky came out to greet them. "What have you fellows been doing?" he demanded. "I came in to have a chat, and I found your room empty. A little later I heard you in it, and then, after I had found my pipe which I dropped under the bed, and went in again, you weren't to be seen. Yet I was sure I heard you moving about in it." "We haven't been home since practice," declared Spike. "You say you heard someone in our room?" inquired Joe. "I sure did." "Maybe it was Hoppy." "No, for I asked him, and he said no." "Any messages or letters left?" asked Spike, looking around, but no missives were in sight. "Oh, well, maybe it was spooks," declared Joe. "I'm going to get on something comfortable," and he went to the clothes closet, presently donning an old coat and trousers. Ricky made himself comfortable in an armchair, and the three talked for some time. "I say, what's that on your sleeve?" asked Ricky of Joe during a pause. "It looks like red ink. See, you've smeared Spike's trigonometry with it." "Quit it, you heathen!" exclaimed the aggrieved one. "Red ink," murmured Joe, twisting his sleeve around to get a look at the crimson spot. He touched it with his finger. "It's paint--red paint!" he exclaimed, "and it's fresh!" CHAPTER XXIII JOE'S TRIUMPH "Red paint!" exclaimed Ricky. "Who put it there?" asked Spike, and he looked queerly at Joe. "Not I," replied the pitcher. "And yet it's fresh. I can't understand. You say you heard someone in here, Ricky?" "As sure as guns." "Maybe it was some of those pesky Freshies trying some of their funny work," suggested Spike. "Hazing and tricks are about over," came from Joe, as he looked more closely at the red spot. "And yet someone seems to have been in here, daubing up my clothes. I wonder if they tried it on any more? Lucky it was an old suit." He looked in the closet, but the coat, with the crimson spot on the sleeve, seemed to be the only one soiled. "I have it!" suddenly cried Spike. "What, for cats' sake?" asked Ricky. "It's good luck!" "Good luck?" demanded Joe. "How do you make that out? These aren't my glad rags, that's a fact, but still paint is paint, and I don't want it daubed all over me. Good luck? Huh!" "Of course it is," went on Spike. "Don't you see? That's red--Harvard's hue. We play them next week, you'll pitch and we've got their color already. Hurray! We're going to win! It's an omen!" "Cæsar's pineapples!" exclaimed Ricky. "So it is. I'm going to grind out a song on it," and, having rather a knack with verse, he was soon scribbling away in rhyme. "How's this?" he demanded a few minutes later. "Listen fellows, and pick out a good tune for it," and he recited: "We've got Harvard's colors, We'll tell it to you. The red always runs At the sight of the blue. So cheer boys, once more, This bright rainbow hue, The Red will turn purple When mixed with the blue!" "Eh? How's that?" he asked proudly. "Pretty nifty I guess! Your Uncle Pete isn't so slow. I'm going to have the fellows practice this for the game, when you pitch, Joe." "Maybe I won't." "Oh, yes you will. But what do you think of it?" "Rotten!" exclaimed Spike. "Punk!" was the opinion of Slim Jones, who had entered in time to hear the verse. "Disinfect it, Ricky." "Aw, you fellows are jealous because you can't sling the muse around when you want to. Guess I'll try a second spasm." "Not in here," declared Spike, quickly. "This is a decent, law-abiding place, and, so far, has a good reputation. I'm not going to have the Dean raiding it just because you think you're a poet. That stuff would give our English Lit. prof. a chill. Can it, Ricky, can it." "You're jealous, that's all," and despite the protest Ricky proceeded to grind out a second verse, that he insisted on reading to his audience, which, by this time had increased to half a dozen lads from neighboring rooms. There was quite a jolly little party, and Ricky demanded that they sing his new song, which they finally did, with more or less success. The strains wafted out of doors and passing students were attracted by the sound until the place was swarming with congenial spirits, and nothing was talked of but the coming game with Harvard. "It's queer though, about that red paint," said Spike, later that night, when he and Joe were alone. "It sure is," agreed the pitcher. "Maybe Hoppy sent someone around to do a bit of daubing, and the chap got in here by mistake," suggested his chum. But inquiry developed that this was not so, and the mystery remained unsolved for a time. But after he got in bed, Joe did some hard thinking. He recalled the red paint episode of the spoiled manuscript, and wondered, without believing, if Weston could have come to his room. "He might have," reflected Joe, "and he might have had a hardened spot of red paint on his clothes from daubing it on the steps that time. If the hardened upper crust rubbed off, it would leave a fresh spot that might have gotten on my coat. And yet what would he be doing in my closet, let alone in the room here? No, it can't be that. Unless he sneaked in here--knowing Spike and I would be away--looking for something to use against me. "He doesn't want me to pitch, that's a fact, and if he could find something against me he'd use it. But he can't. I'm glad I'm not a candidate for any of their queer secret societies here, or I'd be worrying about them not asking me to join. I'm going to keep out of it. But that red spot is sure queer." All Yale was on edge on the day before the Harvard game, which was to take place on the Cambridge diamond. The team and the substitutes were trained to the minute, and all ready to make the trip, together with nearly a thousand "rooters" who were going along to lend moral support. Particular pains had been taken with the pitching staff, and Joe, Weston, McAnish and Avondale had been worked to the limit. They had been coached as they never had been before, for Yale wanted to win this game. As yet it was not known who would pitch. At least the 'varsity candidates did not know, and Joe was hoping for at least half a game. He was modest, for Weston arrogantly declared that he would last the nine innings. His friends said little, but he had a certain power in college not to be overlooked. The stadium was thronged with spectators as the teams trotted out for a little warming-up practice. In the cheering stands for the wearers of the blue the locomotive cry, the Boola song, a new one--"Bulldog Grit!"--and Ricky's effusion were gone over again. "Hit the Line!" came as a retort, and the cheerers tried to outdo each other. "Do you think you'll pitch, Joe?" asked Spike, in a low tone, as he and his chum practised off to one side. "I don't know. There are all sorts of rumors going about. I'd like to--I guess you know how much--just as you would like to catch--but we can't always have what we want. The coaches are having a talk now. Weston seems pretty confident." "Yes, the cad! I wish he'd play fair." "Oh, well," said Joe, with an air of resignation, "I suppose he can't help it. I guess I shouldn't like it if I'd pitched for a year, and then found a new man trying for my place." "But if the new man was better than you, and it meant the winning of the game?" asked Spike, as he took a vicious ball that Joe slugged to him. "Oh, well, of course in theory the best man ought to play--that's not saying I'm the best man by a long shot!" Joe hastened to add; "but even in theory it's hard to see another man take your place." "Something's doing," said Spike suddenly. "The conference has broken up." Joe looked nervously to where the coaches and captain had been talking. Tom Hatfield was buttoning on his shortstop glove, and then taking it off again as though under a strain. He walked over to the umpire, and Weston, seeing him, made a joking remark to a companion. He started for the players' bench, for Harvard was to bat last, and Yale would come up first for the stick-work. "It looks like him," remarked Spike in a low voice. "Well, I'll be ready when they call me," said Joe, with a good nature he did not feel. The umpire raised his megaphone. There was a hush, and then came the hollow tones: "Batteries for to-day. Harvard: Elkert and Snyder--Yale: Matson and Kendall." "By Halifax!" cried Spike, clapping Joe on the back with such force that he nearly knocked over his chum. "You pitch, old man!" CHAPTER XXIV HARD LUCK Shouts and yells greeted the announcement of the umpire--cheers from the admirers of the respective batteries. "Yah!" voiced the wearers of the crimson. "That's our one best bower! Oh you Elkert! Tear 'em apart, Snyder!" Back came the challenge from the sons of Yale. "You're our meat, Harvard! Keep your eye on the ball--that's all you'll be able to do. Fool 'em, Matson. 'Rah for Baseball Joe!" Our hero was becoming quite a favorite with his classmates, many of whom now knew of his one ambition. But Kendall had his admirers too. "He eats 'em alive--Shorty Kendall does!" came the cry. "Look out for our bear-cats, Harvard!" Once more came a riot of cheers and songs, each college group striving its best to outdo the other, giving its favorite cries or songs. "Come, get together, you two, and make sure you don't have any mix-up on signals," exclaimed Mr. Hasbrook to Joe and the catcher. "We want to win this game. And, Joe, don't forget what I told you about getting in on all the plays you can. We'll need every man if we take this game. Harvard has several good twirlers, and she's been playing like a house afire. Watch yourselves." "Then I'm really going to pitch?" asked Joe. It was almost the only thing he had said since hearing the announcement, after Spike had clapped him on the back with such force. "Pitch! Of course you're going to pitch," declared the head coach. "And I want you to pitch your head off. But save your arm, for there are going to be more games than this. But, mind!" and he spoke with earnestness. "You've got to make good!" "I will!" exclaimed Joe, and he meant it. "Come over here," suggested Shorty. "Plug in a few and we'll see if you're as good as you were yesterday," for Joe and he had had considerable practice, as, in fact, had all the pitchers, including Weston. As for that lad, when he heard the announcement a scowl shot across his face, and he uttered an exclamation. "What's the matter?" asked De Vere, who had become rather intimate with Ford of late. "Matter! Isn't there enough when that--when he pitches?" and he nodded his head toward Joe. "Why; do you think they'll get his goat, or that he'll blow, and throw the game?" "He might," sneered Weston, "but I have a right to be on the mound to-day. I was half promised that I could pitch, and now, at the last minute, they put him in. I'm not going to stand for it!" "It's a sort of a raw deal," declared his friend. "I don't see why they let such fellows as he come to college. First we know there'll be a lot of hod-carriers' sons here instead of gentlemen," and De Vere turned up, as far as possible, the point of his rather stubby nose. He himself was the son of a man who had gotten his start as a contractor, employing those same "hod-carriers" at whom the son now sneered. "That's right," agreed Weston. "I should think they could keep Yale a little more exclusive." "I agree with you," came from the other. "Why I even understand that they are talking of forming a club where even those who eat at commons, and are working their way through, can join. It's going to be fierce. But none of them will get in the Blue Ribbon Association," he added, referring to an exclusive college organization. "Nor the Anvil Club either," added Weston. "This is all Hasbrook's fault. He's taken some silly notion to Matson, and he thinks he's a wonderful pitcher. It seems they met somewhere, and Matson did him a favor. Now he's taking advantage of it." "But he can pitch," said De Vere, who, for all his snobbishness, was inclined to be fair. "Yes, after a fashion, but he hasn't anything on me. I won against Harvard last year." "So you did." "And I could do it again." "I believe you. Anyhow I think only the fellows in our own class--socially--should play. It makes it rather awkward, don't you know, if you meet one of the team out anywhere, and he isn't in your set. You've got to notice him, or there'd be a howl, I s'pose; but really some of the fellows are regular clod-hoppers, and this Matson doesn't train in with us." "You're right. But if things go the way I think he may not last very long." "How do you mean? Will he put up such a rotten game that they won't stand for him?" "That's all I can say now," rejoined Weston, somewhat mysteriously. "But something may happen." "And you'll pitch?" "I hope so. I may get in this game, for I did beat Harvard one year." But Weston forgot to add that he pitched so wretchedly the remainder of the season that Yale finished a poor third, losing the championship. "Play ball!" called the umpire. Those who had been practicing straggled to the bench, or walked out to take their fielding positions. "I guess you'll do," declared Kendall to Joe, with a nod of encouragement. "Don't let 'em get your Angora." "I'll try not to," came the smiling answer. "Are they hard hitters?" "They are if they get the ball right, but it's up to you not to let 'em. Give 'em twisters and teasers." "Play ball," called the umpire again, and the first of the Yale batsmen took his place. Once more came the yells and cheers, and when the lad struck out, which he did with an ease that chagrined his mates, there was derisive yelling from the Harvard stands. "Two more and we've got 'em going!" was shouted. But Jimmie Lee, the diminutive first baseman, was up next, and perhaps the Harvard pitcher did not think him a worthy foeman. At any rate Jimmie caught a ball just where he wanted it, and rapped out a pretty two-bagger. "That's the way! Come on in!" was shouted at him, but Jimmie caught the signal to hug the half-way station, and stayed there. He stole third while they were throwing his successor out at first, and this made two down, with Jimmie ready to come in on half a chance. But the Harvard pitcher tightened up, and the fourth man succumbed to a slow twister on his final strike, making the third out, so that poor Jimmie expired on the last sack. "Now, Joe, show 'em that we can do better than that," begged Shorty, as he donned mask and protector. "Throw me a few and warm up. Then sting 'em in!" Joe was a bit nervous as he went to the box, but he managed to control himself. He seemed to guess just what kind of a ball would fool the batter, and, after two balls had been called on him, sent over two in succession that were named strikes. "That's the way we do it!" yelled a Yale admirer, in a high-pitched voice. "One more and he's done." But the one more did not come. Instead, apparently getting the ball just where he wanted it, the Harvard man swung on it to the tune of three sacks, amid a wild riot of cheers. "Now we've got 'em going!" came Harvard's triumphant yells, and Joe felt the hot blood rush to his face. Kendall saw it, and, guessing the pitcher's state of mind, walked out to the box and whispered: "Don't mind. That was a fluke. It won't happen again. Hold on to yourself--tighten up and we'll get 'em." Joe felt better after that bit of advice, and was calmer when he wound up for the next batter. Though he had been told that Harvard would play a foxy game, he was hardly prepared for what followed. The next player up hit lightly, for a sacrifice, thinking to bring in the run. As it happened, Joe stumbled as he raced to pick up the twisting ball, and though he managed to recover himself, and throw home, while on his knees, the man racing from third beat the throw and the first run for Harvard was in. Then such cheering as there was! Yale was nonplussed for the moment, and her rooters in the stands sat glum and silent. But the spirit of the blue could not long be kept down, and soon the Boola song came booming over the field. It cheered Joe mightily, even though he saw the sneering look on the face of Weston, who sat on the bench, hoping for a chance to supplant him. "Here's where we walk away!" crowed a Harvard man, but the wearers of the crimson did not, for that run was the only one they got that inning. But it was a start, and it looked big below the goose egg that adorned Yale's score. The game went on, varyingly. Yale managed to get two runs in the fifth inning, putting her one ahead, for Joe had done such good work, aided by the rest of the team, when a hit was made, that Harvard had not scored again. "Matson's pitching a great game!" exclaimed Mr. Hasbrook, as he watched eagerly. "I told you we wouldn't make any mistake if we let him go in first," and he looked at his colleagues. "But that was a costly fumble," declared Mr. Benson. "Yes, but no one is perfect. Besides we're ahead." "Only one run." "That's enough to win the game." "But hardly with four more innings to go," rejoined Mr. Whitfield, dubiously. "Look at that!" exclaimed Mr. Hasbrook, in excitement, as Joe grabbed a hot liner and whipped it over to first in time to catch the man napping there. "Matson's more than just a pitcher." "You seem interested in him," spoke Mr. Benson. "I am. I think Joe is going to make one of the finest ball players we've ever had at Yale. He hasn't found himself yet, of course, and he needs more judgment. But he's got a future. I think we'll hear of him somewhere else besides on a college team, too." "I understand he has professional ambitions," admitted Mr. Benson. "But he's got a hard life ahead of him." "Oh, he'll make good!" declared Mr. Hasbrook. And it seemed that Joe was going to in this game. He was pitching wonderfully well, and Harvard only found him for scattering hits. On her part Yale was doing very well. Harvard had tried another pitcher when she found that her first one was being pounded, but it availed little, and when the ninth inning closed, as far as the wearers of the blue were concerned, they were two runs ahead. "We've got 'em! We've got 'em!" yelled Shorty with delight, capering about Joe. "All you've got to do is to hold 'em down!" "Yes--all--but that's a lot," declared the pitcher. "They're going to play fierce now." "But they need three runs to win. You can hold 'em down!" "I'll try," promised Joe, as he went to the mound. It looked as if he was going to make good, but luck, that element that is always present in games, especially in baseball, deserted the blue for the red. The first man up knocked a long, high fly to deep centre. So sure was he, as well as everyone else, that it would be caught, that the player hardly ran, but the ball slipped through the fingers of Ed. Hutchinson as if it had been greased, and the man was safe on second. "Now we've got 'em going," came the cry. "A couple more hits and we've got the game." Joe was wary, but he was playing against experienced youths, and when he found the man on second trying to steal third he threw down, hoping to catch him. His throw was wild, the baseman jumped for it in vain, and the runner went on to third. "Never mind--play for the batter," advised Shorty. Joe did, but somehow he could not get the right twist on the ball. He was hit for a single, and the man on third scored. "Two more and we've got 'em!" yelled the delighted wearers of the crimson. "None down yet." Then, whether it was the effect of luck, or because the Yale team was hypnotized by the wearers of the crimson, was not manifest; but certain it was that the blue players went to pieces. It was not Joe's fault--at least not all his, though he made one error. But this seemed to affect all the Yale team, and the result was a wild finish on the part of Harvard that put them two runs to the good, winning the game. "Hard luck!" exclaimed Shorty, in a dejected voice, as he took off his glove and mask. "Hard luck!" CHAPTER XXV AT WEST POINT "We'd a right to that game!" "Sure we had." "And we did have it in the refrigerator, only it got out through the drain pipe, I guess." "It's tough luck!" The Yale team and its admirers--no, in this case its sympathizers--were coming off the field after the Harvard defeat. All sorts of comments, excuses, philosophical expressions, and revilings at fate, were heard. Joe said but little, though he thought much. Every error--every little point he had missed--seemed to stand out glaringly. "Never mind, old man!" It was Spike who spoke, putting his arm affectionately around his chum's shoulders. "I--I can't help it," replied the pitcher, bitterly. "We lost the game." "That's just it--we did--not you. Cæsar's ghost, man! You can't carry the whole blame of losing the game, any more than you can claim the whole credit when we win. It's all in the day's work." "I know, but----" "'But me no buts,' now Joe. Just brace up. This is only one of the championship games. There are more to come, and we'll get enough to put us on top of the heap. I only wish I had your chances to perform in public." "I wish you had, Spike. But I guess this was my last chance." "Nonsense! They'll play you again. Why Weston--or Avondale either, for that matter--wouldn't have done half as well, I think." "Oh, so that's your opinion; is it?" snapped a voice behind them. There was no need to turn to know that Weston was there, and it took but a glance to show that he was frowning and sneering. "It sure is," retorted Spike, sturdily, for he was not afraid to air his opinions. "Well, you've got another think coming," snapped Weston. "I'll pitch a game pretty soon, and show you what's what." Joe did not make reply, but he wondered if Weston's words held significance. "Maybe they won't let me pitch after this," he mused. Spike, reading his thoughts, said: "Now don't you go to thinking gloomy thinks, Joe. You're all right if you only believe so. Have some confidence in yourself." "I have, but after the way things went to pieces in the last inning I don't know what to think." "Oh, bosh! If you'd had anything like decent support it never would have happened. Hutchinson muffing that ball started us down hill." "That's what!" chimed in Jimmie Lee, coming along just then. "This is only one game--the fortunes of war. We'll beat 'em next time; wallop Princeton, and take the championship." "West Point is next on the list," went on Joe. "I wonder what sort of a game they play?" "Like clockwork," explained Spike. "I saw one, once, and they put it all over Yale. But we've got to win this one." "That's what!" declared Jimmie. "I say, I know a nice place where we can get a dandy rabbit. Let's stay over to-night. I can stand some cuts, we'll take in a show, and have supper after it. Come on, and we can go to New Haven in the morning." "No, I guess I'll go back with the team," said Joe, slowly. "They might think I was trying to dodge if I sneaked off. I'll go back with the rest." "All right--then we'll go to Glory's and have a feed," insisted Jimmie. "I've got to do something to raise my spirits." They went to the dressing rooms, and soon the players and their friends were moving to the hotel where they had stopped. Yale had cheered her successful rivals, and had been cheered in turn, and now, as the team walked through the Cambridge streets they heard, on all sides of them, the jubilant expressions that told of joy over the victory. To Joe it was gall and wormwood, for, in spite of the efforts of his friends to make him feel better, he half blamed himself for the defeat. On the way home in the special train he was gloomy and silent, but later, when he and his chums went to the well-known resort, and heard the Yale songs, and saw the jolly faces of the students--jolly in spite of the defeat--he felt better. "It's only once in a while that the bulldog loses his grip," declared Ricky Hanover. "We'll get a strangle hold on the rest of the games and come out on top of the heap." College life resumed its usual routine after this big game. There were others in prospect, though, and practice went on unceasingly. Joe half feared he would be displaced from his position on the 'varsity, but he was not. True, Weston and Avondale were called on at times, for the policy of the coaches was to have the best pitchers always in reserve. But Joe seemingly was the first one to be called on. Nor did Mr. Hasbrook reproach him, personally, for the defeat. All the players received a calling down for their loose methods in the Harvard game, and their faults were pointed out in no uncertain fashion. In a way the loss of the contest did good, for, following it, the practice was snappier than it had been in a long while. "We want to defeat the army lads!" exclaimed the head coach a few days before the West Point game. Contrary to the general custom the two who were to pitch and catch were announced the night before. It was at a meeting of the team, during which the coaches gave some good advice. Joe saw Weston in close conversation with Mr. Benson and Mr. Whitfield, and he had a fear that the deposed pitcher was trying to "pull strings" and make a place for himself. "Of course you'll pitch, Matson," said Mr. Hasbrook, in such a matter-of-fact voice that Joe was rather startled. "And Kendall will catch." There was a murmur, possibly at the remembrance of the Harvard game, but no one said anything. Joe, who sat beside Spike, whispered: "I wonder when you'll get your chance?" "Oh, some day, maybe," was the answer. "I can wait. I'm glad you've had yours." "I must make good, though," declared Joe, half fearful that he would not. They arrived at West Point to be enthusiastically greeted by the cadets, who took charge of the team, the substitutes and the "rooters" in right royal fashion. A big crowd had assembled, and as the day was a fine one there was every prospect of a game that would be all that was desired. "I wonder if we'll win?" mused Joe, as he got into his uniform and started out on the field. The cadets were already at practice, and showed up well. "A fine, snappy lot of fellows," observed Jimmie Lee. "We've got our work cut out all right." "That's what," declared Hen Johnson. As Joe left the dressing room, he saw Weston talking to Mr. Benson, who was having a conversation with the trainer. The former 'varsity pitcher--who was now second choice it seemed--was much excited, and as Joe passed he heard Weston say: "Well, I want half the game, anyhow. Can't I have it?" "I--I'll see what I can do," replied Mr. Benson. "I'll do all I can." "I'm tired of playing second fiddle," snapped Weston, as he drifted out behind a knot of players. Joe began to think of many things. CHAPTER XXVI A SORE ARM Yale won the toss and chose to go to the bat last--always an advantage it seems--so Joe had to go on the mound as soon as practice was concluded. The usual practice of the home team batting last did not prevail on this occasion. The stands were filled with a mass of spectators, in which pretty girls seemed to predominate. At least Joe assumed that they were pretty for they had escorts who looked on them with eyes that seemed to bear witness to this designation. Many of them were "stunning," to quote De Vere, who took a position in the outfield during practice. "Just so he could be nearer some of the girls," declared Jimmie Lee, who had the reputation of being a "woman hater." "Some crowd," remarked Joe to Spike. "Yes, and a good one, too," declared Joe's room-mate. "It isn't all howling for Yale blood. There are a lot of old grads. here to-day, as well as a lot of army men, and we've got our friends with us. You've got to play for all you're worth." "I intend to," declared Joe, "but----" "Now there you go!" interrupted his chum. "Getting doubtful of yourself. Stop it, I tell you! Just make up your mind that you're going to make good and you will. These fellows are only human, and, though they've got the game down to a fine point, and play together like machinery, on account of their drill practice, yet baseball is always uncertain. Yale luck is bound to turn up sooner or later." "It had better be sooner then," remarked Joe, with a grim smile. "Two defeats, hand running, would about put me out of business. I'd resign." "Nonsense!" declared Spike. "You can make good all right. Remember that Weston is just hankering for a chance to displace you, so don't give it to him. Hold on to the mound." "I intend to. And yet I heard something that set me thinking," and Joe related what he had inadvertently listened to, adding: "I may be taken out after two innings." "Not much!" declared Spike emphatically. "I see what's going on. Weston is trying to work his society pull and get the trainers to pitch him. The cad!" "Well, I can't find the heart to blame him," said Joe, softly. "I can," snapped Spike. "He's putting himself above the team." "Well, maybe it will all come out right," said Joe, but his tone did not support his words, for he ended with a doleful sigh. "Oh, you get out!" cried Spike cheerfully. "You've got the losing bugaboo in a bad form. Cheer up--the worst is yet to come." "Yes, a defeat," murmured Joe, and then Spike hit him such a thump in the back that the pitcher had to gasp to recover his breath, and in doing so he forgot some of his gloomy thoughts. The practice went on over the field, until the umpire called the captains together for the final conference, and an agreement on the ground rules. These were adjusted satisfactorily, and once more the inspiring cry rang out: "Play ball!" "Get 'em over, Joe," advised Shorty Kendall, as the young pitcher walked out to his place. "Shoot 'em in good and hard, but keep 'em over the plate. I know this umpire. He's fair, but he's careful. You'll have to work for all the strikes you get." "And I'm willing to," declared Joe. Somehow his confidence was coming back, and as he caught the new ball which the umpire tossed to him, he felt that he could pitch as he never had before. He was aware of the scowling glance of Weston, who sat on the bench, and, as Joe stooped over to rub some dirt on the ball, to render it less slippery, he wondered if the deposed pitcher had so managed to "pull strings" as to gain his end. "Anyhow, I'll pitch as long as I can," thought Joe with grim determination. The game started. There was nothing remarkable about it, at least at first, so I shall not weary you with details of the strikes, balls, the sliding for bases, the decisions, and the runs. Sufficient to say that at first neither side could score. Joe and the rival pitcher were in good form, and, aside from scattering hits, which were usually only good for a single bag, little was done. For four innings neither side scored a run, though on one decision of the umpire, when Joe came sliding home on a sacrifice by Jimmie Lee, and was called out, there was a howl of protest. "Robber!" "Blind man!" "He was safe by a yard!" "Don't give it!" were some of the mildest epithets and expressions of opinion hurled at the umpire. "Hold on! That isn't Yale's way," said the captain quietly. "It's all right," and the decision stood, though had it been otherwise it would have meant a run for Yale. And so the game went on until the eighth inning, which put West Point one run ahead. There was excitement on the part of the army and its supporters, for in the last half of it Yale had been unable to score, and it looked as if she might lose. "We've got to get 'em!" declared Captain Hatfield grimly, as he and his men took the field for the beginning of the ninth. "Don't let one get past you, Joe, and then we'll bat out two runs." The young pitcher nodded, but he did not smile. He was a little in doubt of himself, for there was a strange numb feeling in his right arm, and he knew that the muscles were weakening. He had worked himself to the limit, not only in this game, but the one with Harvard, and now he began to pay the penalty. Once or twice as he wound up to deliver he felt a sharp twinge that alarmed him. He had not asked to have one of the professional rubbers with the team massage him, for fear the rumor would get out that Yale's pitcher was weakening. So he bore it as best he could. But his arm was sore. Joe had struck out one man, and then he was found for a two-bagger. This man was a notorious base stealer and managed to get to third, while the player following him, who was the heaviest hitter on the team, had been passed by Joe on a signal from the captain, who did not want to take chances. "He's afraid!" came the taunt, and Joe was beginning to get nervous, especially as his pain increased. With two on bases, and only one out, Joe saw come to the bat a man who was an expert bunter. He could lay the ball almost anywhere he wanted to, and our hero realized that he was in for a bad few minutes. It would not do to walk another. He must get this man. What he had feared came to pass. The player bunted and the ball came lazily rolling toward the pitcher. Joe and Kendall started for it, and then Joe yelled: "I'll get it--go back!" He felt himself slipping on a pebble, but recovered with a wrench that strained his sore arm. With an effort he managed to get the ball. He knew that if he threw it from the unnatural and disadvantageous position he had assumed in recovering it, he would make his sore arm worse. But there was no help for it. The man on third had started for home. Joe, with a mighty effort, threw to Kendall, who caught it and tagged his quarry. "Out!" called the umpire. One run was saved. Then, like a flash the catcher threw to third, for the man who had been on first, having reached second, rather imprudently tried for another bag. He was tagged there by as neat a double play as could be desired, and the West Pointers had finished, with but the one run to their advantage. "We need one to tie and two to win," exclaimed Shorty to Joe, as he tossed his big mitt into the air. "Why," he added, "what's the matter with your arm?" for he saw it hanging down limp. "A strain," replied Joe shortly. "I'm all right." "You are not! McLeary must look at you. We'll play somebody else this inning. You go get rubbed." And Joe was glad enough to do so. CHAPTER XXVII THE ACCUSATION Yale won from West Point. It was almost a foregone conclusion after that sensational inning when Joe went down and out with his sprained arm, after saving the game. His mates rallied to the support of, not only himself, but the whole team, and, the cadets, having been held runless, the wearers of the blue made a determined stand. Weston was called on to go in and replace Joe, and the former 'varsity pitcher, in spite of his feeling against our hero, had that in him which made him do his best in spite of the odds against him. Weston was half hoping that the game would be a tie, which would give him a chance to go on the mound and show what he could do at pitching against a formidable opponent of Yale. But it was not to be, though he brought in one of the winning runs for the New Haven bulldog. The crowd went wild when they saw what a game fight the visitors were putting up, and even the supporters of the army lads hailed them with delight as they pounded the cadet pitcher, for everyone likes to see a good play, no matter if it is made by the other side. "Oh, wow! A pretty hit!" yelled the throng as Weston sent a two-bagger well out in the field. His face flushed with pleasure, as he speeded around, and, probably, had he been taken in hand then, subsequent events might not have happened, for his unreasonable hatred against Joe might have been dissipated. But no one did, and the result was that Weston felt he had been wrongly treated, and he resolved to get even. "Well played, boys, well played!" exclaimed the captain of the cadets, as he came up to shake hands with Hatfield. "You did us up good and proper. We can't buck such a pitcher as you have. What happened to him!" "Sprained arm," explained Spike, who stood near. "Too bad! Tell him to take care of it," rejoined the cadet. "Such twirlers as he is are few and far between. Well, you beat us, but that's no reason why you can do it again. We'll have your scalps next year. Now, boys, altogether! Show 'em how West Pointers can yell." The cheer for the Yale team broke out in a gladsome yell, tinged with regret, perhaps, for West Point had been sure of winning, especially toward the end, but there was no ill-feeling showing in the cries that echoed over the field. In turn the New Haven bulldog barked his admiration of the gallant opponents, and then came a special cheer for Joe Matson, whose plucky play had made it possible for Yale to win. Joe, in the dressing room, heard his name, and flushed with delight. Trainer McLeary was rubbing his sore arm. "Hurt much?" the man asked, as he massaged the strained muscles. "Some," admitted Joe, trying not to wince as the pain shot along his arm. "How are we making out?" "We win," declared McLeary, as a scout brought him word. "And you did it." "Not by pitching," asserted Joe. "No, perhaps not. But every game isn't won by pitching. There are lots of other plays besides that. Now you've got to take care of this arm." "Is it bad?" "Bad enough so you can't use it right away. You've got to have a rest. You've torn one of the small ligaments slightly, and it will have to heal. No baseball for you for a week." "No!" cried Joe aghast. "No, sir! Not if you want to play the rest of the season," replied the trainer. Now Joe did want to finish out the season, whether he came back to Yale or not, for there were big games yet in prospect, particularly that with Princeton, and, if it was necessary to play a third one, it would take place on the big New York Polo Grounds. "And, oh! if I could only pitch before that crowd!" thought Joe, in a moment of anticipated delight. "There, I guess you'll do, if you keep it well wrapped up, stay out of draughts and don't use it," said the trainer finally, as he bound up Joe's twirling wing. "No practice, even, for a week, and then very light." Joe half groaned, and made a wry face, but there was no help for it, he realized that. He was surrounded by his mates, as the game ended, and many were the congratulations, mingled with commiserations, as they greeted him. Weston even condescended to say: "Hope you won't be knocked out long, old man." "Thanks," replied Joe dryly. "It'll be a week anyhow." "A week!" exclaimed Weston, and he could not keep the delight from showing on his face. Then he hurried off to see one of the coaches. Joe had little doubt what it meant. Weston was going to try for his old place again while Joe was unable to pitch. "Well," remarked De Vere, as his crony came out of the dressing rooms, whither he had gone. "I should think you could drop your other game, now that's he out of it." "Not much!" exclaimed Weston, with some passion. "This won't last. He'll be back pitching again, and do me out of it. What I'm going to do won't hurt him much, and it will give me a chance. I'm entitled to it." "I guess you are, old man." The Yale team went back jubilant, and there was a great celebration in New Haven when the ball nine arrived. Fires were made, and the campus as well as the streets about the college were thronged with students. There were marches, and songs, and Joe Matson's name was cheered again and again. Meanwhile our hero was not having a very delightful time. Not only was he in pain, but he worried lest the injury to his arm prove permanent. "If I shouldn't be able to pitch again!" he exclaimed to Spike, in their room. "Forget it!" advised the other. "You'll be at it again in a little while. Just take it easy." And Joe tried to, but it was hard work. It was galling to go to practice and watch others play the game while he sat and looked on--especially when Weston was pitching. But there was no help for it. And then, like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, it came. The week had passed and Joe, who had done some light practice, was sent in to pitch a couple of innings against the scrub. Weston was pulled out, and he went to the bench with a scowl. "I'll get him yet," he muttered to De Vere. "He's put me out of it again." "I'd go slow," was the advice. "It's been slow enough as it is," growled the other. The day for the first Princeton game was at hand. It was to be played at Yale, and everyone was on edge for the contest. Joe was practically slated to pitch, and he felt his responsibility. His arm was in good shape again. The night before the game the Dean sent for Joe to come to his office. "What's up now?" demanded Spike, as his friend received the summons. "Have you won a scholarship, or is the Dean going to beg of you not to throw the game?" "Both, I guess," answered Joe with a laugh. In his heart he wondered what the summons meant. He was soon to learn. "I have sent for you, Mr. Matson," said the Dean gravely, "to enable you to make some answer to a serious accusation that has been brought against you." "What is it?" faltered the pitcher. "Do you remember, some time ago," the Dean went on, "that some red paint was put on the steps of the house of one of the professors? The gentleman slipped, fell in the paint, and a very rare manuscript was ruined. Do you remember?" "Yes," answered Joe quietly, wondering if he was to be asked to tell what he knew. "Well," went on the Dean, "have you anything to confess?" "Who, me? Confess? Why, no, sir," answered Joe. "I don't know what you mean." "Then I must tell you. You have been accused of putting the red paint on the steps, and, unless you prove yourself innocent you can take no further part in athletics, and you may be suspended." CHAPTER XXVIII VINDICATION Joe fairly staggered back, so startled was he by the words of the Dean--and, not only the words, but the manner--for the Dean was solemn, and there was a vindictiveness about him that Joe had never seen before. "Why--why, what do you mean?" gasped Joe. "I never put the red paint on the steps!" "No?" queried the Dean coldly. "Then perhaps you can explain how this pot of red paint came to be hidden in your closet." "My closet!" cried Joe, and at once a memory of the crimson stain on his coat came to him. "I never----" "Wait," went on the Dean coldly. "I will explain. It is not altogether circumstantial evidence on which I am accusing you. The information came to me--anonymously I regret to say--that you had some red paint in your closet. The spoiling of the valuable manuscripts was such an offence that I decided to forego, for once, my objection to acting on anonymous information. I did ignore one letter that accused you----" "Accused me!" burst out Joe, remembering the incident in chapel. "Yes. But wait, I am not finished. I had your room examined in your absence, and we found--this." He held up a pot of red paint. "I had the paint on the steps analyzed," went on the Dean. "It is of exactly the same chemical mixture as this. Moreover we found where this paint was purchased, and the dealer says he sold it to a student, but he will not run the risk of identifying him. But I deem this evidence enough to bar you from athletics, though I will not expel or punish you." Barred from athletics! To Joe, with the baseball season approaching the championship crisis, that was worse than being expelled. "I--I never did it!" he cried. "Do you know who did, if you did not?" asked the Dean. Like a flash it came to Joe. He could not tell. He could not utter his suspicions, though he was sure in his own heart that Weston was the guilty one--the twice guilty one, for Joe was sure his enemy had put the paint in the closet to direct suspicion to him. "Well?" asked the Dean, coldly. "I--I have nothing to say," faltered Joe. "Very well. You may go. I shall not make this matter public, except to issue the order barring you from athletics." Without a word Joe left. Inside of an hour it was noised all over the college that he could not pitch against Princeton, and great was the regret, mingled with anxiety. "What in thunder is up?" asked Captain Hatfield, as he sought out Joe. "Nothing." "Oh, come off! Can't you tell?" "No," answered Joe, and that was all he would say. Joe did not go to the Yale-Princeton game. Yale won. Won easily, though had Weston, who pitched, not been ably supported the story might have been a different one. "One scalp for us," announced Spike. "Yes," assented Joe gloomily. "Oh, you get out!" cried Spike. "I'm not going to stand for this. You've got to keep in form. There's no telling when this thing will all come out right, and you want to be in condition to pitch. You and I will keep up practice. The Dean can't stop you from that." Nor did he try, and, though Joe was hard to move at first, he soon consented to indulge in pitching practice with his chum. And then life at Yale went on much as before, though Joe's heart was bitter. He seldom saw Weston, who was again first choice for 'varsity pitcher. Weston did fairly well, too, though some games Yale should have won she lost. But it was to Princeton that all eyes turned, looking for the college championship. Could Yale win the next contest? The answer was not long delayed. Two weeks later the bulldog invaded the tiger's lair and was eaten up--to the end of his stubby tail. Yale received the worst beating in her history. "And it's up to Weston!" declared Spike savagely, when he came back from Princeton. "He was absolutely rotten. Went up in the air first shot, and they got seven runs the first inning. Then it was all over but the shouting, for Avondale and McAnish couldn't fill in the gap. Oh, Joe, if you could only pitch!" "But I can't." "You've just got to! Yale has a chance yet. It's a tie now for the championship. The deciding game will be played on the New York Polo Grounds in two weeks. You've got to pitch!" "I don't see how I can." "Well, I'm going to!" and Spike strode from the room, his face ablaze with anger and firm with determination. It seems that one of the janitors about the college had a son who was an epileptic. The lad was not badly afflicted and was able, most of the time, to help his father, sometimes doing the cleaning at one of the student clubs. It was to this club that Spike went when he burst out of his room, intent on finding, in some fashion, a way of vindicating Joe, for he was firm in his belief that Joe was innocent in spite of the silence. There had been rain the night before, and on a billboard adjoining the club room some of the gaudy red and yellow posters, announcing the final Yale-Princeton game, had been torn off. Hardly knowing what he was doing, Spike picked up part of a sheet, colored a vivid red. At that moment, from the side entrance, Charlie, the janitor's son, came out, and Spike, who had often given him odd tasks to do, and who felt sorry for the afflicted one, playfully thrust the red paper at him, saying: "Here, Charlie, take it home, and let your little sister cut out some paper dolls." He slapped the paper on the lad's hand, and being damp and pasty it stuck there, like a splotch of blood. Charlie shrank back, cowering and frightened, whimpering like a child, and mumbling: "Don't! Oh, don't Mr. Poole. Don't put that on me. I--I can't bear it. It's been haunting me. I'll tell all I know. The red paint--I put it there. But he--he made me. Some of it got on my hand, and I wiped it off on his coat. Oh, the blood color! Take it away. I--I can't stand it!" "What's that?" fairly yelled Spike. "Red paint? Here, tell me all you know! Jove, I begin to see things now!" "Take it off! Take it off!" begged Charlie, and he trembled so that Spike feared he would have a seizure. "There--there--it's all right," he said soothingly. "I'll take it off," and he removed the offending paper. "Now you come with me, and tell me all about it," he went on quietly. And Charlie obeyed, like a child. A little later Spike was closeted with the Dean, taking Charlie with him, and when they came out Joe's room-mate said: "Then the ban is removed, sir?" "Certainly, Poole," replied the Dean, "and I will make a public explanation in the morning. I am very sorry this occurred, and I deeply regret it. But circumstances pointed to him, and I felt I had to act. Never again, though, shall I place any faith in an anonymous letter. Yes, everything will be all right. If Matson had only spoken, though!" "It's just like him not to," said Spike. CHAPTER XXIX BUCKING THE TIGER "Hurray! Matson is going to pitch for us!" "Get out! He's barred!" "Not now. It's all off. He'll pitch against Princeton!" "Where'd you hear it?" "What's the matter with Weston?" "Oh, he's gone--vamoosed--flew the coop. Couldn't stand the disgrace. It'll all be out in the morning." Student meeting student on the campus, in dormitories, in the commons, at Glory's--anywhere in fact, passed these, and similar remarks. "And to think you knew, all the while, that Weston put that red paint on the steps, and you wouldn't squeal!" cried Spike, clapping his chum on the shoulder. "Would you?" asked Joe quietly. "Well--er--now you have got me, old man! But it's all right. Come on out and celebrate." And they celebrated as they never had before. Joe was given an ovation when he entered Glory's, and every member of the nine--substitutes and all--were there to do him honor. That is, all but Weston and De Vere. They had quietly taken themselves from Yale. The explanation was simple. Weston had, as my readers know already, put the red paint on the professor's steps. He was not discovered, for Joe kept quiet. Then, when our hero was preferred as pitcher, in the bitterness of his heart, Weston planned to throw suspicion on him. He sent the first anonymous letter, though Avondale knew nothing of it. Then Weston took De Vere into his confidence and the two evolved the scheme of smuggling the pot of red paint, that Weston had used, into Joe's closet. The epileptic lad, Charlie, was the innocent medium, and once the paint was hidden Weston sent the second anonymous letter to the Dean, telling about it. What happened is well known. Joe was accused, and would not inform on another to save himself. Perhaps it was the wrong thing to do--certainly he owed it to himself to have the right to vindication. I am not defending him, I am only telling of what happened. Then came the dramatic episode, when Spike unwittingly brought out the truth from Charlie. It seems that the boy's conscience had been troubling him, for though Weston pretended it was only an innocent joke he was playing on Joe, the lad suspected something. And so the full explanation was made to the Dean, and the latter, publicly, at chapel the next morning, begged Joe's pardon, and restored him to his full rights. As for Weston and De Vere, they were not in evidence. They had left Yale. "Sharp practice from now on," ordered Mr. Hasbrook, when the excitement had quieted down somewhat. "We'll have to replace De Vere at right field, but otherwise the team will be the same as before. Matson, you'll pitch, of course." "And he'll win for us, too!" cried Spike. "I'm sure I hope so," went on the head coach. "Spike, if it wasn't so late in the season I'd let you catch. You deserve something for your share in this." "Oh, I wouldn't think of catching now, though it would be great," declared Joe's chum. "Give me a chance next season." "I sure will," said the head coach. "Get busy now, everybody. We've got to beat Princeton!" "Oh, Joe, do you think we'll win?" asked Spike, half nervously, the night before they were to start for New York to meet their rivals. "Win! Of course we'll win!" cried Joe, and though so much depended on him, he was the coolest member of the team. CHAPTER XXX THE CHAMPIONSHIP Such a crowd as filled the big Polo Grounds! The grandstands seemed full, and the bleachers too, but the elevated and surface roads brought more constantly, and the honking autos added to the clamor. It was a perfect day, and the ball field--one of the best in the world--where professionals meet professionals--was laid out with mathematical precision. From their lairs near the press boxes the tigers trotted to be welcomed with shouts and yells from their supporters and the songs of their fellows. "They beat us once--as we did them," said Joe in a low voice. "They may beat us again." "Not much!" cried Spike. "A Yale victory is in the air. I can feel it! Look at that blue," and he pointed to the sky, "and then at that," and he waved toward the azure-hued Yale stand, "and say we're going to lose! I guess not!" "A cheer for every man!" yelled the leader of the Princeton cheer masters, who were armed with big megaphones as were their New Haven rivals, except that the ribbons were of the tiger's stripes. "A cheer for every man!" And then, as the Jersey cheer was howled there followed each time the name of some player--sweet music to their ears, no doubt. "They're signalling to us," said Spike a little later. "I guess they want us inside to come out all in a bunch, as Princeton did." This was the import of the message delivered to them a little later as they filed into the dressing rooms, where the team and substitutes now were. "Remember, boys," said the captain solemnly, "we've got to win. It's Yale's luck against Princeton's maybe, but even with that it's got to be bulldog pluck against the tiger's fierceness. They can play ball." "And so can we!" declared several, in low voices. "Prove it--by beating 'em!" was the quick retort. "Pile out now, and have some snap to you!" If Yale had gone wild, so now did the students from her rival college. The orange and black, which had been in evidence on the opposite stand to that which showed the blue, now burst forth in a frenzy of color. Hats were tossed in the air, canes too, and one excited man dashed his tall silk head covering about with such energy that he split it on the walking stick of a gentleman seated near him. "I beg your pardon," said the one with the stick. "Don't mention it! My fault entirely--I'm too excited, I guess, but I used to play on the Princeton team years ago, and I came to-day to see her win. I don't care for a hat--I can buy lots more. But Princeton is going to win! Wow!" "I'm sorry for you," said the other with a smile. "But Yale has the bulge to-day." "Never!" "I tell you she has!" And then the argument began, good-natured enough, but only one of many like it going on all about the grounds. "Hark!" said Joe to Spike, as they were walking back toward the diamond. "Isn't that great?" There had come a momentary hush, and the sweet strains of the Princeton song--"Orange and Black," floated over the big diamond. Many of the spectators--former college men--joined in, Yale ceased her cheering while this was rendered, and then came a burst of applause, for the melody was exceptionally well rendered. "Well, they may sing, but they can't play ball," said Spike. Out came the bulldogs, and at once it seemed as if a bit of blue sky had suddenly descended on the stands, so solid was the mass of ultramarine color displayed, in contrast to the orange and black. "Joe, old man, isn't it great!" cried Spike, capering about. "To think that I'm really going to play in this big championship game!" "It's fine!" exclaimed Joe, yet he himself was thinking how glorious it would be if he was only a professional, and could occupy the mound of the Polo Grounds regularly instead of on this rare occasion. "And I will, too, some day!" he murmured. "Play ball!" The practice was over, the last conference between coaches, pitchers, catchers and captains had been held. The championship was now to be contested for. Yale had won the toss and taken last chance at bat. "Play ball!" Joe walked to the mound, a trifle nervous, as anyone would have been under the circumstances, but, with it all, holding himself well in hand. As he got ready to deliver the customary five balls before attending to the batter a quiet-appearing man, sitting in one of the press boxes, moved so as to get a better view of the young pitcher. "What's the matter, Mack?" asked one of the reporters. "Think you see some bushleaguers in this bunch of college boys?" "You never can tell," was the quiet answer. "I'm always on the lookout for recruits, and I'm particularly in need of a good pitcher." "Well, both teams have some good ones I hear," went on the newspaper man, and then he devoted himself to sending out an account of the game to his paper. With the first ball that he delivered Joe knew that he was in shape to pitch the game of his career. He was sure of his control, and he realized that with a little care he could place the horsehide just where he wanted it to go. "If we can only bat a few we've got this cinched," decided Joe, always aware, though, of the fatal element of luck. The early results seemed to justify his confidence. For four innings not a Princeton man got farther than first base, and the crowd was wildly cheering him. "If it will only last," he thought, and the memory of his sore arm came to him as a shock. But he had not suffered from it since, and he hoped he would not. On her part Yale had managed to get one run across, and thus the game stood at the beginning of the fifth inning. In that, for one fearful moment, Joe had fears. He had been signalled to walk the heaviest batter, but something went wrong, and the man plugged a three bagger that got past Spike. The next man up was a good hitter, and Kendall, in fear and trembling, signalled for another pass. But Joe shook his head. He was going to try to strike him out. And he did. Amid wild roars the man was retired, and when two more had gone down, and Princeton was still without a run, pandemonium broke loose. Though Yale tried with all her might to sweeten the score, she could not--at least in the next two innings. She batted well, but Princeton seemed to be right on the ball every time. And with only one run as a margin, the game was far from won. "But we'll do it!" cried Hatfield, fiercely. "That's what!" echoed Joe. Yale's chance came in the eighth inning, when, owing to an error by the Princeton shortstop, a man got to first. None were out, and Joe rapped out a pretty two-bagger that, followed by a wild throw home, enabled a man to score. Then Joe was brought in on a sacrifice hit, and when the inning ended Yale had three more runs, making the score four to nothing in her favor. Once more the riot of blue shot over the stands, while the orange and black fluttered listlessly. But the tiger was growling in his lair, while the bulldog was thus barking, and every Yale player knew that fortune might yet turn against them. But when Princeton had her last chance to bat, and only managed to get one run, it was all over but the shouting. Joe had pitched magnificently, and when the last chance of the Princeton tiger had vanished there was a rush for the young pitcher, and he was fairly carried away on the shoulders of his fellows. And such cheering as there was! "Yale wins!" "Yale is champion!" "Three cheers for Baseball Joe!" The field swarmed with the spectators, who hardly stayed to hear the victors and vanquished cheer each other. The quiet man who had sat in the press box managed to get a word to Joe, though he had to shout to be heard above the din. The young pitcher looked startled, then pleased, and his voice faltered as he answered; after a little more talk: "But supposing I don't make good, Mr.--er--?" "Mack is my name, I represent the manager; in fact I'm his assistant." "But supposing I don't make good?" repeated Joe. "I know I can do pretty well here, but, as you say, I don't seem to take to the college life. Still, I wouldn't want to make a public try as I'd have to, and then give up. It would bar me from the amateur ranks forever." "Yes, I know that," was the answer, "but you needn't be afraid. Look here, Matson. This isn't the first time I've done such a thing as this. It's part of my business, and part of my business to know what I'm doing. I can size a player up as quick as a horse buyer can a spavined nag. I've sized you up, and I know you're all wool and a yard wide." "But this is the first time you've seen me play." "It was enough, I tell you." "And, as I said," went on Joe, "I don't want to be in the position of putting myself out of the game. If I go in with you, and fail, I probably never could get another chance." "Oh, yes you could. But look here, Matson, you mustn't think of failure. You're not built that way. Now aren't you sport enough to take a chance?" Joe was silent for a moment. He thought of many things--of his overpowering ambition, and then answered falteringly: "I--I'm willing to try." "All right, then I'll sign you," was the answer. Another rush of the delirious students almost carried Joe off his feet. He was cheered and cheered again. Through the mob came pushing and shoving the president of the exclusive Anvil Club. "I say, Matson," he began, "this is great! Yale has come into her own again. We'd like the honor of electing you to our society, and would be pleased to have you make application." "I'm much obliged to you," spoke Joe slowly, "but I'm afraid I can't." "You can't! Why not?" "Because I'm going to leave Yale!" "Leave Yale!" came the indignant protest. "What for?" "Because I have just accepted, tentatively, an offer from one of the managers of a professional league to pitch for him the rest of this season, and all of next," replied Joe quietly. "That's right," confirmed the man who had whispered in our hero's ear. "I know a good pitcher when I see one, and there is no use of Matson wearing himself out on a college nine. He is cut out for a professional!" And to all the protests of his classmates Joe would not give in. He knew that college was no place for him, and as the chance had come to get into the professional ranks, at good pay, he was going to take it; provided, of course, that his folks were willing. How he did, and what happened, will be told in the next volume of this series, to be called, "Baseball Joe in the Central League; Or, Making Good as a Professional Pitcher." "Oh, Joe, can't you reconsider, and stay at Yale?" begged Spike, when he and his chum, after the exciting events of the championship game, were in their room once more. "I don't know what I'm going to do without you." "Spike, old man," said Joe, and his voice broke a little. "I would like to stay, for your sake, and for some of the other fine fellows I've met here. I'd like to stay in spite of the unpleasant experience I've had. I know it's going to break mother all up to hear I've left college, but I'm not cut out for it. I'm a square peg in a round hole. I want to get into professional baseball, and I've just _got_ to. I shouldn't be happy here." "Well, if that's the case," said Spike, with a sigh, "I'm not going to say anything more. Only it sure is tough luck. Yale will miss you." "And I'll miss her, too, in a way. But my place isn't here." There was silence between them for a space, and then Spike said softly: "Come on down to Glory's--for the last time. Joe." And they went out together. THE END THE BASEBALL JOE SERIES By LESTER CHADWICK _12mo. Illustrated. Price 50 cents per volume._ _Postage 10 cents additional._ [Illustration] 1. BASEBALL JOE OF THE SILVER STARS _or The Rivals of Riverside_ 2. BASEBALL JOE ON THE SCHOOL NINE _or Pitching for the Blue Banner_ 3. BASEBALL JOE AT YALE _or Pitching for the College Championship_ 4. BASEBALL JOE IN THE CENTRAL LEAGUE _or Making Good as a Professional Pitcher_ 5. BASEBALL JOE IN THE BIG LEAGUE _or A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles_ 6. BASEBALL JOE ON THE GIANTS _or Making Good as a Twirler in the Metropolis_ 7. BASEBALL JOE IN THE WORLD SERIES _or Pitching for the Championship_ 8. BASEBALL JOE AROUND THE WORLD _or Pitching on a Grand Tour_ 9. BASEBALL JOE: HOME RUN KING _or The Greatest Pitcher and Batter on Record_ 10. BASEBALL JOE SAVING THE LEAGUE _or Breaking Up a Great Conspiracy_ 11. BASEBALL JOE CAPTAIN OF THE TEAM _or Bitter Struggles on the Diamond_ 12. BASEBALL JOE CHAMPION OF THE LEAGUE _or The Record that was Worth While_ 13. BASEBALL JOE CLUB OWNER _or Putting the Home Town on the Map_ 14. BASEBALL JOE PITCHING WIZARD _or Triumphs Off and On the Diamond_ _Send for Our Free Illustrated Catalogue._ CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York THE BOMBA BOOKS By ROY ROCKWOOD _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. With colored jacket._ _Price 50 cents per volume._ _Postage 10 cents additional._ [Illustration] _Bomba lived far back in the jungles of the Amazon with a half-demented naturalist who told the lad nothing of his past. The jungle boy was a lover of birds, and hunted animals with a bow and arrow and his trusty machete. He had a primitive education in some things, and his daring adventures will be followed with breathless interest by thousands._ 1. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY 2. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AT THE MOVING MOUNTAIN 3. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AT THE GIANT CATARACT 4. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY ON JAGUAR ISLAND 5. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY IN THE ABANDONED CITY 6. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY ON TERROR TRAIL 7. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY IN THE SWAMP OF DEATH 8. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AMONG THE SLAVES 9. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY ON THE UNDERGROUND RIVER 10. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AND THE LOST EXPLORERS 11. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY IN A STRANGE LAND 12. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AMONG THE PYGMIES _Send for Our Free Illustrated Catalogue._ CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York THE BOY HUNTERS SERIES By CAPTAIN RALPH BONEHILL [Illustration] _12mo. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors._ _Price 50 cents per volume. Postage 10 cents additional._ _Captain Ralph Bonehill is one of the best known and most popular writers for young people. In this series he shows, as no other writer can, the joy, glory and happiness of outdoor life._ =FOUR BOY HUNTERS= _or The Outing of the Gun Club_ A fine, breezy story of the woods and waters, of adventures in search of game, and of great times around the campfire, told in Captain Bonehill's best style. In the book are given full directions for camping out. =GUNS AND SNOWSHOES= _or The Winter Outing of the Young Hunters_ In this volume the young hunters leave home for a winter outing on the shores of a small lake. They hunt and trap to their hearts' content and have adventures in plenty, all calculated to make boys "sit up and take notice." A good healthy book; one with the odor of the pine forests and the glare of the welcome campfire in every chapter. =YOUNG HUNTERS OF THE LAKE= _or Out with Rod and Gun_ Another tale of woods and waters, with some strong hunting scenes and a good deal of mystery. The three volumes make a splendid outdoor series. =OUT WITH GUN AND CAMERA= _or The Boy Hunters in the Mountains_ Takes up the new fad of photographing wild animals as well as shooting them. An escaped circus chimpanzee and an escaped lion add to the interest of the narrative. _Send for Our Free Illustrated Catalogue._ CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York THE JEWEL SERIES By AMES THOMPSON [Illustration] _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in colors._ _Price 50 cents per volume._ _Postage 10 cents additional._ _A series of stories brimming with hardy adventure, vivid and accurate in detail, and with a good foundation of probability. They take the reader realistically to the scene of action. Besides being lively and full of real situations, they are written in a straightforward way very attractive to boy readers._ 1. THE ADVENTURE BOYS _and the_ VALLEY OF DIAMONDS In this book they form a party of five, and with the aid of a shrewd, level-headed sailor named Stanley Green, they find a valley of diamonds in the heart of Africa. 2. THE ADVENTURE BOYS _and the_ RIVER OF EMERALDS With a guide, they set out to find the River of Emeralds. But masked foes, emeralds, and falling mountains are all in the day's fun for these Adventure Boys. 3. THE ADVENTURE BOYS _and the_ LAGOON OF PEARLS This time the group starts out on a cruise simply for pleasure, but their adventuresome spirits lead them into the thick of things on a South Sea cannibal island. 4. THE ADVENTURE BOYS _and the_ TEMPLE OF RUBIES The Adventure Boys find plenty of thrills when they hit the ruby trail, and soon discover that they are marked by some sinister influence to keep them from reaching the Ruby. 5. THE ADVENTURE BOYS _and the_ ISLAND OF SAPPHIRES The paths of the young jewel hunters lead to a mysterious island where the treasures are concealed. _Send for Our Free Illustrated Catalogue._ CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York Transcriber's Notes: --Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). --Text in bold is enclosed by "equal" signs (=bold=). --Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected. --Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved. --Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved. --Retained author's long dash style. 
41847	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustration. See 41847-h.htm or 41847-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41847/41847-h/41847-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41847/41847-h.zip) Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=). [Illustration: JOE STEADIED HIMSELF, AND SMILED AT HIS OPPONENT.] BASEBALL JOE IN THE CENTRAL LEAGUE Or Making Good as a Professional Pitcher by LESTER CHADWICK Author of "Baseball Joe of the Silver Stars," "Baseball Joe at Yale," "The Rival Pitchers," "The Eight-Oared Victors," etc. Illustrated [Illustration] New York Cupples & Leon Company * * * * * =BOOKS BY LESTER CHADWICK= =THE BASEBALL JOE SERIES= =12mo. Cloth. Illustrated= BASEBALL JOE OF THE SILVER STARS Or The Rivals of Riverside BASEBALL JOE ON THE SCHOOL NINE Or Pitching for the Blue Banner BASEBALL JOE AT YALE Or Pitching for the College Championship BASEBALL JOE IN THE CENTRAL LEAGUE Or Making Good as a Professional Pitcher (_Other Volumes in Preparation_) =THE COLLEGE SPORTS SERIES= =12mo. Cloth. Illustrated= THE RIVAL PITCHERS A Story of College Baseball A QUARTER-BACK'S PLUCK A Story of College Football BATTING TO WIN A Story of College Baseball THE WINNING TOUCHDOWN A Story of College Football THE EIGHT-OARED VICTORS A Story of College Water Sports (_Other Volumes in Preparation_) =CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, New York= * * * * * Copyright, 1914, by Cupples & Leon Company =Baseball Joe in the Central League= Printed in U. S. A. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I DANGER 1 II OFF FOR THE SOUTH 13 III AN ACCUSATION 23 IV IN TRAINING 30 V THE CLASH 41 VI A STRAIGHT THROW 50 VII THE GIRL 58 VIII A PARTING 67 IX THE FIRST LEAGUE GAME 74 X BITTERNESS 84 XI OLD POP CONSOLES 92 XII THE QUEER VALISE 98 XIII MABEL 105 XIV BAD NEWS 113 XV JOE'S PLUCK 120 XVI A SLIM CHANCE 128 XVII OLD POP AGAIN 136 XVIII IN DESPAIR 144 XIX A NEW HOLD 153 XX JOE'S TRIUMPH 161 XXI A DANGER SIGNAL 168 XXII VICTORY 176 XXIII THE TRAMP AGAIN 185 XXIV ON THE TRACK 191 XXV REGGIE'S AUTO 198 XXVI THE TRAMP RENDEZVOUS 206 XXVII THE SLOW WATCH 212 XXVIII THE RACE 220 XXIX A DIAMOND BATTLE 228 XXX THE PENNANT 237 BASEBALL JOE IN THE CENTRAL LEAGUE CHAPTER I DANGER "Why, here's Joe!" "So soon? I didn't expect him until night." The girl who had uttered the first exclamation, and her mother whose surprise was manifested in the second, hurried to the door of the cottage, up the gravel walk to which a tall, athletic youth was then striding, swinging a heavy valise as though he enjoyed the weight of it. "Hello, Mother!" he called gaily. "How are you, Sis?" and a moment later Joe Matson was alternating his marks of affection between his mother and sister. "Well, it's good to be home again!" he went on, looking into the two faces which showed the pleasure felt in the presence of the lad. "Mighty good to be home again!" "And we're glad to have him; aren't we, Mother?" "Yes, Clara, of course," and Mrs. Matson spoke with a hesitation that her son could not help noticing. "Of course we just love to have you home Joe----" "There, now, Mother, I know what you're going to say!" he interrupted with good-natured raillery. "You rather wish I'd stuck on there at Yale, turning into a fossil, or something like that, and----" "Oh, Joe! Of course I didn't want you to turn into a fossil," objected his mother, in shocked tones. "But I did hope that you might----" "Become a sky-pilot! Is that it, Momsey?" and he put his arm about her slender waist. "Joe Matson! What a way to talk about a minister!" she cried. "The idea!" "Well, Mother, I meant no disrespect. A sky-pilot is an ancient and honorable calling, but not for me. So here I am. Yale will have to worry along without yours truly, and I guess she'll make out fairly well. But how is everything? Seen any of the fellows lately? How's father? How's the business?" The last two questions seemed to open a painful subject, for mother and daughter looked at one another as though each one was saying: "You tell him!" Joe Matson sensed that something disagreeable was in the air. "What is it?" he demanded, turning from his mother to his sister. "What has happened?" It was not Joe's way to shrink from danger, or from a disagreeable duty. And part of his success as a baseball pitcher was due to this very fact. Now he was aware that something had gone amiss since his last visit home, and he wanted to know what it was. He put his arms on his mother's shoulders--frail little shoulders they were, too--yet they had borne many heavy burdens of which Joe knew nothing. What mother's shoulders have not? The lad looked into her eyes--eyes that held a hint of pain. His own were clear and bright--they snapped with life and youthful vigor. "What is it, Momsey?" he asked softly. "Don't be afraid to tell me. Has anything happened to dad?" "Oh, no, it isn't anything like that, Joe," said Clara quickly. "We didn't write to you about it for fear you'd worry and lose that last big game with Princeton. It's only that----" "Your father has lost some money!" interrupted Mrs. Matson, wishing to have the disagreeable truth out at once. "Oh, if that's all, we can soon fix that!" cried Joe, gaily, as though it was the easiest thing in the world. "Just wait until I begin drawing my salary as pitcher for the Pittston team in the Central League, and then you'll be on Easy Street." "Oh, but it's a great deal of money, Joe!" spoke Clara in rather awed tones. "Well, you haven't heard what my salary is to be." "You mustn't make it so serious, Clara," interposed Mrs. Matson. "Your father hasn't exactly lost the money, Joe. But he has made a number of investments that seem likely to turn out badly, and there's a chance that he'll have to lose, just as some others will." "Oh, well, if there's a chance, what's the use of worrying until you have to?" asked Joe, boy-like. "The chances are pretty good--or, rather, pretty bad--that the money will go," said Mrs. Matson with a sigh. "Oh, dear! Isn't it too bad, after all his hard work!" "There, there, Mother!" exclaimed the lad, soothingly. "Let's talk about something pleasant. I'll go down to the works soon, and see dad. Just now I'm as hungry as a--well, as a ball player after he's won out in the world's series. Got anything to eat in the house?" "Of course!" exclaimed Clara, with a laugh, "though whether it will suit your high and mightiness, after what you have been used to at college, I can't say." "Oh, I'm not fussy, Sis! Trot out a broiled lobster or two, half a roast chicken, some oysters, a little salad and a cup of coffee and I'll try and make that do until the regular meal is ready!" They laughed at his infectious good-humor, and a look of relief showed on Mrs. Matson's face. But it did not altogether remove the shadow of concern that had been there since Joe wrote of his decision to leave Yale to take up the life of a professional baseball player. It had been a sore blow to his mother, who had hopes of seeing him enter the ministry, or at least one of the professions. And with all his light-heartedness, Joe realized the shattered hopes. But, for the life of him, he could not keep on at college--a place entirely unsuited to him. But of that more later. Seated at the dining-room table, the three were soon deep in a rather disjointed conversation. Joe's sister and mother waited on him as only a mother and sister can serve a returned son and brother. Between bites, as it were, Joe asked all sorts of questions, chiefly about his father's business troubles. Neither Mrs. Matson nor her daughter could give a very clear account of what had happened, or was in danger of happening, and the young pitcher, whose recent victory in the college championship games had made him quite famous, remarked: "I'll have to go down and see dad myself, and give him the benefit of my advice. I suppose he's at the Harvester Works?" "Yes," answered Mrs. Matson. "He is there early and late. He is working on another patent, and he says if it's successful he won't mind about the bad investments. But he hasn't had much luck, so far." "I'll have to take him out to a ball game, and get the cobwebs out of his head," said Joe, with a laugh. "It's a bad thing to get in a rut. Just a little more bread, Sis." "And so you have really left Yale?" asked his mother, almost hoping something might have occurred to change her son's mind. "You are not going back, Joe?" "No, I've quit, Mother, sold off what belongings I didn't want to keep, and here I am." "And when are you going to begin pitching for that professional team?" asked Clara, coming in with the bread. "I can't exactly say. I've got to go meet Mr. Gregory, the manager and the largest stockholder in the club. So far I've only dealt with Mr. James Mack, his assistant and scout. He picked me up and made a contract with me." "Perhaps it won't go through," ventured Mrs. Matson, half-hopefully. "Oh, I guess it will," answered Joe, easily. "Anyhow, I've got an advance payment, and I can hold them to their terms. I expect I'll be sent South to the training camp, where the rest of the players are. The season opens soon, and then we'll be traveling all over the circuit--mostly in the Middle West." "Then we won't see much of you, Joe," and his sister spoke regretfully. "Well, I'll have to be pretty much on the jump, Sis. But I'll get home whenever I can. And if ever you get near where the Pittston club is playing--that's my team, you know--" and Joe pretended to swell up with pride--"why, just take a run in, and I'll get you box seats." "I'm afraid I don't care much for baseball," sighed Mrs. Matson. "I do!" cried Clara with enthusiasm. "Oh, we've had some dandy games here this Spring, Joe, though the best games are yet to come. The Silver Stars are doing fine!" "Are they really?" Joe asked. "And since they lost my invaluable services as a twirler? How thoughtless of them, Sis!" Clara laughed. "Well, they miss you a lot," she pouted, "and often speak of you. Maybe, if you're going to be home a few days, you could pitch a game for them." "I wouldn't dare do it, Clara." "Why not, I'd like to know," and her eyes showed her surprise. "Because I'm a professional now, and I can't play in amateur contests--that is, it wouldn't be regular." "Oh, I guess no one here would mind, Joe. Will you have some of these canned peaches?" "Just a nibble, Sis--just a nibble. I've made out pretty well. You can make as good bread as ever, Momsey!" "I'm glad you like it, Joe. Your father thinks there's nothing like home-made bread." "That's where dad shows his good judgment. Quite discriminating on dad's part, I'm sure. Yes, indeed!" "Oh, Joe, you're so--so different!" said Clara, looking at her brother sharply. "In what way, Sis?" "Oh, I don't know," she said, slowly. "I suppose it's--the college influence." "Well, a fellow can't live at Yale, even for a short time, without absorbing something different from the usual life. It's an education in itself just to go there if you never opened a book. It's a different world." "And I wish you had stayed there!" burst out Mrs. Matson, with sudden energy. "Oh, I don't like you to be a professional ball player! It's no profession at all!" "Well, call it a business then, if you like," said Joe good-naturedly. "Say it isn't a profession, though it is called one. As a business proposition, Mother, it's one of the biggest in the world to-day. The players make more money than lots of professional men, and they don't have to work half so hard--not that I mind that." "Joe Matson! Do you mean to tell me a ball player--even one who tosses the ball for the other man to hit at--does he make more than--than a _minister_?" demanded his mother. "I should say so, Mother! Why, there are very few ministers who make as much as even an ordinary player in a minor league. And as for the major leaguers--why, they could equal half a dozen preachers. Mind, I'm not talking against the ministry, or any of the learned professions. I only wish I had the brains and ability to enter one. "But I haven't, and there's no use pretending I have. And, though I do say it myself, there's no use spoiling a good pitcher to make a poor minister. I'm sorry, Mother, that I couldn't keep on at Yale--sorry on your account, not on mine. But I just couldn't." "How--how much do you suppose you'll get a year for pitching in this Central League?" asked Mrs. Matson, hesitatingly. "Well, they're going to start me on fifteen hundred dollars a year," said Joe rather proudly, "and of course I can work up from that." "Fifteen hundred dollars!" cried Mrs. Matson. "Why, that's more than a hundred dollars a month!" "A good deal more, when you figure that I don't have to do anything in the Winter months, Mother." "Fifteen hundred dollars!" murmured Clara. "Why, that's more than father earned when he got married, Mother. I've heard you say so--lots of times." "Yes, Clara. But then fifteen hundred dollars went further in those days than it does now. But, Joe, I didn't think you'd get so much as that." "There's my contract, Mother," and he pulled it from his pocket with a flourish. "Well, of course, Joe--Oh! I _did_ want you to be a minister, or a lawyer, or a doctor; but since you feel you can't--well, perhaps it's all for the best, Joe," and she sighed softly. "Maybe it's for the best." "You'll see that it will be, Mother. And now I'm going down street and see some of the boys. I suppose Tom Davis is around somewhere. Then I'll stroll in on dad. I want to have a talk with him." "Shall I unpack your valise?" asked Clara. "Yes. I guess I'll be home for a few days before starting in at the training camp. I'll be back to supper, anyhow," and, with a laugh he went out and down the main street of Riverside, where the Matsons made their home. As Baseball Joe walked along the thoroughfare he was greeted by many acquaintances--old and young. They were all glad to see him, for the fame of the pitcher who had won the victory for Yale was shared, in a measure, by his home town. In the case of baseball players, at least, they are not "prophets without honor save in their own country." Joe inquired for his old chum, Tom Davis, but no one seemed to have noticed him that day, and, making up his mind he would locate him later, the young pitcher turned his footsteps in the direction of the Royal Harvester Works, where his father was employed. To reach the plant Joe had to cross the railroad, and in doing this he noticed a man staggering along the tracks. The man was not a prepossessing specimen. His clothes were ragged and dirty--in short "tramp" was written all over him. "And he acts as though he were drugged, or had taken too much whiskey," said Joe. "Too bad! Maybe he's had a lot of trouble. You can't always tell. "But I'm sure of one thing, and that is he'd better get off the track. He doesn't seem able to take care of himself. "Look out there!" cried the young pitcher, with sudden energy. "Look out for that freight, old man! You're walking right into danger!" A train of freight cars was backing down the rails, right upon the man who was staggering along, unheeding. The engineer blew his whistle shrilly--insistently; but still the ragged man did not get off the track. Joe sprinted at his best pace, and in an instant had grasped the man by the arm. The tramp looked up with bleary, blood-shot eyes--uncomprehending--almost unseeing. "Wha--wha's matter?" he asked, thickly. "Matter--matter enough when you get sense enough to realize it!" said Joe sharply, as he pulled him to one side, and only just in time, for a second later the freight train thundered past at hardly slackened speed in spite of the fact that the brakes had been clapped on. The man staggered at Joe's sudden energy, and would have toppled over against a switch had not the young pitcher held him. CHAPTER II OFF FOR THE SOUTH Sweeping past, in the cab of the locomotive, the engineer leaned out and shook his fist at the tramp. "You ought to be locked up!" he yelled, with savage energy. Then, lest he might not seem to appreciate Joe's action in saving the man's life and preventing a lot of trouble for the railroad authorities, the engineer added: "Much obliged to you, young fellow. You saved us a bad mess. Better turn that hobo over to one of the yard detectives. He'll take care of him, all right." "No, I'll get him off the tracks and start him home, if I can," answered Joe, but it is doubtful if the engineer heard. "You had a close call, old man," went on Joe, as he helped the tramp to stand upright. "Better get off the railroad. Where do you want to go?" "Hey?" "I ask you where you want to go. I'll give you a hand, if it isn't too far. It's dangerous here--for a man in your--condition." "Uh! Don't make no difference where I go, I reckon," replied the man, thickly. "No difference at all. I'm down and out, an' one place's good's nuther. Down--an'--out!" "Oh, well, maybe you can come back," said Joe, as cheerfully as he could. "Don't give up." "Come back! Huh! Guess you don't know the game. Fellers like me never come back. Say, bo, you've got quite an arm on you," he said admiringly, as he noted the ease with which the young pitcher helped him over the tracks. The unfortunate man could hardly help himself. "You've got an arm--all right." "Oh, nothing much. Just from pitching. I expect." "Pitching!" The man straightened up as though a lash had struck him. "Pitching, did you say? In--er--in what league?" "Not in any league yet, though I've signed with the Central." "The Central? Huh! A bush league." "I left the Yale 'varsity to go with them," said Joe, a little nettled at the tone of the man whose life he had just saved. "Oh--you pitched for Yale?" There was more deference shown now. "Yes, and we beat Princeton." "You did? An' you pitched? Say, young feller, put her there! Put her--there!" The man held out an unsteady hand, which Joe, more to quiet him than for any other reason, clasped firmly. "An' you beat Princeton! Good for you! Put her there! I--er--I read about that. I can read--I got a good education. But I--er--Oh, I'm a fool, that's what I am. A fool! An' to think that I once--Oh, what's the use--what's the use?" The energy faded away from his voice, and he ended in a half sob. With bowed head he allowed Joe to lead him across the tracks. A number of railroad men who had seen the rescue looked at the pair, but once the tramp was off the line, and out of immediate danger, they lost interest. "Can I help you--do you want to go anywhere in particular?" asked Joe, kindly. "What's the use of goin' anywhere in particular?" was the demand. "I've got nowhere to go. One place is as good as another when you're down--and out. Out! Ha! Yes, out! He's out--out at first--last--out all the time! Out!" "Oh, quit!" exclaimed Joe, sharply, for the man was fast losing his nerve, and was almost sobbing. "That's right, young feller--that's right!" came the quick retort. "I do need pullin' up. Much obliged to you. I--I guess I can take care of myself now." "Have you any--do you need any--money?" hesitated Joe. "No--no, thank you. I've got some. Not much, but enough until I can get--straightened out. I'm much obliged to you." He walked straighter now, and more upright. "Be careful to keep off the tracks," warned Joe. "I--I will. Don't worry. Much obliged," and the man walked off into the woods that adjoined the railroad. "Poor old chap," mused the young pitcher, as he resumed his way to his father's shop. And while I have just a few moments I will take advantage of them to make my new readers better acquainted with Joe, and his achievements, as detailed in the former books of this series. The first volume is entitled "Baseball Joe of the Silver Stars," and tells how Joe began his career as a pitcher. The Silver Stars were made up of ball-loving lads in Riverside, a New England town where Joe lived with his parents and his sister Clara. Mr. Matson was an inventor of farming machinery, and had perfected a device that brought him in substantial returns. Joe, Tom Davis, and a number of other lads formed a team that was to represent Riverside. Their bitterest rivals were the Resolutes of Rocky Ford, a neighboring town, and many hot battles of the diamond were fought. Joe rapidly developed as a pitcher, and it was due to his efforts that his team made such an excellent showing. In the second book, entitled, "Baseball Joe on the School Nine," I related what happened when our hero went to Excelsior Hall, a boarding institution just outside of Cedarhurst. Joe did not find it so easy, there, to make a showing as a pitcher. There was more competition to begin with, and he had rivals and enemies. But he did not give up, and, in spite of many difficulties, he finally occupied the mound when the annual struggle for the Blue Banner took place. And what a game that was! Joe spent several terms at Excelsior Hall, and then, more in deference to his mother's wishes than because he wanted to, he went to Yale. For an account of what happened there I refer my readers to the third book of the series, called "Baseball Joe at Yale." Joe had an uphill climb at the big university. Mingled with the hard work, the hopes deferred and the jealousies, were, however, good times a-plenty. That is one reason why Joe did not want to leave it. But he had an ambition to become a professional ball player, and he felt that he was not fitted for a college life. So when "Jimmie" Mack, assistant manager of the Pittston team of the Central League, who was out "scouting" for new and promising players, saw Joe's pitching battle against Princeton, he made the young collegian an offer which Joe did not feel like refusing. He closed his college career abruptly, and when this story opens we find him coming back from New Haven to Riverside. In a day or so he expected to join the recruits at the training camp of the Pittston nine, which was at Montville, North Carolina. As Joe kept on, after his rescue of the tramp, his thoughts were busy over many subjects. Chief among them was wonder as to how he would succeed in his new career. "And then I've got to learn how dad's affairs are," mused Joe. "I may have to pitch in and help him." Mr. Matson came from his private office in the Harvester Works, and greeted Joe warmly. "We didn't expect you home quite so soon," he said, as he clasped his son's hand. "No, I found out, after I wrote, that I was coming home, that I could get an earlier train that would save me nearly a day, so I took it. But, Dad, what's this I hear about your financial troubles?" "Oh, never mind about them, Joe," was the evasive answer. "But I want to mind, Dad. I want to help you." Mr. Matson went into details, with which I will not tire the reader. Sufficient to say that the inventor had invested some capital in certain stocks and bonds the value of which now seemed uncertain. "And if I have to lose it--I have to, I suppose," concluded Joe's father, resignedly. "Now, my boy, tell me about yourself--and--baseball," and he smiled, for he knew Joe's hobby. Father and son talked at some length, and then, as Mr. Matson had about finished work for the day, the two set out for home together. On the way Joe met his old chum, Tom Davis, and they went over again the many good times in which they had taken part. Joe liked his home--he liked his home town, and his old chums, but still he wished to get into the new life that had called him. He was not sorry, therefore, when, a few days later he received a telegram from Mr. Mack, telling him to report at once at Montville. "Oh, Joe!" exclaimed his mother. "Do you really have to go so soon?" "I'm afraid so, Momsey," he answered. "You see the league season will soon open and I want to begin at the beginning. This is my life work, and I can't lose any time." "Pitching ball a life work!" sighed Mrs. Matson. "Oh, Joe! if it was only preaching--or something like that." "Let the boy alone, Mother," said Mr. Matson, with a good-humored twinkle in his eye. "We can't all be ministers, and I'd rather have a world series winner in my family than a poor lawyer or doctor. He'll do more good in society, too. Good luck to you, Joe." But Joe was not to get away to the South as quietly as he hoped. He was importuned by his old baseball chums to pitch an exhibition game for them, but he did not think it wise, under the circumstances, so declined. But they wanted to do him honor, and, learning through Tom Davis--who, I may say in passing, got the secret from Clara--when Joe's train was to leave, many of the old members of the Silver Stars gathered to wish their hero Godspeed. "What's the matter with Baseball Joe?" was the cry outside the station, whither Joe had gone with his sister and mother, his father having bidden him good-bye earlier. "What's the matter with Joe Matson?" "_He's--all--right!_" came the staccato reply. Again the demand: "Who's all right?" "_Baseball Joe!_" "Why--what--what does it mean?" asked Mrs. Matson in bewilderment as she sat near her son in the station, and heard the cries. "Oh, it's just the boys," said Joe, easily. "They're giving Joe a send-off," explained Clara. Quite a crowd gathered as the members of the amateur nine cheered Joe again and again. Many other boys joined in, and the scene about the railroad depot was one of excitement. "What's going on?" asked a stranger. "Joe Matson's going off," was the answer. "Who's Joe Matson?" "Don't you know?" The lad looked at the man in half-contempt. "Why, he pitched a winning game for Yale against Princeton, and now he's going to the Pittstons of the Central League." "Oh, I see. Hum. Is that he?" and the man pointed to the figure of our hero, surrounded by his friends. "That's him! Say, I wish he was me!" and the lad looked enviously at Joe. "I--I never knew baseball was so--so popular," said Mrs. Matson to Clara, as the shouting and cheers grew, while Joe resisted an attempt on the part of the lads to carry him on their shoulders. "I guess it's as much Joe as it is the game," answered Clara, proudly. "Three cheers for Joe!" were called for, and given with a will. Again came the question as to who was all right, and the usual answer followed. Joe was shaking hands with two lads at once, and trying to respond to a dozen requests for letters, or passes to the league games. Then came the whistle of the train, more hurried good-byes, a last kiss for his mother and sister--final cheers--shouts--calls for good wishes--and Joe was on his way to the Southern baseball camp. CHAPTER III AN ACCUSATION "Whew!" exclaimed Joe, as he sank into a car seat and placed his valise beside him. "Some doings--those!" Several passengers looked at him, smiling and appreciative. They had seen and heard the parting ovation tendered to our hero, and they understood what it meant. Joe waved his hand out of the window as the train sped on, and then settled back to collect his thoughts which, truth to tell, were running riot. Pulling from his pocket some books on baseball, one of which contained statistics regarding the Central League, Joe began poring over them. He wanted to learn all he could about the organization with which he had cast his fortunes. And a few words of explanation concerning the Central League may not be unappreciated by my readers. In the first place let me be perfectly frank, and state that the Central League was not one of the big ones. I have not masqueraded a major league under that title. Some day I hope to tell you some stories concerning one of the larger leagues, but not in this volume. And in the second place Joe realized that he was not going to astonish the world by his performances in this small league. He knew it was but a "bush league," in a sense, yet he had read enough of it to know that it was composed of clean-cut clubs and players, and that it bore a good reputation. Many a major league player had graduated from this same Central, and Joe--well, to put it modestly--had great hopes. The Central League was of the Middle West. It played its eight clubs over a circuit composed of eight well-known cities, which for the purposes of this story I have seen fit to designate as follows: Clevefield, Pittston (to which club Joe had been signed), Delamont, Washburg, Buffington, Loston, Manhattan and Newkirk. Perhaps, as the story progresses, you may recognize, more or less successfully, certain players and certain localities. With that I have nothing to do. The train sped on, stopping at various stations, but Joe took little interest in the passing scenery, or in what took place in his coach. He was busy over his baseball "dope," by which I mean the statistics regarding players, their averages, and so forth. "And my name will soon be among 'em!" exulted Joe. As the train was pulling out of a small station, Joe looked out of the window, and, to his surprise, saw, sitting on a baggage truck, the same tramp he had saved from the freight train some days before. "Hum!" mused Joe. "If he's beating his way on the railroad he hasn't gotten very far," for this was not many miles from Riverside. "I guess he's a sure-enough hobo, all right. Too bad!" Others beside Joe seemed to have noticed the tramp, who, however, had not looked at our hero. One of two men in the seat back of Joe spoke, and said: "I say, Reynolds, see that tramp sitting there?" "You mean the one on the truck?" "Yes. Do you recognize him?" "Recognize him? I should say not. I'm not in the habit of----" "Easy, old man. Would you be surprised if I told you that many times you've taken your hat off to that same tramp, and cheered him until you were hoarse?" "Get out!" "It's a fact." "Who is he?" "I don't know who he is now--not much, to judge by his looks; but that's old Pop Dutton, who, in his day, was one of the best pitchers Boston ever owned. He was a wonder!" "Is that Pop Dutton?" "That's the wreck of him!" "How have the mighty fallen," was the whispered comment. "Poor old Pop! Indeed, many a time I have taken my hat off to him! He sure was a wonder. What caused his downfall?" "Bad companions--that and--drink." "Too bad!" Joe felt an irresistible impulse to turn around and speak to the two men. But he refrained, perhaps wisely. "And to think that I saved his life!" mused Joe. "No wonder he talked as he did. Pop Dutton! Why, I've often read of him. He pitched many a no-hit no-run game. And now look at him!" As the train pulled out Joe saw the wreck of what had once been a fine man stagger across the platform. A railroad man had driven him from the truck. Joe's heart was sore. He realized that in baseball there were many temptations, and he knew that many a fine young fellow had succumbed to them. But he felt himself strong enough to resist. If Joe expected to make the trip South with speed and comfort he was soon to realize that it was not to be. Late that afternoon the train came to an unexpected stop, and on the passengers inquiring what was the trouble, the conductor informed them that, because of a wreck ahead, they would be delayed at a little country station for several hours. There were expostulations, sharp remarks and various sorts of suggestions offered by the passengers, all of whom seemed to be in a hurry. Joe, himself, regretted the delay, but he did not see how it could be avoided. "The company ought to be sued!" declared a young man whose rather "loud" clothes proclaimed him for an up-to-date follower of "fashion." He had with him a valise of peculiar make--rather conspicuous--and it looked to be of foreign manufacture. In fact, everything about him was rather striking. "I ought to be in New York now," this young chap went on, as though everyone in the train was interested in his fortunes and misfortunes. "This delay is uncalled for! I shall start suit against this railroad. It's always having wrecks. Can't we go on, my good man?" he asked the conductor, sharply. "Not unless you go on ahead and shove the wreck out of the way," was the sharp answer. "I shall report you!" said the youth, loftily. "Do! It won't be the first time I've been reported--my good fellow!" The youth flushed and, taking his valise, left the car to enter the small railway station. Several other passengers, including Joe, did the same, for the car was hot and stuffy. Joe took a seat near one where the modish young man set down his queer valise. Some of the other passengers, after leaving their baggage inside, went out on the platform to stroll about. Joe noted that the young man had gone to the telegraph office to send a message. Our hero having nothing else to do, proceeded to look over more of his baseball information. He was deep in a study of batting averages when he was aware that someone stood in front of him. It was the young man, who had his valise open, and on his face was a puzzled expression, mingled with one of anger. "I say now! I say!" exclaimed the young chap. "This won't do! It won't do at all, you know!" and he looked sharply at Joe. "Are you speaking to me?" asked the young pitcher. "If you are I don't know what it is that won't do--and I don't care." "It won't do at all, you know!" went on the young man, speaking with what he probably intended to be an English accent. "It won't do!" "What won't?" asked Joe sharply. "Why, taking things out of my valise, you know. There's a gold watch and some jewelry missing--my sister's jewelry. It won't do!" "Do you mean to say that I had anything to do with taking jewelry out of your valise?" asked Joe hotly. "Why--er--you were sitting next to it. I went to send a wire--when I come back my stuff is missing, and----" "Look here!" cried the young pitcher in anger. "Do you mean to accuse me?" and he jumped to his feet and faced the young man. "Do you?" "Why--er--yes, I think I do," was the answer. "You were next my bag, you know, and--well, my stuff is gone. It won't do. It won't do at all, you know!" CHAPTER IV IN TRAINING For a moment Joe stood glaring at the modish young man who had accused him. The latter returned the look steadily. There were superciliousness, contempt and an abiding sense of his own superiority in the look, and Joe resented these too-well displayed feelings fully as much as he did the accusation. Then a calmer mood came over the young pitcher; he recalled the training at Yale--the training that had come when he had been in troublesome situations--and Joe laughed. It was that laugh which formed a safety-valve for him. "I don't see what there is to laugh at," sneered the young man. "My valise has been opened, and my watch and some jewelry taken." "Well, what have I got to do with it?" demanded Joe hotly. "I'm not a detective or a police officer!" Joe glanced from the youth to the bag in question. It was a peculiar satchel, made of some odd leather, and evidently constructed for heavy use. It was such a bag as Joe had never seen before. It was open now, and there could be noticed in it a confused mass of clothes, collars, shirts of gaudy pattern and scarfs of even gaudier hues. The young pitcher also noticed that the bag bore on one end the initials "R. V." while below them was the name of the city where young "R. V." lived--Goldsboro, N. C. "Suffering cats!" thought Joe, as he noted that. "He lives in Goldsboro. Montville is just outside that. I hope I don't meet this nuisance when I'm at the training camp." "I did not assume that you were an officer," answered the young man, who, for the present, must be known only as "R. V." "But you were the only one near my valise, which was opened when I went to send that wire. Now it's up to you----" "Hold on!" cried Joe, trying not to let his rather quick temper get the better of him. "Nothing is 'up to me,' as you call it. I didn't touch your valise. I didn't even know I sat near it until you called my attention to it. And if it was opened, and something taken out, I beg to assure you that I had nothing to do with it. That's all!" "But if you didn't take it; who did?" asked "R. V." in some bewilderment. "How should I know?" retorted Joe, coolly. "And I'd advise you to be more careful after this, in making accusations." He spoke rather loudly--in fact so did "R. V.," and it was but natural that several of the delayed passengers should gather outside the station, attracted by the voices. Some of them looked in through the opened windows and doors, and, seeing nothing more than what seemed to be an ordinary dispute, strolled on. "But this won't do," insisted "R. V.," which expression seemed to be a favorite with him. "This won't do at all, you know, my good fellow. My watch is gone, and my sister's jewelry. It won't do----" "Well, I have nothing to do with it," declared Joe, "and I don't want to hear any more about it. This ends it--see!" "Oh, but I say! You were nearest to my valise, and----" "What's the trouble?" interrupted the ticket agent, coming from his little office. "What's the row here?" "My valise!" exclaimed "R. V." angrily. "It's been opened, and----" "He thinks I did it just because I sat near it!" broke in Joe, determined to get in his word first. "It's absurd! I never touched his baggage." The agent looked at the modish youth. "Is that the only reason you accuse him--because he sat near your satchel?" he asked. "Why--er--yes, to be sure. Isn't that reason enough?" "It wouldn't be for me, young man. I don't see that you can do anything about it. You say he took something of yours, and he says he didn't. That's six of one and a half-dozen of the other. You ought to have your satchel locked if you carry valuables in it." "It was locked, but I opened it and forgot to lock it again." "That's up to you then," and the agent's sympathies seemed to be with Joe. "Well, but it won't do, you know. It won't do at all!" protested "R. V.," this time pleadingly. "I must have my things back!" "Then you had better go to the police," broke in the agent. "If you like, though I've never done such a thing before, I'll submit to a search," said Joe, the red blood mantling to his cheeks as he thought of the needless indignity. "I can refer to several well-known persons who will vouch for me, but if you feel----" "All aboard!" suddenly called the conductor of the stalled train, coming into the depot. "We just got word that we can proceed. If we can reach the next junction before the fast mail, we can go ahead of her and get around the wreck. Lively now! All aboard!" There was a scramble in which Joe and "R. V." took a part. All of the passengers were anxious to proceed, and if haste meant that they could avoid further delay they were willing to hasten. The engineer whistled impatiently, and men and women scrambled into the coaches they had left. "R. V." caught up his peculiar bag and without another look at Joe, got aboard. For a moment the young pitcher had an idea of insisting on having the unpleasant matter settled, but he, too, wanted to go on. At any rate no one he knew or cared about had heard the unjust accusation made, and if he insisted on vindication, by means of a personal search, it might lead to unpleasant complications. "Even if he saw that I didn't have his truck on me that wouldn't prove anything to him--he'd say it 'wouldn't do,'" thought Joe. "He's altogether too positive." And so, leaving the matter of the missing articles unsettled, Joe sprinted for the train. Joe saw his accuser enter the rear coach, while the young ball player took his place in the second coach, where he had been before. "If he wants to take up this matter again he knows I'm aboard," mused Joe, as the train pulled out of the way-station. But the matter was not reopened, and when the junction was reached our hero saw "R. V." hurrying off to make other connections. As he turned away, however, he favored Joe with a look that was not altogether pleasant. The remainder of our hero's trip to Montville was uneventful, save that it was rather monotonous, and, the further South he went the worse the railroad service became, until he found that he was going to be nearly half a day late. But he was not expected at any special time, and he knew that he had done the best possible. Arriving in Montville, which he found to be a typical small Southern town, Joe put up at the hotel where he had been told by "Jimmie" Mack to take quarters. "Are any of the Pittston players around--is Mr. Gregory here?" asked Joe of the clerk, after registering. It was shortly after two o'clock. "They're all out practicing, I believe," was the answer. "Mr. Gregory was here a while ago, but I reckon as how he-all went out to the field, too. Are you a member of the nine, sir?" The clerk really said "suh," but the peculiarities of Southern talk are too well known to need imitating. "Well, I suppose I am, but I've only just joined," answered Joe, with a smile. "I'm one of the new pitchers." "Glad to know you. We enjoy having you ball players here. It sort of livens things up. I believe your team is going to cross bats with our home team Saturday." "That's good!" exclaimed Joe, who was just "aching" to get into a game again. He ate a light luncheon and then, inquiring his way, went out to the ball field. He was rather disappointed at first. It was not as good as the one where the Silver Stars played--not as well laid out or kept up, and the grandstand was only about half as large. "But of course it's only a practice field," reasoned Joe, as he looked about for a sight of "Jimmie" Mack, whom alone he knew. "The home field at Pittston will probably be all right. Still, I've got to remember that I'm not playing in a major league. This will do for a start." He looked over the men with whom he was to associate and play ball for the next year or so--perhaps longer. The members of the team were throwing and catching--some were batting flies, and laying down grounders for others to catch or pick up. One or two were practicing "fungo" batting. Up near the grandstand a couple of pitchers were "warming-up," while the catchers were receiving the balls in their big mitts. Several small and worshipping boys were on hand, as always is the case, gathering up the discarded bats, running after passed balls and bringing water to their heroes. "Well, I'm here, anyhow," thought Joe. "Now to see what sort of a stab I can make at professional ball." No one seemed to notice the advent of the young pitcher on the field, and if he expected to receive an ovation, such as was accorded to him when he left home, Joe was grievously disappointed. But I do not believe Joe Matson looked for anything of the sort. In fact I know he did not, for Joe was a sensible lad. He realized that however good a college player he might be he was now entering the ranks of men who made their living at ball playing. And there is a great deal of difference between doing a thing for fun, and doing it to get your bread and butter--a heap of difference. Joe stood on the edge of the diamond looking at the players. They seemed to be a clean-cut set of young fellows. One or two looked to be veterans at the game, and here and there Joe could pick out one whose hair was turning the least little bit gray. He wondered if they had slid down the scale, and, finding their powers waning, had gotten out of the big leagues to take it a little easier in one of the "bush" variety. "But it's baseball--it's a start--it's just what I want!" thought Joe, as he drew a deep breath, the odors of crushed green grass, the dry dust and the whiff of leather mingling under the hot rays of the Southern sun. "It's baseball, and that's enough!" exulted Joe. "Well, I see you got here!" exclaimed a voice behind him, and Joe turned to see "Jimmie" Mack, in uniform, holding out a welcoming hand. "Yes," said Joe with a smile. "I'm a little late, but--I'm here." "If the trains arrive on time down here everybody worries," went on Jimmie. "They think something is going to happen. Did you bring a uniform?" Joe indicated his valise, into which he had hastily stuffed, at the hotel, one of his old suits. "Well, slip it on--take any dressing room that's vacant there," and Jimmie motioned to the grandstand. "Then come out and I'll have you meet the boys. We're only doing light practice as yet, but we'll soon have to hump ourselves, for the season will shortly open." "Is Mr. Gregory here?" asked Joe, feeling that he ought to meet the manager of the team. "He'll be here before the day is over. Oh, Harrison!" he called to a passing player, "come over and meet Joe Matson, one of our new pitchers. Harrison tries to play centre," explained the assistant manager with a smile. "Quit your kiddin'!" exclaimed the centre fielder as he shook hands with Joe. "Glad to meet you, son. You mustn't mind Jimmie," he went on. "Ever played before?" "Not professionally." "That's what I meant." "Joe's the boy who pitched Yale to the championship this year," explained Jimmie Mack. "Oh, ho! Yes, I heard about that. Well, hope you like it here. I'm going out in the field. See you there," and Harrison passed on. Joe lost no time in changing into his playing togs. The dressing rooms in the Montville grandstand were only apologies compared with what Joe was used to. But he knew that this was only a training camp, and that they would not be here long. He walked out on the field, feeling a little nervous and rather lonesome--"like a cat in a strange garret," as he wrote home to his folks. But Joe's school and college training stood him in good stead, and when he had been introduced to most of the players, who welcomed him warmly, he felt more at home. Then he went out in the field, and began catching flies with the others. "But I wish they'd put me at pitching," mused Joe. "That's what I want to do." He was to learn that to make haste slowly is a motto more or less followed by professional ball players. There would be time enough to put on speed before the season closed. CHAPTER V THE CLASH "That's the way! Line 'em out, now!" "Put some speed into that!" "Look out for a high one!" "Oh, get farther back! I'm going to knock the cover off this time!" These were only a few of the cries and calls that echoed over the ball field at Montville. The occasion was the daily practice of the Pittston nine, and orders had come from the manager and trainer to start in on more lively work. It was Joe's third day with the professionals. He had made the acquaintance of all the players, but as yet had neither admitted, nor been admitted to, a real friendship with any of them. It was too early. Joe held back because he was naturally a bit diffident. Then, too, most of the men were older than he, and with one exception they had been in the professional ranks for several seasons. That one exception was Charlie Hall, who played short. He, like Joe, had been taken that Spring from the amateur ranks. Hall had played on a Western college team, and had been picked out by one of the ever-present professional scouts. With Charlie, Joe felt more at home than with any of the others and yet he felt that soon he would have good friends among the older men. On their part they did not become friendly with Joe at once simply for the reason that they wanted to "size him up," or "get his number," as Jimmie Mack put it in speaking of the matter. "But they'll cotton to you after a bit, Joe," said the assistant manager, "and you'll like them, too. Don't get discouraged." "I won't," was the answer. There was one man on the team, though, with whom Joe felt that he would never be on friendly terms, and this was Jake Collin, one of the pitchers--the chief pitcher and mainstay of the nine on the mound, from what Joe picked up by hearing the other men talk. And Collin himself was not at all modest about his ability. That he had ability Joe was ready to concede. And Collin wanted everyone else to know it, too. He was always talking about his record, and his batting average, which, to do him credit, was good. Collin was not much older than Joe, but a rather fast life and hard living counted for more than years. Joe heard whispers that Collin could not last much longer. Perhaps it was a realization of this that made Collin rather resent the arrival of our hero on the Pittston nine. For he gave Joe but a cold greeting, and, as he moved off to practice, the young pitcher could hear him saying something about "college dudes thinking they can play professional ball." Joe's faced flushed, but he said nothing. It was something that called more for deeds than words. "Everybody lively now! I want some snappy work!" called Jimmie Mack as the practice progressed. "If we're going to play the Montville team Saturday we want to snow them under. A win by a few runs won't be the thing at all, and, let me tell you, those boys can play ball. "So step lively, everybody. Run bases as if you meant to get back home some time this week. Slug the ball until the cover comes off. And you, Collin, get a little more speed on your delivery. Is your arm sore?" "Arm sore? I guess not! I'm all right!" and the man's eyes snapped angrily. "Well, then, show it. Let's see what you've got up your sleeve, anyhow. Here comes Gregory now--he'll catch a few for you, and then we'll do some batting." The manager, whom Joe had met and liked, came out to join in the practice. He nodded to our hero, and then took Collin off to one side, to give him some instructions. Joe under the direction of Jimmie Mack was allowed to do some pitching now. With Terry Hanson the left fielder, to back him up, Joe began throwing in the balls on a space in front of the grandstand. Joe noticed that Collin regarded him sharply in the intervals of his own practice, but he was prepared for a little professional jealousy, and knew how to take it. He had seen it manifested often enough at school and college, though there the spirit of the university was paramount to personal triumph--every player was willing to sacrifice himself that the team might win. And, in a large measure, of course, this is so in professional baseball. But human nature is human nature, whether one is playing for money or for glory, and in perhaps no other sport where money counts for as much as it does in baseball, will you find more of the spirit of the school than in the ranks of the diamond professionals. "Take it easy, Joe; take it easy," advised Terry, with a good-natured smile, as the lad stung in the balls. "You've got speed, and I'm willing to admit it without having you split my mitt. But save yourself for a game. You're not trying to pitch anyone out now, you know, and there's no one looking at you." "I guess I forgot this was just practice," admitted Joe with a laugh. "I'll throw in some easy ones." He did, and saw an admiring look on Terry's face. "They seem to have the punch--that's a nice little drop you've got. But don't work it too much. Vary your delivery." From time to time as the practice proceeded Terry gave Joe good advice. Occasionally this would be supplemented by something Mack or Gregory would say and Joe took it all in, resolving to profit by it. The practice came to an end, and the players were advised by their trainer, Mike McGuire, to take walks in the country round-about. "It'll be good for your legs and wind," was the comment. Joe enjoyed this almost as much as the work on the field, for the country was new to him and a source of constant delight. He went out with some of the men, and again would stroll off by himself. Saturday, the day when the first practice game was to be played, found Joe a bit nervous. He wondered whether he would get a chance to pitch. So too, for that matter, did Tom Tooley, the south-paw moundman, who was nearer Joe's age than was Collin. "Who's going to be the battery?" was heard on all sides as the Pittston players went to the grounds. "The old man hasn't given it out yet," was the reply of Jimmie Mack. The "old man" was always the manager, and the term conveyed no hint of disrespect. The Montville team, a semi-professional one, was a good bit like the Silver Stars, Joe thought, when he saw the members run out on the diamond for practice. Still they looked to be a "husky lot," as he admitted, and he was glad of it, for he wanted to see what he and his team-mates could do against a good aggregation. "Play ball! Play ball!" called the umpire, as he dusted off the home plate. There was quite a crowd present, and when Gregory handed over his batting list the umpire made the announcement: "Batteries--for Pittston, Collin and Gregory. For Montville, Smith and Jennings." "Um. He's going to pitch Collin," murmured Tooley in Joe's ear. "That means we warm the bench." Joe was a little disappointed, but he tried not to show it. This first game was neither better nor worse than many others. Naturally the playing was ragged under the circumstances. The Pittstons had everything to lose by being beaten and not much to gain if they won the game. On the other hand the home nine had much to gain in case they should win. So they took rather desperate chances. Pittston was first at bat, and succeeded in getting two runs over. Then came a slump, and in quick succession three men went down, two being struck out. The Montville pitcher was a professional who had been in a big league, but who had drifted to a minor, and finally landed in the semi-pro ranks. But he had some good "heaves" left. Collin walked to the mound with a rather bored air of superiority. There was a little whispered conference between him and the catcher-manager, and the second half of the first inning began. Collin did well, and though hit twice for singles, not a run came in, and the home team was credited with a zero on the score-board. "Oh, I guess we can play some!" cried one of the professionals. "What are you crowing over?" demanded Jimmie Mack. "If we win this I suppose you fellows will want medals! Why this is nothing but a kid bunch we're up against." "Don't let 'em fool you, though," advised the manager, who overheard the talk. And then, to the surprise and dismay of all, the home team proceeded to "do things" to the professionals. They began making runs, and succeeded in stopping the winning streak of the Pittstons. The detailed play would not interest you, and, for that matter it was a thing the Pittstons did not like to recall afterward. There was a bad slump, and when the seventh inning arrived Gregory called: "Matson, you bat for Collin." Joe felt the blood rush to his face. "Does that mean I'm going to be taken out of the box?" asked the chief pitcher, stalking angrily over to the manager. "It means just that, son. I can't afford to lose this game, and we sure will the way you're feedin' 'em in to 'em. I guess you drew it a little too fine the last few days. You need a rest." "But--I--er--I----" protested Collin. "That'll do," said Gregory, sharply. "Joe Matson will pitch. It's a chance, but I've got to take it." "What's the matter with Tooley?" demanded Collin. "What do you want to go shove this raw college jake in ahead of us for? Say!" "Go to the bench!" ordered the manager. "I know what I'm doing, Collin!" The pitcher seemed about to say something, and the look he gave Joe was far from friendly. Then, realizing that he was under the manager's orders, he stalked to the bench. "You won't do this again, if I can prevent it!" snapped Collin at Joe, as he passed him. "I'll run you out of the league, if you try to come it over me!" Only a few players heard him, and one or two whispered to him to quiet down, but he glared at Joe, who felt far from comfortable. But he was to have his chance to pitch at last. CHAPTER VI A STRAIGHT THROW Joe had hopes of making a safe hit when he came up, but pitchers are proverbially bad batsmen and our hero was no exception. I wish I could say that he "slammed one out for a home run, and came in amid wild applause," but truth compels me to state that Joe only knocked a little pop fly which dropped neatly into the hands of the second baseman, and Joe went back to the bench. "Never mind," consoled Jimmie Mack, "you're not here to bat--we count on you to pitch, though of course if you can hit the ball do it--every time. But don't get nervous." "I'm not," answered Joe. And, to do him justice, his nerves were in excellent shape. He had not played on the school and Yale nines for nothing, and he had faced many a crisis fully as acute as the present one. Then, too, the action of Collin must have had its effect. It was not pleasant for Joe to feel that he had won the enmity of the chief pitcher of the nine. But our hero resolved to do his best and let other matters take care of themselves. Whether it was the advent of Joe into the game, or because matters would have turned out that way anyhow, was not disclosed, but Pittston seemed to brace up, and that inning added three runs to their score, which put them on even terms with the home team--the members of which were playing phenomenal ball. "And now we've got to go in and beat them!" exclaimed Manager Gregory, as his men took the field. "Joe, I want to see what you can do." Enough to make any young pitcher nervous; was it not? Yet Joe kept his nerves in check--no easy matter--and walked to the box with all the ease he could muster. He fingered the ball for a moment, rubbed a little dirt on it--not that the spheroid needed it, but it gave him a chance to look at Gregory and catch his signal for a fast out. He nodded comprehendingly, having mastered the signals, and wound up for his first delivery. "Ball one!" howled the umpire. Joe was a little nettled. He was sure it had gone cleanly over the plate, curving out just as he intended it should, and yet it was called a ball. But he concealed his chagrin, and caught the horsehide which Gregory threw back to him--the catcher hesitating just the least bit, and with a look at the umpire which said much. Again came the signal for a fast out. Joe nodded. Once more the young pitcher threw and this time, though the batter swung desperately at it, not having moved his stick before, there came from the umpire the welcome cry of: "Strike--one!" Joe was beginning to make good. I shall not weary you with a full account of the game. I have other, and more interesting contests to tell of as we proceed. Sufficient to say that while Joe did not "set the river afire," he did strike out three men that inning, after a two-bagger had been made. But Joe "tightened up," just in time to prevent a run coming in, and the score was still a tie when the last man was out. In the next inning Pittston managed, by hard work, and a close decision on the part of the umpire, to add another run to their score. This put them one ahead, and the struggle now was to hold their opponents hitless. It devolved upon Joe to accomplish this. And he did it. Perhaps it was no great feat, as baseball history goes, but it meant much to him--a raw recruit in his first professional league, "bush" though it was. Joe made good, and when he struck out the last man (one of the best hitters, too, by the way) there was an enthusiastic scene on that little ball field. "Good, Joe! Good!" cried Jimmie Mack, and even the rather staid Mr. Gregory condescended to smile and say: "I thought you could do it!" Collin, suffering from his turn-down, sulked on the bench, and growled: "I'll show that young upstart! He can't come here and walk over me." "He didn't walk over you--he pitched over you," said George Lee, the second baseman. "He pitched good ball." "Bah! Just a fluke! If I hadn't strained my arm yesterday I'd have made this home team look like a sick cat!" "Post-mortems are out of style," said Lee. "Be a sport! It's all in the game!" "Um!" growled Collin, surlily. The team played the game all over again at the hotel that night. Of course it was not much of a victory, close as it was, but it showed of what stuff the players were made, and it gave many, who were ignorant of Joe's abilities, an insight into what he could do. "Well, what do you think of my find?" asked Jimmie Mack of his chief that night. "All right, Jimmie! All right! I think we'll make a ball-player of him yet." "So do I. And the blessed part of it is that he hasn't got a swelled head from his college work. That's the saving grace of it. Yes, I think Joe is due to arrive soon." If Joe had heard this perhaps he would have resented it somewhat. Surely, after having supplanted a veteran pitcher, even though of no great ability, and won his first professional game, Joe might have been excused for patting himself on the back, and feeling proud. And he did, too, in a sense. But perhaps it was just as well he did not hear himself discussed. Anyhow, he was up in his room writing home. The next day was Sunday, and in the afternoon Joe went for a long walk. He asked several of the men to go with him, but they all made good-enough excuses, so Joe set off by himself. It was a beautiful day, a little too warm, but then that was to be expected in the South, and Joe was dressed for it. As he walked along a country road he came to a parting of the ways; a weather-beaten sign-post informed him that one highway led to North Ford, while the other would take him to Goldsboro. "Goldsboro; eh?" mused Joe. "That's where that 'R. V.' fellow lives, who thought I robbed his valise. I wonder if I'll ever meet him? I've a good notion to take a chance, and walk over that way. I can ask him if he found his stuff. Maybe it's risky, but I'm going to do it." He set off at a swinging pace to limber up his muscles, thinking of many things, and wondering, if, after all, he was going to like professional baseball. Certainly he had started in as well as could be expected, save for the enmity of Collin. Joe got out into the open country and breathed deeply of the sweet air. The road swept along in a gentle curve, on one side being deep woods, while on the other was a rather steep descent to the valley below. In places the road approached close to the edge of a steep cliff. As the young pitcher strode along he heard behind him the clatter of hoofs. It was a galloping horse, and the rattle of wheels told that the animal was drawing a carriage. "Someone's in a hurry," mused Joe. "Going for a doctor, maybe." A moment later he saw what he knew might at any moment become a tragedy. A spirited horse, attached to a light carriage, dashed around a bend in the road, coming straight for Joe. And in the carriage was a young girl, whose fear-blanched face told that she realized her danger. A broken, dangling rein showed that she had tried in vain to stop the runaway. Joe formed a sudden resolve. He knew something of horses, and had more than once stopped a frightened animal. He ran forward, intending to cut across the path of this one, and grasp the bridle. But as the horse headed for him, and caught sight of the youth, it swerved to one side, and dashed across an intervening field, straight for the steep cliff. "Look out!" cried Joe, as if that meant anything. The girl screamed, and seemed about to jump. "I've got to stop that horse!" gasped Joe, and he broke into a run. Then the uselessness of this came to him and he stopped. At his feet were several large, round and smooth stones. Hardly knowing why he picked up one, just as the horse turned sideways to him. "If I could only hit him on the head, and stun him so that he'd stop before he gets to the cliff!" thought Joe. "If I don't he'll go over sure as fate!" The next instant he threw. Straight and true went the stone, and struck the horse hard on the head. The animal reared, then staggered. It tried to keep on, but the blow had been a disabling one. It tried to keep on its legs but they crumpled under the beast, and the next moment it went down in a heap, almost on the verge of the steep descent. The carriage swerved and ran partly up on the prostrate animal, while the shock of the sudden stop threw the girl out on the soft grass, where she lay in a crumpled heap. Joe sprinted forward. "I hope I did the right thing, after all," he panted. "I hope she isn't killed!" CHAPTER VII THE GIRL Joe Matson bent over the unconscious girl, and, even in the excitement of the moment, out of breath as he was from his fast run, he could not but note how pretty she was. Though now her cheeks that must usually be pink with the flush of health, were pale. She lay in a heap on the grass, at the side of the overturned carriage, from which the horse had partly freed itself. The animal was now showing signs of recovering from the stunning blow of the stone. "I've got to get her away from here," decided Joe. "If that brute starts kicking around he may hurt her. I've got to pick her up and carry her. She doesn't look able to walk." In his sturdy arms he picked up the unconscious girl, and carried her some distance off, placing her on a grassy bank. "Let's see--what do you do when a girl faints?" mused Joe, scratching his head in puzzled fashion. "Water--that's it--you have to sprinkle her face with water." He looked about for some sign of a brook or spring, and, listening, his ear caught a musical trickle off to one side. "Must be a stream over there," he decided. He glanced again at the girl before leaving her. She gave no sign of returning consciousness, and one hand, Joe noticed when he carried her, hung limp, as though the wrist was broken. "And she's lucky to get off with that," decided the young pitcher. "I hope I did the right thing by stopping the horse that way. She sure would have gone over the cliff if I hadn't." The horse, from which had gone all desire to run farther, now struggled to its feet, and shook itself once or twice to adjust the harness. It was partly loose from it, and, with a plunge or two, soon wholly freed itself. "Run away again if you want to now," exclaimed Joe, shaking his fist at the brute. "You can't hurt anyone but yourself, anyhow. Jump over the cliff if you like!" But the horse did not seem to care for any such performance now, and, after shaking himself again, began nibbling the grass as though nothing had happened. "All right," went on Joe, talking to the horse for companionship, since the neighborhood seemed deserted. "Stay there, old fellow. I may need you to get to a doctor, or to some house. She may be badly hurt." For want of something better Joe used the top of his cap in which to carry the water which he found in a clear-running brook, not far from where he had placed the girl. The sprinkling of the first few drops of the cold liquid on her face caused her to open her eyes. Consciousness came back quickly, and, with a start, she gazed up at Joe uncomprehendingly. "You're all right," he said, reassuringly. "That is, I hope so. Do you think you are hurt anywhere? Shall I get a doctor? Where do you live?" Afterward he realized that his hurried questions had given her little chance to speak, but he meant to make her feel that she would be taken care of. "What--what happened?" she faltered. "Your horse ran away," Joe explained, with a smile. "He's over there now; not hurt, fortunately." "Oh, I remember now! Something frightened Prince and he bolted. He never did it before. Oh, I was so frightened. I tried--tried to stop him, but could not. The rein broke." The girl sat up now, Joe's arm about her, supporting her, for she was much in need of assistance, being weak and trembling. "Then he bolted into a field," she resumed, "and he was headed for a cliff. Oh, how I tried to stop him! But he wouldn't. Then--then something--something happened!" She looked wonderingly at Joe. "Yes, I'm afraid _I_ happened it," he said with a smile. "I saw that your horse might go over the cliff, so I threw a stone, and hit him on the head. It stunned him, he fell, and threw you out." "I remember up to that point," she said with a faint smile. "I saw Prince go down, and I thought we were going over the cliff. Oh, what an escape!" "And yet not altogether an escape," remarked Joe. "Your arm seems hurt." She glanced down in some surprise at her right wrist, as though noticing it for the first time. Then, as she moved it ever so slightly, a cry of pain escaped her lips. "It--it's broken!" she faltered. Joe took it tenderly in his hand. "Only sprained, I think," he said, gravely. "It needs attention at once, though; I must get you a doctor. Can you walk?" "I think so." She struggled to her feet with his help, the red blood now surging into her pale cheeks, and making her, Joe thought, more beautiful than ever. "Be careful!" he exclaimed, as she swayed. His arm was about her, so she did not fall. "I--I guess I'm weaker than I thought," she murmured. "But it isn't because I'm injured--except my wrist. I think it must be the shock. Why, there's Prince!" she added, as she saw the grazing horse. "He isn't hurt!" "No, I only stunned him with the stone I threw," said Joe. "Oh, and so you threw a stone at him, and stopped him?" She seemed in somewhat of a daze. "Yes." "What a splendid thrower you must be!" There was admiration in her tones. "It's from playing ball," explained Joe, modestly. "I'm a pitcher on the Pittston nine. We're training over at Montville." "Oh," she murmured, understandingly. "If I could get you some water to drink, it would make you feel better," said Joe. "Then I might patch up the broken harness and get you home. Do you live around here?" "Yes, just outside of Goldsboro. Perhaps you could make a leaf answer for a cup," she suggested. "I believe I would like a little water. It would do me good." She moistened her dry lips with her tongue as Joe hastened back to the little brook. He managed to curl an oak leaf into a rude but clean cup, and brought back a little water. The girl sipped it gratefully, and the effect was apparent at once. She was able to stand alone. "Now to see if I can get that horse of yours hitched to the carriage," spoke the young pitcher, "that is, if the carriage isn't broken." "It's awfully kind of you, Mr.----" she paused suggestively. "I'm Joe Matson, formerly of Yale," was our hero's answer, and, somehow, he felt not a little proud of that "Yale." After all, his university training, incomplete though it had been, was not to be despised. "Oh, a Yale man!" her eyes were beginning to sparkle now. "But I gave it up to enter professional baseball," the young pitcher went on. "It's my first attempt. If you do not feel able to get into the carriage--provided it's in running shape--perhaps I could take you to some house near here and send word to your folks," he suggested. "Oh, I think I can ride--provided, as you say, the carriage is in shape to use," she answered, quickly. "I am Miss Varley. It's awfully good of you to take so much trouble." "Not at all," protested Joe. He noticed a shadow of pain pass over her face, and she clasped her sprained wrist in her left hand. "That must hurt a lot, Miss Varley," spoke Joe with warm sympathy. "I know what a sprain is. I've had many a one. Let me wrap a cold, wet rag around it. That will do until you can get to a doctor and have him reduce it." Not waiting for permission Joe hurried back to the brook, and dipped his handkerchief in the cold water. This he bound tightly around the already swelling wrist, tying it skillfully, for he knew something about first aid work--one needed to when one played ball for a living. "That's better," she said, with a sigh of relief. "It's ever so much better. Oh, I don't know what would have happened if you had not been here!" "Probably someone else would have done as well," laughed Joe. "Now about that carriage." Prince looked up as the youth approached, and Joe saw a big bruise on the animal's head. "Too bad, old fellow, that I had to do that," spoke Joe, for he loved animals. "No other way, though. I had to stop you." A look showed him that the horse was not otherwise injured by the runaway, and another look showed him that it would be impossible to use the carriage. One of the wheels was broken. "Here's a pickle!" cried Joe. "A whole bottle of 'em, for that matter. I can't get her home that way, and she can't very well walk. I can't carry her, either. I guess the only thing to do is to get her to the nearest house, and then go for help--or 'phone, if they have a wire. I'm in for the day's adventure, I guess, but I can't leave her." Not that he wanted to, for the more he was in the girl's presence, the more often he looked into her brown eyes, the more Joe felt that he was caring very much for Miss Varley. "Come, Matson!" he chided himself, "don't be an idiot!" "Well?" she questioned, as he came back to her. "The carriage is broken," he told her. "Do you think you could walk to the nearest house?" "Oh, I'm sure of it," she replied, and now she smiled, showing two rows of white, even teeth. "I'm feeling ever so much better. But perhaps I am keeping you," and she hung back. "Not at all. I'm glad to be able to help you. I suppose I had better tie your horse." "Perhaps." As Joe turned back to the grazing animal there was the sound of a motor car out in the road. He and the girl turned quickly, the same thought in both their minds. Then a look of pleased surprise came over Miss Varley's face. "Reggie! Reggie!" she called, waving her uninjured hand at a young man in the car. "Reggie, Prince bolted with me! Come over here!" The machine was stopped with a screeching of brakes, and the young fellow leaped out. "Why, Mabel!" he cried, as he came sprinting across the field. "Are you hurt? What happened? Dad got anxious about you being gone so long, and I said I'd look you up in my car. Are you hurt, Mabel?" Joe made a mental note that of all names he liked best that of Mabel--especially when the owner had brown eyes. "Only a sprained wrist, Reggie. This gentleman hit Prince with a stone and saved me from going over the cliff." "Oh, he did!" By this time the youth from the auto was beside Joe and the girl. The two young men faced each other. Joe gave a gasp of surprise that was echoed by the other, for the youth confronting our hero was none other than he who had accused Joe of robbing that odd valise. CHAPTER VIII A PARTING "Why--er--that is--I'm awfully obliged to you, of course, for saving my sister," spoke the newcomer--his name must be Reggie Varley, Joe rightly decided. "Very much obliged, old man, and--er----" He paused, evidently quite embarrassed. "You two act as though you had met before," said Miss Varley, with a smile. "Have you?" "Once," spoke Joe, drily. "I did not know your brother's name then." He did not add that he was glad to find that he was Mabel's brother, and not a more distant relation. "How strange that you two should have met," went on Mabel Varley. "Yes," returned Joe, "and it was under rather strange circumstances. It was while I was on my way down here to join the ball team, and your brother thought----" "Ahem!" exclaimed Reggie, with a meaning look at Joe. "I--er--you'd better get in here with me, Mabel, and let me get you home. Perhaps this gentleman----" "His name is Joe Matson," spoke the girl, quickly. "Perhaps Mr. Matson will come home with--us," went on Reggie. Obviously it was an effort to extend this invitation, but he could do no less under the circumstances. Joe felt this and said quickly: "No, thank you, not this time." "Oh, but I want papa and mamma to meet you!" exclaimed Mabel, impulsively. "They'll want to thank you. Just think, Reggie, he saved my life. Prince was headed for the cliff, and he stopped him." There were tears in her eyes as she gazed at Joe. "It was awfully good and clever of you, old man," said Reggie, rather affectedly, yet it was but his way. "I'm sure I appreciate it very much. And we'd like--my sister and I--we'd like awfully to have you come on and take lunch with us. I can put the horse up somewhere around here, I dare say, and we can go on in my car." "The carriage is broken Reggie," Mabel informed him. "Too bad. I'll send Jake for it later. Will you come?" He seemed to wish to ignore, or at least postpone, the matter of the valise and his accusation. Perhaps he felt how unjust it had been. Joe realized Reggie's position. "No, thank you," spoke the young pitcher. "I must be getting back to my hotel. I was just out for a walk. Some other time, perhaps. If you like, I'll try and put the horse in some near-by barn for you, and I'll drop you a card, saying where it is." "Will you really, old man?" asked Reggie, eagerly. "It will be awfully decent of you, after--well, I'd appreciate it very much. Then I could get my sister home, and to a doctor." "Which I think would be a wise thing to do," remarked Joe. "Her wrist seems quite badly sprained. I'll attend to the horse. So now I'll say good-bye." He turned away. He and Reggie had not shaken hands. In spite of the service Joe had rendered he could not help feeling that young Varley harbored some resentment against him. "And if it's her jewelry that is missing, with his watch, and he tells her that he suspects me--I wonder how she'll feel afterward?" mused Joe. "I wonder?" Mabel held out her uninjured hand, and Joe took it eagerly. The warm, soft pressure lingered for some little time afterward in his hardened palm--a palm roughened by baseball play. "Good-bye," she said, softly. "I can't thank you enough--now. You must come and get the rest--later." "I will," he said, eagerly. "Here is my card--it has our address," spoke Reggie holding out a small, white square. "I trust you will come--soon." "I shall try," said Joe, with a peculiar look at his accuser. "And I'll drop you a card about the horse." Reggie helped his sister into the auto, and they drove off, Mabel waving a good-bye to Joe. The latter stood for a minute in the field, looking at the disappearing auto. Then he murmured, probably to the horse, for there was no other sign of life in sight: "Well, you've gone and done it, Matson! You've gone and done it!" But Joe did not admit, even to himself, what he had gone and done. Prince seemed tractable enough after his recent escapade, and made no objection to Joe leading him out to the road. The young pitcher soon came to a farmhouse, where, when he had explained matters, the man readily agreed to stable the animal until it should be called for. And, as Joe Matson trudged back to the hotel he said, more than once to himself: "You've gone and done it, old man! You've gone and done it!" And a little later, as Joe thought of the look on Reggie's face when he recognized the youth he had accused, our hero chuckled inwardly. "He didn't know what to do," mused Joe. "I sure had him buffaloed, as the boys say." Joe was welcomed by his fellow players on his return to the hotel. It was nearly meal time, but before going down to the dining room Joe wrote a short note giving the name of the farmer where he had left the horse. "Let's see now," mused our hero. "To whom shall I send it--to him--or--her." When he dropped the letter in the mail box the envelope bore the superscription--"Miss Mabel Varley." Practice was resumed Monday morning, and Joe could note that there was a tightening up all along the line. The orders from the manager and his assistant came sharper and quicker. "I want you boys to get right on edge!" exclaimed Gregory. "We'll play our opening game in Pittston in two weeks now. We'll cross bats with Clevefield, last season's pennant winners, and we want to down them. I'm getting tired of being in the ruck. I want to be on top of the heap." Joe, from his study of the baseball "dope," knew that Pittston had not made a very creditable showing the last season. The practice was sharp and snappy, and there was a general improvement all along the line. Joe was given several try-outs in the next few days, and while he received no extravagant praise he knew that his work pleased. Jake Collin still held his enmity against Joe, and perhaps it was but natural. Wet grounds, a day or so later, prevented practice, and Joe took advantage of it to call on the girl he had rescued. He found her home, her wrist still bandaged, and she welcomed him warmly, introducing him to her mother. Joe was made to feel quite at home, and he realized that Reggie had said nothing about the articles missing from the valise--or, at least, had not mentioned the accusation against Joe. "Will you tell me how, and when, you met my brother?" asked Mabel, after some general talk. "Hasn't he told you?" inquired Joe, with a twinkle in his eyes. "No, he keeps putting it off." "Then perhaps I'd better not tell," said Joe. "Oh, Mr. Matson, I think you're horrid! Is there some reason I shouldn't know?" "Not as far as I am concerned. But I'd rather your brother would tell." "Then I'm going to make him when he comes home." Joe was rather glad Reggie was not there then. For, in spite of everything, Joe knew there would be a feeling of embarrassment on both sides. "I have come to say good-bye," he said to the girl. "We leave for the North, soon, and the rest of the season will be filled with traveling about." "I'm sorry you're going," she said, frankly. "Are you?" he asked, softly. "Perhaps you will allow me to write to you." "I'd be glad to have you," she replied, warmly, and she gave him a quick glance. "Perhaps I may see you play sometime; I love baseball!" "I'm very glad," returned Joe, and, after a while--rather a long while, to speak the truth--he said good-bye. CHAPTER IX THE FIRST LEAGUE GAME "All aboard!" "Good-bye, everybody!" "See you next Spring!" "Good-bye!" These were some of the calls heard at the Montville station as the Pittston ball team left their training grounds for the trip to their home city, where the league season would start. Joe had been South about three weeks, and had made a few friends there. These waved a farewell to him, as others did to other players, as the train pulled out. Joe was not sure, but he thought he saw, amid the throng, the face of a certain girl. At any rate a white handkerchief was waved directly at him. "Ah, ha! Something doing!" joked Charlie Hall, with whom Joe had struck up quite a friendship. "Who's the fair one, Joe?" "I didn't see her face," was the evasive answer. "Oh, come now! That's too thin! She's evidently taken a liking to you." "I hope she has!" exclaimed the young pitcher, and then blushed at his boldness. As the train pulled past the station he had a full view of the girl waving at him. She was Mabel Varley. Charlie saw her also. "My word!" he cried. "I congratulate you, old man!" and he clapped Joe on the shoulder. "Cut it out!" came the retort, as Joe turned his reddened face in the direction of the girl. And he waved back, while some of the other players laughed. "Better be looking for someone to sign in Matson's place soon, Mack," remarked John Holme, the third baseman, with a chuckle. "He's going to trot in double harness if I know any of the symptoms." "All right," laughed the assistant manager. "I'll have to begin scouting again, I suppose. Too bad, just as Joe is going to make good." "Oh, don't worry," advised our hero coolly. "I'm going to play." The trip up was much more enjoyable than Joe had found the one down, when he came alone. He was beginning to know and like nearly all of his team-mates--that is, all save Collin, and it was due only to the latter's surly disposition that Joe could not be friendly with him. "Think you'll stay in this business long?" asked Charlie of Joe as he sank into the seat beside him. "Well, I expect to make it my business--if I can make good." "I think you will." "But I don't intend to stay in this small league forever," went on Joe. "I'd like to get in a major one." "That isn't as easy as it seems," said the other college lad. "You know you're sort of tied hand and foot once you sign with a professional team." "How's that?" "Why, there is a sort of national agreement, you know. No team in any league will take a player from another team unless the manager of that team gives the player his release. That is, you can quit playing ball, of course; but, for the life of you, you can't get in any other professional team until you are allowed to by the man with whom you signed first." "Well, of course, I've read about players being given their release, and being sold or traded from one team to another," spoke Joe, "but I didn't think it was as close as that." "It is close," said Hall, "a regular 'trust.' Modern professional baseball is really a trust. There's a gentleman's agreement in regard to players that's never broken. I'm sorry, in a way, that I didn't stay an amateur. I, also, want to get into a big league, but the worst of it is that if you show up well in a small league, and prove a drawing card, the manager won't release you. And until he does no other manager would hire you. Though, of course, the double A leagues can draft anyone they like." Joe whistled softly. "Then it isn't going to be so easy to get into another league as I thought," he said. "Not unless something happens," replied his team-mate. "Of course, if another manager wanted you badly enough he would pay the price, and buy you from this club. High prices have been paid, too. There's Marquard--the Giants gave ten thousand dollars to have him play for them." "Yes, I heard about that," spoke Joe, "but I supposed it was mostly talk." "There's a good deal more than talk," asserted Charlie. "Though it's a great advertisement for a man. Think of being worth ten thousand dollars more than your salary!" "And he didn't get the ten," commented Joe. "No. That's the worst of it. We're the slaves of baseball, in a way." "Oh, well, I don't mind being that kind of a slave," said Joe, laughingly. He lay back in his seat as the train whirled on, and before him, as he closed his eyes, he could see a girl's face--the face of Mabel Varley. "I wonder if her brother told her?" mused the young pitcher. "If he did she may think just as he did--that I had a hand in looting that valise. Oh, pshaw! I'm not going to think about it. And yet I wish the mystery was cleared up--I sure do!" The training had done all the players good. They were right "on edge" and eager to get into the fray. Not a little horse-play was indulged in on the way North. The team had a car to itself, and so felt more freedom than otherwise would have been the case. Terry Blake, the little "mascot" of the nine, was a great favorite, and he and Joe soon became fast friends. Terry liked to play tricks on the men who made so much of him, and late that first afternoon he stole up behind Jake Collin, who had fallen asleep, and tickled his face with a bit of paper. At first the pitcher seemed to think it was a troublesome fly, and his half-awake endeavors to get rid of it amused Terry and some others who were watching. Then, as the tickling was persisted in, Collin awoke with a start. He had the name of waking up cross and ugly, and this time was no exception. As he started up he caught sight of the little mascot, and understood what had been going on. "You brat!" he cried, leaping out into the aisle. Terry fled, with frightened face, and Collin ran after him. "I'll punch you for that!" cried the pitcher. "Oh, can't you take a joke?" someone asked him, but Collin paid no heed. He raced after poor little Terry, who had meant no harm, and the mascot might have come to grief had not Joe stepped out into the aisle of the car and confronted Collin. "Let me past! Let me get at him!" stormed the man. "No, not now," was Joe's quiet answer. "Out of my way, you whipper-snapper, or I'll----" He drew back his arm, his fist clenched, but Joe never quailed. He looked Collin straight in the eyes, and the man's arm went down. Joe was smaller than he, but the young pitcher was no weakling. "That'll do, Collin," said Jimmie Mack, quietly. "The boy only meant it for a joke." Collin did not answer. But as he turned aside to go back to his seat he gave Joe a black look. There was an under-current of unpleasant feeling over the incident during the remainder of the trip. Little Terry stole up to Joe, when the players came back from the dining-car, and, slipped his small hand into that of the pitcher. "I--I like you," he said, softly. "Do you?" asked Joe with smile. "I'm glad of that, Terry." "And I'll always see that you have the bat you want when you want it," went on the little mascot. Poor little chap, he was an orphan, and Gus Harrison, the big centre fielder, had practically adopted him. Then he was made the official mascot, and while perhaps the constant association with the ball players was not altogether good for the small lad, still he might have been worse off. Pittston was reached in due season, no happenings worth chronicling taking place on the way. Joe was eager to see what sort of a ball field the team owned, and he was not disappointed when, early the morning after his arrival, he and the others went out to it for practice. It was far from being the New York Polo Grounds, nor was the field equal to the one at Yale, but Joe had learned to take matters as they came, and he never forgot that he was only with a minor league. "Time enough to look for grounds laid out with a rule and compass when I get into a major league," he told himself. "That is, if I can get my release." Joe found some letters from home awaiting him at the hotel where the team had its official home. But, before he answered them he wrote to Mabel. I wonder if we ought to blame him? The more Joe saw of his team-mates the more he liked them--save Collin, and that was no fault of the young pitcher. He found Pittston a pleasant place, and the citizens ardent "fans." They thought their team was about as good as any in that section, and, though it had not captured the pennant, there were hopes that it would come to Pittston that season. "They're good rooters!" exclaimed Jimmie Mack. "I will say that for this Pittston bunch. They may not be such a muchness otherwise, but they're good rooters, and it's a pleasure to play ball here. They warm you up, and make you do your best." Joe was glad to hear this. The new grounds were a little strange to him, at first, but he soon became used to them after one or two days' practice. Nearly all the other players, of course, were more at home. "And now, boys," said Manager Gregory, when practice had closed one day. "I want you to do your prettiest to-morrow. I've got a good team--I know it. Some of you are new to me, but I've heard about you, and I'm banking on your making good. I want you to wallop Clevefield to-morrow. I want every man to do his best, and don't want any hard feelings if I play one man instead of another. I have reasons for it. Now that's my last word to you. I want you to win." There was a little nervous feeling among the players as the time for the first league game drew near. A number of the men had been bought from other clubs. There was one former Clevefield player on the Pittston team, and also one from the pennant club of a previous year. That night Joe spent some time studying the batting averages of the opposing team, and also he read as much of their history as he could get hold of. He wanted to know the characteristics of the various batters if he should be fortunate enough to face them from the pitching mound. There was the blare of a band, roars of cheers, and much excitement. The official opening of the league season was always an event in Pittston, as it is in most large cities. The team left their hotel in a body, going to the grounds in a large 'bus, which was decorated with flags. A mounted police escort had been provided, and a large throng, mostly boys, marched to the grounds, accompanying the players. There another demonstration took place as the home team paraded over the diamond, and greeted their opponents, who were already on hand, an ovation having also been accorded to them. The band played again, there were more cheers and encouraging calls, and then the Mayor of the city stepped forward to throw the first ball. Clevefield was to bat first, the home team, in league games, always coming up last. The initial ball, of course, was only a matter of form, and the batter only pretended to strike at it. Then came the announcement all were waiting for; the naming of the Pittston battery. "For Clevefield," announced the umpire, "McGuinness and Sullivan. For Pittston, Matson and Nelson." Joe had been picked to open the battle, and Nelson, who was the regular catcher, except when Gregory took a hand, would back him up. Joe's ears rang as he walked to the mound. "Play ball!" droned the umpire. CHAPTER X BITTERNESS Joe glanced over to where Gregory sat on the bench, from which he would engineer this first game of the season. The manager caught the eye of the young pitcher, and something in Joe's manner must have told the veteran that his latest recruit was nervous. He signalled to Joe to try a few practice balls, and our hero nodded comprehensively. The batter stepped back from the plate, and Joe thought he detected a smile of derision at his own newness, and perhaps rawness. "But I'll show him!" whispered Joe fiercely to himself, as he clinched his teeth and stung in the ball. It landed in the mitt of the catcher with a resounding thud. "That's the boy!" called Gregory to him. "You'll do, old man. Sting in another." Joe threw with all his force, but there was a sickening fear in his heart that he was not keeping good control over the ball. Nelson signalled to him to hold his curves in a little more, and Joe nodded to show he understood. "Play ball!" drawled the umpire again, and the batter took his place at the plate. Joe looked at the man, and reviewing the baseball "dope" he recalled that the player batted well over .300, and was regarded as the despair of many pitchers. "If I could only strike him out!" thought Joe. His first ball went a little wild. He realized that it was going to be a poor one as soon as it left his hand, but he could not for the life of him recover in time. "Ball one!" yelled the umpire. "That's the way!" "Make him give you what you want!" "Wait for a pretty one!" "That's their ten thousand dollar college pitcher! Back to the bench for his!" These were only a few of the remarks, sarcastic and otherwise, that greeted Joe's first performance. He felt the hot blood rush to his face, and then, as he stepped forward to receive the ball which the catcher tossed back to him, he tried to master his feelings. The catcher shook his head in a certain way, to signal to Joe to be on his guard. Joe looked over at Gregory, who did not glance at him. "I'll do better this time!" whispered Joe, fiercely. He deliberated a moment before hurling in the next ball. "Here goes a home run! Clout it over the fence, Pike!" called an enthusiastic "fan" in a shrill voice and the crowd laughed. "Not if I know it!" muttered Joe. The ball clipped the corner of the plate cleanly, and the batter, who had made a half motion to hit at it, refrained. "Strike one!" yelled the umpire, throwing up his arm. "That's the way, Matson!" "Two more like that and he's a dead one!" Joe caught the signal for a drop, but shook his head. He was going to try another out. Again his catcher signalled for a drop, but Joe was, perhaps, a trifle obstinate. He felt that he had been successful once with an out, and he was going to do it again. The catcher finally nodded in agreement, though reluctantly. Joe shot in a fast one, and he knew that he had the ball under perfect control. Perhaps he was as disappointed as any of the home players when there came a resounding crack, and the white sphere sailed aloft, and well out over centre field. "That's the way, Pike! Two bags anyhow!" But the redoubtable Pike was to have no such good fortune, for the centre fielder, after a heart-breaking run, got under the fly and caught it, winning much applause from the crowd for his plucky effort. "One down!" called Gregory, cheerfully. "Only two more, Joe." Joe wished that he had struck out his man, but it was some consolation to know that he was being supported by good fielding. The next man up had a ball and a strike called on him, and Joe was a bit puzzled as to just what to offer. He decided on a swift in, and thought it was going to make good, but the batter was a crafty veteran, and managed to connect with the ball. He sent a swift liner which the shortstop gathered in, however, and there was another added to the list of outs. "One more and that'll be about all!" called the Pittston catcher. Joe threw the ball over to first for a little practice, while the next batter was picking out his stick, and then came another try. "I've got to strike him out!" decided the young pitcher. "I've got to make good!" His heart was fluttering, and his nerves were not as calm as they ought to have been. He stooped over and made a pretence of tying his shoe-lace. When he straightened up he had, in a measure, gained a mastery of himself. He felt cool and collected. In went the ball with certain aim, and Joe knew that it was just what he had intended it should be. "Strike!" called the umpire, though the batter had not moved. There was some laughter from the grandstand, and the batter tapped the plate nervously. Joe smiled. "Good work!" called Gregory from the bench. Again the ball went sailing in, but this time Joe's luck played him a shabby trick, or perhaps the umpire was not watching closely. Certainly Joe thought it a strike, but "ball" was called. Joe sent in the next one so quickly that the batter was scarcely prepared for it. But it was perfectly legitimate and the umpire howled: "Strike two!" "That's the boy!" "Good work!" "Another like that now, Joe!" Thus cried the throng. Gregory looked pleased. "I guess Mack didn't make any mistake picking him up," he said. The batter knocked a little foul next, that the catcher tried in vain to get. And then, when he faced Joe again, our hero sent in such a puzzling drop that the man was deceived and struck out. "That's the boy!" "What do you think of our ten thousand dollar college pitcher now?" "Come on, Clevefield! He's got some more just like that!" The home team and its supporters were jubilant, and Joe felt a sense of elation as he walked in to the bench. "Now see what my opponent can do," he murmured. McGuinness was an old time pitcher, nothing very remarkable, but one any small club would be glad to get. He had the "number" of most of the Pittston players, and served them balls and strikes in such order that though two little pop flies were knocked no one made a run. The result of the first inning was a zero for each team. "Now Joe, be a little more careful, and I think you can get three good ones," said Gregory, as his team again took the field. "I'll try," replied Joe, earnestly. He got two men, but not the third, who knocked a clean two-bagger, amid enthusiastic howls from admiring "fans." This two-base hit seemed to spell Joe's undoing, for the next man duplicated and the first run was scored. There were two out, and it looked as though Clevefield had struck a winning streak, for the next man knocked what looked to be good for single. But Bob Newton, the right fielder, caught it, and the side was retired with one run. Pittston tried hard to score, but the crafty pitcher, aided by effective fielding, shut them out, and another zero was their portion on the score board. "Joe, we've got to get 'em!" exclaimed Gregory, earnestly. "I'll try!" was the sturdy answer. It was heart-breaking, though, when the first man up singled, and then came a hit and run play. Joe was not the only player on the Pittston team who rather lost his head that inning. For, though Joe was hit badly, others made errors, and the net result was that Clevefield had four runs to add to the one, while Pittston had none. They managed, however, to get two in the following inning, more by good luck than good management, and the game began to look, as Jimmie Mack said, as though the other team had it in the "refrigerator." How it happened Joe never knew, but he seemed to go to pieces. Probably it was all a case of nerves, and the realization that this game meant more to him than any college contest. However that may be, the result was that Joe was effectively hit the next inning, and when it was over, and three more runs had come in, Gregory said sharply: "Collin, you'll pitch now!" It meant that Joe had been "knocked out of the box." "We've got to get this game!" explained the manager, not unkindly. But Joe felt, with bitterness in his heart, that he had failed. CHAPTER XI OLD POP CONSOLES Collin flashed a look of mingled scorn and triumph on Joe as he walked past him. It needed only this to make our hero feel that he had stood about all he could, and he turned away, and tried to get rid of a lump in his throat. None of the other players seemed to notice him. Probably it was an old story to them. Competition was too fierce--it was a matter of making a living on their part--every man was for himself, in a certain sense. They had seen young players come and old players go. It was only a question of time when they themselves would go--go never to come back into baseball again. They might eke out a livelihood as a scout or as a ground-keeper in some big league. It was a fight for the survival of the fittest, and Joe's seeming failure brought no apparent sympathy. Understand me, I am not speaking against organized baseball. It is a grand thing, and one of the cleanest sports in the world. But what I am trying to point out is that it is a business, and from a business standpoint everyone in it must do his best for himself. Each man, in a sense, is concerned only with his own success. Nor do I mean that this precludes a love of the club, and good team work. Far from it. Nor were Joe's feelings made any the less poignant by the fact that Collin did some wonderful pitching. He needed to in order to pull the home team out of the hole into which it had slipped--and not altogether through Joe's weakness, either. Perhaps the other players braced up when they saw the veteran Collin in the box. Perhaps he even pitched better than usual because he had, in a sense, been humiliated by Joe's preference over himself. At any rate, whatever the reason, the answer was found in the fact that Pittston began to wake up. Collin held the other team hitless for one inning, and the rest of the game, ordinary in a sense, saw Pittston march on to victory--a small enough victory--by a margin of two runs, but that was enough. For victory had come out of almost sure defeat. Poor Joe sat on the bench and brooded. For a time no one seemed to take any notice of him, and then Gregory, good general that he was, turned to the new recruit and said: "You mustn't mind a little thing like that, Joe. I have to do the best as I see it. This is business, you know. Why, I'd have pulled Collin out, or Tooley, just as quick." "I know it," returned Joe, thickly. But the knowledge did not add to his comfort, though he tried to make it do so. But I am getting a little ahead of my story. The game was almost over, and it was practically won by Pittston, when a voice spoke back of where Joe sat on the players' bench. It was a husky, uncertain, hesitating sort of voice and it said, in the ear of the young pitcher: "Never mind, my lad. Ten years from now, when you're in a big league, you'll forget all about this. It'll do you good, anyhow, for it'll make you work harder, and hard work makes a good ball player out of a middle-class one. Brace up. I know what I'm talking about!" Joe hesitated a moment before turning. Somehow he had a vague feeling that he had heard that voice before, and under strange circumstances. He wanted to see if he could place it before looking at the speaker. But it was baffling, and Joe turned quickly. He started as he saw standing behind him, attired rather more neatly than when last he had confronted our hero--the tramp whom he had saved from the freight train. On his part the other looked sharply at Joe for a moment. Over his face passed shadows of memory, and then the light came. He recognized Joe, and with a note of gladness in his husky voice--husky from much shouting on the ball field, and from a reckless life--he exclaimed: "Why it's the boy! It's the boy who pulled me off the track! It's the boy!" "Of course!" exclaimed Joe. Impulsively he held out his hand. A shout arose as one of the Pittston players brought in the winning run, but Joe paid no heed. He was staring at old Pop Dutton. The other player--the "has-been"--looked at Joe's extended hand a moment as if in doubt. Then he glanced over the field, and listened to the glad cries. He seemed to straighten up, and his nostrils widened as he sniffed in the odors of the crushed green grass. It was as though a broken-down horse had heard from afar the battle-riot in which he never again would take part. Back came the blood-shot eyes to Joe's still extended hand. "Do you--do you mean it?" faltered the old ball player. "Mean it? Mean what?" asked Joe, in surprise. "Are you going to shake hands with me--with a----" He did not finish his obvious sentence. "Why not?" asked Joe. The other did not need to answer, for at that moment Gregory came up. He started at the sight of Dutton, and said sharply: "How did you get in here? What are you doing here. Didn't I tell you to keep away?" "I paid my way in--_Mister_ Gregory!" was the sarcastic answer. "I still have the price." "Well, we don't care for your money. What are you doing here? The bleachers for yours!" "He came--I think he came to see me," spoke Joe, softly, and he reached for the other's reluctant hand. "I have met him before." "Oh," said Gregory, and there was a queer note in his voice. "I guess we've all met him before, and none of us are the better for it. You probably don't know him as well as the rest of us, Joe." "He--he saved my life," faltered the unfortunate old ball player. "In a way that was a pity," returned Gregory, coolly--cuttingly, Joe thought, "for you're no good to yourself, Dutton, nor to anyone else, as near as I can make out. I told you I didn't want you hanging around my grounds, and I don't. Now be off! If I find you here again I'll hand you over to the police!" Joe expected an outburst from Dutton, but the man's spirit was evidently broken. For an instant--just for an instant--he straightened up and looked full at Gregory. Then he seemed to shrink in his clothes and turned to shuffle away. "All--all right," he mumbled. "I'll keep away. But you've got one fine little pitcher in that boy, and I didn't want to see him lose his nerve and get discouraged--as I often did. That--that's why I spoke to him." Poor Joe felt that he had rather made a mess of it in speaking to Dutton, but, he said afterward, he would have done the same thing over again. "You needn't worry about Matson," said the manager, with a sneer. "I'll look after Joe--I'll see that he doesn't lose his nerve--or get discouraged." "I--I hope you do," said the old player, and then, with uncertain gait, he walked off as the victorious Pittston players swarmed in. The game was over. CHAPTER XII THE QUEER VALISE "Matson, I hope you didn't misunderstand me," remarked the manager as he walked beside Joe to the dressing rooms. "I mean in regard to that Dutton. He's an intolerable nuisance, and I didn't want you to get mixed up with him. Perhaps I spoke stronger than I should, but I'm exasperated with him. I've tried--and so have lots of us--to get him back on the right road again, but I'm afraid he's hopeless." "It's too bad!" burst out the young pitcher. "Yes, I thought you were a little severe with him." "I have to be. I don't want him hanging around here. I haven't seen him for some time. He drifts all about--beating his way like a tramp, I guess, though he's better dressed now than in a long while. What's that he said about you saving his life?" "Well, I suppose I did, in a way," and Joe told of the freight train episode. "But that happened a long distance from here," he added. "I was surprised to turn around and see him." "Oh, Pop travels all over. You've probably heard about him. In his day there wasn't a better pitcher in any league. But he got careless--that, bad companions and dissipation spelled ruin for him. He's down and out now, and I'm sure he can never come back. He lives off what he can borrow or beg from those who used to be his friends. Steer clear of him--that's my advice." Joe did not respond and after a moment Gregory went on with: "And you mustn't mind, Joe, being taken out of to-day's game." "Oh, I didn't--after the first." "It was for your own good, as well as for the good of the team," proceeded the manager. "If I hadn't taken you out you might have gone to pieces, and the crowd would have said mean things that are hard to forget. And I want you to pitch for us to-morrow, Joe." "You do!" cried the delighted young pitcher, all his bitterness forgotten now. "I thought maybe----" He paused in confusion. "Just because you got a little off to-day, did you imagine I was willing to give you your release?" asked Gregory, with a smile. "Well--something like that," confessed Joe. The manager laughed. "Don't take it so seriously," he advised. "You've got lots to learn yet about professional baseball, and I want you to learn it right." Joe felt a sense of gratitude, and when he reached the hotel that afternoon, he took a refreshing shower bath, attired himself in his "glad rags," and bought a ticket to the theatre. Then, before supper, he sat down to write home, enclosing some of his salary to be put in a savings bank at Riverside. Joe also wrote a glowing account of the game, even though his part in it was rather negligible. He also wrote to-- But there! I shouldn't tell secrets that way. It's taking too much of an advantage over a fellow. There was an air of elation about the hotel where the players lived, and on all sides were heard congratulations. The evening papers had big headlines with the victory of the home team displayed prominently. Collin's picture was there, and how much Joe wished that his own was so displayed only he himself knew. Clevefield played four games with Pittston, and they broke even--each side winning two. Joe was given another chance to pitch, and was mainly responsible for winning the second game for his team. Joe was fast becoming accustomed to his new life. Of course there was always something different coming up--some new problem to be met. But he got in the way of solving them. It was different from his life at boarding school, and different from his terms at Yale. He missed the pleasant, youthful comradeship of both places, but he found, as he grew to know them better, some sterling men in his own team, and in those of the opposing clubs. But with all that, at times, Joe felt rather lonesome. Of course the days were busy ones, either at practice or in play. But his nights were his own, and often he had no one with whom he cared to go out. He and Charlie Hall grew more and more friendly, but it was not a companionship of long enough standing to make it the kind Joe really cared for. He had much pleasure in writing home, and to Mabel, who in turn, sent interesting letters of her life in the South. One letter in particular made Joe rather eager. "My brother and I are coming North on a combined business and pleasure trip," she wrote, "and we may see your team play. We expect to be in Newkirk on the twentieth." Joe dropped everything to look eagerly at the official schedule. "Well, of all the luck!" he cried. "We play in Newkirk that date. I wonder if she knew it? I wonder----?" Then for days Joe almost prayed that there would be no rainy days--no upsetting of the schedule that would necessitate double-headers, or anything that would interfere with playing at Newkirk on the date mentioned. That city, as he found by looking at a map, was on a direct railroad line from Goldsboro. "I hope nothing slips up!" murmured the young pitcher. From then on he lived in a sort of rosy glow. The ball season of the Central League was well under way now. A number of games had been played, necessitating travel from one city to another. Some of the journeys Joe liked, and some were tiresome. He met all sorts and conditions of men and was growing to be able to take things as he found them. Joe worked hard, and he took a defeat more to heart than did any of the others. It seemed to be all in the day's work with them. With Joe it was a little more. Not that any of the players were careless, though. They were more sophisticated, rather. The third week of the season, then, found Pittston third in line for pennant honors, and when the loss of a contest to Buffington had set them at the end of the first division there were some rather glum-looking faces seen in the hotel corridor. "Boys, we've got to take a brace!" exclaimed Gregory, and the manner in which he said it told his men that he meant it. Joe went to bed that night wildly resolving to do all sorts of impossible things, so it is no wonder he dreamed that he pitched a no-hit no-run game, and was carried in triumph around the diamond on the shoulders of his enthusiastic comrades. I shall not weary you with an account of the ordinary games. Just so many had to be played in a certain order to fulfill the league conditions. Some of the contests were brilliant affairs, and others dragged themselves out wearily. Joe had his share in the good and bad, but, through it all, he was gradually acquiring a good working knowledge of professional baseball. He was getting better control of his curves, and he was getting up speed so that it was noticeable. "I'll have to get Nelson a mitt with a deeper pit in it if you keep on," said Gregory with a laugh, after one exciting contest when Joe had fairly "pitched his head off," and the game had been won for Pittston by a narrow margin. Gradually Joe's team crept up until it was second, with Clevefield still at the head. "And our next game is with Newkirk!" exulted Joe one morning as they took the train for that place. They were strictly on schedule, and Joe was eager, for more reasons than one, to reach the city where he hoped a certain girl might be. "If we win, and Clevefield loses to-morrow," spoke Charlie Hall, as he dropped into a seat beside Joe, "we'll be on top of the heap." "Yes--if!" exclaimed the young pitcher. "But I'm going to do my best, Charlie!" "The same here!" It was raining when the team arrived in Newkirk, and the weather was matched by the glum faces of the players. "No game to-morrow, very likely," said Charlie, in disappointed tones. "Unless they have rubber grounds here." "No such luck," returned Joe. As he walked with the others to the desk to register he saw, amid a pile of luggage, a certain peculiar valise. He knew it instantly. "Reggie Varley's!" he exclaimed to himself. "There never was another bag like that. And it has his initials on it. Reggie Varley is here--at this hotel, and--and--she--must be here too. Let it rain!" CHAPTER XIII MABEL Joe Matson stood spell-bound for a second or so, staring at the valise which had such an interest for him in two ways. It meant the presence at the hotel of the girl who had awakened such a new feeling within him, and also it recalled the unpleasant occasion when he had been accused of rifling it. "What's the matter, Matson?" asked Gus Harrison, the big centre fielder, who stood directly behind the young pitcher, waiting to register. "Have you forgotten your name?" "No--oh, no!" exclaimed our hero, coming to himself with a start. "I--er--I was just thinking of something." "I should imagine so," commented Harrison. "Get a move on. I want to go to my room and tog up. I've got a date with a friend." As Joe turned away from the desk, after registering, he could not refrain from glancing at the odd valise. He half expected to see Reggie Varley standing beside it, but there was no sign of Mabel's brother. "Quite a coincidence that she should be stopping at this hotel," thought Joe, for a quick glance at the names on the register, ahead of those of the ball team, had shown Joe that Miss Varley's was among them. "Quite a coincidence," Joe mused on. "I wonder if she came here because she knew this was where the team always stops? Oh, of course not. I'm getting looney, I reckon." Then, as he looked at the valise again another thought came to him. "I do wish there was some way of proving to young Varley that I didn't take the stuff out of it," reasoned Joe. "But I don't see how I can prove that I didn't. It's harder to prove a negative than it is a positive, they say. Maybe he has found his stuff by this time; I must ask him if I get a chance. And yet I don't like to bring it up again, especially as she's here. She doesn't know of it yet, that's evident, or she'd have said something. I mean Reggie hasn't told her that he once suspected me." Joe went to his room, and made a much more careful toilet than usual. So much so that Charlie Hall inquired rather sarcastically: "Who's the lady, Joe?" "Lady? What do you mean?" responded Joe, with simulated innocence. "Oh, come now, that's too thin!" laughed the shortstop. "Why all this gorgeousness? And a new tie! Upon my word! You are going it!" "Oh, cut it out!" growled Joe, a bit incensed. But, all the while, he was wondering how and when he would meet Mabel. Would it be proper for him to send her his card? Or would she know that the ball team had arrived, and send word to Joe that he could see her? How were such things managed anyhow? Joe wished there was some one whom he could ask, but he shrank from taking into his confidence any of the members of the team. "I'll just wait and see what turns up," he said. Fate was kind to him, however. Most of the ball players had gone in to dinner, discussing, meanwhile, the weather probabilities. There was a dreary drizzle outside, and the prospects for a fair day to follow were remote indeed. It meant almost certainly that there would be no game, and this was a disappointment to all. The Pittston team was on edge for the contest, for they wanted their chance to get to the top of the league. "Well, maybe it's just as well," confided Gregory to Jimmie Mack. "It'll give the boys a chance to rest up, and they've been going the pace pretty hard lately. I do hope we win, though." "Same here," exclaimed Jimmie earnestly. As Joe came down from his apartment, and crossed the foyer into the dining room, he turned around a pillar and came face to face with Reggie Varley--and his sister. They both started at the sight of the young pitcher, and Mabel blushed. Joe did the same, for that matter. "Oh, why how do you do!" the girl exclaimed graciously, holding out her hand. "I'm awfully glad to see you again! So you are here with your team? Oh, I do hope you'll win! Too bad it's raining; isn't it? Reggie, you must take me to the game! You remember Mr. Matson, of course!" She spoke rapidly, as though to cover some embarrassment, and, for a few seconds, Joe had no chance to say anything, save incoherent murmurs, which, possibly, was proper under the circumstances. "Oh, yes, I remember him," said Reggie, but there was not much cordiality in his tone or manner. "Certainly I remember him. Glad to meet you again, old man. We haven't forgotten what you did for sis. Awfully good of you." Joe rather resented this tone, but perhaps Reggie could not help it. And the young pitcher wondered whether there was any significance in the way Reggie "remembered." Young Varley glanced over toward where his odd valise had been placed, in a sort of checking room. "Excuse me," he said to his sister and Joe. "I must have my luggage sent up. I quite forgot about it." "Then there isn't any jewelry in it this time," spoke Joe significantly, and under the impulse of the moment. A second later he regretted it. "No, of course not. Oh, I see!" exclaimed Reggie, and his face turned red. "I'll be back in a moment," he added as he hurried off. Mabel glanced from her brother to Joe. She saw that there was something between them of which she knew nothing, but she had the tact to ignore it--at least for the present. "Have you dined?" she asked Joe. "If you haven't there's a vacant seat at our table, and I'm sure Reggie and I would be glad to have you sit with us." "I don't know whether he would or not," said Joe, feeling that, as his part in the story of the valise and the missing jewelry would have to come out sometime, now was as good as any. "Why--what do you mean?" asked Mabel in surprise. "Hasn't he told you?" demanded Joe. "Told me? Told me what? I don't understand." "I mean about his watch and some of your jewelry being taken." "Oh, yes, some time ago. You mean when he was up North. Wasn't it too bad! And my lovely beads were in his valise. But how did you know of it?" "Because," blurted out Joe, "your brother accused me of taking them!" Mabel started back. "No!" she cried. "Never! He couldn't have done that!" "But he did, and I'd give a lot to be able to prove that I had no hand in the looting!" Joe spoke, half jokingly. "How silly!" exclaimed the girl. "The idea! How did it happen?" Joe explained briefly, amid rather excited ejaculations from Mabel, and had just concluded when Reggie came back. He caught enough of the conversation to understand what it was about, and as his sister looked oddly at him, he exclaimed: "Oh, I say now, Matson! I was hoping that wouldn't get out. I suppose I made rather a fool of myself--talking to you the way I did, but----" "Well, I resented it somewhat at the time," replied Joe, slowly, "but I know how you must have felt." "Yes. Well, I never have had a trace of the stuff. I was hoping sis, here, wouldn't know how I accused you--especially after the plucky way you saved her." "I thought it best to tell," said the young pitcher, quietly. "Oh, well, as you like," and Reggie shrugged his shoulders. "It was certainly a queer go." "And I'm living in hope," went on Joe, "that some day I'll be able to prove that I had no hand in the matter." "Oh, of course you didn't!" cried Mabel, impulsively. "It's silly of you, Reggie, to think such a thing." "I don't think it--now!" But in spite of this denial Joe could not help feeling that perhaps, after all, Reggie Varley still had an undefined suspicion against him. "I say!" exclaimed Joe's one-time accuser, "won't you dine with us? We have a nice waiter at our table----" "I had already asked him," broke in Mabel. "Then that's all right. I say, Matson, can't you take my sister in? I've just had a 'phone message about some of dad's business that brought me up here. I've got to go see a man, and if you'll take Mabel in----" "I shall be delighted." "How long will you be, Reggie?" "Oh, not long, Sis. But if I see Jenkinson to-night it will save us time to-morrow." "Oh, all right. But if I let you off now you'll have to take me to the ball game to-morrow." "I will--if it doesn't rain." "And you'll be back in time for the theatre?" "Surely. I'll run along now. It's awfully good of you, Matson, to take----" "Not at all!" interrupted Joe. The pleasure was all his, he felt. He and Mabel went into the hotel dining room, and Joe's team-mates glanced curiously at him from where they sat. But none of them made any remarks. "It was dreadful of Reggie, to accuse you that way," the girl murmured, when they were seated. "Oh, he was flustered, and perhaps it was natural," said Joe. "I did sit near the valise, you know." "I know--but----" They talked over the matter at some length, and then the conversation drifted to baseball. Joe had never eaten such a delightful meal, though if you had asked him afterward what the menu was made up of, he could not have told you. It was mostly Mabel, I think, from the soup to the dessert. CHAPTER XIV BAD NEWS Grounds that were soggy and wet, and a dreary drizzle of rain, prevented a game next day, and there was much disappointment. Weather reports were eagerly scanned, and the skies looked at more than once. "I think it'll clear to-morrow," remarked Joe to Charlie Hall. "I sure hope so. I want to see what sort of meat these Newkirk fellows are made of since we played against 'em last." "Oh, they're husky enough, as we found, Charlie," for there had been several league games between this team and the Pittston nine, but in the latter town. Now the tables might be turned. "They've got some new players," went on Charlie, "and a pitcher who's said to be a marvel." "Well, you've got me," laughed Joe, in simulated pride. "That's right, old man, and I'm glad of it. I think you're going to pull us to the top in this pennant race." "Oh, I haven't such a swelled head as to think that," spoke Joe, "but I'm going to work hard--I guess we all are. But what does it look like for Clevefield to-day? You know she's got to lose and we've got to win to put us on top." "I know. There wasn't any report of rain there, so the game must be going on. We ought to get results soon. Come on over to the ticker." It was after luncheon, and the game in Clevefield, with the Washburg nine, would soon start. Then telegraphic reports of the contest that, in a way, meant so much for Pittston would begin coming in. After the delightful dinner Joe had had with Mabel his pleasure was further added to when he went with her to the theatre. Reggie telephoned that he could not get back in time, and asked Joe to take his sister, she having the tickets. Of course the young pitcher was delighted, but he could not get over the uneasy feeling that young Varley was suspicious of him. "Hang it all!" exclaimed Joe, mentally. "I've just got to get that out of his mind! But how? Only by finding his watch or Mabel's jewelry, and I suppose I might as well look for a needle in a haystack." Joe sat in the hotel corridor, looking over a newspaper, and waiting for some news of the Clevefield game, as many of his team were doing. An item caught the eye of the young pitcher that caused him to start. It was to the effect that the unfortunate Pop Dutton had been arrested for creating a scene at a ball park. "Poor old man!" mused Joe. "I wish I could do something for him. I feel sort of responsible for him, since I saved his life. I wonder if he couldn't be straightened up? I must have another talk with Gregory about him." A yell from some of the players gathered about the news ticker in the smoking room brought Joe to his feet. "What is it?" he called to Charlie Hall. "Washburg got three runs the first inning and Clevefield none!" was the answer. "It looks as if Washburg would have a walk-over. And you know what that means for us." "Yes, if we win to-morrow." "Win! Of course we'll win, you old bone-head!" cried Charlie, clapping Joe affectionately on the back. Further news from the game was eagerly awaited and when the last inning had been ticked off, and Washburg had won by a margin of three runs, the Pittston team was delighted. Not at the downfall of fellow players, understand, but because it gave Pittston the coveted chance to be at the top of the first division. "Boys, we've just got to win that game to-morrow!" cried Gregory. "If they don't I'll make them live on bread and water for a week!" cried Trainer McGuire, with a twinkle in his blue eyes. The second day following proved all that could be desired from a weather standpoint for a ball game, the grounds having dried up meanwhile. It was bright and sunny, but not too warm, and soon after breakfast the team was ordered out on the field for light practice. This was necessary as their day of comparative idleness, added to the damp character of the weather, had made them all a little stiff. "Get limbered up, boys," advised Jimmie Mack. "You'll need all the speed and power you can bring along to-day. Joe, how's your arm?" "All right, I guess," answered the young pitcher. "Well, do some light practice. Come on. I'll catch for you a while." There had been some slight changes made in the Newkirk grounds since last season, and Gregory wanted his players to familiarize themselves with the new layout. Joe was delighted with the diamond. Though Newkirk was a smaller city than Pittston the ball field was kept in better shape. "Of course it isn't the Polo Grounds," Joe confided to Charlie Hall, "but they're pretty good." "I wonder if I'll ever get a chance to play on the Polo Grounds?" murmured Charlie, half enviously. "It must be great!" "It is!" cried Joe, with memories of the Yale-Princeton contest he had taken part in there. "And I'm going to do it again, some time!" "You are?" "I sure am. I'm going to break into a big league if it's possible." "Good for you, Joe!" "Still, the grounds aren't everything, Charlie," went on Joe. "We've got to play the best ball to win the game." "And we'll do it, too! Don't worry." The practice was worked up to a fast and snappy point, and then Gregory sent his men for a brisk walk, to be followed by a shower bath in preparation for the afternoon contest. Certainly when the Pittston team started for the grounds again they were a bright, clean-looking lot of players. Joe was wondering whether he would have a chance to pitch, but, following his usual policy, the crafty manager did not announce his battery until the last moment. There was a big crowd out to see the game, for the rivalry in the Central League was now intense, and interest was well keyed up. Joe had seen Mabel and her brother start for the grounds, and he wished, more than ever before, perhaps, that he would be sent to the mound to do battle for his team. The Newkirk men were out on the diamond when the Pittston players arrived, and, after an interval the latter team was given a chance to warm up. Joe and the other pitchers began their usual practice, and Joe felt that he could do himself justice if he could but get a chance. There was silence as the batteries were announced, and Joe could not help feeling a keen disappointment as Tooley, the south-paw, was named to open the contest. "There's a lot of queer batters on the Newkirks," Joe heard Bob Newton, the right fielder, say to Terry Hanson, who played left. "I guess that's the reason the old man wants Tooley to feel them out." "I reckon." "Play ball!" droned the umpire as the gong clanged, and George Lee, the second baseman, who was first at bat, strolled out to pick up his club. The first part of the game was rather a surprise to the Pittston players. Lee was struck out with amazing ease, and even Jimmie Mack, who had the best batting average of any on the team, "fell" for a delusive "fade-away" ball. "But I've got his number!" he exclaimed, as he nodded at the opposing pitcher. "He won't get me again." Pittston did not get a run, though she had three men on bases when the last one went down, and it looked as though her chances were good. Then came more disappointment when Tooley failed to get his batters, and Newkirk had two runs chalked up to her credit. The second inning was almost like the first and then at the proper time, Gregory, with a decisive gesture, signalled to Joe. "You'll have to pitch us out of this hole!" he said, grimly. Collin, who had said openly that he expected to be called on, looked blackly at our hero. As Joe started to take his place a messenger boy handed him a telegram. He was a little startled at first, and then laughed at his fears. "Probably good wishes from home," he murmured, as he tore open the envelope. And then the bright day seemed to go black as he read: "Your father hurt in explosion. No danger of death, but may lose eyesight. If you can come home do so. MOTHER." CHAPTER XV JOE'S PLUCK Joe's distress at receiving the bad news was so evident, at least to Gregory, that the manager hurried over to the young pitcher and asked: "What's the matter, old man? Something upset you?" For answer Joe simply held out the message. "I say! That's too bad!" exclaimed Gregory sympathetically. "Let's see now. You can get a train in about an hour, I think. Skip right off. I'll make it all right." It was his business to know much about trains, and he was almost a "walking timetable." "Awfully sorry, old man!" he went on. "Come back to us when you can. You'll find us waiting." Joe made up his mind quickly. It was characteristic of him to do this, and it was one of the traits that made him, in after years, such a phenomenal pitcher. "I--I'm not going home," said Joe, quietly. "Not going home! Why?" cried Gregory. "At least not until after the game," went on Joe. "The telegram says my father isn't in any immediate danger, and I could not gain much by starting now. I'm going to stay and pitch. That is, if you'll let me." "Let you! Of course I'll let you. But can you stand the gaff, old man? I don't want to seem heartless, but the winning of this game means a lot to me, and if you don't feel just up to the mark----" "Oh, I can pitch--at least, I think I can," said Joe, not wishing to appear too egotistical. "I mean this won't make me flunk." "That's mighty plucky of you, Joe, and I appreciate it. Now don't make a mistake. It won't hurt your standing with the club a bit if you go now. I'll put Collin in, and----" "I'll pitch!" said Joe, determinedly. "After that it will be time enough to start for home." "All right," assented Gregory. "But if you want to quit at any time, give me the signal. And I'll tell you what I'll do. Have you a 'phone at home?" "Yes." "Then I'll have someone get your house on the long distance wire, and find out just how your father is. I'll also send word that you'll start to-night." "That will be fine!" cried Joe, and already he felt better. The bad news had shocked him for the time, though. "Play ball!" called the umpire, for there had been a little delay over the talk between Joe and the manager. "Just keep quiet about it, though," advised the manager to the young pitcher. "It may only upset things if it gets out. Are you sure you can stand it?" "I--I'm going to stand it!" responded Joe, gamely. He faced his first batter with a little sense of uncertainty. But Nelson, who was catching, nodded cheerfully at him, and gave a signal for a certain ball that Joe, himself, had decided would best deceive that man with the stick. He sent it in rushingly, and was delighted to hear the umpire call: "Strike one!" "That's the way!" "Two more like that and he's a goner!" "Slam 'em in, Matson!" Joe flushed with pleasure at the encouraging cries. He wondered if Mabel was joining in the applause that frequently swept over the grandstand at a brilliant play. Again Joe threw, and all the batter could do was to hit a foul, which was not caught. Then came a ball, followed by another, and Joe began to get a bit anxious. "That's the boy!" welled up encouragingly from the crowd. Joe tried a moist ball--a delivery of which he was not very certain as yet, but the batter "fell for it" and whirled around as he missed it cleanly. "Three strikes--batter's out!" howled the umpire, and the man went back to the bench. The next candidate managed to get a single, but was caught stealing second, and Joe had a chance to retire his third man. It was a chance not to be missed, and he indulged in a few delaying tactics in order to place, in his mind, the hitter and his special peculiarities. With a snap of his wrist Joe sent in an out curve, but the manner in which the batter leaped for it, missing it only by a narrow margin, told our hero that this ball was just "pie," for his antagonist. "Mustn't do that again," thought Joe. "He'll slam it over the fence if I do." The next--an in-shoot--was hit, but only for a foul, and Joe, whose heart had gone into his throat as he heard the crack of the bat, breathed easier. Then, just to puzzle the batter, after delivering a "moistener" that fell off and was called a ball, Joe sent in a "teaser"--a slow one--that fooled the player, who flied out to shortstop. Joe was beginning to feel more confidence in himself. The others of the Pittston team grinned encouragingly at Joe, and Gregory clasped his arms about the young pitcher as he came in to the bench. "Can you stick it out?" he asked. "Sure! Have you any word yet on the 'phone?" "No. Not yet. I'm expecting Hastings back any minute," naming a substitute player who had not gone into the game, and whom the manager had sent to call up Joe's house. "But are you sure you want to keep on playing?" "Sure," answered Joe. He had a glimpse of Collin, and fancied that the eager look on the other pitcher's face turned to one of disappointment. "You're beating me out," said Tooley, the south-paw, with an easy laugh. "I'm sorry," said Joe, for he knew how it felt to be supplanted. "Oh, I'm not worrying. My turn will come again. One can't be up to the mark all the while." Pittston managed to get a run over the plate that inning, and when it came time for Joe to go to the mound again he had better news to cheer him up. Word had come over the telephone that Mr. Matson, while making some tests at the Harvester Works, had been injured by an explosion of acids. Some had gone into his face, burning him badly. His life was in no danger, but his eyesight might be much impaired, if not lost altogether. Nothing could be told in this respect for a day or so. Hastings had been talking to Joe's sister Clara, to whom he explained that Joe would start for home as soon as the game was over. Mrs. Matson was bearing up well under the strain, the message said, and Joe was told not to worry. "Now I'll be able to do better," said the young pitcher, with a little smile. "Thanks for the good news." "You're doing all right, boy!" cried Gregory. "I think we're going to win!" But it was not to be as easy as saying it. The Newkirk men fought hard, and to the last inch. They had an excellent pitcher--a veteran--who was well backed up with a fielding force, and every run the Pittstons got they fully earned. Joe warmed up to his work, and to the howling delight of the crowd struck out two men in succession, after one had gone out on a pop fly, while there were two on bases. That was a test of nerve, for something might have broken loose at any moment. But Joe held himself well in hand, and watched his batters. He so varied his delivery that he puzzled them, and working in unison with Nelson very little got past them. Then came a little spurt on the part of Newkirk, and they "sweetened" their score until there was a tie. It was in the ninth inning, necessitating another to decide the matter. "If we can get one run we'll have a chance to win," declared Gregory. "That is, if you can hold them in the last half of the tenth, Joe." "I'll do my best!" "I know you will, my boy!" For a time it looked as though it could not be done. Two of the Pittston players went down in rapid succession before the magnificent throwing of the Newkirk pitcher. Then he made a fatal mistake. He "fed" a slow ball to John Holme, the big third baseman, who met it squarely with his stick, and when the shouting was over John was safely on the third sack. "Now bring him home, Joe!" cried the crowd, as the young pitcher stepped to the plate. It was not the easiest thing in the world to stand up there and face a rival pitcher, with the knowledge that your hit might win the game by bringing in the man on third. And especially after the advent of the telegram. But Joe steadied himself, and smiled at his opponent. He let the first ball go, and a strike was called on him. There was a groan from grandstand and bleachers. "Take your time, Joe!" called Gregory, soothingly. "Get what you want." It came. The ball sailed for the plate at the right height, and Joe correctly gaged it. His bat met it squarely, with a resounding "plunk!" "That's the boy!" "Oh, what a beaut!" "Take third on that!" "Come on home, you ice wagon!" "Run! Run! Run!" It was a wildly shrieking mob that leaped to its feet, cheering on Joe and Holme. On and on ran the young pitcher. He had a confused vision of the centre fielder running back to get the ball which had dropped well behind him. Joe also saw Holme racing in from third. He could hear the yells of the crowd and fancied--though of course it could not be so--that he could hear the voice of Mabel calling to him. On and on ran Joe, and stopped, safe on second, Holme had gone in with the winning run. But that was all. The next man struck out, and Joe was left on the "half-way station." "But we're one ahead, and if we can hold the lead we've got 'em!" cried Gregory. "Joe, my boy, it's up to you! Can you hold 'em down?" He looked earnestly at the young pitcher. "I--I'll do it!" cried Joe. CHAPTER XVI A SLIM CHANCE There was an almost breathless silence as Joe walked to the mound to begin what he hoped would be the ending of the final inning of the game. If he could prevent, with the aid of his mates, the Newkirk team from gaining a run, the Pittstons would be at the top of the list. If not---- But Joe did not like to think about that. He was under a great nervous strain, not only because of the news concerning his father, but because of what his failure or success might mean to the club he had the honor to represent. "I've just got to win!" said Joe to himself. "Play ball!" called the umpire. Joe had been holding himself a little in reserve up to now; that is, he had not used the last ounce of ability that he had, for he could see that the game was going to be a hard one, and that a little added "punch" at the last moment might make or break for victory. The young pitcher had a good delivery of what is known as the "jump" ball. It is sent in with all the force possible, and fairly jumps as it approaches the plate. It is often used to drive the batsman away from the rubber. It is supposed to go straight for the plate, or the inside corner, and about shoulder high. A long preliminary swing is needed for this ball, and it is pitched with an overhand delivery. Joe had practiced this until he was a fair master of it, but he realized that it was exhausting. Always after sending in a number of these his arm would be lame, and he was not good for much the next day. But now he thought the time had come to use it, varying it, of course, with other styles of delivery. "I've got to hold 'em down!" thought Joe. He realized that the attention of all was on him, and he wished he could catch the eyes of a certain girl he knew sat in the grandstand watching him. Joe also felt that Collin, his rival, was watching him narrowly, and he could imagine the veteran pitcher muttering: "Why do they send in a young cub like that when so much depends on it? Why didn't Gregory call me?" But the manager evidently knew what he was doing. "Play ball!" called the umpire again, at the conclusion of the sending in of a practice ball or two. Joe caught his breath sharply. "It's now or never!" he thought as he grasped the ball in readiness for the jump. "It's going to strain me, but if I go home for a day or so I can rest up." In went the horsehide sphere with great force. It accomplished just what Joe hoped it would. The batter instinctively stepped back, but there was no need. The ball neatly clipped the corner of the plate, and the umpire called: "Strike one!" Instantly there was a howl from the crowd. "That's the way!" "Two more, Matson, old man!" "Make him stand up!" "Slam it out, Johnson!" The batter had his friends as well as Joe. But the battle was not half won yet. There were two men to be taken care of after this one was disposed of, and he still had his chances. Joe signalled to his catcher that he would slip in a "teaser" now, and the man in the wire mask nodded his understanding. The batter smiled, in anticipation of having a "ball" called on him, but was amazed, not to say angry, when he heard from the umpire the drawling: "Strike--two!" Instantly there came a storm of protest, some from the crowd, a half-uttered sneer from the batter himself, but more from his manager and team-mates on the players' bench. "Forget it!" sharply cried the umpire, supreme master that he was. "I said 'strike,' and a strike it goes. Play ball!" Joe was delighted. It showed that they were now to have fair treatment from the deciding power, though during the first part of the game the umpire's decisions had not been altogether fair to Pittston. The crowd was breathlessly eager again, as Joe wound up once more. Then there was a mad yell as the batter hit the next ball. "Go on! Go on! You----" "Foul!" yelled the umpire, and there was a groan of disappointment. Joe was a little nervous, so it is no wonder that he was called for a ball on his next delivery. But following that he sent in as neat an out curve as could be desired. The batter missed it by a foot, and throwing his stick down in disgust walked to the bench. "Only two more, old man!" called Gregory encouragingly. "Only two more. We've got their number." Then came an attempt on the part of the crowd, which naturally was mostly in sympathy with their home team, to get Joe's "goat." He was hooted at and reviled. He was advised to go back to college, and to let a man take his place. Joe only grinned and made no answer. The nervous strain under which he was playing increased. He wanted, no one perhaps but Gregory knew how much, to get away and take a train for home, to be with his suffering father. But there were two more men to put out. And Joe did it. That is, he struck out the next man. The third one singled, and when the best batter of the opposing team came up, Joe faced him confidently. After two balls had been called, and the crowd was at the fever point of expectancy, Joe got a clean strike. It was followed by a foul, and then came a little pop fly that was easily caught by the young pitcher, who hardly had to move from his mound. "Pittston wins!" "Pittston is up head!" "Three cheers for Joe Matson!" They were given with a will, too, for the crowd loved a plucky player, even if it was on the other side. But Joe did not stay to hear this. He wanted to catch the first train for home, and hurried into the dressing room. He spoke to Gregory, saying that he was going, and would be back as soon as he could. "Take your time, old man; take your time," said the manager kindly. "You did a lot for us to-day, and now I guess we can hold our own until you come back." There were sympathetic inquiries from Joe's fellow players when they heard what had happened. Joe wanted to say good-bye to Mabel, but did not quite see how he could do it. He could hardly find her in that crowd. But chance favored him, and as he was entering the hotel to get his grip, he met her. "Oh, it was splendid!" she cried with girlish enthusiasm, holding out her slim, pretty hand. "It was fine! However did you do it?" "I guess because I knew you were watching me!" exclaimed Joe with a boldness that he himself wondered at later. "Oh, that's awfully nice of you to say," she answered, with a blush. "I wish I could believe it!" "You can!" said Joe, still more boldly. "But you--you look as though something had happened," she went on, for surely Joe's face told that. "There has," he said, quietly, and he told of the accident to his father. "Oh, I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed, clasping his hand again. "And you pitched after you heard the news! How brave of you! Is there anything we can do--my brother--or I?" she asked anxiously. "Thank you, no," responded Joe, in a low voice. "I am hoping it will not be serious." "You must let me know--let Reggie know," she went on. "We shall be here for some days yet." Joe promised to write, and then hurried off to catch his train. It was a long ride to Riverside, and to Joe, who was all impatience to be there, the train seemed to be the very slowest kind of a freight, though it really was an express. But all things must have an end, and that torturing journey did. Joe arrived in his home town late one afternoon, and took a carriage to the house. He saw Clara at the window, and could see that she had been crying. She slipped to the door quickly, and held up a warning finger. "What--what's the matter?" asked Joe in a hoarse whisper. "Is--is he worse?" "No, he's a little better, if anything. But he has just fallen asleep, and so has mother. She is quite worn out. Come in and I'll tell you about it. Oh, Joe! I'm so glad you're home!" Clara related briefly the particulars of the accident, and then the doctor came in. By this time Mrs. Matson had awakened and welcomed her son. "What chance is there, Doctor," asked the young pitcher; "what chance to save his eyesight?" "Well, there's a chance; but, I'm sorry to say, it is only a slim one," was the answer. "It's too soon to say with certainty, however. Another day will have to pass. I hope all will be well, but now all I can say is that there is a chance." Joe felt his heart beating hard, and then, bracing himself to meet the emergency if it should come, he put his arm around his weeping mother, and said, as cheerfully as he could: "Well, I believe chance is going to be on our side. I'm going to use a bit of baseball slang, and say I have a 'hunch' that we'll win out!" "That's the way to talk!" cried Dr. Birch, heartily. CHAPTER XVII OLD POP AGAIN Dr. Birch remained for some little time at the Matson home, going over in detail with Joe just what the nature of his father's injuries were. In brief, while experimenting on a certain new method of chilling steel, for use in a corn sheller, Mr. Matson mixed some acids together. Unknown to him a workman had, accidentally, substituted one very strong acid for a weak one. When the mixture was put into an iron pot there was an explosion. Some of the acid, and splinters of iron, flew up into the face of the inventor. "And until I can tell whether the acid, or a piece of steel, injured his eyes, Joe, I can't say for sure what we shall have to do," concluded the doctor. "You mean about an operation?" "Yes. If we have to perform one it will be a very delicate one, and it will cost a lot of money; there are only a few men in this country capable of doing it, and their fees, naturally, are high. But we won't think of that now. I think I will go in and see how he is. If he is well enough I want you to see him. It will do him good." "And me, too," added Joe, who was under a great strain, though he did not show it. Mr. Matson was feeling better after his rest, and Joe was allowed to come into the darkened room. He braced himself for the ordeal. "How are you, Son," said the inventor weakly. "Fine, Dad. But I'm sorry to see you laid up this way." "Well, Joe, it couldn't be helped. I should have been more careful. But I guess I'll pull through. How is baseball?" "Couldn't be better, Dad! We're at the top of the heap! I just helped to win the deciding game before I came on." "Yes, I heard your mother talking about the telephone message. I'm glad you didn't come away without playing. Have you the pennant yet?" "Oh, no. That won't be decided for a couple of months. But we're going to win it!" "That's what I like to hear!" Dr. Birch did not permit his patient to talk long, and soon Joe had to leave the room. The physician said later that he thought there was a slight improvement in Mr. Matson's condition, though of course the matter of saving his eyesight could not yet be decided. "But if we do have to have an operation," said Mrs. Matson. "I don't see where the money is coming from. Your father's investments are turning out so badly----" "Don't worry about that, Mother," broke in Joe. "But I have to, Joe. If an operation is needed we'll have to get the money. And from where is more than I know," she added, hopelessly. "I'll get the money!" exclaimed the young pitcher in energetic tones. "How?" asked his mother. "I'm sure you can't make enough at ball playing." "No, perhaps not at ordinary ball playing, Mother, but at the end of the season, when the deciding games for the pennant are played off, they always draw big crowds, and the players on the winning team come in for a good share of the receipts. I'll use mine for the operation." "But your team may not win the pennant, Joe," said Clara. "We're going to win!" cried the young pitcher. "I feel it in my bones! Don't worry, Mother." But, naturally, Mrs. Matson could not help it, in spite of Joe's brave words. Clara, though, was cheered up. "There's more to baseball than I thought," she said. "There's more in it than I'll ever learn," admitted Joe, frankly. "Of course our pennant-deciding games aren't like the world series, but I understand they bring in a lot of money." Mr. Matson was quite improved the next day, but Dr. Birch, and another physician, who was called in consultation, could not settle the matter about the eyes. "It will be fully a month before we can decide about the operation," said the expert. "In the meanwhile he is in no danger, and the delay will give him a chance to get back his strength. We shall have to wait." As nothing could be gained by Joe's staying home, and as his baseball money was very much needed at this trying time, it was decided that he had better rejoin his team. He bade his parents and sister good-bye, and arranged to have word sent to him every day as to his father's condition. "And don't you worry about that money, Mother," he said as he kissed her. "I'll be here with it when it's needed." "Oh, Joe!" was all she said, but she looked happier. Joe went back to join the team at Delamont, where they were scheduled to play four games, and then they would return to their home town of Pittston. From the newspapers Joe learned that his team had taken three of the four contests in Newkirk, and might have had the fourth but for bad pitching on the part of Collin. "Maybe he won't be so bitter against me now," thought Joe. "He isn't such a wonder himself." Joe was glancing over the paper as the train sped on toward Delamont. He was looking over other baseball news, and at the scores of the big leagues. "I wonder when I'll break into them?" mused Joe, as he glanced rather enviously at several large pictures of celebrated players in action. "I'm going to do it as soon as I can." Then the thought came to him of how hard it was for a young and promising player to get away from the club that controlled him. "The only way would be to slump in form," said Joe to himself, "and then even if he did get his release no other team would want him. It's a queer game, and not altogether fair, but I suppose it has to be played that way. Well, no use worrying about the big leagues until I get a call from one. There'll be time enough then to wonder about my release." As Joe was about to lay aside the paper he was aware of a controversy going on a few seats ahead of him. The conductor had stopped beside an elderly man and was saying: "You'll have to get off, that's all there is to it. You deliberately rode past your station, and you're only trying to see how far you can go without being caught. You get off at the next station, or if you don't I'll stop the train when I get to you and put you off, even if it's in the middle of a trestle. You're trying to beat your way, and you know it! You had a ticket only to Clearville, and you didn't get off." "Oh, can't you pass me on to Delamont?" pleaded the man. "I admit I was trying to beat you. But I've got to get to Delamont. I've the promise of work there, and God knows I need it. I'll pay the company back when I earn it." "Huh!" sneered the conductor, "that's too thin. I've heard that yarn before. No, sir; you get off at the next station, or I'll have the brakeman run you off. Understand that! No more monkey business. Either you give me money or a ticket, or off you go." "All right," was the short answer. "I reckon I'll have to do it." The man turned and at the sight of his face Joe started. "Pop Dutton!" exclaimed the young pitcher, hardly aware that he had spoken aloud. "That's me," was the answer. "Oh--why--it's Joe!" he added, and his face lighted up. Then a look of despair came over it. Joe decided quickly. No matter what Gregory and the others said he had determined to help this broken-down old ball player. "What's the fare to Delamont?" Joe asked the conductor. "One-fifty, from the last station." "I'll pay it," went on Joe, handing over a bill. The ticket-puncher looked at him curiously, and then, without a word, made the change, and gave Joe the little excess slip which was good for ten cents, to be collected at any ticket office. "Say, Joe Matson, that's mighty good of you!" exclaimed Old Pop Dutton, as Joe came to sit beside him. "Mighty good!" "That's all right," spoke Joe easily. "What are you going to do in Delamont?" "I've got a chance to be assistant ground-keeper at the ball park. I--I'm trying to--trying to get back to a decent life, Joe, but--but it's hard work." "Then I'm going to help you!" exclaimed the young pitcher, impulsively. "I'm going to ask Gregory if he can't give you something to do. Do you think you could play ball again?" "I don't know, Joe," was the doubtful answer. "They say when they get--get like me--that they can't come back. I couldn't pitch, that's sure. I've got something the matter with my arm. Doctor said a slight operation would cure me, and I might be better than ever, but I haven't any money for operations. But I could be a fair fielder, I think, and maybe I could fatten up my batting average." "Would you like to try?" asked Joe. "Would I?" The man's tone was answer enough. "Then I'm going to get you the chance," declared Joe. "But you'll have to take care of yourself, and--get in better shape." "I know it, Joe. I'm ashamed of myself--that's what I am. I've gone pretty far down, but I believe I can come back. I've quit drinking, and I've cut my old acquaintances." Joe looked carefully at Pop Dutton. The marks of the life he had led of late were to be seen in his trembling hands, and in his blood-shot eyes. But there was a fine frame and a good physique to build on. Joe had great hopes. "You come on to Delamont with me," said the young pitcher, "and I'll look after you until you get straightened out. Then we'll see what the doctor says, and Gregory, too. I believe he'll give you the chance." "Joe! I don't know how to thank you!" said the man earnestly. "If I can ever do something for you--but I don't believe I ever can." Pop Dutton little realized how soon the time was to come when he could do Joe a great favor. CHAPTER XVIII IN DESPAIR Joe and Pop Dutton arrived at the hotel in Delamont ahead of the team, which was on the way from Newkirk after losing the last game of the four. But at that Pittston was still in the lead, and now all energies would be bent on increasing the percentage so that even the loss of a game now and then would not pull the club from its place. "Now look here, Joe," said Pop, when he and Joe had eaten, "this may be all right for me, but it isn't going to do you any good." "What do you mean?" "I mean consorting with me in this way. I can't stay at this hotel with you, the other players would guy you too much." "I don't care about that." "Well, but I do. Now, look here. I appreciate a whole lot what you're doing for me, but it would be better if I could go to some other hotel. Then, if you can, you get Gregory to give me a chance. I'll work at anything--assistant trainer, or anything--to get in shape again. But it would be better for me not to stay here where the team puts up. "If things go right, and I can go back to Pittston with the boys, I'll go to some quiet boarding house. Being at a hotel isn't any too good for me. It brings back old times." Joe saw the logic of Pop's talk, and consented. He gave the broken-down player enough money to enable him to live quietly for several days. When the team came Joe determined to put the question to the manager. As Joe had registered he looked over the book to see if he knew any of the guests at the hotel. Though he did not admit so to himself he had half a forlorn hope that he might find the name of Mabel and her brother there. He even looked sharply at the various pieces of luggage as they were carried in by the bell boys, but he did not see the curious valise that had played such an unpleasant part in his life. Joe was feeling very "fit." The little rest, even though it was broken by anxiety concerning his father, had done him good, and the arm that had been strained in the game that meant so much to Pittston was in fine shape again. Joe felt able to pitch his very best. "And I guess we'll have to do our prettiest if we want to keep at the top of the heap," he reasoned. Then the team arrived, and noisily and enthusiastically welcomed Joe to their midst again. Seeking the first opportunity, Joe had a talk with the manager concerning Pop Dutton. At first Gregory would not listen, and tried to dissuade Joe from having anything to do with the old player. But the young pitcher had determined to go on with his rescue work, and pleaded with such good effect that finally the manager said: "Well, I'll give him a chance, providing he shows that he can keep straight. I don't believe he can, but, for your sake, I'm willing to make the experiment. I've done it before, and been taken in every time. I'm sure this will only be another, but you might as well learn your lesson now as later." "I don't believe I'll have much to learn," answered Joe with a smile. "I think Pop can come back." "The players who can do that are as scarce as hens' teeth," was the rejoinder of the manager. "But I'll take this last chance. Of course he can't begin to play right off the bat. He's got to get in training. By the way, I suppose he has his release?" The manager looked questioningly at Joe. "Oh, yes. He's free and clear to make any contract he likes. He told me that." "I imagined so. No one wants him. I'm afraid I'm foolish for taking him on, but I'll do it to please you. I'll take his option, and pay him a small sum." "Then I'll do the rest," returned Joe, eagerly. "I'm going to have his arm looked at, and then couldn't you get him a place where he could do out-door work--say help keep our grounds in shape?" "Well, I'll think about it, Joe. But about yourself? Are you ready to sail in again?" "I sure am. What are the prospects?" "Well, they might be better. Collin isn't doing any too well. I'm thinking of buying another pitcher to use when there's not much at stake. Gus Harrison is laid up--sprained his knee a little making a mean slide. I've got to do some shifting, and I need every game I can get from now on. But I guess we'll come out somehow." But the team did not come out "somehow." It came out "nohow," for it lost its first game with Delamont the next day, and this, coupled with the winning of a double-header by Clevefield, put that team in the lead and sent Pittston to second place. Joe worked hard, so hard that he began to go to pieces in the seventh inning, and had to be replaced by Tooley, who came into the breach wonderfully well, and, while he did not save the day, he prevented a disgraceful beating. Joe was in the dumps after this despite the cheerful, optimistic attitude of the manager. Joe's one consolation, though, was that Pop Dutton was in the way of being provided for. The old pitcher was holding himself rigidly in line, and taking care of himself. He had a talk with Gregory--a shame-faced sort of talk on Pop's part--and was promised a place at the Pittston ball park. It was agreed that he would go into training, and try to get back to his old form. Gregory did not believe this could be done, but if a miracle should happen he realized that he would own a valuable player--one that would be an asset to his club. And then something happened. How it came about no one could say for a certainty, but Joe went "stale." He fell off woefully in his pitching, and the loss of several games was attributable directly to his "slump." Joe could not account for it, nor could his friends; but the fact remained. Pittston dropped to third place, and the papers which gave much space to the doings of the Central League began to make sarcastic remarks. On the diamond, too, Joe had to suffer the gibes of the crowd, which is always ready to laud a successful player, and only too ready, also, to laugh at one who has a temporary setback. Joe was in despair, but in his letters home he kept cheerful. He did not want his folks to worry. Regularly he sent money to his mother, taking out of his salary check almost more than he could really afford. Also he felt the drain of looking after Pop, but now that the latter had regular work on the diamond, keeping it in order, the old pitcher was, in a measure, self-supporting. Pop was rapidly becoming more like his former self, but it would take some time yet. He indulged in light practice, Joe often having him catch for him when no one else was available. As yet Pop attempted no pitching, the doctor to whom Joe took him warning him against it. "There will have to be a slight operation on certain muscles," said the medical man, "but I prefer to wait a bit before doing it. You will be in better shape then." "You're taking too much trouble about me, Joe," remarked the veteran player one day. "Not a bit too much," responded Joe, heartily. From Joe's father came slightly encouraging news. The need of an operation was not yet settled, and Mr. Matson's general health had improved. "And we can bless baseball a lot!" wrote Mrs. Matson to her son. "I'm sorry I ever said anything against it, Joe. If it were not for the money you make at the game I don't know what we'd do now." Joe was glad his mother saw matters in a different light, but he was also a little disturbed. His pitching was not what it should be, and he felt, if his form fell off much more, that he would not last long, even in a small league. Occasionally he did well--even brilliantly, and the team had hopes. Then would come a "slump," and they would lose a much-needed game that would have lifted them well toward front place. Joe's despair grew, and he wondered what he could do to get back to his good form. Clevefield, the ancient rivals of Pittston, were now firmly entrenched in first place, and there remained only about a quarter of the league season yet to play. "We've got to hustle if we want that pennant!" said Gregory, and his tone was not encouraging. Joe thought of what he had promised about having the money for his father's operation, and wondered whether he could do as he said. But I must not give the impression that all was unhappiness and gloom in the Pittston team. True, the members felt badly about losing, but their nerve did not desert them, and they even joked grimly when the play went against them. Then came a little diversion. They played a contest against a well-known amateur nine for charity, and the game was made the occasion for considerable jollity. Gregory sent in most of his second string players against the amateurs, but kept Joe as a twirler, for he wanted him to see what he could do against some fairly good hitters. And, to Joe's delight, he seemed more like his old self. He had better control of the ball, his curves "broke" well and he was a source of dismay to the strong amateurs. Of course Pittston, even with her substitutes in the game, fairly walked away from the others, the right-handed batters occasionally doing left stick-work, on purpose to strike out. But the little change seemed to do them all good, and when the next regular contest came off Pittston won handily, Joe almost equalling his best record. It was at a hotel in Buffington, whither they had gone to play a series of games with that team, that, one afternoon, as Joe entered his room, after the game, he surprised a colored bell boy hurriedly leaving it. "Did you want me?" asked the young pitcher. "No, sah, boss! 'Deed an' I didn't want yo'all," stammered the dusky youth. "Then what were you doing in my room?" asked Joe, suspiciously. "I--I were jest seein', boss, if yo'all had plenty ob ice water. Dat's whut I was doin', boss! 'Deed I was." Joe noticed that the boy backed out of the room, and held one hand behind him. With a quick motion the young pitcher whirled the intruder about and disclosed the fact that the colored lad had taken one of Joe's neckties. But, no sooner had our hero caught sight of it than he burst into a peal of laughter which seemed to startle the boy more than a storm of accusation. CHAPTER XIX A NEW HOLD "What--what all am de mattah, Massa Matson?" asked the colored lad, his eyes bulging, and showing so much white that the rest of his face seemed a shade or two darker. "What all am de mattah? Ain't yo'all put out 'bout me takin' dish yeah tie? I didn't go fo' to steal it, suh! 'Deed an' I didn't. I were jest sort ob borrowin' it fo' to wear at a party I'se gwine t' attend dis ebenin'." "Put out about you!" laughed Joe. "Indeed I'm not. But don't say you're going to borrow that tie," and he pointed to the one the lad had tried unsuccessfully to conceal. It was of very gaudy hue--broad stripes and prominent dots. "Don't say you were going to borrow it." "'Deed an' dat's all I were gwine t' do, Massa Matson. I didn't go fo' t' take it fo' keeps. I was a gwine t' ask yo'all fo' de lend ob it, but I thought mebby yo'all wasn't comin' in time, so I jest made up mah mind t' 'propriate it on mah own lookout, an' I was fixin' t' put it back 'fo' yo'all come in. I won't hurt it, 'deed an' I won't, an' I'll bring yo'all ice water any time yo'all wants it. I--I'd laik mighty much, Massa Matson, t' buy dish yeah tie offen yo'all." "Buy it!" cried Joe, still laughing, though it was evident that the colored lad could not understand why. "Well, suh, that is, not exactly _buy_ it, 'case I ain't got no money, but yo'all needn't gib me no tips, suh, fo' a--fo' a long time, an' I could buy it dat way. Yes, suh, you needn't gib me no tips fo' two weeks. An' yo'all is so generous, Massa Matson, dat in two weeks' time I'd hab dis tie paid fo'. It's a mighty pert tie, it suah am!" He gazed admiringly at it. "Take it, for the love of mush!" cried Joe. "I'm glad you have it!" "Yo'all am glad, Massa Matson?" repeated the lad, as though he had not heard aright. "Sure! That tie's been a nightmare to me ever since I bought it. I don't know what possessed me to buy a cross section of the rainbow in the shape of a scarf; but I did it in a moment of aberration, I reckon. Take it away, Sam, and never let me see it again." "Does yo'all really mean dat?" "Certainly." "Well, suh, I thanks yo'all fo' de compliment--I suah does. An' yo'all ain't vexted wif me?" "Not at all!" "An'--an' yo'all won't stop giving me tips?" "No, Sam." "Golly! Dat's fine! I suah does thank you, mightily, suh! Won't all dem odder coons open dere eyes when dey sees me sportin' dis yeah tie! Yum-yum! I gass so!" and Sam bounced out of the room before Joe might possibly change his mind. The colored lad nearly ran into Charlie Hall, who was coming to have his usual chat with Joe, and the shortstop, seeing the tie dangling from the bell boy's hand, guessed what had happened. "Was he making free with your things, Joe?" asked Charlie, when Sam had disappeared around a corner of the hall. "Oh, I caught him taking my tie, that's all." "Yes, I did the same thing to one of the boys on my floor the other day. I gave him a flea in his ear, too." "And I gave Sam the tie," laughed Joe. "You _gave_ it to him?" "Yes, that thing has been haunting me. I never wore it but once and I got disgusted with it." Joe failed to state that Mabel had showed a dislike for the scarf, and that it was her implied opinion that had turned him against it. "You see," the young pitcher went on, "I didn't know just which of the fellows to give it to, and two or three times I've left it in my hotel room when we traveled on. And every blamed time some chambermaid would find it, give it to the clerk, and he'd forward it to me. That monstrosity of a scarf has been following me all over the circuit. "I was getting ready to heave it down some sewer hole, when I came in to find Sam 'borrowing' it. I had to laugh, and I guess he thought I was crazy. Anyhow he's got the tie, and I've gotten rid of it. So we're both satisfied." "Well, that's a good way to look at it. How are things, anyhow?" "They might, by a strain, be worse," answered Joe, a bit gloomily. The game that day had been a hard one, and Gregory had used a string of three pitchers, and had only been able to stop the winning streak of Buffington. Joe had been taken out after twirling for a few innings. "Yes, we didn't do ourselves very proud," agreed Charlie. "And to-morrow we're likely to be dumped. Our record won't stand much of that sort of thing." "Indeed it won't. Charlie, I've got to do something!" burst out Joe. "What is it? I can't see but what you're doing your best." "My hardest, maybe, but not my best. You see this league pitching is different from a college game. I didn't stop to figure out that I'd have to pitch a deal oftener than when I was at Yale. This is business--the other was fun." "You're tired, I guess." "That's it--I'm played out." "Why don't you take a vacation; or ask Gregory not to work you so often?" "Can't take any time off, Charlie. I need the money. As for playing the baby-act--I couldn't do that, either." "No, I reckon not. But what are you going to do?" "Hanged if I know. But I've got to do something to get back into form. We're going down." "I know it. Has Gregory said anything?" "No, he's been awfully decent about it, but I know he must think a lot. Yes, something's got to be done." Joe was rather gloomy, nor was Charlie in any too good spirits. In fact the whole team was in the "dumps," and when they lost the next game they were deeper in than ever. Some of the papers began running headlines "Pittston Loses Again!" It was galling. Jimmie Mack worked hard--so did Gregory--and he, and Trainer McGuire, devised all sorts of plans to get the team back in form again. But nothing seemed to answer. The Pittstons dropped to the rear of the first division, and only clung there by desperate work, and by poor playing on the part of other teams. In all those bitter, dreary days there were some bright spots for Joe, and he treasured them greatly. One was that his father was no worse, though the matter of the operation was not definitely settled. Another was that he heard occasionally from Mabel--her letters were a source of joy to him. Thirdly, Old Pop Dutton seemed to be "making good." He kept steadily at work, and had begun to do some real baseball practice. Joe wrote to him, and his letters were answered promptly. Even cynical Gregory admitted that perhaps, after all, the former star pitcher might come into his own again. "When will you give him a trial?" asked Joe, eagerly. "Oh, some day. I'll put him in the field when we're sure of an easy game." The time came when the tail-enders of the league arrived for a series of contests with Pittston, and Pop Dutton, to his delight, was allowed to play. There was nothing remarkable about it, but he made no errors, and once, taking a rather desperate chance on a long fly, he beat it out and retired the batter. He was roundly applauded for this, and it must have warmed his heart to feel that once more he was on the road he had left so long before. But coming back was not easy work. Joe realized this, and he knew the old pitcher must have had a hard struggle to keep on the narrow path he had marked out for himself. But Joe's influence was a great help--Dutton said so often. The other players, now that they found their former mate was not bothering them, begging money, or asking for loans, took more kindly to him. But few believed he could "come back," in the full meaning of the words. "He may be a fairly good fielder, and his batting average may beat mine," said Tooley, "but he'll never be the 'iron man' he once was." And nearly all agreed with him. Joe was faithful to his protegé. Often the two would saunter out to some quiet place and there pitch and catch for each other. And Joe's trained eye told him that the other's hand had lost little of its former cunning. Meanwhile the fortunes of Pittston did not improve much. Sometimes they would struggle to second place, only to slip back again, while victorious Clevefield held her place at the top. There was only one consolation--Pittston did not drop out of the first division. She never got lower than fourth. Joe was being used less and less on the pitching mound, and his heart was sore. He knew he could make good if only something would happen to give him back his nerve, or a certain something he lacked. But he could not understand what. Properly enough it was Pop Dutton who put him on the right track. The two were pitching and catching one day, when Joe delivered what he had always called a "fade-away" ball, made famous by Mathewson, of the New York Giants. As it sailed into Pop's big mitt the veteran called: "What was that, Joe?" "Fade-away, of course." "Show me how you hold the ball when you throw it." Joe did so. The old pitcher studied a moment, and then said: "Joe, you've got it wrong. Have you been pitching that way all the while?" "Always." "No wonder they have been hitting you. Let me show you something. Stand behind me." The old pitcher threw at the fence. Joe was amazed at the way the ball behaved. It would have puzzled the best of batters. "How did you do it?" asked Joe, wonderingly. "By using a different control, and holding the ball differently. I'll show you. You need a new hold." CHAPTER XX JOE'S TRIUMPH Then began a lesson, the learning of which proved of great value to Joe in his after life as a ball player. If Old Pop Dutton had not the nerve to "come back" as a pitcher in a big league, at least he could show a rising young one how to correct his faults. And a fault Joe certainly had. For several years he had been throwing the fade-away ball in the wrong manner. Not entirely wrong, to be sure, or he never would have attained the results he had, but it was sufficiently wrong to prevent him from having perfect control of that style of ball, and perfect control is the first law of pitching. For some time the two practiced, unobserved, and Joe was glad of this. He felt more hopeful than at any time since his team had commenced to "slump." "Am I getting there?" Joe anxiously asked of the veteran, one day. "Indeed you are, boy! But that's enough for to-day. You are using some new muscles in your arm and hand, and I don't want you to tire out. You'll probably have to pitch to-morrow." "I only wish I could use this style ball." "It wouldn't be safe yet." "No, I suppose not. But I'm going to keep at it." It was not easy. It is always more difficult to "unlearn" a wrong way of doing a thing, and start over again on the right, than it is to learn the proper way at first. The old method will crop up most unexpectedly; and this happened in Joe's case more times than he liked. But he persisted and gradually he felt that he was able to deliver the fade-away as it ought to come from a pitcher's hand. Now he waited the opportunity. Meanwhile baseball matters were going on in rather slow fashion. All the teams, after the fierce rush and enthusiasm of the opening season, had now begun to fall off. The dog-days were upon them, and the heat seemed to take all the energy out of the men. Still the games went on, with Pittston rising and falling on the baseball thermometer from fourth to second place and occasionally remaining stationary in third. First place was within striking distance several times, but always something seemed to happen to keep Joe's team back. It was not always poor playing, though occasionally it was due to this. Often it was just fate, luck, or whatever you want to call it. Fielders would be almost certain of a ball rolling toward them, then it would strike a stone or a clod of dirt and roll to one side. Not much, perhaps, but enough so that the man would miss the ball, and the runner would be safe, by a fraction of time or space. It was heart-breaking. Joe continued to work at the proper fade-away and he was getting more and more expert in its use. His control was almost perfect. Still he hesitated to use it in a game, for he wanted to be perfect. A new pitcher--another south-paw, or left-hander--was purchased from another league club, at a high price, and for a time he made good. Joe was fearful lest he be given his release, for really he was not doing as well as he had at first. Truth to tell he was tired out, and Gregory should have realized this. But he did not until one day a sporting writer, in a sensible article telling of the chances of the different teams in the Central League for winning the pennant, wrote of Joe: "This young pitcher, of whom bright things were predicted at the opening of the season, has fallen off woefully. At times he shows brilliant flashes of form, but it seems to me that he is going stale. Gregory should give him a few days off." Then the manager "woke up." "Joe, is this true?" he asked, showing the youth the article. "Well, I am a bit tired, Gregory, but I'm not asking for a vacation," answered Joe. "I know you're not, but you're going to get it. You just take a run home and see your folks. When you come back I'm going to pitch you in a series of our hardest games. We go up against Clevefield again. You take a rest." Joe objected, but half-heartedly, and ended by taking the train for home. His heart felt lighter the moment he had started, and when he got to Riverside, and found his father much improved, Joe was more like himself than at any time since the opening of the ball season. His folks were exceedingly glad to see him, and Joe went about town, renewing old acquaintances, and being treated as a sort of local lion. Tom Davis, Joe's chum, looked at the young pitcher closely. "Joe," he said, "you're getting thin. Either you're in love, or you aren't making good." "Both, I guess," answered Joe, with a short laugh. "But I'm going to make good very soon. You watch the papers." Joe rejoined his team with a sparkle in his eye and a spring in his step that told how much good the little vacation had done him. He was warmly welcomed back--only Collin showing no joy. Truth to tell Collin had been doing some wonderful pitching those last few days, and he was winning games for the team. The advent of Joe gave him little pleasure, for none knew better than he on how slim a margin a pitcher works, nor how easily he may be displaced, not only in the affection of the public, always fickle, but in the estimation of the manager. "Hang him! I wish he'd stayed away!" muttered Collin. "Now he's fresh and he may get my place again. But I'll find a way to stop him, if Gregory gives him the preference!" Joe went back at practice with renewed hope. He took Gregory and the catchers into his confidence, and explained about the fade-away. They were enthusiastic over it. "Save it for Clevefield," advised the manager. The day when Pittston was to play the top-notchers arrived. There were to be four games on Pittston's grounds, and for the first time since his reformation began, Pop Dutton was allowed to play in an important contest. "I'm depending on you," Gregory warned him. "And you won't be disappointed," was the reply. Certainly the old player had improved greatly. His eyes were bright and his skin ruddy and clear. Joe was a bit nonplussed when Collin was sent in for the opening game. But he knew Gregory had his reasons. And perhaps it was wise, for Collin was always at his best when he could deliver the first ball, and open the game. Clevefield was shut out in the first inning, and, to the howling delight of the crowd of Pittston sympathizers and "fans," the home team got a run. This gave the players much-needed confidence, and though the visitors managed to tie the score in their half of the second inning, Pittston went right after them, and got two more tallies. "We're going to win, Joe!" cried Charlie Hall. "We're going to win. Our hoodoo is busted!" "I hope so," said the young pitcher, wishing he had a chance to play. It came sooner than he expected. Collin unexpectedly "blew up," and had to be taken out of the box. Joe was called on, at the proper time, and walked nervously to the mound. But he knew he must conquer this feeling and he looked at Nelson, who was catching. The back-stop smiled, and signalled for a fade-away, but Joe shook his head. He was not quite ready for that ball yet. By using straight, swift balls, interspersed with ins and drops, he fooled the batter into striking out. The next man went out on a pop fly, and Joe teased the third man into striking at an elusive out. Clevefield was retired runless and the ovation to Pittston grew. But it was not all to be as easy as this. Joe found himself in a tight place, and then, with a catching of his breath, he signalled that he would use the fade-away. In it shot--the batter smiled confidently--struck--and missed. He did it twice before he realized what was happening, and then when Joe felt sure that his next fade-away would be hit, he swiftly changed to an up-shoot that ended the matter. Clevefield fought hard, and once when Joe was hit for a long fly, that seemed good for at least two bases, Pop Dutton was just where he was most needed, and made a sensational catch. There was a howl of delight, and Gregory said to Joe afterward: "Your man is making good." Joe was immensely pleased. And when, a little later, at a critical point in the game, he struck out the third man, again using his famous fade-away, his triumph was heralded in shouts and cries, for Pittston had won. It was a triumph for Joe in two ways--his own personal one, and in the fact that he had been instrumental in having Pop Dutton play--and Pop's one play, at least that day, saved a run that would have tied the score. CHAPTER XXI A DANGER SIGNAL "Boys, we're on the right road again!" exclaimed the enthusiastic manager at the conclusion of the game, when the team was in the dressing room. "Another like this to-morrow, and one the next day, if it doesn't rain, and we'll be near the top." "Say, you don't want much," remarked Jimmie Mack, half sarcastically, but with a laugh. "What do you think we are anyhow; wonders?" "We'll have to be if we're going to bring home the pennant," retorted Gregory. "And we're going to do it!" declared Joe, grimly. Collin went to pieces in more ways than one that day. Probably his failure in the game, added to Joe's triumph, made him reckless, for he went back to his old habit of gambling, staying up nearly all night, and was in no condition to report for the second game of the series. "He makes me tired!" declared Gregory. "I'd write his release in a minute," he went on, speaking to Jimmie Mack, "only I'm up to my neck in expenses now, and I can't afford to buy another pitcher. I need all I've got, and Collin is good when he wants to be." "Yes, it's only his pig-headedness about Joe that sets him off. But I think we've got a great find in Matson." "So do I. There was a time when I was rather blue about Joe, but he seems to have come back wonderfully." "Yes," agreed Jimmie Mack, "that fade-away of his is a wonder, thanks to Pop Dutton." "Pop himself is the greatest wonder of all," went on Gregory. "I never believed it possible. I've seen the contrary happen so many times that I guess I've grown skeptical." "He and Joe sure do make a queer team," commented the assistant manager. "Joe watches over him like a hen with one chicken." "Well, I guess he has to. A man like Pop who has been off the right road always finds lots of temptation ready and waiting to call him back. But Joe can keep him straight. "Now come over here. I want to talk to you, and plan out the rest of the season. We're in a bad way, not only financially, but for the sake of our reputations." If Joe could have heard this he would have worried, especially about the financial end. For he counted very much on his baseball money--in fact, his family needed it greatly. Mr. Matson's savings were tied up in investments that had turned out badly, or were likely to, and his expenses were heavy on account of the doctor's and other bills. Joe's salary was a big help. He also earned something extra by doing some newspaper work that was paid for generously. But Joe counted most on the final games of the series, which would decide the pennant. These were always money-makers, and, in addition, the winning team always played one or more exhibition games with some big league nine, and these receipts were large. "But will we win the pennant?" queried Joe of himself. "We've got to--if dad is going to have his operation. We've just got to!" The news from home had been uncertain. At one time Dr. Birch had decided that an operation must be performed at once, and then had come a change when it had to be delayed. But it seemed certain that, sooner or later, it would have to be undertaken, if the inventor's eyesight was to be saved. "So you see we've just got to win," said Joe to Charlie Hall. "I see," was the answer. "Well, I'll do my share toward it, old man," and the two clasped hands warmly. Joe was liking Charlie more and more every day. He was more like a college chum than a mate on a professional team. But Pittston was not to have a victory in the second game with Clevefield. The latter sent in a new pitcher who "played tag," to use a slang expression, with Joe and his mates, and they lost the contest by a four to one score. This in spite of the fact that Joe did some good work at pitching, and "Old Pop," as he was beginning to be called, knocked a three-bagger. Dutton was one of those rare birds, a good pitcher and a good man with the stick. That is, he had been, and now he was beginning to come back to himself. There was a shadow of gloom over Pittston when they lost the second game, after having won the first against such odds, and there was much speculation as to how the other two contests would go. Gregory revised his batting order for the third game, and sent in his latest purchase, one of the south-paws, to do the twirling. But he soon made a change in pitchers, and called on Tooley, who also was a left-hander. "I may need you later, Joe," he said as he arranged to send in a "pinch" hitter at a critical moment. "Don't think that I'm slighting you, boy." "I don't. I understand." "How's your fade-away?" "All right, I guess." "Good. You'll probably have to use it." And Joe did. He was sent in at the seventh, when the Clevefield nine was three runs ahead, and Joe stopped the slump. Then, whether it was this encouragement, or whether the other team went to pieces, did not develop, but the game ended with Pittston a winner by two runs. The crowd went wild, for there had been a most unexpected ending, and so sure had some of the "fans" been that the top-notchers would come out ahead, that they had started to leave. But the unexpected happens in baseball as often as in football, and it did in this case. Pittston thus had two out of the four games, and the even break had increased her percentage to a pleasing point. If they could have taken the fourth they would have fine hopes of the pennant, but it was not to be. An even break, though there was a close finish in the last game, was the best they could get. However, this was better than for some time, and Gregory and his associates were well pleased. Then came a series of games in the different league cities, and matters were practically unchanged. In turn Buffington, Loston and Manhattan were visited, the Pittston nine doing well, but nothing remarkable. Joe seemed firmly established in the place he most desired, and his fine delivery was increasing in effectiveness each day. His fade-away remained a puzzle to many, though some fathomed it and profited thereby. But Joe did not use it too often. The secret of good pitching lies in the "cross-fire," and in varying the delivery. No pitcher can continue to send in the same kind of balls in regular order to each batter. He must study his man and use his brains. Joe knew this. He also knew that he was not alone a pitcher, but a ball player, and that he must attend to his portion of the diamond. Too many twirlers forget this, and Joe frequently got in on sensational plays that earned him almost as much applause as his box-work did. Joe was always glad to get back to Pittston to play games. He was beginning to feel that it was a sort of "home town," though he had few friends there. He made many acquaintances and he was beginning to build up a reputation for himself. He was frequently applauded when he came out to play, and this means much to a baseball man. Then, too, Joe was always interested in Pop Dutton. He was so anxious that the former fine pitcher should have his chance to "come back." Often when scouts from bigger leagues than the Central stopped off to more or less secretly watch the Pittstons play, Joe would have a talk with them. Sometimes he spoke of Pop, but the scouts did not seem interested. They pretended that they had no special object in view, or, if they did, they hinted that it was some other player than Dutton. To whisper a secret I might say that it was Joe himself who was under observation on many of these occasions, for his fame was spreading. But he was a modest youth. Joe was not inquisitive, but he learned, in a casual way, that Pop Dutton was seemingly on the right road to success and prosperity. It was somewhat of a shock to the young pitcher, then, one evening, as he was strolling down town in Pittston, to see his protegé in company with a shabbily dressed man. "I hope he hasn't taken to going with those tramps again," mused Joe. "That would be too bad." Resolving to make sure of his suspicions, and, if necessary, hold out a helping hand, the young pitcher quickened his pace until he was close behind the twain. He could not help but hear part of the conversation. "Oh, come on!" he caught, coming from Dutton's companion. "What's the harm?" "No, I'll not. You don't know how hard it is to refuse, but I--I can't--really I can't." "You mean you won't?" "Put it that way if you like." "Well, then, I do like, an' I don't like it! I'll say that much. I don't like it. You're throwin' me down, an' you're throwin' the rest of us down. I don't like it for a cent!" "I can't help that," replied Dutton, doggedly. "Well, maybe _we_ can help it, then. You're leaving us in the lurch just when we need you most. Come on, now, be a sport, Pop!" "No, I've been too much of a sport in the past--that's the trouble." "So you won't join us?" "No." "Will you come out and tell the boys so? They maybe won't believe me." "Oh, well, I can't see any harm in that." "Come on, then, they'll be glad to see you again." Joe wondered what was afoot. It was as though he saw a danger signal ahead of Pop Dutton. CHAPTER XXII VICTORY Joe hardly knew what to do. He realized that all his efforts toward getting the old ball player back on the right road might go for naught if Pop went off with these loose companions. And yet would he relish being interfered with by the young pitcher? Pop was much older than Joe, but so far he had shown a strong liking for the younger man, and had, half-humorously, done his bidding. Indeed Pop was under a deep debt not only of gratitude to Joe, but there had been a financial one as well, though most of that was now paid. "But I don't want to see him slip back," mused Joe, as he walked along in the shadows, taking care to keep far enough back from the twain. But Pop never looked around. He seemed engrossed in his companion. "What shall I do?" Joe asked himself. He half hoped that some of the other members of the nine might come along, and accost Pop, perhaps taking him off with them, as they had done several times of late. For the old player was becoming more and more liked--he was, in a way, coming into his own again, and he had a fund of baseball stories to which the younger men never tired listening. "If some of them would only come along!" whispered Joe, but none did. He kept on following the two until he saw them go into one of the less disreputable lodging houses in a poor quarter of the city. It was a house where, though some respectable workingmen, temporarily embarrassed, made their homes for a time, there was more often a rowdy element, consisting of tramps, and, in some cases, criminals. At election time it harbored "floaters" and "repeaters," and had been the scene of many a police raid. "I wonder what he can want by going in there?" thought Joe. "It's a good thing Gregory can't see him, or he'd sure say my experiment was a failure. It may be, after all; but I'm not going to give up yet. Now, shall I go in, and pretend I happened by casually, or shall I wait outside?" Joe debated the two propositions within himself. The first he soon gave up. He was not in the habit of going into such places, and the presence of a well-dressed youth, more or less known to the public as a member of the Pittston nine, would excite comment, if nothing else. Besides, it might arouse suspicion of one sort or another. Then, too, Pop might guess why Joe had followed him, and resent it. "I'll just have to wait outside," decided Joe, "and see what I can do when Pop comes out." It was a dreary wait. From time to time Joe saw men slouch into the place, and occasionally others shuffled out; but Pop did not come, nor did his ragged companion appear. Joe was getting tired, when his attention was attracted to a detective whom he knew, sauntering rather aimlessly past on the opposite side of the street. "Hello!" thought the young ball player, "I wonder what's up?" He eyed the officer closely, and was surprised, a moment later, to see him joined by a companion. "Something sure is in the wind," decided Joe. "I'm going to find out." He strolled across the highway and accosted the detective with whom he had a slight acquaintance. "Oh, it's Matson, the Pittston pitcher!" exclaimed the officer. "What's up, Regan?" asked Joe. "Oh, nothing much. Do you know Farley, my side partner? Farley, this is Matson--Baseball Joe, they call him. Some nifty little pitcher, too, let me tell you." "Thanks," laughed Joe, as he shook hands with the other detective. "Why, we're looking for a certain party," went on Regan. "I don't mind telling you that. We'll probably pull that place soon," and he nodded toward the lodging house. "Some of the regulars will be along in a little while," he added. "Pull," I may explain, is police language for "raid," or search a certain suspected place. "Anything big?" asked Joe. "Oh, nothing much. There's been some pocket-picking going on, and a few railroad jobs pulled off. A lot of baggage belonging to wealthy folks has been rifled on different lines, all over the country, and we think we're on the track of some of the gang. We're going to pull the place and see how many fish we can get in the net." Joe did not know what to do. If the place was to be raided soon it might mean that his friend, the old pitcher, would be among those arrested. Joe was sure of his friend's innocence, but it would look bad for him, especially after the life he had led. It might also be discouraging to Pop, and send him back to his old companions again. "How long before you'll make the raid?" asked Joe. "In about half an hour, I guess," replied Regan. "Why, are you going to stick around and see it?" "I might. But there's a friend of mine in there," spoke Joe, "and I wouldn't like him to get arrested." "A friend of yours?" repeated Regan, wonderingly. "Yes. Oh, he's not a hobo, though he once was, I'm afraid. But he's reformed. Only to-night, however, he went out with one of his old companions. I don't know what for. But I saw him go in there, and that's why I'm here. I'm waiting for him to come out." "Then the sooner he does the better," observed Farley, grimly. "It's a bad place." "Look here," said Joe, eagerly, "could you do me a favor, Mr. Regan?" "Anything in reason, Joe." "Could you go in there and warn my friend to get out. I could easily describe him to you. In fact, I guess you must know him--Pop Dutton." "Is Old Pop in there?" demanded the officer, in surprise. "Yes," responded Joe, "but I'm sure he's all right. I don't believe you want him." "No, he's not on our list," agreed Regan. "Well, say, I guess I could do that for you, Joe. Only one thing, though. If Farley or I happen in there there may be a scare, and the birds we want will get away." "How can we do it, then?" asked Joe. A figure came shuffling up the dark street, and, at the sight of the two detectives and the young pitcher, hesitated near a gas lamp. "Hello! There's Bulldog!" exclaimed Regan, but in a low voice. "He'll do. We'll send him in and have him tip Pop off to come out. Bulldog is on our staff," he added. "He tips us off to certain things. Here, Bulldog!" he called, and a short, squat man shuffled up. His face had a canine expression, which, Joe surmised, had gained him his name. "Slip into Genty's place, Bulldog," said Regan in a low voice, "and tell a certain party to get out before the bulls come. Do you know Pop Dutton?" "Sure. He and I----" "Never mind about that part of it," interrupted the detective. "Just do as I tell you, and do it quietly. You can stay in. You might pick up something that would help us." "What, me stay in there when the place is going to be pulled, and get pinched? Not on your life!" and the man turned away. "Hold on!" cried Regan. "We'll get you out all right, same as we always do. You're too valuable to us to go to jail for long." Then, as Bulldog started for the dark entrance to the lodging house, Joe realized that he had seen what is called a "stool-pigeon," a character hated by all criminals, and not very much respected by the police whom they serve. A "stool-pigeon" consorts with criminals, that he may overhear their plans, and betray them to the police. Often he is himself a petty criminal. In a sense he does a duty to the public, making it more easy for the authorities to arrest wrong-doers--but no one loves a "stool-pigeon." They are the decoy ducks of the criminal world. I am making this explanation, and portraying this scene in Joe Matson's career, not because it is pleasant to write about, for it is not. I would much rather take you out on the clean diamond, where you could hear the "swat" of the ball. But as Joe's efforts to make a new man of the old pitcher took him into this place I can do no less than chronicle the events as they happened. And a little knowledge of the sadder, darker and unhappy side of life may be of value to boys, in deterring them from getting into a position where it would appeal to them--appeal wrongly, it is true, but none the less strongly. The Bulldog had not been in the building more than a minute before the door opened again, and Pop Dutton, alone, and looking hastily around, came out. Joe got in a shadow where he could not be seen. He did not want his friend humiliated, now that he had seen him come out victorious. For the young pitcher could see that Pop was the same straight and sober self he had been since getting back on the right road. His association with his former companions had evidently not tempted him. "Oh, I'm glad!" exulted Joe. Pop Dutton looked curiously at the two detectives. "Thanks," he said briefly, as he passed them, and they knew that he understood. Not for a long time afterward did the former pitcher know that to Joe he owed so much. For, though his intention in going to the rendezvous of the unfortunates of the under-world was good, still it might have been misconstrued. Now there was no danger. Afterward Joe learned that Pop had been urged by the man he met on the street to take part in a robbery. The old pitcher refused, but his false companion tried to lure him back to his old life, on the plea that only from his own lips would his associates believe that Pop had reformed. And Pop made them plainly understand that he had. Pop Dutton passed on down the street, and, waiting a little while, Joe followed. He did not care to see the raid. The young pitcher soon reached his hotel, and he felt that Pop was safe in his own boarding house. The next morning Joe read of the wholesale arrests in the lodging house, though it was said that the quarry the detectives most hoped to get escaped in the confusion. "Baggage robbers, eh?" mused Joe. "I wonder if they were the ones who went through Reggie Varley's valise? If they could be caught it would clear me nicely, providing I could prove it was they." CHAPTER XXIII THE TRAMP AGAIN Baseball again claimed the attention of Joe and his mates. They were working hard, for the end of the season was in sight, and the pennant ownership was not yet decided. Clevefield was still at the top of the list, but Pittston was crowding her hard, and was slowly creeping up. Sometimes this would be the result of her players' own good work, and again it would be because some other team had a streak of bad luck which automatically put Joe's team ahead. The young pitcher was more like himself than at any time since he had joined the club. He was really pitching "great" ball, and Gregory did not hesitate to tell him so. And, more than this, Joe was doing some good work with the bat. His average was slowly but steadily mounting. Joe would never be a great performer in this line, and none realized it better than himself. No clubs would be clamoring for his services as a pinch hitter. On the other hand many a pitcher in the big leagues had not Joe's batting average, though of course this might have been because they were such phenomenal twirlers, and saved all their abilities for the mound. Also did Joe pay attention to the bases. He wished he was a south-paw, at times, or a left-hand pitcher, for then he could more easily have thrown to first. But it was too late to change now, and he made up his mind to be content to work up his reputation with his good right arm. But, even with that, he made some surprisingly good put-outs when runners took chances and got too long a lead. So that throughout the circuit the warning began to be whispered: "Look out for Matson when you're on first!" Joe realized that a good pitcher has not only to play the game from the mound. He must field his position as well, and the failure of many an otherwise good pitcher is due to the fact that they forget this. Much of Joe's success, at this time, was due to the coaching and advice he received from Pop Dutton. The veteran could instruct if he could not pitch yet, and Joe profited by his experience. No reference was made by Joe to the night Pop had gone to the lodging house, nor did the old pitcher say anything to his young friend. In fact he did not know Joe had had any hand in the matter. Pop Dutton went on his reformed way. He played the game, when he got a chance, and was increasingly good at it. "Joe!" he cried one day, when he had played a full game, "we're getting there! I hope I'll soon be pitching." "So do I!" added Joe, earnestly. True, the game Pop had played at centre for the full nine innings was with the near-tailenders of the Central League, but it showed that the veteran had "come back" sufficiently to last through the hard work. "How is your arm?" asked Joe. "Not good enough to use on the mound yet, I'm sorry to say," was Pop's answer. "I guess I'll have to have that operation, after all. But I don't see how I can manage it. I'm trying to pay back some of my old debts----" "Don't let that part worry you," spoke Joe, quickly. "If things turn out right I may be able to help you." "But you've done a lot already, Joe." "I'll do more--if I can. Just wait until the close of the season, when we have the pennant." What Joe meant was that he would have the money for an operation on the pitcher's arm if the cash was not needed to put Mr. Matson's eyes in shape through the attention of a surgeon. And this matter was still undecided, much to the worriment of Joe, his mother and sister, to say nothing of his father. But it is necessary, in such matters, to proceed slowly, and not to take any chances. Joe felt the strain. His regular salary was much needed at home, and he was saving all he could to provide for his father's possible operation. That cost would not be light. Then there was Pop Dutton to think of. Joe wanted very much to see the old player fully on his feet again. He did not know what to do, though, should all the money he might get from the pennant series be required for Mr. Matson. "Well, I'll do the best I can," thought Joe. "Maybe if Gregory and the others see how well Pop is doing they'll take up a collection and pay for the operation. It oughtn't to cost such an awful lot." Joe shook his head in a puzzled way. Really it was a little too much for him to carry on his young shoulders, but he had the fire of youth in his veins, and youth will dare much--which is as it should be, perhaps. Then, too, Joe had to be on edge all the time in order to pitch winning ball. No pitcher is, or can be, at top notch all the while. He can hardly serve in two big games in quick succession, and yet Joe did this several times, making an enviable record for himself. The rivalry between him and Collin grew, though Joe did nothing to inflame the other's dislike. But Collin was very bitter, and Pop gave Joe some warning hints. "Oh, I don't believe he'd do anything under-handed," said Joe, not taking it seriously. "Well, be on the lookout," advised the veteran. "I don't like Collin, and never did." There came a series of rainy days, preventing the playing of games, and everyone fretted. The players, even Joe, grew stale, though Gregory tried to keep them in form by sending them off on little trips when the grounds were too wet even for practise. Then came fine bracing weather, and Pittston began to stride ahead wonderfully. It was now only a question of whether Joe's team or Clevefield would win pennant honors, and, in any event, there would have to be several games played between the two nines to decide the matter. This was due to the fact that the league schedule called for a certain number of games to be played by each club with every other club, and a number of rainy days, and inability to run off double headers, had caused a congestion. Pittston kept on playing in good form, and Joe was doing finely. So much so that on one occasion when a big league scout was known to be in attendance, Gregory said in a way that showed he meant it: "Joe, they're going to draft you, sure." The larger or major league clubs, those rated as AA, have, as is well known, the right to select any player they choose from a minor league, paying, of course a certain price. Thus the big leagues are controllers in a way of the players themselves, for the latter cannot go to any club they choose, whereas any big league club can pick whom it chooses from the little or "bush" leagues. If two or more of the big clubs pick the same player there is a drawing to decide who gets him. "Well, I'm not worrying," returned Joe, with a smile. After a most successful game, in Washburg, which team had been playing good ball--the contest having been won by Pittston--Joe was walking across the diamond with Pop Dutton, when the young pitcher saw approaching them the same tramp with whom his protegé had entered the lodging house that night. "Hello, Pop!" greeted the shabby man. "I want t' see you." He leered familiarly. Pop Dutton stopped and gazed with half-frightened eyes at Joe. CHAPTER XXIV ON THE TRACK "Well, are you comin'?" demanded the tramp, as Dutton did not answer. "I said I want to see you, an' I'm dead broke! Took all I had t' git a seat on th' bleachers t' see de bloomin' game." "Well, you saw a good game--I'll say that," commented the old player, though his voice was a bit husky. He seemed to be laboring under some nervous strain. "Huh! I didn't come to see th' game. I want t' see you. Are you comin'?" Pop did not answer at once. About him and Joe, who still stood at his side, surged the other players and a section of the crowd. Some of the members of the team looked curiously at Pop and the ragged individual who had accosted him. Collin, the pitcher, sneered openly, and laughed in Joe's face. "Who's your swell friend?" he asked, nodding toward the tramp. Joe flushed, but did not answer. "Well, I'm waitin' fer youse," spoke the tramp, and his tone was surly. "Come on, I ain't got all day." "Nothing doing," said Pop, shortly. "I'm not coming with you, Hogan." "You're not!" There was the hint of a threat in the husky tones, and the glance from the blood-shot eyes was anything but genial. "No, I'm not coming," went on Pop, easily. He seemed to have recovered his nerve now, and glanced more composedly at Joe. "Huh! Well, I like that!" sneered the tramp. "You're gettin' mighty high-toned, all of a sudden! It didn't used to be this way." "I've changed--you might as well know that, Hogan," went on Pop. There were not so many about them now. All the other players had passed on. "Well, then, if you won't come with me, come across with some coin!" demanded the other. "I need money." "You'll not get any out of me." "What!" There was indignant protest in the husky voice. "I said you'll not get any out of me." "Huh! We'll see about that. Now look here, Pop Dutton, either you help me out, or----" Dutton turned to one of the officers who kept order on the ball field. "Jim, see that this fellow gets out," the old player said, quietly. "All right, Pop. What you say goes," was the reply. "Now then, move on out of here. We want to clean up for to-morrow's game," spoke the officer shortly to the man whom Pop had addressed as Hogan. "Ho! So that's your game is it--_Mister_ Dutton," and the ragged fellow sneered as he emphasized the "Mister." "If you want to call it a game--yes," answered Dutton, calmly. "I'm done with you and yours. I'm done with that railroad business. I don't want to see you again, and I'm not going to give you any more money." "You're not!" "I am not. You've bled me enough." "Oh, I've bled you enough; have I? I've bled you enough, my fine bird! Well then, you wait! You'll see how much more I'll bleed you! You'll sing another tune soon or I'm mistaken. I've bled you enough; eh? Well you listen here! I ain't bled you half as much as I'm goin' to. And some of the others are goin' t' come in on the game! You wait! That's all!" And he uttered a lot of strong expressions that the ground officer hushed by hustling him off the field. Joe took no part in this. He stood quietly at the side of Pop as though to show, by his presence, that he believed in him, trusted him and would help him, in spite of this seeming disgrace. They were alone--those two. The young and promising pitcher, and the old and almost broken down "has-been." And yet the "has-been" had won a hard-fought victory. Pop Dutton glanced curiously at Joe. "Well?" he asked, as if in self-defence. "What's the answer?" inquired Joe, trying to make his tones natural. "Was it a hold-up?" "Sort of. That's one of the fellows I used to trail in with, before you helped me out of the ditch." "Is he a railroad man?" asked Joe. "I thought he said something about the railroad." "He pretends to be," said Dutton. "But he isn't any more. He used to be, I believe; but he went wrong, just as I did. Just as I might be now, but for you, Joe." His voice broke, and there was a hint of tears in his eyes. "Oh, forget it!" said Joe, easily. "I didn't do anything. But what sort of a fellow is this one, anyhow?" The man had been hustled off the grounds by the officer. "Oh, he's just a plain tramp, the same as I was. Only he hasn't anything to do with the railroad any more, except to rob baggage. That's his specialty. He hangs around the depots, and opens valises and such when he gets a chance." "He does!" cried Joe, with sudden interest. "Is he the fellow the detectives wanted to get the time they raided the Keystone Lodging House?" Pop Dutton flushed red. "What--what do you know about that?" he asked. "Oh--I--er--I happened to be around there when the police were getting ready to close in," answered Joe, truthfully enough. He did not want to embarrass his friend by going into details. "Oh," said Pop, evidently in relief. "Yes, I think he was one of the gang they wanted to get. But they didn't." "He's taking a chance--coming here now." "Oh, he's let his whiskers grow, and I suppose he thinks that disguises him. He's had a hold over me, Joe, but I'm glad to say he hasn't any longer. I won't go into details, but I will say that he had me in his power. Now I'm out." "So he used to rob travelers' baggage, did he?" "Yes, and he does yet I guess, when he gets the chance. Jewelry is his specialty. I remember once he was telling me of a job he did. "It was at a small station. I forget just where. Anyhow this fellow--Hogan is one of his names--he pretended to be a railroad freight brakeman. You know they are rather roughly dressed, for their work is not very clean. Well, he got a chance to open a certain valise. I remember it because he said it was such an odd bag." Joe felt a queer sensation. It was as though he had heard this same story years before. Yet he knew what it meant--what it was leading to--as well as if it had all been printed out. "Hogan made a good haul, as he called it," went on Pop. "He thought he was going to have a lot of trouble opening the bag when he came into the station pretending he wanted a drink of water. It was a foreign-make valise, he said, but it opened easier than he thought and he got a watch and a lot of trinkets that ladies like." "He did?" asked Joe, and his voice sounded strange, even to himself. "Yes. Why, do you know anything about it?" asked Pop in some surprise. "I might," said Joe, trying to speak calmly. "Would you remember how this bag looked if I told you?" "I think so." "Was it a yellow one, of a kind of leather that looked like walrus hide, and did it have two leather handles, and brass clips in the shape of lions' heads?" "Yes--that's exactly how Hogan described it," said Pop. "But--why----" "And would you remember the name of the station at which the robbery took place?" asked Joe. "That is if you heard it?" "I think so." "Was it Fairfield?" "That's it! Why, Joe, what does this mean? How did you know all this? What is Hogan to you?" "Nothing much, Pop, unless he proves to be the fellow who took the stuff I was accused of taking," answered Joe, trying to speak calmly. "Do you know where we could find this man again?" "You mean Hogan?" "Yes. I'm going to tackle him. Of course it's only a chance, but I believe it's a good one." "Oh, I guess we can easily locate him," said Pop. "He hasn't any money to get far away." "Then come on!" cried Joe, eagerly. "I think I'm at last on the track of the man who took the stuff from Reggie Varley's valise. Pop, this means more to me than you can imagine. I believe I'm going to be cleared at last!" "Cleared! You cleared? What of?" asked the old ball player in bewilderment. "I'll tell you," said Joe, greatly excited. "Come on!" CHAPTER XXV REGGIE'S AUTO Hardly understanding what was afoot, and not in the least appreciating Joe's excitement, Pop Dutton followed the young pitcher across the diamond. "What are you going to do?" asked the old player, as he hurried on after Joe. "Get into my street togs the first thing. Then I'm going to try and find that fellow--Hogan, did you say his name was?" "One of 'em, yes. But what do you want of him?" "I want him to tell when and where he took that stuff from the queer valise. And I want to know if he has any of it left, by any chance, though I don't suppose he has. And, in the third place, I want to make him say that I didn't take the stuff." Pop Dutton drew a long breath. "You, Joe!" he exclaimed. "You accused?" "Yes. It's a queer story. But I'm beginning to see the end of it now! Come on!" They hurried into the dressing rooms. Most of the other players had gone, for Joe and Pop had been delayed out on the diamond talking to Hogan. Charlie Hall was there, however, and he looked curiously at Joe. "Anything the matter?" asked the young shortstop. "Well, there may be--soon," answered his friend. "I'll see you later. Tell Gregory that I may be going out of town for a while, but I'll sure be back in time for to-morrow's game." "All right," said Charlie, as he went in to take a shower bath. "Now, Pop," spoke Joe, as he began dressing, "where can we find this Hogan?" "Oh, most likely he'll be down around Kelly's place," naming a sort of lodging-house hang-out for tramps and men of that class. "Then down there we'll go!" decided the young pitcher. "I'm going to have an interview with Hogan. If I'd only known he was the one responsible for the accusation against me I'd have held on to him while he was talking to you. But I didn't realize it until afterward, and then the officer had put him outside. He was lost in the crowd. But suppose he isn't at Kelly's?" "Oh, someone there can tell us where to find him. But it's a rough place, Joe." "I suppose so. You don't mind going there; do you?" "Well, no, not exactly. True, a lot of the men I used to trail in with may be there, but, no matter. They can't do any more than gibe me." "We could take a detective along," suggested Joe. "No, I think we can do better by ourselves. I don't mind. You see after I--after I went down and out--I used to stop around at all the baseball towns, and in that way I got to know most of these lodging-house places. This one in Washburg is about as rough as any." "How did you come to know Hogan?" "Oh, I just met him on the road. He used to be a good railroad man, but he went down, and now he's no good. He's a boastful sort, and that's how he came to tell me about the valise. But I never thought you'd be mixed up in it." "Of course I can't be dead certain this is the same valise that was robbed," said Joe; "but it's worth taking a chance on. I do hope we can find him." But they were doomed to disappointment. When they reached Kelly's lodging-house Hogan had gone, and the best they could learn, in the sullen replies given by the habitués, was that the former railroad man had taken to the road again, and might be almost anywhere. "Too bad!" exclaimed Pop sympathetically, as he and Joe came out. "Yes, it is," assented the young pitcher, "for I did want Reggie Varley to know who really robbed his valise." Perhaps Joe also wanted a certain other person to know. But he did not mention this, so of course I cannot be sure. "Better luck next time!" exclaimed the young pitcher as cheerfully as he could. They endeavored to trace whither Hogan had gone, but without success. The best they could ascertain was that he had "hopped a freight," for some point west. Joe did not allow the disappointment to interfere with his baseball work. In the following games with Washburg he fitted well into the tight places, and succeeded, several times, when the score was close, in being instrumental in pulling the Pittston team out a winner. On one occasion the game had gone for nine innings without a run on either side, and only scattered hits. Both pitchers--Joe for Pittston, and young Carrolton Lloyd for Washburg--were striving hard for victory. The game came to the ending of the ninth, with Washburg up. By fortunate chance, and by an error on the part of Charlie Hall, the home team got two men on bases, and only one out. Then their manager made a mistake. Instead of sending in a pinch hitter--for a hit was all that was needed to score the winning run, the manager let the regular batting order be followed, which brought up the Washburg pitcher. Lloyd was tired out, and, naturally, was not at his best. He popped up a little fly, which Joe caught, and then sending the ball home quickly our hero caught the man coming in from third, making a double play, three out and necessitating the scoring of another zero in the ninth frame for Washburg. Then came the tenth inning. Perhaps it was his weariness or the memory of how he had had his chance and lost it that made Lloyd nervous. Certainly he went to pieces, and giving one man his base on balls, allowed Joe to make a hit. Then came a terrific spell of batting and when it was over Pittston had four runs. It was then Joe's turn to hold the home team hitless, so that they might not score, and he did, to the great delight of the crowd. This one feat brought more fame to Joe than he imagined. He did not think so much of it himself, which is often the case with things that we do. But, in a way, it was the indirect cause of his being drafted to a big league, later on. The season was now drawing to a close. The race for the pennant was strictly between Pittston and Clevefield, with the chances slightly in favor of the latter. This was due to the fact that there were more veteran players in her ranks, and she had a better string of pitchers. A week or so more would tell the tale. Pittston and Clevefield would play off the final games, the best three out of four, two in one town and two in the other. Interest in the coming contests was fast accumulating and there was every prospect of generous receipts. The winners of the pennant would come in for a large share of the gate receipts, and all of the players in the two leading teams were counting much on the money they would receive. Joe, as you may well guess, planned to use his in two ways. The major part would go toward defraying the expenses of his father's operation. It had not yet been definitely settled that one would be performed, but the chances were that one would have to be undertaken. Then, too, Joe wanted to finance the cost of getting Dutton's arm into shape. A well-known surgeon had been consulted, and had said that a slight operation on one of the ligaments would work wonders. It would be rather costly, however. "Joe, I'm not going to let you do it," said Pop, when this was spoken of. "You can't help yourself," declared Joe. "I saved your life--at least I'm not modest when it comes to that, you see--and so I have, in a way, the right to say what I shall do to you. Besides, if we win the pennant it will be due, as much as anything, to the instruction you gave me. Now will you be good!" "I guess I'll have to," agreed Pop, laughingly. Pittston closed all her games with the other teams, excepting only Clevefield. The pennant race was between these two clubs. Arrangements had been made so that the opening game would be played on the Pittston grounds. Then the battle-scene would shift to Clevefield, to come back to Pittston, and bring the final--should the fourth game be needed, to Clevefield. "If we could only win three straight it would be fine," said Joe. "It's too much to hope," returned Pop. It was the day before the first of the pennant games. The Pittstons had gone out for light practice on their home grounds, which had been "groomed" for the occasion. As far as could be told Pittston looked to be a winner, but there is nothing more uncertain than baseball. As Joe and his mates came off the field after practice there shuffled up to the veteran player a trampish-looking man. At first Joe thought this might be Hogan again, but a second look convinced him otherwise. The man hoarsely whispered something to the old pitcher. "He says Hogan and a gang of tramps are in a sort of camp in Shiller's Woods," said Pop, naming a place that was frequently the abiding place of "gentlemen of the road." "He is?" cried Joe. "Then let's make a beeline for there. I've just got to get this thing settled! Are you with me, Pop?" "I sure am. But how are we going to get out there? It's outside the city limits, no car line goes there, and trains don't stop." "Then we've got to have an auto," decided Joe. "I'll see if we can hire one." He was on his way to the dressing rooms, when, happening to glance through the big open gate of the ball ground he saw a sight that caused him to exclaim: "The very thing! It couldn't be better. I can kill two birds with one stone. There's our auto, and the man in it is the very one I want to convince of my innocence! That's Reggie Varley. I'll make him take us to Shiller's Woods! We'll catch Hogan there. Come on!" Never stopping to think of the peculiar coincidence that had brought Reggie on the scene just when he was most needed, Joe sprinted for the panting auto, Pop following wonderingly. CHAPTER XXVI THE TRAMP RENDEZVOUS "Come on!" cried Joe to Reggie Varley, not giving that astonished young man a chance to greet him. "Come on! Got plenty of gas?" "Gas? Yes, of course. But where? What is it? Are they after you?" "Not at all. We're after _them_!" laughed Joe. He could afford to laugh now, for he felt that he was about to be vindicated. "But I--er--I don't understand," spoke Reggie, slowly. "Where is it you want to go?" "After the tramp who rifled the valise you suspected me of opening in that way-station some time ago," answered Joe quickly. "We're after him to prove I didn't do it!" "Oh, but my dear Matson--really now, I don't believe you took it. Sis went for me red-hot, you know, after you told her. She called me all kinds of a brute for even mentioning it to you, and really----" He paused rather helplessly, while Joe, taking the situation into his own hands, climbed up beside Reggie, who was alone in his big car. The young pitcher motioned for Pop to get into the tonneau, and the veteran did so, still wondering what was going to happen. "It's all right," laughed Joe, more light-hearted than he had been in many months. "If you'll take us to Shiller's Woods you may see something that will surprise you." "But still I don't understand." Joe explained briefly how Hogan, the railroad tramp, had boasted of robbing a valise corresponding to Reggie's. Hogan was now within five miles of Pittston, hiding in a tramps' camp, and if he was arrested, or caught, he might be made to tell the truth of the robbery, clear Joe, and possibly inform Reggie where the watch and jewelry had been disposed of. "I don't suppose he has any of it left," said Reggie, simply. "There was one bracelet belonging to sis that I'd like awfully much to get back." "Well, we can try," answered Joe, hopefully. "Sometimes," broke in Pop, "those fellows can't dispose of the stuff they take, and then they hide it. Maybe we can get it back." "Let's hope so," went on Reggie. "And now, where do you want to go? I'll take you anywhere you say, and I've got plenty of gas." "Shiller's Woods," returned Joe. "Do you know where it is, Pop?" "Yes. I've been there--once or twice." "And now," went on Joe, as he settled back in the seat, still in his baseball uniform, as was Pop Dutton, "how did you happen to be here?" and he looked at Reggie. "Why, I had to come up in this section on business for dad, and sis insisted that I bring her along. So we motored up, and here we are. Sis is at the Continental." "Our hotel!" gasped Joe. "I didn't see her!" His heart was beating wildly. "No, I just left her there," returned Reggie. "She is wild to see these final games----" "I hope she sees us win," murmured Joe. "But about this chase," went on Reggie. "If we're going up against a lot of tramps perhaps we'd better have a police officer with us." "It wouldn't be a bad idea," agreed Pop. "We can stop and pick up a railroad detective I know. They'll be glad of the chance to raid the tramps, for they don't want them hanging around." "Good idea," announced Joe, who was still puzzling over the manner in which things fitted together, and wondering at the absurdly simple way in which Reggie had appeared on the scene. The car sped away from the ball field, purring on its silent, powerful way. Pop Dutton gave directions as to the best roads to follow, and a little distance out of Pittston he called a halt, in order that a railroad detective might be summoned. They found one at a small branch freight station, and this man called a companion, so there were five who proceeded to the rendezvous of the tramps in Shiller's Woods. It is not a difficult matter to raid the abiding place of the men, unfortunates if you will, who are known as "hoboes," and tramps. They are not criminals in the usual sense of the term, though they will descend to petty thievery. Usually they are "pan-handlers," beggars and such; though occasionally a "yegg-man," or safe-blower, will throw in his lot with them. But for the most part the men are low characters, living as best they can, cooking meager meals over a camp fire, perhaps raiding hen-roosts or corn fields, and moving from place to place. They have no wish to defy police authority, and usually disappear at the first alarm, to travel on to the next stopping place. So there was no fear of any desperate encounter in this raid. The railroad detectives said as much, and expressed the belief that they would not even have to draw their revolvers. "We'll be glad of the chance to clean the rascals out," said one officer, "for they hang around there, and rob freight cars whenever they get the chance." "But we'd like a chance to talk to them--at least to this Hogan," explained Joe. "We want to find what he did with Mr. Varley's jewelry." "Well, then, the only thing to do is to surround them, and hold them there until you interview them," was the decision. "I guess we can do it." Shiller's Woods were near the railroad line, in a lonesome spot, and the outskirts were soon reached. The auto was left in charge of a switchman at his shanty near a crossing and the occupants, consisting of the two detectives, Joe, Pop and Reggie, proceeded on foot. They all carried stout cudgels, though the officers had revolvers for use in emergency. But they were not needed. Pop Dutton knew the way well to a little hollow where the tramps slept and ate. He led the others to it, and so quietly did they approach that the tramps were surrounded before they knew it. Down in a grassy hollow were half a dozen of them gathered about a fire over which was stewing some mixture in a tomato can, suspended over the flame on a stick, by means of a bit of wire. "Good afternoon, boys!" greeted one of the officers, as he stood up, and looked down on the men. It was apparent at first glance that Hogan was one of them. Pop had silently indicated him. The tramps started up, but seeing that they were surrounded settled back philosophically. Only Hogan looked eagerly about for a way of escape. "It's no go," said one of the railroad detectives. "Just take it easy, and maybe you won't be so badly off as you imagine." Hogan had been found at last. It developed that Pop had asked his former "friends of the road" to keep track of him, and send word when located. This had been done by the ragged man who accosted the old player on the diamond that afternoon. CHAPTER XXVII THE SLOW WATCH "Well, what do you want?" growled Hogan, for he seemed to feel that attention was centered on him. "Nothing much--no more than usual, that is," said one of the detectives, to whom the story of the looted valise had been told. "Where did you put the stuff you got from this gentleman's bag some time last Spring?" was the sharp question. "Whose bag?" Hogan wanted to know, with a frown. "Mine!" exclaimed Reggie. "That is, if you're the man. It was a yellow bag, with lions' heads on the clasps and it contained a Swiss watch, with a gold face; some jewelry, including a bracelet of red stones was also taken." Hogan started as this catalog was gone over. "Now look here!" broke in the officer. "These gentlemen are willing to make some concessions to you." "Yes?" spoke Hogan, non-committally. He seemed easier now. "Yes. If you'll own up, and give back what you've got left we'll call it off, providing you get out of the State and keep out." "An' s'posin' I don't?" he asked, defiantly. "Then it's the jug for yours. You're the one we want. The rest of you can go--and keep away, too," added the detective, significantly. The tramps slunk off, glad enough to escape. Only Hogan remained. "Well," he said, but now his nerve was gone. He looked surlily at Pop, and wet his lips nervously. "Go on," urged the officer. "I guess I did get a few things from his bag--leastwise it was a satchel like the one he tells about," confessed Hogan. "Then that clears me!" cried Joe, joyfully. Reggie Varley held out his hand to the young pitcher. "It was silly of me ever to have suspected you," he said, contritely. "Will you forgive me?" "Of course!" Joe would have forgiven Reggie almost anything. "Where's the stuff now?" asked the chief detective, sharply. Hogan laughed. "Where do you s'pose?" he asked. "Think I can afford to carry Swiss watches with gold faces, or ladies' bracelets? I look like it; don't I?" Truly he did not, being most disreputable in appearance. "Did you pawn it?" asked the other officer. "Yes, and precious little I got out of it. You can have the tickets if you like. I'll never redeem 'em," and he tossed a bunch of pawn tickets over to Reggie, who caught them wonderingly. "Are--er--are these stubs for the things?" he asked. "How can I get them back?" "By paying whatever the pawnbrokers advanced on the goods," answered Pop Dutton, who looked quickly over the tickets. He knew most of the places where the goods had been disposed of. "I'll be glad to do that," went on the young man. "I'm much obliged to you, my good fellow." Hogan laughed again. "You're a sport!" he complimented. "Is that all you want of me?" The detectives consulted together a moment. Then one of them asked Joe and his two friends: "What do you say? There isn't much to be gained by arresting him. You've got about all you can out of him. I suppose you might as well let him go." "I'm willing," spoke Joe. "All I wanted was to have my name cleared, and that's been done." "I don't care to have him prosecuted," spoke Reggie. "It might bring my sister into unpleasant prominence, as most of the things were hers." "I say, my good fellow," he went on--he would persist in being what he thought was English, "does the ticket for that bracelet happen to be among these you've given me." "No, here's the thing itself--catch!" exclaimed Hogan, and he threw something to Joe, who caught it. It proved to be a quaint wrist-ornament. The young pitcher slipped it into his pocket. "It'll have to be disinfected before she can wear it," he said in a low voice to Reggie. "I'll give it to her, after I soak it in formaldehyde." Reggie nodded--and smiled. Perhaps he understood more than Joe thought he did. "Is that all you want of me?" asked Hogan, looking uneasily about. "I guess so," answered one of the officers. "But how did you come to get at the valise?" "Oh, it was easy. I spotted it in the depot and when that chap wasn't looking,"--he nodded at Reggie--"I just opened it, took out what I wanted, and slipped out of the station before anyone saw me. You'd never have gotten me, either, if I hadn't been a dub and told him," and he scowled at Pop Dutton. "Well, I'm glad, for my own sake, that you did tell," spoke Joe. "Now you'd better clear out," warned the officer, "and don't let us find you near the railroad tracks again, or it will be the jug for yours. Vamoose!" "Wait a minute," said Pop Dutton, softly. "Have you any money, Hogan?" "Money! No, how should I get money? I couldn't pawn that bracelet, or I'd have some though. They all said it wasn't worth anything." "My sister values it as a keepsake," explained Reggie to Joe in a low voice. "She'll be awfully glad to get it back." "Here," went on the old pitcher to his former companion of the highway, and he passed him a bill. "It's all I can spare or I'd give you more." Hogan was greatly surprised. He stared at the money half comprehendingly. "You--do you mean it?" he stammered. "Certainly," answered Pop. "Well, I--er--I--I'm sorry!" burst out the tramp, and, making a quick grab for the bill, he turned aside and was soon lost to sight amid the trees. "Hum! That's a queer go!" commented one of the officers. "I guess he's got some feeling, after all," said Joe, softly. They had accomplished what they set out to do--proved the innocence of the young pitcher. And they had done more, for they were in the way of recovering most of the stolen stuff. Joe anticipated much pleasure in restoring to Mabel her odd bracelet. They motored back to the city from the rendezvous of the tramps, talking over the strange occurrence. But they took none of the members of the ball team into their confidence--Joe and Pop. They thought the fewer who knew of it the better. "And now if I was sure dad would be all right, and Pop's arm would get into pitching shape again, I wouldn't ask for anything more," said Joe to Reggie that night, when he called on the youth and his sister. "Don't you want to win the pennant?" asked Mabel, softly. She had thanked Joe--and her brother--with blushing cheeks for the return of her keepsake bracelet. But her blushes were not for her brother. "The pennant! Of course!" cried Joe. "I almost forgot about that! And we're going to win it!" "I'm going to see every game, too!" exclaimed Mabel, with brilliant cheeks and eyes. The first pennant game with Clevefield was a hard-fought one. Collin took the mound in the opening of the battle, and for a time all went well. He made some mistakes, and the heavy batters on the other side began "finding" him. But he was well supported by the fielders and basemen, and three innings ran along with the visitors securing nothing but zero tallies. Then came a break. A swift ball glanced off Collin's glove, and Charlie Hall, the shortstop, after a magnificent jump, by which he secured the horsehide, made a wild throw to first. Then began a slump, and Collin had his share in it. Joe was called on, but too late to be of any real service, though he stopped the rout. Score: Pittston three, Clevefield nine. "We've got to take three straight, or make a tie so as to get another game--making five instead of four," said Gregory, gloomily that evening. The next contest would take place in Clevefield and the teams made a night journey there. Reggie and his sister went on by auto early the next day, arriving in time to visit Joe before practice was called. "Joe, you're nervous!" exclaimed Reggie, when he met the young pitcher, just before lunch. "You ought to come out in the country for a little run. I'll take you in my car. It will do you good." "Yes, do come," urged Mabel. "All right," agreed Joe. "But I'll have to be back soon. No telling which one of us Gregory will call on to pitch." "Oh, I'll get you back in time," promised Reggie. So Joe, with the permission of Gregory, who warned him not to be late, started off for an auto ride. They went for some distance into the beautiful country and Joe was beginning to feel in fit condition to pitch a great game. As they passed through one small town, Joe looked at the clock in a jeweler's window. Then he glanced at his watch. "I say!" he cried in dismay. "Either my watch is slow, or that clock is fast. Why, I haven't time enough to get back to play! What time have you, Reggie?" "My watch has stopped. But we can ask the jeweler if his time is right." It was, as Joe learned to his dismay. They had been going by his watch, and now it developed that it was nearly an hour slow! "Jove! If I should be late!" cried the young pitcher in a panic of apprehension. CHAPTER XXVIII THE RACE There was but one thing to do--make all speed back to the ball park. Already, in fancy, Joe could see his team trotting out for warming-up practice, and wondering, perhaps, why he was not there with them. "This is fierce!" he gasped. "I had no idea it was so late!" "Neither had I," admitted Reggie. "It was such easy going that I kept on. It was my fault, Joe." "No, it was my own. I ought to have kept track of the time on such an important occasion. Of course I don't mean to say that they won't win the game without me, but if Gregory should happen to call on me and I wasn't there it would look bad. I'm supposed to be there for every game, if I'm able, whether they use me or not." "Then I'll get you there!" cried Reggie. "I'll make this old machine hum, take my word for that! We'll have a grand old race against time, Joe!" "Only don't get arrested for speeding," cautioned the young pitcher. "That would be as bad as not getting there at all." He looked at his watch while Reggie turned the car around in a narrow street, necessitating some evolutions. Again Joe compared his timepiece with the clock in the window of the jewelry store. His watch was more than an hour slow. "I can't understand it," he murmured. "It never acted like this before." Joe's watch was not a fancy one, nor expensive, but it had been recommended by a railroad friend, and could be relied on to keep perfect time. In fact it always had, and in the several years he had carried it the mechanism had never varied more than half a minute. "Maybe the hair spring is caught up," suggested Reggie. "That happens to mine sometimes." "That would make it go fast, instead of slow," said Joe. "It can't be that." He opened the back case, and looked at the balance wheel, and the mechanism for regulating the length of the hair spring, which controls the time-keeping qualities of a watch. "Look!" he cried to Reggie, showing him, "the pointer is shoved away over to one side. And my watch has been running slow, no telling for how long. That's what made us late. My watch has been losing time!" "Did you do it?" asked Reggie. "Of course not." "Then it was an accident. You can explain to your manager how it happened, and he'll excuse you." "It was no accident!" cried Joe. "No accident! What do you mean?" "I mean that someone did this on purpose!" cried Joe. "Someone got at my watch when I wasn't looking, and shoved the regulator lever over to slow. That was so it would lose time gradually, and I wouldn't notice. It has lost over an hour. This is too bad!" "Well, don't worry," advised Reggie, as he speeded the car ahead, turning into a long, country road that would take them almost directly to the ball park. "I'll get you there on time if I have to do it on bare rims. Let the tires go! But who do you imagine could have slowed down your watch?" "I wouldn't like to say--not until I have more proof," answered Joe, slowly. "It would not be fair." "No, I suppose not. Yet it was a mean trick, if it was done on purpose. They didn't want you to get back in time to pitch. Say! Could it have been any of the Clevefield players? They have plenty of cause to be afraid of you for what you did in the game yesterday--after you got a chance." "No, it wasn't any of them," said Joe, with a shake of his head. "They're too good sports to do a thing like that. Besides, I didn't do so much to them yesterday. We couldn't have had a much worse drubbing." "But you prevented it from being a regular slaughter." "Maybe. But it was none of them who slowed my watch." "You don't mean it was one of your own men!" cried Reggie. "I won't answer now," returned Joe, slowly. "Let's see if we can get there on time." Joe was doing some hard thinking. There was just one man on the Pittston nine who would have perpetrated a trick like this, and that man was Collin. He disliked Joe very much because of his ability, and since the game of yesterday, when Collin, unmercifully batted, had been taken out to let Joe fill his place, there was more cause than ever for this feeling of hatred--no good cause, but sufficient in the eyes of a vindictive man. Joe realized this. He also realized that Collin might even throw away the chance for his team to win in order to gratify a personal grudge. Other players had said as much to Joe, and it was almost an open secret that Gregory intended giving Collin his release at the end of the season. But Joe had not believed his enemy would go to such lengths. "He must be afraid I'll be put in first to-day," thought Joe, "and that he won't get a chance at all. Jove, what a mean trick!" Joe had no "swelled head," and he did not imagine, for a moment, that he was the best pitcher in the world. Yet he knew his own abilities, and he knew he could pitch a fairly good game, even in a pinch. It was but natural, then, that he should want to do his best. For Joe was intensely loyal to the team. He had always been so, not only since he became a professional, but while he was at Yale, and when he played on his school nine. "Hold on now!" called Reggie, suddenly breaking in on Joe's musings. "I'm going to speed her up!" The car sprang forward with a jump, and Joe was jerked sharply back. Then the race was on in earnest. The young pitcher quickly made up his mind. He would say nothing about the slowed watch, and if he arrived too late to take part in the game--provided he had been slated to pitch--he would take his medicine. But he resolved to watch Collin carefully. "He might betray himself," Joe reasoned. He could easily see how the trick had been worked. The players came to the ball field in their street clothes, and changed to their uniforms in the dressing rooms under the grandstand. An officer was always on guard at the entrance, to admit none but the men supposed to go in. But Collin could easily have gone to Joe's locker, taken out his watch and shoved over the regulator. It was the work of only a few seconds. Naturally when one's watch had been running correctly one would not stop to look and see if the regulator was in the right position. One would take it for granted. And it was only when Joe compared his timepiece with another that he noticed the difference. Could they make it up? It was almost time for the game to start, and they were still some distance from the grounds. There was no railroad or trolley line available, and, even if there had been, the auto would be preferable. "I guess we'll do it," Joe murmured, looking at his watch, which he had set correctly, also regulating it as well as he could. "We've just got to!" exclaimed Reggie, advancing the spark. They were certainly making good time, and Reggie was a careful driver. This time he took chances that he marveled at later. But the spirit of the race entered into him, and he clenched his teeth, held the steering wheel in a desperate grip, with one foot on the clutch pedal, and the other on the brake. His hand was ready at any moment to shoot out and grasp the emergency lever to bring the car up standing if necessary. And it might be necessary any moment, for though the road was good and wide it was well crowded with other autos, and with horse-drawn vehicles. On and on they sped. Now some dog would run out to bark exasperatingly at the flying machine, and Reggie, with muttered threats, would be ready to jam on both brakes in an instant. For a dog under an auto's wheels is a dangerous proposition, not only for the dog but for the autoist as well. "Get out, you cur!" yelled Joe, as a yellow brute rushed from one house. "I wish I had something to throw at you!" "Throw your watch!" cried Reggie grimly, above the noise of the machine. "No, it's a good watch yet, in spite of that trick," answered Joe. "It wasn't the fault of the watch." Once more he looked at it. Time was ticking on, and they still had several miles to go. The game must have been called by this time, and Joe was not there. He clenched his hands, and shut his teeth tightly. "We'll do it--or bust!" declared Reggie. His car was not a racer, but it was capable of good speed. He did not dare use all that was available, on account of the traffic. Many autos were taking spectators to the game, and they were in a hurry, too. Amid dust clouds they sped on, the engine whining and moaning at the speed at which it was run. But it ran true and "sweet," with never a miss. "They're playing now!" spoke Joe, in a low voice. In fancy he could hear the clang of the starting gong, and hear the umpire cry: "Play ball!" And he was not there! "We'll do it!" muttered Reggie. He tried to pass a big red car that, unexpectedly, swerved to one side. Reggie, in desperation, as he saw a collision in prospect, whirled the steering wheel to one side. His car careened and almost went over. Joe clung to the seat and braced himself. An instant later there was a sharp report, and the car, wobbling from side to side, shot up a grassy bank at the side of the road. "A blow-out!" yelled Reggie, and then, as he managed to bring the car to a sudden stop, the vehicle settled over on one side, gently enough, tossing Joe out on the grass with a thud. CHAPTER XXIX A DIAMOND BATTLE Confusion reigned supreme for a moment. Several autos that were passing stopped, and men and women came running up to be of assistance if necessary. But neither Joe nor Reggie was hurt. Slowly the young pitcher picked himself up, and gazed about in some bewilderment. For a moment he could not understand what had happened. Then he saw Reggie disentangling himself from the steering wheel. "Hurt?" asked Joe, anxiously. "No. Are you?" "Not a scratch." "Rotten luck!" commented Reggie. "Now you'll never get to the game on time." "Lucky you weren't both killed," commented an elderly autoist. "And your car isn't damaged to speak of. Only a tire to the bad. That grassy bank saved you." "Yes," assented Reggie. "All she needs is righting, but by the time that's done it will be too late." "Where were you going?" asked another man. "To the game," answered Reggie. "I'm on the Pittston team," said Joe. "I'm supposed to be there to pitch if I'm needed. Only--I won't be there," he finished grimly. "Yes you will!" cried a man who had a big machine. "I'll take you both--that is, if you want to leave your car," he added to Reggie. "Oh, I guess that will be safe enough. I'll notify some garage man to come and get it," was the reply. "Then get into my car," urged the gentleman. "I've got plenty of room--only my two daughters with me. They'll be glad to meet a player--they're crazy about baseball--we're going to the game, in fact. Get in!" Escorted by the man who had so kindly come to their assistance, Joe and Reggie got into the big touring car. The other autoists who had stopped went on, one offering to notify a certain garage to come and get Reggie's car. Then the young pitcher was again speeded on his way. The big car was driven at almost reckless speed, and when Joe reached the ball park, and fairly sprang in through the gate, he was an hour late--the game was about half over. Without looking at Gregory and the other players who were on the bench, Joe gave a quick glance at the score board. It told the story in mute figures. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 PITTSTON 0 0 0 0 CLEVEFIELD 1 0 2 3 It was the start of the fifth inning, and Pittston was at bat. Unless she had made some runs so far the tally was six to nothing in favor of Clevefield. Joe groaned in spirit. "Any runs?" gasped Joe, as he veered over to the bench where his mates sat. He was short of breath, for he had fairly leaped across the field. "Not a one," said Gregory, and Joe thought he spoke sharply. "What's the matter? Where have you been?" Joe gaspingly explained. When he spoke of the slow watch he looked at Collin sharply. For a moment the old pitcher tried to look Joe in the face. Then his eyes fell. It was enough for Joe. "He did it!" he decided to himself. "How many out?" was Joe's next question. "Only one. We have a chance," replied Gregory. "Get into a uniform as fast as you can and warm up." "Are you going to pitch me?" "I guess I'll have to. They've been knocking Collin out of the box." Gregory said the last in a low voice, but he might as well have shouted it for it was only too well known. Collin himself realized it. He fairly glared at Joe. As Joe hurried to the dressing room--his uniform fortunately having been left there early that morning--he looked at the bases. Bob Newton was on second, having completed a successful steal as Joe rushed in. Charlie Hall was at bat, and Joe heard the umpire drone as he went under the grandstand: "Strike two!" "Our chances are narrowing," thought Joe, and a chill seemed to strike him. "If we lose this game it practically means the loss of the pennant, and----" But he did not like to think further. He realized that the money he had counted on would not be forthcoming. "I'm not going to admit that we'll lose," and Joe gritted his teeth. "We're going to win." Quickly he changed into his uniform, and while he was doing it the stand above him fairly shook with a mighty yell. "Somebody's done something!" cried Joe aloud. "Oh, if I was only there to see!" The yelling continued, and there was a sound like thunder as thousands of feet stamped on the stand above Joe's head. "What is it? What is it?" he asked himself, feverishly, and his hands trembled so that he could hardly tie the laces of his shoes. He rushed out to find the applause still continuing and was just in time to see Charlie Hall cross the rubber plate. "He must have made a home run! That means two, for he brought in Bob!" thought Joe. He knew this was so, for, a moment later he caught the frantic shouts: "Home-run Hall! Home-run Hall!" "Did you do it, old man?" cried Joe, rushing up to him. "Well, I just _had_ to," was the modest reply. "I'm not going to let you do all the work on this team." Gregory was clapping the shortstop on the back. "Good work!" he said, his eyes sparkling. "Now, boys, we'll do 'em! Get busy, Joe. Peters, you take him off there and warm up with him." Charlie had caught a ball just where he wanted it and had "slammed" it out into the left field bleachers for a home run. It was a great effort, and just what was needed at a most needful time. Then the game went on. Clevefield was not so confident now. Her pitcher, really a talented chap, was beginning to be "found." Whether it was the advent of Joe, after his sensational race, or whether the Pittston players "got onto the Clevefield man's curves," as Charlie Hall expressed it, was not quite clear. Certainly they began playing better from that moment and when their half of the fifth closed they had three runs to their credit. The score was PITTSTON 3 CLEVEFIELD 6 "We only need four more to win--if we can shut them out," said Gregory, as his men took the field again. He sat on the bench directing the game. "Go to it, Joe!" "I'm going!" declared our hero, grimly. He realized that he had a hard struggle ahead of him. Not only must he allow as few hits as possible, but, with his team-mates, he must help to gather in four more tallies. And then the battle of the diamond began in earnest. Joe pitched magnificently. The first man up was a notoriously heavy hitter, and Joe felt tempted to give him his base on balls. Instead he nerved himself to strike him out if it could be done. Working a cross-fire, varying it with his now famous fade-away ball, Joe managed to get to two balls and two strikes, both the latter being foul ones. He had two more deliveries left, and the next one he sent in with all the force at his command. The bat met it, and for an instant Joe's heart almost stopped a beat. Then he saw the ball sailing directly into the hands of Charlie Hall. The man was out. Joe did not allow a hit that inning. Not a man got to first, and the last man up was struck out cleanly, never even fouling the ball. "That's the boy!" cried the crowd as Joe came in. "That's the boy!" His face flushed with pleasure. He looked for Collin, but that player had disappeared. The rest of that game is history in the Central League. How Pittston rallied, getting one run in the sixth, and another in the lucky seventh, has been told over and over again. Joe kept up his good work, not allowing a hit in the sixth. In the seventh he was pounded for a two-bagger, and then he "tightened up," and there were no runs for the Clevefields. They were fighting desperately, for they saw the battle slipping away from them. Pittston tied the score in the eighth and there was pandemonium in the stands. The crowd went wild with delight. "Hold yourself in, old man," Gregory warned his pitcher. "Don't let 'em get your goat. They'll try to." "All right," laughed Joe. He was supremely happy. There was almost a calamity in the beginning of the ninth. Pittston's first batter--Gus Harrison--struck out, and there was a groan of anguish. Only one run was needed to win the game, for it was now evident that the Clevefield batters could not find Joe. George Lee came up, and popped a little fly. The shortstop fumbled it, but stung it over to first. It seemed that George was safe there, but the umpire called him out. "Boys, we've got a bare chance left," said Gregory. "Go to it." And they did. It was not remarkable playing, for the Clevefields had put in a new pitcher who lost his nerve. With two out he gave Joe, the next man, his base. Joe daringly stole to second, and then Terry Hanson made up for previous bad work by knocking a three-bagger. Joe came in with the winning run amid a riot of yells. The score, at the beginning of the last half of the ninth: PITTSTON 7 CLEVEFIELD 6 "Hold 'em down, Joe! Hold 'em down!" pleaded Gregory. And Joe did. It was not easy work, for he was tired and excited from the auto run, and the close call he had had. But he pitched magnificently, and Clevefield's last record at bat was but a single hit. No runs came in. Pittston had won the second game of the pennant series by one run. Narrow margin, but sufficient. And what rejoicing there was! Joe was the hero of the hour, but his ovation was shared by Charlie Hall and the others who had done such splendid work. Pop Dutton did not play, much to his regret. "Congratulations, old man," said the Clevefield manager to Gregory. "That's some little pitcher you've got there." "That's what we think." "Is he for sale?" "Not on your life." "Still, I think you're going to lose him," went on Clevefield's manager. "How's that?" asked Gregory in alarm. The other whispered something. "Is that so! Scouting here, eh? Well, if they get Joe in a big league I suppose I ought to be glad, for his sake. Still, I sure will hate to lose him. He was handicapped to-day, too," and he told of the delay. "He sure has nerve!" was the well-deserved compliment. CHAPTER XXX THE PENNANT The pennant was not yet won. So far the teams had broken even, and unless Pittston could take the next two games there would be a fifth one necessary. "If there is," decided Gregory, "we'll make it an exhibition, on some neutral diamond, and get a big crowd. It will mean a lot more money for us." "Will it?" asked Joe. "Then let's do it!" "We can't make sure of it," went on the manager. "We'll not think of that, for it would mean throwing a game away if we won the next one, and I've never thrown a game yet, and never will. No, Joe, we'll try to win both games straight, even if it doesn't mean so much cash. Now take care of yourself." "I'll try," promised Joe. The next contest would take place at Pittston, and thither the two teams journeyed that evening. Before they left Joe spent a pleasant time at the hotel where Reggie and his sister had rooms. "Are you coming back to Pittston, or stay here for the fourth game?" the young pitcher asked. "We're going to see you play--of course!" exclaimed Mabel. "I wouldn't miss it for anything." "Thank you!" laughed Joe, and blushed. "Did you get your auto all right?" he asked Reggie. "Yes. The man brought her in. Not damaged a bit. Sis and I are going to motor in to-morrow. But I won't take a chance in giving you a ride again--not so close to the game." "I guess not," agreed Joe, laughing. "Did you find out anything?" Reggie went on. "About who meddled with your watch?" "I didn't ask any questions. It was too unpleasant a thing to have come out. But my first guess was right. And I don't think that player will stay around here." I may say, in passing, that Collin did not. He left town that night and was not seen in that part of the country for some years. He broke his contract, but Gregory did not much care for that, as he was about ready to release him anyhow. Joe told the story to the manager only, and they kept it a secret between them. It was a mystery to Collin's team-mates why he disappeared so strangely, but few ever heard the real story. The third game with Clevefield came off before a record-breaking crowd. It was a great contest, and was only won for Pittston in the tenth inning, when Jimmie Mack, the doughty first-baseman, scored the winning run. The crowd went wild at that, for it had looked as though Clevefield would take the game home with them. But they could not stand against Joe's terrific pitching. This made the pennant series stand two to one in favor of the Pittston team. Another victory would clinch the banner for them, but the following game must take place in Clevefield, and this fact was rather a disadvantage to Joe's team. "Now, boys, do your best," pleaded Gregory, as he sat with his men on the bench, making up the batting order. "We want to win!" Tom Tooley was to pitch in Joe's place, for our hero's arm really needed a rest. "I may have to use you anyhow, toward the end, if we get in a hole, Joe," said the manager. "So hold yourself in readiness." Much as Joe liked to pitch he was really glad that he did not have to go in, for he was very tired. The strain of the season, added to the responsibility of the final big games, was telling on him. The battle opened, and at first it seemed to favor Pittston. Then her best hitters began to "slump," and the game slipped away from them. Clevefield came up strong and though, as a desperate resort, Joe was sent in, it was too late. Clevefield won the fourth game by a score of nine to seven. "That means a fifth game!" announced Gregory. "Well, we'll have a better chance in that! Oh, for a rain!" "Why?" asked Jimmie Mack, as they walked off the field. "To give Joe a chance to rest up. He needs it." And the rain came. It lasted for two days, and a third one had to pass to let the grounds at Washburg dry up. It had been decided to play off the tie there, for the diamond was a fine one, and Washburg was centrally located, insuring a big attendance. "We should have arranged this series to be the best three out of five in the beginning," said Gregory. "We'll know better next time. There's too much uncertainty in a three out of four--it practically means five games anyhow." Reggie and Mabel saw every contest, and announced their intention of going to Washburg for the last. At least Mabel did, and Reggie could do no less than take her. The rest had done Joe good, though of course it had also allowed his opponents to recuperate. Joe felt fit to play the game of his life. The grandstands were filled--the bleachers overflowed--the band played--the crowds yelled and cheered. There was a riot of color--represented by ladies' hats and dresses; there was a forest of darkness--represented by the more sober clothes of the men. It was the day of the final game. "Play ball!" called the umpire, and Joe went to the mound, for Pittston had been lucky in the toss-up and could bat last. Joe hardly knew whether he was more elated over his own chance of shining in this deciding game or over the fact that Pop Dutton was playing. The old pitcher had improved wonderfully, and Gregory said, was almost "big league stuff" again. So he had been put in centre field. His batting, too, was a bulwark for Pittston. Just before the game Joe had received a letter from home, telling him news that disconcerted him a little. It was to the effect that an operation would be necessary to restore his father's sight. It was almost certain to be successful, however, for a noted surgeon, who had saved many by his skill, would perform it. But the cost would be heavy. "So I've just got to win this game; to make my share of the money bigger," Joe murmured. "I'll need every cent of it for dad--and Pop." The winner of the pennant, naturally, would receive the larger share of the gate money, and each man on the winning team, the manager had promised, was to have his proportion. "We've just got to win!" repeated Joe. It was a desperately fought battle from the very start. Joe found himself a trifle nervous at first, but he pulled himself together and then began such a pitching battle as is seldom seen. For five innings the game went on without a hit, a run or an error on either side. It was almost machine-perfect baseball, and it was a question of which pitcher would break first. Joe faced batter after batter with the coolness of a veteran. Little "no count" flies were all he was hit for, not a man getting to first. There came a break in the sixth. How it happened Joe never knew, but he hit the batter, who went to first, and a runner had to be substituted for him. Naturally this made Joe nervous and he was not himself. Then one of the Clevefield players knocked a home run, bringing in the man from first, and there were two runs against none for Pittston, and only one man out. Then, if ever, was a crucial moment for Joe. Many young pitchers would have gone to pieces under the strain, but by a supreme effort, Joe got back his nerve. The crowd, always ready to be unfriendly when it sees a pitcher wavering, hooted and howled. Joe only smiled--and struck out the next man--and the next. He had stopped a winning streak in the nick of time. "Get some runs, boys! Get some runs!" pleaded Gregory, and his men got them. They got three, enough to put them one ahead, and then Joe knew he must work hard to hold the narrow margin so hardly won. "I've got to do it! I've just got to do it!" he told himself. "I want to win this game so I'll have money enough for dad--and Pop! I'm going to do it!" And do it he did. How he did it is history now, but it is history that will never be forgotten in the towns of that league. For Joe did not allow another hit that game. He worked himself to the limit, facing veteran batters with a smile of confidence, sending in a deadly cross-fire with his famous fade-away until the last tally was told, and the score stood: PITTSTON 3 CLEVEFIELD 2 When the last batter had gone down to defeat in the first half of the ninth Joe drew off his glove, and, oblivious to the plaudits of the crowd and his own mates, hurried to the dressing rooms. "Where are you going?" cried Charlie Hall. "They're howling for you. They want to see you--hear you talk." Joe could hear the voices screaming: "Speech! Speech! Speech, Matson! Baseball Joe!" "I just can't! I'm all in, Charlie. Tell them," pleaded Joe. "I want to send a telegram home, telling the folks that I'll be with them when dad's operated on. I can't make a speech!" Charlie told the crowd, and Joe was cheered louder than before. And so ended the race for the pennant of the Central League, with Pittston the winner. As Joe walked off the field, on his way to the telegraph office, being cheered again and again, while he made his way through the crowd, a keen-faced man looked critically at him. "I guess you're going to be mine," he said. "I think we'll have to draft you." "What's that?" asked Pop Dutton, who recognized the man as a well-known scout, on the lookout for promising players. "Oh, nothing," answered the keen-faced one, with a laugh. Pop laughed also, but it was a laugh of understanding. And what it meant--and what the man's remark meant to Joe, may be learned by reading the next volume of this series, to be called: "Baseball Joe in the Big League; Or, a Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles." Joe hurried home that night, stopping only to say good-bye to Mabel, and promising to come and see her as soon as he could. The operation on Mr. Matson was highly successful. It cost a large sum, and as his father had no money to pay for it, Joe used much of the extra cash that came to him as his share in the pennant series. Had his team not won he would hardly have had enough. But there was enough to spare for the simple operation on Pop Dutton's arm. "Joe, I hate to have you spend your money this way--on me," objected the grizzled veteran of many diamonds. "It doesn't seem right." "Oh, play ball!" cried Joe, gaily. "You can pay me back, if you want to, you old duffer, when you get into a bigger league than the Central, and are earning a good salary." "I will!" cried Pop, enthusiastically. "For I know I'm good for some years yet. I have 'come back,' thanks to you, Joe." They clasped hands silently--the young pitcher at the start of his brilliant career, and the old one, whose day was almost done. Pop's operation was successful, and he went South for the Winter, there, in company with an old friend, to gradually work up into his old form. Hogan seemed to have vanished, but Reggie got all the pawned jewelry back. The Pittston players, in common with the others in the league teams, went their several ways to their Winter occupations, there to remain until Spring should again make green the grass of the diamond. "Oh, Joe!" exclaimed Mrs. Matson, with trembling voice, when it was certain her husband would see again, "how much we owe to you, my son." "You owe more to baseball," laughed Joe. Clara came in with a letter. "This is for you, Joe," she said, adding mischievously: "It seems to be from a girl, and it's postmarked Goldsboro, North Carolina. Who do you know down there?" "Give me that letter, Sis!" cried Joe, blushing. And while he is perusing the missive, the writer of which you can possibly name, we will, for a time, take leave of Baseball Joe. THE END THE BASEBALL JOE SERIES By LESTER CHADWICK _12mo. Illustrated. Price 50 cents per volume._ _Postage 10 cents additional._ [Illustration] 1. BASEBALL JOE OF THE SILVER STARS _or The Rivals of Riverside_ 2. BASEBALL JOE ON THE SCHOOL NINE _or Pitching for the Blue Banner_ 3. BASEBALL JOE AT YALE _or Pitching for the College Championship_ 4. BASEBALL JOE IN THE CENTRAL LEAGUE _or Making Good as a Professional Pitcher_ 5. BASEBALL JOE IN THE BIG LEAGUE _or A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles_ 6. BASEBALL JOE ON THE GIANTS _or Making Good as a Twirler in the Metropolis_ 7. BASEBALL JOE IN THE WORLD SERIES _or Pitching for the Championship_ 8. BASEBALL JOE AROUND THE WORLD _or Pitching on a Grand Tour_ 9. BASEBALL JOE: HOME RUN KING _or The Greatest Pitcher and Batter on Record_ 10. BASEBALL JOE SAVING THE LEAGUE _or Breaking Up a Great Conspiracy_ 11. BASEBALL JOE CAPTAIN OF THE TEAM _or Bitter Struggles on the Diamond_ 12. BASEBALL JOE CHAMPION OF THE LEAGUE _or The Record that was Worth While_ 13. BASEBALL JOE CLUB OWNER _or Putting the Home Town on the Map_ 14. BASEBALL JOE PITCHING WIZARD _or Triumphs Off and On the Diamond_ _Send for Our Free Illustrated Catalogue._ CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York THE BOMBA BOOKS By ROY ROCKWOOD _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. With colored jacket._ _Price 50 cents per volume._ _Postage 10 cents additional._ [Illustration] _Bomba lived far back in the jungles of the Amazon with a half-demented naturalist who told the lad nothing of his past. The jungle boy was a lover of birds, and hunted animals with a bow and arrow and his trusty machete. He had a primitive education in some things, and his daring adventures will be followed with breathless interest by thousands._ 1. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY _or The Old Naturalist's Secret_ 2. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AT THE MOVING MOUNTAIN _or The Mystery of the Caves of Fire_ 3. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AT THE GIANT CATARACT _or Chief Nasconora and His Captives_ 4. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY ON JAGUAR ISLAND _or Adrift on the River of Mystery_ 5. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY IN THE ABANDONED CITY _or A Treasure Ten Thousand Years Old_ 6. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY ON TERROR TRAIL _or The Mysterious Men from the Sky_ 7. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY IN THE SWAMP OF DEATH _or The Sacred Alligators of Abarago_ 8. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AMONG THE SLAVES _or Daring Adventures in the Valley of Skulls_ _Send for Our Free Illustrated Catalogue._ CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York * * * * * Transcriber's note: --Printer, punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected, except as noted below. --Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved. --Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved. --Author's em-dash style has been preserved. --Changed "Rocky-ford" (p. 17) to "Rocky Ford", the Resolutes ball team's home town, for consistency with previous and subsequent books in the series. 
27584	----	[Illustration: HE BEAT THE BALL BY A NARROW MARGIN, AND WAS DECLARED SAFE. Page 245.] Baseball Joe in the Big League OR A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles _By_ LESTER CHADWICK AUTHOR OF "BASEBALL JOE OF THE SILVER STARS," "BASEBALL JOE AT YALE," "BASEBALL JOE IN THE CENTRAL LEAGUE," "THE RIVAL PITCHERS," "THE EIGHT-OARED VICTORS," ETC. _ILLUSTRATED_ NEW YORK CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY Copyright, 1915, by CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY Baseball Joe in the Big League Printed in U. S. A. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I TWO LETTERS 1 II TO THE RESCUE 11 III AN UPSET 19 IV AN APPEAL 30 V THE THREAT 38 VI A WARNING 46 VII BASEBALL TALK 54 VIII THE QUARREL 61 IX JOE IS DRAFTED 70 X OFF TO ST. LOUIS 77 XI GOING DOWN SOUTH 87 XII THE QUARRELING MAN 97 XIII UNDER SUNNY SKIES 103 XIV HARD WORK 112 XV ANOTHER THREAT 122 XVI JOE'S TRIUMPH 129 XVII "PLAY BALL!" 140 XVIII HOT WORDS 148 XIX JOE GOES IN 153 XX STAGE FRIGHT 162 XXI A QUEER MESSAGE 175 XXII IN DANGER 182 XXIII A LAME ARM 191 XXIV A TIGHT GAME 201 XXV IN NEW YORK 208 XXVI ADRIFT 217 XXVII THE RESCUE 223 XXVIII MOVING PICTURES 229 XXIX SHALLEG'S DOWNFALL 234 XXX THE HARDEST BATTLE 240 BASEBALL JOE IN THE BIG LEAGUE CHAPTER I TWO LETTERS "Whew!" whistled Joe Matson, the astonishment on his bronzed face being indicated by his surprised exclamation of: "Well, what do you know about that, Sis?" "What is it, Joe?" asked his sister Clara, as she looked up from a letter she was reading to see her brother staring at a sheet of paper he had just withdrawn from an envelope, for the morning mail had been delivered a few minutes before. "What is it?" the girl went on, laying aside her own correspondence. "Is it anything serious--anything about father's business? Don't tell me there is more trouble, Joe!" "I'm not going to, Clara. It isn't trouble, but, if what he says is true, it's going to make a big difference to me," and Joe looked out of the window, across a snowy expanse of yard, and gazed at, without consciously seeing, a myriad of white flakes swirling down through the wintry air. "No, it isn't exactly trouble," went on Joe, "and I suppose I ought to be corkingly glad of it; but I hadn't counted on leaving the Central Baseball League quite so soon." "Oh, Joe! Have you lost your place?" exclaimed Clara. "And just after you have done so well, too; and helped them win the pennant! I call that a shame! I thought baseball men were better 'sports' than that." "Listen to her--my little sister using slang!" laughed Joe. "'Sports' isn't slang," defended Clara. "I've heard lots of girls use it. I mean it in the right sense. But have you really lost your place on the team, Joe?" "Well, not exactly, Sis, but I'm about to, I'm afraid. However, I guess I may as well make the best of it, and be glad. I sure can use the extra money!" "I certainly don't know what you're talking about," went on Clara, with a helpless look at her big, handsome brother, "and I suppose you'll take your own time in telling me. But I _would_ like to know what it all means, Joe. And about extra money. Who's going to give it to you?" "Nobody. I'll have to earn it with this pitching arm of mine," and the young baseball player swung it around, as though "winding-up" for a swift delivery. "Look out, Joe!" cried Clara, but she gave the warning too late. At that moment Mrs. Matson entered the room with a jug of water, which she intended pouring on a window-box of flowers. Joe's arm struck the jug a glancing blow, and sent it flying, the water spraying over the floor, and the jug itself falling, and cracking into many pieces. For a moment there was a momentous silence, after two startled screams--one each from Mrs. Matson and Clara. Then Joe cried gaily: "Out at first! Say, Momsey, I hope I didn't hit you!" "No, you didn't," and she laughed now. "But what does it all mean? Are you practicing so early in the season? Oh, my carpet! It will be ruined!" she went on, as she saw the water. "But I'm glad I didn't bring in a good jug. Did you hurt your hand?" "Nary a hurt," said Joe, with a smile. "Ha! I'll save _you_ from a wetting!" he exclaimed, as he stooped quickly and picked up an unopened letter, the address of which was in a girlish hand. "Get the mop, while you're at it," advised Clara. A little later Joe had sopped up the water, and quiet was restored. "And now suppose you tell us all about it," suggested Mrs. Mason. "Why were you practicing gymnastics, Joe?" and she smiled at her athletic son. "I was just telling Clara that my pitching arm was likely to bring me in more money this year, Momsey, and I was giving it a twirl, when you happened to get in my way. Now I'll tell you all about it. It's this letter," and Joe held out the one he had been reading. "Are you sure it isn't the _other_?" asked Clara, with a sly look at her brother, for she had glanced at the writing on the unopened envelope Joe had picked up from the floor. "Let me read that other letter, Joe," she teased. "A little later--maybe!" he parried. "But this one," and he fluttered the open sheet in his hand, "this one is from Mr. Gregory, manager of the Pittston team, with whom I have the honor to be associated," and Joe bowed low to his mother and sister. "Mr. Gregory gives me a bit of news. It is nothing less than that the manager of the St. Louis Nationals is negotiating for the services of yours truly--your humble servant, Joseph Matson," and again the young ball player bowed, and laughed. "Joe, you don't mean it!" cried his sister. "You're going to belong to a major league team!" for Clara was almost as ardent a baseball "fan" as was her brother. "Well, it looks like it, Sis," replied Joe, slowly, as he glanced at the letter again. "Of course it isn't settled, but Mr. Gregory says I'm pretty sure to be drafted to St. Louis." "Drafted!" exclaimed his mother. "That sounds like war times, when they used to draft men to go to the front. Do you mean you haven't any choice in the matter, Joe?" "Well, that's about it, Momsey," the young man explained. "You see, baseball is pretty well organized. It has to be, to make it the success it is," he added frankly, "though lots of people are opposed to the system. But I haven't been in it long enough to find fault, even if I wanted to--which I don't." "But it seems queer that you can't stay with the Pittston team if you want to," said Mrs. Matson. "I don't know as I want to," spoke Joe, slowly, "especially when I'll surely get more money with St. Louis, besides having the honor of pitching for a major league team, even if it isn't one of the top-notchers, and a pennant winner. So if they want to draft me, let them do their worst!" and he laughed, showing his even, white teeth. "You see," he resumed, "when I signed a contract with the Pittstons, of the Central League, I gave them the right to control my services as long as I played baseball. I had to agree not to go to any other team without permission, and, in fact, no other organized team would take me unless the Pittston management released me. I went into it with my eyes open. "And, you see, the Pittston team, being one of the small ones, has to give way to a major league team. That is, any major league team, like the St. Louis Nationals, can call for, or draft, any player in a smaller team. So if they call me I'll have to go. And I'll be glad to. I'll get more money and fame. "That is, I hope I will," and Joe spoke more soberly. "I know I'm not going to have any snap of it. It's going to be hard work from the word go, for there will be other pitchers on the St. Louis team, and I'll have to do my best to make a showing against them. "And I will, too!" cried Joe, resolutely. "I'll make good, Momsey!" "I hope so, my son," she responded, quietly. "You know I was not much in favor of your taking up baseball for a living, but I must say you have done well at it, and after all, if one does one's best at anything, that is what counts. So I hope you make good with the St. Louis team--I suppose 'make good' is the proper expression," she added, with a smile. "It'll do first-rate, Momsey," laughed Joe. "Now let's see what else Gregory says." He glanced over the letter again, and remarked: "Well, there's nothing definite. The managers are laying their plans for the Spring work, and he says I'm being considered. He adds he will be sorry to lose me." "I should think he would be!" exclaimed Clara, a flush coming into her cheeks. "You were the best pitcher on his team!" "Oh, I wouldn't go as far as to say that!" cried Joe, "though I appreciate your feeling, Sis. I had a good bit of luck, winning some of the games the way I did. Well, I guess I'll go look up some St. Louis records, and see what I'm expected to do in the batting average line compared with them," the player went on. "The St. Louis team isn't a wonder, but it's done pretty fair at times, I believe, and it's a step up for me. I'll be more in line for a place on the New York Giants, or the Philadelphia Athletics if I make a good showing in Missouri," finished Joe. He started from the room, carrying the two letters, one of which he had not yet opened. "Who's it from?" asked Clara, with a smile, as she pointed to the heavy, square envelope in his hand. "Oh, one of my many admirers," teased Joe. "I can't tell just which one until I open it. And, just to satisfy your curiosity, I'll do so now," and he proceeded to slit the envelope with his pocket-knife. "Oh, it's from Mabel Varley!" he exclaimed. "Just as if you didn't know all the while!" scoffed Clara. "You wouldn't forget her handwriting so soon, Joe Matson." "Um!" he murmured, non-committally. "Why, this is news!" he cried, suddenly. "Mabel and her brother Reggie are coming here!" "Here!" exclaimed Clara. "To visit us?" "Oh, no, not that exactly," Joe went on. "They're on a trip, it seems, and they're going to stop off here for a day or so. Mabel says they'll try to see us. I hope they will." "I've never met them," observed Clara. "No," spoke Joe, musingly. "Well, you may soon. Why!" he went on, "they're coming to-day--on the afternoon express. I must go down to the station to meet them, though the train is likely to be late, if this snow keeps up. Whew! see it come down!" and he went over to the window and looked out. "It's like a small blizzard," remarked Clara, "and it seems to be growing worse. Doesn't look much like baseball; does it, Joe?" "I should say not! Say, I believe I'll go down to the station, anyhow, and see what the prospects are. Want to come, Sis?" "No, thank you. Not in this storm. Where are the Varleys going to stop?" "At the hotel. Reggie has some business in town, Mabel writes. Well, I sure will be glad to see him again!" "_Him_? _Her_, you mean!" laughed Clara. "Oh, Joe, you _are_ so simple!" "Humph!" he exclaimed, as he put the two letters into his pocket--both of great importance to him. "Well, I'll go down to the station." Joe was soon trudging through the storm on the way to the depot. "The St. Louis 'Cardinals'!" he mused, as he bent his head to the blast, thinking of the letters in his pocket. "I didn't think I'd be in line for a major league team so soon. I wonder if I can make good?" Thinking alternately of the pleasure he would have in seeing Miss Mabel Varley, a girl in whom he was more than ordinarily interested, and of the new chance that had come to him, Joe soon reached the depot. His inquiries about the trains were not, however, very satisfactorily answered. "We can't tell much about them in this storm," the station master said. "All our trains are more or less late. Stop in this afternoon, and I may have some definite information for you." And later that day, when it was nearly arrival time for the train on which Mabel and Reggie were to come, Joe received some news that startled him. "There's no use in your waiting, Joe," said the station master, as the young ball player approached him again. "Your train won't be in to-day, and maybe not for several days." "Why? What's the matter--a wreck?" cried Joe, a vision of injured friends looming before him. "Not exactly a wreck, but almost as bad," went on the official. "The train is stalled--snowed in at Deep Rock Cut, five miles above here, and there's no chance of getting her out." "Great Scott!" cried Joe. "The express snowed in! Why, I've got friends on that train! I wonder what I can do to help them?" CHAPTER II TO THE RESCUE Joe Matson looked so worried at the information imparted by the station master that the latter asked him: "Any particular friends of yours on that train?" "Very particular," declared the young ball player. "And I hope no harm comes to them." "Well, I don't know as any great harm will come," went on the station master. "The train's snowed in, and will have to stay there until we can get together a gang of men and shovel her out. It won't be easy, for it's snowing harder every minute, and Deep Rock Cut is one of the worst places on the line for drifts. But no other train can run into the stalled one, that's sure. The only thing is the steam may get low, and the passengers will be cold, and hungry." "Isn't there any way to prevent that?" asked Joe, anxiously. "I s'pose the passengers could get out and try to reach some house or hotel," resumed the railroad man, "but Deep Rock Cut is a pretty lonely place, and there aren't many houses near it. The only thing I see to do would be for someone to go there with a horse and sled, and rescue the passengers, and that would be _some_ job, as there's quite a trainload of them." "Well, I'm going to try and get _my_ friends that way, anyhow!" cried Joe. "I'll go to the rescue," and he set off for home through the storm again, intending to hire a rig at a livery stable, and do what he could to take Mabel and her brother from the train. And, while Joe is thus making his preparations, I will tell my new readers something about the previous books of this series, in which Joe Matson, or "Baseball Joe," as he is called, has a prominent part. The initial volume was called "Baseball Joe of the Silver Stars; Or, The Rivals of Riverside," and began with my hero's career in the town of Riverside. Joe joined the ball team there, and, after some hard work, became one of the best amateur pitchers in that section of the country. He did not have it all easy, though, and the fight was an uphill one. But Joe made good, and his team came out ahead. "Baseball Joe on the School Nine; Or, Pitching for the Blue Banner," the second book in the series, saw our hero as the pitcher on a better organized team than were the Silver Stars. Joe had taken a step forward. He did not make the school nine without a struggle, for he had rivals, and a strong effort was made to keep him out of the game. But Joe proved his worth, and when a critical time came he pitched to victory, thus defeating the plans of his enemies. It was quite a step forward for Joe to go to Yale from Excelsior Hall, where he had gotten his early education. Naturally Joe wanted to play on the Yale team, but he had to wait some time before his ambition was gratified. In "Baseball Joe at Yale; Or, Pitching for the College Championship," I related how, after playing during his freshman year on the class team, Joe was picked as one of the pitchers for the varsity. Then, indeed, he was proud and happy, but he knew it would not be as easy as it had been at Excelsior Hall. Every step upward meant harder work, but Joe welcomed the chance. And when finally the deciding game came--the one with Princeton at the Polo Grounds, New York--Joe had the proud distinction of pitching for Yale--and he pitched to victory. Joe's ambition, ever since he had taken an interest in baseball, had been to become a professional player. His mother had hoped that he would become a minister, or enter one of the more learned professions, but, though Joe disappointed her hopes, there was some compensation. "Better let the boy have his own way," Mr. Matson had said. "I would rather see him a good ball player than a half-rate lawyer, or doctor; and, after all, there is good money to be made on the diamond." So, when Joe received an offer from the manager of one of the minor league professional teams, he took it. In "Baseball Joe in the Central League; Or, Making Good as a Professional Pitcher," the fourth volume of the series, I related Joe's experiences when he got his start in organized baseball. How he was instrumental in bringing back on the right path a player who had gone wrong, and how he fought to the last, until his team won the pennant--all that you will find set down in the book. I might add that Joe lived with his father, mother, and sister in the town of Riverside, where Mr. Matson was employed in the Royal Harvester Works, being an able inventor. Joe had many friends in town, one in particular being Tom Davis, who had gone to Excelsior Hall with him. Of late, however, Joe had not seen so much of Tom, their occupations pursuing divergent paths. It was while Joe was on his way to join the Pittston team, of the Central League, that he made the acquaintance of Reggie Varley, a rich, and somewhat dudish, young man; and the acquaintance was made in an odd manner. For Reggie practically accused Joe of knowing something of some jewelry that was missing from a valise. Of course Joe did not take it, but for some time the theft remained quite a mystery, until Joe solved the secret. From then on he and Reggie were good friends, and Reggie's sister Mabel and Joe were---- Oh, well, what's the use of telling on a fellow? You wouldn't like it yourself; would you? The baseball season came to an end, and the Pittston team covered itself with glory, partly due to Joe's good pitching. Cold weather set in, and the players took themselves to their various Winter occupations, or pleasures. Joe went home, to wait until the training season should open, in preparation for league games on the velvety, green diamonds. Several weeks of inaction had passed, the holidays were over, Winter had set in with all earnestness, and now we find Joe hurrying along, intent on the rescue of Reggie and his sister from the snow-stalled train. "I hope they will not freeze before I get to them," thought Joe, as he staggered through the blinding snow. "They can't, though, for there'll be sure to be steam for some hours yet. I guess I'll stop home, and get something to eat for them, and a bottle of coffee. I'll put it in one of those vacuum flasks, and it will keep hot." So intent was Joe on his rescue that, for the time, he gave no more thought to the matter of joining the St. Louis nine, important as that matter was to him. "I'd better get a team of horses, and a light sled," he mused, as he turned in the direction of the livery stable. "There will be some heavy going between here and Deep Rock Cut, and I'll need a good team to pull through." A little later he was leaving his order with the proprietor. "I'll fix you up, Joe," said the stable boss, who was a baseball "fan," and a great admirer of our hero. "I'll give you the best team in the place, and they'll get you through, if any horses can. I expect I'll have other calls, if, as you say, the train is stalled, for there'll likely be other folks in town who have friends aboard her. But you've got the first call, and I'm glad of it." "I'll be back in a little while," called Joe, as he hurried off. "I'm going around to my house to put up some lunch and coffee." "Good idea! I'll have everything ready for you when you come back." On Joe hurried once more, through the swirl of white flakes that cut into his face, blown on the wings of a bitter wind. He bent his head to the blast, and buttoned his overcoat more closely about him, as he fought his way through the drifts. It had been snowing since early morning, and there were no signs to indicate that the storm was going to stop. It was growing colder, too, and the wind seemed to increase in violence each hour. Though it was only a little after one o'clock in the afternoon, it was unusually dark, and Joe realized that night would soon be at hand, hastened by the clouds overhead. "But the snow will make it light enough to see, I guess," reasoned Joe. "I hope I can keep to the road. It wouldn't be much of a joke to get Reggie and Mabel out of the train, into the comfortable sled, and then lose them on the way home." Quickly explaining to his mother and sister his plan of going for the two friends in the stalled train, Joe hastily put up some sandwiches, while Clara made coffee and poured it into the vacuum bottle. "Perhaps you'd better bring them here, Joe, instead of taking them to the hotel," suggested his mother. "Mabel will be wet and cold, perhaps, and I could make her more comfortable here than she would be at the hotel. We have room enough." "She can share my room," proposed Clara. "That's good of you," and Joe flashed a grateful look at his sister. "I hope you will like Mabel," he added, softly. "I guess I will; if you do," laughed Clara. "Well, I sure do," and Joe smiled. Then, with a big scarf to wrap about his neck, and carrying the basket of food and coffee, Joe set out for the livery stable, to start to the rescue. CHAPTER III AN UPSET "Here you are, Joe. Best team in the stable. I could have hired 'em out twice over since you went; but I wouldn't do it. Other folks have got the scare, too, about friends on the stalled train," and the livery boss handed Joe the reins of a pair of prancing horses, hitched to a light, but strong cutter. "Thanks, Mr. Blasser," said Joe. "I'll take good care of 'em." "And hold 'em in a bit at the start," advised the man. "They haven't been out for a couple of days, and they're a bit frisky. But they'll calm down after a while." With a jingle of bells, and a scattering of the snow from their hoofs, the horses leaped forward when Joe gave them their heads, and down the whitened street they trotted, on the way to Deep Rock Cut. This was a place where the railroad went through a rocky defile, about a mile long. It had been the scene of more than one wreck, for there was a dangerous curve in it, and in the Winter it was a source of worry to the railroad men, for the snow piled high in it when there was a storm of more than usual severity. In the Summer a nearby river sometimes rose above its banks, and filled the cut with water, washing out the track. Altogether Deep Rock Cut was a cause of much anxiety to the railroad management, but it was not practical to run the line on either side of it, so its use had been continued. "And very likely it's living up to its reputation right now," mused Joe, as he drove down the main street, and then turned to another that would take him out of the town, and to a highway that led near Deep Rock Cut. "It sure must be living up to its reputation right now, though, of course, the storm is to blame. "Whew! It certainly does blow!" he commented, as he held the reins in one hand, and drew more closely about his throat the muffler he had brought with him. "Stand to it, ponies!" Joe called to the sturdy steeds. They had started off at a lively pace, but the snow soon slowed them down. They started up again, however, at the sound of Joe's voice, and settled down into a steady pull that took them over the ground at a good pace. Now that he was actually on the way to the rescue Joe allowed his thoughts to go back to the baseball letter that was in his pocket, next to the one from Mabel. "I wonder how they came to pick me out?" he mused, as he recalled the possibility that he would go to St. Louis. "They must have had a scout at some of the Central League games, though generally the news of that is tipped off beforehand. "That must have been the way of it, though," he went on, still communing with himself. "I don't know that I played so extra well, except maybe at the last, and then--then I just _had_ to--to make good. Well, I'm glad they picked me out. Wonder if any other members of the Pittston team are slated to go? Can't be, though, or Gregory would have told me of it. "And I wonder how much more salary I'll get? Of course I oughtn't to think too much about money, for, after all, it's the game I like. But, then, I have to live, and, since I'm in organized baseball, I want to be at the top of the heap, the same as I would if I were a lawyer, or a doctor. That's it--the top of the heap--the New York Giants for mine--if I can reach 'em," and he smiled quizzically. "Yes, I guess lots of the fellows would give their eye teeth to have my chance. Of course, it isn't settled yet," Joe told himself, "but there must have been a good foundation for it, or Gregory wouldn't have taken the trouble to write to me about it." Joe found the road to Deep Rock Cut fully as bad, in the matter of snowdrifts, as he had expected. It was rather slow going when he got to the open country, where the wind had full sweep, and progress, even on the part of the willing horses, was slower. Joe picked out the best, and easiest, route possible, but that was not saying much, and it was not until nearly three o'clock, and growing quite dark, that he came within sight of the cut. Then the storm was so thick that he could not see the stalled train. "I'll have to leave the team as near to it as I can get, and walk in to tell Reggie and Mabel that I've come for them," Joe decided. The highway crossed the railroad track a short distance from the end of the cut nearest Riverside, and Joe, halting a moment to listen, and to make sure no trains were approaching, drove over the rails. "Though there isn't much danger, now, of a train getting through that," he said to himself, as he saw the big drift of snow that blocked the cut. Behind that drift was the stalled train, he reflected, and then, as he looked at the white mound, he realized that he had made a mistake. "I can never get through that drift myself," he said. "I'll have to drive up to the other end of the cut, by which the engine and cars entered. Stupid of me not to have thought of that at first." He turned his horses, and again sought the highway that led along the cut, parallel to it, and about a quarter of a mile distant. Joe listened, again hoping he could hear the whistle of the approaching rescue-train, for at the station he had been told one was being fitted out, and would carry a gang of snow shovelers. But the howl of the wind was all that came to his ears. "This means another mile of travel," Joe thought, as he urged on the horses. "It will be pitch dark by the time I get back to town with them. I hope Mabel doesn't take cold. It sure is bitter." Joe found the going even harder as he kept on, but he would not give up now. "There's one consolation," he reasoned, "the wind will be at our backs going home. That will make it easier." The road that crossed the track at the other end of Deep Rock Cut was farther from the beginning of the defile, and Joe, leaving the horses in a sheltering clump of trees, struggled down the track, the rails of which were out of sight under the snow. "I wonder if Mabel can walk back?" he said aloud. "If not I guess Reggie and I can carry her. It's pretty deep. I didn't get here any too soon." Something dark loomed up before him, amid the wall of white, swirling flakes. "There's the train!" exclaimed Joe, in relief. It was indeed the rear coach of the stalled passenger train, and, a moment later, Joe was climbing the snow-encumbered steps. It proved to be the baggage car, and, as Joe entered, he surprised a number of men who were smoking, and playing cards on an upturned trunk. "Hello!" exclaimed one of them, in surprise at the sight of the ball player. "Where'd you come from? Is the rescue-train here?" "Not yet," Joe answered. "I came to take a couple of friends into town." "Say, I wish I had a friend like you!" cried the man, with a laugh. "I sure would like to get into town; but I don't dare start out and tramp it--not with my rheumatism. How much room have you got in your airship?" "I came in a cutter," responded Joe, with a smile. "Say, you got some grit!" declared the man. "I like your nerve!" "Oh, Joe's got plenty of nerve--of the right sort!" called a brakeman, and Joe, nodding at him, recognized a railroad acquaintance who had been present at some of the town ball games. "A couple of my friends are in one of the coaches, Mr. Wheatson," explained Joe. "I'm going to drive back with them." "Go ahead and look for 'em," invited the brakeman. "The train is yours, as far as I'm concerned. I guess we're tied up here all night." "They're going to start out a rescue-train," Joe informed the men in the baggage car, for the telegraph wires had gone down after the first message, telling of the stalled train, had been sent. "That's good news," replied one of the men. "Well, all we can do is to stay here, and play cards. It's nice and warm in here, anyhow." "Yes, it will be until the coal for the engine gives out," spoke a player, who seemed to take a rather gloomy view of matters. "And what are we going to do about supper? I'd like to know that!" Joe wished he could have brought along enough food for all the stranded passengers, but this was impossible. He went on through the train, and presently came to where Mabel and her brother were seated in the parlor car, looking gloomily out at the storm. "Well!" exclaimed Joe, with a smile, as he stood just back of them. They both turned with a flash, and a look of pleased surprise came over the faces of Reggie and his sister as they saw him. "Joe Matson!" cried Reggie, jumping up, and holding out his hand. "Where in the world did you come from? I didn't know you were on this train." "I wasn't," laughed Joe. "I just boarded it, and I've come for you," he added, as he gave Mabel his hand. "Oh, but I'm glad to see you!" she exclaimed. "Isn't this just perfectly awful, to be snowed in like this! And they tell us there's no chance of getting out to-night." "There is for you," remarked Joe, quietly. "How?" asked Reggie, quickly. "Did they push the relief-train through?" "I'm all the relief-train there is," announced Joe, and he told about having the cutter in readiness. "Say, that's fine of you!" cried Reggie. "Shall we go with him, Mabel?" "Well, I rather guess so," she answered. "I couldn't stay here another hour." "It won't be much fun traveling through the storm," Joe warned his friends. At this Reggie looked a bit doubtful, but his sister exclaimed: "I don't mind it! I love a storm, anyhow, and I just can't bear sitting still, and doing nothing. Besides, there isn't a thing to eat aboard this train, for they took off the dining car right after lunch." "I brought along a little something. It's in the cutter," Joe said. "I didn't bring it in here for fear the famished passengers would mob me for it," he added, with a smile. "Well, if you're willing to trust yourself with me, perhaps we'd better start," he went on. "It is getting darker all the while, and the snow is still falling." "I'll be ready at once!" cried Mabel. "Reggie, get down the valises; will you, please? Can you take them?" she asked of Joe. "Oh, yes--room for them in the cutter," he assured her. The other passengers looked on curiously, and enviously, when they heard where Reggie and his sister were going. But, much as Joe would have liked to take them all to a place of comfort, he could not. The three went back to the baggage car, and, saying good-bye to the card-players, stepped out into the storm. "I guess your brother and I had better carry you, Mabel," suggested Joe, as he saw the deep snow that led along the track to where he had left the cutter. "Indeed you'll not--thank you!" she flashed back at him. "I have on stout shoes, and I don't mind the drifts." She proved it by striding sturdily through them, and soon the three were at the cutter, the horses whinnying impatiently to be gone. "Have some hot coffee and a sandwich," invited Joe, as he got out the basket, and served his guests. "Say, you're all right!" cried Reggie. Mabel said nothing, but the look she gave Joe was reward enough. The coffee in the vacuum bottle was warm and cheering, and soon, much refreshed from the little lunch, and bundled up well in the robes Joe had brought, Reggie and his sister were ready for the trip to town. "Step along!" cried the young baseball player to the horses, and glad enough they were to do so. Out to the highway they went, and it was not until they were some distance away from the cut that Joe noticed how much worse the going was. The snow was considerably deeper, and had drifted high in many more places. "Think you can make it?" asked Reggie, anxiously. "Well, I'm going to make a big try!" responded Joe. "I've got a good team here." Half an hour later it was quite dark, but the white covering on the ground showed where the road was faintly outlined. Joe let the horses have their heads, and they seemed to know they were going toward their stable, for they went along at a good pace. "There's a bad drift!" exclaimed Joe as, ahead of him, he saw a big mound of snow. He tried to guide the horses to one side, and must have given a stronger pull on the reins than he realized. For the steeds turned sharply, and, the next moment, the cutter suddenly turned over on its side, spilling into the snow the three occupants. CHAPTER IV AN APPEAL "Look out there!" "See if you can grab the horses, Reggie!" "Mabel, are you hurt?" Fast and excitedly came the exclamations, as Joe managed to free himself from the entanglement of robes and lines. Then he stood up, and, giving a hasty glance to see that Mabel and her brother were extricating themselves (apparently little if any hurt), the young pitcher sprang for the heads of the horses, fearing they might bolt. But, as if the steeds had done mischief enough; or, possibly because they were well trained, and had lost most of their skittishness in the cold, they stood still. "For which I'm mighty glad!" quoth Joe, as he looked to see that no part of the harness was broken, a fact of which he could not be quite sure in the darkness. "Are you all right, Mabel?" called Joe, as he stood at the heads of the animals. "All right, Joe, yes, thank you. How about yourself?" "Oh, I haven't a scratch. The snow is soft. How about you, Reggie?" "Nothing worse than about a peck of snow down my neck. What happened, anyhow?" "Hit a drift and turned too suddenly. I guess you'll wish I had left you in the train; won't you?" "No, indeed!" laughed Mabel. "This isn't anything, nor the first upset I've been in--Reggie tipped us over once." "Oh, that was when I was first learning how to drive," put in the other youth, quickly. "But can we go on, Joe?" "I think so. Nothing seems to be broken. We'll have to right the sled, though. I wonder if the horses will stand while we do it? I wouldn't like them to start up, but----" "Let me hold them!" begged Mabel. "I'm not afraid, and with me at their heads you boys can turn the sled right side up. It isn't tipped all the way over, anyhow." She shook the snow from her garments, and made her way to where Joe stood, holding the reins close to the heads of the horses. It was still snowing hard, and with the cold wind driving the flakes into swirls and drifts, it was anything but pleasant. Had they been left behind by the horses running away, their plight would have been dangerous enough. "Perhaps I can help you," suddenly called a voice out of the storm, and Joe and the others turned quickly, to see whence it had come. The snow-encrusted figure of a man made its way over the piles of snow, and stood beside Joe. "I'll hold the horses for you," the stranger went on. "You seem to have had an accident. I know something about horses. I'll hold them while you right the sled." "Thanks," said Joe, and, as he spoke, he wondered where he had heard that voice before. He knew he had heard it, for there was a familiar ring to it. But it was not light enough to make out the features of the man. Besides, he was so wrapped up, with a slouch hat drawn low over his face, and a scarf pulled up well around his neck, that, even in daylight, his features would have been effectually concealed. "I guess they won't need much holding," Joe went on, all the while racking his brain to recall the voice. He wanted to have the man speak again, that he might listen once more. And the unknown, who had appeared so suddenly out of the storm, did not seem to have anything to conceal. He spoke freely. "Don't worry about the horses," he remarked. "I can manage them." "They won't need a lot of managing," responded Joe. "I guess they've had pretty nearly all the tucker taken out of them in the storm. It was pretty hard coming from Riverside." "Are you from there?" the man asked rather quickly. "Yes," answered Joe, "and we're going back." "Then I'm glad I met you!" the man exclaimed, and Joe, who had half formed an opinion as to his identity, changed his mind, for the voice sounded different now. "Yes, I'm glad I met you," the stranger went on. "I was looking for someone to ask the road to Riverside, and you can tell me. I guess I lost my way in the storm. I heard your sleigh-bells, and I was heading for them when I heard you upset. You can show me the shortest road to Riverside; can't you?" "We can do better than that," spoke Joe, trying, but still unsuccessfully, to get a look at the man's face. "We've got plenty of room in the sled, and you can ride back with us, once we get it on the runners again. Come on, Reggie, give me a hand, if you will, and we'll get this cutter right side up with care." "If it needs three of you, I can take my place at the horses," suggested Mabel, who was standing beside Joe, idly looking through the fast-gathering darkness at the stranger. "Oh, the two of us can easily do it," said the young ball player. "It isn't heavy. Come on, Reggie. Better stand a bit back, Mabel. It might slip," he advised. Joe and his friend easily righted the sleigh, while the stranger stood at the heads of the horses, who were now quiet enough. Then, the scattered robes having been collected, and the baggage picked up, all was in readiness for a new start. Joe tucked the warm blanket well around Mabel, and then called to the stranger: "Get up on the front seat, and I'll soon have you in Riverside. It isn't very far now." "Thanks," said the man, briefly. "This is better luck than I've had in some time." For a while, after the mishap, none of the occupants of the cutter spoke, as the willing horses pulled it through the big drifts of snow. Joe drove more carefully, taking care not to turn too suddenly, and he avoided, as well as he could, the huge heaps of white crystals that, every moment, were piling higher. Reggie was snuggling down in the robes, and Mabel, too, rather worn out by the events of the day, and the worry of being snowed in, maintained silence. As for Joe, he had all he could do to manage the horses in the storm, though the beasts did not seem inclined to make any more trouble. The man on the seat beside him appeared wrapped, not only in his heavy garments, but in a sort of gloomy silence, as well. He did not speak again, and Joe was still puzzling over his identity. "For I'm sure I've met him before, and more than once," reasoned Joe. "But then I've met so many fellows, playing ball all around the country, that it's no wonder I can't recall a certain voice. Maybe I'll get a chance to have a good look at him later." "You'll come right to our house," said Joe, turning to speak to Mabel and Reggie. "Mother said so." "Oh, but we have our rooms engaged at the hotel," objected the other youth. "That doesn't matter. You can go there later, if you like. But mother insisted that I bring you home," Joe went on. "You can be more comfortable there--at least, until you get over this cold trip." "It's perfectly lovely of your mother," declared Mabel. "But I don't want to put her to so much inconvenience." "It isn't any inconvenience at all," laughed Joe. "She wants to meet you, and so does my sister Clara." "And I want to meet them," responded Mabel, with a blush that was unseen in the darkness. "Well, have it your own way," said Reggie, who was, perhaps, rather too much inclined to give in easily. Life came very easy to him, anyhow. "It's very nice of you to put us up, Joe. By the way, how is your father since the operation?" "Oh, he has almost entirely recovered. His eyesight is better than ever, he says." "How lovely!" cried Mabel. "And how lucky it was, Joe, that your share of the money your team got for winning the pennant helped to make the operation possible." "Yes, I sure do owe a debt of gratitude to baseball," admitted the young pitcher. "Do you play ball?" suddenly asked the man on the seat beside Joe. "Yes, I play at it," was the modest answer. "Amateur or professional?" "Professional. I am with the Central League." Was it fancy, or did the man give a sudden start, that might indicate surprise? Joe could not be sure. "I suppose you'll be at it again this year, Joe," put in Reggie. "Oh, yes. But I may change my club. I'll tell you about it later. We'll soon be at the house. Is there any special place I can take you to, in Riverside?" asked Joe of the stranger. "Well, I'm looking for a young fellow named Matson," was the unexpected answer. "Matson?" cried Joe. "Why, that's my name!" "Joe Matson?" the man exclaimed, drawing slightly away in order, possibly, to get a better look at the young player. "I'm Joe Matson--yes. Are you looking for me?" "I was, and I'm glad I found you!" the man exclaimed. "I've got a very special request to make of you. Is there some hotel, or boarding house, where I could put up, and where I could see you--later?" he asked, eagerly. "Why, yes, there are several such places in town," said Joe, slowly, trying, harder than ever, to place the man who had so unexpectedly appeared. "Take me to a quiet one--not too high-priced," requested the man in a low voice. "I want to see you on a very particular matter--that is, it's particular to me," he added, significantly. "Will you come and see me--after you take care of your friends?" "Why, yes, I guess so--perhaps to-morrow," replied Joe, for he did not fancy going out in the storm again that night. "But why can't you stop off at my house now?" he asked. "No, I don't want to do that," the man objected. "I'd rather you would come to see me," and there was a note of appeal in his voice. "Very well, I'll see you to-morrow," Joe promised, wondering if this man's seeking of him had any connection with his possible draft to the St. Louis Cardinals. CHAPTER V THE THREAT "Here's a boarding house that will suit you, I think," announced Joe, a little later, as he stopped the horses in front of a sort of hostelry of good reputation. It was not as large nor as stylish as some of the other places in Riverside, but Joe bore in mind the man's request to be taken to a moderate-priced establishment. "Thanks," said the stranger. "Then you'll come here to see me to-morrow? I'll be in all day." "I'll call in the afternoon, Mr.--er----" and Joe hesitated. "I don't believe I caught your name," he said, significantly. "No, I didn't mention it, but it's Shalleg," was the answer. "Oh, of the Clevefield team!" exclaimed the young player, knowing now where he had heard the voice before. "Yes, of the Clevefield team," admitted Mr. Shalleg, repeating the name of one of the nines forming the Central League, and which team Joe's club had met several times on the diamond. "I was trying, ever since you spoke, to recall where I'd met you before," went on Joe, "but you had me guessing. I'm glad to meet you again. I suppose you're going to stay with the League this coming season?" "I--er--I haven't quite made my plans," was the somewhat hesitating answer. "I've been looking about. I was over in Rocky Ford this morning, seeing a friend, and I happened to recall that you lived in Riverside, so I came on, but lost my way in the storm. I didn't recognize you back there, where you had the upset." "The lack of recognition was mutual," laughed Joe, puzzling over what Shalleg's object could be in seeking him. "Well, I must get these folks in out of the storm," Joe went on. "I'll see you to-morrow, Mr. Shalleg." The latter alighted from the cutter, and entered the boarding house, while Joe turned the heads of the horses toward his own home. "I guess you'll be glad to get indoors," he said to Reggie and Mabel. "Well, it's pretty cold," Reggie admitted, "though I suppose my sister will say she likes it." "I do!" declared Mabel. "But it isn't so nice when it's dark," she confessed. They were now on the principal street of Riverside, and the lamps from the shop windows gleamed dimly on the swirling flakes, and drifts of snow. A little later Joe pulled up in front of his own house, and escorted the visitors into the cheery living room. "Here they are, Mother--Clara!" he called, as Mrs. Matson and her daughter came out to welcome their guests. "I am glad to see you," said Clara, simply, as she kissed Mabel----and one look from the sister's eyes told Joe that Clara approved of his friends. "Where's father?" asked Joe. "Bathing his eyes," replied his mother. "He'll be here presently," for Mr. Matson had recently undergone an operation on his eyes, after an accident, and they still needed care. Soon a merry party was gathered about the supper table, where the events of the day were told, from the receipt by Joe of the two letters, to the rescue from the stalled train, and the accident in the snow. "But I sure would like to know what it is Shalleg wants," mused Joe, who had come back from leaving the horses at the livery stable. "I sure would." "Didn't he give you any hint?" asked Clara. "No. But perhaps he wants some advice about baseball matters. I'm getting to be some pumpkins, you know, since St. Louis is after me!" cried Joe, with simulated pride. "Oh, do tell us about it!" cried Mabel, and Joe related the news of the draft that would probably take him to the big league. Reggie and Mabel spent the night at Joe's house. The storm kept up through the hours of darkness, and part of the next day, when it stopped, and the sun came out. Old Sol shone on a scene of whiteness, where big drifts of snow were piled here and there. "I wonder how the stalled train is faring?" remarked Mabel, after breakfast. "We'll have to get our trunks away from it, somehow, Reggie." "Yes, I suppose so," he said. "And I've got to look after those business matters. I think we had better go to the hotel," he added. "Very well," assented Joe. "I'll go down to the station with you, and we'll see about your baggage." "I'll stay here until you boys come back," decided Mabel, who had taken as great a liking to Clara, as the latter had to her. Joe and Reggie found that the train was still stalled in the snow drift, but a large force of shovelers was at work, and the prospect was that the line would be opened that afternoon. Thereupon Reggie went to the hotel to arrange about his own room, and one for his sister. "And I'll go see Shalleg," decided Joe. "Might as well get it over with, though I did tell him I wouldn't come until afternoon. I'm anxious to know what it's all about." "He's making a sort of mystery of it," observed Reggie. "Somewhat," admitted Joe, with a smile. Greatly to his relief (for Joe was anxious to get the matter over with) he found Shalleg at the boarding house when he called. "Come up to my room," invited the baseball player. "It's warmer than down in the parlor." In his room he motioned Joe to a chair, and then, looking intently at the young pitcher, said: "Matson, do you know what it is to be down and out?" "Down and out? What do you mean?" "I mean to have few friends, and less money. Do you know what that means?" "Well, not personally," said Joe, "though I can't boast of a superfluity of money myself." "You've got more than I have!" snapped Shalleg. "I don't know about that," said Joe, slowly, wondering whither the conversation was leading. "Your team won the pennant!" cried the man, and Joe, as he caught the odor of his breath, realized what made Shalleg's manner so excited. The man was partially intoxicated. Joe wished he had not come. "Your team won the pennant," Shalleg went on, "and that meant quite a little money for every player. You must have gotten your share, and I'd like to borrow some of you, Matson. I'm down and out, I tell you, and I need money bad--until I can get on my feet again." Joe did not answer for a moment, but mentally he found a reason for Shalleg's being "off his feet" at present. Bad habits, very likely. "Can you let me have some money--until Spring opens?" proceeded Shalleg. "You'll be earning more then, whether I am or not, for I don't know that I'm going back with Clevefield. I suppose you'll play with the Pittston team?" "I don't know," answered Joe, preferring to reply to that question first. He wanted time to think about the other. "You don't know!" Shalleg exclaimed, in surprise. "No. I hear I am to be drafted to the St. Louis Nationals." "The St. Louis Nationals!" cried Shalleg. "That team! Why, that team is the one I----" He came to a sudden halt. "What is it?" asked Joe, wonderingly. "I--er--I--er--well, never mind, now. Can you let me have--say, two hundred dollars?" "Two hundred dollars!" cried Joe. "I haven't that much money to spare. And, if I had, I don't know that I would be doing my duty to my father and mother to lend it." "But I need it!" cried Shalleg. "Did you ever know what it was to be down and out?" "Well, I've seen such sad cases, and I'm sorry for you," spoke Joe, softly. He thought of John Dutton, the broken-down pitcher whose rescue, from a life of ruin, had been due largely to our hero's efforts, as told in the volume immediately preceding this. "Being sorry isn't going to help," sneered Shalleg, and there was an ugly note in his voice. "I need money! You must have some left from your pennant winnings." "I had to spend a large sum for my father's operation," said Joe. "He has had bad luck, too. I really have no money to spare." "That's not so--I don't believe you!" snapped Shalleg. "You must have money, and I've got to get some. I've been begging from a lot of fellows who played ball with me, but they all turned me down. Now you're doing the same thing. You'd better be careful. I'm a desperate man!" "What do you mean?" asked Joe, in some alarm, for he thought the fellow meditated an attack. Joe looked to see with what he could defend himself, and he noted, though with no cowardly satisfaction, that the door to the hall was close at hand. "I mean just what I say. I'm desperately in need of money." "Well, I'm very sorry, but I'm not in a position to be able to help you," said Joe, firmly. "Why don't you go to the manager of your team, and get him to give you an advance on your salary? That is often done. I'm sure if you told him your need he'd do it." "No, he wouldn't!" growled Shalleg. "I've got to borrow it somewhere else. Then you won't let me have it?" and he glowered at Joe. "I can't, even if I would." "I don't believe it!" snarled the other. "And now I tell you one thing. I'm a bad man to be bad friends with. If you don't let me have this money it will be the worse for you." "I guess you are forgetting yourself," returned Joe, quietly. "I did not come here to be threatened, or insulted. I guess you are not yourself, Mr. Shalleg. I am sorry, and I'll bid you good day." With that Joe walked out, but not before the infuriated man called after him: "And so you're going to St. Louis; are you? Well, look out for me, that's all I've got to say! Look out for Bill Shalleg!" and he slammed the door after Joe. CHAPTER VI A WARNING Joe Matson's brain was in a whirl as he left the boarding house where Shalleg had made his strange threat. The young pitcher had never before gone through such an experience, and it had rather unnerved him. "I wonder what I'd better do?" he mused, as he walked along the street, where many men were busy clearing away the snow. "I don't like to report what he said to me to any of the baseball authorities, for it would look as though I was afraid of him. And I'm not!" declared Joe, sturdily. "Shalleg wasn't himself, or he wouldn't have said such things. He didn't know quite what he was doing, I guess." But, the more Joe thought of it, as he trudged along, the more worried he became. "He has a very bad temper, and he might do me some injury," mused Joe. "But, after all, what _can_ he do? If he stays on the Clevefield team, and I go to St. Louis, we'll be far enough apart. I guess I won't do anything about it now." But the youth could not altogether conceal the emotions that had swayed him during the strange interview. When, a little later, he called at the hotel to see if Reggie and his sister had comfortable rooms, his face must have showed something unusual, for Mabel asked: "Why, Joe, what is the matter?" "Matter? Nothing," he replied, with a laugh, but it was rather forced. "You look as though--something had happened," the girl went on. "Perhaps you haven't recovered from your efforts to rescue us from the stalled train last night." "Oh, yes, I'm all over that," declared Joe, more at his ease now. "It was awfully good of you," proceeded Mabel. "Just think; suppose we had had to stay in that train until now?" "Oh, they've been relieved by this time," spoke Joe. "Yes, but they had to stay there all night. I can't thank you enough for coming after us. Are you sure there is nothing the matter?" she insisted. "You haven't had bad news, about not making the St. Louis team; have you?" "No, indeed. I haven't had any news at all since that one letter from Mr. Gregory. And no news is good news, they say." "Not always," and she smiled. "Are you comfortable here?" asked Joe, as he sat in the parlor between the bedrooms of brother and sister. "Oh, yes. And Reggie likes it very much. He has a lot of business to attend to. Father is putting more and more on his shoulders each year. He wants him finally to take it up altogether. Reggie doesn't care so much for it, but it's good for him," and she smiled frankly at Joe. "Yes, work is good," he admitted, "even if it is only playing baseball." "And that sometimes seems to me like hard work," responded Mabel. "It is," Joe admitted. "How long do you stay in Riverside?" "Three or four days yet. Why?" "Because there'll be good sleighing, and I thought perhaps you'd like to go out for a ride." "I shall be delighted!" "Then I'll arrange for it. Won't you come over to the house this evening?" "I have an engagement," she laughed. Joe looked disappointed. Mabel smiled. "It's with your sister," she said. "I promised to come over and learn a new lace pattern." "I'm just crazy about fancy work myself!" and Joe laughed in turn. "It's as bad as the new dances. I guess I'll stay home, too." "Do," Mabel invited. And when Joe took his leave some of the worry caused by Shalleg's threat had passed away. "I guess I'll say nothing about it," mused our hero. "It would do no good, and if father and mother heard about it they might worry. I'll just fight it out all alone. I guess Shalleg was only a 'bluff,' anyhow. He may be in desperate straits, but he had no right to make threats like that." Riverside was storm-bound for several days, and when she was finally dug out, and conditions were normal, there was still plenty of snow left for sleighing. Joe planned to take Mabel for a ride, and Reggie, hearing of it, asked Clara to be his guest. Two or three days passed, and Joe neither saw nor heard any more of Shalleg, except to learn, by judicious inquiry, that the surly and threatening fellow had left the boarding house to which Joe had taken him. "I guess he's gone off to try his game on some other players in the League," thought the young pitcher. "I hope he doesn't succeed, though. If he got money I'm afraid he'd make a bad use of it." There came another letter from Mr. Gregory, in which he told Joe that, while the matter was still far from being settled, the chances were that the young pitcher would be drafted to St. Louis. "I will let you know, in plenty of time, whether you are to train with us, or with the big league," the manager of the Pittston team wrote. "So you will have to hold yourself in readiness to do one or the other." "They don't give you much choice; do they?" spoke Reggie, when Joe told him this news. "You've got to do just as they tell you; haven't you?" "In a measure, yes," assented Joe. "Baseball is big business. Why, I read an article the other day that stated how over fifty million persons pay fifteen million dollars every year just to see the games, and the value of the different clubs, grounds and so on mounts up to many millions more." "It sure is big business," agreed Reggie. "I might go into it myself." "Well, more than one fortune has been made at it," observed Joe. "But I don't like the idea of the club owners and managers doing as they please with the players. It seems to take away your freedom," argued the other lad. "Well, in a sense I suppose it does," admitted Joe. "And yet the interests of the players are always being looked after. We don't have to be baseball players unless we want to; but, once we sign a contract, we have to abide by it. "Then, too, the present organization has brought to the players bigger salaries than they ever got before. Of course we chaps in the minor leagues aren't bid for, as are those in the big leagues. But we always hope to be." "It seems funny, for one manager to buy a player from another manager," went on Reggie. "I suppose so, but I've grown sort of used to it," Joe replied. "Of course the players themselves don't benefit by the big sum one manager may give another for the services of a star fielder or pitcher, but it all helps our reputations." "Is the St. Louis team considered pretty good?" Reggie wanted to know. "Well, it could be better," confessed Joe, slowly. "They reached one place from the top of the second division last season, but if I play with them I'll try to pull them to the top of the second half, anyhow," he added, with a laugh. "The Cardinals never have been considered so very good, but the club is a money-maker, and we can't all be pennant winners," he admitted, frankly. "No, I suppose not," agreed Reggie. "Well, I wish you luck, whatever you do this Summer. If I ever get out to St. Louis I'll stop off and see you play." "Do," urged Joe. He hoped Mabel would come also. When Joe reached home that afternoon his mother met him in the living room, and said quickly: "Someone is waiting for you in the parlor, Joe." "Gracious! I hope it isn't Shalleg!" thought the young pitcher. "If he has come here to make trouble----" And his heart sank. But as he entered the room a glad smile came over his face. "Hello, Charlie Hall!" he cried, at the sight of the shortstop of the Pittston team, with whom Joe had been quite chummy during the league season. "What good wind blows you here?" "Oh, you know I'm a traveling salesman during the Winter, and I happened to make this town to-day. Just thought I'd step up and see how you were." "Glad you did! It's a real pleasure to see you. Going back at the game in the Spring, I expect; aren't you?" "Sure. I wouldn't miss it for anything. But what's this I hear about you?" "I don't know. Nothing to my discredit, I hope," and Joe smiled. "Far from it, old man. But there's a rumor among some of the old boys that you're to be drafted to the Cardinals. How about it?" "Well, Gregory told me as much, but it isn't all settled yet. Say, Charlie, now you're here, I want to ask you something." "Fire ahead." "Do you know a fellow named Shalleg?" Charlie Hall started. "It's queer you should ask me that," he responded, slowly. "Why?" Joe wanted to know. "Because that's one of the reasons I stopped up to talk to you. I want to warn you against Shalleg." "Warn me! What do you mean?" and Joe thought of the threats the man had made. "Why, you know he's out of the Clevefield team; don't you?" "No, I didn't know it," replied Joe. "But go on. I'll tell you something pretty soon." "Yes, he's been given his unconditional release," went on Charlie. "He got to gambling, and doing other things no good ball player can expect to do, and keep in the game, and he was let go. And I heard something that made me come here to warn you, Joe. There may be nothing in it, but Shalleg----" There came a knock at the door of the parlor, and Joe held up a warning hand. "Wait a minute," he whispered. CHAPTER VII BASEBALL TALK There was silence for a moment, following Joe's warning, and then the voice of his mother was heard: "Joe, you're wanted on the telephone." "Oh, all right," he answered in a relieved tone. "I didn't want her to hear about Shalleg," he added in a whisper to Charlie. "She and father would worry, and, with his recent sickness, that wouldn't be a good thing for him." "I should say not," agreed the other ball player. "I'll be right there, Mother," went on Joe, in louder tones and then he went to the hall, where the telephone stood. It was only a message from a local sporting goods dealer, saying that he had secured for Joe a certain glove he had had made to order. Joe went back to his chum, and the baseball talk was renewed. "What were you going to say that Shalleg was up to?" asked Joe. "As I was saying," resumed Charlie, "there may be nothing in the rumor, but it's the talk, in baseball circles, that Shalleg has been trying his best, since being released, to get a place with the Cardinals." "You don't mean it!" cried Joe. "That accounts for his surprise, and perhaps for his bitter feeling against me when I told him there was a chance that I would go to St. Louis." "Probably," agreed Charlie. "So, having heard this, and knowing that Shalleg is a hard character, I thought I'd warn you." "I'm glad you did," returned Joe warmly. "It was very good of you to go to that trouble. And, after the experience I had with Shalleg, I shouldn't wonder but what there was something in it. Though why he should be vindictive toward me is more than I can fathom. I certainly never did anything to him, except to refuse to lend him money, and I actually had to do that." "Of course," agreed Charlie. "But I guess, from his bad habits, his mind is warped. He is abnormal, and your refusal, coupled with the fact that you are probably going to a team that he has tried his best to make, and can't, simply made him wild. So, if I were you, I should be on the lookout, Joe." "I certainly will. It's queer that I met Shalleg the way I did--in the storm. It was quite an unusual coincidence. It seems he had been to Rocky Ford, a town near here, to see if he could borrow money from somebody there--at least so he said. Then he heard I lived here, and he started for Riverside, and got lost on the way, in the storm. Altogether it was rather queer. I never was so surprised in my life as when, after riding with me for some time, the man said he was looking for me." "It _was_ queer," agreed Charlie. "Well, the only thing to do, after this, is to steer clear of him. And, after all, it may only be talk." "Yes," assented Joe, "and now let's talk about something pleasant. How are you, anyhow? What are your plans for the coming season? And how are all the boys since we played the last pennant game?" "Gracious!" exclaimed Charlie with a laugh. "You fire almost as many questions at a fellow as a lawyer would." Then the two plunged into baseball talk, which, as it has no special interest for my readers, I shall omit. "Have you anything special to do?" asked Joe, as Charlie and he came to a pause in recalling scenes and incidents, many of which you will find set down in the previous book of this series. "No. After I clean up all the orders I can here I will have a few days' vacation," replied Hall. "Good!" cried Joe. "Then spend them with me. Reggie Varley and his sister are here for a while--you remember Reggie; don't you, Charlie?" "As well as you remember his sister, I reckon," was the laughing rejoinder. "Never mind that. Then I'll count on you. I'll introduce you to a nice girl, and we'll get up a little sleigh-riding party. There'll be a fine moon in a couple of nights." "Go as far as you like with me," invited Charlie. "I'm not in training yet, and I guess a late oyster supper, after a long ride, won't do me any particular harm." Charlie departed for the hotel, to get his baggage, for he was going to finish out the rest of his stay in Riverside as Joe's guest, and the young pitcher went to get the new glove, about which he had received the telephone message. It was a little later that day that, as Clara was passing her brother's room, she heard a curious, thumping noise. "I wonder what that is?" she murmured. "Sounds as though Joe were working at a punching bag. Joe, what in the world are you doing?" she asked, pausing outside his door. "Making a pocket in my new glove," he answered. "Come on in, Sis. I'm all covered with olive oil, or I'd open the door for you." "Olive oil! The idea! Are you making a salad, as well?" she asked laughingly, as she pushed open the portal. She saw her brother, attired in old clothes, alternately pouring a few drops of olive oil on his new pitcher's glove, and then, with an old baseball pounding a hollow place in the palm. "What does it mean?" asked Clara. "Oh, I'm just limbering up my new glove," answered Joe. "If I'm to play with a big team, like the St. Louis Cardinals, I want to have the best sort of an outfit. You know a ball will often slip out of a new glove, so I'm making a sort of 'pocket' in this one, only not as deep as in a catcher's mitt, so it will hold the ball better." "But why the olive oil?" "Oh, well, of course any good oil would do, but this was the handiest. The oil softens the leather, and makes it pliable. And say, if you haven't anything else to do, there's an old glove, that's pretty badly ripped; you might sew it up. It will do to practice with." "I'll sew it to-morrow, Joe. I've got to make a new collar now. Mabel and I are going to the matinee, and I want to look my best." "Oh, all right," agreed Joe easily. "There's no special hurry," and he went on thumping the baseball into the hollow of the new glove. "Well, Joe, is there anything new in the baseball situation?" asked Mr. Matson of his son a little later. The inventor, whose eyesight had been saved by the operation (to pay for which most of Joe's pennant money went) was able to give part of his time to his business now. "No, there's not much new, Dad," replied the young player. "I am still waiting to hear definitely about St. Louis. I do hope I am drafted there." "It means quite an advance for you; doesn't it, Joe?" "Indeed it does, Dad. There aren't many players who are taken out of a small league, to a major one, at the close of their first season. I suppose I ought to be proud." "Well, I hope you are, Joe, in a proper way," said Mr. Matson. "Pride, of the right sort, is very good. And I'm glad of your prospective advance. I am sure it was brought about by hard work, and, after all, that is the only thing that counts. And you did work hard, Joe." "Yes, I suppose I did," admitted the young pitcher modestly, as he thought of the times he pitched when his arm ached, and when his nerves were all unstrung on account of the receipt of bad news. "But other fellows worked hard, too," he went on. "You've _got_ to work hard in baseball." "Will it be any easier on the St. Louis team?" his father wanted to know. "No, it will be harder," replied Joe. "I might as well face that at once." And it was well that Joe had thus prepared himself in advance, for before him, though he did not actually know it, were the hardest struggles to which a young pitcher could be subjected. "Yes, there'll be hard work," Joe went on, "but I don't mind. I like it. And I'm not so foolish as to think that I'm going to go in, right off the reel, and become the star pitcher of the team. I guess I'll have to sit back, and warm the bench for quite a considerable time before I'm called on to pull the game out of the fire." "Well, that's all right, as long as you're there when the time comes," said his father. "Stick to it, Joe, now that you are in it. Your mother didn't take much to baseball at first, but, the more I see of it, and read of it, the more I realize that it's a great business, and a clean sport. I'm glad you're in it, Joe." "And I am too, Dad." CHAPTER VIII THE QUARREL "Are we all here?" "Oh, what a glorious night!" "Did you ever see such a moon!" "Looks about as big as a baseball does when you're far from first and the pitcher is heaving it over, to tag you out!" This last observation from Joe Matson. "Oh, what an unpoetical remark to make!" That from Mabel Varley. There came a chorus of laughter, shouts, good-natured jibes, little shrieks and giggles from the girls, and chuckles from the young men. "Well, let's get started," proposed Joe. It was the occasion of the sleigh ride that Joe had gotten up, ostensibly for the enjoyment of a number of his young friends, but, in reality for Mabel, who, with her brother, was still staying on in Riverside, for the Varley business was not yet finished. It was a glorious, wintry night, and in the sky hung the silvery moon, lighting up a few fleecy clouds with glinting beams, and bringing into greater brightness the sparkling snow that encrusted the earth. "Count noses," suggested Charlie Hill, who, with a young lady to whom Joe had introduced him a day or so before, was in the sleighing party. "I'll help," volunteered Mabel, who, of course, was being escorted by Joe, while Reggie had Clara under his care. Mabel and Joe made sure that all of their party were present. They were gathered in the office of the livery stable, whence they were to start, to go to a hotel about twelve miles distant--a hotel famous for its oyster suppers, as many a sleighing party, of which Joe had been a member, could testify. Following the supper there was to be a little dance, and the party, properly chaperoned, expected to return some time before morning. "Yes, I guess we're all here," Joe announced, as he looked among the young people. And it was no easy task to make sure, for they were constantly shifting about, going here and there, friends greeting friends. Four sturdy horses were attached to a big barge, in the bottom of which had been spread clean straw, for it was quite frosty, and, in spite of heavy wraps and blankets, feet would get cold. But the straw served, in a measure, to keep them warm. "All aboard!" cried Charlie Hill, who had made himself a general favorite with all of Joe's friends. "All aboard!" "Why don't you say 'play ball'?" asked Mabel, with a laugh. "It seems to me, with a National Leaguer with us, the least we could do would be to make that our rallying cry!" Mabel was a real "sport." "I'm not a big leaguer yet," protested Joe. "Don't go too strong on that. I may be turned back into the bushes." "Not much danger," commented Charlie, as he thought of the fine work Joe had done in times past. Joe was a natural born pitcher, but he had developed his talents by hard work, as my readers know. Into the sled piled the laughing, happy young folks, and then, snugly tucked in, the word was given, and, with a merry jingle of bells, away they went over the white snow. There were the old-time songs sung, after the party had reached the open country, and had taken the edge off their exuberance by tooting tin horns. "Aunt Dinah's Quilting Party," "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean," "Old Black Joe"--all these, and some other, more modern, songs were sung, more or less effectively. But, after all, it was the spirit and not the melody that counted. On over the snowy road went the big sled, pulled by the willing horses, who seemed all the more willing because of the joyous party they were dragging along. "Look out for this grade-crossing," remarked Joe to the driver, for they were approaching the railroad. "I will, Joe," the man replied. "I have good occasion to remember this place, too." "So have I," spoke Mabel, in a low voice to her escort. "There is where we were snowed in; isn't it?" she asked, nodding in the direction of Deep Rock Cut. "That's the place," replied Joe. "Yes, sir, I have occasion to remember this place," went on the driver. "And I'm always careful when I cross here, ever since, two years ago, I was nearly run down by a train. I had just such a load of young folks as I've got now," he went on. "How did it happen?" asked Reggie, as the runners scraped over the bare rails, a look up and down the moon-lit track showing no train in sight. "Well, the party was making quite a racket, and I didn't hear the whistle of the train," resumed the driver. "It was an extra, and I didn't count on it. We were on our way home, and we had a pretty narrow escape. Just got over in time, I tell you. The young folks were pretty quiet after that, and I was glad it happened on the way home, instead of going, or it would have spoiled all their fun. And, ever since then, whether I know there's a train due or not, I'm always careful of this crossing." "It makes one feel ever so much safer to have a driver like him," spoke Mabel to Clara. "Oh, we can always trust Frank," replied Joe's sister. Laughing, shouting, singing and blowing the horns, the party went on its merry way, until the hotel was reached. Everything was in readiness for the young people, for the arrangements had been made in advance, and soon after the girls had "dolled-up," as Joe put it, by which he meant arranged their hair, that had become blown about under the scarfs they wore, they all sat down to a bountifully-spread table. "Reminds me of the dinner we had, after we won the pennant," said Charlie Hall. "Only it's so different," added Joe. "That was a hot night." Talk and merry laughter, mingled with baseball conversation went around the table. Joe did not care to "talk shop," but somehow or other, he could not keep away from the subject that was nearest his heart. Nor could Charlie, and the two shot diamond discussion back and forth, the others joining in occasionally. The meal was drawing to an end. Reggie Varley, pouring out a glass of water, rose to his feet. "Friends and fellow citizens," he began in a sort of "toastmaster voice." "Hear! Hear!" echoed Charlie, entering into the spirit of the occasion. "We have with us this evening," went on Reggie, in the approved manner of after-dinner introductions, "one whom you all well know, and whom it is scarcely necessary to name----" "Hear! Hear!" interrupted Charlie, pounding on the table with his knife handle. All eyes were turned toward Joe, who could not help blushing. "I rise to propose the health of one whom we all know and love," went on Reggie, "and to assure him that we all wish him well in his new place." "Better wait until I get it," murmured Joe, to whom this was a great surprise. "To wish him all success," went on Reggie. "And I desire to add that, as a token of our esteem, and the love in which we hold him, we wish to present him this little token--and may it be a lucky omen for him when he is pitching away in the big league," and with this Reggie handed to Joe a stick-pin, in the shape of a baseball, the seams outlined in diamonds, and a little ruby where the trademark would have been. Poor Joe was taken quite by surprise. "Speech! Speech!" came the general cry. Joe fumbled the pin in his fingers, and for a moment there was a mist before his eyes. This little surprise had been arranged by Reggie, and he had quietly worked up the idea among Joe's many young friends, all of whom had contributed to the cost of the token. "Go on! Say something!" urged Mabel, at Joe's side. "Well--er--well, I--er--I don't know what to say," he stammered, "except that this is a great surprise to me, and that I--er--I thank you!" He sat down amid applause, and someone started up the song "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow!" It was sung with a will. Altogether the affair was successfully carried out, and formed one of the most pleasant remembrances in the life of Baseball Joe. After the presentation, others made impromptu speeches, even the girls being called on by Reggie, to whom the position of toastmaster particularly appealed. The supper was over. The girls were in the dressing room, donning their wraps, and Joe and Reggie had gone to the office to pay the bill. The proprietor of the hotel was in the men's room, and going there Joe was greeted by name, for the hotel man knew him well. "Everything satisfactory, Mr. Matson?" the host asked, and at the mention of Joe's name, a rough-looking fellow, who was buying a cigar, looked up quickly. "Yes, Mr. Todd, everything was fine," replied Joe, not noticing the man's glance. "Now we'll settle with you." "No hurry," said the proprietor. "I hear you're going to leave us soon--going up to a higher class in baseball, Joe." "Well, there's some talk of it," admitted our hero, and as he took out the money to make the payment, the rough-looking man passed behind him. Joe dropped a coin, and, in stooping to pick it up, he moved back a step. As he did so, he either collided with the man, who had observed him so narrowly, or else the fellow deliberately ran into Joe. "Look out where you're walking! You stepped on my foot!" exclaimed the man in surly tones. "Can't you see what you're doing? you country gawk!" "I beg your pardon," spoke Joe quietly, but a red flush came into his face, and his hands clenched involuntarily. "Huh! Trying to put on high society airs; eh?" sneered the other. "I'll soon take that out of you. I say you stepped on me on purpose." "You are mistaken," said Joe, still quietly. "Huh! Do you mean to say I'm sayin' what ain't so?" demanded the other. "If you like to put it that way; yes," declared Joe, determined to stand upon his rights, for he felt that it had not been his fault. "Be careful," warned Reggie, in a low voice. "Say, young feller, I don't allow nobody to say that to me!" blustered the fellow, advancing on Joe with an ugly look. "You'll either beg my pardon, or give me satisfaction! I'll----" "Now here. None of that!" interposed the proprietor. "You aren't hurt, Wessel." "How do you know? And didn't he accuse me of----" "Oh, get out. You're always ready to pick a quarrel," went on the hotel man. "Move on!" "Well, then let him beg my pardon," insisted the other. "If he don't, I'll take it out of him," and his clenched fist indicated his meaning only too plainly. CHAPTER IX JOE IS DRAFTED For a moment Joe stood facing the angry man--unnecessarily angry, it seemed--since, even if the young ball player had trod on his foot, the injury could not have amounted to much. "I told you once that I was sorry for having collided with you, though I do not believe it was my fault," spoke Joe, holding himself in check with an effort. "That is all I intend to say, and you may make the most of it." "I'll make the most of you, if you don't look out!" blustered the man. "If you'll just step outside we can settle this little argument to the queen's taste," and he seemed very eager to have Joe accept his challenge. "Now see here! There'll be no fighting on these premises," declared the hotel proprietor, with conviction. "No, we'll do it outside," growled the man. "Not with me. I don't intend to fight you," said Joe as quietly as he could. "Huh! Afraid; eh?" "No, not afraid." "Well, you're a coward and a----" "That will do, Wessel. Get out!" and the proprietor's voice left no room for argument. The man slunk away, giving Joe a surly look, and then the supper bill was paid, and receipted. "Who was he?" asked Joe, when the fellow was out of sight. "Oh, I don't know any good of him," replied the hotel man. "He's been hanging around town ever since the ball season closed." "Is he a player?" Joe inquired. "No. I'm inclined to think he's a gambler. I know he was always wanting to make bets on the games around here, but no one paid much attention to him. You don't know him; do you?" "Never saw him before, as far as I recollect," returned Joe slowly. "I wonder why he wanted to pick a quarrel with me? For that was certainly his object." "It was," agreed Reggie, "and he didn't pay much attention to you until he heard your name." "I wonder if he could be----?" began Joe, and then he hesitated in his half-formed question. Reggie looked at his friend inquiringly, but Joe did not proceed. "Don't say anything about this to the girls," requested Joe, as they went upstairs. "Oh, no, of course not," agreed Reggie. "He was only some loafer, I expect, who had a sore head. Best to keep it quiet." Joe was more upset by the incident than he liked to admit. He could not understand the man's motive in trying so hard to force him into a fight. "Not that I would be afraid," reasoned Joe, for he was in good condition, and in splendid fighting trim, due to his clean living and his outdoor playing. "I think I could have held my own with him," he thought, "only I don't believe in fighting, if it can be avoided. "But there was certainly something more than a little quarrel back of it all. Wessel is his name; eh? I must remember that." Joe made a mental note of it, but he little realized that he was to hear the name again under rather strange circumstances. "What's the matter?" asked Mabel, on the way home in the sleigh, drawn by the prancing horses with their jingling bells. "Why?" parried Joe. "You are so quiet." "Well--I didn't count on so much happening to-night." "You mean about that little pin? I think it's awfully sweet." "Did you help pick it out?" asked Joe, seeing a chance to turn the conversation. "Yes. Reggie asked me what I thought would be nice, and I chose that." "Couldn't have been better," declared Joe, with enthusiasm. "I shall always keep it!" They rode on, but Joe could not shake off the mood that had seized him. He could not forget the look and words of the man who endeavored to force a quarrel with him--for what object Joe could only guess. "I'm sure there's something the matter," insisted Mabel, when the song "Jingle Bells!" had died away. "Have I done anything to displease you?" she asked, for she had "split" one dance with Charlie Hall. "No, indeed!" cried Joe, glad that he could put emphasis into his denial. "There's nothing really the matter." "Unless you're sorry you're going away out to Missouri," persisted the girl. "Well, I am sorry--that is, if I really have to go," spoke the young ball player sincerely. "Of course it isn't at all certain that I will go." "Oh, I guess it's certain enough," she said. "And I really hope you do go." "It's pretty far off," said Joe. "I'll have to make my headquarters in St. Louis." "Reggie and I expect to be in the West a good part of the coming Summer," went on Mabel, in even tones. "It's barely possible that Reggie may make his business headquarters in St. Louis, for papa's trade is shifting out that way." "You don't mean it!" cried Joe, and some of his companions in the sleigh wondered at the warmth of his tone. "Oh, yes, I do," said Mabel. "So I shall see you play now and then; for I'm as ardent a 'fan' as I ever was." "That's good," returned Joe. "I'm glad I'm going to a major league--that is, if they draft me," he added quickly. "I didn't know you might be out there." From then on the thought of going to St. Louis was more pleasant to Joe. The sleigh ride was a great success in every particular. The young people reached home rather late--or, rather early in the morning, happy and not too tired. "It was fine; wasn't it?" whispered Clara, as she and her brother tip-toed their way into the house, so as not to awaken their parents. "Dandy!" he answered softly. "Weren't you surprised about the pin?" "Of course I was." "But you don't seem exactly happy. Is something worrying you? I heard Mabel ask you the same thing." "Did you?" inquired Joe, non-committally. "Yes. Is anything the matter?" "No, Sis. Get to bed. It's late." Clara paused for a moment. She realized that Joe had not answered her question as she would have liked. "But I guess he's thinking of the change he may have to make," the sister argued. "Joe is a fine fellow. He certainly has gone ahead in baseball faster than he would have done in some other line of endeavor. Well, it's good he likes it. "And yet," she mused, as she went to her room, "I wonder what it is that is worrying him?" If she could have seen Joe, at that same moment, sitting on the edge of a chair in his apartment, moodily staring at the wall, she would have wondered more. "What was his game?" thought Joe, as he recalled the scene with the man at the hotel. "What was his object?" But he could not answer his own question. Joe's sleep was disturbed the remainder of that night--short as the remainder was. At breakfast table, the next morning, the story of the jolly sleigh ride was told to Mr. and Mrs. Matson. Of course Joe said nothing of the dispute with the surly man. "And here's the pin they gave me," finished the young player as he passed around the emblem that had been so unexpectedly presented to him. His mother was looking at it when the doorbell rang, and the maid, who answered it, brought back a telegram. "It's for Mr. Joseph," she announced. Joe's face was a little pale as he tore open the yellow envelope, and then, as he glanced at the words written on the sheet of paper, he exclaimed: "It's settled! I'm drafted to St. Louis!" CHAPTER X OFF TO ST. LOUIS For a few seconds, after Joe's announcement, there was silence in the room. Then, as the realization of what it meant came to them, Clara was the first to speak. "I'm _so_ glad, Joe," she said, simply, but there was real meaning in her words. "And I congratulate you, son," added Mr. Matson. "It's something to be proud of, even if St. Louis isn't in the first division." "Oh, they'll get there, as soon as I begin pitching," declared Joe with a smile. Mrs. Matson said nothing for a while. Her son, and the rest of the family, knew of her objection to baseball, and her disappointment that Joe had not entered the ministry, or some of the so-called learned professions. But, as she looked at the smiling and proud face of her boy she could not help remarking: "Joe, I, too, am very glad for your sake. I don't know much about sporting matters, but I suppose this is a promotion." "Indeed it is, Mother!" Joe cried, getting up to go around the table and kiss her. "It's a fine promotion for a young player, and now it's up to me to make good. And I will, too!" he added earnestly. "Is that all Mr. Gregory, your former manager, says in the telegram?" asked Mr. Matson. "No, he says a letter of explanation will follow, and also a contract to sign." "Will you get more money, Joe?" asked Clara. "Sure, Sis. I know what you're thinking of," Joe added, with a smile at the girl, as he put his stick-pin in his scarf. "You're thinking of the ring I promised to buy you if I got this place. Well, I'll keep my word. You can go down and get measured for it to-day." "Oh, Joe, what a good brother you are!" she cried. "Then you really will get more money?" asked Mrs. Matson, and her voice was a bit eager. Indeed Joe's salary, and the cash he received as his share of the pennant games, had been a blessing to the family during Mr. Matson's illness, for the inventor had lost considerable funds. "Yes, I'll get quite a bit more," said Joe. "I got fifteen hundred a year with the Pittstons, and Mr. Gregory said I ought to get at least double that if I go with St. Louis. It will put us on Easy Street; won't it, Momsey?" "It will be very welcome," she replied, with a sigh, but it was rather a happy sigh at that. She had known the pinch of hard times in her day, had Mrs. Matson. "I'd have to be at the game of lawyering or doctoring a long while, before I'd get an advance like this," went on Joe, as he read the telegram over a second time. And then he put it carefully in his pocket, to be filed away with other treasures, such as young men love to look at from time to time; a faded flower, worn by "Someone," a letter or two, a--but there, I promised not to tell secrets. The first one who knew of his promotion, after the folks at home, was Mabel. Joe made some excuse to call at the hotel. Reggie was out on business, but Joe did not mind that. "Oh, I'm so glad--for your sake, Joe!" exclaimed Mabel warmly. "I hope you make a great reputation!" "It won't be from lack of trying," he said, with a smile. "And I do hope you can get out to St. Louis this Summer." "We expect to," she answered. "I have been there with Reggie several times." "What sort of a place is it?" asked Joe eagerly, "and where does my team play?" he inquired, with an accent on the "my." "There are two major league teams in St. Louis," explained Mabel, who, as I have said, was an ardent "fan." She was almost as good as a boy in this respect. "The National League St. Louis team, or the 'Cardinals,' as I suppose you know they are nicknamed, plays on Robison Field, at Vandeventer and Natural Bridge road. I've often been out there to games with Reggie, but I'll look forward to seeing them now, with a lot more pleasure," she added, blushing slightly. "Thanks," laughed Joe. "I guess I'll be able to find my way about the city. But, after all, I'll be likely to strike it with the team, for I'll probably have to go South training before I report in St. Louis." "It isn't hard to find your way about St. Louis," went on Mabel. "Just take a Natural Bridge line car, and that'll bring you out to Robison Field. Or you can take a trunk line, and transfer to Vandeventer. But the best way is the Natural Bridge route. Is there anything else you'd like to know?" she asked, with a smile. "Information supplied at short notice. The Browns, or American League team, play at Grand and Dodier----" "Oh, I'm not interested in them!" interrupted Joe. "I'm going to stick to my colors--cardinal." "And I'll wear them, too," said Mabel in a low voice, and the blush in her cheeks deepened. Already she was wearing Joe's color. "This is our last day here," the girl went on, after a pause. "It is?" cried Joe in surprise. "Why, I thought----" "I'm sorry, too," she broke in with. "You have given Reggie and me a lovely time. I've enjoyed myself very much." "Not half as much as _I_ have," murmured Joe. Reggie came in a little later, and congratulated the young player, and then Charlie Hall added his good wishes. It was his last day in town also, and he and the Varleys left on the same train, Joe and his sister going to the station to see them off. "If you get snowed in again, just let me know," called Joe, with a laugh, as the train pulled out. "I'll come for you in an airship." "Thanks!" laughed Mabel, as she waved her hand in a final good-bye. As Joe was leaving the station a train from Rocky Ford pulled in, and one of the passengers who alighted from it was the ill-favored man who had endeavored to pick a quarrel with Joe at the hotel the night before. The fellow favored the young player with a surly glance, and seemed about to approach him. Then, catching sight of Clara at her brother's side, he evidently thought better of it, and veered off. Joe's face must have showed his surprise at the sight of the man, for Clara asked: "Who is that fellow, Joe? He looked at you in such a peculiar way. Do you know him?" Joe was glad he could answer in the negative. He really did not know the man, and did not want to, though it certainly seemed strange that he should encounter him again. "He seems to know you," persisted Clara, for the man had looked back at Joe twice. "Maybe he thinks he does, or maybe he wants to," went on the pitcher, trying to speak indifferently. "Probably he's heard that I'm the coming twirling wonder of the Cardinals," and he pretended to swell up his chest, and look important. "Nothing like having a good opinion of yourself," laughed Clara. That afternoon's mail brought Joe a letter from Mr. Gregory, in which the news contained in the telegram was confirmed. It was also stated that Joe would receive formal notice of his draft from the St. Louis team, and his contract, which was to be signed in duplicate. "I wish he'd said something about salary," mused our hero. "But probably the other letter, from the St. Louis manager, will have that in, and the contract will, that's certain." The following day all the details were settled. Joe received formal notice of his draft from the Pittstons to the St. Louis Cardinals. He was to play for a salary of three thousand dollars a year. In consideration of this he had to agree to certain conditions, among them being that he would not play with any other team without permission from the organized baseball authorities, and, as long as he was in the game, and accepted the salary, he would be subject to the call of any other team in the league, the owners of which might wish to "purchase" him; that is, if they paid the St. Louis team sufficient money. "I wonder what they'll consider me worth, say at the end of the first season?" said Joe to Clara. "What a way to talk!" she exclaimed. "As if you were a horse, or a slave." "It does sound a bit that way," he admitted, "and some of the star players bring a lot more than valuable horses. Why, some of the players on the New York Giants cost the owners ten and fifteen thousand dollars, and the Pittsburgh Nationals paid $22,500 for one star fellow as a pitcher. I hope I get to be worth that to some club," laughed Joe, "but there isn't any danger--not right off the bat," he added with a smile. "Well, that's a part of baseball I'm not interested in," said Clara. "I like to see the game, but I watch it for the fun in it, not for the money." "And yet there has to be money to make it a success," declared Joe. "Grounds, grandstands and trips cost cash, and the owners realize on the abilities of the players. In return they pay them good salaries. Many a player couldn't make half as much in any other business. I'm glad I'm in it." Joe signed and returned the contract, and from then on he was the "property" of the St. Louis team, and subject to the orders of the owners and manager. A few days later Joe received his first instructions--to go to St. Louis, report to the manager, and then go South to the training camp, with the team. There his real baseball work, as a member of a big league, would start. Joe packed his grip, stowing away his favorite bat and his new pitcher's glove, said good-bye to his family and friends in Riverside, and took a train that eventually would land him in St. Louis, at the Union Depot. The journey was without incident of moment, and in due time Joe reached the hotel where he had been told the players were quartered. "Is Mr. Watson here?" he asked the clerk, inquiring for the manager. "I think you'll find him in the billiard room," replied the clerk, sizing up Joe with a critical glance. "Here, boy, show this gentleman to Mr. Watson," went on the man at the register. "Do you know him by sight?" he asked. "No," replied Joe, rather sorry he did not. "I know him!" exclaimed the bellboy, coming forward, with a cheerful grin on his freckled face. "He sure has a good ball team. I hope they win the pennant this year. Are you one of the players?" he asked. "One of the new ones," spoke Joe, modestly enough. "Gee! Dat's great!" exclaimed the lad admiringly. "There's 'Muggins' Watson over there," and he pointed to a man in his shirt sleeves, playing billiards with a young fellow whom Joe recognized, from having seen his picture in the papers, as 'Slim' Cooney, one of the St. Louis pitchers. "Mr. Watson?" inquiringly asked Joe, waiting until the manager had made, successfully, a difficult shot, and stood at rest on his cue. "That's my name," and a pair of steel-blue eyes looked straight at our hero. "What can I do for you?" "I'm Joe Matson, and----" "Oh, yes, the new recruit I signed up from Pittston. Well, this is the first time I've seen you. Took you on the report of one of my men. Glad to meet you," and he held out a firm hand. "Slim," he went on to his opponent at billiards, "let me make you acquainted with one of your hated rivals--Joe Matson. Matson, this is our famous left-hand twirler." Joe laughed and shook hands. He liked the manager and the other player. I might state, at this point, that in this book, while I shall speak of the players of the Cardinals, and of the various National League teams, I will not use their real names, for obvious reasons. However, if any of you recognize them under their pseudonyms, I cannot help it. CHAPTER XI GOING DOWN SOUTH "Well, are you going to help us win the pennant, Matson?" asked Manager Watson, when he had introduced Joe to a number of the other St. Louis players, who were lounging about the billiard room. It was a cold and blustery day outside, and the hotel, where the team had lately taken up quarters, ready for the trip to the South, offered more comfort than the weather without. "I'm going to do my best," replied Joe modestly, and he blushed, for most of the other players were older than he, many of them seasoned veterans, and the heroes of hard-fought contests. "Well, we sure do need help, if we're to get anywhere," murmured Hal Doolin, the snappy little first baseman. "We sure do!" "You needn't look at me!" fired back Slim Cooney. "I did my share of the work last season, and if I'd had decent support----" "Easy now, boys!" broke in Mr. Watson. "You know what the papers said about last year--that there were too many internal dissensions among the Cardinals to allow them to play good ball. You've got to cut that out if I'm going to manage you." I might add that Sidney Watson, who had made a reputation as a left-fielder, and a hard hitter on the Brooklyn team, had lately been offered the position as manager of the Cardinals, and had taken it. This would be his first season, and, recognizing the faults of the team, he had set about correcting them in an endeavor to get it out of the "cellar" class. Quarrels, bickerings and disputes among the players had been too frequent, he learned, and he was trying to eliminate them. "Have a heart for each other, boys," he said to the men who gathered about him, incidentally to covertly inspect Joe, the recruit. "It wasn't anybody's fault, in particular, that you didn't finish in the first division last season. But we're going to make a hard try for it this year. That's why I've let some of your older players go, and signed up new ones. I'm expecting some more boys on in a few days, and then we'll hike for the Southland and see what sort of shape I can pound you into." "Don't let me keep you from your game," said Joe to the manager. "Oh, I'll let Campbell finish it for me, he's better at the ivories than I am," and Watson motioned for the centre fielder to take the cue. "I'll see what sort of a room we can give you," the manager went on. "Nothing like being comfortable. Did you have a good trip?" "Yes, indeed." "Contract satisfactory, and all that?" "Oh, yes. And, by the way, Mr. Watson, if it isn't asking too much I'd like to know how you came to hear of me and sign me up?" "Oh, I had scouts all over last fall," said the manager with a smile. "One of them happened to see you early in the season, and then he saw the game you pitched against Clevefield, winning the pennant. You looked to him like the proper stuff, so I had you drafted to our club." "I hope you won't repent of your bargain," observed Joe, soberly. "Well, I don't think I will, and yet baseball is pretty much of a chance game after all. I've often been fooled, I don't mind admitting. But, Matson, let me tell you one thing," and he spoke more earnestly, as they walked along a corridor to the lobby of the hotel. "You mustn't imagine that you're going in right off the reel and clean things up. You'll have to go a bit slow. I want to watch you, and I'll give you all the opportunity I can. "But you must remember that I have several pitchers, and some of them are very good. They've been playing in the big leagues for years. You're a newcomer, and, unless I'm much mistaken, you'll have a bit of stage fright at first. That's to be expected, and I'm looking for it. I won't be disappointed if you fall down hard first along. But whatever else you do, don't get discouraged and--don't lose your nerve, above all else." "I'll try not to," promised Joe. But he made up his mind that he would surprise the manager and make a brilliant showing as soon as possible. Joe had several things to learn about baseball as it is played in the big leagues. "I guess I'll put you in with Rad Chase," said Manager Watson, as he looked over the page of the register, on which were the names of the team. "His room is a good one, and you'll like him. He's a young chap about your age." "Was he in there?" asked Joe, nodding toward the billiard room, where he had met several of the players. "No. I don't know where he is," went on the manager. "Is Rad out?" he asked of the clerk. That official, stroking his small blonde mustache, turned to look at the rack. From the peg of room 413 hung the key. "He's out," the clerk announced. "Well, you might as well go up and make yourself at home," advised the manager. "I'll tell Rad you're quartered with him. Have his grip taken up," went on Mr. Watson to the clerk. "Front!" called the young man behind the desk, and when the same freckle-faced lad, who had pointed out to Joe the manager, came shuffling up, the lad took our hero's satchel, and did a little one-step glide with it toward the elevator. "Tanks," mumbled the same lad, as Joe slipped a dime into his palm, when the bellboy had opened the room door and set the grip on the floor by the bed. "Say, where do youse play?" he asked with the democratic freedom of the American youth. "Well, I'm supposed to be a pitcher," said Joe. "Left?" "No, right." "Huh! It's about time the Cardinals got a guy with a right-hand delivery!" snorted the boy. "They've been tryin' southpaws and been beaten all over the lots. Got any speed?" "Well, maybe a little," admitted Joe, smiling at the lad's ingenuousness. "Curves, of course?" "Some." "Dat's th' stuff! Say, I hopes you make good!" and the lad, spinning the dime in the air, deftly caught it, and slid out of the room. Joe looked after him. He was entering on a new life, and many emotions were in conflict within him. True, he had been at hotels before, for he had traveled much when he was in the Central League. But this time it was different. It seemed a new world to him--a new and big world--a much more important world. And he was to be a part of it. That was what counted most. He was in a Big League--a place of which he had often dreamed, but to which he had only aspired in his dreams. Now it was a reality. Joe unpacked his grip. His trunk check he had given to the clerk, who said he would send to the railroad station for the baggage. Then Joe changed his collar, put on a fresh tie, and went down in the elevator. He wanted to be among the players who were to be his companions for the coming months. Joe liked Rad Chase at once. In a way he was like Charlie Hall, but rather older, and with more knowledge of the world. "Do you play cards?" was Rad's question, after the formalities of introduction, Joe's roommate having come in shortly after our hero went down. "Well, I can make a stab at whist, but I'm no wonder," confessed Joe. "Do you play Canfield solitaire?" "Never heard of it." "Shake hands!" cried Rad, and he seemed relieved. "Why?" asked Joe. "Well, the fellow I roomed with last year was a fiend at Canfield solitaire. He'd sit up until all hours of the morning, trying to make himself believe he wasn't cheating, and I lost ten pounds from not getting my proper sleep." "Well, I'll promise not to keep you awake that way," said Joe with a laugh. "Do you snore?" Rad wanted next to know. "I never heard myself." Rad laughed. "I guess you'll do," he said. "We'll hit it off all right." Joe soon fell easily into the life at the big hotel. He met all the other players, and while some regarded him with jealous eyes, most of them welcomed him in their midst. Truth to tell, the St. Louis team was in a bad way, and the players, tired of being so far down on the list, were willing to make any sacrifices of professional feeling in order to be in line for honors, and a share in the pennant money, providing it could be brought to pass that they reached the top of the list. Joe spent a week at the hotel while Manager Watson was arranging matters for the trip South. One or two players had not yet arrived, "dickers" being under way for their purchase. But finally the announcement was made that the start for the training camp, at Reedville, Alabama, would be made in three days. "And I'm glad of it!" cried Rad Chase, as he and Joe came back one evening from a moving picture show, and heard the news. "I'm tired of sitting around here doing nothing. I want to get a bat in my hands." "So do I," agreed Joe. "It sure will be great to get out on the grass again. Have you ever been in Reedville?" "No, but I hear it's a decent place. There's a good local team there that we brush up against, and two or three other teams in the vicinity. It'll be lively enough." "Where do you like to play?" asked Joe. "Third's my choice, but I hear I'm to be soaked in at short. I hate it, too, but Watson seems to think I fill in there pretty well." "I suppose a fellow has to play where he's considered best, whether he wants to or not," said Joe. "I hope I can pitch, but I may be sent out among the daisies for all that." "Well, we've got a pretty good outfield as it is," went on Rad. "I guess, from what I hear, that you'll be tried out on the mound, anyhow. Whether you stick there or not will be up to you." "It sure is," agreed Joe. A box-party was given at the theatre by the manager for the players, to celebrate their departure for the South. The play was a musical comedy, and some of the better known players were made the butt of jokes by the performers on the stage. This delighted Joe, and he longed for the time when he would be thought worthy of such notice. The audience entered into the fun of the occasion, and when the chief comedian came out, and, in a witty address, presented Manager Watson with a diamond pin, and wished him all success for the coming season, there were cheers for the team. "Everybody stand up!" called Toe Barter, one of the veteran pitchers. "Seventh inning--everybody stretch!" The players in the two boxes arose to face the audience in the theatre, and there were more cheers. Joe was proud and happy that he was a part of it all. That night he wrote home, and also to Mabel, telling of his arrival in St. Louis, and all that had happened since. "We leave for the South in the morning," he concluded. The departure of the players on the train was the occasion for another celebration and demonstration at the depot. A big crowd collected, several newspaper photographers took snapshots, and there were cheers and floral emblems. Joe wished his folks could have been present. Compared to the time when he had gone South to train for the Pittston team, this was a big occasion. A reporter from the most important St. Louis paper was to accompany the team as "staff correspondent," for St. Louis was, and always has been, a good "fan" town, and loyal to the ball teams. "All aboard!" called the conductor. There were final cheers, final good-byes, final hand-shakes, final wishes of good luck, and then the train pulled out. Joe and his teammates were on their way South. It was the start of the training season, and of what would take place between that and the closing Joe little dreamed. CHAPTER XII THE QUARRELING MAN Quite a little family party it was the St. Louis players composed as they traveled South in their private car, for they enjoyed that distinction. This was something new for Joe, as the Pittston team was not blessed with a wealthy owner, and an ordinary Pullman had sufficed when Joe made his former trip. Now it was travel "de luxe." The more Joe saw of Rad Chase the more he liked the fellow, and the two soon became good friends, being much in each other's company, sharing the upper and lower berths by turns in their section, eating at the same table, and fraternizing generally. Some of the older players were accompanied by their wives, and after the first few hours of travel everyone seemed to know everyone else, and there was much talk and laughter. "Can't you fellows supply me with some dope?" asked a voice in the aisle beside the seats occupied by Joe and Rad. "I've gotten off all the departure stuff, and I want something for a lead for to-morrow. Shoot me some new dope; will you?" "Oh, hello, Jim!" greeted Rad, and then, as Joe showed that he did not recognize the speaker, the other player went on: "This is the _Dispatch-Times's_ staff correspondent, Jim Dalrymple. You want to be nice to him, Joe, and he'll put your name and picture in the paper. Got anything you can give him for a story?" "I'm afraid not," laughed Joe. "Oh, anything will do, as long as I can hang a lead on it," said Dalrymple hopefully. "If you've never tried to get up new stuff every day at a training camp of a ball team, you've no idea what a little thing it takes to make news. Now you don't either of you happen to have a romance about you; do you?" he inquired, pulling out a fold of copy paper. (Your real reporter never carries a note book. A bunch of paper, or the back of an envelope will do to jot down a few facts. The rest is written later from memory. Only stage reporters carry note books, and, of late they are getting "wise" and abstaining from it.) "A romance?" repeated Joe. "Far be it from me to conceal such a thing about my person." "But you _have_ had rather a rapid rise in baseball; haven't you, Joe?" insinuated Rad. "You didn't have to wait long for promotion. Why not make up a yarn about that?" went on Rad, nodding at the reporter. "Sure I'll do it. Give me a few facts. Not too many," the newspaper man said with a whimsical smile. "I don't want to be tied down too hard. I like to let my fancy have free play." "He's all right," whispered Rad in an aside to Joe. "One of the best reporters going, and he always gives you a fair show. If you make an error he'll debit you with it, but when you play well he'll feature you. He's been South with the team a lot of times, I hear." "But I don't like to talk about myself," objected Joe. "Don't let that worry you!" laughed Rad. "Notoriety is what keeps baseball where it is to-day, and if it wasn't for the free advertising we get in the newspapers there would not be the attendance that brings in the dollars, and lets us travel in a private car. Don't be afraid of boosting yourself. The reporters will help you, and be glad to. They have to get the stuff, and often enough it's hard to do, especially at the training camp." In some way or other, Joe never knew exactly how, Dalrymple managed to get a story out of him, about how Joe had been drafted, how he had begun playing ball as a boy on the "sand lots," how he had pitched Yale to victory against Princeton, and a few other details, with which my readers are already familiar. "Say, this'll do first rate!" exulted the reporter, as he went to a secluded corner to write his story, which would be telegraphed back to his daily newspaper. "I'm glad I met you!" he laughed. Dalrymple was impartial, which is the great secret of a newspaper reporter's success. Though he gave Joe a good "show," he also "played up" some of the other members of the team. So that when copies of the paper were received later, they contained an account of Joe's progress, sandwiched in between a "yarn" of how the catcher had once worked in a boiler factory, where he learned to catch red-hot rivets, and how one of the outfielders had inherited a fortune, which he had dissipated, and then, reforming, had become a star player. So Joe had little chance to get a "swelled head," which is a bad thing for any of us. The first part of the journey South was made in record time, but after the private car was transferred to one of the smaller railroad lines there were delays that fretted the players. "What's the matter?" asked Manager Watson of the conductor as that official came through after a long stop at a water tank station, "won't the cow get off the track?" and he winked at the players gathered about him. "That joke's a hundred years old," retorted the ticket-taker. "Think up a new one! There's a freight wreck ahead of us, and we have to go slow." "Well, as long as we get there some time this week, it will be all right, I reckon," drawled the manager. Reedville was reached toward evening of the second day, and the travel-weary ball-tossers piled out of their coach to find themselves at the station of a typical Southern town. Laziness and restfulness were in the air, which was warm with the heat of the slowly setting sun. There was the odor of flowers. Colored men were all about, shuffling here and there, driving their slowly-ambling horses attached to rickety vehicles, or backing them up at the platform to get some of the passengers. "Majestic Hotel right this yeah way, suh! Right over yeah!" voiced the driver of a yellow stage. "Goin' right up, suh!" "That's our place, boys," announced the manager. "Pile in, and let me have your checks. I'll have the baggage sent up." Joe and the others took their place in the side-seated stage. A little later, the manager having arranged for the transportation of the trunks, they were driven toward the hotel that was to be their headquarters while in the South. They were registering at the hotel desk, and making arrangements about who was to room with who, when Joe heard the hotel clerk call Mr. Watson aside. "He says he's with your party, suh," the clerk spoke. "He arrived yesterday, and wanted to be put on the same floor with your players. Says he's going to be a member of the team." "Huh! I guess someone is bluffing you!" exclaimed the manager. "I've got all my team with me. Who is the fellow, anyhow?" "That's his signature," went on the clerk, pointing to it on the hotel register. "Hum! Wessel; eh?" said Mr. Watson. "Never heard of him. Where is he?" "There he stands, over by the cigar counter." Joe, who had heard the talk, looked, and, to his surprise, he beheld the same individual who had tried to pick a quarrel with him the night of the sleigh ride. CHAPTER XIII UNDER SUNNY SKIES "That man!" exclaimed Mr. Watson, as he gave the stranger a quick glance. "No, I don't know him, and he certainly isn't a member of my team. He isn't going to be, either; as far as I know. I'm expecting some other recruits, but no one named Wessel." Joe said nothing. He was wondering if the man would recognize him, and, perhaps, renew that strange, baseless quarrel. And, to his surprise, the man did recognize him, but merely to bow. And then, to Joe's further surprise, the individual strolled over to where the manager and some of the players were standing, and began: "Is this Mr. Watson?" "That's my name--yes," but there was no cordiality in the tone. "Well, I'm Isaac Wessel. I used to play short on the Rockpoint team in the Independent League. My contract has expired and I was wondering whether you couldn't sign me up." "Nothing doing," replied Mr. Watson, tersely. "I have all the material I need." "I spoke to Mr. Johnson about it," naming one of the owners of the St. Louis team, "and he said to see you." "Did he tell you to tell me to put you on?" "No, I wouldn't go so far as to say that," was the hesitating reply. "And did he say I was to give you a try-out?" "Well, he--er--said you could if you wanted to." "Well, I _don't_ want to," declared the manager with decision. "And I want to say that you went too far when you told the clerk here you belonged to my party. I don't know you, and I don't want anything to do with a man who acts that way," and Mr. Watson turned aside. "Well, I didn't mean any harm," whined Wessel. "The--er--I--er--the clerk must have misunderstood me." "All right. Let it go at that," was all the answer he received. "Then you won't give me a chance?" "No." The man evidently realized that this was the end, for he, too, turned aside. As he did so he looked sneeringly at Joe, and mumbled: "I suppose you think you're the whole pitching staff now?" Joe did not take the trouble to answer. But, though he ignored the man, he could not help wondering what his plan was in coming to the training camp. Could there be a hidden object in it, partly covered by the fellow's plea that he wanted to get on the team? "Do you often have cases like that, Mr. Watson?" Joe asked the manager when he had a chance. "Like what, Matson?" "Like that Wessel." "Oh, occasionally. But they don't often get as fresh as he did. The idea of a bush-leaguer thinking he could break into the majors like that. He sure had nerve! Well, now I hope we're all settled, and can get to work. We've struck good weather, anyhow." And indeed the change from winter to summer was little short of marvelous. They had come from the land of ice and snow to the warm beauty of sunny skies. There was a feeling of spring in the air, and the blood of every player tingled with life. "Say, it sure will be great to get out on the diamond and slam the ball about; won't it?" cried Joe to Rad Chase, as the two were unpacking in their hotel room. "That's what! How are you on stick work?" "Oh, no better than the average pitcher," replied Joe, modestly. "I had a record of .172 last season." "That's not so worse," observed Rad. "What's yours?" asked Joe. "Oh, it runs around .250." "Good!" cried Joe. "I hope you get it up to .300 this year." "Not much chance of that. I was picked because I'm pretty good with the stick--a sort of pinch hitter. But then that's not being a star pitcher," he added, lest Joe feel badly at the contrast in their batting averages. "Oh, I'm far from being a star, but I'd like to be in that class. There's my best bat," and he held out his stick. "Oh, you like that kind; eh?" spoke Rad. "Well, I'll show you what I favor," and then the two plunged into a talk that lasted until meal time. The arrival of the St. Louis team in the comparatively small town of Reedville was an event of importance. There was quite a crowd about the hotel, made up mostly of small boys, who wanted a chance to see the players about whom they had read so much. After the meal, as Joe, Rad and some of the others strolled out for a walk about the place, our hero caught murmurs from the crowd of lads about the entrance. "There's 'Toe' Barter," one lad whispered, nodding toward a veteran pitcher. "Yes, and that fellow walking with him is 'Slim' Cooney. He pitched a no-hit, no-run game last year." "Sure, I know it. And that fellow with the pipe in his mouth is 'Dots' McCann, the shortstop. He's a peach!" And so it went on. Joe's name was not mentioned by the admiring throng. "Our turn will come later," said Rad, with a smile. "I guess so," agreed his chum, somewhat dubiously. Reedville was a thriving community, and boasted of a good nine, with whom the St. Louis team expected to cross bats a number of times during the training season. Then, too, in nearby towns, were other teams, some of them semi-professional, who would be called on to sacrifice themselves that the Cardinals might have something to bring out their own strong and weak points. "Let's go over to the grounds," suggested Joe. "I'm with you," agreed Rad. "Say, you fellows won't be so anxious to head for the diamond a little later in the season," remarked "Doc" Mullin, one of the outfielders. "You'll be only too glad to give it the pass-up; won't they?" he appealed to Roger Boswell, the trainer and assistant manager. "Well, I like to see young fellows enthusiastic," said Boswell, who had been a star catcher in his day. But age, and an increasing deposit of fat, had put him out of the game. Now he coached the youngsters, and when "Muggins," as Mr. Watson was playfully called, was not on hand he managed the games from the bench. He was a star at that sort of thing. "Go to it, boys," he advised Joe and Rad, with a friendly nod. "You can't get too much baseball when you're young." The diamond at Reedville was nothing to boast of, but it would serve well enough for practice. And the grandstand was only a frail, wooden affair, nothing like the big one at Robison Field, in St. Louis. Joe and Rad walked about the field, and longed for the time when they would be out on it in uniform. "Which will be about to-morrow," spoke Rad, as Joe mentioned his desire. "We'll start in at light work, batting fungo and the like, limbering up our legs, and then we'll do hard work." "I guess so," agreed Joe. The weather could not have been better. The sun shone warmly from a blue sky, and there was a balmy spiciness to the southern wind. Rad and Joe walked about town, made a few purchases, and were turning back to the hotel when they saw "Cosey" Campbell, the third baseman, standing in front of a men's furnishing store. "I say, fellows, come here," he called to the two. They came. "Do you think that necktie is too bright for a fellow?" went on Campbell, pointing to a decidedly gaudy one in the show window. "Well, it depends on who's going to wear it," replied Rad, cautiously. "Why, I am, of course," was the surprised answer. "Who'd you s'pose?" "I didn't know but what you were buying it to use for a foul line flag," chuckled Rad, for Campbell's weakness for scarfs was well known. He bought one or two new ones every day, and, often enough, grew dissatisfied with his purchase before he had worn it. Then he tried to sell it to some other member of the team, usually without success. "Huh! Foul flag!" grunted Campbell. "Guess you don't know a swell tie when you see it. I'm going to get it," he added rather desperately, as though afraid he would change his mind. "Go ahead. We'll go in and see fair play," suggested Joe, with a smile. The tie was purchased, and the clerk, after selling the bright scarf, seeing that Campbell had a package in his hand, inquired: "Shall I wrap them both up together for you?" "If you don't mind," replied the third baseman. And, in tying up the bundle, the one Campbell had been carrying came open, disclosing three neckties more gaudy, if possible, than the one he had just purchased. "For the love of strikes!" cried Rad. "What are you going to do; start a store?" "Oh, I just took a fancy to these in a window down street," replied Campbell easily. "Rather neat; don't you think?" and he held up a red and green one. "Neat! Say, they look like the danger signals in the New York subway!" cried Rad. "Shade your eyes, Joe, or you won't be able to see the ball to-morrow!" "That shows how much taste you fellows have," snapped Campbell. "Those are swell ties." But the next day Joe heard Campbell trying to dispose of some of the newly purchased scarfs to "Dots" McCann. "Go ahead, 'Dots,' take one," pleaded the baseman. "You need a new tie, and I've got more than I want. This red and green one, now; it's real swell." "Go on!" cried the other player. "Why I'd hate to look at myself in a glass with that around my neck! And you'd better not wear it, either--at least, not around town." "Why not?" was the wondering answer. "Because you might scare some of the mules, and there'd be a runaway. Tie a stone around it, Campbell, and drown it. It makes so much noise I can't sleep," and with that McCann walked off, leaving behind him a very indignant teammate. That night notice was given that all the players would assemble at the baseball diamond in uniform next morning. "That's the idea!" cried Joe. "Now for some real work." CHAPTER XIV HARD WORK The rooms of the ball players were all in one part of the hotel, along the same hall. Joe and Rad were together, near the stairway going down. That night, their first in the training camp, there was considerable visiting to and fro among the members of the team, and some little horse-play, for, after all, the players were like big boys, in many respects. Rad, who had been in calling on some of his fellow players, came back to the room laughing. "What's up?" asked Joe, who was writing a letter. "Oh, Campbell is still trying to get rid of that hideous tie we helped him purchase. He wanted to wish it on to me." "And of course you took it," said Joe, with a smile. "Of course I did _not_. Well, I guess I'll turn in. We'll have plenty to do to-morrow." "That's right. I'll be with you as soon as I finish this letter." But Rad was sound asleep when Joe had finished his correspondence, and slipped downstairs to leave it at the desk for the early mail. Joe looked around the now almost deserted lobby, half expecting to see the strange man, Wessel, standing about. But he was not in sight. "I wonder what his game is, after all?" mused Joe. "I seem to have been running into two or three queer things lately. There's Shalleg, who bears me a grudge, though I don't see why he should, just because I couldn't lend him money, and then there's this fellow--I only hope the two of them don't go into partnership against me. I guess that's hardly likely to happen, though." But Joe little realized what was in store for him, and what danger he was to run from these same two men. Joe awakened suddenly, about midnight, by hearing someone moving around the room. He raised himself softly on his elbow, and peered about the apartment, for a dim light showed over the transom from the hall outside. To Joe's surprise the door, which he had locked from the inside before going to bed, now stood ajar. "I wonder if Rad can be sick, and have gone out?" Joe thought. "Maybe he walks in his sleep." He looked over toward his chum's bed, but could not make out whether or not Rad was under the covers. Then, as he heard someone moving about the apartment he called out: "That you, Rad?" Instantly the noise ceased, to be resumed a moment later, and Joe felt sure that someone, or something, went past the foot of his bed and out into the hall. "That you, Rad?" he called again. "What's that? Who? No, I'm here," answered the voice of his chum. "What's the matter?" Joe sprang out of bed, and in one bound reached the corridor. By means of the one dim electric lamp he saw, going down the stairs, carrying a grip with him, the mysterious man who had tried to quarrel with him. He was evidently taking "French leave," going out in the middle of the night to "jump" his hotel bill. "What's up?" asked Rad, as he, too, left his bed. "What is it, Joe?" The young pitcher came back into the room, and switched on a light. A quick glance about showed that neither his baggage, nor Rad's, had been taken. "It must have been his own grip he had," said Joe. "His? Who do you mean--what's up?" demanded Rad. "It was Wessel. He's sneaking out," remarked Joe in a low voice. "Shall we give the alarm?" "No, I guess not. We don't want to be mixed up in a row. And maybe he's going to take a midnight train. You can't tell." "I think he was in this room," went on Joe. "He was? Anything missing?" "Doesn't seem to be." "Well, then, don't make a row. Maybe he made a mistake." "He'd hardly unlock our door by mistake," declared Joe. "No, that's so. Did you see him in here?" "No, but I heard someone." "Well, it wouldn't be safe to make any cracks. Better not make a row, as long as nothing is gone." Joe decided to accept this advice, and went back to bed, after taking the precaution to put a chair-back under the knob, as well as locking it. It was some time before he got to sleep, however. But Rad was evidently not worried, for he was soon in peaceful slumber. Rad's theory that Wessel had gone out in the middle of the night to get a train was not borne out by the facts, for it became known in the morning that he had, as Joe suspected, "jumped" his board bill. "And he called himself a ball player!" exclaimed Mr. Watson in disgust. "I'd like to meet with him again!" "Maybe you will," ventured Joe, but he did not know how soon his prediction was to come to pass. "Well, boys, we'll see how we shape up," said the manager, a little later that morning when the members of the team, with their uniforms on, had assembled at the ball park. "Get out there and warm up. Riordan, bat some fungoes for the boys. McCann, knock the grounders. Boswell, you catch for--let's see--I guess I'll wish you on to Matson. We'll see what sort of an arm he's got." Joe smiled, and his heart beat a trifle faster. It was his first trial with the big league, an unofficial and not very important trial, to be sure, but none the less momentous to him. Soon was heard the crack of balls as they bounded off the bats, to be followed by the thuds as they landed in the gloves of the players. The training work was under way. "What sort of ball do you pitch?" asked the old player pleasantly of Joe, as they moved off to a space by themselves for practice. "Well, I've got an in, an out, a fadeaway and a spitter." "Quite a collection. How about a cross-fire?" "I can work it a little." "That's good. Now let's see what you can do. But take it easy at first. You don't want to throw out any of your elbow tendons so early in the season." "I guess not," laughed Joe. Then he began to throw, bearing in mind the advice of the veteran assistant manager. The work was slow at first, and Joe found himself much stiffer than he expected. But the warm air, and the swinging of his arm, limbered him up a bit, and soon he was sending in some swift ones. "Go slow, son," warned Boswell. "You're not trying to win a game, you know. You're getting a little wild." Joe felt a bit chagrined, but he knew it was for his own good that the advice was given. Besides the pitching and batting practice, there was some running around the bases. But Manager Watson knew better than to keep the boys at it too long, and soon called the work off for the day. "We'll give it a little harder whack to-morrow," he said. And then Joe, as he went to the dressing rooms, overheard the manager ask Boswell: "What do you think of Matson?" "Oh, he's not such a wonder," was the not very encouraging reply. "But I've seen lots worse. He'll do to keep on your string, but he's got a lot to learn. It's a question of what he'll do when he faces the big teams, and hears the crowd yelling: 'He's rotten! Take him out!' That's what's going to tell." "Yes, I suppose so. But I heard good reports of him--that gameness was one of his qualities." "Well, he'll need it all right," declared the veteran player. Then Joe passed on, not wanting to listen to any more. Truth to tell, he rather wished he had not heard that much. His pride was a little hurt. To give him credit, Joe had nothing like a "swelled head." He knew he had done good work in the Central League, and there, perhaps, he had been made more of than was actually good for him. Here he was to find that, relatively, he counted for little. A big team must have a number of pitchers, and not all of them can be "first string" men. Some must be kept to work against weak teams, to spare the stars for tight places. Joe realized this. "But if hard work will get me anywhere I'm going to arrive!" he said to himself, grimly, as the crowd of players went back to the hotel. The days that followed were given up to hard and constant practice. Each day brought a little more hard work, for the time was approaching when practice games must be played with the local teams, and it was necessary that the Cardinals make a good showing. Life in the training camp of a major league team was different than Joe had found it with the Pittstons. There was a more business-like tone to it, and more snap. The newspaper men found plenty of copy at first, in chronicling the doings of the big fellows, telling how this one was working up his pitching speed, or how that one was improving his batting. Then, too, the funny little incidents and happenings about the diamond and hotel were made as much of as possible. The various reporters had their own papers sent on to them, and soon, in some of these, notably the St. Louis publications, Joe began to find himself mentioned occasionally. These clippings he sent home to the folks. He wanted to send some to Mabel, but he was afraid she might think he was attaching too much importance to himself, so he refrained. Some of the reporters did not speak very highly of Joe's abilities, and others complimented him slightly. All of them intimated that some day he might amount to something, and then, again, he might not. Occasionally he was spoken of as a "promising youngster." It was rather faint praise, but it was better than none. And Joe steeled himself to go on in his own way, taking the well-intentioned advice of the other baseball players, Boswell in particular. Joe had other things besides hard work to contend against. This was the petty jealousy that always crops up in a high-tensioned ball team. There were three other chief pitchers on the nine, Toe Barter, Sam Willard and Slim Cooney. Slim and Toe were veterans, and the mainstays of the team, and Sam Willard was one of those chaps so often seen in baseball, a brilliant but erratic performer. Sometimes he would do excellently, and again he would "fall down" lamentably. And, for some reason, Sam became jealous of Joe. Perhaps he would have been jealous of any young pitcher who he thought might, in time, displace him. But he seemed to be particularly vindictive against Joe. It started one day in a little practice game, when Sam, after some particularly wild work, was replaced by our hero. "Huh! Now we'll see some real pitching," Sam sneered as he sulked away to the bench. Joe turned red, and was nervous as he took his place. Perhaps if Joe had made a fizzle of it Willard might have forgiven him, but Joe, after a few rather poor balls, tightened up and struck out several men neatly, though they were not star batters. "The Boy Wonder!" sneered Willard after the game. "Better order a cap a couple of sizes larger for him after this, Roger," he went on to the coach. "Oh, dry up!" retorted Boswell, who had little liking for Willard. And so the hard work went on. The men, whitened by the indoor life of the winter, were beginning to take on a bronze tan. Muscles hardened and become more springy. Running legs improved. The pitchers were sending in swifter balls, Joe included. The fungo batters were sending up better flies. The training work was telling. CHAPTER XV ANOTHER THREAT "Play ball!" "Batter up!" "Clang! Clang!" The old familiar cries, and the resonant sound of the starting gong, were heard at the Reedville diamond. It was the first real game of the season, and it was awaited anxiously, not only by the players, but by Manager Watson, the coach, and by the owners back home. For it would give a "line" on what St. Louis could do. Of course it was not a league contest, and the work, good, bad or indifferent, would not count in the averages. Joe hoped he would get a chance to pitch, at least part of the game, but he was not likely to, Boswell frankly told him, as it was desired to let Barter and Cooney have a fairly hard work-out on this occasion. "But your turn will come, son," said the coach, kindly. "Don't you fret. I think you're improving, and, to be frank with you, there's lots of room for it. But you've got grit, and that's what I like to see." Reedville was a good baseball town, which was one of the reasons why Manager Watson had selected it as his training camp. The townspeople were ardent supporters of the home team, and they welcomed the advent of the big leaguers. In the vicinity were also other teams that played good ball. The bleachers and grandstand were well filled when the umpire gave his echoing cry of: "Play ball!" The ball-tossers had been warming up, both the Cardinals and the home team, which proved to be a husky aggregation of lads, with tremendous hitting abilities, provided they could connect with the ball. And that was just what the St. Louis pitchers hoped to prevent. "Willard, you can lead off," was the unexpected announcement of Mr. Watson, as he scanned his batting order. "McCann will catch for you. Now let's see what you can do." "I'll show 'em!" exclaimed the "grouchy" pitcher as he unbuttoned his glove from his belt. He had been warming up, and had come to the bench, donning a sweater, with no hope of being put in the game at the start off. But, unexpectedly, he had been called on. "Play ball!" cried the umpire again. Joe wished, with all his heart, that he was going in, but it was not to be. In order to give the home team every possible advantage, they were to go to bat last. And there was some little wonder when the first St. Louis player faced the local pitcher. There were cries of encouragement from the crowd, for Robert Lee Randolph--the pitcher in question--had aspirations to the big league. He was a tall, lanky youth, and, as the Cardinal players soon discovered, had not much except speed in his box. But he certainly had speed, and that, with his ability, or inability, to throw wildly, made him a player to be feared as much as he was admired. He hit three players during the course of the game, and hit them hard. "If they can't beat us any other way they're going to cripple us," said Rad grimly to Joe, as they sat on the bench. "It does look that way; doesn't it?" agreed our hero. The game went on, and, as might have been expected, the St. Louis team did about as they pleased. No, that is hardly correct. Even a country aggregation of players can sometimes make the finest nine of professionals stand on its mettle. And, in this case, for a time, the contest was comparatively close. For Mr. Watson did not send in all his best players, and, from the fact that his men had not been in a game since the former season closed, whereas the Reedville team had been at the game for two months or more, the disadvantage was not as great as it might have seemed. But there was one surprise. When Willard first went in he pitched brilliantly, and struck out the local players in good order, allowing only a few scattering hits. Then he suddenly went to pieces, and was severely pounded. Only excellent fielding saved him, for he was well backed-up by his fellow players. "Rexter will bat for you, Willard," said Manager Watson, when the inning was over. "Cooney, you go out and warm up." "What's the matter. Ain't I pitching all right?" angrily demanded the deposed one. "I'm sorry to say you're not. I'm not afraid of losing the game, but I don't want any more of this sort of stuff going back home," replied the manager, as he nodded over to where the newspaper reporters were chuckling among themselves over the comparatively poor exhibition the St. Louis Cardinals had so far put up. So Willard went to the bench, while crafty Cooney, with his left-hand delivery, went to warm up. And how Joe did wish _he_ would get a chance! But he did not, and the game ended, as might have been expected, with the Cardinals snowing under their country opponents. Hard practice followed that first exhibition game, and there were some shifts among the players, for unexpected weakness, as well as strength had by this time developed in certain quarters. "I wonder when I'll get a chance to show what I can do?" spoke Joe to Rad, as they were on their way back to the hotel, after a second contest with Reedville, in which our hero had still stuck to the bench. "Oh, it's bound to come," his chum told him. Personally, he was joyful, for he had been given a try-out, and had won the applause of the crowd by making a difficult play. "Well, it seems a long time," grumbled Joe, with a sigh. The practice became harder, as the opening of the season drew nearer. Some recruits joined the Cardinals at their training camp, and further shifts were made. Joe was finally given a chance to pitch against a team from Bottom Flats--a team, by the way, not as strong as the Reedville nine. And that Joe made good was little to his credit, as he himself knew. "I could have fanned them without any curves," he told Rad afterward. "Well, it's good you didn't take any chances," his chum said. "You never can tell." Again came a contest with Reedville, but Joe was not called on. Toe Barter, who had gained his nickname from the queer habit he had of digging a hole for his left foot, before delivering the ball, opened the contest, and did so well that he was kept in until the game was "in the refrigerator." Then Joe was given his chance, but there was little incentive to try, with the Cardinals so far ahead. Nevertheless, our hero did his best, and to his delight, he knocked a two-bagger, sliding to second amid a cloud of dust, to be decided safe by the umpire, though there was a howl of protest from the "fans." The Cardinals won handily, and as Joe was walking to the club house with Rad, eagerly talking about the game, he saw, just ahead of him in the crowd of spectators a figure, at the sight of which he started. "That looks like Shalleg," he said, half aloud. "What's that?" asked Rad. "Oh, nothing. I just thought I saw someone I knew. That is, I don't exactly know him, but----" At that moment the man at whose back Joe had been looking turned suddenly, and, to our hero's surprise, it was Shalleg. The man, with an impudent grin on his face, spoke to a companion loudly enough for Joe to hear. "There's the fellow who wouldn't help me out!" Shalleg exclaimed. "He turned me down cold. Look at him." The other turned, and Joe's surprise was heightened when he saw Wessel, the man who had tried to quarrel with him, and who had "jumped" his bill at the hotel. "Oh, I know him all right," Wessel responded to Shalleg. "I've seen him before." Joe and Rad, with the two men, were comparatively alone now. The attitude and words of the fellows were so insulting that Joe almost made up his mind to defy them. But before he had a chance to do so Shalleg snapped out: "You want to look out for yourself, young man. I'll get you yet, and I'll get even with you for having me turned down. You want to look out. Bill Shalleg is a bad man to have for an enemy. Come on, Ike," and with that they turned away and were soon lost in the throng. CHAPTER XVI JOE'S TRIUMPH "Well, what do you know about that?" cried Rad, with a queer look at Joe. "I don't know what to think about it, and that's the truth," was the simple but puzzled answer. "But who are they--what do they mean? The idea of them threatening you that way! Why, that's against the law!" "Maybe it is," agreed Joe. "As for who those men are, you know Wessel, of course." "Yes. The fellow who jumped his board bill at the hotel. Say, I guess the proprietor would like to see him. He has nerve coming back to this town. I've a good notion to tell the hotel clerk he's here. Mr. Watson would be glad to know it, too, for he takes it as a reflection on the team that Wessel should claim to be one of us, and then cheat the way he did." "Maybe it would be a good plan to tell on him," agreed Joe. "And who's the other chap, and why did he threaten you?" his chum asked. "That's another queer thing," the young pitcher went on. "He's angry at me, as near as I can tell, because I had to refuse him a loan," and he detailed the circumstances of his meeting with Shalleg. "But it's odd that he and Wessel should be chumming together. I've said little about it, but I've been wondering for a long time why Wessel quarreled with me. I begin to see a light now. It must have been that Shalleg put him up to it." "A queer game," admitted Rad. "Well, I think I'll put the hotel proprietor wise to the fact that he can collect that board bill from Ike Wessel." But Joe and Rad found their plans unexpectedly changed when they went to put them into effect. They were a little late getting back to the hotel from the grounds, as Joe had some purchases to make. And, as the two chums entered the lobby, they saw standing by the desk the two men in question. Mr. Watson was addressing Shalleg in no uncertain tones. "No, I tell you!" he exclaimed. "I won't have you on the team, and this is the last time I'll tell you. And I don't want you hanging around, either. You don't do us any good." "Is that your last word?" asked Shalleg, angrily. "Yes, my last word. I want you to clear out and leave us alone." "Huh! I guess you can't keep me away from games!" sneered Shalleg. "This is a free country." "Well, you keep away from my club," warned Mr. Watson, with great firmness. "I wouldn't have you as a bat-tender." The flushed and ill-favored face of Shalleg grew more red, if that were possible, and he growled: "Oh, don't let that worry you. Some day you may be glad to send for me to help pull your old club out of the cellar. Someone has been talking about me, that's the trouble; and if I find out who it is I'll make 'em sweat for it!" and he glared at Joe, who was too amazed at the strange turn of affairs to speak. Then the two cronies turned and started out of the hotel lobby. But Rad was not going to be foiled so easily. He slipped over to the clerk and whispered: "Say, that's the fellow who jumped his board bill, you know," and he nodded at Wessel. "Yes, I know," the clerk replied. "He just came in to settle. He apologized, and said he had to leave in a hurry," and the clerk winked his eye to show how much belief he placed in the story. "Hum!" mused Rad. "That's rather queer. He must have wanted to square matters up so he could come back to town safely." "Looks so," returned the clerk. Joe talked the matter over with his roommate, as to whether or not it would be advisable to tell Mr. Watson how Shalleg had threatened the young pitcher, and also whether to speak about the queer actions of Wessel. "But I think, on the whole," concluded Joe, "that I won't say anything; at least not yet a while. The boss has troubles enough as it is." "I guess you're right," agreed Rad. "But what about him being in our room that night?" asked Joe. "I wonder if I hadn't better speak of that?" "Oh, I don't know as I would," replied his chum. "In the first place, we can't be absolutely sure that it was he, though I guess you're pretty certain. Then, again, we didn't miss anything, and he could easily claim it was all a mistake--that he went in by accident--and we'd be laughed at for making such a charge." "Probably," agreed Joe. "As you say, I can't be dead sure, though I'm morally certain." "One of the porters might have opened our door by mistake," went on Rad. "You know the hotel workers have pass-keys. Better let it drop." And they did. Joe, however, often wondered, in case Wessel had entered his room, what his object could have been. But it was not until some time later that he learned. Shalleg and his crony were not seen around the hotel again, nor, for that matter, at the ball grounds, either--at least during the next week. Practice went on as usual, only it grew harder and more exacting. Joe was made to pitch longer and longer each day, and, though he did not get a chance to play in many games, and then only unimportant ones, still he was not discouraged. There were many shifts among the out and infield staff, the manager trying different players in order to get the best results. The pitching staff remained unchanged, however. Some more recruits were received, some of them remaining after a gruelling try-out, and others "falling by the wayside." In addition to pitching balls for Boswell to catch, and doing some stick work, Joe was required to practice with the other catchers of the team. "I want you to get used to all of them, Matson," said the manager. "There's no telling, in this business, when I may have to call on my youngsters. I want you to be always ready." "I'll try," promised Joe, with a smile. "You're coming on," observed Boswell, after a day of hard pitching, which had made Joe's arm ache. "You're coming on, youngster. I guess you're beginning to feel that working in a big league is different than in a minor; eh?" "It sure is!" admitted Joe, rubbing his aching muscles. "Well, you're getting more speed and better control," went on the veteran. "And you don't mind taking advice; that's what I like about you." "Indeed I'd be glad of any tips you could give me," responded Joe, earnestly. He did indeed realize that there was a hard road ahead of him, and he was a little apprehensive of the time when he might be called on to pitch against such a redoubtable team as the Giants. "Most folks think," went on Boswell, "that the chief advantage a pitcher has over a batter is his speed or his curves. Well, that isn't exactly so. The thing of it is that the batter has to guess whether the ball that's coming toward him is a swift straight one, or a comparatively slow curve. You see, he's got to make up his mind mighty quickly as to the speed of the horsehide, and he can't always do it. "Now, if a batter knew in advance just what the pitcher was going to deliver--whether a curve or a straight one, why that batter would have a cinch, so to speak. You may be the best twirler in the league, but you couldn't win your games if the batters knew what you were going to hand them--that is, knew in advance, I mean." "But that's what signals are for," exclaimed Joe. "I watch the catcher's signals, and if I think he's got the right idea I sign that I'll heave in what he's signalled for. If not, I'll make a switch." "Exactly," said the old player, "and that's what I'm coming to. If your signals are found out, where are you? Up in the air, so to speak. So you want to have several sets of signals, in order to change them in the middle of an inning if you find you're being double-crossed. There's lots of coaches who are fiends at getting next to the battery signs, and tipping them off to their batters. Then the batters know whether to step out to get a curve, or lay back to wallop a straight one. The signal business is more important than most players think." Joe believed this, and, at his suggestion, and on the advice of Boswell, a little later, a new signal system was devised between the pitchers and catchers. Joe worked hard to master it, for it was rather complicated. He wrote the system out, and studied it in his room nights. "Well, boys, a few weeks more and we'll be going home for the opening of the season," said Mr. Watson in the hotel lobby one day. "I see the Boston Braves are about through training, the Phillies are said to be all primed, and the Giants are ready to eat up all the rest of us." "Whom do we open with?" asked Joe. "The Cincinnati Reds," answered the manager. "The exact date isn't set yet, but it will be around the last of April. We've got some hard games here yet. I'm going to play some exhibitions on the way up North, to break you in gradually." More hard work and practice, and the playing of several games with the Reedville and other local nines soon brought the time of departure nearer. "This is our last week," Mr. Watson finally announced. "And I'm going to put you boys up against a good stiff proposition. We'll play the Nipper team Saturday, and I want to warn you that there are some former big leaguers on it, who can still hit and run and pitch, though they're not qualified for the big circuit. So don't go to the grounds with the idea that it'll be a cinch. Play your best. Of course I know you will, and win; but don't fall down!" Joe hoped he would be called on to pitch, but when the game started, before the biggest crowd that had yet assembled at the Reedville grounds, the umpire announced the Cardinal battery as Slim Cooney and Rob Russell. "Play ball!" came the signal, and the game was under way. To make the contest a little more even the St. Louis team were to bat first, giving the visitors the advantage of coming up last in the ninth inning. "Doolin up!" called the score keeper, and the lanky left-handed hitter strolled up to the plate, while Riordan, who was on deck, took up a couple of bats, swinging them about nervously to limber his arms. "Strike one!" bawled the umpire, at the first delivery of the visiting pitcher. Doolin turned with a look of disgust and stared at the arbiter, but said nothing. There was an exchange of signals between catcher and pitcher, and Joe watched to see if he could read them. But he could not. "Ball," was the next decision, and this time the pitcher looked pained. It got to be three and two, and the St. Louis team became rather interested. Doolin swung at the next with vicious force--and missed. "Strike three--batter's out!" announced the umpire, as the ball landed with a thud in the deep pit of the catcher's mitt. Doolin threw down his bat hard. "What's he got?" whispered Riordan, as he went forward. "Aw, nothing so much! This light bothers me, or I'd have hit for a three-sacker, believe me!" Riordan smiled, but he did little better. He hit, but the next man flied out. Rad was up next and hit a twisting grounder that just managed to evade the shortstop, putting Rad on first and advancing Riordan. But that was the end. The next man was neatly struck out, and a goose-egg went up in St. Louis's frame. "Got to get 'em, boys," announced the manager grimly, as the team went to the field. Cooney did not allow a hit that inning, but he was pounded for two when he was on the mound again, St. Louis in the meanwhile managing to get a run, through an error. "Say, this is some little team," declared Boswell admiringly. "I told you they were," replied the manager. "I want to see our boys work." And work they had to. The best pitcher in the world has his off days, and the best pitcher in the world may occasionally be pounded, as Slim Cooney was hit that day. How it happened no one could say, but the Nippers began to slide ahead, chiefly through hard hitting and excellent pitching. "This won't do," said Manager Watson as the sixth inning saw the score tied. "Matson, go out and warm up. I'm going to see what you can do. I'm taking a chance, maybe; but I'll risk it." Joe's heart beat fast. Here was his chance. Willard, who sat near him on the bench, muttered angrily under his breath. "If I can only do something!" thought Joe, anxiously. CHAPTER XVII "PLAY BALL!" "Come on, Joe, I'll catch for you," good-naturedly offered Doc Mullin, who had been "warming" the bench, Russell being behind the bat. "That'll give Rob a chance to rest, and he can take you on just before we go out." "Thanks," replied the young pitcher, and, flushing with pleasure, in this his triumph, though it was but a small one, he went out to the "bull-pen," to get some practice. "Huh! He'll make a fine show of us!" sneered Willard. "He can't make a much worse show than we've made of ourselves already," put in Cooney quickly. "I sure am off my feed to-day. I don't know what makes it." "Trained a little too fine, I guess," spoke the manager. "We'll take it a bit easy after this." "Speed 'em in, Joe. Vary your delivery, and don't forget the signals," advised Mullin, as the two were warming up. "And don't get nervous. You'll do all right." "I'm sure I hope so," responded Joe. He was getting more confidence in himself, but at that, when he stood on the mound, and had the ball in his hand he could not help a little twinge of "stage fright," or something akin to it. The batter stepped back, to allow the usual interchange of balls between pitcher and catcher, and then, when Joe nodded that he was ready, moved up to the plate, where he stood, swinging his bat, and waiting for the first one. The catcher, Russell, signalled for a swift, straight one, and, though Joe would rather have pitched his fadeaway, he nodded his head to show that he accepted. The ball whizzed from Joe's hand, and he felt a wave of apprehension, a second later, that it was going to be slammed somewhere out over the centre field fence. But, to his chagrin, he heard the umpire call: "Ball one!" The batter grinned cheerfully at Joe. "That won't happen again!" thought our hero fiercely. This time the catcher signalled for a teasing curve, and again Joe signified that he would deliver it. He did, and successfully, too. The batter made a half motion, as though he were going to strike at it, and then refrained, but the umpire called, in tones that were musical to Joe's ear: "Strike--one!" "He's feedin' 'em to 'em!" joyfully exclaimed Boswell to the manager. "Joe's feedin' 'em in, all right." "Too early to judge," replied the cautious manager. "Wait a bit." But Joe struck out his man, and a little applause came from his fellow players on the bench. "That's the way to do it, boy!" "Tease 'em along!" "We only need two more!" Thus they called encouragingly to him. Joe was hit once that half of the inning, and no runs came in. The score was still tie. "Now, boys, we've got to bat!" said the manager when his team came in. "We need three or four runs, or this game will make us ashamed to go back to St. Louis." There was a noticeable improvement as the Cardinals went to bat. Tom Dugan slammed out one that was good for three bases, and Dots McCann, by a double, brought in the needed run. The St. Louis boys were themselves again. The fact that the visiting pitcher was "going to pieces" rather helped, too. The Cardinals were two runs to the good when the inning ended. "Now we want to hold them there. It's up to you, Joe, and the rest of you boys!" exclaimed Mr. Watson as the leaguers again took the field. Joe had more confidence in himself now, though it oozed away somewhat when the first man up struck the ball savagely. But it was only a foul, and, though Russell tried desperately to get it, he could not. It was a case of three and two again, and Joe's nerves were tingling. "Hit it now, Red!" the friends of the visiting player besought him. "Bang it right on the nose!" "He hasn't anything on you!" "Nothing but a slow out!" "Slam out a home run!" There was a riot of cries. Joe calmed himself by an effort, and then sent in his fadeaway. It completely fooled the batter, who struck at it so hard that he swung around in a circle. "You're out!" called the umpire. Joe's heart beat with pride. But I must not dwell too long on that comparatively unimportant game, as I have other, and bigger ones, of which to write. Sufficient to say that, though there were a few scattering hits made off Joe, the visitors did not get another run, though they tried desperately in the last half of the ninth. But it was not to be, and St. Louis had the game by a good margin. "That's fine work, boys!" the manager greeted them. "Matson, you're coming on. I won't promise to pitch you against the Giants this season, unless all my other pitchers get 'Charlie-horse,'" he went on, "but I'll say I like your work." "Thanks!" murmured Joe, his heart warming to the praise. "Congratulations, old man!" cried Rad, as they went to the dressing rooms together. "You did yourself proud!" "I'm glad you think so. I wonder what sort of a story it will be when I go up against a big league team?" "Oh, you'll go up against 'em all right!" predicted his chum, "and you'll win, too!" Preparations for leaving Reedville were made. The training was over; hard work was now ahead for all. Nothing more was seen of Shalleg and Wessel, though they might have been at that last game, for all Joe knew. In order not to tire his players by a long jump home, especially as they were not to open at once on Robison Field, Manager Watson planned several exhibition games to be played in various cities and towns on the way. Thus the journey would occupy a couple of weeks. The players were on edge now, a little rest from the Nipper game having put them in fine trim. "They're ready for Giants!" energetically declared Boswell, who took great pride in his training work. "Hardly that," replied the manager, "but I think we can take care of the Cincinnati Reds when we stack up against them on opening day." The journey North was enjoyed by all, and some good games took place. One or two were a little close for comfort, but the Cardinals managed to pull out in time. Joe did some pitching, though he was not worked as often as he would have liked. But he realized that he was a raw recruit, in the company of many veterans, and he was willing to bide his time. Joe had learned more about baseball since getting into the big league than he ever imagined possible. He realized, as never before, what a really big business it was, involving, as it did, millions of dollars, and furnishing employment to thousands of players, besides giving enjoyment to millions of spectators. The home-coming of the Cardinals, from their trip up from the South, was an event of interest. St. Louis always did make much of her ball teams, and though the American Brown nine had arrived a day or so before our friends, and had been noisily welcomed, there was a no less enthusiastic reception for the Cardinals. There was a band, a cheering throng at the station, and any number of reporters, moving picture men and newspaper photographers. "Say, it's great; isn't it?" cried Joe to Rad. "It sure is, old man!" Joe wrote home an enthusiastic account of it all, and also penned a note to Mabel, expressing the hope that she and her brother would get to St. Louis on the occasion of some big game. "And I hope I pitch in it," Joe penned. A day of rest, then a week of practice on their own grounds, brought the opening date nearer for St. Louis. Joe and the other players went out to the park the morning of the opening day of the season. The grounds were in perfect shape, and the weather man was on his good behavior. "What kind of ball have the Reds been playing?" asked Joe of Rad, who was a "fiend" on baseball statistics. "Snappy," was the answer. "We'll have our work cut out for us!" "Think we can do 'em?" "Nobody can tell. I know we're going to try hard." "If I could only pitch!" murmured Joe. The grandstand was rapidly filling. The bleachers were already overflowing. The teams had marched out on the field, preceded by a blaring band. There had been a presentation of a floral horseshoe to Manager Watson. Then came some fast, snappy practice on both sides. Joe, who had only a faint hope of being called on, warmed up well. He took his turn at batting and catching, too. "They look to be a fast lot," observed Joe to Rad, as they watched the Reds at work. "Oh, yes, they're there with the goods." The game was called, and, as is often done, a city official pitched the first ball. This time it was the mayor, who made a wild throw. There was laughter, and cheers, the band blared out, and then the umpire called: "Play ball!" CHAPTER XVIII HOT WORDS That opening game, between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Cincinnati Reds, was not remarkable for good playing. Few opening games are, for the teams have not that fierce rivalry that develops later in the pennant season, and, though both try hard to win, they are not keyed up to the pitch that makes for a brilliant exhibition. So that opening game was neither better nor worse than hundreds of others. But, as we have to deal mostly with Baseball Joe in this book, I will centre my attention on him. His feelings, as he watched his fellow players in the field, the pitcher on the mound, and the catcher, girded like some ancient knight, may well be imagined. I fancy my readers, even if they are not baseball players, have been in much the same situation. Joe sat on the bench, "eating his heart out," and longing for the chance that he had small hopes would come to him. How he wished to get up there, and show what he could do, only he realized. But it was not to be. Manager Watson's Cardinals went into the game with a rush, and had three runs safely stowed away in the ice box the first inning, after having gracefully allowed the Reds to score a goose egg. Then came an uninteresting period, with both pitchers working their heads off, and nothing but ciphers going up on the score board. "By Jove, old man, do you think we'll win?" asked Cosey Campbell, as he came to the bench after ingloriously striking out, and looked at Joe. "I don't see why we shouldn't," responded Joe. "We've got 'em going." "Yes, I know, but you never can tell when we may strike a slump." "You seem terribly worried," laughed Joe. "Have you wagered a new necktie on the result?" "No," he answered, "but I am anxious. You see, Matson, there's a girl--I could point her out to you in one of the boxes; but maybe she wouldn't like it," he said, craning his neck and going out from under the shelter of the players' bench and looking at the crowd in the grandstand. "Oh, that's all right, I'll take your word for it," said Joe, for he appreciated the other's feelings. "A girl, you understand, Matson. She's here to see the game," went on Campbell. "I sent her tickets, and I told her we were sure to win. She's here, and I'm going to take her out to supper to-night. I've got the stunningest tie----" He fumbled in his pocket. "Thought I had a sample of it here with me," he said. "But I haven't. It's sort of purple--plum color--with a shooting of gold, and it shimmers down into a tango shade. It's a peach! I was going to wear it to-night, but, if we don't win----" His face showed his misery. "Oh, cut it out!" advised Rad, coming up behind him. "We can't lose. Don't get mushy over an old tie." "It isn't an old tie!" stormed Campbell. "It's a new one I had made to order. Cost me five bones, too. It's a peach!" "Well, you'll wear it, all right," said Joe with a laugh. "I don't see how we can lose." The Cardinals were near it, though, in the seventh inning, when, with only one out, and three on bases, Slim Cooney was called on to face one of the hardest propositions in baseball. But he made good, and not a man crossed home plate. And so the game went on, now and then a bit of sensational fielding, or a pitcher tightening up in a critical place, setting the crowd to howling. It was nearing the close of the contest. It looked like the Cardinals, for they were three runs to the good, and it was the ending of the eighth inning. Only phenomenal playing, at this stage, could bring the Reds in a winner. Some of the crowd, anticipating the event, were already leaving, probably to catch trains, or to motor to some resort. "Well, it's a good start-off," said Rad to Joe, as he started out to the field, for the beginning of the ninth. "Yes, but it isn't cinched yet." "It will be soon." The Reds were at bat, and Joe, vainly wishing that he had had a chance to show what he could do, pulled his sweater more closely about him, for the day was growing cool. Then Batonby, one of the reserve players, strolled up to him. "You didn't get in, either," he observed, sitting down. "No. Nor you." "But I've been half-promised a chance in the next game. Say, it's fierce to sit it out; isn't it?" "It sure is." "Hear of any new players coming to us?" Batonby wanted to know. "Haven't heard," said Joe. The game was over. The Cardinals did not go to bat to end the last inning, having the game by a margin of three runs. The players walked across the field to the clubhouse, the spectators mingling with them. "Did you hear anything about a fellow named Shalleg, who used to play in the Central League, coming to us?" asked Batonby, as he caught up to Joe and Rad, who had walked on ahead. "No," answered Joe quickly. "That is, I have heard of him, but I'm pretty sure he isn't coming with us." "What makes you think so?" "Why, I heard Mr. Watson tell him----" "Say, if I hear you retailing any more stuff about me I'll take means to make you stop!" cried an angry voice behind Joe, and, wheeling around, he beheld the inflamed face of Shalleg, the man in question. "I've heard enough of your talk about me!" the released player went on. "Now it's got to quit. I won't have it! Cut it out! I'll settle with you, Matson, if I hear any more out of you," and he shook his fist angrily at Joe. CHAPTER XIX JOE GOES IN Batonby looked wonderingly, first at Joe, and then at Shalleg. The latter's crony did not seem to be with him. "What's the row, old top?" asked Batonby easily. "Who are you, anyhow, and what's riled you?" "Never you mind what's riled me! You'll find out soon enough," was the sharp answer. "I heard you two chaps talking about me, and I want it stopped!" "Guess you're a little off, sport. I wasn't talking about you, for I haven't the doubtful honor of your acquaintance." "None of your impudence!" burst out Shalleg. Joe had not yet spoken. "And I don't want any of yours," fired back Batonby, slapping his glove from one hand to the other. "I say I wasn't talking about you!" "I say you were. My name is Shalleg!" Batonby let out a whistle of surprise. "Is that the one?" he asked of Joe. The latter nodded. "Well, all I've got to say," went on Batonby, "is that I hope you don't get on our team. And, for your information," he went on, as he saw that Shalleg was fairly bursting with passion, "I'll add that all I said about you was that I heard you were trying to get on the Cardinals. As for Matson, he said even less about you." "That's all right, but you fellows want to look out," mumbled Shalleg, who seemed nonplused on finding that he had no good grounds for a quarrel. "And I want to add," broke in Joe, who felt that he had a right to say something in his own behalf, "I want to add that I'm about through with hearing threats from you, Mr. Shalleg," and he accented the prefix. "I haven't said anything against you, and I don't expect to, unless you give me cause. You've been following me about, making unjustified remarks, and it's got to stop!" "Hurray!" cried Batonby. "That's the kind of mustard to give him. Heave at it again, Joe!" The young pitcher stood facing his enemy fearlessly, but he had said enough. Shalleg growled out: "Well, somebody's been talking about me to the manager, giving me a bad name, and it's got to stop. If I find out who did it, he'll wish he hadn't," and he glared vindictively at Joe. "I guess his own actions have given him the bad name," remarked Batonby, as the dismissed player turned aside and walked off to join the throng that had surged away from the little group. "That's about it," agreed Joe, as Rad came up and joined them. "Good work, old man!" said our hero, for Rad had done well. "I came mighty near making an error, though, toward the last," Rad responded. "Guess I'm not used to such strenuous life as playing nine innings in a big game. My heart was in my throat when I saw that fly ball coming toward me." "But you froze on to it," said Batonby. "Hello, what's up?" asked Rad quickly, for Joe's face still showed the emotion he felt at the encounter with Shalleg. "Had a row?" asked Rad. "Rather," admitted the young pitcher. "Shalleg was on deck again." "Say, that fellow, and his side partner, Wessel, ought to be put away during the ball season!" burst out Rad. "They're regular pests!" Joe heartily agreed with him, as he related the circumstances of the last affair. Then the friends passed on to the clubhouse, where the game was played over again, as usual, a "post-mortem" being held on it. Only, in this case the Cardinals, being winners, had no excuses to make for poor playing. They were jubilant over the auspicious manner in which the season had opened. "Boys. I'm proud of you!" exclaimed Manager Watson as he strolled through. "Do this often enough, and we'll have that pennant sure." "Yes, a fat chance we have!" muttered Willard, sulkily. "That's no way for a member of the team to talk!" snapped "Muggins." Willard did not reply. It was clear that he was disgruntled because he had not had a chance to pitch. Then the splashing of the shower baths drowned other talk, and presently the players, fresh and shining from their ablutions, strolled out of the clubhouse. "Got anything on to-night?" asked Rad of Joe, as they reached the hotel. "Nothing special--why?" "Let's go down to the Delaware Garden, and hear the Hungarian orchestra. There's good eating there, too." "I'm with you. Got to write a letter, though." "Tell her how the game went, I s'pose?" laughed Rad. "Something like that," agreed Joe, smiling. He bought an evening paper, which made a specialty of sporting news. It contained an account of the opening game, with a skeletonized outline of the plays, inning by inning. The Cardinals were properly congratulated for winning. Joe wished he could have read his name in the story, but he felt he could bide his time. Joe and Rad enjoyed their little excursion to the Delaware Garden that evening, returning to the hotel in good season to get plenty of sleep, for they were to play the Reds again the next day. There were four games scheduled, and then the Cardinals would go out on the circuit, remaining away about three weeks before coming back for a series on Robison Field. The tables were turned in the next game. The Cincinnati team, stinging from their previous defeat, played strong ball. They sent in a new pitcher, and with a lead of three runs early in the contest it began to look bad for the Cardinals. "I'll get no chance to-day," reasoned Joe, as he saw a puzzled frown on Mr. Watson's face. Joe knew that only a veteran would be relied on to do battle now, and he was right. Mr. Watson used all his ingenuity to save the game. He put in pinch hitters, and urged his three pitchers to do their best. Willard was allowed to open the game, but was taken out after the first inning, so fiercely was he pounded. Cooney and Barter had been warming up, and the latter went in next. "You go warm up, too, Matson," directed Boswell, "though it's doubtful if we'll have to use you." Joe hoped they would, but it was only a faint hope. Barter did a little better, but the Reds had a batting streak on that day, and found his most puzzling curves and drops. Then, too, working the "hit and run" feature to the limit and stealing bases, which in several cases was made possible by errors on the part of the Cardinals, soon gave the Reds a comfortable lead of five runs. "I'm afraid they've got us," grumbled the manager, as he substituted a batter to enable Cooney to go in the game. "You've got to pull us out, Slim," he added. Slim grinned easily, not a whit disconcerted, for he was a veteran. But though he stopped the winning streak of the Reds, he could not make runs, and runs are what win ball games. With his best nine in the field the manager tried hard to overcome the advantage of his opponents. It looked a little hopeful in the eighth inning, when there were two men on bases, second and third, and only one out, with "Slugger" Nottingham at the plate. "Now, then, a home run, old man!" pleaded the crowd. "Soak it on the nose!" "Over the fence!" "A home run means three tallies, old man. Do it now!" Nottingham stood easily at the plate, swinging his bat. There was an interchange of signals between catcher and pitcher--a slight difference of opinion, it seemed. Then the ball was thrown. There was a resounding crack, and the crowd started to yell. "Go it, old man, go it!" "That's the pie!" "Oh, that's a beaut!" But it was not. It was a nice little fly, to be sure, but the centre fielder, running in, had it safely before the batter reached first. Then, with Nottingham out, the ball was hurled home to nip the runner at the plate. Dugan, who had started in from third, ran desperately, and slid in a cloud of dust. "You're out!" howled the umpire, waving him to the bench. "He never touched me!" retorted Dugan. "I was safe by a mile!" "Robber!" shrieked the throng in the bleachers. "Get a pair of glasses!" "He was never out!" The umpire listened indifferently to the tirade. Dugan dusted off his uniform, and, losing his temper, shook his fist at the umpire, sneering: "You big fat----" and the rest of it does not matter. "That'll cost you just twenty-five dollars, and you can go to the clubhouse," said the umpire, coolly. Dugan's face fell, and Manager Watson flushed. He bit his lips to keep from making a retort. But, after all, the umpire was clearly within his rights. In silence Dugan left the field, and the Reds, who were jubilant over the double play, came in from the diamond. "The fat's in the fire now, for sure," sighed Rad, "with Dugan out of the game. Hang it all, anyhow!" "Oh, we can't win every time," and Joe tried to speak cheerfully. And so the Reds won the second of the first series of games. There was a rather stormy scene in the clubhouse after it was over, and Mr. Watson did some plain talking to Dugan. But, after all, it was too common an occurrence to merit much attention, and, really, nothing very serious had occurred. The contest between the Reds and Cardinals was an even break, each team taking two. Then came preparations for the Cardinals taking the road. A series of four games with the Chicago Cubs was next in order, and there, in the Windy City, St. Louis fared rather better, taking three. "I wonder if I'm ever going to get a chance," mused Joe, who had been sent to the "bull-pen" many times to warm up, but as yet he had not been called on. After games with the Pittsburg Pirates, in which an even break was registered, the Cardinals returned to St. Louis. As they had an open date, a game was arranged with one of the Central League teams, the Washburgs. "Say, I would like to pitch against them!" exclaimed Joe. And he had his chance. When the practice was over Manager Watson, with a smile at our hero, said, with a friendly nod: "Joe, you go in and see what you can do." Joe was to have his first big chance. CHAPTER XX STAGE FRIGHT Joe was a little nervous at first, but it was like being among old friends to work against the Washburg team. "How's your head, Joe?" asked some of the players whom he knew well, from having associated with them in the Central League. "Had to get larger sized caps?" asked another. "Don't you believe it!" exclaimed the Washburg catcher. "Joe Matson isn't that kind of a chap!" and Joe was grateful to him. The game was not so easy as some of the Cardinal players had professed to believe it would be. Not all of the first string men went in, but they were in reserve, to be used if needed. For baseball is often an uncertainty. Joe looked around at the grandstands and bleachers as he went out for warm-up practice. There was a fair-sized crowd in attendance, but nothing like the throng that would have been present at a league game. "But I'll pitch before a big crowd before I'm through the season!" declared Joe to himself, though it was not clear how this was to be brought about. Washburg had a good team, and knew how to make everything tell. They led off with a run, which, however, was due to an error on the part of two of the Cardinals. Joe was a little put out by it, for he had allowed only scattering hits that inning. "Better try to tighten up--if you can," advised Boswell, as our hero came to the bench. "They're finding you a bit." "They won't--any more!" exclaimed Joe, fiercely. The Washburg pitcher was a good one, as Joe knew, so it was not surprising that he was not so very badly batted. In fact, it was hard work for the Cardinals to garner three runs during their half of the first inning. But they got them. Joe had the advantage of knowing considerable about the various batters who faced him, so it was easier than it would have been for another pitcher to deceive them. He varied his delivery, used his fadeaway and his cross-fire, and had the satisfaction of pitching three innings during which he did not allow a hit. "That's the way to do it!" exclaimed his friend Boswell, the coach. "Hold 'em to that, and you'll have a look-in at a big game, soon." And Joe did. In vain did the Washburgs send in their best pinch hitters; in vain did they try to steal bases. Twice Joe nipped the man at first, who was taking too big a lead, and once the young pitcher stopped a hot liner that came driving right at him. Then the story was told, and the Cardinals romped home easy winners. Joe had done well, even though the Washburgs were not exactly big leaguers. In the weeks that followed, Joe worked hard. There was constant morning practice, when the weather allowed it, and the work on the circuit was exacting. Occasionally Joe went in as relief pitcher, when the game was safe in the "ice box," but the chance he wanted was to pitch against the New Yorks at St. Louis. For the Giants were at the top of the league now, and holding on to their pennant place with grim tenacity. In turn Joe and his fellow players went to Philadelphia, New York and Boston, eventually playing all around the circuit, but, as yet, the young pitcher had had no real chance to show what he could do. It was irksome--it was even heart-breaking at times; but Joe had to stand it. Sometimes he felt that he could do better than Barter, Willard and Cooney, the seasoned veterans, and especially was this so when the game went against the Cardinals. For the St. Louis team was falling sadly behind. They were next to the tail-enders for some time, and the outlook was dubious. The papers alternately roasted and poked fun at the Cardinals, and Manager Watson was urged to "do something." Various remedies were suggested. New players might be had, and in fact some exchanges were made. Another catcher was imported, from the Detroits, and a new shortstop engaged in a trade. But the pitching staff remained unchanged. Then some reporter, looking for "copy," saw a chance in Joe, and in a snappy little article reviewed Joe's career, ending with: "If Mr. Watson wants to see his Cardinals crawl up out of the subway why doesn't he give Matson a chance? The youngster can pitch good ball, and the line of twirling that has been handed out by the Cardinals thus far this season would be laughable, were it not lamentable." Of course that article made trouble for Joe, especially with the pitching staff. "Say, how much did you slip that reporter to pull off that dope about you?" inquired Willard with a sneer. "What do you mean?" asked Joe indignantly. "I mean how much coin did you pay him?" "You know I didn't have anything to do with it!" our hero fired back. "He asked me for my record, and I gave it to him. I didn't know he was going to write that." "A likely story," grumbled Willard. The other pitchers did not say so much, but it was clear they did not like the "roasting" they got. But it was not Joe's doing. There were shifts and re-shifts, there were hard feelings manifested, and gotten over. But nothing could disguise the fact that the Cardinals were in a "slump." Loyal as the St. Louis "fans" were to their teams, when they were on the winning side, it was not in human nature to love a losing nine. So that it got to be the fashion to refer to the Cardinals as "losing again." And this did not make for good ball playing, either. There were sore hearts among the players when they assembled in the clubhouse after successive defeats. Not that the Cardinals lost all the time. No team could do that, and stay in the big league. But they never got to the top of the second division, and even that was not much of an honor to strive for. Still, it was better than nothing. Joe pitched occasionally, and, when he did there was a little improvement, at times. But of course he was not a veteran, and once or twice he was wild. Then the paper which bore the least friendliness to the Cardinals took a different tack. It laughed at the manager for sending in a young pitcher when a veteran was needed. "Say, I'd like to know just what those fellows want me to do!" Mr. Watson exclaimed one day, after a particularly severe roast. "I can't seem to please 'em, no matter what I do." "Don't let 'em get your goat," advised his coach. "Go on. Keep going. We'll strike a winning streak yet, and mark my words, it will be Joe Matson who'll pull us out of a hole." "He hasn't done so well yet," objected Mr. Watson, dubiously. "No, and it's because he hasn't exactly found himself. He is a bit nervous yet. Give him time." "And stay in the cellar?" "Well, but what are you going to do?" reasoned the other. "Cooney and Barter aren't pitching such wonderful ball." "No, that's true, but they can generally pull up in a tight place. I'd send Matson in oftener than I do, only I'm afraid he'll blow up when the crises comes. He is a good pitcher, I admit that, but he isn't seasoned yet. The Central League and the National are a wide distance apart." "That's true. But I'd like to see him have his chance." "Well, I'll give it to him. We play Boston next week. They happen to be in the second division just at present, although they seem to be going up fast. I'll let Joe go up against them." "That won't be as good as letting him go against New York," said Boswell. "Well, it'll have to do," decided the manager, who could be very set in his ways at times. The Braves proved rather "easy," for the Cardinals and, as Boswell had indicated, there was little glory for Joe in pitching against them. He won his game, and this, coupled with the fact that the reporter friendly to Joe made much of it, further incensed the other pitchers. "Don't mind 'em," said Rad, and Joe tried not to. The season was advancing. Try as the Cardinals did, they could not get to the top of the second division. "And if we don't finish there I'll feel like getting out of the game," said the manager gloomily, after a defeat. "Pitch Matson against the Giants," advised the coach. "By Jove! I'll do it!" cried the manager, in desperation. "We open with New York at St. Louis next week for four games. I'll let Matson see what he can do, though I reckon I'll be roasted and laughed at for taking such a chance." "Well, maybe not," the coach replied, chuckling. In the meanwhile Joe had been working hard. Under the advice of Boswell he adopted new training tactics, and he had his arm massaged by a professional between games. He was surprised at the result of the new treatment, and he found he was much fresher after a hard pitching battle than he had been before. "He thinks he's going to be a Boy Wonder," sneered Willard. "Oh, cut it out!" snapped Boswell. "If some of you old stagers would take better care of yourselves there'd be better ball played." "Huh!" sneered Willard. The Cardinals came back to St. Louis to play a series with New York. "Wow!" exclaimed Rad as he and Joe, discussing the Giants' record, were sitting together in the Pullman on their way to their home city, "here's where it looks as if we might get eaten up!" "Don't cross a bridge before you hear it barking at you," advised Joe. "Maybe they won't be so worse. We're on our own grounds, that's sure." "Not much in that," decided his chum, dubiously. When Joe reached the hotel he found several letters awaiting him. One, in a girl's handwriting, he opened first. "Does she still love you?" laughed Rad, noticing his friend's rapt attention. "Dry up! She's coming on to St. Louis." "She is? Good! Will she see you play?" "Well, I don't know. It doesn't look as though I was going to get a game--especially against New York." "Cheer up! There might be something worse." "Yes, I might have another run-in with Shalleg." "That's so. Seen anything of him lately?" "No, but I hear he's been writing letters to Mr. Watson, intimating that if the boss wants to see the team come up out of the subway, Shalleg is the man to help." "Some nerve; eh?" "I should say so!" It was a glorious sunny day, perhaps too hot, but that makes for good baseball, for it limbers up the players. The grandstand and bleachers were rapidly filling, and out on the well-kept diamond of Robison Field the rival teams--the Cardinals and the Giants--were practicing. Mabel Varley and her brother had come to St. Louis, stopping off on business, and Joe had called on them. "I'm coming out to see you play," Mabel announced after the greetings at the hotel. "I'm afraid you won't," said Joe, somewhat gloomily. "Why not?" she asked in surprise. "Aren't you on the pitching staff?" "Yes, but perhaps you haven't been keeping track of where the Cardinals stand in the pennant race." "Oh, yes, I have!" she laughed, and blushed. "I read the papers every day." "That's nice. Then you know we're pretty well down?" "Yes, but the season isn't half over yet. I think you'll do better." "I sure do hope so," murmured Joe. "But, for all that, I am afraid you won't see me pitch to-day. Mr. Watson won't dare risk me, though I think I could do some good work. I'm feeling fine." "Oh, I do hope you get a chance!" Mabel exclaimed enthusiastically. "Anyhow, I'm going to have one of the front boxes, and there are to be some girl friends with me. You know them, I think--Hattie Walsh and Jean Douglass." "Oh, yes, I remember them," Joe said. "Well, I hope you see us win, but I doubt it." And now, as the game was about to start, Joe looked up and saw, in one of the front boxes, Mabel and her friends. He went over to speak to them, as he walked in from practice. "For good luck!" said Mabel softly, as she gave him one of the flowers she was wearing. "Thanks," and Joe blushed. As yet the battery of the Cardinals had not been announced. Clearly Manager Watson was in a quandary. He and Boswell consulted together, while the players waited nervously. Some of the newspaper reporters, anxious to flash some word to their papers, asked who was to pitch. "I'll let you know in a few minutes," was the manager's answer. And then, as the time for calling the game approached, Mr. Watson handed his batting order to the umpire. The latter stared at it a moment before making the announcement. He seemed a trifle surprised. "Batteries!" he called through his megaphone. "For New York, Hankinson and Burke--for St. Louis--Matson and Russell." Joe was to pitch, and in the biggest game he had ever attempted! There was a rushing and roaring in his ears, and for a moment he could not see clearly. "Go to it, Matson," said the manager. "I'm going to try you out." Joe's lips trembled. He was glad his teammates could not know how he felt. Nervously he walked out to the mound, and caught the new ball which the umpire divested of its foil cover and tossed to him. Russell girded himself in protector and mask, and the batter stepped back to allow the usual practice balls. Someone in a box applauded. Joe could not see, but he knew it was Mabel. "Oh, Joe's going to pitch!" she exclaimed to her girl friends. "I hope he strikes them all out!" "Not much chance," her brother said, rather grimly. Joe sent the first ball whizzing in. It went so wild that the catcher had to jump for it. There was a murmur from the stands, and some of the Giants grinned at one another. Russell signalled to Joe that he wanted to speak to him. Pitcher and catcher advanced toward one another. "What's the matter?" Russell wanted to know, while some in the crowd laughed at the conference. "Got stage fright?" "Ye--yes," stammered Joe. Poor Joe, he had a bad case of nerves. "Say, look here!" exclaimed Russell with a intentional fierceness. "If you don't get over it, and pitch good ball, I'll give you the best beating up you ever had when we get to the clubhouse! I'm not going to stand being laughed at because you're such a rotten pitcher! Do you get me!" and he leered savagely at Joe. The effect on the young pitcher was like an electric shock. He had never been spoken to like that before. But it was just the tonic he needed. "I get you," he said briefly. "It's a good thing you do!" said Russell brutally, and, as he walked back to his place his face softened. "I hated to speak that way to the lad," he murmured to himself, "but it was the only way to get him over his fright." CHAPTER XXI A QUEER MESSAGE The next practice ball Joe sent in went cleanly over the plate, and landed with a thud in the catcher's glove. Russell nodded at Joe, to indicate that was what he wanted. "Play ball!" directed the umpire, and the batter moved up closer to the plate. Stooping low, and concealing his signal with his big glove, Russell called for a straight, swift ball. Joe gave it, and as it was in the proper place, though the striker did not attempt to hit it, the umpire called: "Strike--one!" Indignantly the batter looked around, but it was only done for effect. He knew it was a strike. "That's the way. Now we've got 'em!" cried Boswell from the coaching line. "Ball one," was the next decision of the umpire, and Joe felt a little resentment, for he had made sure it went over the plate. But there was little use to object. A curve was next called for, and Joe succeeded in enticing the batter to strike at it. But the stick missed the horsehide cleanly. It was two strikes. "Pretty work! Oh, pretty work!" howled Boswell. A foul next resulted, and Russell missed it by inches. The batter had still another chance. But it availed him little, for Joe fooled him on the next one. "Good!" nodded the catcher to the young pitcher, and Joe felt his vision clearing now. He looked over toward where Mabel was sitting. She smiled encouragingly at him. The New Yorks got one hit off Joe that inning, but, though the man on first stole second, after Joe had tried to nip him several times, the other two men struck out, and a goose egg went up in the first frame. "Well, if you can do that eight more times the game is ours, if we can only get one run," said Manager Watson, as Joe came up to the bench, smiling happily. "I'll try," was all he said. But the Cardinals did not get their run that inning, nor the next nor the next nor next. The game ran along for five innings with neither side crossing home plate, and talk of a "pitchers' battle" began to be heard. Joe was pitching remarkably well, allowing only scattering hits. The Giants could not seem to bunch them. Then, as might have been expected, Joe had a bit of bad luck. There had been hard work for him that day--hard and nervous work, and it told on him. He was hit for a two-bagger, and the next man walked, though Joe thought some of the decisions unfair. Then the runner attempted to steal third. There was a wild throw, and the man came in, scoring the first run. Joe felt a wave of chagrin sweep over him. He felt that the game was going. "Tighten up! Tighten up!" he heard Boswell call to him. By a determined effort he got himself well in hand, and then amid the cheers of the crowd he succeeded in striking out the other men up, so that only the one run was in. But the pace was telling on Joe. He gave two men their base on balls the next time he pitched, and by a combination of circumstances, two more runs were made before the Giants were retired. "This won't do," murmured Mr. Watson. "I'm afraid I'll have to take Joe out." "Don't," advised Boswell. "He'll be all right, but if you take him out now you'll break him all up. I think he could have a little better support." "Possibly. The fielding is a bit shaky. I'll send in Lawson to bat for Campbell." This change resulted in a marked improvement With a mighty clout Lawson knocked a home run, and, as there was a man on third, that two. From then on the Cardinals seemed to find themselves. They began coming back in earnest, and everyone "got the habit." Even Joe, proverbially poor hitters as pitchers are supposed to be, did his share, and, by placing a neat little drive, that eluded the shortstop, he brought in another needed run. "One ahead now! That's fine!" cried Rad to his chum, though Joe "died" on second. "If we can only hold 'em down----" and he looked questioningly at the young pitcher. "I'll do it!" cried Joe, desperately. It did not look as though he would, though, when the first man up, after receiving three and two, was allowed to walk. Joe felt a bit shaky, but he steeled himself to hold his nerve. The man at first was a notorious base-stealer, and Joe watched him closely. Twice he threw to the initial sack, hoping to nip him, and he almost succeeded. Then he slammed in a swift one to the batter, only to know that the runner started for second. But it did him little good to do it, for though he made third, Joe struck out his three men amid a wave of applause. "One more like that, and we've got the game!" cried Mr. Watson. "It's up to you, Joe. But if you can't stand it I'll send in Slim." "I'll stand it," was the grim answer, though Joe's arm ached. And stand it Joe did. He was hit once in that last inning, and one man got his base on balls. And then and there Joe gave a remarkably nervy exhibition. He nipped the man on first, and then in quick succession succeeded in fooling the two batters next up. "That's the eye!" "The Cardinals win!" "What's the matter with Joe Matson?" "He's all right!" The crowd went wild, as it had a right to do, and Joe's face was as red with pleasure as the nickname of his team. For he had had a large share in defeating the redoubtable Giants, though to the credit of that team be it said that several of its best players were laid up, and, at a critical part in the game their best hitter was ruled out for abusing the umpire. But that took away nothing from Baseball Joe's glory. "Oh, I'm so glad you won!" cried Mabel, as he passed her box. "Isn't it glorious?" "It sure is," he admitted with a smile. "Can't you take dinner with us at the hotel?" she went on, and Joe blushingly agreed. The other girls smiled at him, and Reggie nodded in a friendly manner. "Great work, old man!" called Mabel's brother. "It was a neat game." Then Joe hurried off to have a shower, and dress, and in the clubhouse he was hailed genially by his fellow players. "Good work, Joe!" "I didn't think you had it in you." "This sure will make the Giants feel sore." As for Manager Watson, he looked at Joe in a manner that meant much to the young pitcher. "I told you so!" said the old coach to the manager, later that day. "Yes, you did," admitted the latter. "Of course I knew Joe had good stuff in him, but I didn't think it would come out so soon. He may help pull us up out of the cellar yet." Joe enjoyed the little dinner with Mabel and her friends that night, as he had seldom before taken pleasure in a gathering. Rad was one of the guests, and later they went to the theatre, as there was no game next day. But if the Cardinals expected to repeat their performance they were disappointed. Joe was started in another contest, and he was glad Mabel was not present, for somehow he could not keep control of the balls, and following a rather poor exhibition, he was taken out after the fourth inning. But it was too late to save the game. "Never mind, we got one of the four, and it was due to you," consoled Rad, when the series was over. "And you've found out what it is to stack up against the Giants." Joe had had his "baptism of fire," and it had done him good. The St. Louis team was to take the road again, after a time spent in the home town, where they had somewhat improved their standing. "Got anything to do this evening?" asked Rad, as they were coming back from the ball park, after a final game with Boston. "No." "Then let's go to the Park Theatre. There's a good hot-weather show on." "I'm with you." "All right. I've got to go down town, but I'll be back before it's time to go," Rad went on. Joe dressed, and waited around the hotel lobby for his friend to return. It grew rather late, and Joe glanced uneasily at the clock. He was rather surprised, as he stood at the hotel desk, to hear his name spoken by a messenger boy who entered. "Matson? There he is," and the clerk indicated our hero. "Sign here," said the boy, shortly. Joe wondered if the telegram contained bad news from home. Giving the lad a dime tip, Joe opened the envelope with fingers that trembled, and then he read this rather queer message: "If you want to do your friend Rad a good turn, come to the address below," and Joe recognized the street as one in a less desirable section of the city. CHAPTER XXII IN DANGER "Bad news?" asked the hotel clerk, as he noticed the look on Joe's face. "No--yes--well, it's unexpected news," hesitated Joe, as he made up his mind, on the instant, not to tell the contents of the note. He wanted a little time to think. Rapidly he read the message over again. The boy was just shuffling out of the hotel. "Wait a minute!" Joe called after him. "Where'd you get this note?" the young pitcher asked. "At de office." "Yes, I know. But who brought it in?" "I dunno. Youse'll have to see de manager." "Oh, all right," Joe assented, and then he turned aside. He was still in a quandary as to what to do. Once more he read the note. "'If you want to do your friend Rad a good turn,'" he repeated. "Of course I do, but what does it mean? Rad can't be in trouble, or he'd have sent me some word himself. That isn't a very good neighborhood at night, but I guess I can take care of myself. The trouble is, though, if I go out, and Rad comes back here in the meanwhile, what will happen?" Joe was thinking hard, trying to find some solution of the mystery, and then a flash came to him. "Baseball!" he whispered to himself. "Maybe it is something to do with baseball! Someone may be scouting for Rad, and want to find out, on the quiet, if he's willing to help in making a shift to some other team. They want me to aid them, perhaps." Joe had been long enough in organized baseball to know that there are many twists and turns to it, and that many "deals" are carried on in what might be considered an underhand manner. Often, when rival organizations in the baseball world are at war, the various managers, and scouts, go to great lengths, and secretly, to get some player they consider valuable. "Maybe some rival club is after Rad and doesn't want its plans known," mused Joe. "That must be it. They know he and I are chums, and they come to me first. Well, I sure do want to help Rad, but I don't want to see him leave the Cardinals. I guess I'll take a chance and go down there. I'll leave word at the desk that I'll meet Rad at the theatre. That will be the best. I can telephone back to the hotel, after I go to this address, and find out if Rad has been back here. I'll go." Stuffing the queer note into his pocket, Joe started off, catching a car that would take him near the address given. Before leaving, he arranged with the hotel clerk to tell Rad that he would meet him at the theatre. It was a rather dark, and quite lonesome, street in which Joe found himself after leaving the street car. On either side were tall buildings that shut out much of the light by day, while at night they made the place a veritable canyon of gloom. There were big warehouses and factories with, here and there, a smaller building, and some ramshackle dwellings that had withstood the encroachment of business. Some of these latter had fallen into decay, and others were being used as miserable homes by those who could afford no better. In one or two, saloons held forth, the light from their swinging doors making yellow patches on the dark pavement. "I wouldn't like to have to live down here," mused Joe, as he picked his way along, looking, as best he could, for the number given in the note. "It's a queer place to appoint a meeting, but I suppose the baseball fellows don't want to be spied on. I'll be glad when I'm through." Joe walked on a little farther. The neighborhood seemed to become more deserted and lonesome. From afar off came the distant hum and roar of the city, but all around Joe was silence, broken, now and then, by the sound of ribald laughter from the occasional saloons. "Ah, here's the place!" exclaimed Joe, as he stood in front of one of the few dwellings in the midst of the factories. "It looks gloomy enough. I wonder who can be waiting to see me here about Rad? Well, there's a light, anyhow." As Joe approached the steps of the old house he saw, at one side of the door, a board on which were scrawled the words: _Peerless Athletic Club_ "Hum! Must be a queer sort of club," mused Joe. "I guess they do more exercise with their tongues, and with billiard cues, than with their muscles." For, as he mounted the steps, he heard from within the click of billiard and pool balls, and the noise of talk and laughter. It was one of the so-called "athletic" clubs, that often abound in low neighborhoods, where the name is but an excuse for young "toughs" to gather. Under the name, and sometimes incorporation of a "club," they have certain rights and privileges not otherwise obtainable. They are often a political factor, and the authorities, for the sake of the votes they control, wink at minor violations of the law. It was to such a place as this that Joe had come--or, in view of what happened afterward, had been lured would be the more proper term. "Well, what do youse want?" asked an ill-favored youth, as Joe entered the poorly lighted hall. The fellow had his hat tilted to one side, and a cigarette was glued to one lip, moving up and down curiously as he spoke. "I don't know who I want," said Joe, as pleasantly as he could. "I was told to come here to do my friend Rad Chase a favor. I'm Joe Matson, of the Cardinals, and----" "Oh, yes. He's expectin' youse. Go on in," and the fellow nodded toward a back room, the door of which stood partly open. Joe hesitated a moment, while the youth who had spoken to him went out and stood on the half-rotting steps. Then, deciding that, as he had come thus far, he might as well see the thing through, Joe started for the rear room. But, as he reached the door, and heard a voice speaking, he hesitated. For what he heard was this: "S'posin' he don't come?" "Aw, he'll come all right, Wessel," said another voice. "He sure is stuck on his friend Rad, and he'll want to know what he can do for him. He'll come, all right." "Shalleg!" gasped Joe, as he recognized the tones. "It's a trick. He thinks he can trap me here!" As he turned to go, Joe heard Wessel say: "There won't be no rough work; will there?" "Oh, no! Not too rough!" replied Shalleg with a nasty laugh. Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, Joe was hastening away when he accidentally knocked over a box in the hall. Instantly the door to the rear room was thrown wide open, giving the young pitcher, as he turned, a glimpse of Shalleg, Wessel and several other men seated about a table, playing cards. "Who's there?" cried Shalleg. Then, as he saw Joe hurrying away, he added: "Hold on, Matson. I sent for you. I want to see you!" "But I don't want to see you!" Joe called back over his shoulder. "Say, this is straight goods!" cried Shalleg, pushing back his chair from the table, the legs scraping over the bare boards of the floor. "It's all right. I've got a chance to do your friend Rad Chase a good turn, and you can help in it. Wait a minute!" But Joe fled, unheeding. Then Shalleg, seeing that his plans were about to miscarry, yelled: "Stop him, somebody!" Joe was running along the dim hallway. As he reached the outside steps the youth who had first accosted him turned, and made a grab for him. "What's your hurry?" he demanded. "Hold on!" Joe did not answer, but, eluding the outstretched hands, made the sidewalk in a jump and ran up the street. He was fleet of foot--his training gave him that--and soon he was safe from pursuit, though, as a matter of fact, no one came after him. Shalleg and his tools were hardly ready for such desperate measures yet, it seemed. Joe passed a side street, and, looking up it, saw at the other end, a more brilliantly lighted thoroughfare. Arguing rightly that he would be safer there, Joe turned up, and soon was in a more decent neighborhood. His heart was beating rapidly, partly from the run, and partly through apprehension, for he had an underlying fear that it would not have been for his good to have gone into the room where Shalleg was. "Whew! That was a happening," remarked Joe, as he slowed down. "I wonder what it all meant? Shalleg must be getting desperate. But why does he keep after me? Unless he thinks I am responsible for his not getting a place on the Cardinals. It's absurd to think that, but it does seem so. I wonder what I'd better do?" Joe tried to reason it out, and then came the recollection of Rad. "I'll telephone to the hotel, and see if he's come back," he said. "Then, when I meet him, I'll tell him all that happened. It's a queer go, sure enough." A telephone message to the hotel clerk brought the information that Rad had telephoned in himself, saying that he had been unexpectedly detained, and would meet Joe at the theatre entrance. "That's good!" thought our hero. For one moment, after running away from the gloomy house, he had had a notion that perhaps Rad had also been lured there. Now he knew his friend was safe. "Sorry I couldn't come back to the hotel for you," Rad greeted Joe, as they met in front of the theatre. "But my business took me longer than I counted on. We're in time for the show, anyhow. It starts a little later in summer." "That's all right," said Joe. "As a matter of fact I have been away from the hotel myself, for some time." "So the clerk said. Told me you'd gone out and left a message for me. Say, what's up, Joe? You look as though something had happened," for now, in the light, Rad had a glimpse of his chum's face, and it wore a strange look. "Something did happen," said Joe in a low voice. "I believe I was in danger. I'll tell you all about it," which he did, in a low voice, between the acts of the play. It is doubtful if either Joe or Rad paid much attention to what occurred on the stage that evening. CHAPTER XXIII A LAME ARM "But, great Scott, Joe!" exclaimed Rad, when he had been given all the facts of the strange occurrence, "that was a raw sort of deal!" "I think so myself." "Why don't you get the police after them?" "What would be the good? Nothing really happened, and just because I have an idea it would have, if I'd given them the chance to get at me, doesn't make them liable to arrest. I would look foolish going to the police." "Maybe so. But then there's that note. They didn't have any idea of doing me a good turn. That was almost a forgery." "The trouble is we can't prove it, though. I think the only thing I can do is to let it go, and be more careful in the future." "Well, maybe it is," agreed Rad slowly. "But what do you think was their object?" "I haven't the least idea," replied Joe. "That is, the only thing I can imagine is that Shalleg wanted to scare me; or, perhaps, threaten me for what he imagines I have done to him." "And that is?" questioned Rad. "That I've been spreading false reports about him to our manager, in order to keep him off the team. As a matter of fact, I don't believe I have ever mentioned him to Mr. Watson. It's all imagination on Shalleg's part." "What condition was he in to-night?" asked Rad, as he and Joe were on their way to the hotel after the play. "As far as I could judge, he was about as he has been most of the time lately--scarcely sober. That, and his gambling and irregular living, took him off the team, you know." "And he thinks, with that record behind him, that he can get on the Cardinals!" exclaimed Rad. "He's crazy!" "He's dangerous, too," added Joe. "I'm going to be more careful after this." "And you thought you were doing me a favor, old man?" "I sure did, Rad. I thought maybe some scout from another club was trying to secure your valuable services." "Now you're stringing me!" "No, I'm not, really. You know there are queer doings in baseball." "Yes, but none as queer as that. Well, I'm much obliged, anyhow. But after this you stick to me. If there's any danger we'll share it together!" "Thanks!" exclaimed Joe warmly. "Going to say anything to the boss about this?" asked Rad, after a pause. "I think not. Would you?" "Well, perhaps we might just as well keep still about it," agreed Rad. "We'll see if we can't trap this Shalleg and his crony, and put a stop to their game." "All they have been is a nuisance, so far," spoke Joe. "But there's no telling when they might turn to something else." "That's so. Well, we'll keep our weather eyes open." Joe was not a little unnerved by his experience, and he was glad there was not a game next day. The Cardinals had crept up a peg. They were now standing one from the top of the second division of clubs, and there began to be heard talk that they would surely lead their column before many more games had been played. "And maybe break into the first division!" exclaimed Trainer Boswell. "If you keep on the way you've started, Matson, we sure will do it!" "I'll do my best," responded Joe. In a series of four games with the Brooklyn Superbas the Cardinals broke even, thus maintaining their position. But they could not seem to climb any higher. Joe's pitching helped a lot, and he was regarded as a coming star. He was acquiring more confidence in himself, and that, in playing big baseball, helps a lot. Of course I am not saying that Joe did all the work for his team. No pitcher does, but a pitcher is a big factor. It takes batters to make hits and runs, however, and the Cardinals had their share of them. They could have done better with more, but good players brought high prices, and Manager Watson had spent all the club owners felt like laying out. The other pitchers of the Cardinals worked hard. It must not be imagined that because I dwell so much on Joe's efforts that he was the "whole show." Far from it. At times Joe had his "off days" as well as did the others, and there were times when he felt so discouraged that he wanted to give it all up, and go back to a smaller league. But Joe had grit, and he stuck to it. He was determined to make as great a name for himself as is possible in baseball, and he knew he must take the bitter with the sweet, and accept defeat when it came, as it is bound to now and then. Nor did his determination to overcome obstacles fail of its object. With the other members of the team, Joe played so surprisingly well that suddenly the Cardinals took one of those remarkable "braces" that sometimes come in baseball, and from eighth position the club leaped forward into fifth, being aided considerably by some hard luck on the part of the other teams. In other words, "things broke right" for the Cardinals and the St. Louis "fans" began to harbor hopes of a possible pennant. Joe had several incentives for doing his best. There were his folks. He wanted to justify his father's faith in him, and also his sister's. Joe knew that his mother, in spite of her kind and loving ways, was secretly disappointed that he had quit his college career to become a baseball player. "But I'll show her that it's just as honorable as one of the learned professions, and that it pays better in a great many cases," reasoned Joe. "Though of course the money end of it isn't the biggest thing in this world," he told himself. "Still it is mighty satisfactory." Then there was another reason why Joe wanted to make good. Or, rather, there was another person he wanted to have hear of his success. I guess you know her name. And so the young pitcher kept on, struggling to perfect himself in the technicalities of the big game, playing his position for all it was capable of. As the season went on Joe's name figured more and more often in the papers. "He's got reporters on his staff!" sneered Willard. "Well, I wish we all had," observed Manager Watson. "Publicity counts, and I want all I can get for my players. It's a wonder some of you fellows wouldn't have your name in the papers oftener." "I don't play to the grandstand," growled the grouchy pitcher. "Maybe it would help some if you did," the manager remarked quietly. The baseball practice and play went on. Joe was called on more often now to pitch a game, as Mr. Watson was kind enough to say some of the club's success was due to him, and while of course he was not considered the equal of the veteran pitchers, he was often referred to as a "comer." What Joe principally lacked was consistency. He could go in and pitch a brilliant game, but he could not often do it two days in succession. In this respect he was not unlike many celebrated young pitchers. Joe was not fully developed yet. He had not attained his full growth, and he had not the stamina and staying power that would come with added years. But he was acquiring experience and practice that would stand him in good stead, and his natural good health, and clean manner of living, were in his favor. The Cardinals had come back to St. Louis in high spirits over their splendid work on the road. "We ought to take at least three from the Phillies," said Boswell, for they were to play four games with the Quaker City nine. "That will help some." "If we win them," remarked Joe, with a smile. "Well, we're depending on you to help," retorted the trainer. Joe only smiled. There was some discussion in the papers as to who would pitch the first game against the Phillies, and it was not settled until a few minutes before the game was called, when Slim Cooney was sent in. "I guess Mr. Watson wants to make sure of at least the first one," remarked Joe, as he sat on the bench. "Oh, you'll get a chance," Boswell assured him. "You want to keep yourself right on edge. No telling when you'll be called on." It was a close game, and it was not until the eleventh inning that the home team pulled in the winning run. Then, with jubilant faces, the members hurried to the clubhouse. "Whew!" whistled Cooney, as he swung his southpaw arm about. "I sure will be lame to-morrow." "You can have a rest," the manager informed him. "And be sure to have your arm massaged well. This is going to be a stiffer proposition than I thought." "Did you see him at the game?" asked Rad of Joe, as they walked along together. "See who?" "Shalleg." "No. Was he there?" "He sure was! I had a glimpse of him over in the bleachers when I ran after that long drive of Mitchell's. He was with that Wessel, but they didn't look my way." "Humph!" mused Joe. "Well, I suppose he's got a right to come to our games. If he bothers me, though, I'll take some action." "What?" "I don't know, yet. But I'm through standing for his nonsense." "I don't blame you." If Joe could have seen Shalleg and Wessel talking to a certain "tough" looking character, after the game, and at the same time motioning in his direction, he would have felt added uneasiness. "Oh, let's go out to some summer garden and cool off," proposed Rad after supper. It was a hot night, and sitting about the hotel was irksome. "All right," agreed Joe, and they started for a car. The same "tough" looking character who had been talking with Wessel and Shalleg took the car as well. Coming back, after sitting through an open-air moving picture performance, Joe and Rad found all the cars crowded. It was an open one, and Joe and Rad had given their seats to ladies, standing up and holding to the back of the seat in front of them. Just beyond Joe was a burly chap, the same one who had left the hotel at the time they did. He kept his seat. Then, as the car reached a certain corner, this man got up hurriedly. "Let me past! I want to get off!" he exclaimed, in unnecessarily rough tones to Joe, at the same time pressing hard against him. "Certainly," the young pitcher replied, removing his hands from the seat in front of him. At that moment the car stopped with a sudden jerk, and the fellow grabbed Joe by the right arm, twisting it so that the ball player cried out, involuntarily. "'Scuse me!" muttered the fellow. "I didn't mean to grab youse so hard. I didn't know youse was so tender," he sneered. "Seems to me you could have grabbed the seat," objected Joe, wincing with pain. The other did not answer, but afterward Rad said he thought he saw him wink and grin maliciously. "Hurt much?" asked Rad of Joe, as the fellow got off and the car went on again. "It did for a minute. It's better now." "It looked to me as though he did that on purpose," said Rad. "He certainly was very clumsy," spoke one of the ladies to whom Joe and Rad had given their places. "He stepped on my foot, too." Joe worked his arm up and down to limber the muscles, and then thought little more about the incident. That is, until the next morning. He awoke with a sudden sense of pain, and as he stretched out his pitching arm, he cried out. "What's the matter?" asked Rad. "My arm's sore and lame!" complained Joe. "Say, this is tough luck! And maybe I'll get a chance to pitch to-day." CHAPTER XXIV A TIGHT GAME Rad gave a look at his chum, and then, sliding out of bed, ran to the window. "No luck!" he exclaimed. "What do you mean?" asked Joe. "I mean it isn't raining." "What has that got to do with it?" the young pitcher wanted to know, as he moved his sore arm back and forth, a little frown of pain showing on his face at each flexing movement. "Why, if it rained we wouldn't have any game, and you'd get a chance to rest and get in shape. It's a dead cinch that you or Barter will be called on to-day. Willard has 'Charlie-horse,' and he can't pitch. So it's you or Barter." "Then I guess it will have to be Barter," said Joe with a grimace. "I'm afraid I can't go in. And yet I hate to give up and say I can't pitch. It's tough luck!" "Does it hurt much?" Rad wanted to know. "Enough, yes. I could stand it, ordinarily, but every time I move it will make it worse." "Is it where that fellow pinched you, in getting off the car last night?" "He didn't pinch me," said Joe, "it was a deliberate twist." "Deliberate?" questioned Rad in surprise. "It sure was!" exclaimed the young pitcher decidedly. "The more I think of it the more I'm certain that he did it deliberately." "But why should he?" went on Rad. "You didn't prevent him from getting out of the car. There was plenty of room for him to pass. Why should he try to hurt you?" "I don't know," answered Joe, "unless he was put up to it by----" "By Jove! Shalleg! Yes!" cried Rad. "I believe you're right. Shalleg is jealous of you, and he wants to see you kept out of the game, just because he didn't make the nine. And I guess, too, he'd be glad to see the Cardinals lose just to make Manager Watson feel sore. That's it, Joe, as sure as you're a foot high!" "Oh, I don't know as he thought the Cardinals would lose because I didn't pitch," said Joe, slowly, "but he may have been set on me by Shalleg, out of spite. Well, there's no use thinking about that now. I've got to do something about this arm. I think I'll send word that I won't be in shape to-day." "No, don't you do it!" cried Rad. "Maybe we can fix up your arm. I know how to make a dandy liniment that my mother used on me when I was a small chap." "Liniment sounds good," said Joe with a smile. "But I guess I'd better have Boswell look at it. He's got some of his own----" "Yes, and then you'd have to admit that you're lame, and give the whole thing away!" interrupted Rad. "Don't do it. Leave it to me. There's some time before the game and I can give you a good rubbing, meanwhile. I'll send out to the drug store, get the stuff made up, and doctor you here. "There'll be no need to tell 'em anything about it if I can get you into shape, and then, if you're called on, you can go in and pitch. If they think you're crippled they won't give you a chance." "That's so," admitted Joe. "Still, you wouldn't go in if you didn't think you could do good work," went on his chum. "Certainly I would not," agreed Joe. "That would be too much like throwing the game. Well, see what you can do, Rad. I'd like to get a good whack at the fellow who did this, though," he went on, as he worked his arm slowly back and forth. Rad rang for a messenger, and soon had in from a drug store a bottle of strong-smelling liniment, with which he proceeded to massage Joe's arm. He did it twice before the late breakfast to which they treated themselves, and once afterward, before it was time to report at the park for morning practice. "Does it feel better?" asked Rad, as his chum began to do some pitching work. "A whole lot, yes." It was impossible to wholly keep the little secret from Boswell. He watched Joe for a moment and then asked suddenly: "Arm stiff?" "A bit, yes," the pitcher was reluctantly obliged to admit. "You come in the clubhouse and have it attended to!" ordered the trainer. "I can't have you, or any of the boys, laid up." Then, as he got out his bottle of liniment, and looked at Joe's arm, one of the ligaments of which had been strained by the cruel twist, Boswell said, sniffing the air suspiciously: "You've been using some of your own stuff on that arm; haven't you?" "Yes," admitted Joe. "I thought so. Well, maybe it's good, but my stuff is better. I'll soon have you in shape." He began a scientific massage of the sore arm, something of which, with all his good intentions, Rad was not capable. Joe felt the difference at once, and when he went back to practice he was almost himself again. "How about you?" asked Rad, when he got the chance. "I guess I'll last out--if I have to pitch," replied Joe. "But it's not certain that I shall go in." "The Phillies are out to chew us up to-day," went on his chum. "It's going to be a tight game. Don't take any chances." "I won't; you may depend on that." There was a conference between Boswell and the manager. "Who shall I put in the box?" asked the latter, for he often depended in a great measure on the old trainer. "Let Barter open the ball, and see how he does. It's my notion that he won't stand the pace, for he's a little off his feed. But I want to take a little more care of Matson, and this will give him a couple of innings to catch up." "Matson!" cried the manager. "Has he----" "Just a little soreness," said Boswell quickly, for that was all he imagined it to be. He had not asked Joe how it happened, for which the young pitcher was glad. "It'll be all right with a little more rubbing." He knew Joe's hope, and wanted to do all he could to further it. "All right. Announce Barter and Russell as the battery. And you look after Matson; will you?" "I sure will. I think Joe can pitch his head off if he gets the chance." "I hope he doesn't lose his head," commented the manager grimly. "It's going to be a hard game." Which was the opinion of more than one that day. Joe was taken in charge by Boswell, and in the clubhouse more attention was given to the sore arm. "How does it feel now?" asked the trainer, anxiously. "Fine!" replied Joe, and really the pain seemed all gone. "Then come out and warm up with me. You'll be needed, if I am any judge." To Joe's delight he found that he could send the ball in as swiftly as ever, and with good aim. "You'll do!" chuckled Boswell. "And just in time, too. There goes a home run, and Barter's been hit so hard that we'll have to take him out." It was the beginning of the third inning, and, sure enough, when it came the turn of the Cardinals to bat, a substitution was made, and the manager said: "Get ready, Joe. You'll pitch the rest of the game." Joe nodded, with a pleased smile, but, as he raised his arm to bend it back and forth, a sharp spasm of pain shot through it. "Whew!" whistled Joe, under his breath. "I wonder if the effects of that liniment are wearing off? If they are, and that pain comes back, I'm done for, sure. What'll I do?" There was little time to think; less to do anything. Joe would not bat that inning, that was certain. He took a ball, and, nodding to Rad, who was not playing, went out to the "bull-pen." "What's up?" asked Rad, cautiously. "I felt a little twinge. I just want to try the different balls, and find which I can deliver to best advantage to myself. You catch." Rad nodded understandingly. To Joe's delight he found that in throwing his swift one, the spitter, and his curves he had no pain. But his celebrated fadeaway made him wince when he twisted his arm into the peculiar position necessary to get the desired effect. "Wow!" mused Joe. "I can't deliver that, it's a sure thing. Well, I'm not going to back out now. I'll stay in as long as I can. But it's going to hurt!" He shut his teeth, and, trying to keep away from his face the shadow of pain, threw his fadeaway to Rad again. The pain shot through his arm like a sharp knife. "But I'll do it!" thought Joe, grimly. CHAPTER XXV IN NEW YORK "That's good," called Rad, as he caught a swift one. "You'll do, Joe." But only the young pitcher knew what an effort it was going to cost him to stay in that game. And stay he must. It was time for the Cardinals to take the field. The Phillies were two runs ahead, and that lead must be cut down, and at least one more tally made if the game were to be won. "Can we do it?" thought Joe. He felt the pain in his arm, but he ground his teeth and muttered: "I'm going to do it!" The play started off with the new pitcher in the box. The news went flashing over the telegraph wires from the reporters on the ground to the various bulletin boards through the country, and to the newspaper offices. Baseball Joe was pitching for the Cardinals. But Joe was not thinking of the fame that was his. All he thought of was the effort he must make to pitch a winning game. Fortunately for him three of the weakest batters on the Phillies faced him that inning. Joe knew it, and so did the catcher, for he did not signal for the teasing fadeaway, for which Joe was very glad. Joe tried a couple of practice balls, but he did not slam them in with his usual force, at which the man in the mask wondered. He had not heard of Joe's lame arm, and he reasoned that his partner was holding back for reasons best known to himself. "Ball one!" yelled the umpire when Joe had made his first delivery to the batter. Joe winced, partly with pain, and partly because of the wasted effort that meant so much to him. "The next one won't be a ball!" he muttered fiercely. He sent in a puzzling curve that enticed the batter. "Strike one!" "That's better!" yelled Boswell, from the coaching line. "Serve 'em some more like that, Joe." And Joe did. No one but himself knew the effort it cost him, but he kept on when it was agony to deliver the ball. Perhaps he should not have done it, for he ran the chance of injuring himself for life, and also ran the chance of losing the game for his team. But Joe was young--he did not think of those things. He just pitched--not for nothing had he been dubbed "Baseball Joe." "You're out!" snapped the umpire to the first batter, who turned to the bench with a sickly grin. Joe faced the next one. To his alarm the catcher signalled for a fadeaway. Joe shook his head. He thought he could get away with a straight, swift one. But when the batter hit it Joe's heart was in his throat until he saw that it was a foul. By a desperate run Russell caught it. Joe pitched the next man out cleanly. "That's the way to do it!" "Joe, you're all right!" "Now we'll begin to do something!" Thus cried his teammates. And from then on the Phillies were allowed but one more tally. This could not be helped, for Joe was weakening, and could not control the ball as well as at first. But the run came in as much through errors on the part of his fellow players as from his own weakness. Meanwhile the Cardinals struck a batting streak, and made good, bunching their hits. The ending of the eighth inning saw the needed winning run go up in the frame of the Cardinals, and then it was Joe's task to hold the Phillies hitless in their half of the ninth. How he did it he did not know afterward. His arm felt as though someone were jabbing it with a knife. He gritted his teeth harder and harder, and stuck it out. But oh! what a relief it was when the umpire, as the third batter finished at the plate, called: "You're out!" The Cardinals had won! Joe's work for the day was finished. But at what cost only he knew. Pure grit had pulled him through. "Say, did you pitch with that arm?" asked Boswell in surprise as he saw Joe under the shower in the clubhouse later. "Well, I made a bluff at it," said Joe, grimly and gamely. "Well, I'll be Charlie-horsed!" exclaimed the trainer. "Say, you won't do any more pitching for a week! I've got to take you in hand." Of course the story of Joe's grit got out, and the papers made much of how he had pitched through nearly a full game, winning it, too, which was more, with a badly hurt arm. "But don't you take any such chances as that again!" cried Manager Watson, half fiercely, when he heard about it. "I can't have my pitchers running risks like that. Pitchers cost too much money!" This was praise enough for Joe. And so he had a much-needed rest. Under the care of Boswell the arm healed rapidly, though, for some time, Joe was not allowed to take part in any big games, for which he was sorry. Whether it was the example of Joe's grit, or because they had improved of late was not made manifest, but the Cardinals took three of the four games with the Phillies, which made Manager Watson gleeful. "They called us tail-enders!" he exulted, "but if we don't give the Giants a rub before the end of the season I'll miss my guess!" The Cardinals were on the move again. They went from city to city, playing the scheduled games, winning some and losing enough to keep them about in fifth place. Joe saw much of life, of the good and bad sides. Many temptations came to him, as they do to all young fellows, whether in the baseball game, or other business or pleasure. But Joe "passed them up." Perhaps the memory of a certain girl helped him. Often it does. The Cardinals came to New York, once more to do battle with the redoubtable Giants. "But you won't get a game!" declared Manager McGraw to "Muggins" Watson. "Won't we? I don't know about that. I'm going to spring my colt slab artist on you again." "Who, Matson?" "Um," said the manager of the Cardinals. "Um," responded the manager of the Giants, laughing. St. Louis did get one game of a double-header, and Joe, whose arm was in perfect trim again, pitched. It was while he was on the mound that a certain man, reputed to be a scout for the Giants, was observed to be taking a place where he could watch the young pitcher to advantage. "Up to your old tricks; eh, Jack?" asked a man connected with the management of the Cardinals. "Who are you scouting for now?" "Well, that little shortstop of yours looks pretty good to me," was the drawling answer. "What you s'pose you'll be asking for him." "He's not for sale. Now if you mentioned the centre fielder, Jack----" "Nothing doing. I've got one I'll sell you cheap." "I don't suppose you want to make an offer for Matson; do you?" asked the Cardinal man with a slow wink. "Oh, no, we've got all the pitchers we can use," the Giant scout responded quickly. It is thus that their kind endeavor to deceive one another. But, as the game went on, it might have been observed that the Giant scout changed his position, where he could observe Joe in action from another angle. "Didn't see anything of Shalleg since we struck Manhattan; did you, Joe?" asked Rad, as he and his chum, taking advantage of a rainy day in New York, were paying a visit to the Museum of Natural History. "No," replied Joe, pausing in front of a glass case containing an immense walrus. "I don't want to see him, either. I'm sure he planned to do me some harm, and I'm almost positive that some of his tools had to do with my sore arm. But I can't prove it." "That's the trouble," admitted Rad. "Well, come on, I want to see that model of the big whale. They say it's quite a sight." The rain prevented games for three days, and the players were getting a bit "stale" with nothing to do. Then the sun came out, the grounds dried up and the series was resumed. But the Cardinals were not very lucky. Philadelphia was the next stopping place, and there, once again, the Cardinals proved themselves the masters of the Quakers. They took three games straight, and sweetened up their average wonderfully, being only a game and a half behind the fourth club. "If we can only keep up the pace!" said the manager, wistfully. "Joe, are you going to help us do it?" "I sure am!" exclaimed the young pitcher. There was one more game to play with the Phillies. The evening before it was scheduled, which would close their stay in the Quaker City, Joe left the hotel, and strolled down toward the Delaware River. He intended to take the ferry over to Camden, in New Jersey, for a friend of his mother lived there, and he had promised to call on her. Joe did not notice that, as he left the hotel, he was closely followed by a man who walked and acted like Wessel. But the man wore a heavy beard, and Wessel, the young pitcher remembered was usually smooth-shaven. But Joe did not notice. If he had perhaps he would have seen that the beard was false, though unusually well adjusted. Joe turned his steps toward the river front. It was a dark night, for the sky was cloudy and it looked like rain. Joe just missed one ferryboat, and, as there would be some little time before the other left, he strolled along the water front, looking at what few sights there were. Before he realized it, he had gone farther than he intended. He found himself in a rather lonely neighborhood, and, as he turned back a bearded man, who had been walking behind the young pitcher for some time, stepped close to him. "I beg your pardon," the man began, speaking as though he had a heavy cold, "but could you direct me to the Reading Terminal?" "Yes," said Joe, who had a good sense of direction, and had gotten the "lay of the land" pretty well fixed in his mind. "Let's see now--how I can best direct you?" He thought for a moment. By going a little farther away from the ferry he could put the stranger on a thoroughfare that would be more direct than traveling back the way he had come. "If you wouldn't mind walking along a little way," said the man eagerly. "I'm a stranger here, and----" "Oh, I'll go with you," offered Joe, good-naturedly. "I'm not in any hurry." Be careful, Joe! Be careful! CHAPTER XXVI ADRIFT "There," said Baseball Joe, coming to a halt at a dark street corner, the stranger close beside him, "if you go up that way, and turn as I told you to, it will take you directly to the Reading Terminal." "I don't know how to thank you," mumbled the other. He seemed to be fumbling in his pocket. "I'll give you my card," he went on. "If you are ever in San Francisco----" But it was not a card that he pulled from the inner pocket of his coat. It was a rag, that bore a strange, faint odor. Joe stepped back, but not quickly enough. He suspected something wrong, but he was too late. An instant later the stranger had thrown one powerful arm about the young pitcher, and, with his other hand he pressed the chloroform-saturated rag to Joe's nose and mouth. Joe tried to cry out, and struggled to free himself. But his senses seemed leaving him under the influence of the powerful drug. At that moment, as though it had been timing itself to the movements of the man who had followed Joe, there drove up a large ramshackle cab, and out of it jumped two men. "Did you get him, Wes?" one asked eagerly. "I sure did. Here, help me. He's gone off. Get him into the cab." Poor Joe's senses had all but left him. He was an inert mass, but he could hear faintly, and he recognized the voice of Shalleg. He tried to rouse himself, but it was as though he were in a heavy sleep, or stupor. He felt himself being lifted into a cab. The door slammed shut, and then he was rattled away over the cobbles. "I wonder what they're going to do with me?" Joe thought. He had enough of his brain in working order to do that. Once more he tried to struggle. "Better tie him up," suggested a voice he now recognized as that of the fellow who had twisted his arm on the street car. "Yes, I guess we had," agreed Shalleg. "And then to the Delaware with him!" Joe was too weak, and too much under the influence of the drug, to care greatly what they did with him--that is, in a sense, though a feeling of terror took possession of him at the words. "The river!" gasped Wessel. "I thought you said there'd be no violence, Shalleg." "And there won't!" promised the leader of the conspirators. "But you said to tie him, and then to the river with him." "You don't s'pose I'm going to chuck him in; do you?" was the angry question. "I don't know." "Well, I'm not! I'm just going to put him out of the way for a time. I told him I'd get even with him for not helping me out of a hole, and then for spreading reports about me, that kept me from getting a place on the Cardinals, as well as on any other team. I told him I'd fix him!" So, this was the secret of Shalleg's animosity! He had a fancied grievance against Joe, and was taking this means of gratifying his passion for revenge. Joe, dimly hearing, understood now. He longed to be able to speak, to assure Shalleg that he was all wrong, but they had bound a rag about his mouth, and he could not utter a sound, even had not the chloroform held his speech in check. "Pass over those ropes," directed Shalleg to his cronies in the cab, which lurched and swayed over the rough stones. The cab held four, on a pinch, and Joe was held and supported by one of the men. The gag in the young pitcher's mouth was made tighter, and ropes were passed about his arms and feet. He could not move. "What's the game?" asked Wessel, as the trussing-up was finished. "Well, I don't want to do him any real harm," growled Shalleg, "but I'm going to put him out of the game, just as I was kept out of it by his tattling tongue. I'm going to make him fail to show up to-morrow, and the next day, too, maybe. That'll put a crimp in his record, and in the Cardinals', too, for he's been doing good work for them. I'll say that about him, much as I hate him!" Joe heard this plot against him, heard it dimly, through his half-numbed senses, and tried to struggle free from his bonds. But he could not. On rattled the cab. Joe could not tell in which direction they were going, but he was sure it was along the lonely river front. The effects of the chloroform were wearing off, but the gag kept him silent, and the ropes bound his hands and feet. "Have any trouble trailing him?" asked Shalleg of Wessel, who had disguised himself with a false beard. "Not a bit," was the answer. "It was pie! I pretended I had lost my way." The men laughed. Either they thought Joe was still incapable of hearing them, or they did not care if their identity and plans were known. A multitude of thoughts rushed through Joe's head. He did not exactly understand what the men were going to do with him. They had spoken of taking him to the river. Perhaps they meant to keep him prisoner on a boat until his contract with the St. Louis team would be void, because of his non-appearance. And Joe knew how hard it would be to get back in the game after that. True, he could explain how it had happened, and he felt sure he would not be blamed. But when would he get a chance to make explanations? And there was the game to-morrow! He knew he would be called on to pitch, for Mr. Watson had practically told him so. And Joe would not be on hand. "Aren't we 'most there?" asked Wessel. "Yes," answered Shalleg, shortly. "What are we to do?" asked the other. "You'll know soon enough," was the half-growled reply. The cab rattled on. Then it came to a stop. Joe could smell the dampness of the river, and he realized that the next act in the episode was about to be played. He felt himself being lifted out of the cab, and he had a glimpse of a street, but it was too dark to recognize where it was, and Joe was not well enough acquainted with Philadelphia to know the neighborhood. Then a handkerchief was bound over his eyes, and he was in total darkness. He heard whispered words between Shalleg and the driver of the cab, but could not make out what they were. Then the vehicle rattled off. "Catch hold of him now," directed Shalleg to his companions. "We'll carry him down to the river." "To the river!" objected Wessel, and Joe felt a shiver go through him. "Well, to the boat then!" snapped Shalleg. "Don't talk so much." Joe felt himself being carried along, and, a little later, he was laid down on what he felt was the bottom of a boat. A moment later he could tell by the motion of the craft that he was adrift on the Delaware. CHAPTER XXVII THE RESCUE For a few moments Joe was in a sort of daze. He was extremely uncomfortable, lying on the hard bottom of the boat, and there seemed to be rough water, for the craft swayed, and bobbed up and down. Joe wondered if he was alone, for he did not hear the noise of oars in the locks, nor did he catch the voices of the three rascals. But it soon developed that they were with him, for, presently Wessel asked: "Where are we going with him?" "Keep still!" snapped Shalleg in a tense whisper. "Do you want someone to hear us?" "Who, him?" "No, someone on these ships. We're right alongside of 'em yet. Keep still; can't you!" Wessel subsided, but one of Joe's questions was answered. There were other problems yet unsolved, though. What were they going to do with him? He could only wait and learn. The bandage was still over his eyes, and he tried, by wrinkling the skin of his forehead, to work it loose. But he could not succeed. He wished he could have some glimpse, even a faint one, in the darkness, of where he was, though perhaps it would have done him little good. "Take the oars now," directed Shalleg, after a pause. "I guess it's safe to row out a bit. There aren't so many craft here now. But go easy." "Hadn't we better show a light?" asked the man who had twisted Joe's arm. "We might be run down!" "Light nothing!" exclaimed Shalleg, who now spoke somewhat above a whisper. "I don't want some police launch poking her nose up here. It's light enough for us to see to get out of the way if anything comes along. I'm not going to answer any hails." "Oh, all right," was the answer. Joe's head was beginning to clear itself from the fumes of the chloroform, and he could think more clearly. He wondered more and more what his fate was to be. Evidently the men were taking him somewhere in a rowboat. But whether he was to be taken wherever they were going, in this small craft, or whether it was being used to transport them to a larger boat, he could not, of course, determine. The men rowed on for some time in silence. "It's getting late," ventured Wessel at length. "Not late enough, though," growled Shalleg. Joe went over, in his mind, all the events that had been crowded into the last few hours. He had told Rad that he was going to see his mother's friend in Camden, but had given no address. "They won't know but what I'm staying there all night," he reasoned. "And they won't start to search for me until some time to-morrow. When I don't show up at the game they'll think it's queer, and I suppose they'll fine me. I wouldn't mind that if they only come and find me. But how can they do it? There isn't a clue they could follow, as far as I know. Not one!" He tried to think of some means by which he could be traced, and rescued by his friends, but he could imagine none. No one who knew him had seen him come down to the ferry, or walk through the deserted neighborhood. And, as far as he knew, no one had seen the bearded stranger accost him. "I'll just have disappeared--that's all," mused poor Joe, lying on the hard and uncomfortable bottom of the boat. For some time longer the three men, or rather two of them, rowed on, paying no attention to Joe. Then Shalleg spoke. "I guess we're far enough down the river," he said. "We can go ashore now." "And take him with us?" asked Wessel. "Well, you don't think I'm going to chuck him overboard; do you?" demanded Shalleg. "I told you I wasn't going to do anything violent." "But what are you going to do?" "Wait, and you'll see," was the rather unsatisfactory answer. Joe wished it was settled. He, too, was wondering. The course of the boat seemed changed. By the motion the men were rowing across a choppy current, probably toward shore. Joe found this to be so, a little later, for the boat's side grated against what was probably a wooden pier. "Light the lantern," directed Shalleg. "But I thought you didn't want to be seen," objected Wessel. "Do as I tell you," was the sharp rejoinder. "We're not going to be seen. We're going to leave the boat." "And leave him in it?" asked the other man. "Yes, I'm going to turn him adrift down the river," went on the chief conspirator. "I'll stick a light up, though, so he won't be run down. I don't wish him that harm." "Are you going to leave him tied?" Wessel wanted to know. "I sure am!" was the rejoinder. "Think I want him giving the alarm, and having us nabbed? Not much!" Dimly, from beneath the handkerchief over his eyes, Joe saw the flash as a match was struck, and the lantern lighted. Then he heard it being lashed to some upright in the boat. A little later Joe felt the craft in which he lay being shoved out into the stream, and then he realized that he was alone, drifting down the Delaware, toward the bay, and tied hand and foot, as well as being gagged. He was practically helpless. "There, I guess that'll teach him not to meddle in my affairs any more!" said Shalleg bitterly. Then Joe heard no more, save the lapping of the waves against the side of the craft. For a time his senses seemed to leave him under the terrible strain, and when he again was in possession of his faculties he could not tell how long he had been drifting alone, nor had he any idea of the time, save that it was still night. "Well, I've got to do something!" decided Joe. "I've got to try and get rid of this gag, and yell for help, and to do that I've got to have the use of my hands." Then he began to struggle, but the men who had trussed him up had done their evil work well, and he only cut his wrists on the cruel bonds. He was on his back, and he wished there was some rough projection in the bottom of the boat, against which he could rub his rope-entangled wrists. But there was none. How the hours of darkness passed Joe never knew. He was thankful for one thing--that there was a light showing in his boat, for he would not be run down in the darkness by some steamer, or motor craft. By daylight he hoped the drifting boat might be seen, and picked up. Then he would be rescued. Even now, if he could only have called, he might have been saved. Gradually Joe became aware that morning had come. He could see a film of light beneath the bandage over his eyes. The boat was bobbing up and down more violently now. "I must be far down the bay," thought Joe. He was cramped, tired, and almost parched for a drink. He had dozed fitfully through the night, and his eyes smarted and burned under the bandage. Suddenly he heard voices close at hand, above the puffing of a motorboat. "Look there!" someone exclaimed. "A boat is adrift. Maybe we can work that into the film." "Maybe," assented another voice. "Let's go over and see, anyhow. We want this reel to be a good one." Dimly Joe wondered what the words meant. He heard the voices, and the puffing of the motor coming nearer. Then the latter sound ceased. Some craft bumped gently against his, and a man cried: "Someone is in this boat!" CHAPTER XXVIII MOVING PICTURES For a moment silence followed the announcement that meant so much to Joe. He could hear murmurs of surprise, and the violent motion of the craft in which he lay, bound helpless and unseeing, told him that the work of rescue was under way. The motor boat, he reflected, must be making fast to the other. The bandage over Joe's eyes prevented him from seeing what went on. Then came a series of exclamations and questions, and, to Joe's surprise, the voices of women and girls mingled with those of men. "My, look, Jackson!" a man's voice exclaimed. "He's bound, and gagged. There's been some crime here!" "You're right. We must get him aboard our boat." Joe could tell, by the motion of the boat which contained him, that some of the rescue party were getting into it to aid him. Then he felt the bandage being taken from his eyes, and the gag from his mouth. "Hand me a knife, somebody!" called a man. "I'll cut these ropes." Joe opened his eyes, and closed them again with a feeling of pain. The sudden light of a bright, sunny morning was too much for him. "He's alive, anyhow," a girl's voice said. Joe half opened his eyes this time, and saw a strange sight. Alongside his boat was a cabin motor craft, and on the rear deck he could see gathered a number of men, women and girls. What took Joe's attention next was a queer oblong box, with a crank at one side, and a tube projecting from it, mounted on a tripod. Then, as his eyes became more accustomed to the light, Joe saw bending over him in the boat, two men. One of them had a knife, with which he quickly cut the ropes that bound Joe's arms and feet. It was a great relief. He sat up and looked about him. The motor boat was a large and fine one, and was slowly drifting down into Delaware Bay, for Joe could see a vast stretch of water on all sides. "Too bad we can't work this rescue into a scene," spoke one of the men on the motor craft. Joe looked at him wonderingly, and then at the machine on the bow of the boat. All at once he realized what it was--a moving picture camera. He had seen them before. "Are you folks in the movies?" he asked as he stood up, with the help of the two men. "That's what we are," was the answer. "We came out early this morning to do a bit of 'water stuff,' when we saw your boat adrift. We put over to it, and were surprised to see you tied in it. Can you tell us what happened?" "Yes," answered Joe, "I was practically kidnapped!" "Come aboard, and have some coffee," urged a motherly-looking woman of the party. "Yes, do," added another member of the company. "We have just had breakfast." The aroma of coffee was grateful to Joe, and soon he was aboard the motorboat, sipping a steaming cup. "Kidnapped; eh?" remarked one of the men. "Then we'd better save that boat for you. It will be a clue to those who did it." "Oh, I know who did it, all right," answered Joe, who was rapidly feeling more like himself. "I don't need the boat for evidence. But, since you have been so kind to me, I wish you'd do one thing more." "Name it," promptly said the man who seemed to be in charge of the company. "Get me somewhere so I can send word to Philadelphia--to Manager Watson of the St. Louis Cardinals. I want to explain what happened, so he won't expect me in the game to-day." "Are you a member of the St. Louis team?" asked one of the men, quickly. "One of the pitchers--my name is Matson." The two leading men of the company looked at each other in an odd manner. "It couldn't have happened better; could it, Harry?" one asked. Our hero was a trifle mystified until the man called Harry explained. "You see, it's this way," he said. "My name is Harry Kirk, and this is James Morton," nodding toward the other man. "We manage a moving picture company, most of whom you now see," and he indicated those about him. "We have been doing a variety of stuff, and we want to get some baseball pictures. We've been trying to induce some of the big teams to play an exhibition game for us, but so far we haven't been successful. Now if you would use your influence with your manager, and he could induce some other team to play a short game, why we'd be ever so much obliged." "Of course I'll do all I can!" cried Joe. "I can't thank you enough for your rescue of me, and the least I could do would be to help you out! I'm pretty sure I can induce Mr. Watson to let his team give an exhibition, anyhow." "That's all we want--an opening wedge," said Mr. Kirk, "but we couldn't seem to get it. Our finding of you was providential." "It was for me, anyhow," said Joe. "I don't know what might have happened to me if I had drifted much farther." Joe explained how it had happened, and the unreasoning rage of Shalleg toward him. "He ought to be sent to jail for life, to do such a thing as that!" burst out Mr. Kirk. "You'll inform the police; won't you?" "I think I had better," said Joe, thoughtfully. The motor began its throbbing, and the big boat cut through the water, towing the small craft, in which Joe had spent so many uncomfortable hours. The young pitcher was himself again, thanks to a good breakfast, and when the dock was reached was able to talk to Manager Watson over the telephone. It was then nearly noon, and Joe was in no shape to get in the game that day. To say that the news he gave the manager astonished Mr. Watson is putting it mildly. "You stay where you are," directed his chief. "I'll send someone down to see you, or come myself. We'll get after this Shalleg and his gang. This has gone far enough!" "What about the game to-day?" asked Joe. "Don't you worry about that. We'll beat the Phillies anyhow, though I was counting on you, Joe. But don't worry." CHAPTER XXIX SHALLEG'S DOWNFALL Plans to capture Shalleg and his cronies were carefully made, but were unsuccessful, for, it appeared, the scoundrel and his cronies had fled after putting Joe into the boat. The moving picture people readily agreed to keep silent about the affair, and Manager Watson said he would explain Joe's absence from the game in a way that would disarm suspicion. Joe soon recovered from his unpleasant and dangerous experience and, true to his promise, used his influence to induce Mr. Watson to play an exhibition game for the moving picture people. "Of course we'll do it!" the manager exclaimed. "That would be small pay for what they did for you. I'll see if we can't play the Phillies right here. Of course it will have to be arranged with the high moguls, but I guess it can be." And it was. The game was not to count in the series, for some changes and new rules had to be adopted to make it possible to get it within the scope of the moving picture cameras. And the picture managers agreed to pay a sum that made it worth while for the players, Joe included, to put up a good game of ball. To his delight Joe was selected to pitch for his side, and fully himself again, he "put up a corking good game," to quote his friend Rad. "Well, I'm not sorry to be leaving Philadelphia," remarked Joe to Rad, when their engagement in the Quaker City was over, and they were to go on to Brooklyn. "I always have a feeling that Shalleg will show up again." "I only wish he would!" exclaimed Rad. "I don't!" said Joe, quickly. "I mean and be captured," his chum added, quickly. "Oh, that's different," laughed Joe. Taking three of the four games from the Superbas, two of them on the same day, in a double-header, the St. Louis team added to their own prestige, and, incidentally, to their standing in the league, gaining fourth place. "I think we have a good chance of landing third place," the manager exulted when they started West. They were to play Chicago in their home town, then work their way to New York for a final set-to with the Giants, and end the season on Robison Field. And in St. Louis something happened that, for a long time, took Shalleg out of Joe's path. The first game with Chicago had been a hard one, but by dint of hard work, and good pitching (Joe going in at the fourth inning to replace Barter), the Cardinals won. "And we'll do the same to-morrow," good-naturedly boasted Manager Watson, to Mr. Mandell of the Cubs. "Well, maybe you will, but I have a good chance to put it all over you," said the Chicago manager, and there was that in his manner which caused Mr. Watson to ask quickly: "What do you mean?" "Just this. How much chance do you think you'd have to win if our men knew your battery signals?" "Not much, of course, but the thing is impossible!" "Is it?" asked the other, quietly. "Not so impossible as you suppose. I have just received an offer to have the signals disclosed to me before the game to-morrow." "By whom?" cried Manager Watson. "If any of my players is trying to throw the team----" "Go easy," advised the other with a smile. "It's nothing like that. The offer came from a man, who, I understand, tried unsuccessfully to become a member of the Cardinals." "Not Shalleg!" "That's who it was." "Where can I get him?" asked Mr. Watson, eagerly. "He's wanted on a good deal more serious charge than that. Where can I get him?" "I thought you might want to see him," said the Chicago manager, "so I put him off. I've made an appointment with him----" "Which the police and I will keep!" interrupted Mr. Watson. "Perhaps that would be better," agreed Mr. Mandell. So the plot for the downfall of Shalleg was laid. It appeared that he had come back to St. Louis, and, by dint of careful watching, and by his knowledge of the game, he had managed to steal the signal system used between the Cardinal pitchers and catchers. This he proposed disclosing to the Chicago team, but of course the manager would have nothing to do with the scheme. Shalleg had named a low resort for the transfer of the information he possessed, he to receive in exchange a sum of money. He was in desperate straits, it appeared. The Cubs' manager, Joe and Mr. Watson, with a detective, went to the appointed meeting place. The manager went in alone, but the others were hiding, in readiness to enter at a signal. "Did you bring the money?" asked Shalleg, eagerly, as he saw the man with whom he hoped to make a criminal "deal." "I have the money, yes," was the cool answer. "Are you prepared to disclose to me the Cardinal battery signals?" "Yes, but don't speak so loud, someone might hear you!" whined Shalleg. "That's just what I want!" cried the manager in loud tones, and that was the signal for the officer to come in. He, Joe and Mr. Watson had heard enough to convict Shalleg. "Ha! A trap!" cried the released player, as he saw them close in on him. He made a dash to get away, but, after a brief struggle, the detective overpowered him, for Shalleg's manner of life was not such as to make him a fighter. He saw that it was no use to bluff and bluster, and, his nerve completely gone, he made a full confession. After his unsuccessful attempt to borrow money of Joe, he really became imbued with the idea that our hero had injured him, and was spreading false reports about him. So he set out to revenge himself on Joe. It was Shalleg who induced Wessel to pick a quarrel with Joe, hoping to disable the pitcher so he could not play ball that season. It was a mean revenge to plot. And it was Shalleg's idea, in luring Joe to the lonely house, on the plea of helping Rad, to involve him in a fight that might disable, or disgrace, him so that he would have to resign from the Cardinals. Likewise it was a tool of Shalleg's who kept track of Joe, who boarded the same car as did our hero, and who so cruelly twisted his arm, hoping to put him out of the game. Shalleg denied having induced Wessel to enter Joe's room that night in question, but his denial can be taken for what it was worth. As to Weasel's object, it could only be guessed at. It may have been robbery, or some worse crime. And then, when all else failed, Shalleg tried the desperate plan of kidnapping Joe, but, as he explained, he did not really intend bodily harm. And perhaps he did not. He was a weak and criminally bad man, but perhaps there was a limit. "Well, this is the end!" the former ball player said, bitterly, as he was handcuffed, and led away. "I might have known better." Some time afterward, when the ball season had closed, Shalleg was tried on the charge of mistreating Joe, and was convicted, being sentenced to a long term. His cronies were not caught, but as they were only tools for Shalleg no one cared very much whether or not they were punished. CHAPTER XXX THE HARDEST BATTLE Filled to overflowing were the big bleachers. Crowded were the grandstands. Above the noise made by the incoming elevated trains, and the tramp of thousands of feet along the boarded run-ways leading to the big concrete Brush Stadium at the Polo Grounds, could be heard the shrill voices of the vendors of peanuts, bottled ginger ale and ice cream cones. Out on the perfect diamond, laid out as though with rule and compass, men in white and other men in darker uniforms were practicing. Balls were being caught, other balls were being batted. It was a sunny, perfect day, hot enough to make fast playing possible, and yet with a refreshing breeze. "Well, Joe, are we going to win?" asked Rad, as he and his chum went to the bench after their warm-up work. "I don't know," answered the young pitcher slowly. "They're a hard team to beat." It was the final game between the Giants and the Cardinals. To win it meant for the St. Louis team that they would reach third place. And if they did get third position, it was practically certain that they could keep it, for their closing games in St. Louis were with the tail-enders of the league. "Are you going to pitch, Joe?" "I don't know that, either. Haven't heard yet," was the answer. Just then a messenger came up to Joe. "There's somebody in that box," he said, indicating one low down, and just back of home plate, "who wants to speak to you." Joe looked around, and a delighted look came over his face as he saw his father and mother, Clara, and one other. "Mabel!" exclaimed Joe, and then he hurried over. "Say, this is great!" he cried, with sparkling eyes. "I didn't know you folks were coming," and he kissed his mother and sister, and wished--but there! I said I wouldn't tell secrets. "Your father found he had some business in New York," explained Mrs. Matson, "so we thought we would combine pleasure with it, and see you play." "And they looked me up, and brought me along," added Mabel. "I just happened to be in town. Now we want to see you win, Joe!" "I don't even know that I'll play," he said, wistfully. Joe felt that he could bide his time, and yet he did long to be the one to open the game, as it was an important one, and a record-breaking crowd was on hand to see it. But it was evident that Manager Watson's choice of a pitcher must be changed. It needed but two innings to demonstrate that, for the Giants got four hits and three runs off Slim Cooney, who, most decidedly, was not in form. The substitution of a batter was made, and the manager nodded at Joe. "You'll pitch!" he said, grimly. "And I want you to win!" "And I want to," replied Joe, as he thought of those in the box watching him. It was to be Baseball Joe's hardest battle. Opposed to him on the mound for the Giants was a pitcher of world-wide fame, a veteran, well-nigh peerless, who had won many a hard-fought game. I might describe that game to you in detail, but I will confine myself to Joe's efforts, since it is in him we are most interested. I might tell of the desperate chances the Cardinals took to gain runs, and of the exceptionally good stick work they did, against the redoubtable pitcher of the Giants. For a time this pitcher held his opponents to scattering hits. Then, for a fatal moment, he went up in the air. It was a break that was at once taken advantage of by the Cardinals. They slammed out two terrific hits, and, as there were men on bases, the most was made of them. Two wild throws, something exceptional for the Giants, added to the luck, and when the excitement was over the Cardinals had tied the game. "Oh, wow!" "Now, we've got 'em going!" "Only one run to win, boys!" "Hold 'em down, Joe!" Thus came the wild cries from the stands. Excitement was at its height. There was a hasty consultation between the peerless pitcher and the veteran catcher. They had gone up in the air, but now they were down to earth again. From then on, until the beginning of the ninth inning, the Cardinals did not cross home plate, and they got very few hits. It was a marvelous exhibition of ball twirling. But if the Giant pitcher did well, Joe did even better, when you consider that he was only rounding out his first season in a big league, and that he was up against a veteran of national fame, the announcement that he was going to be in the game being sufficient to attract a large throng. "Good work, old man! Good work!" called Boswell, when Joe came to the bench one inning, after having allowed but one hit. "Can you keep it up?" "I--I hope so." It was a great battle--a hard battle. The Giants worked every trick they knew to gain another run, but the score remained a tie. Goose egg after goose egg went up on the score board. The ninth inning had started with the teams still even. "We've just _got_ to get that run!" declared Manager Watson. "We've just _got_ to get it. Joe, you are to bat first. See if you can't get a hit!" Pitchers are proverbially weak hitters. One ingenious theory for it is that they are so used to seeing the ball shooting away from them, and toward the batter, that, when the positions are reversed, and they see the ball coming toward them they get nervous. "Ball!" was the umpire's first decision in Joe's favor. The young pitcher was rather surprised, for he knew the prowess of his opponent. And then Joe decided on what might have proved to be a foolish thing. "I'm going to think that the next one will be a swift, straight one, and I'm going to dig in my spikes and set for it," he decided. And he did. He made a beautiful hit, and amid the wild yells of the crowd he started for first. He beat the ball by a narrow margin, and was declared safe. A pinch hitter was up next, and amid a breathless silence he was watched. But the peerless pitcher was taking no chances, and walked him, thinking to get Joe later. But he did not. For, as luck would have it, Rad Chase made the hit of his life, a three-bagger, and with the crowd going wild, two runs came in, giving the Cardinals the game, if they could hold the Giants down. And it was up to Joe to do this. Could he? As Joe walked to the mound, for that last momentous inning, he glanced toward the box where his parents, sister and Mabel sat. A little hand was waved to him, and Joe waved back. Then he faced his first man. "Thud!" went the ball in Doc Mullin's big mitt. "Ball!" droned the umpire. "Thud!" went another. The batter stood motionless. "Strike!" The batter indignantly tapped the rubber. "Crack!" "You can't get it!" yelled the crowd, as the ball shot up in a foul. The umpire tossed a new ball to Joe, for the other had gone too far away to get back speedily. Joe wet the horsehide, and sent it drilling in. The batter made a slight motion, as though to hit it, but refrained: "Strike! You're out!" said the umpire, stolidly. "Why, that ball was----" "You're out!" and the umpire waved him aside, impatiently. Joe grinned in delight. But when he saw the next man, "Home Run Crater," facing him, our hero felt a little shaky. True, the chances were in favor of the Cardinals, but baseball is full of chances that make or break. "If he wallops it!" thought Joe. But Crater did not wallop it. In his characteristic manner he swung at the first delivery, and connected with it. Over Joe's head it was going, but with a mighty jump Joe corraled it in one hand, a sensational catch that set the crowd wild. Joe was playing the game of his life. "Only one more!" "Strike him out!" "The game is ours, Joe!" But another heavy hitter was up, and there was still work for Baseball Joe to do. To his alarm, as he sent in his first ball, there came to his arm that had been twisted on the car, a twinge of pain. "My! I hope that doesn't bother me," thought Joe, in anxiety. "Ball one," announced the umpire. Joe delivered a straight, swift one. His arm hurt worse, and he gritted his teeth to keep from crying out. "Strike!" grunted the umpire, and there was some balm for Joe in that. The batter hit the next one for a dribbler, and just managed to reach first. "If I could only have managed to get him out!" mused Joe. "I'd be done now. But I've got to do it over again. I wonder if I can last out?" To his relief the next batter up was one of the weakest of the Giants, and Joe was glad. And even yet a weak batter might make a hit that would turn the tables. "I've got to do it!" murmured Joe, and he wound up for the delivery. "Strike!" announced the umpire. Joe's heart beat hard. "Here goes for the fadeaway," he said to himself, "though it will hurt like fun!" It did, bringing a remembrance of the old hurt. But it fooled the batter, and there were two strikes on him. The game was all but over. With two out, and two strikes called, there could be but one result, unless there was to be something that occurs but once in a lifetime. And it did not occur. "Strike! You're out!" was the umpire's decision, and that was the end. The Cardinals had won, thanks, in a great measure, to Joe Matson's splendid work. "That's the stuff!" "Third place for ours!" "Three cheers for Joe Matson--Baseball Joe!" called his teammates, who crowded around him to clap him on the back and say all sorts of nice things. Joe stood it, blushingly, for a moment, and then he made his way over to the box. As he walked along, a certain quiet man who had been intently watching the game said softly to himself. "He must be mine next season. I guess I can make a trade for him. He'd be a big drawing card for the Giants." "Oh, Joe, it was splendid! Splendid!" cried Mabel, enthusiastically. "Fine!" said his father. "Do you get any extra when your side wins?" asked his mother, while the crowd smiled. "Well, yes, in a way," answered Joe. "You get treated extra well." "And it's going to be my treat this time," said Mabel, with a laugh. "I want you all to come to dinner with me. You'll come; won't you, Joe?" she asked, pleadingly. "Of course," he said. "And bring a friend, if you like," and she glanced at Clara. "I'll bring Rad," Joe answered. They lived the great game over again at the table of the hotel where Mable was stopping. "Is your arm lame?" asked Mrs. Matson, noticing that her son favored his pitching member a trifle. "Oh, I can finish out the season," said Joe. "The remainder will be easy--only a few more games." "And then what?" asked Rad. "Well, a vacation, I suppose, and then get ready for another season with the Cardinals." But Joe was not destined to remain with the Western team. The horizon was widening, and those of you who wish to follow further the adventures of our hero may do so in the succeeding volume, which will be called "Baseball Joe on the Giants; Or, Making Good as a Ball Twirler in the Metropolis." In that we shall see how Joe rose to even higher fame, through grit, hard work and ability. "Well, you turned the trick, old man!" declared Manager Watson, when, a few days later, the team was on the way back to St. Louis. "You did it. I felt sure you could." "Well, _I_ didn't, at one time," was the rejoinder. "My arm started to go back on me." "Well, there's one consolation, Shalleg and his crowd will never get another chance at you," went on the manager. "Now take care of yourself. I'm only going to let you play one game--the closing one at St. Louis. We won't need our stars against the tail-enders." And the Cardinals did not, winning handily with a number of second string men playing. "Where are you going, Joe?" asked Rad, as they sat in their hotel room one evening, for Joe was "dolling up." "Out to a moving picture show." "Moving pictures?" "Yes. That film of the exhibition game we played in Philadelphia is being shown in town. Come on up." "Sure," assented Rad; and as they went out together we will take leave of Baseball Joe. THE END * * * * * BOOKS BY LESTER CHADWICK THE COLLEGE SPORTS SERIES 12mo. Cloth. Illustrated THE RIVAL PITCHERS A Story of College Baseball A QUARTER-BACK'S PLUCK A Story of College Football BATTING TO WIN A Story of College Baseball THE WINNING TOUCHDOWN A Story of College Football THE EIGHT-OARED VICTORS A Story of College Water Sports THE BASEBALL JOE SERIES _12mo. Illustrated. Price 50 cents per volume. Postage 10 cents additional._ [Illustration: BASEBALL JOE PITCHING WIZARD LESTER CHADWICK] 1. BASEBALL JOE OF THE SILVER STARS _or The Rivals of Riverside_ 2. BASEBALL JOE ON THE SCHOOL NINE _or Pitching for the Blue Banner_ 3. BASEBALL JOE AT YALE _or Pitching for the College Championship_ 4. BASEBALL JOE IN THE CENTRAL LEAGUE _or Making Good as a Professional Pitcher_ 5. BASEBALL JOE IN THE BIG LEAGUE _or A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles_ 6. BASEBALL JOE ON THE GIANTS _or Making Good as a Twirler in the Metropolis_ 7. BASEBALL JOE IN THE WORLD SERIES _or Pitching for the Championship_ 8. BASEBALL JOE AROUND THE WORLD _or Pitching on a Grand Tour_ 9. BASEBALL JOE: HOME RUN KING _or The Greatest Pitcher and Batter on Record_ 10. BASEBALL JOE SAVING THE LEAGUE _or Breaking Up a Great Conspiracy_ 11. BASEBALL JOE CAPTAIN OF THE TEAM _or Bitter Struggles on the Diamond_ 12. BASEBALL JOE CHAMPION OF THE LEAGUE _or The Record that was Worth While_ 13. BASEBALL JOE CLUB OWNER _or Putting the Home Town on the Map_ 14. BASEBALL JOE PITCHING WIZARD _or Triumphs Off and On the Diamond_ _Send for Our Free Illustrated Catalogue._ CHAMPION SPORTS STORIES By NOEL SAINSBURY, JR. _Every boy enjoys sport stories. Here we present three crackerjack stories of baseball, football, and basketball, written in the vernacular of the boy of to-day, full of action, suspense and thrills, in language every boy will understand, and which we know will be enthusiastically endorsed by all boys._ _Large 12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in color. Price 50 cents per volume._ _Postage 10 cents additional_ [Illustration: CRACKER STANTON] 1. CRACKER STANTON _Or The Making of a Batsman_ Ralph Stanton, big, rawboned and serious, is a product of the backwoods and a crack rifle shot. Quick thinking and pluck bring him a scholarship to Clarkville School where he is branded "grind" and "dub" by classmates. How his batting brings them first place in the League and how he secures his appointment to West Point make CRACKER STANTON an up-to-the-minute baseball story no lover of the game will want to put down until the last word is read. 2. GRIDIRON GRIT _Or The Making of a Fullback_ A corking story of football packed full of exciting action and good, clean competitive rivalry. Shorty Fiske is six-foot-four and the product of too much money and indulgence at home. How Clarkville School and football develop Shorty's real character and how he eventually stars on the gridiron brings this thrilling tale of school life and football to a grandstand finish. 3. THE FIGHTING FIVE _Or the Kidnapping of Clarkville's Basketball Team_ Clarkville School's basketball team is kidnapped during the game for the State Scholastic Championship. The team's subsequent adventures under the leadership of Captain Charlie Minor as he brings them back to the State College Gymnasium where the two last quarters of the Championship game are played next evening, climaxes twenty-four pulsating hours of adventure and basketball in the FIGHTING FIVE.... CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York 
43940	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 43940-h.htm or 43940-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/43940/43940-h/43940-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/43940/43940-h.zip) Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=). [Illustration: IT WAS THE LONGEST HIT THAT EVER HAD BEEN MADE ON THE POLO GROUNDS.] BASEBALL JOE, HOME RUN KING Or The Greatest Pitcher and Batter on Record by LESTER CHADWICK Author of "Baseball Joe of the Silver Stars," "Baseball Joe in the Big League," "The Rival Pitchers," "The Eight-Oared Victors," etc. ILLUSTRATED New York Cupples & Leon Company * * * * * * BOOKS BY LESTER CHADWICK =THE BASEBALL JOE SERIES= =12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.= BASEBALL JOE OF THE SILVER STARS BASEBALL JOE ON THE SCHOOL NINE BASEBALL JOE AT YALE BASEBALL JOE IN THE CENTRAL LEAGUE BASEBALL JOE IN THE BIG LEAGUE BASEBALL JOE ON THE GIANTS BASEBALL JOE IN THE WORLD SERIES BASEBALL JOE AROUND THE WORLD BASEBALL JOE, HOME RUN KING =THE COLLEGE SPORTS SERIES= =12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.= THE RIVAL PITCHERS A QUARTERBACK'S PLUCK BATTING TO WIN THE WINNING TOUCHDOWN FOR THE HONOR OF RANDALL THE EIGHT-OARED VICTORS CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, New York * * * * * * Copyright, 1922, by CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY =Baseball Joe, Home Run King= Printed in U. S. A. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I A DANGEROUS PLUNGE 1 II A SURPRISE 17 III REGGIE TURNS UP 33 IV THE ANONYMOUS LETTER 43 V "PLAY BALL!" 54 VI GETTING THE JUMP 61 VII STEALING HOME 71 VIII A BASEBALL IDOL 79 IX AN OLD ENEMY 87 X THREE IN A ROW 94 XI RIGHT FROM THE SHOULDER 101 XII JIM'S WINNING WAYS 108 XIII A BREAK IN THE LUCK 117 XIV A DELIGHTFUL SURPRISE 123 XV AN EVENING RIDE 131 XVI THE ATTACK ON THE ROAD 136 XVII FALLING BEHIND 143 XVIII IN THE THROES OF A SLUMP 151 XIX A CLOSE CALL 157 XX SPEEDING UP 163 XXI THE WINNING STREAK 170 XXII STRIVING FOR MASTERY 178 XXIII HOLDING THEM DOWN 184 XXIV A CRUSHING BLOW 191 XXV LINING THEM OUT 197 XXVI THE TIRELESS FOE 203 XXVII CHAMPIONS OF THE LEAGUE 210 XXVIII THE WORLD SERIES 218 XXIX THE GAME OF HIS LIFE 224 XXX CHAMPIONS OF THE WORLD 230 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IT WAS THE LONGEST HIT THAT EVER HAD BEEN MADE ON THE POLO GROUNDS. THERE WAS NO DOUBT OF THE WARMTH OF THAT WELCOME. SUDDENLY PICKING UP THE BALL HE HURLED IT TO SECOND. "GREAT SCOTT!" HE CRIED. "WHAT�S THE MATTER WITH YOUR HAND?" BASEBALL JOE, HOME RUN KING CHAPTER I A DANGEROUS PLUNGE "I'm going to tie you up in knots, old man," said Jim Barclay, with a smile, as he picked up the ball and stepped into the box in batting practice at the training camp. "I've heard that kind of talk before," retorted Joe Matson, known all over the country as "Baseball Joe," the king pitcher of the Giants. "But untying knots is the best thing I do. Give me the best you have in the shop." Jim wound up and put one over that just cut the corner of the plate. Joe made a mighty swing at it, but it was just beyond his reach. "Nearly broke your back reaching for that one, eh?" laughed Jim, as the ball was thrown back to him. "I was just kidding you that time," grinned Joe. "I'm going to kill the next one." Again the ball whizzed to the plate. It was a fast, straight ball with a slight hop to it. Joe caught it near the end of his bat and "leaned on it" heavily. The ball soared out between right and center, and the outfielders covering that position gave one look at it and then turned and ran with the ball. But it kept on and on until it cleared the fence, and the discomfited fielders threw up their hands and came slowly back to their positions. Jim looked sheepish, and Joe, who was his chum and best friend, laughed outright as he relinquished the bat to the next man in line. "A sweet home run, Jim," he remarked. "I should say so!" snorted Jim. "That hit was good for two home runs. The ball was ticketed for kingdom come." "Who was it said that pitchers couldn't hit?" laughed Mylert, the burly catcher of the Giant team, as he took Joe's place. "I'll tell the world that some of them can!" exclaimed Jim, as he prepared to try his luck again. "Gee, Joe, if that had happened to me in a regular game, it would have broken my heart." Two keen-eyed men in uniform had been standing near the side lines, watching intently every move of the players, as they tried out their batting eyes and arms. One was stocky and of medium height, with hair that had begun to grey at the temples. The other was stout and ruddy, with a twinkle in his eyes that bespoke good nature. Both were veterans of many hard-fought baseball campaigns, and both had played on the Baltimore Orioles when that great organization of stars was the sensation of the baseball world. "Did you see that hit, Robbie?" asked McRae, the manager of the Giants, of his stout companion. "Not all of it," replied Robson, the coach of the team. "But I followed it as far as the fence. That was a whale of a wallop. I'll bet the ball's going yet," and the man chuckled gleefully. "Of course, this was only in practice," mused McRae. "Perhaps Barclay wasn't trying over hard." "Don't kid yourself, Mac," replied Robson. "Barclay wasn't just lobbing them up. That ball came over like a bullet. It had a hop on it too, but Joe gauged it just right. I tell you that boy is a wonder. If he wasn't a wizard in the box, he'd be a terror at the bat." "I wish there were two of him, Robbie," said the manager, smiling. "One to cover the mound and the other to use as a pinch hitter or play him in the outfield. That would make a combination hard to beat." "It was the best day's work you ever did when you got that lad from St. Louis," remarked Robson. "I'll bet the Cardinal's manager feels like throwing a fit every time he thinks what a fool he was to let him go." "Well," said McRae, "if everybody's foresight in baseball was as good as his hindsight, there'd be no trading done. I don't mind saying that I throw out my chest a little for having seen what was in the kid. He's certainly been the making of the team." "One thing is certain; and that is that you wouldn't have the World's Championship tucked away if it hadn't been for his great work in the Series," rejoined Robson. "He just had those Chicago birds eating out of his hand." "Right you are," admitted McRae. "Here's hoping he'll repeat this season." "Don't worry a bit about that," was Robson's confident answer. "You can see for yourself that he's been going great guns in practice. And even at that he hasn't been letting himself out. He's taking good care of that old soup-bone of his." "He was never better in his life," declared McRae. "I'll admit that I was a little worried for fear that the trip around the world had taken something out of him. You know what a strain he was under in that All-Star League affair, Robbie. But it hasn't seemed to affect him at all." "He'll need all he's got this year," said Robbie thoughtfully. "We'll have to depend more on the pitching than we did last year, because we're not so strong on the batting end. When Burkett quit, it took away a good deal of our hitting strength, and you've seen that Mylert is slipping. On the form he's shown in practice this spring, he won't be good for more than a two hundred and fifty per cent average, and that's about sixty points below what he showed last year." "I know it," agreed the manager, a worried look coming into his face. "And what makes it worse is that Larry, too, is slow in rounding into form. Instead of lining them out, he's sending them up in the air. He'll be just pie for the fielders if he keeps it up. I can't understand the thing at all." "Oh, well," said Robbie, whose jolly disposition never let him stay long under a cloud, "here's hoping that they'll come to the scratch when the season opens. Some of the rookies look pretty good to me, and if the old-timers fall down we may be able to fill their places all right. Come along, Mac; let's finish working out that schedule for the trip north. We'll have to get a hustle on to be in shape to start to-morrow." McRae gave the signal to his men that practice time was over, and the young athletes, nothing loth to drop their work and get down to the hotel for dinner, began to gather up their bats preparatory to jumping into the bus which was waiting outside the grounds. But before they got to it, McRae and Robson had climbed in and given the signal to the driver to start. "No, you don't!" he called out with a grin, as the bus started away. "You fellows leg it down to the hotel. It's only two miles, and you need the exercise. Get a move on, or Robbie and I will clear the table before you get there." There were grunts and groans from the players, for the sun was warm and the practice had been strenuous. But there was no help for it, and they dropped into a dog trot that was quickened by the thought of the dinner that was waiting for them at the end of the journey. They reached the hotel in good time, took a shower bath, changed into their regular clothes, and were soon at the table with an appetite that swept the board and made the colored waiters roll their eyes in wonder, not unmixed with awe. After the meal was finished, Joe and Jim were on their way to the room they shared together when they passed McRae and Robbie, who were sitting in the lobby enjoying their after-dinner cigars. McRae beckoned to them, and they went over to where the pair was sitting. "Well, boys," said the manager, as he motioned to a couple of chairs into which they dropped, "our spring practice is over and I don't mind saying that I'm feeling good over the way you fellows ate up your work. Both of you look as fit as fiddles." "That's sure the way we feel," answered Joe, and Jim murmured acquiescence. "In fact you look so good," went on McRae, knocking the ashes from his cigar and settling back comfortably in his chair, "that I'm going to call training finished, as far as you two are concerned. Just now you're right at the top of your form, and I don't want to take any chances on your going stale. So I'm going to let you rest up for the next week or ten days. All you have to do is to take good care of yourselves--and I know you boys well enough to be sure you'll do that--and turn up in shape when the season opens week after next." Joe and Jim looked at each other, and the same thought was in the mind of each. This seemed too good to be true! "We start north to-morrow," went on McRae, "in two lots, playing minor league teams on the way to keep in practice. The regulars will go along with me, while Robbie will take the second string men and the rookies. We'll jog along in easy fashion and hope to reach the Polo Grounds in the pink of condition." By this time Joe had found his voice. He smiled broadly. "That's mighty good of you, Mac," he said. "I suppose you want us then to go right through to New York." "That's the idea," replied the manager. "Robbie will see to your transportation this afternoon." But just here, Robson, who had been watching the boys' faces, broke into a laugh. "For the love of Mike, wake up Mac!" he adjured his friend. "Don't you know that Joe lives only a couple of hundred miles from here right over the border? And don't you remember those two pretty girls that were with us on the World Tour? And didn't we hear Joe telling Jim a few days ago that his sweetheart was visiting his folks? And here you are sending the lads straight through to New York with never a stop on the way. Mac, old man, I'm ashamed of you." McRae grinned as he looked at the faces of the young men--faces that had grown suddenly red. "Robbie hit the nail on the head, did he?" he said, with a chuckle. "Well, I'm Irishman enough to have a soft spot in my heart for the lads and their colleens. Fix it up, boys, to suit yourselves. As long as you report on time, that's all I ask. Get along with you now, as Robbie and I have got to fix up our routes." Joe and Jim were only too glad to "get along," and after thanking McRae hurried to their room, where they indulged in a wild war dance. "Glory, hallelujah!" shouted Joe. "A whole week or more to ourselves, and home only two hundred miles away!" "Your home is," replied Jim. "Mine's more than a thousand miles away." "You old sardine!" cried Joe, throwing a book at his head. "Isn't my home yours? Do you think I'd dare show my face there without bringing you along? Clara would never forgive me. Neither would Mabel. Neither would Momsey nor Dad. Get a wiggle on now, old man, and hunt up a time-table." Jim, with his face jubilant at the thought of soon seeing Joe's pretty sister, hustled about for the time-table; and with heads close together the young men were soon poring over the schedules. At last Joe straightened up with a vexed exclamation. "Of all the roundabout ways!" he ejaculated. "We'll have to change three or four different times with all sorts of bad connections, and can't reach Riverside until to-morrow afternoon." "Wait a minute," said Jim, running his pencil along a column. "Here's a line that will get us to Martinsville early to-morrow morning, just before daylight. How far is Martinsville from Riverside?" "About fifty miles more or less," replied Joe. "But crickey, Jim, that gives me an idea! What's the matter with going to Martinsville and hiring an auto there? I know Hank Bixby who keeps a garage there and has autos for hire. He used to live in Riverside, and played with me on the old school nine before his folks moved away. I'll send him a wire telling him what time we'll get there and asking him to have a first-class car ready for us." "You know the road all right, do you?" asked Jim. "Remember it will be dark when we get there." "I know it like a book," replied Joe. "I've been over it many a time. I could travel it in the dark. It's as level as a table until you get to Hebron. Just beyond that there's a steep hill that will give the car something to do. But Hank will give me a machine that can climb it, and, besides, it will be just about daylight by the time we get there. It's a cinch that we won't have any trouble. I'll bet a hat--what's the matter, Jim?" For Jim had risen and moved quickly toward the door, which had been standing partly open. He put out his head and looked down the corridor. Not satisfied with that, he went down the hall to the head of the stairs. Then he slowly retraced his steps. Joe, who had followed his chum to the door, looked at him with open-mouthed wonder. "What's the matter with you?" he queried. "Have you gone daffy?" "Not exactly," replied Jim. "I thought I saw somebody I knew go past the door." "Likely enough," said Joe, with a touch of sarcasm. "It wouldn't be at all surprising. The hotel is full of our fellows." "It wasn't one of our boys," returned Jim slowly. "Well, who was it then?" asked Joe, a little impatiently. "Come out of your trance, old man." "I think it was a fellow we know only too well," Jim replied. "I think it was Braxton." "Braxton!" exclaimed Joe with sudden interest. "The fellow that was with us on the World Tour?" "The same one," affirmed Jim. "The fellow you licked within an inch of his life in the old Irish castle." "Are you sure?" asked Joe. "It doesn't seem at all likely that we'd run across that rascal in this little training-camp town. What on earth would he be doing down here?" "That's just what I want to know," replied Jim soberly. "As you say, it's all against the chances that we should run across him here by accident. If he's here, he's come with some purpose. And that purpose means nothing good for you. He's exactly the sort of man that won't forget that thrashing." "I guess he won't," replied Joe grimly. "My knuckles ache now when I think of it. But if he's looking for another licking, he sure can have it." "He isn't looking for another," Jim returned. "He's looking to get even for the first one you gave him. You know he swore at the time that he'd pay you up for it." "He's welcome to try," declared Joe indifferently. "But really, Jim, I think you're mistaken. It seems too improbable. There are plenty of men in the world who look like Braxton." "Of course, I wouldn't swear it was he," admitted Jim. "I only saw him side-face, and he slipped past the door like a ghost." "Well, we'll keep our eyes open about the hotel and around the town," rejoined Joe. "But now let's think of pleasanter things. Our train goes at six, and we've got lots to do in getting our duds packed. Then, too, I've got to wire to Hank and must get the tickets for as far as the cars will carry us." The afternoon proved a busy one, but by train time they had completed their packing, said good-by to the rest of the team, who frankly envied them their luck, and were snugly ensconced in the day coach, as the little road had no sleeping cars, and even if they had the frequent changes they had to make would have made a sleeper not worth while. As it was, they slept in snatches, had luck in their connections, and about an hour before dawn stepped off the train at the little station of Martinsville. Both Baseball Joe and Jim Barclay had expected to find the town asleep, but were surprised to find a large number of the inhabitants, chiefly the younger men, at the station. Still another group stood in the lighted doorway of Hank Bixby's garage, which was directly across the street. "What's the big idea?" Jim asked Joe, as he looked in surprise at the crowd that drew close about them. "Blest if I know," replied Joe. "Maybe there's been a fire or something." But they were soon enlightened, as Hank came bustling across the street, his face aglow with welcome and self-importance. "Howdy, Mr. Matson!" he exclaimed, as he wrung Joe's hand. "Mr. Matson!" laughed Joe, returning the handshake. "Where do you get that stuff? What's the matter with Joe?" "Well, Joe, then," beamed Hank. "You see, Joe, you've got to be such a big fellow now, known all over the United States, that I felt a bit shy about calling you by your first name. I got your wire and mentioned it to a fellow or two, and by heck it was all over town in no time that the greatest pitcher in the country was going to be here. This crowd's been waiting here all night to say howdy to you." The people were all crowding around him by now, waiting their turn to shake hands, and Joe, although embarrassed, as he always was when he found himself the center of attention, did his best to respond to the expressions of good will and admiration that were showered upon him. Jim also came in for his share of the crowd's interest as a promising and rapidly rising pitcher of the baseball champions of the world. It was with a sigh of relief that they settled themselves at last in the speedy car which Hank had provided for them and which he proudly assured them would "just burn up the road" between Martinsville and Riverside. Joe took the wheel and the car started off, amid a waving of hands and a roar of farewell from the crowd. "Great day for Martinsville," said Jim mischievously, as he settled down by the side of his chum and the car purred along over the level road. "How does it feel to be a hero, Joe?" "Quit your kidding," replied Joe, with a grin. "If they'd wrung this old wing of mine much more, McRae would have been minus one of his pitchers." "One of the penalties of greatness," chaffed Jim. "And now for home!" exulted Joe, as he put on added speed and the car leaped forward. "And Clara," murmured Jim under his breath, as he thought of Joe's charming sister. Joe did not hear him, for his thoughts were engrossed with Mabel, the girl who had promised to marry him and who he fondly hoped might be at this moment dreaming of him, as without her knowledge he was speeding toward her. She had been visiting at his father's home as the guest of his sister Clara. Since their trip together around the world the two girls had become almost inseparable, and Mr. and Mrs. Matson already regarded Mabel as a second daughter. The day for the marriage of Joe and Mabel had not yet been set, but Joe was determined that it should take place soon, and he hoped that now he would be able to get Mabel to set a definite date for that happy event. Jim, too, had his dreams, and they all centered about Clara. He had fallen desperately in love with her at their first meeting, and he had made up his mind that on this visit he would ask the all-important question, on the answer to which his happiness depended. The car dashed along at rapid speed, and as they came near Hebron Joe roused himself from his reverie. The darkness was disappearing, and in the faint light of the spring morning they could see a steep hill a little way ahead. At the side of the road ran a little river, of whose murmur they had been conscious for some time, although in the darkness they could scarcely see it. "Here's where we'll see whether Hank was bragging overmuch about this car," remarked Joe, as he tightened his grasp on the wheel and put his foot on the accelerator. "I'll give her a good start and see how she can climb." The car gathered speed as it neared the bottom of the hill. Joe peered forward, and then from his lips came a startled shout. Directly in front of them, completely blocking the road, was a mass of heavy timbers. To strike them at that speed meant maiming or death! At one side of the road was a steep cliff. On the other side was the river. Joe's brain worked like lightning. There was but one chance. He swung the wheel around, the car crashed through a fence at the side of the road, suddenly stopped short, and Joe and Jim were sent headlong into the river! CHAPTER II A SURPRISE The water was icy and deep, and at this point the current was swift. The force with which the luckless occupants of the car had been propelled sent them far beneath the surface and some distance out into the stream. A moment later their heads appeared above the water, and they struck out for the shore. Both were strong swimmers, and in a few strokes they reached the bank. Fortunately they had escaped striking any part of the car in their wild hurtling through space, and apart from the chill and wetting were unharmed. From the mud at the river's edge, they dragged their dripping feet to the solid ground of the road. Then they stood still and looked at each other. The shock and suddenness of it all still affected them, but as they continued to look at the comical figure that each presented, with hair plastered over their faces and clothes clinging to their bodies, their sense of the ludicrous got the better of them and they burst into laughter. "Talk about scarecrows!" gurgled Jim, as he dragged a wet handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his face in a vain attempt to dry it. "None of them have anything on us," admitted Joe, as he threw off his coat and wrung one dripping trousers leg after the other. "If only the team could get a snapshot of us now, they'd kid us for the rest of our natural lives," remarked Jim. "You said it," agreed Joe. "But now," he added more soberly, "just let's take a look at what it was that so nearly killed us or crippled us for life." They made their way to the mass of timber in the road. At first Jim thought that it might have fallen off some wagon, unknown to the driver. But a closer examination showed that this was an error. The timbers were piled in a way that could have been done only by human hands, and what made this certain was the fact that rocks had been placed on either side to prevent the logs from slipping. It was a formidable barrier, and if the car had dashed into it at the rate it was going, the occupants would almost certainly have been killed. "Whoever put those timbers there meant harm," said Joe solemnly, when the examination had been completed. "It looks that way," agreed Jim. "Whoever did it was a scoundrel who ought to be in jail." "It might have been the work of a crazy man," suggested Joe. "As crazy as a fox," rejoined Jim, looking squarely into his chum's eyes. "What do you mean?" asked Joe, in some perplexity. "I mean," said Jim, carefully weighing every word, "that the man who put that mass of timber there was just as sane as you or I. I mean that he intended that some one should be seriously hurt. I'll go even further. That man meant to injure Joe Matson, whom he hated with a deadly hatred." "You mean that Braxton did it?" cried Joe. "I mean that Braxton did it," replied Jim quietly. They stared at each other with strange emotions stirring in their hearts. And while they stand there, as if turned to stone, it may be well, for the benefit of those who have not read the earlier volumes of this series, to trace the fortunes of Baseball Joe up to the time that this story opens. Joe Matson was born in a little inland village of the Middle West, and grew up in a pleasant home amid wholesome surroundings. His first experience in the great national game, where he was destined to become famous as the greatest pitcher of his time, was gained on the simple diamond of his home town, and his natural aptitude was such that he soon became known as a rising player all over the county. What obstacles he met and surmounted at that time are related in the first volume of the series, entitled: "Baseball Joe of the Silver Stars." Some time later, when playing on his school nine, he had considerable trouble with a bully who tried to down him, but found out, as so many trouble makers did later on in life, that Joe Matson was not easily downed. He put into his playing all that experience, combined with his native ability, could teach him, and he served an apprenticeship that stood him in good stead when later he went to Yale. The trials and triumphs of his school experience are told in the second volume of the series, entitled: "Baseball Joe on the School Nine." With the natural buoyancy of youth, Joe had hoped when he entered Yale that he would have a chance to show his mettle in the box in some of the great annual games that Yale played with Harvard and Princeton. There were many rivals, however, for the honor, including those who had already won their spurs in actual contests. But Joe's light was not made to shine under a bushel, and one day when the cohorts of Princeton came down in their orange and black prepared to "tie the can" to the Bulldog's tail, Joe got his chance and sent a very bedraggled Tiger back to his lair in Princeton. How Joe won gloriously is told in the third volume of the series, entitled: "Baseball Joe at Yale." Though he enjoyed his college days at Yale, stood high in his studies, and was popular with his mates, he felt that he was not cut out for one of the learned professions. His mother had hoped that he would be a clergyman and had been urgent in having him adopt that profession. But Joe, though he respected the noble aims of that calling, was not drawn to it. It was the open air life that he craved and for which he was fitted, and the scholastic calm of a study had little attraction for him. He felt that he had it in him to win supremacy in athletic fields. His mother, of course, was greatly disappointed when she learned how he felt, but she was too wise to insist on her plan when she realized that it was contrary to his special gifts. She knew very little about baseball, but she had the impression that it was no place for an educated man. The fact, however, that so many college men were entering the ranks of professional baseball was made the most of by Joe, and she finally yielded to his wishes. His chance was not long in coming, for he was soon picked up by one of the scouts who are always looking for "diamonds in the rough," and was offered a contract with the Pittston team of the Central League. The League was a minor one, but Joe had already learned that a man who proved that he had the makings of a star in him would soon have an opportunity with one of the majors. How speedily his ability was proved and recognized is narrated in the fourth volume of the series, entitled: "Baseball Joe in the Central League." From the bushes to the National League was a big jump, but Joe made it when he was drafted into the ranks of the St. Louis Cardinals. The team was in the second division when Joe came into action, and was altogether out of the running for the championship. But Joe's twirling was just what it needed to put new heart and life into it, and before the season ended it had climbed into the first division and if the race had been a little longer might have made a big stroke for the pennant. The story of the team's climb, with all its exciting episodes, is told in the fifth volume of the series, entitled: "Baseball Joe in the Big League." McRae, the crafty and resourceful manager of the New York Giants, had had his eye on Joe all the season, and when the race was ended he made an offer for him that the St. Louis management could not refuse. Now, indeed, Joe felt that the ambition of his life was in a fair way to be realized. McRae had intended to bring him along slowly, so that he could be thoroughly seasoned, but circumstances put on him the heft of the pitching, and how fully he justified his manager's confidence is narrated in the sixth volume of the series, entitled: "Baseball Joe on the Giants." After the winning of the National League Championship by the Giants, came the World Series with the Boston Red Sox, who had won the title that year in the American League. The Sox were a hard team to beat, and the Giants had their work cut out for them. In addition to the strain of the games in which he was slated to pitch, Joe had to contend with the foul tactics of a gang of gamblers who had wagered heavily on the Sox and did all they could to put Joe out of action. But his indomitable will and quick wit triumphed over all obstacles, and his magnificent pitching in the last game of the series won the World's Championship for the Giants. The story of that stirring fight is told in the seventh volume of the series, entitled: "Baseball Joe in the World Series." During these experiences, Joe had not escaped the toils of Cupid. Mabel Varley, a charming young girl, had been rescued by Joe at the moment that a runaway horse was about to carry her over a cliff. The romantic acquaintanceship thus begun soon grew into a deep affection, and Joe knew that Mabel held the happiness of his life in her hands. Jim Barclay, also, a promising young Princeton man and second string pitcher for the Giants, who was Joe's special chum, had grown very fond of Clara, Joe's pretty sister, and hoped that some day she would promise to be his wife. The World Series had scarcely ended before Joe and Jim were invited by McRae to make a trip around the world with the Giant and All-American teams. They were eager for the chance, and their delight was increased when it developed that there were to be a number of wives of the players in the party so that Mabel and Clara could go along. The teams played in Japan, in China, and in many of the cities of Europe, and the experience would have been a thoroughly happy one for Joe, had it not been for the machinations of men who were trying to form a rival league and had by the meanest trickery secured Joe's signature to what afterward turned out to be a contract. How Joe finally unmasked the plotters and had the satisfaction of giving the ringleader a tremendous thrashing is narrated in the preceding volume of the series, entitled: "Baseball Joe Around the World." And now to return to Joe and Jim, as they stood in their dripping clothes on the country road in the growing light of the spring morning. For some seconds after Jim's startling statement, Joe stood as though rooted to the spot. Then he pulled himself together. "Come now, Jim, isn't that pretty far-fetched?" he said, with a forced laugh, in which, however, there was little mirth. "You haven't a shred of proof of anything of the kind." "No," admitted Jim, "there isn't anything--yet--that would convince a judge or a jury. I'll agree that it wouldn't go far in a court of law. But just put two and two together. Yesterday afternoon we were talking about this trip. You distinctly mentioned the hill near Hebron. It was just after you spoke that I saw Braxton pass the door." "Thought you saw," corrected Joe. "All right, then," said Jim patiently, "let it go at that--thought I saw Braxton passing the door. Now just suppose for a minute that I was right and see what comes of it. The man who hates you worse, probably, than any man on earth--the man to whom you gave a terrible thrashing--knew that you would be driving a car just before daylight--knew that you would have to climb a hill--knew that as you got near it you'd probably put on speed to carry the car up--knew that an obstacle put near the bottom of the hill would almost certainly wreck the car and hurt the driver. Knowing all this, might not such a man as we know Braxton to be see his chance and take it?" There was silence for a moment. Then: "It certainly sounds strong the way you put it," Joe said thoughtfully. "But how on earth could Braxton get here in time to do all this? Think of the distance." "It isn't so great a distance," rejoined Jim. "That is, if a man came straight across country in a speedy car for instance. It seemed long to us because of the roundabout way we had to go by train. Then too that was early in the afternoon, and Braxton could have had four hours' start of us. He's a rich man and probably has a fast car. He could have made it all right and got here hours ago." "Yes, but even then," argued Joe, "he couldn't have done it all alone. It's as much as you and I can do together to handle these timbers." "That's true," conceded Jim. "But he may have had one or more confederates with him. Money you know can do almost anything. I shouldn't wonder if that fellow Fleming helped him. He owed you a debt too, you remember, and the pair were as thick as thieves on the world tour." "Well, it may be just as you say," replied Joe. "But I hate to think that any man hates me so badly as to try to injure me in such a cowardly way as that. At any rate, it won't do any harm for us to keep our eyes open in the future. But we've got plenty of time to think of that. Now let's get busy and hustle these timbers over to the side of the road so that nobody else can run into them. Then we'll take a look at the car." They set to work with a will, and in a few minutes had removed the obstacles from the road. "Now for the machine," said Joe, as he led the way to the river bank. "I've got an idea that what we owe Hank will put a dent in our bank rolls." To their delight they found, however, that, apart from superficial injuries, the car seemed to be intact. The wind shield had been shattered and the mud guards were badly bent. But the axles seemed to be sound, the wheels were in place, and as far as they could judge there had been no injury to the engine. To all appearances the expenditure of a hundred dollars would put the car in good shape again. But the wheels were so firmly imbedded in the mud of the shore that despite all their efforts they could not budge the car. They strained and pushed and lifted, but to no avail. Joe climbed into the driver's seat and set the engine going, but the car was stubborn and refused to back. "Swell chance of our getting home in time for breakfast," grumbled Joe, as he stopped to rest for a moment. "Lucky if we get there in time for supper," muttered Jim. "We'll have to go somewhere and borrow a shovel so that we can dig the wheels out of the mud." But just at this moment they heard the rumbling of a cart, and running to the road they saw it coming, drawn by two stout horses, while the driver sat handling the reins in leisurely fashion. They waved their hands and the cart came to a halt, the driver scanning curiously the two young men who had appeared so unexpectedly from the side of the road. He was a bluff, jovial person, and his eyes twinkled with amusement as he noted the wet garments that were clinging to their limbs. "Been taking a bath with all your clothes on?" he asked, as he got down from his seat. "Something like that," replied Joe, with a laugh, "but the bath came as a sort of surprise party. The road was blocked, and it was either the morgue or the river for us, so we chose the river." "Road blocked?" repeated the newcomer, looking about with a puzzled expression. "I don't get you. Looks clear enough to me." "It wouldn't if you'd been here half an hour ago," replied Joe, and then, as the man listened with interest that soon changed to indignation, he recounted briefly the events of the morning. "Whoever did that ought to be jailed," he burst out, when the boys had concluded their story. "And he can't be very far away, either. This road was clear when I passed over it last night. Jump in and I'll drive you into town and we can send out an alarm." "Not much use of that I'm afraid," replied Joe. "The man or men may be fifty miles away by this time. But if you'll give us a hand to get this auto out of the mud, you'll do us a big favor." "Sure I'll help you," said the friend in need, whose name they learned was Thompson. "I've got a spade right here in the cart. We'll dig around the wheels a little. Then I'll hitch a trace chain to the machine and my horses will yank it out in a jiffy." A few minutes of work sufficed to clear the wheels. Then boards were placed behind them, the chain was attached to the rear axle, and the horses drew the car back into the road. It presented rather a forlorn appearance, but the boys cared little for that. What they were far more concerned about was their own bedraggled condition. "We match the car all right," remarked Jim disgustedly, as he looked at his own clothes and those of his companion. "It will never do to let Mabel and Clara see us like this," responded Joe lugubriously. "Don't let that worry you," laughed their new friend. "Just drive into town and stop at Eph Allen's tailor shop. It's pretty early, but Eph sleeps in the back of his shop and he'll let you in and fix you up in no time." This was evidently the best thing to be done, and the young men, after repeated thanks to their newly made friend and with fullest directions as to how to find the tailor shop in question, jumped into the auto and started on the way back to Hebron. "Old bus seems to work as well as ever," commented Joe, as the car moved on without any visible evidence of injury. "That's one bit of good luck," replied Jim. "And it's certainly coming to us to make up in part for the bad." They thanked their stars that it was too early yet for many people to be stirring in the town, and were relieved when they found themselves in front of Allen's shop. Eph must have been a pretty sound sleeper, for it took a good deal of knocking to wake him up, and when at last he thrust his tousled head through the door to ask what was wanted, he was not in the best of temper. But as soon as he learned the circumstances that had occasioned the early call, he became at once all interest and attention, and hustled about to put their clothes in presentable shape. It was a fairly good job that he at length turned out after he had ironed and pressed their suits, though they had by no means the Beau Brummel effect with which the boys had planned to impress the girls. By this time the sun had fully risen and Joe looked at his watch. "Perhaps we'll be in time to catch them at breakfast yet," he remarked. "It's only about twenty miles from here to Riverside. Maybe they won't be surprised when we break in on them. They don't think we're within several hundred miles of them." "Perhaps we ought to have telegraphed that we were coming," said Jim. "It might have been just as well, I suppose," admitted Joe. "But that would have taken away the fun of the surprise. I want to see the look on their faces." "Of course we won't say anything about what happened to us this morning," suggested Jim, as the machine bowled along over a road that with every minute that passed was growing more familiar. "Not on your life," replied Joe earnestly. "None of them would ever have another easy minute. They'd be seeing our mangled remains every night in their dreams. All we'll tell them is that we had a little spill and got wet. But not a word about the blocked road or what we suspect regarding Braxton." Before long they were passing the straggling houses that marked the outskirts of Riverside. Joe pulled his cap down over his eyes so that he would not be recognized and stopped by any of the people of the town, where he was regarded as something of an idol. All he wanted to do was to get to his family and Mabel, or, as perhaps he would have put it, get to Mabel and his family. His ruse was successful, for there was no sign of recognition from the few he passed on the streets, and in a few minutes he brought the car to a stop in front of the Matson home. The young men jumped out, and with Joe leading the way ran lightly up the steps. He tried the front door and found that it yielded to his touch. With his finger on his lips as a warning to Jim, he tiptoed softly through the hall to the door of the dining room. The odor of coffee and bacon came to them and from the click of plates and cups, as well as the murmur of several voices, they knew that the family was still at the breakfast table. Joe waited no longer but threw open the door. "Hello, folks!" he cried. CHAPTER III REGGIE TURNS UP If Joe had counted upon producing a surprise, his success surpassed his wildest expectations. At first there was a second of paralyzed silence. Then there was a wild hubbub of delighted cries, as four figures started up from the table and launched themselves upon the stalwart figure that stood framed in the doorway. "Joe!" "Mabel!" "Clara!" "Momsey!" "Dad!" "Jim!" The names were repeated in quick succession and were punctuated with hugs and kisses. In a moment Joe had his right arm around Mabel, his left about his mother, while Clara had thrown her arms about his neck and his father was attempting to get hold of one of his hands. There was no doubt of the warmth of that welcome. [Illustration: THERE WAS NO DOUBT OF THE WARMTH OF THAT WELCOME.] Nor was Jim left out in the cold. Joe naturally had the center of the stage, but after the first rapturous greeting had passed, they all made Jim feel how delighted they were that he had come along with Joe. In Clara's eyes especially there was a look that Jim hoped he read aright. Her flushed and sparkling face was alive with happiness that might not be due altogether to the return of her brother, dearly as she loved him. For a few minutes questions and answers followed close on each other's heels, and it was Mrs. Matson at last who suggested that probably the boys were hungry. They agreed with her emphatically that they were. The girls flew about, and in a short time fresh coffee and hot biscuits and bacon and eggs were set before them in tempting profusion. Then while they ate like famished wolves, the others, who had been just finishing breakfast when they burst in upon them, sat about the table and talked and laughed and beamed to their hearts' content. Perhaps in all the broad land there was no happier group than was gathered about that table in the little town of Riverside. "You ought to have telegraphed that you were coming, Joe," said Mrs. Matson. "Then we could have had a good breakfast ready for you." "What do you call this?" laughed Joe, as he helped himself to another biscuit, watching at the same time the bewitching way in which Mabel was pouring him another cup of coffee. "There couldn't be anything better than this this side of kingdom come." "You're right there, old man," observed Jim, his own appetite keeping pace with that of his chum. "Seems to me, Joe, that your clothes look a little seedy this morning," Clara remarked, with a sister's frankness, during a moment's pause in the conversation. "The last time you came home you looked like a fashion plate. But now your shirt front is wrinkled, your collar is wilted, and the colors in your necktie have run together. Looks as though you'd got wet through and hadn't dried out yet." "Perhaps they've been in the river," laughed Mabel gaily, little thinking how near she came to hitting the nail on the head. Mrs. Matson's motherly heart was quick to take alarm. "What's that?" she asked. "Nothing really has happened to you, has it, Joe?" she inquired, looking anxiously at her son, who after one glare at the sister who had precipitated the topic, was trying to assume an air of nonchalance. But this direct inquiry from his mother left him no recourse except to tell her a part of the truth, though not necessarily the whole truth. "We did have a little spill this morning," he returned indifferently. "I turned the car a little too much to the right and we went through a fence and into a little stream at the side of the road. Jim and I got wet, but after we got over being mad we had a good laugh over it. Neither one of us was a bit hurt, and it's only our clothes that got the worst of it." "Oh, but you might have been killed!" exclaimed Mrs. Matson, clasping her hands together nervously. "You must be more careful, Joe. It would break my heart if anything happened to you." "Don't worry a bit, Momsey," replied Joe, placing his hand affectionately over hers. "Only the good die young, you know, and that makes me safe." They all pressed him for the details of the accident, and he and Jim both made light of it, making a joke out of their plight and their visit to the tailor, so that apprehension vanished, and after a while the matter was dropped. Joe was eager for a chance to get alone with Mabel, and Jim was quite as keen for a tête-à-tête with Clara. The girls were quite as eager, but as there was no servant in the simple little household the girls flew around to clear the table, while Joe had a chance for a quiet talk with his mother, and Jim beguiled his impatience by going out on the porch with Mr. Matson for a smoke before the latter had to go downtown to business. "How have you been feeling, Momsey?" Joe asked when they had settled down in a cosy corner of the living room. "It seems to me that you're a little thinner than you were." "I'm not feeling any too well," replied Mrs. Matson. "I have trouble with my breathing whenever I go up or down stairs. But I'll be all right pretty soon," she added, with an attempt at brightness. "I'm afraid you've been working too hard, Momsey," replied Joe, patting her hand. "Why don't you let me get you a maid to help out with the work? The money doesn't matter, and you know how glad I'd be to bear the expense." "I don't want any regular servant, Joe," replied Mrs. Matson. "I haven't been used to one, and she'd be more bother than help. We have a wash woman. There isn't much to be done in this little house, and Clara is the dearest girl. If I did what she wanted, I'd just fold my hands and sit around in the living room. And Mabel, too, has spoiled me since she's been here. She's already like a second daughter to me." "She'll be really your daughter before long, if I have anything to say about it," replied Joe. "I'm going to put it right up to her to marry me while I'm here this time." Mrs. Matson was both delighted and flustered at the boldness of this announcement. "You take my breath away, talking like that," she replied. "But I'm afraid Mabel won't let herself be carried off her feet in that way. A girl wants to get her trousseau ready. And then, too, she'll want to be married in her father's house. You're a dear boy, Joe, but you've got a lot to learn about women." "Mabel will agree all right," replied Joe confidently, though his masculine assurance had been slightly dashed by his mother's prediction. The opportunity to make sure about that important matter came a few minutes later, when Mabel came into the room looking more lovely, Joe thought, than he had ever seen her before. Mrs. Matson lingered only a moment longer, and then made an excuse to leave the room. The door had hardly closed behind her before Mabel was in Joe's arms. It was a long time before they were able to talk coherently, and when at last Mabel told Joe that he was too greedy and laughingly bade him be sensible, she was more rosy and beautiful than ever, and Joe was deeper in love than before, if that could be possible. Joe was not long in putting his mother's prediction to the test. "Do you remember what Jim said when we said good-by to McRae after the World Tour was over?" he asked, with a twinkle in his eye. The flush in Mabel's cheeks deepened. "Jim talks so much nonsense," she countered. "Think a minute." Joe was jogging her memory. "Wasn't it something about bells?" "How should I remember?" asked Mabel, though she did remember perfectly. "Well, I remember," said Joe. "He said I'd soon be hearing wedding bells. Now do you remember?" "Y-yes," admitted Mabel at last, hiding her face on Joe's shoulder, which was very close to her. "I want to hear those wedding bells, very soon, dearest," said Joe tenderly. "Next week--this week--to-morrow----" Mabel sat up with a little scream. "Next week--this week--to-morrow!" she repeated. "Why, Joe dear, we can't!" "Why can't we?" asked Joe with masculine directness. "Why--why--we just can't," replied Mabel. "I haven't got my wedding clothes ready. And I'll have to be married in my own home. What would my family think? What would my friends think? It would look like a runaway affair. People would talk. Oh, Joe dear, I'd love to, but I just can't. Don't you see I can't?" Joe did not see at all, and he renewed his importunities with all his powers of persuasion. But Mabel, though she softened her refusal with lover-like endearments, was set in her convictions, and Joe at last was forced to confess in his heart with a groan that his mother was right, and that he had a lot to learn about women. He suggested in desperation that they go on at once to her home in Goldsboro and be married there, but although that would have taken away one of her arguments, the others still continued in full force, and she added another for good measure. "You see, Joe, dear, your mother isn't well enough just now to travel so far, and it would break her heart if she weren't present at our marriage. By fall she may be better." "By fall!" echoed Joe in dismay. "Have I got to wait that long?" "I think it would be better, dear," said Mabel gently. "You see if we got married any time after the baseball season had commenced, you would find it hard to get away from your club. In any case, our honeymoon trip would have to be very short. Then, too, if I traveled about the circuit with you, you'd have me on your mind, and it might affect your playing. But I promise you that we shall get married in the fall, just as soon as the baseball season is over." And as she sealed this promise in the way that Joe liked best, he was forced to be content. The days passed by, as though on wings, with Joe grudging every minute as it passed that brought him nearer to the day when he would have to rejoin his team. The hours were precious and he spent every one of them that he could with Mabel. Jim, too, was finding his vacation delightful. He was getting on famously with Clara, and the latter's heart was learning to beat very fast when she heard the step and saw the face of the handsome young athlete. The prospects were very good that two weddings would be celebrated in the fall, and that Baseball Joe would gain not only a wife but a brother-in-law. During that week the moon was at its full, and almost every night saw the two couples out for a stroll. They would start out from the house together and walk down the village street, with only a few yards separating them. However, they usually lost sight of each other before they had gone far. Joe was happy, supremely happy. Mabel had never been so dear, so affectionate. He knew that he possessed her heart utterly. Yet there was a faint something, a mysterious impression to which he could scarcely give a name, that at times marred his happiness and caused him to feel depressed. He chased the feeling away, and yet it returned. There were moments when Mabel grew quiet and seemed as though brooding over something. Her face would become sad, and only brighten with a gayety that seemed a little forced, when she saw that he was studying her and seeking to learn what troubled her. At times she would cling to him as though she feared he was to be taken from her. Once or twice he questioned her, but she laughed his fears away and declared that there was nothing the matter. Despite her denials, he remained vaguely uneasy. The day before his brief vacation came to an end there was a ring at the bell of the Matson home. Mabel, who happened to be in the hall at the time, opened the door. There was an exclamation of surprise and delight as the newcomer threw his arms about her. "Reggie!" "Mabel!" There was a fond embrace, and then Mabel came into the living room where the family were assembled, while close behind her came Reggie Varley, her brother, the same old Reggie, monocle, cane, lisp, English clothes, English accent, fancy waistcoat, fitted in topcoat, spats and all--a vision of sartorial splendor! CHAPTER IV THE ANONYMOUS LETTER All rose to their feet in hearty welcome. It was not the first time Reggie had visited the Matson home, and all were fond of him. Joe and Jim especially gave him a hilarious greeting. "Hello, Reggie, old man," cried Joe, as he shook hands. "I'm tickled to death to see you. What good wind blew you down this way? I didn't think you were within a thousand miles of here." "Well, old top," explained Reggie, as he gracefully drew off his gloves and divested himself of his topcoat, "it was so beastly quiet in Goldsboro, don't y'know, that I got fed up with it and when the guv'nor suggested that there was a bit of business I could attend to in Chicago I just blew the bally town and ran out there. Then bein' so near, I thought I'd run down and see Sis and the rest of you. It's simply rippin' to see y'all again, don't y'know." He sat down in a chair, carefully adjusting his trousers so as not to mar the creases in the legs, and beamed blandly upon the friendly faces that surrounded him. Joe and Reggie had first met under rather unpleasant circumstances, that bore no promise of a close friendship later on. Reggie had left his bag in a seat of a railroad station while he went to buy his ticket. Upon his return he missed his bag, which had been left in a seat adjoining the one in which Joe had in the meantime seated himself, and had practically accused Joe of taking it. As may be readily imagined, Joe was not the one to take lightly such an accusation, and Reggie had to apologize. It was only after Joe had met Mabel that he again encountered Reggie and learned that he was the girl's brother. But apart from his relationship to Mabel, Joe had found further reason for liking Reggie, as time wore on and he became better acquainted with him. Reggie had never been restrained much by his father, who was rich and indulgent. He had an inordinate love of fine clothes and an affectation of English customs and manner of speech. But these, after all, were foibles, and at heart Reggie was "true blue." He was a staunch friend, generous, kindly and honorable. He idolized his charming sister, who in return was devotedly attached to him. Another thing that strengthened the friendship between Joe and Reggie was that they were both ardent lovers of the great national game. Reggie was a "dyed-in-the-wool fan," and though his general information was none too great he had the records of individual players and the history of the game at his tongue's end, and could rattle on for an hour on a stretch when he once got started on his favorite theme. He was a great admirer of Joe as a player, and intensely proud that he was going to be his brother-in-law. Whenever the Giants played and Joe was slated to pitch, the latter could be perfectly certain that Reggie, even if he chanced to be at the time in San Francisco, was "rooting" for him to win. Jim also had met Reggie frequently and liked him thoroughly. The other members of the Matson family liked him, both for Mabel's sake and his own. So it was a very friendly circle into which Reggie had come so unexpectedly. "But I didn't expect to see you two chaps here," said Reggie, as he looked from Joe to Jim. "I thought you were down in the training camp, or else on your way to New York with the rest of the Giants." "It was just a bit of luck that we are here," replied Joe. "McRae thought that we were trained fine enough, and might go stale if we worked out in practice any longer. He wants us to be at the top of our form when the bell rings at the Polo Grounds." "Bally good sense, I call it, too," replied Reggie, looking admiringly at their athletic forms. "Just now you look fit to fight for a man's life, don't y'know." "Never felt better," admitted Joe. "Nor happier either," he added, as he glanced at Mabel, who dropped her eyes before his ardent look. "You came just in time to see the boys," put in Mrs. Matson. "They're starting to-morrow for New York." "Bah Jove, I'd like to go with them," said Reggie. "I'd give a lot to see that opening game on the Polo Grounds. But this beastly business in Chicago will make it necessary for me to go back there in a few days. In the meantime I thought that perhaps you might put me up here for a little while, don't y'know?" He looked toward Mr. Matson as he spoke, and both he and Mrs. Matson hastened to assure the young man that they would be only too glad to do so. All had a lot to talk about, and the evening passed quickly, until at last Mrs. Matson excused herself on the plea that she wanted to see about Reggie's room. Mr. Matson soon followed, and the young people were left to themselves. "Well, what do you think the chances are of the Giants copping the flag again, old top?" asked Reggie, as he pulled down his cuffs and put up his hand to make sure that his immaculate tie was all right. "The Giants look mighty sweet to me," answered Joe. "They've had a good training season and shown up well in practice. They've won every game they've played with the minor leaguers so far, and haven't had to exert themselves. Of course that doesn't mean very much in itself, as the bushers ought to be easy meat for us. But we've got practically the same team with which we won the pennant last year, and I can't see why we shouldn't repeat. Jim here has been coming along like a house afire, and he'll make the fans sit up and take notice when they see him in action." "Oh, I'm only an also ran," said Jim modestly. "Indeed you're not," Clara started to say indignantly, but checked herself in time. Not so quickly, however, that Jim failed to catch her meaning and note the flush that rose to her cheek. "Funny thing happened when I was in Chicago," mused Reggie. "I heard a chap say in one of the hotels that there was heavy betting against the Giants winning this year. Some one, he didn't know who, was putting up cash in great wads against them, and doing it with such confidence that it almost seemed as though he thought he was betting on a sure thing. Taking ridiculous odds too. Queer, wasn't it?" "A fool and his money are soon parted," remarked Joe. "That fellow will be a little wiser and a good deal poorer when the season ends, or I miss my guess. Who's going to beat us out? Nothing short of a train wreck can stop us." "Now you're talking!" cried Jim. "Another thing that's going to help us," said Joe, "was that trip we had around the world. We had some mighty hot playing on that tour against the All-Americans, and it kept the boys in fine fettle." "Speaking about that trip, old chap," put in Reggie, "reminds me of another thing that happened in Chicago. I was going down State Street one afternoon, and almost ran into that Braxton that you handed such a trimming to over in Ireland." "Braxton!" cried Joe. "Braxton!" echoed Jim. "Sure thing," replied Reggie, mildly puzzled at the agitation that the name aroused in the two chums. "I'm not spoofing you. Braxton it was, as large as life. The bounder recognized me and started to speak, but I gave him the glassy eye and he thought better of it and passed on. Funny what a little world it is, don't y'know." "It surely is a little world," replied Jim, as a significant glance passed between him and Joe. "I glanced back," Reggie went on, "and saw him getting into a car drawn up at the curb. As classy a machine as I've seen, too, for a long time. Built for speed, y'know. If he hadn't driven off too quickly, I'd have made a note of the make. My own is getting rather old, and I've been thinking about replacing it." The conversation turned into other channels and finally began to drag a little. The others made no sign of being ready to retire, and at last Reggie woke to the fact that he would have to make the first move. He looked at his watch, remarked that he was rather tired after his journey, and thought that he would "pound the pillow." Joe showed him to his room, chatted with him a few minutes, and then returned to the living room where he found Mabel alone, as Clara and Jim had drifted into the dining room. It was the last night the boys would have at home, and the two young couples had a lot to talk about. To Jim especially the time was very precious, for he had made up his mind to ask a very momentous question, and there is little doubt but that Clara knew it was coming and had already made up her mind how it should be answered. It was an exceedingly agitated Jim that asked Mr. Matson for a private interview the next morning, and it was an exceedingly happy Jim that emerged from the room a few minutes later and announced to the family already seated at the breakfast table that Clara had promised to be his wife. There was a stampede from the chairs, to the imminent danger of the coffee being upset, and Clara was hugged and kissed by Mabel and hugged and kissed and cried over by her mother, while Jim's hand was almost wrung off by Joe and Reggie in the general jubilation. For Jim was a splendid fellow, a Princeton graduate, a rising man in his chosen calling, and an all round good fellow. And there was no sweeter or prettier girl than Clara in all Riverside, or, as Jim stood ready to maintain, in the whole world. Needless to say that for the rest of that morning Reggie and Joe had no other masculine society than each could furnish to the other, for Jim had shamelessly abandoned them. Soon Reggie, too, had to chum with himself, as Joe and Mabel had found a sequestered corner and seemed to be dead to the rest of the world. Just before noon, however, when Mabel had gone in to help Mrs. Matson to prepare lunch, Joe had a chance to talk with Reggie alone. "Mabel's looking rippin', don't you think?" remarked Reggie, as he caught a glimpse of his sister passing the door of the room in which they sat. "Most beautiful girl that lives," returned Joe, with enthusiasm. "I guess she's stopped worrying about----" began Reggie, and then checked himself as though he had said more than he intended to. "Worrying about what?" asked Joe, with the quick apprehension of a lover. "Oh, about--about things in general," replied Reggie, in some confusion and evading Joe's searching eyes. "Look here, Reggie," said Joe with decision. "If anything's worrying Mabel, I've got a right to know what it is. I've noticed lately that she seemed to have something on her mind. Come now, out with it." Reggie still tried to put him off, but Joe would have none of it. "I've got to know, Reggie," he declared. "You've simply got to tell me." Reggie pondered a moment. "Well, old top," he said at last, "I suppose you have a right to know, and perhaps it's best that you should know. The fact is that Mabel got a letter a little while ago telling her that it would be a sorry day for her if she ever married Joe Matson. Threatened all sorts of terrible things against you, don't y'know." "What!" cried Joe, wild with rage and leaping to his feet. "The scoundrel! The coward! Who signed that letter? What's his name? If I ever lay my hands on him, may heaven have mercy on him, for I won't!" "That's the worst of it," replied Reggie. "There wasn't any name signed to it. The bounder who wrote it took good care of that." "But the handwriting!" cried Joe. "Perhaps I can recognize it. Where is the letter? Give it to me." "I haven't got it with me," Reggie explained. "It's at my home in Goldsboro. The poor girl had to confide in somebody, so she sent it to me. And even if you had it, it wouldn't tell you anything. It was in typewriting." "But the postmark!" ejaculated Joe. "Perhaps that would give a clue. Where did it come from?" "There again we're stumped," responded Reggie. "It was postmarked Chicago. But that doesn't do us any good, for there are two million people in Chicago." "Oh!" cried Joe, as he walked the floor and clenched his fists until the nails dug into his palms. "The beastliness of it! The cowardice of it! An anonymous letter! That such a villain should dare to torture the dearest girl in the world! But somewhere, somehow, I'll hunt him out and thrash him soundly." "Don't take the beastly thing so much to heart," returned Reggie. "Of course it's just a bluff by some bally bounder. Nobody ought to do anything with such a letter but tear it up and think no more about it. Some coward has done it that has a grudge against you, but he'd probably never have the nerve to carry out his threats." "It isn't that I care about," answered Joe. "I've always been able to take care of myself. I'd like nothing better than to have the rascal come out in the open and try to make his bluff good. But it's Mabel I'm thinking about. You know a woman doesn't dismiss those things as a man would. She worries her heart out about it. So that's what has been weighing on her mind, poor, dear girl. Oh, if I only had my hands on the fellow that wrote that letter!" And here he yielded again to a justified rage that was terrible to behold. It would have been a bad day for the rascally writer of that anonymous letter if he had suddenly stood revealed in the presence of Joe Matson! CHAPTER V "PLAY BALL!" Just then Mabel came in with her hands full of flowers that she meant to arrange for the table. She stopped short in consternation as she saw the thundercloud on Joe's brow. For a moment she thought that he and Reggie had been quarreling. "Oh, Joe, what is it?" she asked in alarm. Joe looked at her lovingly and his brow cleared. "Nothing, honey," he said, as he came up to her and slipped his arm around her. "It's only that I've just found out from Reggie what it is that's been worrying you." Mabel shot a reproachful glance at Reggie, who looked a little embarrassed. "Joe got it out of me, Sis," he explained. "Said he had a right to know and all that sort of thing, don't y'know. And 'pon honor, Sis, I don't know but what he's right about it." "Of course I'm right about it," affirmed Joe. "There can't be anything now that concerns Mabel that doesn't concern me. Don't you agree with me, dearest?" "I suppose so," returned Mabel, as Joe drew her closer. "But, oh, Joe, I didn't want to distress you about it. I was afraid that it would weigh on your mind and affect your work this season, and I knew how your heart was set on making a record. It was just for your sake, dearest, that I kept it to myself. Of course I would have told you sooner or later." "Well, now Mabel, listen to me," said Joe, as he placed a chair and sat down beside her. "I don't know what fellow has done this. But whoever he is, he is a coward as well as a rascal, and will never dare to carry out his threats against me. And even if he should, you know that I am perfectly able to take care of myself. You know that others have tried to injure me, but I always came out on top. Fleming tried it; Braxton tried it, and you know what happened to them. Now what I want you to promise me is to banish this beastly thing entirely from your memory. Treat it with the contempt it deserves. Will you promise me this?" "I will promise, Joe," answered Mabel. "I'll try to forget that it ever happened." "That's the girl," commended Joe. "And to set your mind at rest I'll promise on my part to take especially good care of myself. That's a bargain." But while Joe had secured the promise of Mabel to forget the letter, he had made no such promise himself, and he vowed that if he could ever get any trace of the writer of that letter he would give him the punishment he so richly deserved. The train Baseball Joe and Jim Barclay would take was to leave late that afternoon. Somehow general knowledge of that fact had got abroad, and the boys were dismayed, on reaching the station, to find that half the population of the little town had gathered there to say good-by and wish them luck. To many of the townspeople, Joe was a bigger man than the President of the United States. He had put Riverside "on the map," and through the columns of the papers they followed his triumphs and felt that in a sense they were their own. Of course Joe appreciated this affectionate interest, but just at the moment all he wanted was to be alone with Mabel. He had already bidden his mother a loving farewell at the house, as she was not well enough to go to the station. Jim also had eyes and thoughts only for Clara. But there was no help for it, and they had to exchange greetings and good wishes with the kindly friends who clustered around them. At the last minute, however, the young folks had a chance to say a few words to each other, and what they did not have time to say was eloquent in their eyes. The train moved off, and the boys leaned far out of the windows and waved to the girls as long as they were in sight. Then they settled back in their seats, and for a long time were engrossed in their thoughts. Usually they were full of chaff and banter, but to-day it was some time before they roused themselves from reverie and paid attention to the realities around them. It was after they had come back from the dining car after supper that Joe told Jim about his interview with Reggie and the anonymous letter. Jim's wrath was almost as great as that which had shaken Joe himself. "And the worst of it is," said Joe, "that there doesn't seem the slightest chance of getting hold of the cowardly fellow that did it. You might as well look for a needle in a haystack." "Yes," agreed Jim, "that's the exasperating feature of it. It may be the work of gamblers who have bet against the Giants and want to worry you so that you won't pitch your best ball. Some of those fellows will do anything for money. Or it may have been done by some enemy who chose that way of striking in the dark." "If it's an enemy," mused Joe, "that narrows it down. There's old Bugs Hartley, but I don't think he has intelligence enough to write a letter. Then there's Fleming, with whom I'm just about as popular as poison ivy. Add to that Braxton and a few old-time enemies, and you've about completed the list." "I wouldn't put it past Braxton," remarked Jim thoughtfully. "That fellow's a rattlesnake. He wouldn't stop at anything to get even with you." "I hate to think he'd stoop as low as to try to strike me through a woman," replied Joe. "But, by Jove!" he went on, as a thought struck him, "do you remember what Reggie said about meeting Braxton in Chicago? You know while we were on the trip he mentioned Chicago as his home town. And that letter had the Chicago postmark." "Oh, well, you couldn't hang a yellow dog on that," Jim replied. "But what struck me was what Reggie said about the speedy car that Braxton had. It must have been a mighty speedy car that got the fellow who laid that trap on the road from the training town to Hebron. Of course those things are only straws, of no value separately, though straws show which way the wind blows. One thing is certain. We've got to keep one man in our mind and guard against him. And that man's name is Braxton." They reached New York without incident the day before the opening game, and found the city baseball mad. The front pages of the newspapers had big headlines discussing the opening of the season. The sporting pages overflowed with speculation and prophecy as to the way the different teams would shape up for the pennant race. In the street cars, in the subways, in the restaurants, in the lobbies of the theatres, wherever men congregated, baseball was the subject of discussion. The long winter had made the populace hungry for their favorite game. On the following day, the migration toward the Polo Grounds began long before noon. Every train was packed with eager, good-natured humanity on its way to the game. By noon the bleachers were packed, and an hour before the game was scheduled to begin, every inch of the grandstands were packed to overflowing. The Bostons were to be the Giants' opponents in the opening game. The team had finished poorly the year before, but many winter trades had strengthened the weak spots, and the spring training of the nine had been full of promise. A close game was looked for, with the chances favoring the Giants. McRae was anxious to win the opening game, and had selected Joe to "bring home the bacon." Hughson's arm was not yet in shape, and the prospects were that Joe would have to bear the heft of the pitcher's burden if the Giants were to carry off the flag. Both teams were greeted with hearty cheers as they came out on the field. The Bostons as the visiting team, had the first chance at practice, and they uncovered a lot of speed in their preliminary work. Then the Giants took their turn in shooting the ball across the diamond and batting long flies to the outfielders. The bell rang and the field was cleared, while a hush of expectation fell on the crowds. The blue-uniformed umpire stepped to the plate. "Ladies and gentlemen," he bawled, "the batteries for to-day's game are Albaugh and Menken for Boston, and Matson and Mylert for New York. Play ball!" CHAPTER VI GETTING THE JUMP Neale, the heavy hitting center fielder of the Bostons, who led off in the batting order, came to the plate, swinging three bats. He discarded two of them and took up his position, after having tapped his heel for luck. Joe looked him over for a moment. Then he wound up and whipped one over the plate. It was a high fast one, and Neale swung at it, his bat missing the ball by fully three inches. "Strike one!" called the umpire, and the crowd roared in approval. It was an auspicious beginning. The next one was wide, and Neale refused to "bite." Again Joe tempted him with a bad one, and again Neale was too wary. The next ball was a swift incurve that broke so suddenly that it buffaloed Neale completely. The lunge he made at it swung him round so that he almost lost his balance, and he looked rather sheepish as Mylert, the burly catcher of the Giants, grinned at him. "Had that in my mitt before you swung at it," taunted Mylert. "Gee, but you're slow." Neale glared at him, but made no reply and tightened his grip on the bat. This time Joe floated up a slow teaser that looked as big as a balloon as it sailed lazily for the plate. Neale, who was all set for a fast one, nearly broke his back reaching for it. "You're out," declared the umpire, while shouts and laughter came from the crowded stands, as Neale, flinging down his bat disgustedly, went back to the dugout. Kopf, the next man up, dribbled a slow one to the box that Joe had no trouble in getting to first on time. Mitchell lifted a towering fly that Iredell gobbled up without moving in his tracks. "Classy work, old man!" cried out Robbie, his face glowing with satisfaction, as Joe drew off his glove and came in to the bench. "The old wing seems to be working as well as ever." The Giants did a little better in the first inning, though not well enough to chalk up a run. Curry started well by lining to center for a single, the ball just escaping Warner's fingers, as he leaped into the air for it. Iredell tried to sacrifice, but the ball went too quickly to the pitcher, who turned and caught Curry at second. Iredell tried to get down on the first ball pitched, but Menken showed that his throwing arm was right and nipped him by three feet. Burkett lifted one between right and center that had all the earmarks of a home run, but Mitchell, by a great run, got to it with one hand and froze on to it. It was a remarkable catch, and the sportsmanlike New York crowd applauded it as heartily as though it had been made by one of their favorites. "Highway robbery," growled Burkett, who had almost reached second before the ball was caught, and was cherishing hopes of having knocked out the first home run of the season. It seemed clear that the Bostons were not to be trifled with, at least as far as their fielding was concerned, and the crowd settled down in expectation of a close struggle. The second inning for the Bostons was short. Douglas sent up a pop fly to Willis at third. Barber fouled to Mylert. Warner tapped a little one in front of the plate that Mylert heaved to first. Each had offered at the first ball pitched, so that only three balls had been thrown for the entire inning. The hard hitting that the Giants had done in the first session had resulted in nothing, but it had shown them that Albaugh could be hit, and they faced him with confidence when they next went to the bat. But Albaugh had braced in his short breathing spell, and he set the Giants down in short order. The best that Wheeler could do was to lift a high fly behind second that nestled comfortably in Douglas' hands. Willis got to first base on an error by Warner, but Denton hit into a double play, Ellis to Douglas to Kopf, and the inning was over. In the third inning, the Bostons swung their bats in vain. Joe struck out Ellis, Menken and Albaugh, one after the other. His fast ball shot over the plate as though propelled by a gun. It came so swiftly that the Boston batsmen either winced and drew back, or struck at it after the ball had passed. His outcurve had a tremendous break, and Mylert had all he could do to get it. It was a superb example of pitching, and Joe had to remove his cap in response to the thunderous applause of the stands. "Isn't that boy a wonder, Mac?" asked Robbie in exultation. "He's simply standing those fellows on their heads. They just can't touch him." "He's the goods all right," agreed the less demonstrative McRae. "But don't let's crow too loud. The game isn't over yet by a long shot, and anything can happen in baseball." Allen was the first man up in the Giants' half, and he went out on a grasser to Warner, who got him at first by yards. It was Joe's turn next. "Win your own game now, Joe," said Jim, as his chum left the bench for the plate. "None of the other boys seem to be doing much. Show them one of the clouts you made at the training camp." Joe grinned in reply and went to the plate. Albaugh looked at him and thought he sensed an easy victim. He seldom had much trouble with pitchers. The first ball was wide and Joe let it go by. The second and third also went as balls. "Good eye, Joe," sang out Robbie, who was coaching at third. "Make him put it over." Albaugh now was "in a hole." Three balls had been called on him, and he had to get the next one over the plate. He wound up carefully and sent over a swift straight one about waist high. Joe timed it perfectly and caught it near the end of his bat. The ball went on a line straight toward the right field stands. On and on it went, still almost in a line. Neale and Barber had both started for it from the crack of the bat, but it stayed so low and went so fast that it eluded them and struck just at the foot of the right field bleachers. Joe in the meantime was running like a deer around the bases, while his comrades leaped about and howled, and the crowds in the stands were on their feet and shouting like madmen. He had rounded second and was well on toward third before Neale retrieved the ball. He relayed it to Douglas like a shot. By this time Joe had turned third and was dashing toward the plate. It was a race between him and the ball, but he beat the sphere by an eyelash, sliding into the rubber in a cloud of dust. For a few moments pandemonium reigned, as Joe, flushed and smiling, rose from the ground and dusted himself off while his mates mauled and pounded him and the multitude roared approval. "Jumping jiminy!" cried Jim, "that was a lallapaloozer! It was a longer hit than you made off of me this spring, and that's going some. And on a line too. I thought it was never going to drop." "It was a dandy, Joe," commended McRae, clapping him on the shoulder. "It's only a pity that there weren't men on bases at the time for you to bring in ahead of you. But we've broken the ice now, and perhaps the rest of the boys will get busy." Albaugh was rather shaken by the blow, and gave Mylert his base on balls. Curry too was passed to first, advancing Mylert to second. The stage seemed set for more Giant runs, but Iredell hit a liner to Ellis who took it at his shoe tops and made a smart double play by getting it to second before Mylert could scramble back. Still the Giants were a run to the good, and as the fourth and fifth innings went by without a score that run began to look as big as a meeting house. Albaugh had stiffened up and was pitching superbly, while his mates were giving him splendid support. He mowed down the heavy batters of the Giants one after another, and McRae began to fidget about uneasily on the bench. One run was a slender margin, and he was intensely eager to win this first game, not only because of the enormous crowd that had turned out to see their favorites win, but because of the moral effect on his players of "getting the jump" on at least four of the other teams by winning the first game of the season. When Joe came to the bat for the second time, there was a short consultation between Albaugh and his catcher, in which the astute manager of the Braves, Sutton, joined. Then Albaugh deliberately pitched four wild balls, and Joe trotted down to first. There was a chorus of jeers and catcalls from the crowds. "Got you rattled by that homer, did he?" "You're a sport--I don't think!" "Don't blame you for being afraid to let him hit it!" "He'll lose the ball next time!" "Crawl into a hole and pull the hole in after you!" But although it was not exactly sportsmanlike, it was within the rules of the game, and when Mylert went out on a fly a moment later, making the third out and leaving Joe stranded at first, Albaugh took off his glove and waved it mockingly at his tormentors. In the sixth inning the Bostons took their turn at scoring. Kopf sent an easy grounder to Iredell, who ordinarily would have eaten it up. This time, however, he fumbled it for a moment, and then in his haste to make up for the mishap threw wild to first. Burkett made a great jump for it, but it went high over his head to the right field fence, and before Burkett could regain it Kopf was on third. Mitchell tried to bring him home, but his efforts resulted in a weak grounder along the third base line. It looked as though the ball would roll over the foul line, and Willis waited too long. It proved to be fair, and by this time Mitchell was legging it for second. Willis threw low and the ball hit the bag, bounding out into center field. Wheeler ran in and got it, making a superb throw to the plate. But it was too late, and both Kopf and Mitchell had scored, putting Boston in the lead by two runs to one. Joe put on steam and struck out the next three batters. But the mischief had been done. Two miserable errors had given them as many unearned runs. Now all they had to do was to keep the Giants scoreless and the game would be won. Poor Iredell and Willis were disconsolate as they came in to the bench and their discomfiture was not lessened by the tongue lashing that McRae gave them. Joe, too, might naturally have been angered at the wretched support accorded to him in a game where he was showing such airtight pitching, but he was too fair and generous to find fault with comrades for a blunder that all athletes make more or less often. "Never mind, boys," he said to them in an undertone, as he sat beside them on the bench. "Just get busy with your bats and we'll pull the game out of the fire yet." Although the Giants made a desperate rally and in each of the next two innings got men on second and third, the score was unchanged and the game still "in the fire" when the eighth inning ended. Joe in the meantime had pitched with such effect that in the two innings not a man reached first. The ninth inning came, and the Giants took the field for the last time. "Now Joe," said McRae, as the former picked up his glove to walk out to the box, "hold them down just for one more inning, and we'll have a chance either to tie or win, if our boobs can wake up enough to do a little batting. The head of their batting order is coming up, but the way you've been pitching up to now they all look alike to you." "I'll pitch my head off if necessary," Joe assured him. The twirling that Joe did in that last inning was phenomenal. His control of the ball was almost uncanny. It writhed and twisted about the bats like a snake. Neale, the slugger of the Braves, struck out on the first three balls pitched. Kopf lifted a foul that came down straight over the plate, where Mylert gathered it in. Mitchell drove the ball straight over Joe's head, but the latter leaped high in the air and speared it with his gloved hand, while the stands rocked with applause. McRae gathered the Giants about him as they came in from the field. "Now you fellows listen to me," he commanded. "You've got to cop this game. No excuses. You've got to. Show these bean-eaters where they get off. Make them look like thirty cents. Knock the cover off the ball. Go in and win!" CHAPTER VII STEALING HOME Willis was first to the bat, and he strode to the plate with blood in his eye. He was still smarting from the sharp words of the manager and was anxious for a chance to redeem himself. A hit would help to wipe out the memory of his error. The first ball was an outshoot that just cut the corner of the plate. Willis struck at it and missed. The next one was a straight ball about knee high. Willis gave it a resounding clout, and it soared out toward the flagpole in left field. Willis was off with the crack of the bat, footing it down to first, while a roar went up from the stands. It looked like a sure home run, and it was clear that the Boston left fielder could not get under it. The runner was well on his way to second before the ball touched the ground. "Foul ball!" called the umpire. There was a groan from the Giant rooters, and Robbie rushed from the dugout to protest. The umpire coldly waved him off. "I said foul and that settles it," he declared, at the same time waving to Willis to come back to the plate. It was a very disgruntled Willis that complied, and he took up his bat mumbling something about "blind" and "robber." "What's that?" asked the umpire sharply. "Nothing," growled Willis, as he squared himself to meet the next ball. It was a bad one, and he let it go by. The next suited him, and he sent a sizzling grounder between second and third, on which he might have made a double, had he been quicker on his feet. But he was of the "ice wagon" type and had to be content with a single. Still it was a hit, and it put all the Giants on their toes in an instant. Their coachers at first and third began a chattering designed to rattle the pitcher. McRae hustled Denton out of the dugout with directions to sacrifice. The latter did his best, but Albaugh pounced on the ball and shot it to second, putting Willis out. Douglas whipped the ball to first in an endeavor to complete a double play, but Denton beat the ball by a step. With one man out and the tail end of the Giant batting order coming up the outlook was decidedly gloomy. Hope revived, however, when Allen laced a single to left. It was a clean hit, but Mitchell ran in on it and fielded so smartly that Denton was held at second. With two men on bases, Joe came to the bat, while the great throng gave him an ovation. "Win your own game, Matson," was shouted at him from thousands of throats. "Give the ball a ride!" "Another homer, Joe!" "Give the ball a passport and send it out of the country!" These and other encouraging cries greeted Joe as he waited for the ball. Albaugh looked at him with some apprehension. His respect for him as a batter had grown considerably since the beginning of the game. Joe refused to offer at the first ball, which was high and wide. Menken caught it and instead of returning it to the pitcher shot it down to second. Denton had taken too long a lead off the base and was trapped. His first impulse was to slide back to the bag, but he saw that he was too late for that and set out for third. The whole Boston infield joined in running him down, and despite his doubling and twisting, he was run down and put out near third. During the fracas, Allen reached second, but this was poor consolation, for now two men were out. Albaugh grinned as he picked up the ball and stepped on the mound. Baseball Joe resolved to knock that grin off his face. The ball came toward the plate like a bullet. Joe timed it perfectly, and poled a tremendous hit out toward center. "A homer! A homer!" yelled the crowd, wild with excitement. By the time Allen had galloped over the plate, Joe had rounded second, running like a frightened jackrabbit. But in the meantime, Mitchell, by a herculean effort, had managed to knock down the ball, after it had struck the ground and was speeding toward the fence. He straightened up and threw it in a line to third. It came plump into the waiting hands of the guardian of the bag. But Joe had already pulled up there, panting a little, but with his heart full of exultation. "Jumping Jehoshaphat, how that boy can hit!" cried McRae, while Joe's comrades jigged about and threw their caps into the air. "As pretty a three-bagger as I ever saw," declared Robson. "That ties the score anyway. Now if Mylert can only bring him in, the game's ours." Albaugh, though sore and enraged, still maintained perfect control of the ball. Twice in succession he sent it whizzing over the plate, and twice Mylert missed it by inches. Perhaps he was too anxious, but it was evident that his batting eye was off. Albaugh sensed this, and felt so sure of his victim that he paid little attention to third. Suddenly, as Albaugh began to wind up for his pitch, Joe darted down the line for the plate. A warning cry from Menken and a roar from the crowd told Albaugh what was happening. He stopped his windup and threw to Menken, who was covering the rubber and yelling to him to throw. He threw high in his excitement. Menken caught the ball and bent down, just as Joe slid over the plate in a cloud of dust. Menken dabbed frantically at him, and they rolled on the ground together. "Safe!" cried the umpire. The game was won and the Giants had "got the jump." The crowd went mad. By thousands they rushed down from the stands and swarmed down over the field. Joe saw them coming and made a dash for the clubhouse. But before he had reached it, the crowd had closed in about him, and it was only by the assistance of his mates, who cleared a way for him, that he could get away from their wild enthusiasm and slip into its welcome shelter. In a few minutes more the whole team had gathered there, laughing and shouting and going over the details of the game, while they took the showers and changed into their street clothes. There too came Robbie and McRae, as full of glee and happiness as the rest. "You old rascal!" chortled Robbie, as he slapped Joe on the back. "What are you trying to do? Be the whole team--gyp the other fellows out of their jobs? Such pitching, such batting--and then to cap it all by stealing home! Joe, old boy, I've seen lots of ball games, but your work to-day takes the cake." McRae, though less demonstrative, was not a whit less delighted. "Great work, Matson," he said. "Keep that up and there isn't a man in either league will be able to touch you." Jim too was fairly stuttering with his pride in his chum's achievements. "Picked the game right out of the fire," he exulted. "Tied it first and won it afterward. Joe old fellow, you're in a class by yourself. And that steal home! They'll talk about it all the season." "Well," replied Baseball Joe, with a grin, "I got rather homesick on third, and that home plate looked mighty good to me." Then Hughson came along with his congratulations, and these perhaps were the greatest reward that Joe could have asked for his day's work. For Hughson had been Joe's baseball idol for the last ten years. For at least that period of time, Hughson had been confessedly the greatest pitcher that baseball had ever seen. During that decade he had been the mainstay of the Giant team. When Hughson was slated to pitch, his mates were ready to chalk that game up in advance as won. And on the other hand, the opposing team was almost ready to concede the game before it was played. He had speed, curves and everything. At the most critical stage of a game he never lost his head. There might be three men on bases and none out, but that never disturbed Hughson. He would bring his wonderful "fadeaway" into action and the batters would go down like ninepins. He had brawn--plenty of it--but in addition he had brain, and when it came to strategy and quick thinking there was no one to be compared with him. But it was not merely his remarkable skill that had made him the hero of the baseball world. He was a gentleman through and through. He had had a college training and could meet and talk with educated men on equal terms. He was upright in his principles, clean in his living, quiet, plain, and unassuming. He was hail fellow well met with the other members of his team, and in fact with baseball players everywhere. Everybody liked him, and those who knew him best had a warm affection for him. Nor was there the slightest touch of jealousy about him. If any one else could take his laurels by showing that he was a better pitcher, Hughson welcomed the opportunity to give him every chance to do so. He was wholly wrapped up in the success of his team, and was only too glad to see any one helping to gain that success. His treatment of Joe since the latter had joined the team had been cordial in the extreme. He coached him, encouraged him, and did everything in his power to make him the star pitcher he saw he was destined to become. Hughson had been hurt in a collision just before the final games of the previous year, and had not been able to take part in the World Series. His arm had become better, but he was still in no condition to pitch. So that it had been merely as a spectator that he had witnessed the triumph of the Giants in this opening game of the season. Joe's eyes lighted up as he saw Hughson coming toward him with extended hand. CHAPTER VIII A BASEBALL IDOL "Put her there, Matson!" cried Hughson, his face beaming with pleasure. "I never saw better pitching than you showed us to-day." Joe's face flushed. He shook Hughson's hand heartily. "Oh, it's nothing compared with lots of games you've pitched, Hughson," he said. "I'm only in the infant class yet." "A mighty husky infant," laughed Hughson. "At least that's what the Bostons think. It was a hard game for them to lose, just when they thought they had it tucked away in their bat bag." "I feel rather sorry for Albaugh," said Joe. "He pitched a peach of a game and deserved to win." "He sure did," conceded Hughson. "And nine times out of ten that kind of pitching would have won. But to-day he had the hard luck to be pitted against a better man. They got only one clean hit off of you. The other was a scratch. A little more and you'd have pitched a no-hit game. And that's going some for the first game of the season, I'll tell the world. "Another thing that tickled me," he went on, "was to see him pass you to first rather than give you a chance to hit the ball. That's a compliment to all the boxmen of the country. As a rule we're easy meat. The other pitchers are glad to see us come up to the plate. It has got to be a proverb that pitchers can't hit. But you gave the lie to that proverb to-day. Those two hits of yours were ticketed for the fence. And that steal home was the classiest thing I've seen for a blue moon. That's the kind of thinking that wins ball games. Do the thing the other fellow doesn't expect you to do." "It was a case of touch and go," replied Joe. "I knew that I had touched the plate before Menken put the ball on me, but I wasn't sure the umpire would see it the same way. But he did, and that's all that matters. By the way, Hughson, how is that arm of yours coming along?" "Not as well as I should like," responded Hughson, while a touch of gloom came into his face. "There are days when it feels all right, and other days when I can't lift it without pain. I've been down to see Reese again about it, and he can't see anything radically wrong with it. Says I'll have to be patient and give it time. But it's mighty hard to have to sit on the bench when I'm fairly aching to get in the box again." "I know just how you must feel," returned Joe sympathetically. "The boys are all rooting for you to get back into harness again. It doesn't seem the same old team with you out of the running." "I'll be back with bells on before long," answered Hughson with a smile, as he moved on to have a chat with Robbie. "Isn't he a prince?" Joe remarked admiringly to Jim, as they watched the back of the tall figure. "He sure is an honor to the game," returned Jim. "Here's hoping that he'll soon be on deck again." The next day the New York papers were full of the story of the game. There was a general feeling of jubilation over the auspicious start by the Giants, a feeling that was the more pronounced, because of the feeling that had previously prevailed that Hughson's continued disability would be a serious handicap to the chances of again winning the pennant. One great subject dwelt upon in all the accounts was the marvelous pitching that Joe had shown. The sporting reporters "spread themselves" on the way he had held the Bostons in the hollow of his hand. To allow only two hits in the opening game, and one of them a scratch, was a feat that they dwelt upon at length. But scarcely less space was devoted to his batting. Although it was recalled that in the previous year he had had a creditable average at the bat, considering that he was a pitcher, his power as a twirler had kept his other qualities in the shade. Comment was made on the perfect way he had timed the ball and of the fact that his homer had gone nearly to the end of the grounds almost on a straight line, a fact that attested the tremendous power behind the hit. One of the papers headed its article: "Is There to Be a New Batting King?" and went on to say among other things: "It is an extraordinary thing to pitch a two-hit game at the beginning of the season. But it is still more extraordinary that, despite the strain on the muscles and nerves of the pitcher who achieves that distinction, he should also have a perfect batting average for the day. That is what occurred yesterday. In four times at the bat he was passed twice and the other times poled out a triple and a home run. And this was done against heady and effective pitching, for Albaugh has seldom showed better form than in yesterday's game. "One might have thought that with this record Matson would have called it a day and let it go at that. But he was still not satisfied. In the ninth, with two men out and two strikes called on Mylert, he put the game on ice by stealing home from third--as unexpected and dazzling a play as we shall probably be fortunate enough to see this year. It was the climax of a wonderful game. "McRae never made a shrewder deal than when he secured this phenomenal pitcher from St. Louis. We said this last year, when Matson's great pitching disposed of Chicago's chances for the pennant. We said it again when in the World Series he bore the heft of the pitcher's burden and made his team champions of the world. But a true thing will bear repeating twice or even thrice, and so we say it now with added emphasis." All of the comment was in the same laudatory strain, although in reference to his batting, one paper cautioned its readers that not too much importance was to be attached to that. It was probably one of Matson's good days, and one swallow did not make a summer. But whether he kept up his remarkable batting or not, the New York public would ask nothing more of him than to keep up his magnificent work in the box. Joe would not have been human if he had not enjoyed the praise that was showered upon him in the columns that he and Jim read with interest the next morning. It was pleasant to know that his work was appreciated. But he was far too sensible to be unduly elated or to get a "swelled head" in consequence. He knew how quickly a popular idol could be dethroned, and he did not want the public to set up an ideal that he could not live up to. It was for that reason that he read with especial approval the article that warned against expecting him to be a batting phenomenon because of his performance of yesterday. "That fellow's got it right," he remarked to Jim, as he pointed to the paragraph in question. "I just had luck yesterday in straightening out Albaugh's slants. Another time and I might be as helpless as a baby." "Luck, nothing!" replied Jim, who had no patience with Joe's depreciation of himself. "There was nothing fluky about those hits. You timed them perfectly and soaked the ball right on the nose. And look at the way you've been lining them out in training this spring. Wake up, man. You're not only the king of pitchers, but you've got it in you to become the king of sluggers." "Oh, quit your kidding," protested Joe. "I'm not kidding," Jim affirmed earnestly. "It's the solemn truth. You'll win many a game this year not only by your pitching but by your batting too. Just put a pin in that." At this moment a bellboy tapped at the door, and being told to come in, handed Joe two telegrams. He tore them open in haste. The first was from Reggie and read: "Keep it up, old top. Simply ripping, don't you know." Joe laughed and passed it on to Jim. "Sounds just like the old boy, doesn't it?" he commented. The second one was from Mabel: "So proud of you, Joe. Not surprised though. Best love. Am writing." Jim did not see this one, but it went promptly into that one of Joe's pockets that was nearest his heart, the same one that carried the little glove of Mabel's that had been his inspiration in all his victorious baseball campaigns. After a hearty breakfast, the chums went out for a stroll. Neither was slated to pitch for that day, and they had no immediate weight of responsibility on their minds. Markwith, the left-handed twirler of the Giants, would do the box work that day unless McRae altered his plans. "Hope Red puts it over the Braves to-day the way you did yesterday," remarked Jim, as they sauntered along. "I hope so," echoed Joe. "The old boy seems to be in good shape, and they've usually had trouble in hitting him. They'll be out for blood though, and if they put in Belden against him it ought to be a pretty battle. Markwith beat him the last time he was pitted against him, but only by a hair." It was a glorious spring morning, and as they had plenty of time they prolonged their walk far up on the west side of the city. As they were approaching a corner, they saw a rather shabbily dressed man slouching toward them. Jim gave him a casual glance, and then clutched Joe by the arm. "Look who's coming, Joe!" he exclaimed. "It's Bugs Hartley!" CHAPTER IX AN OLD ENEMY Baseball Joe started as he looked at the man more closely. "Bugs Hartley!" he ejaculated. "I thought we'd seen the last of that fellow. I imagined that by this time he'd be in jail or in a lunatic asylum." "He'll get there some time likely enough," replied Jim. "But just now he's here. That's Bugs as sure as shooting." It was evident that the man had recognized them also, for he stopped suddenly, as though debating whether to advance or retreat. He decided on the former course, and with an air of bravado came toward them. Joe and Jim would have passed him without speaking, but he planted himself squarely in their path, a malignant look glowing in his bleary eyes. "So here you are again," he snarled, addressing himself to Joe. "Sure thing," answered Joe coolly. "You see me, don't you?" "I see you all right," replied Hartley, as his eye took in Joe's well-dressed form. "All dolled up too. The man who took the bread and butter out of my mouth. Oh, I see you all right, worse luck." Bugs Hartley had been a well known character in baseball for some years. He had gained his nickname from his erratic habits. He had never been any too strong mentally, and his addiction to liquor had still further contributed to throw him off his balance. But he had been a remarkable pitcher, with a throwing arm that made up for some of his mental deficiencies, and had played in several major league clubs. For some years he had been a member of the Giants, and was still a member when Joe joined the team. His vicious habits and utter failure to obey the rules of discipline had made him a thorn in his manager's side, but McRae had tolerated him because of his unusual skill in the box. Joe had felt sorry for the man, and had done all he could to help him along. Once he had found him wandering intoxicated in the streets on the eve of an important game, and had got him off quietly to bed so as to hide the matter from McRae. But there was no gratitude in Hartley's disposition, and besides he was consumed with envy at seeing Joe's rapid progress in his profession, while he himself, owing to his dissipation, was going backward. On one occasion, he had tried to queer Joe by doping his coffee just before the latter was scheduled to pitch in a game with Philadelphia. His hatred was increased when, after being knocked out of the box during a game, Joe had taken his place and won out. McRae at last lost patience with him and gave him his walking papers. Hartley's twisted brain attributed this to Joe, though as a matter of fact Joe had asked McRae to give Bugs another chance. Hartley's reputation was so bad as a man and it was so generally understood that he was through as a pitcher that no other club cared to engage him. This increased his bitterness against the supposed author of his misfortunes. On one occasion he had tried to injure Joe in a dark street by hurling a jagged bolt of iron at his head, and the only thing that saved Baseball Joe was that at the moment he had stooped to adjust his shoelace. At that time Joe might have handed him over to the police, but instead he let him go with a warning. Now he had again met this dangerous semi-lunatic in the streets of New York. "Now look here, Bugs," said Joe quietly and decidedly. "I'm just about tired of that kind of talk. I've done everything I could for you, and in return you've doped me and otherwise tried to hurt me. You've been your own worst enemy. I'm sorry if you're hard up, and if you need money I'll give it to you. But I want you to keep away from me, and if there's any more funny business you won't get off as easily as you did last time." "I don't want your money," snapped Bugs. "I'm after you, and I'll get you yet." "I don't think you'd better try it. It won't get you anywhere, except perhaps in jail." "There's ways of doing it," growled Hartley. "Ways that you ain't dreamin' of." A sudden thought struck Joe. "Do you mean anonymous letters?" he asked, looking keenly into Hartley's eyes. "Anon-non--what do you mean?" the man asked sullenly. He was an illiterate man and had probably never heard the word before. "Letters without any name signed to them," persisted Joe. "Aw! what are you giving me?" snapped Hartley. "I don't know what you're talking about." His mystification was so genuine that Joe knew that his shot, fired at random, had missed the mark. He could eliminate Hartley at once as a possible author of the anonymous letter Mabel had received. "Never mind," said Joe. "Now one last word, Bugs. Twice you've tried to do me up and twice you've failed. Don't let it happen a third time. It will be three strikes and out for you if you do." He made a move to pass on. Hartley seemed for a moment as though he would bar the way, but the steely look in Joe's eyes made him think better of it. With a muttered imprecation he stepped aside, and the two friends moved on. "A bad egg," remarked Jim, as they walked along. "I don't know whether he's just bad or is mad," replied Joe regretfully. "A combination of both I suppose. He's got the fixed idea that I've done him a wrong of some kind and his poor brain hasn't room for anything else. It's too bad to see a man that was once a great pitcher go to the dogs the way he has. I suppose he picks up a few dollars now and then by pitching for semi-professional teams. But most of that I suppose is dissipated." "Well, you want to keep on your guard against him, Joe," warned Jim, in some anxiety. "A crazy man makes a dangerous enemy." "Oh, I don't think there's any need of worrying about Bugs," rejoined Joe carelessly. "The chances are ten to one we'll never run across him again." The encounter had rather spoiled their morning, and they hailed a taxicab to take them back to their hotel. There they had lunch and then rode up to the Polo Grounds for the game. As Joe had predicted, the Bostons that afternoon were out for blood and they evened up the score. Markwith pitched a good game except for one bad inning when he lost control, and hits, sandwiched in with passes and a wild pitch, let in three runs. He braced up after that, but it was too late, and the Giants had to take the little end of the score. In the next two weeks the Giants met the rest of the Eastern teams, and, taking it as a whole, the result was satisfactory. They had no trouble in taking the Phillies into camp, for that once great team had been shot to pieces. The majority of the Boston games also went to the Giants' credit. They met a snag, however, in Brooklyn, and the team from over the bridge took four games out of six from their Manhattan rivals. But then the Brooklyns always had been a hoodoo for the Giants, and in this season, as in many others, they lived up to the tradition. Still the Giants wound up their first Eastern series with a percentage of 610, which was respectable if not brilliant. But now their real test was coming. They were about to make their first invasion of the West, where the teams were much stronger than those of the East. Cincinnati was going strong under the great leader who had once piloted the Phillies to a championship. Chicago was quite as formidable as in the year before, when the Giants had just nosed them out at the finish. St. Louis, though perhaps the least to be feared, was developing sluggers that would put the Giants' pitchers on their mettle. But most of all to be feared was Pittsburgh, which had been going through the rest of the Western teams like a prairie fire. "Pittsburgh's the enemy," McRae told his men, and Robbie agreed with him. "Beat those birds and you'll cop the flag!" CHAPTER X THREE IN A ROW The first jump of the team was to Cincinnati, and there they found their work cut out for them. The Reds had just lost three out of four to Pittsburgh, and they had got such a talking to from their manager, from the fans, and from the press of the city that they knew they had to do something to redeem themselves. They knew that if they could hold the Giants even, it would be something; if they could take three out of four they would be forgiven; while if they could make a clean sweep of the series they would "own the town." It was a singular thing what delight all the Western teams, and for that matter all the teams of the League, took in beating the Giants. A victory over them, of course, did not count any more in the final score than a victory over one of the tailenders; but there was a fiendish satisfaction in taking the scalps of the team from the "Big Town." So that the managers always saved their best pitchers for the games with the Giants, while they took a chance with their second string pitchers against the other teams. This of course was a compliment; but it was a compliment that the Giants did not especially appreciate, for it made their task harder than that of any other team in the League. So when the Giants learned that Dutch Rutter was to try his prowess against them in the opening game, they were not surprised. Rutter was a left-hander who had made a phenomenal record the preceding year, and he had been especially rested up and groomed with the Giant series in view. Meran, the manager, had figured that if he could win the first game with Rutter he could come back with him in the fourth, and thus have at least a chance of getting an even break on the series. But McRae, anticipating such a move, had so arranged his own selection of pitchers that Joe was in line for the first game, and he was not afraid to pit his "ace" against the star boxman of the Cincinnatis. His confidence was justified, for Baseball Joe won out after a gruelling struggle. In Rutter he had found an opponent worthy of his steel. For six innings neither team broke into the run column. Rutter had superb control for a left-hander, and he showed a most dazzling assortment of curves and slants. But Joe came back at him with the same brand of pitching that he had shown in the opening game, and the Cincinnati batsmen were turned back from the plate bewildered and disgruntled. In vain their manager raved and stormed. "Why don't you hit him?" he asked of his star slugger, as the latter came back to the bench, after having been called out on strikes. "Hit him!" Duncan came back at him. "What chance have I got of hitting him, when I can't even hit the ball he pitches?" Still the Giants had a scare thrown into them when in the ninth inning, by a succession of fumbles and wild throws, the Cincinnatis had three men on bases and none out. As they themselves had only one run, scored in the seventh inning by a three base hit by Joe, aided by a clean single by Mylert, the chances looked exceedingly good that the Cincinnatis might tie the score or win the game. A clean single would have brought in one run and probably two. But Baseball Joe was always at his best when most depended on him. While the coachers tried to rattle him and the crowds frantically adjured Thompson, who was at the bat, to bring the men on bases in to the plate, Joe was as cool as a cucumber. He threw a swift high one to Thompson which the latter missed by three inches. Mylert threw the ball back to Joe, who stopped it with his foot and stooped as though to adjust his shoe lace. He fumbled an instant with the lace, and then suddenly picking up the ball hurled it to second like a shot. Emden, who was taking a long lead off the base, tried to scramble back, but Denton had the ball on him like a flash. Mellen who was on third made a bolt for the plate, but Denton shot the ball to Mylert, and Mellen was run down between third and home. While this was going on, Gallagher had taken second, and profiting by the running down of Mellen, kept on half way to third. He did not dare go all the way to third, because Mellen still had a chance to get back to that base. But the instant Mellen was touched out, Joe, who had taken part in running him down, shot the ball to Willis at third and Gallagher was caught between the second and third bags. Three men were out, the game was over, and the Giants had begun their Western invasion with a 1 to 0 victory. [Illustration: SUDDENLY PICKING UP THE BALL HE HURLED IT TO SECOND.] Joe's quick thinking had cleared the bags in a twinkling. It had all come so suddenly that the crowd was dumbfounded. Meran, the Cincinnati manager, sat on the bench with his mouth open like a man in a daze. His men were equally "flabbergasted." Thompson still stood at the plate with his bat in hand. It seemed to him that a bunco game had been played on him, and he was still trying to fathom it. Then at last the crowd woke up. They hated to see the home team lose, but they could not restrain their meed of admiration and applause. The stands fairly rocked with cheering. They had seen a play that they could talk about all their lives, one that happens perhaps once in a generation, one that they would probably never see again. McRae and Robbie for a moment acted like men in a trance. Over Robbie's rubicund face chased all the colors of the chameleon. It almost seemed as though he might have a stroke of apoplexy. Then at last he turned to McRae and smote him mightily on the knees. "Did you see it, John?" he roared. "Did you see it?" "I saw it," answered McRae. "But for the love of Pete, Robbie, keep that pile driver off my knees. Yes, I saw it, and I don't mind saying that I never saw anything like it in my thirty years of baseball. I have to pinch myself to make sure I'm not dreaming." "A miracle man, that's what he is!" ejaculated Robbie. "That wing of his is wonderful, but it's the head on him that tops any other in the league. He wasn't behind the door when brains were given out." Meran, the Cincinnati manager, who was a good sport, after he had recovered from his astonishment, came over to the Giants' bench and shook hands with McRae and Robson. "It was a hard game to lose, John," he said to the Giants' manager. "I thought we had it sewed up in the ninth. But there's no use bucking against that pitcher of yours. I'm only glad that you can't pitch him in all your games." Joe, flushed and smiling, was overwhelmed with congratulations, but he made light of his feat, as was his custom. "It was simple enough," he protested. "I had the luck to catch Emden off second and the boys did all the rest." "Simple enough," mimicked Jim. "Oh, yes, it was simple enough. That's the reason it happens every day of the week." It was a good beginning, but the old proverb that "a good beginning makes a bad ending" was illustrated in this Western tour. For some reason most of the Giant pitchers could not "get going." Jim pulled out a victory in the Cincinnati series, but Markwith lost his game, and Hughson, who tried to pitch one of the games, found that he was not yet in shape. That series ended two and two. In Chicago the Giants had to be content with only one victory out of the series. They hoped to make up for this in St. Louis. But they found that the fame of "Murderers' Row" had not been exaggerated, and there was a perfect rain of hits from the Cardinals' bats that took two games out of three, the fourth that had been scheduled being held up by rain. When the team swung around to Pittsburgh, there were some added wrinkles between McRae's brows. "If we can only break even with Cincinnati and get the little end of it in Chicago and St. Louis, what will Pittsburgh do to us?" he asked Robbie, with a groan. "What Pittsburgh will do to us, John," replied Robbie soberly, "is a sin and a shame!" CHAPTER XI RIGHT FROM THE SHOULDER The Smoky City was all agog over the games. It had won championships before, but that was in the days of Fred Clarke and Honus Wagner and other fence breakers. It had been a good many years since it had seen a pennant floating over Forbes Field, and old-timers were wont to shake their heads sadly and say they never would see it again. But this year the "dope" pointed in the right direction. The management of the team had strengthened the weak point in the infield by a winter trade that had brought to them "Rabbit" Baskerville, the crackerjack shortstop of the Braves. The benefit of the change had been manifested in the spring practice when the Rabbit had put new pep and ginger in the team. And in the regular games so far they had had little difficulty in winning a large majority from their rivals. How they would hold out against the Giants was the problem that yet remained to be solved. But unless the Giants showed a decided reversal from the form in which they had been playing recently, it would not be so very hard to take them also into camp. The Giants themselves felt none too much confidence, as they prepared for this important series. One bit of luck came to them, however, in the return at this juncture of Larry Barrett to the team. He had been down with an attack of intermittent fever that had kept him out of part of the spring practice and had prevented him thus far from playing in any of the regular games. But on the team's arrival in Pittsburgh, they found Barrett waiting for them, looking a little lighter than usual, but declaring himself in excellent condition and fit to play the game of his life. The previous year he had guarded the keystone bag, and by general consent was regarded as the best second baseman in the League. His batting too was a powerful asset to the team, as season after season he ranked among the .300 hitters. Apart from his superb playing at bat and in the field, he also helped to keep the boys in good spirits. His wit and love of fun had gained him the nickname of "Laughing Larry," and no team of which Larry was a member could stay long in the doleful dumps. His coming made necessary a change in the team. Allen, who had not made a success in playing the "sun field," was benched, and Denton, whose batting could not be spared, was shifted to right field in his place, while Larry resumed his old position at second. On the morning of the day of the first game, McRae called his players together for a few words of counsel. At least he called it counsel. The players were apt to refer to it as roasting. "I've been thinking," he said, "that I've got the greatest collection of false alarms of any manager in either of the big leagues." This was not an especially encouraging beginning, but each of the men tried to look as though the manager could not by any possibility be referring to him. Some of them hoped that he would not descend from generalities to particulars. The manager's keen eyes ranged around the circle as though looking for contradiction. There was a silence as of the tomb. "You fellows haven't been playing baseball," he went on. "You've been playing hooky. Look at the way you've let the other teams walk over you. The Chicagos took three out of four from you. The Cardinals grabbed two out of three, and it's only the mercy of heaven that rain kept them from copping another. Look at the way you've been batting. Every team in the League except the Phillies has a better average. You've got enough beef about you to knock the ball out of the lot, and you've been doing fungo hitting, knocking up pop flies. What in the name of seven spittin' cats do you mean by it? Every time you collect your salaries you ought to be arrested for getting money on false pretenses." He paused for a moment, and some of the more hopeful players thought that perhaps he was through. But he was only getting his breath. He faced them scornfully. "Giants!" he exclaimed with sarcasm. "Giants you call yourselves. Get wise to yourselves. If you're Giants, I'm a Chinaman. It's dwarfs you are, pygmies. Now I want you boobs to get one thing into your heads. Get it straight. You've got to win this series from Pittsburgh. Do you get me? You've got to! If you don't, I'll disband the whole team and start getting another one from the old ladies' home." Much more he said to the same effect, with the result that when the men, with heightened color and nerves rasped by his caustic tongue lashing, left the clubhouse, they were in red-hot fighting mood. Pygmies were they? Well, on the ball field they'd prove to McRae that he didn't know what he was talking about. An immense crowd was present that filled Forbes Field to capacity when the bell rang for the beginning of the game. Joe had pitched only two days before, and McRae decided to send Markwith into the box. In the first inning, Dawley, the Pittsburgh pitcher, found it hard to locate the plate, and Curry was passed to first. On the hit and run play, Iredell popped to the pitcher, and Curry had all he could do to get back to first. Burkett lined a clean hit over the second baseman's head, but by sharp fielding Curry was kept from going beyond the middle bag. On the next ball pitched, Curry tried to steal third but was thrown out. Burkett in the meantime had got to second, but he was left there when Wheeler sent a long fly to center that Ralston captured after a hard run. The Pittsburghs were not long in proving that they had their batting clothes on. Ralston landed on the first ball that Markwith sent up for a home run. The crowd chortled with glee, and the Giants and the few supporters they had in the stands were correspondingly glum. The blow seemed to shake Markwith's nerve, and the next batter was passed. Bemis sent a sizzling grounder to Iredell and it bounced off his glove, the batter reaching first and Baskerville taking second on the play. Astley dribbled a slow one to Markwith, who turned to throw to third, but finding that Baskerville was sure of making the bag, turned and threw high to Burkett at first. The tall first baseman leaped high in the air and knocked it down, but not in time to get his man. With the bases full Brown slapped a two bagger to center that cleared the bases, three men galloping over the plate in succession. It was evidently not Markwith's day, and McRae beckoned him to come in to the bench while the crowd jeered the visitors and cheered their own favorites. Poor Markwith looked disconsolate enough, and after a moment's conference with McRae, which he was not anxious to prolong, he meandered over the field to the showers. "Bring on the next victim!" taunted some of the spectators. "All pitchers look alike to us to-day. Next dead one to the front." McRae held a brief consultation with Robbie, and then nodded to Jim. "Go to it, Jim," encouraged Joe. "I'm rooting for you, old man. Pull some of the feathers out of those birds. It's a tough job bucking against a four run lead, but you're the boy to do it." "I'll do my best," answered Jim, as he put on his glove and went into the box. It was the cue for the crowd to try to rattle him. The coachers began chattering like a lot of magpies, and the man on second began to dance about the bag and shout to Garrity, the next batsman, to bring him in. Jim sent one over the plate that cut it in half, but the batsman had orders to wait him out, under the supposition that he would be wild. So he let the second one go by also. "Strike two!" called the umpire. Garrity braced. This was getting serious. This time Jim resorted to a fadeaway that Garrity swung at with all his might. But the ball eluded him and dropped into Mylert's mitt. "You're out!" snapped the umpire, waving him away from the plate. CHAPTER XII JIM'S WINNING WAYS "Good boy, Jim!" cried Joe, as his chum came in to the bench. "You put the Indian sign on that fellow all right. Just hold them down and trust to the boys to bat in some runs to even up the score." But if the boys had any such intentions they certainly took their time about it. Larry, to be sure, poled out a long hit to right that had all the signs of a homer, but Astley backed up and fairly picked it off the wall. Denton cracked out a single between first and second. Jim hit sharply to third, and O'Connor by a superb stop got the ball to first in time, Denton in the meantime reaching second. Mylert swung savagely at the ball, but it went up straight in the air and Dawley gathered it in. In their half of the second, the Pittsburghs increased their lead to five. O'Connor struck out on the first three balls pitched, but Jenkins caught the ball on the nose for a single to center. Curry thought he had a chance to make a catch, and ran in for it, instead of waiting for it on a bound. By this mistake of judgment the ball got past him, and before it could be retrieved Jenkins by fast running had crossed the plate. Dawley was easy on a bounder to Willis, and Ralston, in trying to duck away from a high incurve, struck the ball with his bat and sent it rolling to Burkett for an out. "Not much nourishment for us in that inning," muttered McRae, as he watched the man chalking up another run for Pittsburgh on the big scoreboard at the side of the field. "No," agreed Robbie. "But you'll notice that the run wasn't earned. If that hit had been played right, Jenkins would have been held for a single." "Give them a row of goose eggs, Dawley," was the advice shouted to the Pittsburgh pitcher, as he stepped into the box. Dawley grinned with supreme confidence. And for the third and fourth inning his confidence seemed justified. The ball came zipping over the plate with all sorts of twists and contortions, and the Giants seemed helpless before him. They either struck out or put up feeble flies and fouls that were easily gathered up. Only one hit went outside the diamond and that plumped square into the hands of the waiting center fielder. But in the meantime, the Pittsburghs were getting a little uneasy about the kind of pitching that Jim was sending across. His fast ball went so swiftly that the eye could scarcely follow it. He had perfect control, and the "hop" on the ball just before it got to the plate was working to perfection. The way he worked the corners of the plate was a revelation. And in the fourth inning, when he struck out the side on nine pitched balls, a ripple of applause was forced from the spectators, despite their desire to see the home team win. "You're going like a house afire, old man," exclaimed Joe, as the Giants came in for their turn. "That's what he is," agreed Robbie, who had overheard the remark. "But it won't do any good unless our boys wake up and do something with their bats. That five run lead is bad medicine." It did not look any better to the Giants than it did to Robbie, and in the fifth inning they began to come to life. Dawley, for the first time, seemed to be a little shaky in his control. He passed Iredell and then tried to fool Burkett on a slow ball. But the latter timed it exactly and poled it out between left and center for a beautiful three-bagger. Iredell scored easily and a roar went up from the men in the Giants' dugout as he crossed the plate. "Here's where we start a rally, boys!" cried Robbie. "Every man on his toes now. Here's where we send this pitcher to the showers." Wheeler went to the plate with directions to sacrifice, which he did neatly by sending a slow roller to first, on which Burkett scored. Willis clipped out a liner to right, which was really only good for a single, but in trying to stretch it to a two baser he fell a victim at second. Then Larry came to the bat. "Show them that your layoff hasn't hurt your batting eye, Larry," sang out McRae. The first ball was wide, and Larry held his bat motionless. On the second offering he fouled off. The third was about waist high, and Larry swung at it. The ball soared off to right field and landed in the bleachers. It was a clean home run and Larry trotted easily around the bases, a broad grin on his good-natured Irish face. "We're finding him!" shouted McRae. "We've got him going! Now, Denton, put another one in the same place." Denton did his best, but it was not good enough. Dawley had tightened up and was sending the ball over the plate as though thrown from a catapult. Two strikes were called on Denton, and then he put up a fly just back of second which Baskerville caught in good style. The inning was over, but the Giants felt better. There was a big difference between five to none and five to three. Besides, they had learned that Dawley could be hit. "Keep them down, Jim, and we'll put you in the lead next inning," prophesied Larry, as he passed him on his way out to second. Jim proceeded at once to keep them down. He had never been in better form. The three runs that his mates had scored had put new heart in him and he made the Pittsburghs "eat out of his hand." They simply could not get going against him. His sharp breaking curve had their best batters completely at sea. They were swinging in bewilderment at balls that they could not reach. For the next three innings not a man reached first base and in the eighth inning he mowed them down on strikes as fast as they came to the plate. "Oh, if we'd only started the game with him!" groaned McRae, as the eighth inning ended with the score unchanged. For in the meantime Larry's prophecy had not been fulfilled that the Giant batsmen would gain the lead. They had been hitting more freely than in the early part of the game, but had been batting in hard luck. Every ball they hit seemed to go straight to some fielder, and the Pittsburghs were giving their pitcher magnificent support. There was one gleam of hope in the eighth, when with two men out, a Giant was roosting on second and another on third. But hope went glimmering when Burkett's hoist to center was easily gathered in by Ralston. "We can win yet," crowed Robbie, with a confidence he was far from feeling, as the Giants entered on their last inning. "There's many a game been won in the ninth. Go in now and knock him out of the box." Wheeler started in with a single that just escaped the outstretched hands of Baskerville. McRae himself ran down to first to coach him. Willis followed with another single on which Wheeler went all the way to third. It looked as though the long-hoped for rally had at last commenced. But a groan went up from the Giant dugout when Willis, on the next ball pitched, started for second and was nailed by three feet. Still Larry was next at bat, and his comrades, remembering his last home run, urged him to repeat. Larry was only too eager to do so, and on the second ball pitched laced it to right field for what looked to be a homer but went foul by a few feet only. The next was a missed strike. Two balls followed in quick succession and then, with the count three to two, slapped out a rattling two-bagger to center. Wheeler scored and the tally was five to four in Pittsburgh's favor. Then to Joe's surprise McRae beckoned him from the dugout. "What's the big idea?" Joe asked, as he came up to his manager. "I'm going to put you in as a pinch hitter," answered McRae. "I'd rather take a chance on you than Denton. Get in there now and knock the cover off the ball." There was a gasp of surprise from the stands. In their experience it was usually a pitcher who was taken out to make room for a pinch hitter. It was almost unheard of that the procedure should be reversed. To them it seemed a sign that McRae was at the end of his rope, and there were catcalls and shouts of derision as Joe came to the plate. And these redoubled in volume as he missed the first ball that Dawley sent over. "What did I tell you, boys?" "Nit, on that!" "Matson is all right as a pitcher, but as a batter, nothing doing." "Give him two more like that, Dawley!" "Take your time, Joe!" "Make him give you the kind you want!" "Here is where Pittsburgh chews the Giants up!" "Maybe you can do it somewhere else, but you can't do it here!" "One, two, three, Dawley, remember." So the calls ran on as Joe waited for the pitcher to deliver the sphere again. The Pittsburgh rooters thought they had Joe's "goat" and they were prepared to make the most of it. They began a chorus of yells and groans that grew louder and louder. They stopped suddenly as Joe caught the next ball about a foot from the end of his bat. There was a mighty crack and the ball soared up and up into the sky over right field. The fielders started to run for it and then stopped short in their tracks, throwing up their hands in despair. The ball cleared the bleachers, cleared the wall, and went through the window of a house on the other side of the street. Joe had started running like a deer at the crack of the bat, but as he rounded first McRae shouted at him to take his time, and he completed the rest of his journey at a jog trot, Larry of course having preceded him. There was a wild jubilee at the plate. Robbie threw dignity to the winds and danced a jig, and Joe was sore from the thumping of his mates. "The longest hit that's ever been made on Forbes Field!" cried Larry exultingly. "Old Honus Wagner in his best days never made such a clout," joined in Jim. "Joe, old boy, you've saved the game." "It isn't over yet," cautioned Joe smilingly; "but if you keep up the same brand of pitching you've been showing us, they won't have a Chinaman's chance." The next two batters were easy outs and the Giants' half was over. The Pittsburghs came in for their last chance, determined to do or die. It was exasperating for them to have the game snatched from them when they were just about to put it on their side of the ledger. But Jim put out the first one on a puny fly and sent the last two back to the bench by the strike-out route--and the game was over. In their first clash with the redoubtable Pittsburghs, the Giants had won by six to five! CHAPTER XIII A BREAK IN THE LUCK It was a highly elated crowd of Giants that chattered away excitedly in the clubhouse after the finish of the game. Jim and Joe came in for the major share of the honors, the first because of his superb pitching and the latter for the glorious home run that had clinched the victory. "Some pitching, Barclay," said Hughson, clapping Jim on the shoulder. "Do you realize that only thirty-two batters faced you and that eleven of them went out on strikes? That's what I call twirling." "It'll take some of the chestiness out of these Pirates," laughed Larry. "They thought we were going to be as easy meat for them as the rest of the teams. And, begorra, it looked as though we would from the way the game started." "You did your share all right, Larry," replied Jim. "That home run of yours was a beauty. And that two-bagger was no slouch." "But that clout of Joe's was the real cheese," said Denton generously. "Gee, Joe, I was a little sore when McRae put you in to take my turn at bat. But when I saw that old apple clear the fence I knew that the old man had the right dope. I haven't made a hit like that since I've been in the game." "Who has?" queried Curry. "I'll bet it comes pretty close to being a record. If that house hadn't been in the way the ball would be going yet." "Don't forget, Joe, that you'll have to pay for that broken window," laughed Wheeler. "I guess McRae would pay for a hundred broken windows and never say a word," chuckled Iredell. He would have been still more sure of this had he been able to see McRae's face at that moment and overheard what he was saying to Robson. "You've had a real bit of luck to-day, John," the latter had remarked, his broad face radiant with satisfaction. "You've discovered that you have another first string pitcher. That work of young Barclay was simply marvelous." "You said it, Robbie," agreed McRae. "It was a rough deal to give a young pitcher the job of beating the Pittsburghs after they had a four run lead. But he stood the gaff and came through all right. From this time on he'll take his regular turn in the box. But it isn't that that pleases me most in this day's work." "What is it then?" asked Robbie. "It's the batting of Matson," replied McRae thoughtfully. "I've been in the game thirty years, and I've seen all the fence-breakers--Wagner, Delehanty, Brouthers, Lajoie, and all the rest of them. And I tell you now, Robbie, that he's the king of all of them. The way he stands at the plate, the way he holds his bat, the way he times his blow, the way he meets the ball--those are the things that mark out the natural batter. It's got to be born in a man. You can't teach it to him. All the weight of those great shoulders go into his stroke, and he makes a homer where another man would make a single or a double. Now mark what I'm telling you, Robbie, but keep it under your hat, for I don't want the kid to be getting a swelled head. In Baseball Joe Matson we've got not only the greatest pitcher in the game, but the hardest hitter in either league. And that goes." "Oh, come now, John," protested Robbie, "aren't you going a little too strong? The greatest pitcher, yes. I admit that. There's no one in sight now that can touch him, now that Hughson's laid up. And between you and me, John, I don't believe that even Hughson in his best days had anything on Matson. But when you speak of batting, how about Kid Rose of the Yankees?" "He's all to the good," admitted McRae. "He's got a wonderful record; the best record in fact of any man that has ever broken into the game. He topped the record for home runs last season, and by the way he's starting in this year he'll do it again. Up to now we haven't had anyone in the National League that could approach him. But I'm willing to bet right now that he never made so long a hit as Matson made this afternoon. Of course Rose has had more experience in batting than Matson, and for the last two or three years he's hardly done any pitching. But if I should take Matson out of the box right now and play him in the outfield every day, I'll bet that by the end of the season he'd be running neck and neck with Kid Rose and perhaps a wee bit ahead of him." "Well, maybe, John," agreed Robbie, though a little doubtfully. "But what's the use of talking about it? You know that we can't spare him from the box. He's our pitching ace." "I know that well enough," replied McRae. "But all the same I'm going to see that he has many a chance to win games for us by his batting as well as by his pitching. On the days he isn't pitching, I'll use him as a pinch hitter, as I did to-day. Then, too, when he is pitching, I'm going to make a change in the batting order. Instead of having him down at the end I'm going to put him fourth--in the cleanup position. If that old wallop of his doesn't bring in many a run I'll miss my guess." The very next day McRae had a chance to justify his theories. Hughson had told the manager that he thought he was in shape to pitch, and McRae, who had great faith in his judgment, told him to go in. The "Old Master," as he was affectionately called, used his head rather than his arm and by mixing up his slow ball with his fast one and resorting on occasion to his famous fadeaway, got by in a close game. In the sixth, Joe was called on as a pinch hitter, and came across with another homer, which, although not as long as that of the previous day, enabled him to reach the plate without sliding and bring in two runs ahead of him. Two homers in two consecutive days were not common enough to pass without notice, and the Pittsburgh sporting writers began to feature Joe in their headlines. There was a marked increase in the attendance on the third day when Joe was slated to pitch. On that day he "made monkeys" of the Pittsburgh batters, and on the two turns at bat when he was permitted to hit made a single and a three-bagger. In two other appearances at bat, the Pittsburgh pitcher deliberately passed him, at which even the Pittsburgh crowd expressed their displeasure by jeers. On the final day, Markwith was given a chance to redeem himself, and pitched an airtight game. But Hooper of the Pittsburghs was also at his best, and with the game tied in the ninth Joe again cracked out a homer to the right field bleachers, his third home run in four days! Markwith prevented further scoring by the enemy, and the game went into the Giants' winning column. "Four straight from the league leaders," McRae chuckled happily. "The break in the luck has come at last." CHAPTER XIV A DELIGHTFUL SURPRISE "Well, we wound up the trip in a blaze of glory, anyway," remarked Jim to Baseball Joe, as they sat in the Pullman coach that was carrying them and the rest of the team back to New York. "Yes, and we just saved our bacon by doing it," replied Joe. "Those last four games gave us eight out of fifteen for the trip. Not so awfully bad for a team on a trip, and yet not good enough to win the championship. But even at that I guess McRae won't supplant us with a team from the old ladies' home," he added, with a laugh. "We've got a long series of games on the home grounds now," put in Larry, the optimist. "We'll show these other fellows how the game ought to be played. Just watch us climb." "Here's hoping you're right," chimed in Burkett. "A slice of the World Series money this year would look mighty good to me." "That's looking pretty far ahead," said Curry. "Still, if Joe keeps up the batting he's been showing us in Pittsburgh, I'll bet we cop the flag." "That may be just a flash in the pan," cautioned Joe. "I may have had just a few good days when everything broke just right for me. I'm a pitcher, not a batter." "Not a batter, eh?" remarked Larry, in feigned surprise. "How surprised Dawley and Hooper and the other Pittsburgh pitchers will be to hear that. They seemed to think you could pickle the pill all right." The players found the baseball circles of New York in a ferment of interest and excitement over the team. There had been considerable despondency over the poor showing of the Giants in the first three series they had played on the trip. But the four rattling victories they had gained over Pittsburgh had redeemed them in the minds of their followers, and hopes for the pennant had revived. But the one thing that obscured everything else was the tremendous batting that Joe had done in that last series. The sporting columns of the newspapers had headlines like: "The New Batting Star;" "A Rival to Kid Rose;" "Is There to Be a New Home-Run King?" and "The Colossus of Swat." Joe found his footsteps dogged by reporters eager to get interviews telling how he did it. Moving picture operators begged the privilege of taking him in all positions--as he gripped his bat--the way he stood at the plate--as he drew back for his swing. Illustrated weekly papers had full page pictures of him. Magazines offered him large sums for articles signed with his name. He found himself in the calcium light, holding the center of the stage, the focus of sporting interest and attention. Joe was, of course, pleased at the distinction he had won, and yet at the same time he was somewhat uneasy and bewildered. He was not especially irked at the attention he was attracting. That had already become an old story as to his pitching. He was hardened to reporters, to being pointed out in the streets, to having a table at which he happened to be dining in a restaurant or hotel become the magnet for all eyes while whispers went about as to who he was. That was one of the penalties of fame, and he had become used to it. But hitherto his reputation had been that of a great pitcher, and in his own heart he knew he could sustain it. The pitching box was his throne, and he knew he could make good. But he was somewhat nervous about the acclamations which greeted his batting feats. He was not at all sure that he could keep it up. He had never thought of himself as any more than an ordinary batter. He knew that as a pitcher he was not expected to do much batting, and so he had devoted most of his training to perfecting himself in the pitching art. Now he found himself suddenly placed on a pedestal as a Batting King. Suppose it were, as he himself had suggested, merely a flash in the pan. It would be rather humiliating after all this excitement to have the public find out that their new batting idol was only an idol of clay after all. He confided some of his apprehension to Jim, but his chum only laughed at him. "Don't worry a bit over that, old man," Jim reassured him. "I only wish I were as sure of getting a million dollars as I am that you've got the batting stuff in you. You've got the eye, you've got the shoulders, you've got the knack of putting all your weight into your blow. You're a natural born batter, and you've just waked up to it." "But this is only the beginning of the season," argued Joe. "The pitchers haven't yet got into their stride. By midsummer they'll be burning them over, and then more than likely I'll come a cropper." "Not a bit of it," Jim affirmed confidently. "You won't face better pitching anywhere than we stacked up against in Pittsburgh, and you made all those birds look like thirty cents. They had chills and fever every time you came to the bat." The matter was not long left in doubt. In the games that followed Joe speedily proved that the Pittsburgh outburst was not a fluke. Home runs rained from his bat in the games with the Brooklyns, the Bostons and the Phillies. And when the Western teams came on for their invasion of the East, they had to take the same medicine. All pitchers looked alike to him. Of course he had his off days when all he could get was a single, and sometimes not that. Once in a long while he went out on strikes, and the pitcher who was lucky or skilful enough to perform that feat hugged it to his breast as a triumph that would help him the next season in demanding a rise in salary. But these occasions were few and far between. The newspapers added a daily slab to their sporting page devoted to Joe's mounting home run record, giving the dates, the parks and the pitchers off whom they were made. And there was hardly a pitcher in the league whose scalp Joe had not added to his rapidly growing collection. In the business offices of the city, in restaurants, at all kinds of gathering places, the daily question changed. Formerly it had been: "Will the Giants win to-day?" Now it became: "Will Baseball Joe knock out another homer?" And the fever showed itself in the attendance at the Polo Grounds. Day by day the crowds grew denser. Soon they were having as many spectators at a single game as they had formerly looked for at a double-header. The money rolled into the ticket offices in a steady stream, and the owners and manager of the club wore the "smile that won't come off." The same effect was noted in all the cities of the circuit. The crowds turned out not so much to see the Giants play as to see if Baseball Joe would knock another home run. Joe Matson had become the greatest drawing card of the circuit. If this kept up, it would mean the most prosperous season the League had ever known. For the Giants' owners alone, it meant an added half million dollars for the season. Already, with not more than a third of the games played, they had taken in enough to pay all expenses for the year, and were "on velvet" for the rest of the season. Nothing in all this turned Joe's head. He was still the same modest, hardworking player he had always been. First and all the time he worked for the success of his team. Already the Giants' owners had voluntarily added ten thousand dollars to his salary, and he was at present the most highly paid player in his League. He knew that next year even this would be doubled, if he kept up his phenomenal work. But he was still the same modest youth, and was still the same hail fellow well met, the pal and idol of all his comrades. What delighted Baseball Joe far more than any of his triumphs was the information contained in a letter he wore close to his heart that Mabel was coming on to New York with her brother Reggie for a brief stay on her way to her home in Goldsboro. They had been in almost daily correspondence, and their affection had deepened with every day that passed. Jim also had been equally assiduous and equally happy, and both players were counting the days that must elapse before the wedding march would be played at the end of the season. Luck was with Joe when, in company with Jim, he drove to the station to meet Mabel and Reggie. The rain was falling in torrents. Ordinarily that would have been depressing. But to-day it meant that there would be no game and that he could count on having Mabel to himself with nothing to distract his attention. Jim was glad on his friend's account, but nevertheless was unusually quiet for him. "Come out of your trance, old boy," cried Joe, slapping him jovially on the knee. Jim affected to smile. "Oh, I know what you're thinking about," charged Joe. "You're jealous because I'm going to see Mabel and you're not going to see Clara. But cheer up, old man. The next time we strike Chicago we'll both run down to Riverside for a visit. Then you'll have the laugh on me, for you'll have Clara all to yourself while Mabel will be in Goldsboro." Jim tried to find what comfort he could from the prospect, but the Chicago trip seemed a long way off. They reached the station ahead of time and walked up and down impatiently. The rain and wet tracks had detained the train a little, but at length its giant bulk drew into the station. They scanned the long line of Pullmans anxiously. Then Joe rushed forward with an exclamation of delight as he saw Reggie descend holding out his hand to assist Mabel--Mabel, radiant, starry-eyed, a vision of loveliness. Jim had followed a little more slowly to give Joe time for the first greeting. But his steps quickened and his eyes lighted up with rapture as behind Mabel Joe's sister Clara came down the steps, sweet as a rose, and with a look in her eyes as she caught sight of Jim that made that young man's heart lose a beat. CHAPTER XV AN EVENING RIDE There was a hubbub of delighted and incoherent exclamations as the young people greeted each other with all their heart in their eyes. Of course in the crowded station the greetings could not be just what the boys--and the girls, too--desired, but those would come later. Reggie too came in for warm handshakes. "My word!" he exclaimed, as he smiled affably upon them all, "you folks seem glad to see one another. I'll just slip over and look after the luggage." They spared him without any regret at all. Indeed, it is doubtful if they even heard him. Joe was saying things to Mabel in an undertone, and Jim was doing the same thing to Clara. What they said was their own affair, but it seemed eminently satisfactory to all concerned. When at last they had come somewhat to their senses, Joe poked Jim in the ribs. "Some surprise, old man!" he remarked mischievously. "Surprise!" repeated Jim. "It's Paradise. It's heaven. Don't tell me I'm going to wake up and find it all a dream. And you knew this all the time, you old rascal, and didn't let me in on it." "Just a little scheme that Mabel and I cooked up," laughed Joe happily. "I thought Sis might like to come on and take a look at her only brother." "Brother," mimicked Mabel saucily. "Don't flatter yourself. You won't be looked at much while Jim's around." Clara flushed and laughed in protest. Joe, however, did not seem disturbed at the prospect. As long as Mabel looked at him the way she was looking now, he had nothing more to ask. A taxicab whirled them up to the pretty suite that Joe had reserved for the girls in a hotel. There were two rooms in the suite, and it was surprising how quickly Joe and Mabel took possession of one of them, while Jim and Clara found the other one much preferable. They had so much to say to each other that required no audience. Reggie, who had an adjoining room, took himself off on the plea of an engagement that would keep him till luncheon time, and the happy young people had a long delightful morning to themselves. "Oh, I'm so proud of you, Joe," Mabel assured him, among many other things. "You're making such a wonderful record. You don't know how I read and treasure all the things the papers are saying about you. They give you more space than they give the President of the United States." "You mustn't make too much of it, honey," Joe replied. "I'm in luck just now; but if I should have a slump the same people that cheer me now when I make a homer would be jeering at me when I came to the bat. There's nothing more fickle than the public. One day you're a king and the next you're a dub." "You'll always be a king," cried Mabel. "Always my king, anyway," she added blushingly. In the meantime Clara and Jim were saying things equally precious to themselves and each other, but of no importance at all to the general public. Jim was surprised and pleased at the intimate acquaintance she had with all the phases of his rapid rise in his profession. She knew quite as well as the rest of the world that Jim already stood in the very front rank of pitchers, second only perhaps to Joe himself, and she had no hesitation in telling him what she thought of him. Sometimes it is not a pleasant thing for a man to know what a woman thinks of him, but in Jim's case it was decidedly different, if his shining face went for anything. The young people took in a matinee in the afternoon and a musical show, followed by dinner, in the evening, and all were agreed in declaring it a perfect day. Jim was slated to pitch the next day and with Clara watching from a box he turned in a perfect game, winning by a score of 1 to 0, the run being contributed by Joe, who turned loose a screaming homer in the sixth. Naturally both young men felt elated. It was a beautiful summer evening, and they had arranged for an automobile ride out on Long Island. Joe had hired a speedy car, but dispensed with the services of a chauffeur. He himself was an accomplished driver and knew all the roads. A chauffeur would have been only a restraint on their freedom of conversation. They bowled along over the perfect roads, happy beyond words and at peace with all the world. Mabel was seated in front with Joe, while Jim and Clara occupied the tonneau. All were in the gayest of spirits. Much of the time they talked, but speech and silences were equally sweet. They had dinner at an excellent inn, about forty miles out of the city. There was a good string band and the young couples had several dances. The evening wore away before they knew it, and it was rather late when they turned their faces cityward. The car was purring along merrily on a rather lonely stretch of road in the vicinity of Merrick, when a big car came swiftly up behind them. The driver tooted his horn and Joe drew a little to one side to give the car plenty of room to pass. The car rushed by and lengthened the distance until it was about a hundred yards ahead. "Seems to be in a hurry," remarked Jim. "A bunch of joy riders, I suppose," answered Joe. "Hello, what does that mean?" For the car had suddenly stopped and the driver had swung it across the road, blocking it. "Something gone wrong with the steering gear," commented Joe. "Looks like a breakdown. Perhaps we can help them." He slowed up as he drew near the car. The next instant four men jumped out of the car and ran toward them. They had their caps drawn down over their eyes, and each of them carried a leveled revolver. "Hands up!" commanded their leader, as he covered Joe with his weapon. CHAPTER XVI THE ATTACK ON THE ROAD In an instant Baseball Joe brought the car to a stop. But in that instant his brain worked like lightning. Neither he nor Jim was armed. He must temporize. Resistance at the moment might be fatal. Shooting would result probably in the death of one or more of the party. Before he had taken his hand from the wheel, he had formed a plan. The women had screamed and Jim had jumped to his feet. "Sit down, Jim," said Joe. "Don't you see they have the drop on us. I suppose it's money you want?" he went on coolly, addressing the leader of the gang. "No," was the unexpected answer. "We're not after money this time. We want a man named Matson." "I didn't know I was so popular," replied Joe jokingly, though the mention of his name in so ominous a way had sent a start through him. "My name is Matson, Joe Matson. What do you want of me?" "Are you giving it to us straight?" asked the leader. "Are you Matson? How many men are there with you anyway?" he went on, peering into the tonneau. "There are two of us," replied Joe. "Then get down in the road, both of you," commanded the bandit. "I want to have a look at both of you so that there won't be any mistake. My orders are for the man named Matson. No monkey work now!" Joe and Jim, inwardly boiling but outwardly cool, got down into the road. As they climbed down, Joe's hand nudged Jim ever so slightly. Jim knew what that meant. It meant to make no move until Joe gave the sign. "Up with your hands!" ordered the leader curtly. "Bill, frisk them and see if they have guns." The bandit called Bill ran his hands along their bodies and reported that they were entirely unarmed. "Now strike a match and let's have a look at their faces," was the next order. Bill obeyed, and as the light flared up, not only the leader but the rest of the band looked over the young men keenly. "You're Matson, all right," said the leader to Joe, and the rest acquiesced. "I've seen your picture in the papers many a time, and I've seen you at the Polo Grounds too. All right. You get back in the car," he said to Jim, poking him in the side with his pistol, "and drive off." "What do you want with me?" asked Joe steadily. "Oh, we're not going to kill you," replied the leader, with an evil grin. "But," he muttered under his breath so low that only Joe could hear him, "by the time we're through with you, that pitching arm of yours will be out of business. Them's our orders." "Who gave you those orders?" asked Joe. "Never you mind who gave them," snarled the bandit. "I've got them, and I'm going----" He never finished the sentence. Like lightning Joe's foot shot up and kicked the weapon from the leader's hand. The next instant his fist caught another of the scoundrels a terrific crack on the jaw. The man went down as though he had been hit with an axe. At the same moment Jim's hard right fist smashed into another straight between the eyes. There was the snap of a breaking bone and the man toppled over. The fourth rascal, who had been paralyzed with astonishment, forgot to shoot and started to run, but Jim was on him like a tiger and bore him to the ground, his hands tightening on his throat until the rascal lay limp and motionless. In the meantime, the leader, nursing his hurt wrist, had hobbled to the car, whose engine all this time had remained running. Joe made a dash for the car, but the chauffeur put on all speed and darted away into the darkness. The first task of Joe and Jim was to gather up the weapons of the assailants. The three still lay dazed or unconscious. Under other circumstances, the boys would have waited until the trio had regained their senses. But their first duty now was to the girls, who were half hysterical with fright. Joe took Mabel in his arms, after assuring her again and again in answer to her frantic questions that he was unhurt, and Jim comforted Clara until she had recovered her composure. They laid the bandits at the side of the road, so that they could not be run over, and then Joe took the wheel and drove on. To the first policeman they saw, Joe reported that he had seen some men who seemed to be hurt, alongside the road, and suggested that they be looked after. But he said nothing about the attempted holdup. Then he sped on, and soon they were in the precincts of the city. The girls in their alarm had failed to gather the true significance of the affair. To them it was like a confused dream. Their general impression was that a holdup had been attempted for the purposes of robbery. Still Mabel did remember that they had asked specifically for Matson. "Why was it that they asked for you especially, Joe?" she asked, snuggling closely to the arm that had so stoutly done its work that night. "Why was it?" "How do I know, honey?" answered Joe. "Perhaps," he said jokingly, "they had heard of my increase in salary and thought I was rolling in money. Sometimes you know they kidnap a man, make him sign a check and then hold him prisoner until they cash it. No knowing what such rascals may do." "Whatever it was, they've lost all interest in the matter now," said Jim, with a laugh, as he thought of the discomfited bandits by the roadside and the fleeing leader in the automobile. Both Joe and Jim made light of it to the girls and laughed away their fears until they had seen them safely to their hotel. But later on two very sober and wrathful young men sat in their own room discussing the holdup. Joe had told Jim what the bandit leader had said about putting his pitching arm out of business, and his friend was white with anger. "The scoundrels!" he ejaculated. "That meant that they would have twisted your arm until they had snapped the tendons or pulled it from its socket and crippled you for life. If I'd known that when I had my hands on that rascal's throat, I'd have choked the life out of him." "You did enough," returned Joe. "As it is they got a pretty good dose. I know I cracked the leader's wrist, and I heard a bone snap when you smashed that other fellow. Gee, Jim, you hit like a pile driver." "No harder than you did," replied Jim. "That fellow you clipped in the jaw was dead to the world before he hit the ground." "After all, those fellows were merely tools," mused Joe thoughtfully. "Did you hear the leader say that he had his orders? Who gave him those orders? If only the girls hadn't been there, I'd have trussed the rascals up, waited until they had got their senses back, and then put them through the third degree until I'd found out the name of their employer. But I wouldn't for the world have the girls know what those scoundrels were up to. They'd never have a happy moment. They'd worry themselves to death. We've got to keep this thing absolutely to ourselves." "All the same, I can guess who the fellow was that employed them," said Jim. "I think I can come pretty near it, too," affirmed Joe. "In the first place, it was a man who had money. Those fellows wouldn't have taken the job unless they had been well paid. Then, too, it was somebody who hated me like poison. There are two men who fulfil both of those conditions, and their names are----" "Fleming and Braxton," Jim finished for him. "Exactly," agreed Joe. "And knowing what I do of the two, I have a hunch that it was Braxton." CHAPTER XVII FALLING BEHIND "Braxton's the more likely one of the two to use violence--or have it used," said Jim. "Not but what either one of them would be mean enough to do it. But Braxton has got more nerve than Fleming. Then, too, I happen to know that Fleming has run pretty well through his money, while Braxton is a millionaire. He was pretty hard hit by the failure of the All-Star League to go through last year, but he's got plenty left. He could give those rascals a thousand, or five thousand if necessary, and never feel it." "Speaking of money," said Joe, "reminds me of something else that may be connected with this case. Do you remember what Reggie told us when he was in Riverside about that fellow in Chicago that was betting great wads of money that the Giants wouldn't cop the flag? Betting it, Reggie said, as though he had something up his sleeve, as though he were betting on a sure thing. Now what could be a surer thing in a race as close as this than to cripple the Giant team by robbing it of one of its pitchers? He'd be getting a double satisfaction then--making a pile of money to make up for his losses last season and getting even with me for the thrashing I gave him. That is, of course, if the man is really Braxton." "By Jove, I believe you're right!" exclaimed Jim. "Of course that might seem a little far-fetched, if it weren't for the other things that point to the same man. But when you remember that Braxton hails from Chicago, that the anonymous letter had a Chicago postmark, when you recall that somebody tried to injure us in that road blockade the day after I thought I saw Braxton in the training town, and that he was the only one besides ourselves who knew the road we were going to take--when you take all these things together, it seems a dead open-and-shut proposition that Braxton was the man that plotted all this scoundrelism." "Some day soon I hope we'll know the truth," said Joe. "And when that day comes----" He did not finish the sentence, but his clenched fist and flashing eyes were eloquent. The next morning the chums went around early, to learn how the girls were feeling after their trying experience. They found them still a little nervous and overwrought, but the society of the boys and the knowledge that they had come through without injury soon brightened them up, and before long they were their natural selves again. The way the boys had carried themselves in the fight with their assailants made them more than ever heroes in the eyes of those they loved best, and if it had not been for the deeper knowledge they had of the affair, Joe and Jim would have been rather glad it happened. Reggie, of course, had been told of the holdup and was almost stuttering in his wrath and indignation. But he, like the girls, figured that it had been an attack simply for the purpose of robbery, and the boys were not sure enough of Reggie's discretion to tell him the real facts. They feared that some slip of the tongue on his part might reveal the matter, and they knew that a constant fear would from then on shadow the lives of Mabel and Clara. In about ten days the next Western trip of the Giants was to begin, and then Clara would return home, while Mabel would go on with Reggie to Goldsboro. But those precious ten days were enjoyed to the full by the young folks. Every hour that the boys could spare from the games was spent in the society of the girls, and every day that a game was played Mabel and Clara occupied a box in the grandstand at the Polo Grounds. The knowledge of the bright eyes that were following their every move put the boys on their mettle, and they played up to the top of their form. Jim's progress as a boxman was evident with each succeeding game, and Joe covered himself with laurels as both pitcher and batsman. But more than once, after Joe had let down an opposing team with but a few hits, he had an involuntary shudder as he looked at the mighty arm that had scored the victory and thought of it as hanging withered and helpless at his side. And only by the narrowest of margins had he escaped that fate. The hour of parting came at last, and it was a great wrench to all of them. There were promises on both sides of daily letters, that would serve to bridge the gulf of separation. The fight for the pennant was waxing hotter and hotter. The Giants and the Pittsburghs were running neck and neck. First one and then the other was at the head in victories won. At times one would forge ahead for a week or two, but the other refused obstinately to be shaken off and would again assume the leadership. Everything promised a ding-dong, hammer-and-tongs finish. Some of the other teams were still in striking distance, but the first two were really the "class" of the League. The great pitching staff of the Brooklyns had gone to pieces, and it looked as though they were definitely out of the running. The Bostons, after a poor start, had braced and were rapidly improving their average, but they seemed too far behind to be really dangerous. The unfortunate Phillies were in for the "cellar championship" and did not have a ghost of a chance. Of the Western teams, outside of Pittsburgh, no fear was felt, though the consistent slugging of the Cardinals gave the leaders some uneasy moments. Still, batting alone could not win games, and the Cardinals' pitching staff, though it had some brilliant performers, was surpassed in ability by several teams in the League. In the American League also a spirited contest was going on. The White Sox, who had usually been a dangerous factor, were out of the running because they had had to build up practically a new team. But the Clevelands were as strong as they had been the year before, and were making a great bid for the flag. Detroit had started out brilliantly, and with its hard hitting outfield was winning many a game by sheer slugging. Washington loomed up as a dangerous contender, and only a little while before had won fifteen straight games. But the chief antagonist of the Clevelands was the New York Yankee team. For many years they had struggled to win the championship, but though they had come so close at one time that a single wild pitch beat them out of it, they had never been able to gain the coveted emblem. "It seems at times as though a 'jinx' were pursuing the Yankees," remarked Jim. "But this year they have got together a rattling good crowd in all departments of the game. Most of all that counts in their hopes, I imagine, is the acquisition of Kid Rose." Kid Rose was a phenomenal batter of whom every baseball fan in the United States was talking. He had been a pitcher on the Red Sox and had done fine work in the box. It was only after he had been playing some time in that position that he himself, as well as others, began to realize the tremendous strength that resided in his batting arm and shoulders. He was a left handed batter, so that most of his hits went into right field, or rather into the right field bleachers, where they counted as home runs. In one season he accumulated twenty-nine home runs, which was a record for the major leagues. The Yankee owners made a deal with the Red Sox by which the "Kid" was brought to the New York club at a price larger than had ever been paid for a player. It was a good investment, however, for the newcomer was excelling his home run record of the year before and drew so many people to the parks where he played that a constant golden stream flowed into the strong boxes of the club. He made as many home runs as all the other players of his team together. Now, owing to his work, the Yankees were fighting it out with the Clevelands for the lead, and the papers were already beginning to talk of the possibility of both championships coming to New York. If this should be the case, the World Series games would probably draw the greatest crowds that had ever witnessed such a contest, and the prize money for the players would undoubtedly be larger than ever before in the history of the game. Joe and his comrades needed no such spur as this to make them play their best. A strong loyalty to the club marked every player of the team. Still it was not at all an unpleasing thought that the result of winning would add a good many thousand dollars to the salary of every member. The Giants started out in high hopes on this second Western invasion. "Sixteen games to be played on this trip, boys," McRae had said to them, as they boarded the train at the Pennsylvania Station. "And out of that sixteen I want at least twelve. Nix on the breaking even stuff. That won't go with me at all. I want to get so far ahead on this trip that we'll be on easy street for the rest of the race." "Why not cop the whole sixteen, Mac?" asked Larry, with a broad grin. "So much the better," answered McRae. "But I'm no hog. Give me an average of three out of four in each series and I'll ask for nothing better." The team started out as though they were going to give their manager what he wanted. Their first stop this time was Pittsburgh, and here they won the first two games right off the reel. The third, however, was lost by a close margin. In the fourth the Giants' bats got going and they sent three Pirate pitchers to the showers, winning by the one-sided score of eleven to two. So that it was in high spirits that they left the Smoky City for Cincinnati. Here they met with a rude shock. The Reds were in the midst of one of their winning streaks and were on a hitting rampage. They had the "breaks," too, and cleaned up by taking every game. It was a complete reversal, and the Giants were stunned. CHAPTER XVIII IN THE THROES OF A SLUMP Robson's round face had lost its usual smile. McRae's was like a thundercloud, and the players evaded him as much as they could. Even Larry was "Laughing Larry" no longer. It was a disgruntled crowd of baseball players that shook the dust of Cincinnati from their feet and started for Chicago. "Better luck next time," Joe comforted his mates. "After all it's the uncertainty of the game that makes baseball. How many people would have been at the park if they thought their pets didn't have a chance to win?" "That's all very well," grumbled Curry, "but we ought at least to have had our share of the breaks. We hit the ball hard enough, but every time it went straight to the fielders. They didn't hit any better, but the ball went just out of the reach of our fellows. Talk about fool luck! If those Cincinnati players fell in the water they'd come up with a fish dinner." "That's just the reason we're due for a change," argued Jim. "We'll get it all back from the Cubs." But here again there was disappointment. Joe pitched the first game and won in a close fight, although the Cubs tied it up in the ninth and Joe had to win his own game in the eleventh by a homer. But the next two went to Chicago, and in the fourth game, which Jim pitched, the best he could do was to make it a tie, called in the twelfth on account of darkness. This time it was not luck that gave to the Giants only one game out of three. They had as many of the breaks of the game as their opponents. They simply slumped. One of those mysterious things that come to almost every team once at least in a season had them in its clutches. Perhaps it was overanxiety, perhaps it was a superstitious feeling that a "jinx" was after them, but, whatever it was, it spread through the team like an epidemic. Their fingers were "all thumbs." Their bats had "holes" in them. The most reliable fielders slipped up on easy chances. They booted the ball, or if they got it they threw either too high or too low to first. Double plays became less frequent. Two of the best batters in the team, Larry and Burkett, fell off woefully in their hitting. In vain McRae raged and stormed. In vain Robbie begged and pleaded and cajoled. In vain Jim and Joe, who still resisted the infection, sought to stem the tide of disaster. The members of the team with a few exceptions continued to act as if they were in a trance. McRae did everything in his power to bring about a change. He laid off Willis and Iredell, and put two promising rookies, Barry and Ward, in their places. This added a little speed on the bases to the team, but did not materially add to the batting or fielding, for the rookies were nervous and made many misplays, while they were lamentably short on the "inside stuff" that takes long experience to acquire. He shook up the batting order. But the hits were still few and far between. St. Louis gave the Giants a sound trouncing in the first game, but in the second the Giants came to life and reversed the score. Joe was in the box in this contest, and as he came in to the bench in the fourth inning, he noted, sitting in the grandstand, a figure that seemed familiar to him. The man seemed to have seen Baseball Joe at the same time, but he hid himself behind the form of a big man sitting in front of him, so that Joe could not be sure of his identification. "What were you looking at so steadily, Joe?" inquired Jim, as his friend sat down on the bench beside him. "Did you by any chance catch sight of the jinx that's been following us?" he continued jokingly. "Maybe I did, at that," replied Joe. "I could have sworn that I got a glimpse of Bugs Hartley in the grandstand." "Bugs Hartley?" echoed Jim in surprise. "How could that old rascal have got as far as St. Louis?" "Beat his way, perhaps," answered Joe. "Of course I'm not dead sure but that I might have been mistaken. And I won't have much time to look for him while I'm in the box. But suppose in the meantime you go down to the coaching line near first. While you're pretending to coach, you can take an occasional look at the grandstand and see if you can pick out Bugs. He's somewhere about the third row near the center. Just where the wire netting is broken." Jim did as suggested, and studied the grandstand with care. He had only a chance to make an affirmative nod of the head as Joe, the inning ended, went out again to the box, but when he returned after pitching the side out on strikes, Jim told Joe that he was right. "It's Bugs all right," he said. "I had a good chance to see that ugly mug of his, and there can't be any mistake. But what in thunder can he be doing in St. Louis?" "Oh, panhandling and drinking himself to death, I suppose," answered Joe carelessly, his mind intent upon the game. "But how did he get here?" persisted Jim. "I don't like it, old man. It takes money to travel, and I don't think Bugs could hustle up railroad fare to save his life. And if somebody gave him the money to get here, why was it done? I tell you again, Joe, I don't like it." "Well, perhaps it's just as well we caught sight of him," admitted Joe. "It will help us to keep our eyes open." In the seventh inning for the Giants, with the score tied at 3 to 3, Larry started a rally for the Giants by lining out a screaming single to right. Denton followed with a hit to short that was too hot for the shortstop to handle. He knocked the ball down, however, and got it to first. Denton had thought the play would be made on Larry, who was already on his way to third. Denton, therefore, had rounded first and started for second, but saw the ball coming and scrambled back to first. There was a grand mixup, but the umpire declared Denton safe. It was a close play, and the St. Louis team was up in arms in a moment. Some of them, including their manager, rushed to the spot to argue with the umpire. The crowd also was enraged at the decision and began to hoot and howl. One or two pop bottles were thrown at the umpire, but fell short. Joe, who was next at bat, had taken his stand at the plate, awaiting the outcome of the argument. Suddenly a bottle, aimed with great skill and tremendous force, came through the broken wire netting, whizzed close by his head, the top of it grazing his ear in passing. If it had hit his head, it would have injured him greatly beyond a doubt. Joe turned toward the stand and saw a man hastily making his way out toward the entrance. He could only see his back, but he knew at once to whom that back belonged. "Stop him! Stop him!" he shouted, as he threw aside his bat and rushed toward the stand. But Jim had already vaulted over the barrier and was rushing through the aisle. CHAPTER XIX A CLOSE CALL The people in the grandstand had not fully grasped the significance of the cowardly attack, as the attention of most of them was centered upon the dispute at first base. But the shout of Baseball Joe and the rush of Jim through the aisle of the stand had brought them to their feet, and some of them started in pursuit or tried to stop the flying figure of the fugitive. But this very desire of so many to apprehend him helped in his escape. Men crowded in the aisle, and Jim, who could otherwise have captured him, found himself in the midst of a throng that effectually hindered his progress. He pushed his way through desperately, using his arms and hands to clear a passage, but by the time he arrived at the outer edge, the man had disappeared. Either he had mixed with the enormous crowd or had found his way through one of the numerous exits. In any event, he was not to be seen, and at last Jim, flaming-eyed and dripping with sweat from his exertions, had to come back empty-handed. In the meantime, the umpire had asserted his authority at first base, and given the St. Louis players one minute by his watch to resume play. With much muttering and grumbling they obeyed. The decision stood, and Larry was on third, while Denton danced around on first and "kidded" the Cardinal first baseman on the umpire's decision. Joe again took up his position at the plate, the fairer-minded among the spectators giving him a cheer as he did so, to express their indignation at the dastardly attack that had been made on him. He was somewhat shaken by the close call he had had, and the first two balls were strikes. Then he took a grip on himself, and when the next one came over he smashed a beauty to right. It went for two bases, while Larry scored easily, and Denton by great running and a headlong slide also reached the plate. The next man up sacrificed Joe to third, but there he remained, as the next two batters, despite McRae's adjurations, were not able to bring him in. The Giants, however, had now broken the tie and had a two-run lead, and although that ended their scoring, it was sufficient, as Joe put on extra steam and mowed down the Cardinals almost as fast as they came to the bat. One hit was made off him for the remainder of the game, but as the batter got no farther than first there was no damage done. Joe and Jim did not care to discuss the matter before their mates, and the attack was put down to some rowdy who was sore at the umpire's decision and took that method of showing it. But the two friends knew that it was much more than that. "Well, what do you think now of my hunch?" demanded Jim, when the chums were alone together. "Was I right when I said I was uneasy about that fellow being in the grandstand?" "You certainly were, Jim," answered Joe. "It must have been Bugs who threw that bottle. I know at any rate that it was he whom I saw hustling out of the stands. And when I looked at where he had been sitting the seat was empty." "It was Bugs all right," affirmed Jim with decision. "I saw his face once, when he glanced behind him while he was running. Then, too, only a pitcher could have hurled the bottle with the swiftness and precision that he did. It went nearly as far as the pitcher's box before it struck the ground. Gee! my heart was in my mouth for a second when I saw it go whizzing past your ear. If it had hit you fair and square, it would have been good night." "It did barely touch me," replied Joe, pointing to a scratch on his ear. "The old rascal hasn't forgotten how to throw. How that fellow must hate me! And yet I was the best friend that he had on the team." "He hates you all right," replied Jim. "But it wasn't only his own personal feeling that prompted him to do that thing to-day. That isn't Bugs' way. He'd dope your coffee on the sly. Or he'd throw a stone at your head in a dark street, as he did that time when we'd started on our tour around the world. But to do a thing in the open, as he did to-day, means that he had a mighty big incentive to lay you out. That incentive was probably money. Somebody has put up the cash to send him to St. Louis, and that same somebody has probably promised him a big wad of dough if he could do you up. The chance came to-day, when the fans began to throw bottles at the umpire. He figured that that was the time to get in his work. If he'd been caught, he could have said that he was only one of a good many who did the same thing, and that he had no idea the bottle was going to hit anybody." "Then you think that Bugs this time was acting as the tool of Braxton, or whoever it is that's trying to put me out of business," remarked Joe. "Think so!" cried Jim. "I'm sure of it. So many things, all pointing to deliberate purpose, don't happen by accident. The same fellow who hired those auto bandits to cripple you hired Bugs for the same purpose. Lots of people have heard of the hatred that Bugs has for you. I suppose he's panning you all the time in the joints where he hangs out. This fellow that's after your hide has heard of Bugs and put him on the job. If he can't get you in one way, he's going to try to get you in another. He figures that some time or other one of his schemes will go through. Gee!" he exclaimed, jumping up and pacing the floor, "what would I give just to come face to face with him and have him in a room alone with me for five minutes. Just five minutes! I'd change his face so that his own brother wouldn't know him." "I hope that job's reserved for me," replied Joe, as his fist clenched. "He'd get a receipt in full for all I owe him." "In the meantime, what shall we do about Bugs?" asked Jim anxiously. "He ought to be put in jail. It isn't right that a man who's tried to cripple another should be at large." "No," agreed Joe, "it isn't. But I don't see just what we can do about it. The chances are ten to one against his being found. Even if he were, nobody could be found probably who saw him actually throw the bottle. We didn't ourselves, though we feel absolutely certain that he did. He could explain his leaving by saying that he was taken ill and had to leave. Then, too, if he were arrested, we'd have to stay here and prosecute him, and we can't stay away from the team. Besides the whole thing would get in the papers, and Mabel and Clara and all the folks would have heart failure about it. No, I guess we'll have to keep quiet about it." "I suppose we will," admitted Jim reluctantly. "But some day this scoundrel who's hounding you will be caught in the open. And I'm still hoping for that five minutes!" CHAPTER XX SPEEDING UP St. Louis was in good form on the following day, and a perfect deluge of hits came from their bats. The Giants, too, had a good hitting day, and the fans who like to see free batting had their desire satisfied to the full. And their pleasure was all the greater because the home team had the best of the duel, and came out on top by a score of 17 to 12. Jim was in the box on the next day, and by superb pitching had the St. Louis sluggers hitting like a kindergarten team. They simply could not solve him. His team mates had scarcely anything to do, and only by the narrowest of margins did he miss turning the Cardinals back without a hit. One hit narrowly escaped the fingers of the second baseman, as he leaped in the air for it. But it did escape him, and counted for the only hit made by the St. Louis in the game. It was a magnificent exhibition and wound up a disastrous trip in a blaze of glory. Still it could not be denied that the trip had put a big dent in the Giants' aspirations for the pennant. Instead of the twelve games out of sixteen that McRae had asked for, they had only turned in six victories. It was the most miserable record that the Giants had made for years. "And we call ourselves a good road team!" snorted Curry in disgust, as they settled down in the Pullman for the long ride back from St. Louis to New York. "A bunch of school girls could have done better work." "Luck was against us," ventured Larry. "It sure was against us." "Luck, nothing!" exclaimed Curry. "We simply fell down, and fell down hard. The whole League is laughing at us. Look at the way the other Eastern teams held up their end. The Brooklyns copped ten games, the Bostons got eleven, and the Phillies pulled down seven. We ought to sneak back into New York on a freight train instead of riding in Pullmans." "I guess there won't be any band at the station to meet us," remarked Joe. "But after all, any team is liable to have a slump and play like a lot of dubs. Let's hope we've got all the bad playing out of our systems. From now on we're going to climb." "That's the way to talk," chimed in Jim. "Of course we can't deny that we've stubbed our toes on this trip. But we know in our heart that we've got the best team in the League. We've got the Indian sign on all of them. The fans that are roasting us now will be shouting their heads off when we get started on our winning streak. Remember, boys, it's a long worm that has no turning." There was a general laugh at this, and the spirits of the party lightened a little. But not all of the gloom was lifted. The prediction that their reception in New York would be rather frosty was true. Such high hopes had been built on the result of this trip that the reaction was correspondingly depressing. And what made the Giants feel the change of attitude the more keenly was the fact that while they had been doing so poorly, the Yankees at home had been going "like a house afire." They had taken the lead definitely away from the Clevelands, and it did not seem as though there was any team in their League that could stop them. New York was quite sure that it was going to have one championship team. But it was quite as certain that it was not going to have two. That hope had gone glimmering. Both teams were occupying the Polo Grounds for the season, while the new park of the Yankees was being completed. The schedule therefore had been arranged so that while one of the teams was playing at home the other was playing somewhere out of town. Thus on the very day the Giants reached home the Yankees were starting out on their trip to other cities. They went away in the glory of victory. The Giants came home in the gloom of defeat. The change of sentiment was visible in the first home game that the Giants played. On the preceding day, at their last game, the Yankees had played before a crowd of twenty-five thousand. The first game of the Giants drew scarcely more than three thousand. Many of these were the holders of free season passes, others, like the reporters, had to be there, while the rest were made up of the chronic fans who followed the Giants through thick and thin. There was no enthusiasm, and even the fact that the Giants won did not dispel the funereal atmosphere. And then the Giants began to climb! At first the process did not attract much attention. The public was so thoroughly disheartened by the downfall of their favorites in the West, that they took it for granted that they were out of the running for the pennant. Of course it was assumed that they would finish in the first division--it was very seldom that a New York team could not be depended on to do that--and that by some kind of miracle it might be possible to finish second. But there was very little consolation in that. New York wanted a winner or nothing. If the Giants could not fly the championship flag at the Polo Grounds, nobody cared very much whether they came in second or eighth or anywhere between. The first team to visit the Polo Grounds was the Bostons. They had greatly improved their game since the beginning of the season, and were even thought to have a look-in for the flag. They chuckled to themselves at the thought that they would catch the Giants in the slump that had begun out West and press them still deeper in the direction of the cellar. At first they thought they might even make a clean sweep. They lost the first game, but only by reason of a muff of an easy fly that let in two unearned runs in the sixth. That of course disposed of the clean sweep idea, but still, three out of four would do. But when they lost the second game also, their jubilation began to subside. Now the best they could hope for was an even break. But again they lost, and the climax was put to their discomfiture when the Giants simply walked away with the fourth game by a score of 10 to 0. But even with this series of four in a row captured by the Giants, the public refused to enthuse. It might have been only a flash in the pan. It is true that the sporting writers were beginning to sit up and take notice. Most of their time hitherto had been spent in advising McRae through the columns of their paper how he might strengthen his team for next year. The present season of course was past praying for. Yet there was a distinct chirking up on the part of the scribes, although they carefully refrained from making any favorable predictions that afterward they might be sorry for. They would wait awhile and see. Besides, the Brooklyns were coming next, and they had usually found it easy to defeat the Giants. If the Giants could hold the men from over the big bridge to an even break, it might mean a great deal. The Brooklyns came, saw and--were conquered. Four times in succession they went down before superb pitching and heavy batting. Four times they called on their heavy sluggers and their best boxmen, but the Giants rode over them roughshod. The sporting writers sat up and rubbed their eyes. Was this the same team that had come home forlorn and bedraggled after their last trip? Had the Giants really come to life? Was the pennant still a possibility? By this time the public had begun to wake up. The stands at the Polo Grounds no longer looked like a desert. The crowds began to pack the subway cars on their way up to the grounds. Everywhere the question was beginning to be asked: "What do you think of the Giants? Have they still got a chance?" It was the Phillies' turn next, and they had also to bend the knee. The Giants took them into camp as easily as they had the Braves and the Dodgers. And to rub it in, two of the games were shutouts. Twelve games in a row, and the Giants tearing through the other teams like so many runaway horses! CHAPTER XXI THE WINNING STREAK The Giants were in for a winning streak, and New York City promptly went baseball mad! Now there was no question of filling the grounds. It was rather a question of getting there early enough to secure seats. The Polo Grounds could accommodate thirty-five thousand, and again and again that number was reached and exceeded. The great amphitheatre was a sea of eager faces. Fans stood in hundreds in the rear of the upper grandstands. The lower stand too was filled to overflowing, and the bleachers were packed. It was astonishing how many business men closed their rolltop desks with a bang on those summer afternoons. Young and old alike were wild to be at the games and see the Giants add one more to their rapidly mounting list of victories. Thirteen--fourteen--fifteen--sixteen! Were the Giants ever going to be stopped? If so, who was going to stop them? The Western teams were coming now and the St. Louis team had left their scalps in the Giant's wigwam. Chicago was next in line. Could they stop the Giants in their mad rush for the flag? They could not, although they tried desperately, and Brennan, their resourceful manager, used all the cunning and guile that his long experience had taught him. The Giants tamed the Cubs with a thoroughness that left nothing to be desired from a New York point of view. And now the string of victories had mounted to twenty. Old records were got out and furbished up. It was found that once before, when Markwith and Hughson were in their prime, the New Yorks had won twenty-six games in a row. Could they repeat? Could they beat their own record that had been hung up so long for other teams to aim at? That was the question that absorbed public interest, not only in New York, but in baseball circles all over the country. The reason for this phenomenal spurt of the Giants, it was recognized, could be found in two chief factors. One was the wonderful work being done by Joe both as a pitcher and a batter. The other was the marvelous advance that had been made by Jim as a twirler. Joe had never had such complete mastery of the ball as he was showing this season. Even the pitching he had done the previous year, in the World Series between the Giants and the Sox, paled in comparison with what he was doing now. His control was something almost magical. It was such a rarity for him to give a base on balls that when it happened it was specially noted by the sporting writers. He worked the corners of the plate to perfection. He mixed up his fast ones with slow teasers that made the opposing batsmen look ridiculous as they broke their backs reaching for them. His slants and twists and hops and curves had never been so baffling. It was fast getting to the point where the other teams were half beaten as soon as they saw Joe pick up his glove and go into the box. But it was not even his pitching, great as it was, that held the worshiping attention of the crowds. It was the home run record that he was piling up in such an amazing fashion that already he was rated by many the equal of the wonderful Kid Rose. That wonderful eye of his had learned to time the ball so accurately as it came up to the plate that the bat met it at precisely the hundredth part of a second when it did the most good. Then all his mighty arm and shoulder leaned on the ball and gave it wings. Almost every other game now saw a home run chalked up to his credit. In three games of the winning streak he had made two home runs in a single game. It was common talk that he was out to tie the record of Ed Delehanty, the one-time mighty slugger of the Phillies, who in the years of long ago had hung up a record of four homers in a game. He had not done it yet, but there was still time before the season closed. More still would have gone to his credit had not the opposing pitchers become so afraid of him that they would not let him hit the ball. Again and again when he came to the bat, the catcher would stand away off to the side and the pitcher would deliberately send over four balls, so wide that Joe could not possibly reach them without stepping out of the box. This was a mighty disappointment to the crowds, half of whom had come with no other object in view than to see Joe smash out a homer. They would jeer and taunt the pitcher for his cowardice in fearing to match his slants against Joe's bat, but the practice continued nevertheless. Even this, however, was not a total loss to the Giants. It put Joe on first anyway, and counted at least for as much as a single would have done. And Joe was so fleet of foot on the bases that McRae once said jokingly that he would have to have detectives on the field to keep him from stealing so many bags. Many a base on balls thus given to Joe out of fear for his mighty bat was eventually turned into a run that helped to win the game. One morning when Joe, with the rest of the Giant team, was going out on the field for practice, his eye caught sight of a long white streak of kalsomine that ran up the right field wall to the top, behind the bleachers. "What's the idea?" he asked, turning to Robbie, who was close beside him. "Don't you really know, you old fence-breaker?" asked Robbie, a smile breaking over his jovial face. "Blest if I do," answered Joe. "Well, I'll tell you," answered Robbie. "The fact is that you've got into such a habit of knocking the ball into the right field stands--mighty good habit, too, if you ask me--that the umpires have asked us to paint this line so that they can see whether the hit is fair or foul. The ordinary hit they can tell easy enough. But yours are so far out that they have to have especial help in judging them. It's the first time it's had to be done for any hitter in the history of the game. Some compliment, what?" But Joe's work, wonderful as it was, would not alone have started and maintained the Giants' winning streak. No one man, however great, can carry a whole team on his shoulders. The next most important element was the pitching that Jim was showing. It was only second in quality to that turned in by Joe himself. Jim was a natural ball player, and his close association and friendship with Joe had taught him all the fine points of the game. He had learned the weaknesses of opposing batters. He knew those who would bite at an outcurve and those to whom a fast high one was poison; those who would offer at the first ball and those who would try to wait him out; those who would crowd the plate and those who would flinch when he wound the ball around their necks. He had a splendid head on his shoulders and a world of power in his biceps; and those two things go far to make a winning combination. Another element of strength was the return of Hughson to the team and his ability to take his regular turn in the box. His arm still hurt him, and it was beginning to be evident that he would never again be the Hughson of old. But his skill and knowledge of the game and the batters was so great that it more than atoned for the weakness of his pitching arm. His control was as wonderful as ever, and he nursed his arm as much as possible. He did not attempt to do much striking out, as that would have been too severe a strain. More and more he let the batsmen hit the ball, and depended upon the eight men behind him to back him up. Often he would go through an inning this way and the three put outs would be made by the infield on grounders and the outfielders on flies. But once let a man get on first and the "Old Master" would tighten up and prevent scoring. By thus favoring his arm, he was able to turn in his share of the victories. Markwith also had a new lease of life, and was winging them over as in the days when he had been without question the best port side flinger in the League. In fact the pitching staff was at the height of its form and had never been going better. And the rest of the team, without exception, was playing great ball. There was not a cripple on the list. Willis and Iredell had been restored to their positions at third and short respectively, and were playing the best ball of their careers. With Larry at second and Burkett at first, they formed a stonewall infield that seldom let anything get away from them. They made hair-raising stops and dazzling double plays, gobbling up grounders on either side, spearing high liners that were ticketed for singles, and played like supermen. The outfielders had caught the spirit of enthusiasm that pervaded the team, and were making what seemed like impossible catches. Add to this that the team members were batting like fiends and running bases like so many ghosts, and the reason for the winning streak becomes apparent. The Giants were simply playing unbeatable ball. So the Cincinnatis found when the time came for their heads to drop into the basket. That series was sweet revenge for the Giants, who had not forgotten the beating the Reds had given them on their last swing around the circuit. Twenty-one--twenty-two--twenty-three--twenty-four. Two more games to tie their own previous record. Three more to beat it. Would they do it? Many shook their heads. On the mere law of averages, a break for the Giants was now due. The team had been under a fearful strain. Such phenomenal work could not last forever. Besides, the severest test was now at hand. The Pittsburghs were coming. The Smoky City boys had been playing great ball themselves. They had won nineteen games out of the last twenty-four, and the margin of seven games that they had had when the Giants began their streak still kept them in the lead by two games. They had boasted that they would break the Giants' streak as soon as they struck New York. The time had come to make good their boast. Would they do it? CHAPTER XXII STRIVING FOR MASTERY It was Jim's turn to go on the mound in the first game with the Pittsburghs, and in the practice work before the game he showed that he was keyed up for his work. For so comparatively young a pitcher, he might well have been a bit nervous at facing so redoubtable a team before the immense crowd that had gathered to see whether or not the Giants' winning streak was doomed to be broken. But there was no trace of it in his manner, and McRae, looking him over, concluded that there was no reason to change his selection. His confidence was justified. Jim that afternoon was at as high a point of pitching form as he had ever reached in his career. He pitched a masterly game and held the Pirate sluggers to four hits. His support was all that could be desired, and some of the stops and throws of his comrades bordered on the miraculous. The Giants came out at the big end of the score, their tally being three to the solitary run scored by their opponents. "Twenty-five!" chuckled Joe, as he slapped his friend on the back, when the Pirates had been turned back in their half of ninth. "Jim, you're a lulu! You had those fellows rolling over and playing dead." "I guess we had all the breaks," returned Jim, smiling modestly. "Nothing of the kind," disclaimed Joe. "If anything, they had whatever breaks there were. It was simply a case of dandy pitching. You had them buffaloed." "Only one more game to go before we tie our own record," said Jim. "Gee, Joe, I wish you were going to pitch to-morrow. We're just in sight of the Promised Land. That will be the most important game of all." "Oh, I don't know," replied Joe. "It will be something to tie the record, but I want to break it. Day after to-morrow will be the big day. That is, if we win to-morrow, and I think we shall. It's Markwith's turn to go in, and he's going fine. The Pittsburghs aren't any too good against left-handed pitchers, anyway." But whatever the alleged weakness of the Pirates against southpaws, they showed little respect for Markwith's offerings on the next day. They had on their batting clothes and clouted the ball lustily. Only phenomenal fielding on the part of the Giants kept the score down, and again and again Markwith was pulled out of a hole by some dazzling bit of play when a run seemed certain. Still he worried through until the first part of the eighth. At that time the score was five to four in favor of the visitors. The Giants had been batting freely, but not quite as hard as the Pirates. In the eighth, Markwith was plainly beginning to wobble in his control. He passed two men in quick succession. That was enough for McRae, and Joe, who had been warming up at the right of the grandstand, was sent into the box. The Pirates' scoring stopped then and there. Astley, who was at the bat, fanned on three successive strikes. Brown hit to the box and Joe made a lightning throw to Larry at second, who relayed it to first for a sparkling double play, putting out the side. The Giants' half of the eighth was scoreless. All the Pittsburghs had to do now was to hold them down for one more inning, and the winning streak would be broken. Joe made short work of the visitors in their last inning and the Giants came in for their final half. Willis was the first man up. He made a savage lunge at the first ball pitched, but caught it on the under side, and it went up directly over the plate. Jenkins the Pittsburgh catcher, did not have to move from his tracks to gather it in. Larry sent a fierce low liner to Baskerville at short, who made a magnificent catch, picking it off his shoe tops. Two out, and the crowd fairly groaned as the winning streak seemed at last about to be broken. All hopes were now pinned on Denton. All he could do, however, was to dribble a slow one to the box. It seemed a certain out, and nine times out of ten would have been. But the Pittsburgh pitcher, in running in on it, snatched it up so hurriedly that it fell out of his hand. He recovered it in an instant and shot it to first. But that fumble had been fatal, and Denton by a headlong slide reached first before the ball. A tremendous roar arose from the stands, and the people who had started to leave sat down suddenly and sat down hard. In the Giants' dugout, all was excitement and animation. McRae ran down to first to coach Denton. Robbie rushed over to Joe, who was next in turn and had already picked up his bat. "For the love of Pete, Joe," he begged, "paste the old apple. Show them again what you've been showing us all along. Kill the ball! Just once, Joe, just once! You can do it. One good crack, and you'll save the winning streak." "I'll do my best," was Joe's reply. Frantic adjurations of the same nature were showered on Joe as he took up his position at the plate. Then there was a great silence, as the crowd fairly held their breath. But the crafty Pittsburgh pitcher was to be reckoned with. He had no mind to see the game go glimmering just at the moment it seemed to be won. He signaled to his catcher and deliberately pitched two balls wide of the plate. It was evident that he was going to give Joe his base on balls and take a chance with Mylert, the next batter. But the best laid plans sometimes miscarry. The third ball he pitched did not go as wide of the plate as he had meant it should. Joe sized it up, saw that he could reach it, and swung for it with all his might. There was a crack like that of a rifle as the bat met the ball and sent it mounting ever higher and higher toward the right field wall. It seemed as though it were endowed with wings. On it went in a mighty curve and landed at last in the topmost row of the right field seats. There it was pocketed by a proud and happy fan, while Joe, sending in Denton ahead of him, jogged easily around the bases to the home plate. The game was won! The winning streak was saved! The Giants had tied their record, which had stood untouched for so many years! The scene in the stands and bleachers beggared description. Roar after roar went up, while the crazy spectators threw their straw hats into the air and scattered them by scores over the field. The Polo Grounds had been transformed into a madhouse, but differing from other insane asylums in that all the inmates were happy. All, that is, except the Pirates and their supporters, who thought unspeakable things as they saw the game in a twinkling torn from their grasp. Joe's only escape from his enthusiastic well-wishers lay in flight, and he made a bee line for the clubhouse. He got inside not a moment too soon. For a long time afterward a great crowd hung about the entrance, waiting for him to reappear, and it was only by slipping out of a back entrance that he eluded them. The old record had been tied. Could it be beaten? CHAPTER XXIII HOLDING THEM DOWN Baseball circles had rarely been more deeply stirred than by the issue of the game, by winning which the Giants had tied their record. It was not merely the winning, but the sensational way in which Baseball Joe's home run had turned the scales in the last minute and snatched victory from defeat that excited the fans. But now that the record was tied, would the Giants be able to hang up a new one? That was the question on every lip, the question whose discussion filled column after column of the sporting pages of the newspapers. All agreed that the Giants had been lucky to win. If it had not been for the error of the pitcher on Denton's slow dribble, they would have lost. But it was conceded that it was not luck that had secured that mighty home run that Joe had hammered out to the bleachers. That was ball playing. That was muscle. That was determination. Once again his cool head and quick eye and powerful arm had shown that the game was not over until the last man was out. It was Joe's turn to pitch, and it was upon that fact more than anything else that the vast crowd that stormed the Polo Grounds relied for annexing the twenty-seventh game. The Pittsburghs too were holding out their star pitcher, Hooper, for that critical game, and it was certain that they would put forth superhuman efforts to win. In more senses than one, the game was an important one. The last two victories of the Giants had wiped out the lead that the Pirates had had over them, and the two teams were now on even terms in games won and lost for the season, so that the Pirates had a double incentive to win. If they took the game they would not only prevent the Giants from breaking their own record for a winning streak, but would also once more stand at the head of the League. "It's up to you, Joe," McRae said, just before the bell rang for the game to begin. "How are you feeling? Are you tired at all from pitching those last two innings yesterday?" "Not a bit tired," replied Joe promptly. "That little work yesterday was just the practice I needed to get into form. I'm feeling as fine as silk." "You look it," said the manager admiringly, as his eye took in the strong, lithe figure, the bronzed face and clear eyes of his star pitcher. "Well go in now Joe and eat them up. Hooper will be in the box for them, and I'm not denying that he's some pitcher. But he never saw the day that you couldn't run rings around him. Go in and win." It was evident from the start that there would be no such free hitting that day as there had been the day before. Both boxmen were in superb form, and by the time the first inning for each side was over, the spectators had settled down to witness a pitcher's duel. Hooper was a spitball artist, and his moist slants kept the Giants guessing in the early part of the game. But while he depended chiefly on this form of delivery, he had other puzzlers in his assortment, and he mixed them up in a most deceptive manner. In the first three innings he had four strike-outs to his credit, and when the Giants did connect with the ball it went up into the air and into the hands of some waiting fielder. His control of the slippery sphere also was excellent, and he issued no passes. In the fourth inning, the Giants began to nibble at his offerings. Curry rapped one out to right for the first single of the game. Iredell was robbed of a hit by a great jumping catch of O'Connor, who speared the ball with his gloved hand. Burkett lined out a two-bagger that carried Curry easily to third, but in trying to stretch the hit, he was caught by Ralston's magnificent throw to the plate. Burkett in the meantime had made a dash for third, but thought better of it, and scrambled back to second just in time. The next man up went out from short to first and the inning ended without scoring. But the Giants had proved to themselves that Hooper could be hit, and it was with renewed confidence that they took their places in the field. Joe in the meantime was mowing his opponents down with the regularity of a machine. His mighty arm swung back and forth like a piston rod. He had never cared for the spitball, as he knew that sooner or later it destroyed a pitcher's effectiveness. But in his repertoire of curves and slants he had weapons far more deadly. His fast straight one whizzed over the plate like a bullet. He mixed these up with a slow, dipping curve that the Pirates endeavored in vain to solve. Only with the head of the Pittsburgh batting order did he at times resort to the fadeaway. That he kept in reserve for some moment when danger threatened. Twice in the first five innings he set down the side on strikes, and not a man reached first on balls. It was wonderful pitching, and again and again Joe was forced to doff his cap to the cheers of the crowd, as he came into the bench. In the sixth inning, the Giants got busy. Wheeler lashed out a whale of a three-bagger to left. Willis laid down a neat sacrifice, bringing Wheeler home for the first run of the game. Larry hit the ball on the seam for a single, but was caught a moment later in trying to purloin second. The next batter up went out on strikes and the inning ended with the Giants one run to the good. The seventh inning came and passed and not a hit had been made by the Pirates. Then it began to be realized that Joe was out for a no-hit game, and the crowd rooted for him madly. Joe himself was about the only cool man on the grounds. He measured every man that came to the plate and took his time about pitching to him. Man after man he fanned or made him hit feeble grounders to the infield. And that wonderful control of his forbade any passes. The Pirates did not dare to wait him out. It was a case of strike or be struck out, and so they struck at the ball, but usually struck only the empty air. That ball! Sometimes it was a wheedling, coaxing ball, that sauntered up to the plate as though just begging to be hit. Again it was a vanishing ball that grew smaller from the time it left Joe's hand until it became a mere pin point as it glinted over the rubber. Still again it was a savage ball that shot over the plate with a rush and a hiss that made the batter jump back. But always it was a deceptive ball, that slipped by, hopped by, loafed by, twisted by, dodged by, and the Pirate sluggers strained their backs as well as their tempers in trying to hit it. McRae and Robbie on the bench watched with fascination and delight the work of their king pitcher. "It's magic, I tell you, John, just magic!" blurted out Robbie, as another victim went out on strikes and threw down his bat in disgust. "It sure looks like it," grinned McRae. "He has those fellows jumping through the hoops all right. I'm free to say I never saw anything like it." "He's got the ball trained, I tell you," persisted Robbie, rubbing his hands in jubilation. "It's an educated ball. It does just what Joe tells it to." Almost uncontrollable excitement prevailed as the Pirates came in for their last inning. Their heaviest sluggers were coming to the bat, and now if ever was the time to do something. They figured that the strain must have told on Joe and that a crack was due. Their hope grew dimmer, however, when Ralston, after fouling off two, fanned on the third strike. But it revived again when Baskerville rolled an easy one to Larry, that the latter fumbled for a moment and then hurled to first a fraction of a second too late. There was a roar of glee from the Pirates, and they began to chatter in the hope of rattling the pitcher. Bemis, the next man up, came to the plate swinging three bats. He discarded two of them and glared at Joe. "Here's where you meet your finish," he boasted, as he brandished his bat. Joe merely smiled and put one over. Bemis drove it straight for the box. Joe leaped into the air, caught it in his ungloved hand and shot it like lightning to first, catching Baskerville before he could get back. It was as pretty a double play as had ever been made on the New York grounds! CHAPTER XXIV A CRUSHING BLOW The play had been so swift that the eye could scarcely follow the ball, and it was a few seconds before the majority of the spectators could grasp what had happened. Then a tremendous shout went up that rolled across the field in increasing volume as the crowds realized that they had seen what would probably never be seen again in a single game. They had seen the New York team break its own record for straight wins, and in addition they had witnessed that rarest of pitching exploits, a no-hit game. Not even a scratch hit had marred Joe's wonderful performance, nor had he given a single base on balls. It was a red-letter day for the Giants and for Joe, and the people who had been there would talk about that game for years. If any one should have been elated by the marvelous result of that day's work, it was Joe. He had never stood on a higher pinnacle, except perhaps when he had won the last game of the World Series the preceding year. He was more than ever a hero in the eyes of the baseball public of New York, and within five minutes after the game was over the wires had flashed the news to every city of the country. But despite his natural pride in his achievement and his pleasure in knowing that he had won this critical game for his team, it was a very subdued and worried Joe that hurried to the clubhouse after the game was over. There his mates gathered, in the seventh heaven of delight, and there was a general jubilee, in which McRae and Robson joined. "We did it, we did it!" cried Robbie, bouncing about like a rubber ball in his excitement. "We broke the record! Twenty-seven games in a row!" "Where do you get that 'we' stuff, you old porpoise," grinned McRae, poking him jovially in the ribs. "Seems to me that Joe had something to do with it. Put it there, Matson," he went on, extending his hand. "You pitched a game that will go down in baseball history and you saved our winning streak from going up in smoke." Joe put out his left hand, and McRae looked a little surprised. Then he glanced down at Joe's right hand, and a look of consternation swept over his face. "Great Scott!" he cried. "What's the matter with your hand? It's swelled to twice its usual size." [Illustration: "GREAT SCOTT!" HE CRIED. "WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOUR HAND?"] "It was that drive of Bemis', I guess," replied Joe. "When I nabbed it, I seemed to feel something crack in the hand. Perhaps, though, it's only strained. It will probably be all right by to-morrow." "To-morrow!" roared McRae, as all crowded around anxiously. "There'll be no waiting till to-morrow. That hand is worth a half million dollars to the New York club, to say nothing of its worth to yourself. Where's the trainer? Where's the doctor? Jump, some of you fellows, and get them here quick!" There was a general scurrying around, and in a few minutes both of those men were examining the injured hand with the greatest solicitude. They looked grave when they had finished. "It's hard to tell just what has happened until the swelling has been reduced," pronounced the doctor, as he busied himself with splints and lotions. "I'm afraid, though, that it's more than a sprain. When it swells as much as that it generally means that a bone has been broken." There was a general groan. "That means, does it, that he will be out of the game for the rest of the season?" asked McRae, in notes of despair. "Oh, I wouldn't say that," the doctor hastened to reassure him. "It may be only a trifling fracture, and in that case he will have to be out only for a short time. But for the next few weeks anyway, he isn't likely to do any more pitching." "Who's the best specialist in New York?" demanded McRae. The doctor named a surgeon of national reputation. "'Phone him to come at once," commanded McRae. "Or, better yet, Joe, you'd better come right with me now. My car's outside and I'll get you up there in fifteen minutes. Every minute counts now." Joe hurriedly finished dressing, and McRae bundled him into his automobile. It was a speedy machine, and it was to be feared that the traffic laws were not strictly observed as it made its way downtown. But the traffic policemen all knew McRae and Joe, and there was nothing to prevent their getting to their destination in record time. A telephone call from the clubhouse had already notified the eminent surgeon that the pair were coming, and he was waiting for them. Without a moment's delay, they were ushered into his inner office, where he stripped off the bandages from the hand and made a thorough examination. "There is a small dislocation," he said when he had finished. "But I think it will yield readily to treatment. It will not be a permanent injury, and in a little while the hand will be as good as ever." Both drew a sigh of immense relief. "A little while," repeated McRae. "Just what do you mean by that, Doctor? You know we're fighting for the pennant, and we're depending on this king pitcher of ours more than on any one else to win out. Every day he's out of the race weakens our chances." "I can't tell that definitely until to-morrow morning," the doctor replied. "But offhand I should say for two or three weeks at least." "Two or three weeks!" repeated McRae in tones of mingled dismay and relief. "In those two or three weeks we may lose the flag. But thank heaven it's no worse." After making an appointment for the next morning, McRae drove Joe to his hotel. "It's bad enough, Joe," he said to him in parting. "I don't know how we're going to spare you while we're in the thick of the fight. But when I think of what it would mean to the team if you were knocked out altogether, I've got no kick coming. We're ahead of the Pittsburghs now, anyway, thanks to your splendid work, and if we can just hold our own till you get back, we'll pull out all right yet." Joe found Jim waiting for him, full of anxiety and alarm. But his face lighted up when he learned that the injury was not a permanent one. "It would have been a mighty sight better to have lost the game to-day than to have bought it at such a price," he said. "But after all, nothing matters as long as your hand is safe. That hand is your fortune." "To-day was my unlucky day," remarked Joe ruefully, as he looked at his bandaged hand. "In one sense it was," replied Jim, "but in another it wasn't. To-day you hung up a record. You saved the Giants' winning streak and you pitched a no-hit game!" CHAPTER XXV LINING THEM OUT The pain in his injured hand was intense that night, and Joe paced the floor for hours before he was able to get to sleep. By morning, however, the hand had yielded to treatment, and the swelling had greatly decreased. At the earliest hour possible Joe, accompanied by Jim, was at the surgeon's office. The doctor's face expressed his satisfaction, as, after an examination, he rendered his verdict. "It isn't as bad as I feared," he said while he deftly rebandaged the injured member. "This dislocation is slight and you'll soon be as right as ever. But you've got to take good care of it. It will be some time before you can pitch." "But how about batting?" asked Joe anxiously. "That isn't a steady strain, as I'd only have to do it three or four times in the course of the game." "I don't know," replied the doctor with a smile. "I'm not familiar enough with the game to tell where the strain comes in that case. I can imagine, however, that it would be chiefly in the arm and shoulder. It's possible that you may be able to bat before you can pitch. But I can tell more about that later on, as I see how your hand mends. For the present, you'll have to go slow." The sporting writers had no reason to complain of the dullness of news for that day's issue. The papers were ringing with the stirring events of the day before. Columns of space were devoted to the story of the game, and there was unstinted praise of Joe for his wonderful exploit. But mingled with the jubilation was a strain of apprehension. The accident that had befallen the great pitcher was a subject of the keenest anxiety. It was recognized that a great blow had been struck at the Giants' hope for the pennant. To have the greatest twirler of the team put out of the game just in the hottest part of the fight was a disaster that might prove fatal. Pittsburgh stock took a decided upward bound in consequence. The effect on the Giants themselves, as far as their morale was concerned, was almost certain to be hurtful. The tremendous strain under which they had been, while compiling their twenty-seven consecutive wins, had brought them to a point where a sudden blow like this might make them go to pieces. As a matter of fact, that is just what did happen to them that very afternoon. The whole team was depressed and had a case of nerves. They played like a lot of schoolboys, booting the ball, slipping up on easy grounders and muffing flies that ordinarily they could have caught with ease. The Pittsburghs, on the other hand, played with redoubled skill and courage. Their hopes had been revived by the misfortune that had befallen their most dangerous opponent. Joe was personally popular with all the players of the League, and they were sorry that he was hurt. But that did not prevent them from taking advantage of the chance to make hay while the sun shone. The game developed into a farce after the third inning, and from that time on it was only a question of the size of the score. When the game ended, the Giant outfielders were leg-weary from chasing hits, and the visitors were equally tired from running bases. The Pittsburghs won by a score of 17 to 3, and the Giants' winning streak came to an end. But for once the team escaped a roasting from McRae. The team had done wonderful work, and any nine that wins twenty-seven games in succession has a right to lose the twenty-eighth. Besides the break was due, and the manager hoped that with this one bad game out of their systems the team would pull itself together and start another rally. For the next week or two, the race see-sawed between the two leading teams. By this time it had become generally recognized that the pennant lay between them. The other contestants had occasional spurts, when great playing for a short period would revive the waning hopes of their admirers, but they soon fell back again in the ruck. It was quite certain that the flag would fly either over Forbes Field or over the Polo Grounds. In the meantime, Joe's hand was mending rapidly. His superb physical condition helped him greatly, and the doctor was visibly surprised and gratified by the progress of his patient. But it was hard work for Joe to be laid off just at the time that his team needed him most. Still he believed in the proverb "the more haste the less speed," and he tried to be patient, even while he was "chafing at the bit." About ten days after the accident, the doctor delighted him by telling him that he need not come to see him any more. But he still ordered him to refrain from pitching. As to batting, he said cautiously that Joe could try that out a little at a time. If he found that after easy batting practice his hand did not hurt him, he might be permitted to bat in an actual game. Joe was quick to avail himself of the permission. Very cautiously he tried batting out fungo hits. While at first the hand felt a little sore and stiff, this soon passed off. Then Joe had Jim pitch him some easy ones in practice, and found that he could line them out without ill effects. Finally he let Jim put them over at full speed, and was delighted to find that he could lift them into the right field stands and not suffer much of a twinge. At last he was himself again, as far at least as batting was concerned. His recovery came just in time to be of immense benefit to the team. The men had slumped considerably in batting, though they still held up to their usual form in fielding. But fielding alone cannot win games. Defensive work is all very well, but combined with it must be the offensive work on the part of the batsmen. The best fielding in the world cannot put runs over the plate. Joe's return put new spirit into the team at once. The batting picked up noticeably, with Joe leading the way. At first he was a little cautious about putting his whole strength into his blow, and for a few days when he was used in emergencies as a pinch hitter, he gathered a crop of singles with an occasional double and triple. But with every successive day he let out a new link, and at length he put his whole strength into his swing. Home runs became again a common feature, and the Giants started in joyously on a new upward climb. The season was to end this year in the West, and by the time the Giants started on their last swing around the circuit, they had a lead of four games over the Pirates. It was not necessarily a winning lead, but it was very comforting just the same to have those four games as a margin. Still, the Pittsburghs were hanging on gamely, ready to forge to the front on the least sign of weakening shown by their competitors. It was one of the hottest races that had ever been seen in the National League, and there was a chance that it would not be decided until the last day of the season. "The last lap," remarked Jim, as the team started on its trip. "Here's where we win or lose." "Here's where we win," corrected Joe. CHAPTER XXVI THE TIRELESS FOE The Giants opened at Chicago, and the results were none too good. The Cubs, who just then were in the midst of a spurt, clawed and bit their way to victory in two games of the four, and the Giants were lucky to break even. As it was, the two games they won were annexed by the terrific batting of Joe, who was hitting like a demon. In the four games he made three home runs, and two of them were lined out when there were men on bases. All pitchers looked alike to him, and he played no favorites. The rest he had had from pitching had made him all the more effective as a batsman. His fame as a hitter had spread through all the cities of the League, and the Chicago grounds were filled to their capacity during the Giants' visit. Most of the spectators were as eager to see him hit one of his mammoth homers as they were to see the home team win. Cheers greeted him every time he came to the bat. He was the greatest drawing card that the Giants had or ever had had. Opinion was divided as to whether he or Kid Rose of the Yankees was the greatest hitter. Each had his partisans. Rose had been longer in the limelight, and those who had made up their minds that he was the greatest hitter that ever lived were reluctant to see their idol replaced by a newcomer. Many confidently predicted that Joe would not last, that his work was only a flash in the pan. Others declared that he did not have to bat against as good pitching in the National League as was shown in the American, and that therefore Rose's work was superior. But as Joe kept on, day in and day out, lacing out tremendous hits that landed in the bleachers and at times sailed over the fence, the doubters grew silent, or joined in the wild applause as Joe jogged around the bases and crossed the plate standing up. The keenest interest was manifested in the race that the Yankees were making to land the flag in the American League. If they should come out on top, the World Series would be held between New York teams, and Rose and Joe could be seen in action against each other. That would help to settle the question as to which had a right to wear the batting crown of the world. It would be a battle of giants, and it was certain that, if such a contest took place, there would be delegations to see it from all parts of the country. McRae was no longer content to use Joe simply as a pinch hitter. He wanted to take full advantage of his marvelous hitting, and so he put him in the regular line-up and played him every day. Wheeler was relegated to the bench and Joe took his place in the field. The manager also changed his batting order, putting Joe fourth in the cleanup position. And again and again his judgment was vindicated by the way Joe cleaned up with homers, sending his comrades in ahead of him. The day the third Chicago game was played was a very hot one, and Joe and Jim were tired and warm. Jim had pitched that day and won, after a gruelling contest, and Joe had varied his ordinary routine by knocking out two home runs instead of one. Joe was seated in his hotel room, writing a letter to Mabel. Jim had stepped down to the office to get some stationery, for he had the pleasant task on hand of writing to Clara. A knock came at the door, and in answer to his call to enter, a bellboy stepped into the room, bearing a pitcher and glasses. "Here's the lemonade you ordered, boss," he said, as he put his burden on a convenient stand. "Lemonade?" repeated Joe in some surprise. "I didn't order any." "Clerk sent me up with it, sir," said the bellboy respectfully. "Said it was for Mr. Matson, room four-seventeen. This is four-seventeen, isn't it?" he asked as he glanced at the number on the door, which he had left open. "This is four-seventeen, all right, and I'm Mr. Matson," Joe answered. "But I didn't order anything. I'll tell you how it is though," he added, as a thought struck him. "My friend who is sharing the room with me has just gone down to the lobby, and he's probably told the clerk to send it up. That's all right. Leave it there." "Shall I pour you out a glass, sir?" asked the boy, suiting the action to the word. "If you like," responded Joe carelessly, taking a quarter out of his pocket as a tip. The boy thanked him and withdrew, closing the door behind him. Joe finished the paragraph he was writing, and then picked up the glass. He took a sip of it and put it down. "Pretty bitter," he said to himself. "Not enough sugar. Still it's cooling, and I sure am warm." Again he lifted the glass to his lips, but just then Jim burst into the room. "Whom do you think I saw just now?" he demanded. "Give it up," replied Joe. "But whoever it was, you seem to be all excited about it. Who was it?" "Fleming!" answered Jim, as he plumped down into a chair. "Fleming!" repeated Joe with quickened interest. "What's that fellow doing here? I thought he hung out in New York." "That's what I want to know," replied Jim. "Wherever that fellow is, there's apt to be dirty work brewing. And the frightened look that came into his eyes when he saw me, and the way he hurried past me, made me uneasy. He acted as if he'd been up to something. I don't like the idea of a pal of Braxton being in the same hotel with us." "I don't care much for it myself," answered Joe. "Still, a hotel is open to anybody, and this is one of the most popular ones in the city. It isn't especially surprising that you should happen to run across him." "Not surprising perhaps, but unpleasant just the same," responded Jim. "It leaves a bad taste in my mouth." "Well," laughed Joe, "take the bad taste out with a glass of this lemonade you sent up. It isn't very good--it has a bad taste of its own--but it will cool you off." He raised his glass to his mouth as he spoke. But in an instant Jim was on his feet and knocked the glass from his hand. It fell on the floor and splintered in many pieces. Joe looked at him in open-eyed amazement, too astonished to speak. "Don't touch the stuff!" cried Jim. "What do you mean by saying I sent it up?" "Didn't you?" asked Joe. "The bellboy said he had been told to bring it to me, and as I hadn't ordered it, I jumped to the conclusion that you had." "Not I!" replied Jim. "But I can guess who did!" "Who?" "Fleming." The two friends looked fixedly at each other. "Do you mean," asked Joe, after a moment in which surprise and indignation struggled for the mastery, "that that lemonade was doped?" "Doped or poisoned, I'll bet my life," affirmed Jim. "Let's get to the bottom of this thing. Quick, old man! Perhaps Fleming is still somewhere in the hotel." "Not a chance," replied Joe, jumping to his feet. "If he's mixed up in this, he's getting away as fast as his legs or a car can carry him. But we'll go down and see what we can learn from the clerk." They went to the head clerk, whom they knew very well. He was an ardent fan, and his face lighted up as he saw the friends approaching. "Saw you play to-day, gentlemen," he said. "Those two home runs of yours were whales, Mr. Matson. And your pitching, Mr. Barclay, was all to the mustard." "Sorry to beat your Chicago boys, but we needed that game in our business," laughed Joe. "But what I want to see you about just now is a personal matter. Did you get an order from me or from my room to send up any lemonade?" The clerk looked surprised. "No," he replied. "I didn't get any such request. Wait a moment until I see the telephone operator." He consulted the girl at the telephone, and was back in a moment. "No message of any kind came from your room to-night," he announced. "But one of your bellboys brought it up," persisted Joe. "Which one of them was it?" asked the clerk, pointing to a group of them lounging about. "None of them," responded Joe, as he ran his eye over them. CHAPTER XXVII CHAMPIONS OF THE LEAGUE "There are three more of the bellboys doing various errands about the hotel," replied the clerk. "If you gentlemen will wait around they'll be back in a few minutes." "All right, we'll wait," said Joe. Before long, all the bellboys were back, and Joe had had a good look at the entire staff. Not one resembled the boy who had come to his room. "I can't understand it," mused the clerk, to whom the boys had been careful not to impart their suspicions. "It must have been sent in by somebody from the outside. It's certain that it wasn't sent up from here." "Oh, well," said Joe carelessly, "it doesn't matter. I just wanted to find out, so that I could thank the one who did it. Sorry to have troubled you." They strolled off indifferently and returned to their room. "'Thank' is good," said Jim, as soon as they were out of earshot. "I'll thank him all right," replied Joe grimly. "In fact I'll thank him so warmly that it will stagger him." "May I be there to see!" replied Jim gruffly. "I can figure out the whole thing now. Fleming had had that lemonade doped and it was meant to put you out of business. It was easy to find out what hotel you were stopping at, as that's been in all the papers. Then it was a simple thing to glance over the register and get the number of your room. He's either got a bellboy from some other hotel or dressed up somebody in a bellboy's uniform. He's probably bribed him well, and it's been all the easier because he didn't have to let on to the boy that there was anything crooked about it. Told him perhaps that he was just playing a little joke on a friend or something like that. There's the whole story." "I guess that's about right," agreed Joe. "Gee, Jim, it's mighty lucky that you knocked that glass out of my hand. I had noticed that it tasted rather bitter, but put that down to too little sugar." "Let's send some of the stuff to a chemist and have it analyzed," suggested Jim. "No," objected Joe, "that wouldn't do any good. The thing would be apt to get into the papers, and that's the very thing we mustn't let happen for the sake of the folks at home. We know enough about the stuff to be sure that it was doctored in some way. Everything about the incident tells of crookedness. Fleming was probably the master hand, although he may have simply been the tool of Braxton. Those fellows are running up a heavy account, and some day I hope we'll get the goods on them. We'll just dump the stuff out so that nobody else will be injured. Then we'll lay low but keep our eyes open. It's all that we can do." "Gee, that was one dandy homer, Joe," said the catcher some time later. "Best ever," added the first baseman. "Oh, I don't know," answered the young ball player modestly. "I think I have done better. But it was great to carry it along to eleven innings," he added, with a smile. "That tenth had me almost going," said the shortstop. "We came close to spilling the beans," and he shook his head seriously. "Well, 'all's well that ends well,' as Socrates said to General Grant," and Joe grinned. From Chicago the Giants jumped to St. Louis, where, despite the stiffest kind of resistance, they took three games out of four. They were not quite as successful in Cincinnati, where the best they could get was an even break. The Reds saw a chance to come in third, in which case they would have a share in the World Series money, and they were showing the best ball that they had played all season. The Giants had all they could do to nose them out in the last game, which went to eleven innings and was only won by a home run by Joe in the wind-up. Seven games out of twelve for a team on the road was not bad, but it would have been worse if the Pirates, in the meantime, had not also had a rocky road to travel. The Brooklyns had helped their friends across the bridge by taking the Pittsburghs into camp to the tune of three games out of four and the Bostons had broken even. With the Phillies, however, the Pirates had made a clean sweep of the four games. So when the Giants faced their most formidable foes, they still had the lead of four games with which they had begun their Western trip. This, of course, gave the Giants the edge on their rivals. The Pittsburghs would have to win the whole four games to draw up on even terms with the leaders. In that case a deciding game would be necessary to break the tie. On the other hand all the Giants had to do was to win one game of the four and they would have the championship cinched. And that they would do at least that seemed almost a certainty. But nothing is certain in baseball, as soon became evident. Perhaps it was overconfidence or a sense of already being on easy street that caused the Giants to lose the first game. That, however, could not be said of the second, when the Giants "played their heads off," Jim said, and yet could not win against the classy pitching and stonewall defense put up by the Smoky City team. Things were beginning to look serious for the Giants, and some of their confidence was vanishing. Still more serious did they become when the third game went into the Pirates' basket. Jim pitched in that game and twirled wonderful ball, but his support was ragged, and several Pirate blows that ought to have been outs were registered ultimately as runs. They were unearned runs, but they counted in the final score as much as though they had been due to the team's hitting. The Giants were long-faced and gloomy. McRae was clearly worried. If the next game were lost, the leaders would be tied, and the Pirates would still have a chance to win. It would be a bitter pill to swallow if the Giants lost the flag just when it had seemed that all was over except the shouting. Moreover, the manager was in a quandary. All his first string pitchers had been beaten. His best one in active service at the present time, Jim, had pitched that day and it would not do to ask him to go into the box again to-morrow. In his desperation he turned to Joe. "Joe," he said, "we're up against it unless you can help us out. How is your hand feeling? Would you dare to take a chance with it?" "I think it's all right now, or nearly so," replied Joe. "I've been trying it out in practice right along, and it seems to me it's about as good as ever. I was putting them over to Mylert yesterday, and he told me he couldn't see any difference between them and those I threw before I was hurt. The only thing I'm a little skittish about is my fadeaway. That gives me a little twinge when I try it. But I guess I can leave that out and still pull through." "That's good!" ejaculated McRae, with great relief. "Go in then, old boy, and show these pesky Pirates where they get off. We simply must win this game." There was a startled murmur among the spectators who thronged Forbes Field that afternoon when they saw Joe go into the box. They had been gloating over the supposition that McRae would have to use again one of the pitchers whom the Pirates had already beaten in that series, and the way their pets were going, they looked for a sure victory. Now they saw the man who had always baffled the Pittsburghs again take up the pitcher's burden, and their faces took on a look of apprehension. The Pirate players too shared in that apprehension. They had a profound respect for Joe's ability, and had always had a sinking of the heart when they saw him draw on his glove. Still, they comforted themselves with the hope that his long layoff had hurt his effectiveness, and they braced to give him the battle of his life. Joe himself felt a thrill of exultation when he stepped on the mound. That was his throne. There he had won the laurels that crowned him as the greatest pitcher of his League. Now he was back again, back to buoy up the spirit of his team, back to justify the confidence of his manager, back to uphold his fame, back to bring the championship of the National League once more to New York. He still carried in his pocket Mabel's glove, that he had come to regard as his mascot. He touched it now. Then he wound up for the first pitch and split the plate for a strike. It was an auspicious beginning of one of the greatest games he had ever pitched in his whole career. The Pirates simply did not have a chance. All through the game they were swinging wildly at a ball that seemed to be bewitched, a ball that dodged their bats and appeared to be laughing at them. Angered and bewildered, they tried every device to avoid impending defeat. They bunted, they put in pinch hitters, they called the umpire's attention to Joe's delivery in the hope of rattling him, they tried to get hit with the ball. Through it all, Joe kept on smiling and mowing them down. Only three men got to first. Not one got to second. Thirteen men went out on strikes. And then, to cap the climax, Joe sent a screaming homer into the right field bleachers, sending in two men ahead of him. The final score was 8 to 0. The Giants had won the championship of the National League. Now they were to battle for the championship of the world! CHAPTER XXVIII THE WORLD SERIES It was a happy team of Giants that left Pittsburgh that night on the sleeper for New York. The season's strain was over. The coveted flag was theirs. They had fought their way through many discouragements, had stood the gaff, and now they were at the top of their League, with none to contest their title as champions. "Some victory, eh, Joe?" remarked Jim to his chum. "Right, Jim," was the ready reply. To be sure a great battle loomed up ahead of them, but they welcomed that with eagerness. It meant thousands of dollars to every member of the team, win or lose. But they had no thought of losing. The return of their king pitcher to the box that afternoon, and the proof that he was in magnificent form, had filled them chock full of confidence. And they were doubly glad that the Yankees were to be their opponents. That had been settled three days before, when the American League season had closed with the Yankees just nosing out the Clevelands at the finish. It was settled that every game of the World Series would be played in New York. This meant that there would be no long, tiresome, overnight journeys between cities. But it meant more than that. It meant that the question would now be settled once for all as to which of the New York teams was the better. This had been a mooted question for a good many years past. Each team had its warm friends and admirers, who were ready to back it through thick and thin. The Giants, of course, had been established longer, and had gained a strong place in the affections of the metropolis. Their games, as a usual thing, drew many more spectators than those played by their rivals. But of late the acquisition of Kid Rose by the Yankees had drawn the greater attention to that team, and the Giants had been cast in the shade. They were not used to this and did not relish it. They knew the Yankees were a strong team, but at the same time they believed that they could take their measure if it ever came to a showdown. Now that showdown was at hand, and the Giants were glad of it. The public, too, were eager to have the question of supremacy settled. The metropolis was fairly seething with excitement over the series, and the hotels already were filling up with visitors from as far off as the Pacific Coast. Not only columns but whole pages of the newspapers were filled with comments and prophecies respecting the chances of the respective teams. More than anything else in the public mind was the coming duel between Kid Rose and Joe Matson as home run hitters. Which would make the longer hits? Which would make the more home runs? These were the questions that were on the lips of the fans wherever two or more of them met. And the sporting pages of the daily newspapers were full of it. The series this year was to consist of nine games if so many should be necessary. The team that first won five games would be the champions of the world. The members of the teams were to share in the money taken in at the first five games played, so that there would be no inducement to spin out the series. After certain percentages had been deducted sixty per cent was to go to the winners and forty per cent to the losers. The outlook was that each member of the winning team would get about five thousand dollars and each member of the losing team between three and four thousand, a difference great enough to make each player do his best, apart from his loyalty to his team. Reggie had come up from Goldsboro, bringing Mabel with him, a charge of which Joe promptly relieved him. She seemed to Joe more distractingly beautiful than ever, and his heart thumped as he realized that in less than a month she would be his own. That had been arranged in their correspondence. The wedding would take place in Mabel's home in Goldsboro, and after their honeymoon they were to go to Riverside, to witness the marriage of Jim and Clara. The latter had hoped to come on to see the World Series, but Mrs. Matson was not well enough to come along, and Clara did not want to leave her. So poor Jim had to exercise patience and not be too envious of the almost delirious happiness of Joe and Mabel at being together. A more exciting World Series than that which now began between the Giants and Yankees had never been known in the history of the game. Both teams were out for blood. Every man was on his toes, and the excited spectators were roused almost to madness by the almost miraculous stops and throws pulled off by the fielders. From the start it was evident that the nines were very evenly balanced, and that whichever finally won would in all probability do so by the narrowest kind of margin. Victory seesawed between the teams. Joe pitched the first game, and the Giants won by 3 to 1. The Yankees took the second by 5 to 2. Jim held them down in the third to two runs, while the Giants accumulated six. The Yankees made it "fifty-fifty" by galloping away with the fourth game in a free hitting contest, of which Markwith was the victim, the final score being 9 to 5. The Giants again assumed the lead by copping the fifth by 4 to 0, Joe decorating his opponents with a necklace of goose eggs. They repeated on the following day, and with only one more game needed to make the five, it looked as though they would be certain winners. But the Yankees were not yet through, and they came back strong on the two succeeding days and evened up the score. Each had won four games. The ninth and final game would determine which team was to be the champions of the world. In these contests, Joe had batted like a fiend. McRae had played him in every game, putting him in the outfield on the days that he was not scheduled to pitch. In the eight games, Joe had made six circuit clouts, in addition to four three-baggers, three two-base hits, and some singles. He was simply killing the ball. Kid Rose also had done sterling work, and had rapped out five homers, besides a number of hits for a lesser number of bags. But Baseball Joe so far had outclassed him, both in the number and the length of his hits. There was no stopping him. High or low, incurve or outcurve, they were all the same to him. That eagle eye of his located the course of the ball unerringly, and when the ash connected with the ball that ball was slated for a ride. There was no mistake about it. Joe had arrived. The batting crown was his. He had long since been recognized as the king of pitchers. Now he was hailed by acclamation as the greatest hitter in the game! CHAPTER XXIX THE GAME OF HIS LIFE For the ninth and deciding game, McRae had selected Joe to pitch. "I don't need to tell you, Joe, how much depends on this game," McRae said soberly, as the two came out of the clubhouse and walked across the field towards the grandstand, which was crowded to suffocation. "You know it as well as I do. I'm just counting on you, my boy. You've never failed me yet in a pinch. You won't fail me now." "Trust me, Mac," replied Joe. "I'll do my best to win out." Hudson, the manager of the Yankees, was also pinning his faith on the leader of his pitching staff, Phil Hays. He was a master of the underhand delivery, and had already captured for the Yankees the two games of the series in which he had pitched. In both games he had sorely puzzled the Giants, for there was no pitcher in the National League who used that delivery, and they had found it almost impossible to gauge it. He also had a crossfire, that he used at times with telling effect. He had not yet matched his pitching strength against Joe's, and the crowd was all agog with curiosity to see them battle against each other. Jim had been a little later than Joe in slipping into his uniform, and was still in the clubhouse, after his friend had gone out on the field, when Reggie came rushing in, panting and out of breath. "Where's Joe?" he asked, looking wildly around. "He's just gone out to practice," answered Jim. "Why, what's the matter, Reggie?" "I've got to get Joe," Reggie panted, making a dash for the door. But Jim caught his arm. "Look here, Reggie," he said, holding to him tightly. "Joe mustn't be upset. I can see that something's happened. Tell me what it is, and I'll see about letting Joe know." "It's M-Mabel!" answered Reggie, stammering in his excitement. "She's disappeared." "Disappeared!" echoed Jim, in bewilderment. "What do you mean?" "Just that," answered Reggie. "She went out this morning to call on a friend, but said she'd get back to go with me to the game. I got anxious when she didn't come, and called up her friend, who said she hadn't seen her. Just then a messenger boy brought me this," and he handed over a typewritten, unsigned note, which read: "Miss Varley is in safe hands. If Matson loses his game to-day she will be returned this evening. If he doesn't, it will cost $25,000 to get her back. Personal in papers to-morrow, signed T. Z., will give exact directions for carrying on further negotiations." "Now you see why I've got to see Joe right away," said Reggie in frenzied impatience, snatching the note from Jim's hands. "You mustn't!" ejaculated Jim, barring the way. "Don't you see that that's just what the rascals want you to do? You'd just be playing their game. They want to get Joe so frightened and upset that he can't pitch. It's the scheme of some gamblers who have bet on the Yanks to win. They want to make sure that they will win, and so they want to bribe or frighten Joe into losing. But probably if he did, they'd demand the ransom money just the same. We'll have to keep it from Joe until the game is over. Nothing will be lost by that. I'll give McRae a tip and he'll let me off. Then you and I will get busy and do all that we can for the next two hours. If we turn nothing up, we'll be back here when the game ends and tell Joe all about it. Wait here a minute till I see McRae, and then we'll get on the job." In five minutes he was back with the required permission, and as soon as he had got into his street clothes he hailed a taxicab, and he and Reggie jumped in and were off. When the bell rang for the game to begin, the Giants took the field, and Milton, the big center-fielder of the Yankees, came to the plate. Joe wound a high fast one about his neck, at which he refused to bite. The next one split the rubber, and Milton swung savagely at it and missed. The next was a called strike. On the following ball, he rolled an easy grounder to Burkett at first, who made the put out unassisted. The next man, Pender, Joe put out on strikes in jig time. Then the mighty Kid Rose strode to the bat. He grinned at Joe and Joe grinned back. They were both good fellows, and each thoroughly respected the other. There was no bitterness in their rivalry. "Now little ball, come to papa!" sang out Rose. "Here he comes!" laughed Joe. "Take a look at baby." The ball whizzed over the plate, and Rose missed it by an inch. The next he fouled off, as he did the following one. Then Joe tried a fadeaway, and Rose fell for it, swinging himself halfway round with the force of his blow. "You're out!" cried the umpire, and the Giant supporters in the stands broke out in cheers. It was not often that Rose struck out, and the feat was appreciated. In the Giants' half, Hays set them down in one, two, three order. Curry flied to Russell in right, Iredell went out by the strike route, while Burkett's grounder to Pender at short was whipped smartly down to first. The Yankees were easy victims in the second. Russell fanned, Walsh lifted a twisting foul, on which Mylert made a superb catch close to the Giants' dugout and Mullen hit a grounder between first and the box, which Joe captured and fielded to Burkett in plenty of time. Joe was first up in the Giants' half, and had to doff his cap in response to the cheers which greeted him as he came to the plate. Hays sized him up carefully and did not like his looks. The first ball he threw him was so wide that Banks, the catcher, had to reach far out to nab it with one hand. That might have been lack of control on Hays' part, but when a second followed, that came nowhere in the range of Joe's bat, the crowd jumped to the conclusion that he was deliberately trying to pass him, and a storm of protests rained down on the diamond. "You're a game sport--not!" "Let Baseball Joe hit the ball!" "Yellow streak!" "Matson took a chance with Rose. Why don't you take a chance with Matson?" "Where's your sand?" Whether Hays was stung by these jibes or not, the next ball curved over the plate and just above the knee. There was a ringing crack, and the ball sailed aloft in the direction of the bleachers with home run written all over it. There was no need of hurrying, and Joe simply trotted around the bases, while pandemonium reigned in the stands and bleachers. CHAPTER XXX CHAMPIONS OF THE WORLD Wheeler went out on a fly to Milton, Willis fanned, and Larry closed the inning with a pop up to second. But the Giants had scored first blood, and in such a close game as this promised to be, that run stood out like a lighthouse. In the third, McCarthy fell victim to Joe's curves and went out on strikes. Banks was lucky and got to first on a grasser to Iredell that took a wicked bound just as the shortstop was all set to receive it and jumped into left. He was nipped a minute later, when Joe saw out of the corner of his eye that he was taking too long a lead off first and made a lightning throw to Burkett. Hays, after fouling off two, struck out on a mean drop, and the inning ended without damage. Hays put one over for Denton that the latter pickeled for a dandy grasser between third and short. Rose at left was slow in retrieving the ball, and Denton by fleet running and a hook slide reached the middle station. Here, however, he was caught napping. Then Hays braced and set the next two players down on strikes. It was a deft exhibition of "getting out of a hole," and deserved the generous applause that it received. In the Yankees' half of the fourth, Milton sent one to Willis at third that the latter stopped neatly but threw to first too wide, the ball almost missing Burkett's fingers as he reached for it. Pender knocked a grounder to Larry, but the latter hesitated a moment as to whether to make the play at first or second, and when he finally chose second, Milton had reached that bag, and both men were safe. Then Rose came to the bat, with the Yankee partisans shouting wildly for a homer. Joe fooled him twice, but Rose caught the third one and poled a hit to right. Wheeler and Denton both raced for it, and the latter by a herculean effort just managed to get under it. In the meantime, Milton had started forward, and Pender too was on his way. Quick as a flash, Denton straightened up and sent the ball on a line to first. Pender had turned and was running back, but was an easy out. Burkett shot the ball to Larry, putting out Milton, who was scrambling back to second. It was a superb triple play and the crowd went crazy. Iredell started the Giants' fourth with a liner to McCarthy, that settled comfortably in the third baseman's glove. Burkett lammed a single into right. Joe walloped a shrieking three-bagger between right and center, that brought Burkett galloping to the plate for the second run of the game. Wheeler was ordered to sacrifice, but his attempted bunt resulted in a little fly to Hays, and Joe was held on third. Hays turned on steam and struck Willis out. The fifth inning passed without scoring by either side. Both Joe and Hays were pitching magnificent ball, and the crowds cheered each in turn lustily. The first real hit that Joe yielded came in the sixth, when after McCarthy had struck out, Banks lined a beauty into right between first and second. It did no harm, however, for Joe tightened up immediately and made Hays and Milton hit at empty air. The Giants in their half went the Yankees one better in the matter of hits, and yet could not score. Curry sent a twister over second that Mullen could not get under. Iredell followed with a slow roller down the third base line, that McCarthy could not reach in time to field. A moment later, however, Curry was caught napping at second, and Burkett hit into a snappy double play, retiring the side. In the seventh, the Yankees broke the ice. Pender got a life, when his high fly to third was muffed by Willis. Kid Rose came to the bat. "Put it over, Joe, and see me lose it," he called. "I was robbed last time." "That's nothing, Kid," chaffed Joe. "You'll be killed this time." The first ball, which completely baffled the most dangerous slugger of the American League, seemed to bear out this prediction. On the second, however, Rose sent a neat hit to right that was good for two bases and brought Pender over the plate, amid the thunderous roars of the Yankee supporters. Russell tapped a little one in front of the plate, that Joe got in time to put him out at first, but not to head Rose off at third. Walsh went out on strikes. Mullen rolled one to Burkett, and Joe ran over to cover the bag, but Burkett's throw hit the dirt and Rose came over the plate, tying the score. McCarthy fanned, and the inning was over. One hit, sandwiched in with errors, had knocked the Giants' lead into a cocked hat and tied up the game. Not for long, however. Joe was the first man up, and came to the plate with blood in his eye. The first two offerings he let go by. The third was to his liking. There was an explosion like the crack of a gun and the ball started on its journey. That journey was destined to be talked about for years to come. It was the longest hit that ever had been made on the Polo Grounds. On it went over right field, over the bleachers and over the fence, clearing it at a height of fifty feet. In the wild roar that went up as Joe loped around the bases, even the Yankee supporters joined. It was an occasion that rose above partisanship, an outstanding event in the history of sport. The spectators cheered until they were hoarse, and it was a minute or two before play could be resumed. The rest of the inning was short and sweet. Wheeler, Willis and Larry went out in order, the first two on strikes and the latter on a grounder fielded by Mullen. The eighth was on the same snappy order. Joe was determined to maintain his advantage, and was invincible. Banks grounded to the box, and Joe tossed him out. Hays fanned for the second time and Milton followed suit. Hays, too, was going strong, and the Giant batsmen went down before him like a row of tenpins. Denton made three futile attempts and threw down his bat in disgust. Mylert cut three successive swaths in the atmosphere and went back to the bench, while Curry fouled out to Banks. In the ninth, the Yankees again sewed it up. Pender got to first, when Larry was slow in fielding his grounder. The mighty Rose came up amid frantic cheering. But Joe summoned all his cunning, and for the second time that day struck him out, while the crowd cheered his sportsmanship in not passing him to first. Russell popped up an infield fly that Willis and Iredell ran for but collided, the ball dropping between them. In the scramble that ensued, Pender reached third and Russell made second. Iredell was still a little shaken by the collision, and fumbled the easy grounder of Walsh that ought to have resulted in an out at the plate, Walsh reaching first in safety. In consequence Pender scored, and again the game was tied at 3 to 3. A single now would have brought in another run, but Joe by a quick throw caught Walsh asleep at first and struck out Mullen, thus ending the inning. With the frenzied adjurations of McRae and Robbie in their ears, the Giants came to the bat for the last half of the ninth. Iredell made a mighty effort, but came back to the bench after three fruitless swings at Hays' benders. Burkett sent up a towering skyscraper that was gathered in after a long run by Milton in center. On Joe now rested the Giants' hopes. Twice that day he had poled out homers, and once he had ripped out a three-bagger. Could he repeat? Hays was determined that he shouldn't have a chance. Amid the jeers and taunts of the crowd, he deliberately sent three balls wide of the plate. In attempting to do the same with the fourth, however, he sent it a trifle too close. Joe caught it on the end of his bat. How that ball traveled! Almost on a line it whistled through the air in the direction of the right field bleachers. On and on went that terrific, screeching liner straight into the crowd in the bleachers who scrambled frantically to get out of its path. Round the bases went Joe, amid shouts and yells that were deafening. Down on the home plate he came with both feet. The game was won, the series was over and the Giants were the champions of the world! Like a deer Joe made for the clubhouse, to escape the crowds that came swarming over the field. He reached it just as a man was being carried inside. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Any one hurt?" "Only a glancing blow," remarked the club doctor, who had been looking the man over. "He's dazed, but he'll come to his senses soon." Joe bent over to look at him and started back in surprise. "Why, I know that man!" he exclaimed. "His name's Fleming!" "It's Fleming all right," said Jim's voice beside him. "And he's got just what was coming to him." Joe looked up and saw Jim and Reggie. They were grave and worried, and Joe's sixth sense told him that something was wrong. "What's happened?" he asked in alarm. "And where is Mabel? What kept her from the game? Don't stand there dumb! Tell me, quick!" "Now, Joe----" began Jim soothingly, but was interrupted by the injured man who opened his eyes, looked wildly around and struggled to a sitting posture. His eyes dilated with fright when he saw Joe and Jim. "I didn't do it!" he half screamed. "I didn't kidnap her! It was Braxton. He----" Jim interposed. "Clear a space here," he commanded. "This is a private matter for Joe and me. Now, Fleming," he went on in short, menacing words that cut like a knife, "tell me this instant where Miss Varley is. You know. Tell me. Quick! Don't lie, or I'll tear your tongue out by the roots." Before the blazing fury in his eyes Fleming quailed. "She's at Inwood," he muttered. "She's safe enough. She's----" "Reggie," commanded Jim, "jump into the car and take the wheel. Joe, help me to get this man into the car. Don't talk. I'll explain as we go along. Doyle," he continued, turning to a police lieutenant who was a warm admirer of the boys and who happened to be standing near, "come along with us if you don't mind. It may be a case for you." "Sure thing," replied Doyle. "I'm with you." They half dragged, half carried, Fleming to the car, and Reggie put on speed. The lieutenant sat in front with him, and his uniform prevented any question on the part of the traffic policemen. Fleming, pale and apprehensive, was thrust into a corner of the tonneau, while Jim explained the situation to Joe, who was boiling with rage. The headlong speed at which Reggie drove soon brought them to the vicinity of Inwood, and following the faltering directions of Fleming, they drew up before a little house that was a block away from any of its neighbors. They tiptoed up the steps, Joe having his hand so tightly on Fleming's collar that his knuckles ground into his neck. "You know what you've got to do, Fleming," he whispered. "If you don't do it----" His grip tightened and his fist clenched. Trembling, Fleming opened the front door with his latchkey, and the party went softly through the hall. They stopped in front of a door from behind which a man was heard talking. "I'm sorry to have to incommode you, Miss Varley," he was saying in suave polished tones that the boys recognized at once as Braxton's. "But unfortunately it is necessary to the success of my plans. You can't complain that we haven't treated you with perfect respect outside of the little violence we had to use to get you into the car." There was no reply, but the party could hear the sound of sobbing. "Knock," whispered Joe, emphasizing the command by a twist of Fleming's collar. Fleming knocked. "Who's there?" came from within. "It's Fleming," was the weak answer. "Open up." The door opened and the party went in with a rush. There was a cry of joy from Mabel and a startled exclamation from Braxton. He looked toward the door, but the burly policeman had closed it and stood with his back against it. The next instant Joe had smashed Braxton straight between the eyes and the rascal measured his length on the floor. An instant more, and Mabel was in Joe's arms, sobbing her heart out against his breast. For a few moments the reunited ones were dead to the world around them. When at last they had come to their senses, Joe, with a final caress, relinquished Mabel to Reggie's care. "You'd better go out to the car, dearest," he said to her. "I'll be with you soon. I've got a little business to attend to here." The brother and sister went out, and Joe turned to the rest of the party. Braxton had been yanked to his feet by Jim and jammed down hard into a chair, where he sat glowering with rage and fear. Doyle stood guard over Fleming, who presented a miserable picture of abjectness. "Shall I take them in charge, Mr. Matson?" asked the police lieutenant. "You seem to have a clear case against them. They ought to get ten years at least." The fear in the rascals' faces deepened. "No," answered Joe thoughtfully. "I don't want any scandal and I don't believe I'll make a charge. At least, not yet. Jim, can you skirmish around and find pen and ink?" In a minute or two Jim had found them. "Now, you contemptible skunks," began Joe, "listen to me. I'm going to get a written confession from you of this whole business. Put down, Jim, that matter of the anonymous letter. Don't try to lie out of it, you scoundrel," he said, as Braxton started to protest. "Put down, too, that hiring of the auto bandits to cripple me." Here Braxton gave a violent start. "Put down that attempt to dope me in Chicago. That hits you on the raw, doesn't it, Fleming?" he added, as the latter cringed still lower in his seat. "We'll pass over the matter of hiring Bugs Hartley to do me up in St. Louis, for he may have done that on his own account. Now add this kidnaping incident and the record will be complete." Jim wrote rapidly and soon had the document ready. "Now we'll ask these gentlemen to sign," said Joe, with exaggerated politeness. "I won't sign," snarled Braxton, livid with rage. "Oh, you won't?" said Joe. "All right, Lieutenant----" "I'll sign," said Braxton hastily. Both he and Fleming signed, and Joe put the document carefully into his pocket. "Now," he said, "I have you rascals on the hip. Dare to make one other move against me as long as you live, and I'll have you clapped into jail so quickly it will make your heads swim. I'll put you where the dogs won't bite you." Both Braxton and Fleming rose to their feet. "Where are you going?" asked Joe, in apparent surprise. "You're through with us, aren't you?" growled Braxton. Joe laughed outright. "Oh, dear no," he said, as he rose to his feet. "There's just one little thing to attend to yet. I'm going to thrash you within an inch of your life." Braxton made a dash for the door, but Joe caught him a clip on the jaw that sent him staggering back into a corner. "Now Jim," said Joe, "suppose you take that little rat out," pointing to Fleming, "and drop him somewhere. He got his dose when the ball knocked him out in the bleachers, and that perhaps will be enough for him. Lieutenant," he went on, turning to Doyle, "you're a policeman, and might feel called on to stop any scene of violence. I feel it in my bones that there's going to be a little violence here--just a little. Would you mind stepping outside and seeing whether the car is all right?" "Sure," replied Doyle, with a grin and a wink. "Now, you cur," said Joe, as he turned to Braxton, "take off your coat. It's a long account I have to settle with you, and I'm going to give you the licking of your life." There was no way out, and Braxton took off his coat and closed in. He was a big man and fought with the desperation of a cornered rat. He got in one or two wild blows that did no damage. Joe smashed him right and left, knocked him down and lifted him to his feet to knock him down again, until Braxton, beaten to a finish, refused to get up, and lay in a heap in a corner, fairly sobbing with rage and pain and shame. "Just one little bit of news, Braxton," said Joe, as he turned to leave. "You've lost your bets. The Giants won!" He ran lightly down the steps and jumped into the car, where Mabel snuggled up to him. "What kept you so long, Joe?" she asked anxiously. "Just settling an account, honey," he replied, as he drew her closer. "It was a long one and took some time." "An account? What do you mean?" the girl asked, and then added suddenly: "Oh, Joe, you are all--all mussed up!" "Am I, dear? Well, if I am you ought to see the other fellow, that's all." "It was a--a fight?" she faltered. "Hardly that, Mabel. Braxton had it coming to him--and I gave it to him with interest. But let us forget it. It's over now, and all I want to think about is--you!" And he held her closer than ever. * * * * * A few weeks later the wedding march was played in Mabel's home, and she and Joe joined hands for life. Clara was bridesmaid and Jim was best man. Mr. and Mrs. Matson, the latter greatly improved in health, were present. It was a glorious occasion, and all of them, the bride and groom especially, were happy beyond words. "I'm quite a royal personage," said Mabel, as the happy pair, amid a shower of rice, started off on their honeymoon. "To think of poor little me marrying the king of pitchers and king of batters." "As Reggie would say, you're 'spoofing' me," he laughed. "At any rate, I'm luckier than most kings. I've picked a perfect queen." And Baseball Joe smiled broadly. And he had a right to smile, don't you think so? THE END THE BASEBALL JOE SERIES BY LESTER CHADWICK _12mo. Illustrated. Price per volume, $1.00, postpaid_ [Illustration] BASEBALL JOE OF THE SILVER STARS _or The Rivals of Riverside_ Joe is an everyday country boy who loves to play baseball and particularly to pitch. BASEBALL JOE ON THE SCHOOL NINE _or Pitching for the Blue Banner_ Joe's great ambition was to go to boarding school and play on the school team. BASEBALL JOE AT YALE _or Pitching for the College Championship_ Joe goes to Yale University. In his second year he becomes a varsity pitcher and pitches in several big games. BASEBALL JOE IN THE CENTRAL LEAGUE _or Making Good as a Professional Pitcher_ From Yale college to a baseball league of our Central States. BASEBALL JOE IN THE BIG LEAGUE _or A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles_ From the Central League Joe goes to the St. Louis Nationals. BASEBALL JOE ON THE GIANTS _or Making Good as a Twirler in the Metropolis_ Joe was traded to the Giants and became their mainstay. BASEBALL JOE IN THE WORLD SERIES _or Pitching for the Championship_ What Joe did to win the series will thrill the most jaded reader. BASEBALL JOE AROUND THE WORLD _or Pitching on a Grand Tour_ The Giants and the All-Americans tour the world. BASEBALL JOE: HOME RUN KING _or The Greatest Pitcher and Batter on Record_ Joe becomes the greatest batter in the game. BASEBALL JOE SAVING THE LEAGUE _or Breaking Up a Great Conspiracy_ Throwing the game meant a fortune but also dishonor and it was a great honor to defeat it. _Send For Our Free Illustrated Catalogue_ CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York THE MOTOR BOYS SERIES BY CLARENCE YOUNG _12mo. Illustrated. Price per volume, $1.00, postpaid_ [Illustration] The Motor Boys _or Chums Through Thick and Thin_ The Motor Boys Overland _or A Long Trip for Fun and Fortune_ The Motor Boys In Mexico _or The Secret of The Buried City_ The Motor Boys Across the Plains _or The Hermit of Lost Lake_ The Motor Boys Afloat _or The Cruise of the Dartaway_ The Motor Boys on the Atlantic _or The Mystery of the Lighthouse_ The Motor Boys in Strange Waters _or Lost in a Floating Forest_ The Motor Boys on the Pacific _or The Young Derelict Hunters_ The Motor Boys in the Clouds _or A Trip for Fame and Fortune_ The Motor Boys Over the Rockies _or A Mystery of the Air_ The Motor Boys Over the Ocean _or A Marvelous Rescue in Mid-Air_ The Motor Boys on the Wing _or Seeking the Airship Treasure_ The Motor Boys After a Fortune _or The Hut on Snake Island_ The Motor Boys on the Border _or Sixty Nuggets of Gold_ The Motor Boys Under the Sea _or From Airship to Submarine_ The Motor Boys on Road and River _or Racing to Save a Life_ THE MOTOR BOYS SECOND SERIES BY CLARENCE YOUNG Ned, Bob and Jerry at Boxwood Hall _or The Motor Boys as Freshmen_ Ned, Bob and Jerry on a Ranch _or The Motor Boys Among the Cowboys_ Ned, Bob and Jerry in the Army _or The Motor Boys as Volunteers_ Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line _or The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam_ Ned, Bob and Jerry Bound for Home _or The Motor Boys on the Wrecked Troopship_ CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York THE GREAT MARVEL SERIES BY ROY ROCKWOOD _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in Colors_ _=Price per volume, $1.00, postpaid=_ [Illustration] _Stories of adventures in strange places, with peculiar people and queer animals._ 1. THROUGH THE AIR TO THE NORTH POLE _or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch_ The tale of a trip to the frozen North with a degree of reality that is most convincing. 2. UNDER THE OCEAN TO THE SOUTH POLE _or The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder_ A marvelous trip from Maine to the South Pole, telling of adventures with the sea-monsters and savages. 3. FIVE THOUSAND MILES UNDERGROUND _or The Mystery of the Center of the Earth_ A cruise to the center of the earth through an immense hole found at an island in the ocean. 4. THROUGH SPACE TO MARS _or The Most Wonderful Trip on Record_ This book tells how the journey was made in a strange craft and what happened on Mars. 5. LOST ON THE MOON _or In Quest of the Field of Diamonds_ Strange adventures on the planet which is found to be a land of desolation and silence. 6. ON A TORN-AWAY WORLD _or Captives of the Great Earthquake_ After a tremendous convulsion of nature the adventurers find themselves captives on a vast "island in the air." _Send For Our Free Illustrated Catalogue_ CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York THE JACK RANGER SERIES BY CLARENCE YOUNG _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in Colors_ _=Price per volume, $1.00, postpaid=_ [Illustration] _Lively stories of outdoor sports and adventure every boy will want to read._ 1. JACK RANGER'S SCHOOL DAYS _or The Rivals of Washington Hall_ You will love Jack Ranger--you simply can't help it. He is bright and cheery, and earnest in all he does. 2. JACK RANGER'S WESTERN TRIP _or From Boarding School to Ranch and Range_ This volume takes the hero to the great West. Jack is anxious to clear up the mystery surrounding his father's disappearance. 3. JACK RANGER'S SCHOOL VICTORIES _or Track, Gridiron and Diamond_ Jack gets back to Washington Hall and goes in for all sorts of school games. There are numerous contests on the athletic field. 4. JACK RANGER'S OCEAN CRUISE _or The Wreck of the Polly Ann_ How Jack was carried off to sea against his will makes a "yarn" no boy will want to miss. 5. JACK RANGER'S GUN CLUB _or From Schoolroom to Camp and Trail_ Jack organizes a gun club and with his chums goes in quest of big game. They have many adventures in the mountains. 6. JACK RANGER'S TREASURE BOX _or The Outing of the Schoolboy Yachtsmen_ Jack receives a box from his father and it is stolen. How he regains it makes an absorbing tale. _Send For Our Free Illustrated Catalogue_ CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York THE COLLEGE SPORTS SERIES BY LESTER CHADWICK _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in Colors_ _=Price per volume, $1.00, postpaid=_ [Illustration] _Mr. Chadwick has played on the diamond and on the gridiron himself._ 1. THE RIVAL PITCHERS _A Story of College Baseball_ Tom Parsons, a "hayseed," makes good on the scrub team of Randall College. 2. A QUARTERBACK'S PLUCK _A Story of College Football_ A football story, told in Mr. Chadwick's best style, that is bound to grip the reader from the start. 3. BATTING TO WIN _A Story of College Baseball_ Tom Parsons and his friends Phil and Sid are the leading players on Randall College team. There is a great game. 4. THE WINNING TOUCHDOWN _A Story of College Football_ After having to reorganize their team at the last moment, Randall makes a touchdown that won a big game. 5. FOR THE HONOR OF RANDALL _A Story of College Athletics_ The winning of the hurdle race and long-distance run is extremely exciting. 6. THE EIGHT-OARED VICTORS _A Story of College Water Sports_ Tom, Phil and Sid prove as good at aquatic sports as they are on track, gridiron and diamond. _Send For Our Free Illustrated Catalogue_ CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York THE WEBSTER SERIES By FRANK V. WEBSTER [Illustration] Mr. Webster's style is very much like that of the boys' favorite author, the late lamented Horatio Alger, Jr., but his tales are thoroughly up-to-date. =Cloth. 12mo. Over 200 pages each. Illustrated. Stamped in various colors.= =Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid.= Only A Farm Boy _or Dan Hardy's Rise in Life_ The Boy From The Ranch _or Roy Bradner's City Experiences_ The Young Treasure Hunter _or Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska_ The Boy Pilot of the Lakes _or Nat Morton's Perils_ Tom The Telephone Boy _or The Mystery of a Message_ Bob The Castaway _or The Wreck of the Eagle_ The Newsboy Partners _or Who Was Dick Box?_ Two Boy Gold Miners _or Lost in the Mountains_ The Young Firemen of Lakeville _or Herbert Dare's Pluck_ The Boys of Bellwood School _or Frank Jordan's Triumph_ Jack the Runaway _or On the Road with a Circus_ Bob Chester's Grit _or From Ranch to Riches_ Airship Andy _or The Luck of a Brave Boy_ High School Rivals _or Fred Markham's Struggles_ Darry The Life Saver _or The Heroes of the Coast_ Dick The Bank Boy _or A Missing Fortune_ Ben Hardy's Flying Machine _or Making a Record for Himself_ Harry Watson's High School Days _or The Rivals of Rivertown_ Comrades of the Saddle _or The Young Rough Riders of the Plains_ Tom Taylor at West Point _or The Old Army Officer's Secret_ The Boy Scouts of Lennox _or Hiking Over Big Bear Mountain_ The Boys of the Wireless _or a Stirring Rescue from the Deep_ Cowboy Dave _or The Round-up at Rolling River_ Jack of the Pony Express _or The Young Rider of the Mountain Trail_ The Boys of the Battleship _or For the Honor of Uncle Sam_ CUPPLES & LEON CO., Publishers, NEW YORK THE TOM FAIRFIELD SERIES By ALLEN CHAPMAN Author of the "Fred Fenton Athletic Series," "The Boys of Pluck Series," and "The Darewell Chums Series." 12mo. Illustrated. Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid. Tom Fairfield is a typical American lad, full of life and energy, a boy who believes in doing things. To know Tom is to love him. [Illustration] TOM FAIRFIELD'S SCHOOLDAYS _or The Chums of Elmwood Hall_ Tells of how Tom started for school, of the mystery surrounding one of the Hall seniors, and of how the hero went to the rescue. The first book in a line that is bound to become decidedly popular. TOM FAIRFIELD AT SEA _or The Wreck of the Silver Star_ Tom's parents had gone to Australia and then been cast away somewhere in the Pacific. Tom set out to find them and was himself cast away. A thrilling picture of the perils of the deep. TOM FAIRFIELD IN CAMP _or The Secret of the Old Mill_ The boys decided to go camping, and located near an old mill. A wild man resided there and he made it decidedly lively for Tom and his chums. The secret of the old mill adds to the interest of the volume. TOM FAIRFIELD'S PLUCK AND LUCK _or Working to Clear His Name_ While Tom was back at school some of his enemies tried to get him into trouble. Something unusual occurred and Tom was suspected of a crime. How he set to work to clear his name is told in a manner to interest all young readers. TOM FAIRFIELD'S HUNTING TRIP _or Lost in the Wilderness_ Tom was only a schoolboy, but he loved to use a shotgun or a rifle. In this volume we meet him on a hunting trip full of outdoor life and good times around the camp-fire. CUPPLES & LEON CO., Publishers, NEW YORK THE SPEEDWELL BOYS SERIES By ROY ROCKWOOD Author of "The Dave Dashaway Series," "Great Marvel Series," etc. 12mo. Illustrated. Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid. All boys who love to be on the go will welcome the Speedwell boys. They are clean cut and loyal lads. [Illustration] THE SPEEDWELL BOYS ON MOTOR CYCLES _or The Mystery of a Great Conflagration_ The lads were poor, but they did a rich man a great service and he presented them with their motor cycles. What a great fire led to is exceedingly well told. THE SPEEDWELL BOYS AND THEIR RACING AUTO _or A Run for the Golden Cup_ A tale of automobiling and of intense rivalry on the road. There was an endurance run and the boys entered the contest. On the run they rounded up some men who were wanted by the law. THE SPEEDWELL BOYS AND THEIR POWER LAUNCH _or To the Rescue of the Castaways_ Here is an unusual story. There was a wreck, and the lads, in their power launch, set out to the rescue. A vivid picture of a great storm adds to the interest of the tale. THE SPEEDWELL BOYS IN A SUBMARINE _or The Lost Treasure of Rocky Cove_ An old sailor knows of a treasure lost under water because of a cliff falling into the sea. The boys get a chance to go out in a submarine and they make a hunt for the treasure. THE SPEEDWELL BOYS AND THEIR ICE RACER _or The Perils of a Great Blizzard_ The boys had an idea for a new sort of iceboat, to be run by combined wind and motor power. How they built the craft, and what fine times they had on board of it, is well related. CUPPLES & LEON CO., Publishers, NEW YORK * * * * * * Transcriber's note: --Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected except as indicated below. --Archaic and variable spellings were preserved. --Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved. --Inconsistencies in formatting and punctuation of individual advertisements have been retained. --A List of Illustrations has been provided for the convenience of the reader. 
52670	----	YOU KNOW ME AL RING W. LARDNER YOU KNOW ME AL _A Busher's Letters_ BY RING W. LARDNER [Illustration] NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY Copyright, 1916, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I A BUSHER'S LETTERS HOME 9 II THE BUSHER COMES BACK 45 III THE BUSHER'S HONEYMOON 83 IV A NEW BUSHER BREAKS IN 122 V THE BUSHER'S KID 166 VI THE BUSHER BEATS IT HENCE 208 YOU KNOW ME AL YOU KNOW ME AL CHAPTER I A BUSHER'S LETTERS HOME _Terre Haute, Indiana, September 6._ FRIEND AL: Well, Al old pal I suppose you seen in the paper where I been sold to the White Sox. Believe me Al it comes as a surprise to me and I bet it did to all you good old pals down home. You could of knocked me over with a feather when the old man come up to me and says Jack I've sold you to the Chicago Americans. I didn't have no idea that anything like that was coming off. For five minutes I was just dum and couldn't say a word. He says We aren't getting what you are worth but I want you to go up to that big league and show those birds that there is a Central League on the map. He says Go and pitch the ball you been pitching down here and there won't be nothing to it. He says All you need is the nerve and Walsh or no one else won't have nothing on you. So I says I would do the best I could and I thanked him for the treatment I got in Terre Haute. They always was good to me here and though I did more than my share I always felt that my work was appresiated. We are finishing second and I done most of it. I can't help but be proud of my first year's record in professional baseball and you know I am not boasting when I say that Al. Well Al it will seem funny to be up there in the big show when I never was really in a big city before. But I guess I seen enough of life not to be scared of the high buildings eh Al? I will just give them what I got and if they don't like it they can send me back to the old Central and I will be perfectly satisfied. I didn't know anybody was looking me over, but one of the boys told me that Jack Doyle the White Sox scout was down here looking at me when Grand Rapids was here. I beat them twice in that serious. You know Grand Rapids never had a chance with me when I was right. I shut them out in the first game and they got one run in the second on account of Flynn misjuging that fly ball. Anyway Doyle liked my work and he wired Comiskey to buy me. Comiskey come back with an offer and they excepted it. I don't know how much they got but anyway I am sold to the big league and believe me Al I will make good. Well Al I will be home in a few days and we will have some of the good old times. Regards to all the boys and tell them I am still their pal and not all swelled up over this big league business. Your pal, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, December 14._ Old Pal: Well Al I have not got much to tell you. As you know Comiskey wrote me that if I was up in Chi this month to drop in and see him. So I got here Thursday morning and went to his office in the afternoon. His office is out to the ball park and believe me its some park and some office. I went in and asked for Comiskey and a young fellow says He is not here now but can I do anything for you? I told him who I am and says I had an engagement to see Comiskey. He says The boss is out of town hunting and did I have to see him personally? I says I wanted to see about signing a contract. He told me I could sign as well with him as Comiskey and he took me into another office. He says What salary did you think you ought to get? and I says I wouldn't think of playing ball in the big league for less than three thousand dollars per annum. He laughed and says You don't want much. You better stick round town till the boss comes back. So here I am and it is costing me a dollar a day to stay at the hotel on Cottage Grove Avenue and that don't include my meals. I generally eat at some of the cafes round the hotel but I had supper downtown last night and it cost me fifty-five cents. If Comiskey don't come back soon I won't have no more money left. Speaking of money I won't sign no contract unless I get the salary you and I talked of, three thousand dollars. You know what I was getting in Terre Haute, a hundred and fifty a month, and I know it's going to cost me a lot more to live here. I made inquiries round here and find I can get board and room for eight dollars a week but I will be out of town half the time and will have to pay for my room when I am away or look up a new one when I come back. Then I will have to buy cloths to wear on the road in places like New York. When Comiskey comes back I will name him three thousand dollars as my lowest figure and I guess he will come through when he sees I am in ernest. I heard that Walsh was getting twice as much as that. The papers says Comiskey will be back here sometime to-morrow. He has been hunting with the president of the league so he ought to feel pretty good. But I don't care how he feels. I am going to get a contract for three thousand and if he don't want to give it to me he can do the other thing. You know me Al. Yours truly, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, December 16._ DEAR FRIEND AL: Well I will be home in a couple of days now but I wanted to write you and let you know how I come out with Comiskey. I signed my contract yesterday afternoon. He is a great old fellow Al and no wonder everybody likes him. He says Young man will you have a drink? But I was to smart and wouldn't take nothing. He says You was with Terre Haute? I says Yes I was. He says Doyle tells me you were pretty wild. I says Oh no I got good control. He says Well do you want to sign? I says Yes if I get my figure. He asks What is my figure and I says three thousand dollars per annum. He says Don't you want the office furniture too? Then he says I thought you was a young ball-player and I didn't know you wanted to buy my park. We kidded each other back and forth like that a while and then he says You better go out and get the air and come back when you feel better. I says I feel O.K. now and I want to sign a contract because I have got to get back to Bedford. Then he calls the secretary and tells him to make out my contract. He give it to me and it calls for two hundred and fifty a month. He says You know we always have a city serious here in the fall where a fellow picks up a good bunch of money. I hadn't thought of that so I signed up. My yearly salary will be fifteen hundred dollars besides what the city serious brings me. And that is only for the first year. I will demand three thousand or four thousand dollars next year. I would of started home on the evening train but I ordered a suit of cloths from a tailor over on Cottage Grove and it won't be done till to-morrow. It's going to cost me twenty bucks but it ought to last a long time. Regards to Frank and the bunch. Your Pal, JACK. _Paso Robles, California, March 2._ OLD PAL AL: Well Al we been in this little berg now a couple of days and its bright and warm all the time just like June. Seems funny to have it so warm this early in March but I guess this California climate is all they said about it and then some. It would take me a week to tell you about our trip out here. We came on a Special Train De Lukes and it was some train. Every place we stopped there was crowds down to the station to see us go through and all the people looked me over like I was a actor or something. I guess my hight and shoulders attracted their attention. Well Al we finally got to Oakland which is across part of the ocean from Frisco. We will be back there later on for practice games. We stayed in Oakland a few hours and then took a train for here. It was another night in a sleeper and believe me I was tired of sleepers before we got here. I have road one night at a time but this was four straight nights. You know Al I am not built right for a sleeping car birth. The hotel here is a great big place and got good eats. We got in at breakfast time and I made a B line for the dining room. Kid Gleason who is a kind of asst. manager to Callahan come in and sat down with me. He says Leave something for the rest of the boys because they will be just as hungry as you. He says Ain't you afraid you will cut your throat with that knife. He says There ain't no extra charge for using the forks. He says You shouldn't ought to eat so much because you're overweight now. I says You may think I am fat, but it's all solid bone and muscle. He says Yes I suppose it's all solid bone from the neck up. I guess he thought I would get sore but I will let them kid me now because they will take off their hats to me when they see me work. Manager Callahan called us all to his room after breakfast and give us a lecture. He says there would be no work for us the first day but that we must all take a long walk over the hills. He also says we must not take the training trip as a joke. Then the colored trainer give us our suits and I went to my room and tried mine on. I ain't a bad looking guy in the White Sox uniform Al. I will have my picture taken and send you boys some. My roommate is Allen a lefthander from the Coast League. He don't look nothing like a pitcher but you can't never tell about them dam left handers. Well I didn't go on the long walk because I was tired out. Walsh stayed at the hotel too and when he seen me he says Why didn't you go with the bunch? I says I was too tired. He says Well when Callahan comes back you better keep out of sight or tell him you are sick. I says I don't care nothing for Callahan. He says No but Callahan is crazy about you. He says You better obey orders and you will git along better. I guess Walsh thinks I am some rube. When the bunch come back Callahan never said a word to me but Gleason come up and says Where was you? I told him I was too tired to go walking. He says Well I will borrow a wheelbarrow some place and push you round. He says Do you sit down when you pitch? I let him kid me because he has not saw my stuff yet. Next morning half the bunch mostly vetrans went to the ball park which isn't no better than the one we got at home. Most of them was vetrans as I say but I was in the bunch. That makes things look pretty good for me don't it Al? We tossed the ball round and hit fungos and run round and then Callahan asks Scott and Russell and I to warm up easy and pitch a few to the batters. It was warm and I felt pretty good so I warmed up pretty good. Scott pitched to them first and kept laying them right over with nothing on them. I don't believe a man gets any batting practice that way. So I went in and after I lobbed a few over I cut loose my fast one. Lord was to bat and he ducked out of the way and then throwed his bat to the bench. Callahan says What's the matter Harry? Lord says I forgot to pay up my life insurance. He says I ain't ready for Walter Johnson's July stuff. Well Al I will make them think I am Walter Johnson before I get through with them. But Callahan come out to me and says What are you trying to do kill somebody? He says Save your smoke because you're going to need it later on. He says Go easy with the boys at first or I won't have no batters. But he was laughing and I guess he was pleased to see the stuff I had. There is a dance in the hotel to-night and I am up in my room writing this in my underwear while I get my suit pressed. I got it all mussed up coming out here. I don't know what shoes to wear. I asked Gleason and he says Wear your baseball shoes and if any of the girls gets fresh with you spike them. I guess he was kidding me. Write and tell me all the news about home. Yours truly, JACK. _Paso Robles, California, March 7._ FRIEND AL: I showed them something out there to-day Al. We had a game between two teams. One team was made up of most of the regulars and the other was made up of recruts. I pitched three innings for the recruts and shut the old birds out. I held them to one hit and that was a ground ball that the recrut shortstop Johnson ought to of ate up. I struck Collins out and he is one of the best batters in the bunch. I used my fast ball most of the while but showed them a few spitters and they missed them a foot. I guess I must of got Walsh's goat with my spitter because him and I walked back to the hotel together and he talked like he was kind of jealous. He says You will have to learn to cover up your spitter. He says I could stand a mile away and tell when you was going to throw it. He says Some of these days I will learn you how to cover it up. I guess Al I know how to cover it up all right without Walsh learning me. I always sit at the same table in the dining room along with Gleason and Collins and Bodie and Fournier and Allen the young lefthander I told you about. I feel sorry for him because he never says a word. To-night at supper Bodie says How did I look to-day Kid? Gleason says Just like you always do in the spring. You looked like a cow. Gleason seems to have the whole bunch scared of him and they let him say anything he wants to. I let him kid me to but I ain't scared of him. Collins then says to me You got some fast ball there boy. I says I was not as fast to-day as I am when I am right. He says Well then I don't want to hit against you when you are right. Then Gleason says to Collins Cut that stuff out. Then he says to me Don't believe what he tells you boy. If the pitchers in this league weren't no faster than you I would still be playing ball and I would be the best hitter in the country. After supper Gleason went out on the porch with me. He says Boy you have got a little stuff but you have got a lot to learn. He says You field your position like a wash woman and you don't hold the runners up. He says When Chase was on second base to-day he got such a lead on you that the little catcher couldn't of shot him out at third with a rifle. I says They all thought I fielded my position all right in the Central League. He says Well if you think you do it all right you better go back to the Central League where you are appresiated. I says You can't send me back there because you could not get waivers. He says Who would claim you? I says St. Louis and Boston and New York. You know Al what Smith told me this winter. Gleason says Well if you're not willing to learn St. Louis and Boston and New York can have you and the first time you pitch against us we will steal fifty bases. Then he quit kidding and asked me to go to the field with him early to-morrow morning and he would learn me some things. I don't think he can learn me nothing but I promised I would go with him. There is a little blonde kid in the hotel here who took a shine to me at the dance the other night but I am going to leave the skirts alone. She is real society and a swell dresser and she wants my picture. Regards to all the boys. Your friend, JACK. P.S. The boys thought they would be smart to-night and put something over on me. A boy brought me a telegram and I opened it and it said You are sold to Jackson in the Cotton States League. For just a minute they had me going but then I happened to think that Jackson is in Michigan and there's no Cotton States League round there. _Paso Robles, California, March 9._ DEAR FRIEND AL: You have no doubt read the good news in the papers before this reaches you. I have been picked to go to Frisco with the first team. We play practice games up there about two weeks while the second club plays in Los Angeles. Poor Allen had to go with the second club. There's two other recrut pitchers with our part of the team but my name was first on the list so it looks like I had made good. I knowed they would like my stuff when they seen it. We leave here to-night. You got the first team's address so you will know where to send my mail. Callahan goes with us and Gleason goes with the second club. Him and I have got to be pretty good pals and I wish he was going with us even if he don't let me eat like I want to. He told me this morning to remember all he had learned me and to keep working hard. He didn't learn me nothing I didn't know before but I let him think so. The little blonde don't like to see me leave here. She lives in Detroit and I may see her when I go there. She wants me to write but I guess I better not give her no encouragement. Well Al I will write you a long letter from Frisco. Yours truly, JACK. _Oakland, California, March 19._ DEAR OLD PAL: They have gave me plenty of work here all right. I have pitched four times but have not went over five innings yet. I worked against Oakland two times and against Frisco two times and only three runs have been scored off me. They should only ought to of had one but Bodie misjuged a easy fly ball in Frisco and Weaver made a wild peg in Oakland that let in a run. I am not using much but my fast ball but I have got a world of speed and they can't foul me when I am right. I whiffed eight men in five innings in Frisco yesterday and could of did better than that if I had of cut loose. Manager Callahan is a funny guy and I don't understand him sometimes. I can't figure out if he is kidding or in ernest. We road back to Oakland on the ferry together after yesterday's game and he says Don't you never throw a slow ball? I says I don't need no slow ball with my spitter and my fast one. He says No of course you don't need it but if I was you I would get one of the boys to learn it to me. He says And you better watch the way the boys fields their positions and holds up the runners. He says To see you work a man might think they had a rule in the Central League forbidding a pitcher from leaving the box or looking toward first base. I told him the Central didn't have no rule like that. He says And I noticed you taking your wind up when What's His Name was on second base there to-day. I says Yes I got more stuff when I wind up. He says Of course you have but if you wind up like that with Cobb on base he will steal your watch and chain. I says Maybe Cobb can't get on base when I work against him. He says That's right and maybe San Francisco Bay is made of grapejuice. Then he walks away from me. He give one of the youngsters a awful bawling out for something he done in the game at supper last night. If he ever talks to me like he done to him I will take a punch at him. You know me Al. I come over to Frisco last night with some of the boys and we took in the sights. Frisco is some live town Al. We went all through China Town and the Barbers' Coast. Seen lots of swell dames but they was all painted up. They have beer out here that they call steam beer. I had a few glasses of it and it made me logey. A glass of that Terre Haute beer would go pretty good right now. We leave here for Los Angeles in a few days and I will write you from there. This is some country Al and I would love to play ball round here. Your Pal, JACK. P.S.--I got a letter from the little blonde and I suppose I got to answer it. _Los Angeles, California, March 26._ FRIEND AL: Only four more days of sunny California and then we start back East. We got exhibition games in Yuma and El Paso, Texas, and Oklahoma City and then we stop over in St. Joe, Missouri, for three days before we go home. You know Al we open the season in Cleveland and we won't be in Chi no more than just passing through. We don't play there till April eighteenth and I guess I will work in that serious all right against Detroit. Then I will be glad to have you and the boys come up and watch me as you suggested in your last letter. I got another letter from the little blonde. She has went back to Detroit but she give me her address and telephone number and believe me Al I am going to look her up when we get there the twenty-ninth of April. She is a stenographer and was out here with her uncle and aunt. I had a run in with Kelly last night and it looked like I would have to take a wallop at him but the other boys seperated us. He is a bush outfielder from the New England League. We was playing poker. You know the boys plays poker a good deal but this was the first time I got in. I was having pretty good luck and was about four bucks to the good and I was thinking of quitting because I was tired and sleepy. Then Kelly opened the pot for fifty cents and I stayed. I had three sevens. No one else stayed. Kelly stood pat and I drawed two cards. And I catched my fourth seven. He bet fifty cents but I felt pretty safe even if he did have a pat hand. So I called him. I took the money and told them I was through. Lord and some of the boys laughed but Kelly got nasty and begun to pan me for quitting and for the way I played. I says Well I won the pot didn't I? He says Yes and he called me something. I says I got a notion to take a punch at you. He says Oh you have have you? And I come back at him. I says Yes I have have I? I would of busted his jaw if they hadn't stopped me. You know me Al. I worked here two times once against Los Angeles and once against Venice. I went the full nine innings both times and Venice beat me four to two. I could of beat them easy with any kind of support. I walked a couple of guys in the forth and Chase drops a throw and Collins lets a fly ball get away from him. At that I would of shut them out if I had wanted to cut loose. After the game Callahan says You didn't look so good in there to-day. I says I didn't cut loose. He says Well you been working pretty near three weeks now and you ought to be in shape to cut loose. I says Oh I am in shape all right. He says Well don't work no harder than you have to or you might get hurt and then the league would blow up. I don't know if he was kidding me or not but I guess he thinks pretty well of me because he works me lots oftener than Walsh or Scott or Benz. I will try to write you from Yuma, Texas, but we don't stay there only a day and I may not have time for a long letter. Yours truly, JACK. _Yuma, Arizona, April 1._ DEAR OLD AL: Just a line to let you know we are on our way back East. This place is in Arizona and it sure is sandy. They haven't got no regular ball club here and we play a pick-up team this afternoon. Callahan told me I would have to work. He says I am using you because we want to get through early and I know you can beat them quick. That is the first time he has said anything like that and I guess he is wiseing up that I got the goods. We was talking about the Athaletics this morning and Callahan says None of you fellows pitch right to Baker. I was talking to Lord and Scott afterward and I say to Scott How do you pitch to Baker? He says I use my fadeaway. I says How do you throw it? He says Just like you throw a fast ball to anybody else. I says Why do you call it a fadeaway then? He says Because when I throw it to Baker it fades away over the fence. This place is full of Indians and I wish you could see them Al. They don't look nothing like the Indians we seen in that show last summer. Your old pal, JACK. _Oklahoma City, April 4._ FRIEND AL: Coming out of Amarillo last night I and Lord and Weaver was sitting at a table in the dining car with a old lady. None of us were talking to her but she looked me over pretty careful and seemed to kind of like my looks. Finally she says Are you boys with some football club? Lord nor Weaver didn't say nothing so I thought it was up to me and I says No mam this is the Chicago White Sox Ball Club. She says I knew you were athaletes. I says Yes I guess you could spot us for athaletes. She says Yes indeed and specially you. You certainly look healthy. I says You ought to see me stripped. I didn't see nothing funny about that but I thought Lord and Weaver would die laughing. Lord had to get up and leave the table and he told everybody what I said. All the boys wanted me to play poker on the way here but I told them I didn't feel good. I know enough to quit when I am ahead Al. Callahan and I sat down to breakfast all alone this morning. He says Boy why don't you get to work? I says What do you mean? Ain't I working? He says You ain't improving none. You have got the stuff to make a good pitcher but you don't go after bunts and you don't cover first base and you don't watch the baserunners. He made me kind of sore talking that way and I says Oh I guess I can get along all right. He says Well I am going to put it up to you. I am going to start you over in St. Joe day after to-morrow and I want you to show me something. I want you to cut loose with all you've got and I want you to get round the infield a little and show them you aren't tied in that box. I says Oh I can field my position if I want to. He says Well you better want to or I will have to ship you back to the sticks. Then he got up and left. He didn't scare me none Al. They won't ship me to no sticks after the way I showed on this trip and even if they did they couldn't get no waivers on me. Some of the boys have begun to call me Four Sevens but it don't bother me none. Yours truly, JACK. _St. Joe, Missouri, April 7._ FRIEND AL: It rained yesterday so I worked to-day instead and St. Joe done well to get three hits. They couldn't of scored if we had played all week. I give a couple of passes but I catched a guy flatfooted off of first base and I come up with a couple of bunts and throwed guys out. When the game was over Callahan says That's the way I like to see you work. You looked better to-day than you looked on the whole trip. Just once you wound up with a man on but otherwise you was all O.K. So I guess my job is cinched Al and I won't have to go to New York or St. Louis. I would rather be in Chi anyway because it is near home. I wouldn't care though if they traded me to Detroit. I hear from Violet right along and she says she can't hardly wait till I come to Detroit. She says she is strong for the Tigers but she will pull for me when I work against them. She is nuts over me and I guess she has saw lots of guys to. I sent her a stickpin from Oklahoma City but I can't spend no more dough on her till after our first payday the fifteenth of the month. I had thirty bucks on me when I left home and I only got about ten left including the five spot I won in the poker game. I have to tip the waiters about thirty cents a day and I seen about twenty picture shows on the coast besides getting my cloths pressed a couple of times. We leave here to-morrow night and arrive in Chi the next morning. The second club joins us there and then that night we go to Cleveland to open up. I asked one of the reporters if he knowed who was going to pitch the opening game and he says it would be Scott or Walsh but I guess he don't know much about it. These reporters travel all round the country with the team all season and send in telegrams about the game every night. I ain't seen no Chi papers so I don't know what they been saying about me. But I should worry eh Al? Some of them are pretty nice fellows and some of them got the swell head. They hang round with the old fellows and play poker most of the time. Will write you from Cleveland. You will see in the paper if I pitch the opening game. Your old pal, JACK. _Cleveland, Ohio, April 10._ OLD FRIEND AL: Well Al we are all set to open the season this afternoon. I have just ate breakfast and I am sitting in the lobby of the hotel. I eat at a little lunch counter about a block from here and I saved seventy cents on breakfast. You see Al they give us a dollar a meal and if we don't want to spend that much all right. Our rooms at the hotel are paid for. The Cleveland papers says Walsh or Scott will work for us this afternoon. I asked Callahan if there was any chance of me getting into the first game and he says I hope not. I don't know what he meant but he may surprise these reporters and let me pitch. I will beat them Al. Lajoie and Jackson is supposed to be great batters but the bigger they are the harder they fall. The second team joined us yesterday in Chi and we practiced a little. Poor Allen was left in Chi last night with four others of the recrut pitchers. Looks pretty good for me eh Al? I only seen Gleason for a few minutes on the train last night. He says, Well you ain't took off much weight. You're hog fat. I says Oh I ain't fat. I didn't need to take off no weight. He says One good thing about it the club don't have to engage no birth for you because you spend all your time in the dining car. We kidded along like that a while and then the trainer rubbed my arm and I went to bed. Well Al I just got time to have my suit pressed before noon. Yours truly, JACK. _Cleveland, Ohio, April 11._ FRIEND AL: Well Al I suppose you know by this time that I did not pitch and that we got licked. Scott was in there and he didn't have nothing. When they had us beat four to one in the eight inning Callahan told me to go out and warm up and he put a batter in for Scott in our ninth. But Cleveland didn't have to play their ninth so I got no chance to work. But it looks like he means to start me in one of the games here. We got three more to play. Maybe I will pitch this afternoon. I got a postcard from Violet. She says Beat them Naps. I will give them a battle Al if I get a chance. Glad to hear you boys have fixed it up to come to Chi during the Detroit serious. I will ask Callahan when he is going to pitch me and let you know. Thanks Al for the papers. Your friend, JACK. _St. Louis, Missouri, April 15._ FRIEND AL: Well Al I guess I showed them. I only worked one inning but I guess them Browns is glad I wasn't in there no longer than that. They had us beat seven to one in the sixth and Callahan pulls Benz out. I honestly felt sorry for him but he didn't have nothing, not a thing. They was hitting him so hard I thought they would score a hundred runs. A righthander name Bumgardner was pitching for them and he didn't look to have nothing either but we ain't got much of a batting team Al. I could hit better than some of them regulars. Anyway Callahan called Benz to the bench and sent for me. I was down in the corner warming up with Kuhn. I wasn't warmed up good but you know I got the nerve Al and I run right out there like I meant business. There was a man on second and nobody out when I come in. I didn't know who was up there but I found out afterward it was Shotten. He's the center-fielder. I was cold and I walked him. Then I got warmed up good and I made Johnston look like a boob. I give him three fast balls and he let two of them go by and missed the other one. I would of handed him a spitter but Schalk kept signing for fast ones and he knows more about them batters than me. Anyway I whiffed Johnston. Then up come Williams and I tried to make him hit at a couple of bad ones. I was in the hole with two balls and nothing and come right across the heart with my fast one. I wish you could of saw the hop on it. Williams hit it right straight up and Lord was camped under it. Then up come Pratt the best hitter on their club. You know what I done to him don't you Al? I give him one spitter and another he didn't strike at that was a ball. Then I come back with two fast ones and Mister Pratt was a dead baby. And you notice they didn't steal no bases neither. In our half of the seventh inning Weaver and Schalk got on and I was going up there with a stick when Callahan calls me back and sends Easterly up. I don't know what kind of managing you call that. I hit good on the training trip and he must of knew they had no chance to score off me in the innings they had left while they were liable to murder his other pitchers. I come back to the bench pretty hot and I says You're making a mistake. He says If Comiskey had wanted you to manage this team he would of hired you. Then Easterly pops out and I says Now I guess you're sorry you didn't let me hit. That sent him right up in the air and he bawled me awful. Honest Al I would of cracked him right in the jaw if we hadn't been right out where everybody could of saw us. Well he sent Cicotte in to finish and they didn't score no more and we didn't neither. I road down in the car with Gleason. He says Boy you shouldn't ought to talk like that to Cal. Some day he will lose his temper and bust you one. I says He won't never bust me. I says He didn't have no right to talk like that to me. Gleason says I suppose you think he's going to laugh and smile when we lost four out of the first five games. He says Wait till to-night and then go up to him and let him know you are sorry you sassed him. I says I didn't sass him and I ain't sorry. So after supper I seen Callahan sitting in the lobby and I went over and sit down by him. I says When are you going to let me work? He says I wouldn't never let you work only my pitchers are all shot to pieces. Then I told him about you boys coming up from Bedford to watch me during the Detroit serious and he says Well I will start you in the second game against Detroit. He says But I wouldn't if I had any pitchers. He says A girl could get out there and pitch better than some of them have been doing. So you see Al I am going to pitch on the nineteenth. I hope you guys can be up there and I will show you something. I know I can beat them Tigers and I will have to do it even if they are Violet's team. I notice that New York and Boston got trimmed to-day so I suppose they wish Comiskey would ask for waivers on me. No chance Al. Your old pal, JACK. P.S.--We play eleven games in Chi and then go to Detroit. So I will see the little girl on the twenty-ninth. Oh you Violet. _Chicago, Illinois, April 19._ DEAR OLD PAL: Well Al it's just as well you couldn't come. They beat me and I am writing you this so as you will know the truth about the game and not get a bum steer from what you read in the papers. I had a sore arm when I was warming up and Callahan should never ought to of sent me in there. And Schalk kept signing for my fast ball and I kept giving it to him because I thought he ought to know something about the batters. Weaver and Lord and all of them kept kicking them round the infield and Collins and Bodie couldn't catch nothing. Callahan ought never to of left me in there when he seen how sore my arm was. Why, I couldn't of threw hard enough to break a pain of glass my arm was so sore. They sure did run wild on the bases. Cobb stole four and Bush and Crawford and Veach about two apiece. Schalk didn't even make a peg half the time. I guess he was trying to throw me down. The score was sixteen to two when Callahan finally took me out in the eighth and I don't know how many more they got. I kept telling him to take me out when I seen how bad I was but he wouldn't do it. They started bunting in the fifth and Lord and Chase just stood there and didn't give me no help at all. I was all O.K. till I had the first two men out in the first inning. Then Crawford come up. I wanted to give him a spitter but Schalk signs me for the fast one and I give it to him. The ball didn't hop much and Crawford happened to catch it just right. At that Collins ought to of catched the ball. Crawford made three bases and up come Cobb. It was the first time I ever seen him. He hollered at me right off the reel. He says You better walk me you busher. I says I will walk you back to the bench. Schalk signs for a spitter and I gives it to him and Cobb misses it. Then instead of signing for another one Schalk asks for a fast one and I shook my head no but he signed for it again and yells Put something on it. So I throwed a fast one and Cobb hits it right over second base. I don't know what Weaver was doing but he never made a move for the ball. Crawford scored and Cobb was on first base. First thing I knowed he had stole second while I held the ball. Callahan yells Wake up out there and I says Why don't your catcher tell me when they are going to steal. Schalk says Get in there and pitch and shut your mouth. Then I got mad and walked Veach and Moriarty but before I walked Moriarty Cobb and Veach pulled a double steal on Schalk. Gainor lifts a fly and Lord drops it and two more come in. Then Stanage walks and I whiffs their pitcher. I come in to the bench and Callahan says Are your friends from Bedford up here? I was pretty sore and I says Why don't you get a catcher? He says We don't need no catcher when you're pitching because you can't get nothing past their bats. Then he says You better leave your uniform in here when you go out next inning or Cobb will steal it off your back. I says My arm is sore. He says Use your other one and you'll do just as good. Gleason says Who do you want to warm up? Callahan says Nobody. He says Cobb is going to lead the league in batting and basestealing anyway so we might as well give him a good start. I was mad enough to punch his jaw but the boys winked at me not to do nothing. Well I got some support in the next inning and nobody got on. Between innings I says Well I guess I look better now don't I? Callahan says Yes but you wouldn't look so good if Collins hadn't jumped up on the fence and catched that one off Crawford. That's all the encouragement I got Al. Cobb come up again to start the third and when Schalk signs me for a fast one I shakes my head. Then Schalk says All right pitch anything you want to. I pitched a spitter and Cobb bunts it right at me. I would of threw him out a block but I stubbed my toe in a rough place and fell down. This is the roughest ground I ever seen Al. Veach bunts and for a wonder Lord throws him out. Cobb goes to second and honest Al I forgot all about him being there and first thing I knowed he had stole third. Then Moriarty hits a fly ball to Bodie and Cobb scores though Bodie ought to of threw him out twenty feet. They batted all round in the forth inning and scored four or five more. Crawford got the luckiest three-base hit I ever see. He popped one way up in the air and the wind blowed it against the fence. The wind is something fierce here Al. At that Collins ought to of got under it. I was looking at the bench all the time expecting Callahan to call me in but he kept hollering Go on and pitch. Your friends wants to see you pitch. Well Al I don't know how they got the rest of their runs but they had more luck than any team I ever seen. And all the time Jennings was on the coaching line yelling like a Indian. Some day Al I'm going to punch his jaw. After Veach had hit one in the eight Callahan calls me to the bench and says You're through for the day. I says It's about time you found out my arm was sore. He says I ain't worrying about your arm but I'm afraid some of our outfielders will run their legs off and some of them poor infielders will get killed. He says The reporters just sent me a message saying they had run out of paper. Then he says I wish some of the other clubs had pitchers like you so we could hit once in a while. He says Go in the clubhouse and get your arm rubbed off. That's the only way I can get Jennings sore he says. Well Al that's about all there was to it. It will take two or three stamps to send this but I want you to know the truth about it. The way my arm was I ought never to of went in there. Yours truly, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, April 25._ FRIEND AL: Just a line to let you know I am still on earth. My arm feels pretty good again and I guess maybe I will work at Detroit. Violet writes that she can't hardly wait to see me. Looks like I got a regular girl now Al. We go up there the twenty-ninth and maybe I won't be glad to see her. I hope she will be out to the game the day I pitch. I will pitch the way I want to next time and them Tigers won't have such a picnic. I suppose you seen what the Chicago reporters said about that game. I will punch a couple of their jaws when I see them. Your pal, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, April 29._ DEAR OLD AL: Well Al it's all over. The club went to Detroit last night and I didn't go along. Callahan told me to report to Comiskey this morning and I went up to the office at ten o'clock. He give me my pay to date and broke the news. I am sold to Frisco. I asked him how they got waivers on me and he says Oh there was no trouble about that because they all heard how you tamed the Tigers. Then he patted me on the back and says Go out there and work hard boy and maybe you'll get another chance some day. I was kind of choked up so I walked out of the office. I ain't had no fair deal Al and I ain't going to no Frisco. I will quit the game first and take that job Charley offered me at the billiard hall. I expect to be in Bedford in a couple of days. I have got to pack up first and settle with my landlady about my room here which I engaged for all season thinking I would be treated square. I am going to rest and lay round home a while and try to forget this rotten game. Tell the boys about it Al and tell them I never would of got let out if I hadn't worked with a sore arm. I feel sorry for that little girl up in Detroit Al. She expected me there to-day. Your old pal, JACK. P.S. I suppose you seen where that lucky lefthander Allen shut out Cleveland with two hits yesterday. The lucky stiff. CHAPTER II THE BUSHER COMES BACK. _San Francisco, California, May 13._ FRIEND AL: I suppose you and the rest of the boys in Bedford will be supprised to learn that I am out here, because I remember telling you when I was sold to San Francisco by the White Sox that not under no circumstances would I report here. I was pretty mad when Comiskey give me my release, because I didn't think I had been given a fair show by Callahan. I don't think so yet Al and I never will but Bill Sullivan the old White Sox catcher talked to me and told me not to pull no boner by refuseing to go where they sent me. He says You're only hurting yourself. He says You must remember that this was your first time up in the big show and very few men no matter how much stuff they got can expect to make good right off the reel. He says All you need is experience and pitching out in the Coast League will be just the thing for you. So I went in and asked Comiskey for my transportation and he says That's right Boy go out there and work hard and maybe I will want you back. I told him I hoped so but I don't hope nothing of the kind Al. I am going to see if I can't get Detroit to buy me, because I would rather live in Detroit than anywheres else. The little girl who got stuck on me this spring lives there. I guess I told you about her Al. Her name is Violet and she is some queen. And then if I got with the Tigers I wouldn't never have to pitch against Cobb and Crawford, though I believe I could show both of them up if I was right. They ain't got much of a ball club here and hardly any good pitchers outside of me. But I don't care. I will win some games if they give me any support and I will get back in the big league and show them birds something. You know me, Al. Your pal, JACK. _Los Angeles, California, May 20._ AL: Well old pal I don't suppose you can find much news of this league in the papers at home so you may not know that I have been standing this league on their heads. I pitched against Oakland up home and shut them out with two hits. I made them look like suckers Al. They hadn't never saw no speed like mine and they was scared to death the minute I cut loose. I could of pitched the last six innings with my foot and trimmed them they was so scared. Well we come down here for a serious and I worked the second game. They got four hits and one run, and I just give them the one run. Their shortstop Johnson was on the training trip with the White Sox and of course I knowed him pretty well. So I eased up in the last inning and let him hit one. If I had of wanted to let myself out he couldn't of hit me with a board. So I am going along good and Howard our manager says he is going to use me regular. He's a pretty nice manager and not a bit sarkastic like some of them big leaguers. I am fielding my position good and watching the baserunners to. Thank goodness Al they ain't no Cobbs in this league and a man ain't scared of haveing his uniform stole off his back. But listen Al I don't want to be bought by Detroit no more. It is all off between Violet and I. She wasn't the sort of girl I suspected. She is just like them all Al. No heart. I wrote her a letter from Chicago telling her I was sold to San Francisco and she wrote back a postcard saying something about not haveing no time to waste on bushers. What do you know about that Al? Calling me a busher. I will show them. She wasn't no good Al and I figure I am well rid of her. Good riddance is rubbish as they say. I will let you know how I get along and if I hear anything about being sold or drafted. Yours truly, JACK. _San Francisco, California, July 20._ FRIEND AL: You will forgive me for not writeing to you oftener when you hear the news I got for you. Old pal I am engaged to be married. Her name is Hazel Carney and she is some queen, Al--a great big stropping girl that must weigh one hundred and sixty lbs. She is out to every game and she got stuck on me from watching me work. Then she writes a note to me and makes a date and I meet her down on Market Street one night. We go to a nickel show together and have some time. Since then we been together pretty near every evening except when I was away on the road. Night before last she asked me if I was married and I tells her No and she says a big handsome man like I ought not to have no trouble finding a wife. I tells her I ain't never looked for one and she says Well you wouldn't have to look very far. I asked her if she was married and she said No but she wouldn't mind it. She likes her beer pretty well and her and I had several and I guess I was feeling pretty good. Anyway I guess I asked her if she wouldn't marry me and she says it was O.K. I ain't a bit sorry Al because she is some doll and will make them all sit up back home. She wanted to get married right away but I said No wait till the season is over and maybe I will have more dough. She asked me what I was getting and I told her two hundred dollars a month. She says she didn't think I was getting enough and I don't neither but I will get the money when I get up in the big show again. Anyway we are going to get married this fall and then I will bring her home and show her to you. She wants to live in Chi or New York but I guess she will like Bedford O.K. when she gets acquainted. I have made good here all right Al. Up to a week ago Sunday I had won eleven straight. I have lost a couple since then, but one day I wasn't feeling good and the other time they kicked it away behind me. I had a run in with Howard after Portland had beat me. He says Keep on running round with that skirt and you won't never win another game. He says Go to bed nights and keep in shape or I will take your money. I told him to mind his own business and then he walked away from me. I guess he was scared I was going to smash him. No manager ain't going to bluff me Al. So I went to bed early last night and didn't keep my date with the kid. She was pretty sore about it but business before plesure Al. Don't tell the boys nothing about me being engaged. I want to surprise them. Your pal, JACK. _Sacramento, California, August 16._ FRIEND AL: Well Al I got the supprise of my life last night. Howard called me up after I got to my room and tells me I am going back to the White Sox. Come to find out, when they sold me out here they kept a option on me and yesterday they exercised it. He told me I would have to report at once. So I packed up as quick as I could and then went down to say good-by to the kid. She was all broke up and wanted to go along with me but I told her I didn't have enough dough to get married. She said she would come anyway and we could get married in Chi but I told her she better wait. She cried all over my sleeve. She sure is gone on me Al and I couldn't help feeling sorry for her but I promised to send for her in October and then everything will be all O.K. She asked me how much I was going to get in the big league and I told her I would get a lot more money than out here because I wouldn't play if I didn't. You know me Al. I come over here to Sacramento with the club this morning and I am leaveing to-night for Chi. I will get there next Tuesday and I guess Callahan will work me right away because he must of seen his mistake in letting me go by now. I will show them Al. I looked up the skedule and I seen where we play in Detroit the fifth and sixth of September. I hope they will let me pitch there Al. Violet goes to the games and I will make her sorry she give me that kind of treatment. And I will make them Tigers sorry they kidded me last spring. I ain't afraid of Cobb or none of them now, Al. Your pal, JACK. _Chicago_, _Illinois, August 27._ AL: Well old pal I guess I busted in right. Did you notice what I done to them Athaletics, the best ball club in the country? I bet Violet wishes she hadn't called me no busher. I got here last Tuesday and set up in the stand and watched the game that afternoon. Washington was playing here and Johnson pitched. I was anxious to watch him because I had heard so much about him. Honest Al he ain't as fast as me. He shut them out, but they never was much of a hitting club. I went to the clubhouse after the game and shook hands with the bunch. Kid Gleason the assistant manager seemed pretty glad to see me and he says Well have you learned something? I says Yes I guess I have. He says Did you see the game this afternoon? I says I had and he asked me what I thought of Johnson. I says I don't think so much of him. He says Well I guess you ain't learned nothing then. He says What was the matter with Johnson's work? I says He ain't got nothing but a fast ball. Then he says Yes and Rockefeller ain't got nothing but a hundred million bucks. Well I asked Callahan if he was going to give me a chance to work and he says he was. But I sat on the bench a couple of days and he didn't ask me to do nothing. Finally I asked him why not and he says I am saving you to work against a good club, the Athaletics. Well the Athaletics come and I guess you know by this time what I done to them. And I had to work against Bender at that but I ain't afraid of none of them now Al. Baker didn't hit one hard all afternoon and I didn't have no trouble with Collins neither. I let them down with five blows all though the papers give them seven. Them reporters here don't no more about scoreing than some old woman. They give Barry a hit on a fly ball that Bodie ought to of eat up, only he stumbled or something and they handed Oldring a two base hit on a ball that Weaver had to duck to get out of the way from. But I don't care nothing about reporters. I beat them Athaletics and beat them good, five to one. Gleason slapped me on the back after the game and says Well you learned something after all. Rub some arnicky on your head to keep the swelling down and you may be a real pitcher yet. I says I ain't got no swell head. He says No. If I hated myself like you do I would be a moveing picture actor. Well I asked Callahan would he let me pitch up to Detroit and he says Sure. He says Do you want to get revenge on them? I says, Yes I did. He says Well you have certainly got some comeing. He says I never seen no man get worse treatment than them Tigers give you last spring. I says Well they won't do it this time because I will know how to pitch to them. He says How are you going to pitch to Cobb? I says I am going to feed him on my slow one. He says Well Cobb had ought to make a good meal off of that. Then we quit jokeing and he says You have improved a hole lot and I am going to work you right along regular and if you can stand the gaff I may be able to use you in the city serious. You know Al the White Sox plays a city serious every fall with the Cubs and the players makes quite a lot of money. The winners gets about eight hundred dollars a peace and the losers about five hundred. We will be the winners if I have anything to say about it. I am tickled to death at the chance of working in Detroit and I can't hardly wait till we get there. Watch my smoke Al. Your pal, JACK. P.S. I am going over to Allen's flat to play cards a while to-night. Allen is the lefthander that was on the training trip with us. He ain't got a thing, Al, and I don't see how he gets by. He is married and his wife's sister is visiting them. She wants to meet me but it won't do her much good. I seen her out to the game to-day and she ain't much for looks. _Detroit, Mich., September 6._ FRIEND AL: I got a hole lot to write but I ain't got much time because we are going over to Cleveland on the boat at ten P.M. I made them Tigers like it Al just like I said I would. And what do you think, Al, Violet called me up after the game and wanted to see me but I will tell you about the game first. They got one hit off of me and Cobb made it a scratch single that he beat out. If he hadn't of been so dam fast I would of had a no hit game. At that Weaver could of threw him out if he had of started after the ball in time. Crawford didn't get nothing like a hit and I whiffed him once. I give two walks both of them to Bush but he is such a little guy that you can't pitch to him. When I was warming up before the game Callahan was standing beside me and pretty soon Jennings come over. Jennings says You ain't going to pitch that bird are you? And Callahan said Yes he was. Then Jennings says I wish you wouldn't because my boys is all tired out and can't run the bases. Callahan says They won't get no chance to-day. No, says Jennings I suppose not. I suppose he will walk them all and they won't have to run. Callahan says He won't give no bases on balls, he says. But you better tell your gang that he is liable to bean them and they better stay away from the plate. Jennings says He won't never hurt my boys by beaning them. Then I cut in. Nor you neither, I says. Callahan laughs at that so I guess I must of pulled a pretty good one. Jennings didn't have no comeback so he walks away. Then Cobb come over and asked if I was going to work. Callahan told him Yes. Cobb says How many innings? Callahan says All the way. Then Cobb says Be a good fellow Cal and take him out early. I am lame and can't run. I butts in then and said Don't worry, Cobb. You won't have to run because we have got a catcher who can hold them third strikes. Callahan laughed again and says to me You sure did learn something out on that Coast. Well I walked Bush right off the real and they all begun to holler on the Detroit bench There he goes again. Vitt come up and Jennings yells Leave your bat in the bag Osker. He can't get them over. But I got them over for that bird all O.K. and he pops out trying to bunt. And then I whiffed Crawford. He starts off with a foul that had me scared for a minute because it was pretty close to the foul line and it went clear out of the park. But he missed a spitter a foot and then I supprised them Al. I give him a slow ball and I honestly had to laugh to see him lunge for it. I bet he must of strained himself. He throwed his bat way like he was mad and I guess he was. Cobb came pranceing up like he always does and yells Give me that slow one Boy. So I says All right. But I fooled him. Instead of giveing him a slow one like I said I was going I handed him a spitter. He hit it all right but it was a line drive right in Chase's hands. He says Pretty lucky Boy but I will get you next time. I come right back at him. I says Yes you will. Well Al I had them going like that all through. About the sixth inning Callahan yells from the bench to Jennings What do you think of him now? And Jennings didn't say nothing. What could he of said? Cobb makes their one hit in the eighth. He never would of made it if Schalk had of let me throw him spitters instead of fast ones. At that Weaver ought to of threw him out. Anyway they didn't score and we made a monkey out of Dubuque, or whatever his name is. Well Al I got back to the hotel and snuck down the street a ways and had a couple of beers before supper. So I come to the supper table late and Walsh tells me they had been several phone calls for me. I go down to the desk and they tell me to call up a certain number. So I called up and they charged me a nickel for it. A girl's voice answers the phone and I says Was they some one there that wanted to talk to Jack Keefe? She says You bet they is. She says Don't you know me, Jack? This is Violet. Well, you could of knocked me down with a peace of bread. I says What do you want? She says Why I want to see you. I says Well you can't see me. She says Why what's the matter, Jack? What have I did that you should be sore at me? I says I guess you know all right. You called me a busher. She says Why I didn't do nothing of the kind. I says Yes you did on that postcard. She says I didn't write you no postcard. Then we argued along for a while and she swore up and down that she didn't write me no postcard or call me no busher. I says Well then why didn't you write me a letter when I was in Frisco? She says she had lost my address. Well Al I don't know if she was telling me the truth or not but may be she didn't write that postcard after all. She was crying over the telephone so I says Well it is too late for I and you to get together because I am engaged to be married. Then she screamed and I hang up the receiver. She must of called back two or three times because they was calling my name round the hotel but I wouldn't go near the phone. You know me Al. Well when I hang up and went back to finish my supper the dining room was locked. So I had to go out and buy myself a sandwich. They soaked me fifteen cents for a sandwich and a cup of coffee so with the nickel for the phone I am out twenty cents altogether for nothing. But then I would of had to tip the waiter in the hotel a dime. Well Al I must close and catch the boat. I expect a letter from Hazel in Cleveland and maybe Violet will write to me too. She is stuck on me all right Al. I can see that. And I don't believe she could of wrote that postcard after all. Yours truly, JACK. _Boston, Massachusetts, September 12._ OLD PAL: Well Al I got a letter from Hazel in Cleveland and she is comeing to Chi in October for the city serious. She asked me to send her a hundred dollars for her fare and to buy some cloths with. I sent her thirty dollars for the fare and told her she could wait till she got to Chi to buy her cloths. She said she would give me the money back as soon as she seen me but she is a little short now because one of her girl friends borrowed fifty off of her. I guess she must be pretty soft-hearted Al. I hope you and Bertha can come up for the wedding because I would like to have you stand up with me. I all so got a letter from Violet and they was blots all over it like she had been crying. She swore she did not write that postcard and said she would die if I didn't believe her. She wants to know who the lucky girl is who I am engaged to be married to. I believe her Al when she says she did not write that postcard but it is too late now. I will let you know the date of my wedding as soon as I find out. I guess you seen what I done in Cleveland and here. Allen was going awful bad in Cleveland and I relieved him in the eighth when we had a lead of two runs. I put them out in one-two-three order in the eighth but had hard work in the ninth due to rotten support. I walked Johnston and Chapman and Turner sacrificed them ahead. Jackson come up then and I had two strikes on him. I could of whiffed him but Schalk makes me give him a fast one when I wanted to give him a slow one. He hit it to Berger and Johnston ought to of been threw out at the plate but Berger fumbles and then has to make the play at first base. He got Jackson all O.K. but they was only one run behind then and Chapman was on third base. Lajoie was up next and Callahan sends out word for me to walk him. I thought that was rotten manageing because Lajoie or no one else can hit me when I want to cut loose. So after I give him two bad balls I tried to slip over a strike on him but the lucky stiff hit it on a line to Weaver. Anyway the game was over and I felt pretty good. But Callahan don't appresiate good work Al. He give me a call in the clubhouse and said if I ever disobeyed his orders again he would suspend me without no pay and lick me too. Honest Al it was all I could do to keep from wrapping his jaw but Gleason winks at me not to do nothing. I worked the second game here and give them three hits two of which was bunts that Lord ought to of eat up. I got better support in Frisco than I been getting here Al. But I don't care. The Boston bunch couldn't of hit me with a shovvel and we beat them two to nothing. I worked against Wood at that. They call him Smoky Joe and they say he has got a lot of speed. Boston is some town, Al, and I wish you and Bertha could come here sometime. I went down to the wharf this morning and seen them unload the fish. They must of been a million of them but I didn't have time to count them. Every one of them was five or six times as big as a blue gill. Violet asked me what would be my address in New York City so I am dropping her a postcard to let her know all though I don't know what good it will do her. I certainly won't start no correspondents with her now that I am engaged to be married. Yours truly, JACK. _New York, New York, September 16._ FRIEND AL: I opened the serious here and beat them easy but I know you must of saw about it in the Chi papers. At that they don't give me no fair show in the Chi papers. One of the boys bought one here and I seen in it where I was lucky to win that game in Cleveland. If I knowed which one of them reporters wrote that I would punch his jaw. Al I told you Boston was some town but this is the real one. I never seen nothing like it and I been going some since we got here. I walked down Broadway the Main Street last night and I run into a couple of the ball players and they took me to what they call the Garden but it ain't like the gardens at home because this one is indoors. We sat down to a table and had several drinks. Pretty soon one of the boys asked me if I was broke and I says No, why? He says You better get some lubricateing oil and loosen up. I don't know what he meant but pretty soon when we had had a lot of drinks the waiter brings a check and hands it to me. It was for one dollar. I says Oh I ain't paying for all of them. The waiter says This is just for that last drink. I thought the other boys would make a holler but they didn't say nothing. So I give him a dollar bill and even then he didn't act satisfied so I asked him what he was waiting for and he said Oh nothing, kind of sassy. I was going to bust him but the boys give me the sign to shut up and not to say nothing. I excused myself pretty soon because I wanted to get some air. I give my check for my hat to a boy and he brought my hat and I started going and he says Haven't you forgot something? I guess he must of thought I was wearing a overcoat. Then I went down the Main Street again and some man stopped me and asked me did I want to go to the show. He said he had a ticket. I asked him what show and he said the Follies. I never heard of it but I told him I would go if he had a ticket to spare. He says I will spare you this one for three dollars. I says You must take me for some boob. He says No I wouldn't insult no boob. So I walks on but if he had of insulted me I would of busted him. I went back to the hotel then and run into Kid Gleason. He asked me to take a walk with him so out I go again. We went to the corner and he bought me a beer. He don't drink nothing but pop himself. The two drinks was only ten cents so I says This is the place for me. He says Where have you been? and I told him about paying one dollar for three drinks. He says I see I will have to take charge of you. Don't go round with them ball players no more. When you want to go out and see the sights come to me and I will stear you. So to-night he is going to stear me. I will write to you from Philadelphia. Your pal, JACK. _Philadelphia, Pa., September 19._ FRIEND AL: They won't be no game here to-day because it is raining. We all been loafing round the hotel all day and I am glad of it because I got all tired out over in New York City. I and Kid Gleason went round together the last couple of nights over there and he wouldn't let me spend no money. I seen a lot of girls that I would of liked to of got acquainted with but he wouldn't even let me answer them when they spoke to me. We run in to a couple of peaches last night and they had us spotted too. One of them says I'll bet you're a couple of ball players. But Kid says You lose your bet. I am a bellhop and the big rube with me is nothing but a pitcher. One of them says What are you trying to do kid somebody? He says Go home and get some soap and remove your disguise from your face. I didn't think he ought to talk like that to them and I called him about it and said maybe they was lonesome and it wouldn't hurt none if we treated them to a soda or something. But he says Lonesome. If I don't get you away from here they will steal everything you got. They won't even leave you your fast ball. So we left them and he took me to a picture show. It was some California pictures and they made me think of Hazel so when I got back to the hotel I sent her three postcards. Gleason made me go to my room at ten o'clock both nights but I was pretty tired anyway because he had walked me all over town. I guess we must of saw twenty shows. He says I would take you to the grand opera only it would be throwing money away because we can hear Ed Walsh for nothing. Walsh has got some voice Al a loud high tenor. To-morrow is Sunday and we have a double header Monday on account of the rain to-day. I thought sure I would get another chance to beat the Athaletics and I asked Callahan if he was going to pitch me here but he said he thought he would save me to work against Johnson in Washington. So you see Al he must figure I am about the best he has got. I'll beat him Al if they get a couple of runs behind me. Yours truly, JACK. P.S. They was a letter here from Violet and it pretty near made me feel like crying. I wish they was two of me so both them girls could be happy. _Washington, D.C., September 22._ DEAR OLD AL: Well Al here I am in the capital of the old United States. We got in last night and I been walking round town all morning. But I didn't tire myself out because I am going to pitch against Johnson this afternoon. This is the prettiest town I ever seen but I believe they is more colored people here than they is in Evansville or Chi. I seen the White House and the Monumunt. They say that Bill Sullivan and Gabby St. once catched a baseball that was threw off of the top of the Monumunt but I bet they couldn't catch it if I throwed it. I was in to breakfast this morning with Gleason and Bodie and Weaver and Fournier. Gleason says I'm supprised that you ain't sick in bed to-day. I says Why? He says Most of our pitchers gets sick when Cal tells them they are going to work against Johnson. He says Here's these other fellows all feeling pretty sick this morning and they ain't even pitchers. All they have to do is hit against him but it looks like as if Cal would have to send substitutes in for them. Bodie is complaining of a sore arm which he must of strained drawing to two card flushes. Fournier and Weaver have strained their legs doing the tango dance. Nothing could cure them except to hear that big Walter had got throwed out of his machine and wouldn't be able to pitch against us in this serious. I says I feel O.K. and I ain't afraid to pitch against Johnson and I ain't afraid to hit against him neither. Then Weaver says Have you ever saw him work? Yes, I says, I seen him in Chi. Then Weaver says Well if you have saw him work and ain't afraid to hit against him I'll bet you would go down to Wall Street and holler Hurrah for Roosevelt. I says No I wouldn't do that but I ain't afraid of no pitcher and what is more if you get me a couple of runs I'll beat him. Then Fournier says Oh we will get you a couple of runs all right. He says That's just as easy as catching whales with a angleworm. Well Al I must close and go in and get some lunch. My arm feels great and they will have to go some to beat me Johnson or no Johnson. Your pal, JACK. _Washington, D.C., September 22._ FRIEND AL: Well I guess you know by this time that they didn't get no two runs for me, only one, but I beat him just the same. I beat him one to nothing and Callahan was so pleased that he give me a ticket to the theater. I just got back from there and it is pretty late and I already have wrote you one letter to-day but I am going to sit up and tell you about it. It was cloudy before the game started and when I was warming up I made the remark to Callahan that the dark day ought to make my speed good. He says Yes and of course it will handicap Johnson. While Washington was takeing their practice their two coachers Schaefer and Altrock got out on the infield and cut up and I pretty near busted laughing at them. They certainly is funny Al. Callahan asked me what was I laughing at and I told him and he says That's the first time I ever seen a pitcher laugh when he was going to work against Johnson. He says Griffith is a pretty good fellow to give us something to laugh at before he shoots that guy at us. I warmed up good and told Schalk not to ask me for my spitter much because my fast one looked faster than I ever seen it. He says it won't make much difference what you pitch to-day. I says Oh, yes, it will because Callahan thinks enough of me to work me against Johnson and I want to show him he didn't make no mistake. Then Gleason says No he didn't make no mistake. Wasteing Cicotte or Scotty would of been a mistake in this game. Well, Johnson whiffs Weaver and Chase and makes Lord pop out in the first inning. I walked their first guy but I didn't give Milan nothing to bunt and finally he flied out. And then I whiffed the next two. On the bench Callahan says That's the way, boy. Keep that up and we got a chance. Johnson had fanned four of us when I come up with two out in the third inning and he whiffed me to. I fouled one though that if I had ever got a good hold of I would of knocked out of the park. In the first seven innings we didn't have a hit off of him. They had got five or six lucky ones off of me and I had walked two or three, but I cut loose with all I had when they was men on and they couldn't do nothing with me. The only reason I walked so many was because my fast one was jumping so. Honest Al it was so fast that Evans the umpire couldn't see it half the time and he called a lot of balls that was right over the heart. Well I come up in the eighth with two out and the score still nothing and nothing. I had whiffed the second time as well as the first but it was account of Evans missing one on me. The eighth started with Shanks muffing a fly ball off of Bodie. It was way out by the fence so he got two bases on it and he went to third while they was throwing Berger out. Then Schalk whiffed. Callahan says Go up and try to meet one Jack. It might as well be you as anybody else. But your old pal didn't whiff this time Al. He gets two strikes on me with fast ones and then I passed up two bad ones. I took my healthy at the next one and slapped it over first base. I guess I could of made two bases on it but I didn't want to tire myself out. Anyway Bodie scored and I had them beat. And my hit was the only one we got off of him so I guess he is a pretty good pitcher after all Al. They filled up the bases on me with one out in the ninth but it was pretty dark then and I made McBride and their catcher look like suckers with my speed. I felt so good after the game that I drunk one of them pink cocktails. I don't know what their name is. And then I sent a postcard to poor little Violet. I don't care nothing about her but it don't hurt me none to try and cheer her up once in a while. We leave here Thursday night for home and they had ought to be two or three letters there for me from Hazel because I haven't heard from her lately. She must of lost my road addresses. Your pal, JACK. P.S. I forgot to tell you what Callahan said after the game. He said I was a real pitcher now and he is going to use me in the city serious. If he does Al we will beat them Cubs sure. _Chicago, Illinois, September 27._ FRIEND AL: They wasn't no letter here at all from Hazel and I guess she must of been sick. Or maybe she didn't think it was worth while writeing as long as she is comeing next week. I want to ask you to do me a favor Al and that is to see if you can find me a house down there. I will want to move in with Mrs. Keefe, don't that sound funny Al? sometime in the week of October twelfth. Old man Cutting's house or that yellow house across from you would be O.K. I would rather have the yellow one so as to be near you. Find out how much rent they want Al and if it is not no more than twelve dollars a month get it for me. We will buy our furniture here in Chi when Hazel comes. We have a couple of days off now Al and then we play St. Louis two games here. Then Detroit comes to finish the season the third and fourth of October. Your pal, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, October 3._ DEAR OLD AL: Thanks Al for getting the house. The one-year lease is O.K. You and Bertha and me and Hazel can have all sorts of good times together. I guess the walk needs repairs but I can fix that up when I come. We can stay at the hotel when we first get there. I wish you could of came up for the city serious Al but anyway I want you and Bertha to be sure and come up for our wedding. I will let you know the date as soon as Hazel gets here. The serious starts Tuesday and this town is wild over it. The Cubs finished second in their league and we was fifth in ours but that don't scare me none. We would of finished right on top if I had of been here all season. Callahan pitched one of the bushers against Detroit this afternoon and they beat him bad. Callahan is saveing up Scott and Allen and Russell and Cicotte and I for the big show. Walsh isn't in no shape and neither is Benz. It looks like I would have a good deal to do because most of them others can't work no more than once in four days and Allen ain't no good at all. We have a day to rest after to-morrow's game with the Tigers and then we go at them Cubs. Your pal, JACK. P.S. I have got it figured that Hazel is fixing to surprise me by dropping in on me because I haven't heard nothing yet. _Chicago, Illinois, October 7._ FRIEND AL: Well Al you know by this time that they beat me to-day and tied up the serious. But I have still got plenty of time Al and I will get them before it is over. My arm wasn't feeling good Al and my fast ball didn't hop like it had ought to. But it was the rotten support I got that beat me. That lucky stiff Zimmerman was the only guy that got a real hit off of me and he must of shut his eyes and throwed his bat because the ball he hit was a foot over his head. And if they hadn't been makeing all them errors behind me they wouldn't of been nobody on bases when Zimmerman got that lucky scratch. The serious now stands one and one Al and it is a cinch we will beat them even if they are a bunch of lucky stiffs. They has been great big crowds at both games and it looks like as if we should ought to get over eight hundred dollars a peace if we win and we will win sure because I will beat them three straight if necessary. But Al I have got bigger news than that for you and I am the happyest man in the world. I told you I had not heard from Hazel for a long time. To-night when I got back to my room they was a letter waiting for me from her. Al she is married. Maybe you don't know why that makes me happy but I will tell you. She is married to Kid Levy the middle weight. I guess my thirty dollars is gone because in her letter she called me a cheap skate and she inclosed one one-cent stamp and two twos and said she was paying me for the glass of beer I once bought her. I bought her more than that Al but I won't make no holler. She all so said not for me to never come near her or her husband would bust my jaw. I ain't afraid of him or no one else Al but they ain't no danger of me ever bothering them. She was no good and I was sorry the minute I agreed to marry her. But I was going to tell you why I am happy or maybe you can guess. Now I can make Violet my wife and she's got Hazel beat forty ways. She ain't nowheres near as big as Hazel but she's classier Al and she will make me a good wife. She ain't never asked me for no money. I wrote her a letter the minute I got the good news and told her to come on over here at once at my expense. We will be married right after the serious is over and I want you and Bertha to be sure and stand up with us. I will wire you at my own expence the exact date. It all seems like a dream now about Violet and I haveing our misunderstanding Al and I don't see how I ever could of accused her of sending me that postcard. You and Bertha will be just as crazy about her as I am when you see her Al. Just think Al I will be married inside of a week and to the only girl I ever could of been happy with instead of the woman I never really cared for except as a passing fancy. My happyness would be complete Al if I had not of let that woman steal thirty dollars off of me. Your happy pal, JACK. P.S. Hazel probibly would of insisted on us takeing a trip to Niagara falls or somewheres but I know Violet will be perfectly satisfied if I take her right down to Bedford. Oh you little yellow house. _Chicago, Illinois, October 9._ FRIEND AL: Well Al we have got them beat three games to one now and will wind up the serious to-morrow sure. Callahan sent me in to save poor Allen yesterday and I stopped them dead. But I don't care now Al. I have lost all interest in the game and I don't care if Callahan pitches me to-morrow or not. My heart is just about broke Al and I wouldn't be able to do myself justice feeling the way I do. I have lost Violet Al and just when I was figureing on being the happyest man in the world. We will get the big money but it won't do me no good. They can keep my share because I won't have no little girl to spend it on. Her answer to my letter was waiting for me at home to-night. She is engaged to be married to Joe Hill the big lefthander Jennings got from Providence. Honest Al I don't see how he gets by. He ain't got no more curve ball than a rabbit and his fast one floats up there like a big balloon. He beat us the last game of the regular season here but it was because Callahan had a lot of bushers in the game. I wish I had knew then that he was stealing my girl and I would of made Callahan pitch me against him. And when he come up to bat I would of beaned him. But I don't suppose you could hurt him by hitting him in the head. The big stiff. Their wedding ain't going to come off till next summer and by that time he will be pitching in the Southwestern Texas League for about fifty dollars a month. Violet wrote that she wished me all the luck and happyness in the world but it is too late for me to be happy Al and I don't care what kind of luck I have now. Al you will have to get rid of that lease for me. Fix it up the best way you can. Tell the old man I have changed my plans. I don't know just yet what I will do but maybe I will go to Australia with Mike Donlin's team. If I do I won't care if the boat goes down or not. I don't believe I will even come back to Bedford this winter. It would drive me wild to go past that little house every day and think how happy I might of been. Maybe I will pitch to-morrow Al and if I do the serious will be over to-morrow night. I can beat them Cubs if I get any kind of decent support. But I don't care now Al. Yours truly, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, October 12._ AL: Your letter received. If the old man won't call it off I guess I will have to try and rent the house to some one else. Do you know of any couple that wants one Al? It looks like I would have to come down there myself and fix things up someway. He is just mean enough to stick me with the house on my hands when I won't have no use for it. They beat us the day before yesterday as you probibly know and it rained yesterday and to-day. The papers says it will be all O.K. to-morrow and Callahan tells me I am going to work. The Cub pitchers was all shot to peaces and the bad weather is just nuts for them because it will give Cheney a good rest. But I will beat him Al if they don't kick it away behind me. I must close because I promised Allen the little lefthander that I would come over to his flat and play cards a while to-night and I must wash up and change my collar. Allen's wife's sister is visiting them again and I would give anything not to have to go over there. I am through with girls and don't want nothing to do with them. I guess it is maybe a good thing it rained to-day because I dreamt about Violet last night and went out and got a couple of high balls before breakfast this morning. I hadn't never drank nothing before breakfast before and it made me kind of sick. But I am all O.K. now. Your pal, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, October 13._ DEAR OLD AL: The serious is all over Al. We are the champions and I done it. I may be home the day after to-morrow or I may not come for a couple of days. I want to see Comiskey before I leave and fix up about my contract for next year. I won't sign for no less than five thousand and if he hands me a contract for less than that I will leave the White Sox flat on their back. I have got over fourteen hundred dollars now Al with the city serious money which was $814.30 and I don't have to worry. Them reporters will have to give me a square deal this time Al. I had everything and the Cubs done well to score a run. I whiffed Zimmerman three times. Some of the boys say he ain't no hitter but he is a hitter and a good one Al only he could not touch the stuff I got. The umps give them their run because in the fourth inning I had Leach flatfooted off of second base and Weaver tagged him O.K. but the umps wouldn't call it. Then Schulte the lucky stiff happened to get a hold of one and pulled it past first base. I guess Chase must of been asleep. Anyway they scored but I don't care because we piled up six runs on Cheney and I drove in one of them myself with one of the prettiest singles you ever see. It was a spitter and I hit it like a shot. If I had hit it square it would of went out of the park. Comiskey ought to feel pretty good about me winning and I guess he will give me a contract for anything I want. He will have to or I will go to the Federal League. We are all invited to a show to-night and I am going with Allen and his wife and her sister Florence. She is O.K. Al and I guess she thinks the same about me. She must because she was out to the game to-day and seen me hand it to them. She maybe ain't as pretty as Violet and Hazel but as they say beauty isn't only so deep. Well Al tell the boys I will be with them soon. I have gave up the idea of going to Australia because I would have to buy a evening full-dress suit and they tell me they cost pretty near fifty dollars. Yours truly, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, October 14._ FRIEND AL: Never mind about that lease. I want the house after all Al and I have got the supprise of your life for you. When I come home to Bedford I will bring my wife with me. I and Florence fixed things all up after the show last night and we are going to be married to-morrow morning. I am a busy man to-day Al because I have got to get the license and look round for furniture. And I have also got to buy some new cloths but they are haveing a sale on Cottage Grove Avenue at Clark's store and I know one of the clerks there. I am the happyest man in the world Al. You and Bertha and I and Florence will have all kinds of good times together this winter because I know Bertha and Florence will like each other. Florence looks something like Bertha at that. I am glad I didn't get tied up with Violet or Hazel even if they was a little bit prettier than Florence. Florence knows a lot about baseball for a girl and you would be supprised to hear her talk. She says I am the best pitcher in the league and she has saw them all. She all so says I am the best looking ball player she ever seen but you know how girls will kid a guy Al. You will like her O.K. I fell for her the first time I seen her. Your old pal, JACK. P.S. I signed up for next year. Comiskey slapped me on the back when I went in to see him and told me I would be a star next year if I took good care of myself. I guess I am a star without waiting for next year Al. My contract calls for twenty-eight hundred a year which is a thousand more than I was getting. And it is pretty near a cinch that I will be in on the World Serious money next season. P.S. I certainly am relieved about that lease. It would of been fierce to of had that place on my hands all winter and not getting any use out of it. Everything is all O.K. now. Oh you little yellow house. CHAPTER III THE BUSHER'S HONEYMOON _Chicago, Illinois, October 17._ FRIEND AL: Well Al it looks as if I would not be writeing so much to you now that I am a married man. Yes Al I and Florrie was married the day before yesterday just like I told you we was going to be and Al I am the happyest man in the world though I have spent $30 in the last 3 days incluseive. You was wise Al to get married in Bedford where not nothing is nearly half so dear. My expenses was as follows: License $ 2.00 Preist 3.50 Haircut and shave .35 Shine .05 Carfair .45 New suit 14.50 Show tickets 3.00 Flowers .50 Candy .30 Hotel 4.50 Tobacco both kinds .25 You see Al it costs a hole lot of money to get married here. The sum of what I have wrote down is $29.40 but as I told you I have spent $30 and I do not know what I have did with that other $0.60. My new brother-in-law Allen told me I should ought to give the preist $5 and I thought it should be about $2 the same as the license so I split the difference and give him $3.50. I never seen him before and probily won't never see him again so why should I give him anything at all when it is his business to marry couples? But I like to do the right thing. You know me Al. I thought we would be in Bedford by this time but Florrie wants to say here a few more days because she says she wants to be with her sister. Allen and his wife is thinking about takeing a flat for the winter instead of going down to Waco Texas where they live. I don't see no sense in that when it costs so much to live here but it is none of my business if they want to throw their money away. But I am glad I got a wife with some sense though she kicked because I did not get no room with a bath which would cost me $2 a day instead of $1.50. I says I guess the clubhouse is still open yet and if I want a bath I can go over there and take the shower. She says Yes and I suppose I can go and jump in the lake. But she would not do that Al because the lake here is cold at this time of the year. When I told you about my expenses I did not include in it the meals because we would be eating them if I was getting married or not getting married only I have to pay for six meals a day now instead of three and I didn't used to eat no lunch in the playing season except once in a while when I knowed I was not going to work that afternoon. I had a meal ticket which had not quite ran out over to a resturunt on Indiana Ave and we eat there for the first day except at night when I took Allen and his wife to the show with us and then he took us to a chop suye resturunt. I guess you have not never had no chop suye Al and I am here to tell you you have not missed nothing but when Allen was going to buy the supper what could I say? I could not say nothing. Well yesterday and to-day we been eating at a resturunt on Cottage Grove Ave near the hotel and at the resturunt on Indiana that I had the meal ticket at only I do not like to buy no new meal ticket when I am not going to be round here no more than a few days. Well Al I guess the meals has cost me all together about $1.50 and I have eat very little myself. Florrie always wants desert ice cream or something and that runs up into money faster than regular stuff like stake and ham and eggs. Well Al Florrie says it is time for me to keep my promise and take her to the moveing pictures which is $0.20 more because the one she likes round here costs a dime apeace. So I must close for this time and will see you soon. Your pal, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, October 22_. AL: Just a note Al to tell you why I have not yet came to Bedford yet where I expected I would be long before this time. Allen and his wife have took a furnished flat for the winter and Allen's wife wants Florrie to stay here untill they get settled. Meentime it is costing me a hole lot of money at the hotel and for meals besides I am paying $10 a month rent for the house you got for me and what good am I getting out of it? But Florrie wants to help her sister and what can I say? Though I did make her promise she would not stay no longer than next Saturday at least. So I guess Al we will be home on the evening train Saturday and then may be I can save some money. I know Al that you and Bertha will like Florrie when you get acquainted with her spesially Bertha though Florrie dresses pretty swell and spends a hole lot of time fusing with her face and her hair. She says to me to-night Who are you writeing to and I told her Al Blanchard who I have told you about a good many times. She says I bet you are writeing to some girl and acted like as though she was kind of jealous. So I thought I would tease her a little and I says I don't know no girls except you and Violet and Hazel. Who is Violet and Hazel? she says. I kind of laughed and says Oh I guess I better not tell you and then she says I guess you will tell me. That made me kind of mad because no girl can't tell me what to do. She says Are you going to tell me? and I says No. Then she says If you don't tell me I will go over to Marie's that is her sister Allen's wife and stay all night. I says Go on and she went downstairs but I guess she probily went to get a soda because she has some money of her own that I give her. This was about two hours ago and she is probily down in the hotel lobby now trying to scare me by makeing me believe she has went to her sister's. But she can't fool me Al and I am now going out to mail this letter and get a beer. I won't never tell her about Violet and Hazel if she is going to act like that. Yours truly, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, October 24._ FRIEND AL: I guess I told you Al that we would be home Saturday evening. I have changed my mind. Allen and his wife has a spair bedroom and wants us to come there and stay a week or two. It won't cost nothing except they will probily want to go out to the moveing pictures nights and we will probily have to go along with them and I am a man Al that wants to pay his share and not be cheap. I and Florrie had our first quarrle the other night. I guess I told you the start of it but I don't remember. I made some crack about Violet and Hazel just to tease Florrie and she wanted to know who they was and I would not tell her. So she gets sore and goes over to Marie's to stay all night. I was just kidding Al and was willing to tell her about them two poor girls whatever she wanted to know except that I don't like to brag about girls being stuck on me. So I goes over to Marie's after her and tells her all about them except that I turned them down cold at the last minute to marry her because I did not want her to get all swelled up. She made me sware that I did not never care nothing about them and that was easy because it was the truth. So she come back to the hotel with me just like I knowed she would when I ordered her to. They must not be no mistake about who is the boss in my house. Some men lets their wife run all over them but I am not that kind. You know me Al. I must get busy and pack my suitcase if I am going to move over to Allen's. I sent three collars and a shirt to the laundrey this morning so even if we go over there to-night I will have to take another trip back this way in a day or two. I won't mind Al because they sell my kind of beer down to the corner and I never seen it sold nowheres else in Chi. You know the kind it is, eh Al? I wish I was lifting a few with you to-night. Your pal, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, October 28._ DEAR OLD AL: Florrie and Marie has went downtown shopping because Florrie thinks she has got to have a new dress though she has got two changes of cloths now and I don't know what she can do with another one. I hope she don't find none to suit her though it would not hurt none if she got something for next spring at a reduckshon. I guess she must think I am Charles A. Comiskey or somebody. Allen has went to a colledge football game. One of the reporters give him a pass. I don't see nothing in football except a lot of scrapping between little slobs that I could lick the whole bunch of them so I did not care to go. The reporter is one of the guys that travled round with our club all summer. He called up and said he hadn't only the one pass but he was not hurting my feelings none because I would not go to no rotten football game if they payed me. The flat across the hall from this here one is for rent furnished. They want $40 a month for it and I guess they think they must be lots of suckers running round loose. Marie was talking about it and says Why don't you and Florrie take it and then we can be right together all winter long and have some big times? Florrie says It would be all right with me. What about it Jack? I says What do you think I am? I don't have to live in no high price flat when I got a home in Bedford where they ain't no people trying to hold everybody up all the time. So they did not say no more about it when they seen I was in ernest. Nobody cannot tell me where I am going to live sister-in-law or no sister-in-law. If I was to rent the rotten old flat I would be paying $50 a month rent includeing the house down in Bedford. Fine chance Al. Well Al I am lonesome and thirsty so more later. Your pal, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, November 2._ FRIEND AL: Well Al I got some big news for you. I am not comeing to Bedford this winter after all except to make a visit which I guess will be round Xmas. I changed my mind about that flat across the hall from the Allens and decided to take it after all. The people who was in it and owns the furniture says they would let us have it till the 1 of May if we would pay $42.50 a month which is only $2.50 a month more than they would of let us have it for for a short time. So you see we got a bargain because it is all furnished and everything and we won't have to blow no money on furniture besides the club goes to California the middle of Febuery so Florrie would not have no place to stay while I am away. The Allens only subleased their flat from some other people till the 2 of Febuery and when I and Allen goes West Marie can come over and stay with Florrie so you see it is best all round. If we should of boughten furniture it would cost us in the neighborhood of $100 even without no piano and they is a piano in this here flat which makes it nice because Florrie plays pretty good with one hand and we can have lots of good times at home without it costing us nothing except just the bear liveing expenses. I consider myself lucky to of found out about this before it was too late and somebody else had of gotten the tip. Now Al old pal I want to ask a great favor of you Al. I all ready have payed one month rent $10 on the house in Bedford and I want you to see the old man and see if he won't call off that lease. Why should I be paying $10 a month rent down there and $42.50 up here when the house down there is not no good to me because I am liveing up here all winter? See Al? Tell him I will gladly give him another month rent to call off the lease but don't tell him that if you don't have to. I want to be fare with him. If you will do this favor for me, Al, I won't never forget it. Give my kindest to Bertha and tell her I am sorry I and Florrie won't see her right away but you see how it is Al. Yours, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, November 30._ FRIEND AL: I have not wrote for a long time have I Al but I have been very busy. They was not enough furniture in the flat and we have been buying some more. They was enough for some people maybe but I and Florrie is the kind that won't have nothing but the best. The furniture them people had in the liveing room was oak but they had a bookcase bilt in in the flat that was mohoggeny and Florrie would not stand for no joke combination like that so she moved the oak chairs and table in to the spair bedroom and we went downtown to buy some mohoggeny. But it costs too much Al and we was feeling pretty bad about it when we seen some Sir Cashion walnut that was prettier even than the mohoggeny and not near so expensive. It is not no real Sir Cashion walnut but it is just as good and we got it reasonable. Then we got some mission chairs for the dining room because the old ones was just straw and was no good and we got a big lether couch for $9 that somebody can sleep on if we get to much company. I hope you and Bertha can come up for the holidays and see how comfertible we are fixed. That is all the new furniture we have boughten but Florrie set her heart on some old Rose drapes and a red table lamp that is the biggest you ever seen Al and I did not have the heart to say no. The hole thing cost me in the neighborhood of $110 which is very little for what we got and then it will always be ourn even when we move away from this flat though we will have to leave the furniture that belongs to the other people but their part of it is not no good anyway. I guess I told you Al how much money I had when the season ended. It was $1400 all told includeing the city serious money. Well Al I got in the neighborhood of $800 left because I give $200 to Florrie to send down to Texas to her other sister who had a bad egg for a husband that managed a club in the Texas Oklahoma League and this was the money she had to pay to get the divorce. I am glad Al that I was lucky enough to marry happy and get a good girl for my wife that has got some sense and besides if I have got $800 left I should not worry as they say. Your pal, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, December 7._ DEAR OLD AL: No I was in ernest Al when I says that I wanted you and Bertha to come up here for the holidays. I know I told you that I might come to Bedford for the holidays but that is all off. I have gave up the idea of comeing to Bedford for the holidays and I want you to be sure and come up here for the holidays and I will show you a good time. I would love to have Bertha come to and she can come if she wants to only Florrie don't know if she would have a good time or not and thinks maybe she would rather stay in Bedford and you come alone. But be sure and have Bertha come if she wants to come but maybe she would not injoy it. You know best Al. I don't think the old man give me no square deal on that lease but if he wants to stick me all right. I am grateful to you Al for trying to fix it up but maybe you could of did better if you had of went at it in a different way. I am not finding no fault with my old pal though. Don't think that. When I have a pal I am the man to stick to him threw thick and thin. If the old man is going to hold me to that lease I guess I will have to stand it and I guess I won't starv to death for no $10 a month because I am going to get $2800 next year besides the city serious money and maybe we will get into the World Serious too. I know we will if Callahan will pitch me every 3d day like I wanted him to last season. But if you had of approached the old man in a different way maybe you could of fixed it up. I wish you would try it again Al if it is not no trouble. We had Allen and his wife here for thanksgiveing dinner and the dinner cost me better than $5. I thought we had enough to eat to last a week but about six o'clock at night Florrie and Marie said they was hungry and we went downtown and had dinner all over again and I payed for it and it cost me $5 more. Allen was all ready to pay for it when Florrie said No this day's treat is on us so I had to pay for it but I don't see why she did not wait and let me do the talking. I was going to pay for it any way. Be sure and come and visit us for the holidays Al and of coarse if Bertha wants to come bring her along. We will be glad to see you both. I won't never go back on a friend and pal. You know me Al. Your old pal, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, December 20._ FRIEND AL: I don't see what can be the matter with Bertha because you know Al we would not care how she dressed and would not make no kick if she come up here in a night gown. She did not have no license to say we was to swell for her because we did not never think of nothing like that. I wish you would talk to her again Al and tell her she need not get sore on me and that both her and you is welcome at my house any time I ask you to come. See if you can't make her change her mind Al because I feel like as if she must of took offense at something I may of wrote you. I am sorry you and her are not comeing but I suppose you know best. Only we was getting all ready for you and Florrie said only the other day that she wished the holidays was over but that was before she knowed you was not comeing. I hope you can come Al. Well Al I guess there is not no use talking to the old man no more. You have did the best you could but I wish I could of came down there and talked to him. I will pay him his rotten old $10 a month and the next time I come to Bedford and meet him on the street I will bust his jaw. I know he is a old man Al but I don't like to see nobody get the best of me and I am sorry I ever asked him to let me off. Some of them old skinflints has no heart Al but why should I fight with a old man over chicken feed like $10? Florrie says a star pitcher like I should not ought never to scrap about little things and I guess she is right Al so I will pay the old man his $10 a month if I have to. Florrie says she is jealous of me writeing to you so much and she says she would like to meet this great old pal of mine. I would like to have her meet you to Al and I would like to have you change your mind and come and visit us and I am sorry you can't come Al. Yours truly, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, December 27._ OLD PAL: I guess all these lefthanders is alike though I thought this Allen had some sense. I thought he was different from the most and was not no rummy but they are all alike Al and they are all lucky that somebody don't hit them over the head with a ax and kill them but I guess at that you could not hurt no lefthanders by hitting them over the head. We was all down on State St. the day before Xmas and the girls was all tired out and ready to go home but Allen says No I guess we better stick down a while because now the crowds is out and it will be fun to watch them. So we walked up and down State St. about a hour longer and finally we come in front of a big jewlry store window and in it was a swell dimond ring that was marked $100. It was a ladies' ring so Marie says to Allen Why don't you buy that for me? And Allen says Do you really want it? And she says she did. So we tells the girls to wait and we goes over to a salloon where Allen has got a friend and gets a check cashed and we come back and he bought the ring. Then Florrie looks like as though she was getting all ready to cry and I asked her what was the matter and she says I had not boughten her no ring not even when we was engaged. So I and Allen goes back to the salloon and I gets a check cashed and we come back and bought another ring but I did not think the ring Allen had boughten was worth no $100 so I gets one for $75. Now Al you know I am not makeing no kick on spending a little money for a present for my own wife but I had allready boughten her a rist watch for $15 and a rist watch was just what she had wanted. I was willing to give her the ring if she had not of wanted the rist watch more than the ring but when I give her the ring I kept the rist watch and did not tell her nothing about it. Well I come downtown alone the day after Xmas and they would not take the rist watch back in the store where I got it. So I am going to give it to her for a New Year's present and I guess that will make Allen feel like a dirty doose. But I guess you cannot hurt no lefthander's feelings at that. They are all alike. But Allen has not got nothing but a dinky curve ball and a fast ball that looks like my slow one. If Comiskey was not good hearted he would of sold him long ago. I sent you and Bertha a cut glass dish Al which was the best I could get for the money and it was pretty high pricet at that. We was glad to get the pretty pincushions from you and Bertha and Florrie says to tell you that we are well supplied with pincushions now because the ones you sent makes a even half dozen. Thanks Al for remembering us and thank Bertha too though I guess you paid for them. Your pal, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, Januery 3._ OLD PAL: Al I been pretty sick ever since New Year's eve. We had a table at 1 of the swell resturunts downtown and I never seen so much wine drank in my life. I would rather of had beer but they would not sell us none so I found out that they was a certain kind that you can get for $1 a bottle and it is just as good as the kind that has got all them fancy names but this lefthander starts ordering some other kind about 11 oclock and it was $5 a bottle and the girls both says they liked it better. I could not see a hole lot of difference myself and I would of gave $0.20 for a big stine of my kind of beer. You know me Al. Well Al you know they is not nobody that can drink more than your old pal and I was all O.K. at one oclock but I seen the girls was getting kind of sleepy so I says we better go home. Then Marie says Oh, shut up and don't be no quiter. I says You better shut up yourself and not be telling me to shut up, and she says What will you do if I don't shut up? And I says I would bust her in the jaw. But you know Al I would not think of busting no girl. Then Florrie says You better not start nothing because you had to much to drink or you would not be talking about busting girls in the jaw. Then I says I don't care if it is a girl I bust or a lefthander. I did not mean nothing at all Al but Marie says I had insulted Allen and he gets up and slaps my face. Well Al I am not going to stand that from nobody not even if he is my brother-in-law and a lefthander that has not got enough speed to brake a pain of glass. So I give him a good beating and the waiters butts in and puts us all out for fighting and I and Florrie comes home in a taxi and Allen and his wife don't get in till about 5 oclock so I guess she must of had to of took him to a doctor to get fixed up. I been in bed ever since till just this morning kind of sick to my stumach. I guess I must of eat something that did not agree with me. Allen come over after breakfast this morning and asked me was I all right so I guess he is not sore over the beating I give him or else he wants to make friends because he has saw that I am a bad guy to monkey with. Florrie tells me a little while ago that she paid the hole bill at the resturunt with my money because Allen was broke so you see what kind of a cheap skate he is Al and some day I am going to bust his jaw. She won't tell me how much the bill was and I won't ask her to no more because we had a good time outside of the fight and what do I care if we spent a little money? Yours truly, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, Januery 20._ FRIEND AL: Allen and his wife have gave up the flat across the hall from us and come over to live with us because we got a spair bedroom and why should they not have the bennifit of it? But it is pretty hard for the girls to have to cook and do the work when they is four of us so I have a hired girl who does it all for $7 a week. It is great stuff Al because now we can go round as we please and don't have to wait for no dishes to be washed or nothing. We generally almost always has dinner downtown in the evening so it is pretty soft for the girl too. She don't generally have no more than one meal to get because we generally run round downtown till late and don't get up till about noon. That sounds funny don't it Al, when I used to get up at 5 every morning down home. Well Al I can tell you something else that may sound funny and that is that I lost my taste for beer. I don't seem to care for it no more and I found I can stand allmost as many drinks of other stuff as I could of beer. I guess Al they is not nobody ever lived can drink more and stand up better under it than me. I make the girls and Allen quit every night. I only got just time to write you this short note because Florrie and Marie is giving a big party to-night and I and Allen have got to beat it out of the house and stay out of the way till they get things ready. It is Marie's berthday and she says she is 22 but say Al if she is 22 Kid Gleason is 30. Well Al the girls says we must blow so I will run out and mail this letter. Yours truly, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, Januery 31._ AL: Allen is going to take Marie with him on the training trip to California and of course Florrie has been at me to take her along. I told her postivly that she can't go. I can't afford no stunt like that but still I am up against it to know what to do with her while we are on the trip because Marie won't be here to stay with her. I don't like to leave her here all alone but they is nothing to it Al I can't afford to take her along. She says I don't see why you can't take me if Allen takes Marie. And I says That stuff is all O.K. for Allen because him and Marie has been grafting off of us all winter. And then she gets mad and tells me I should not ought to say her sister was no grafter. I did not mean nothing like that Al but you don't never know when a woman is going to take offense. If our furniture was down in Bedford everything would be all O.K. because I could leave her there and I would feel all O.K. because I would know that you and Bertha would see that she was getting along O.K. But they would not be no sense in sending her down to a house that has not no furniture in it. I wish I knowed somewheres where she could visit Al. I would be willing to pay her bord even. Well Al enough for this time. Your old pal, JACK. CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, FEBUERY 4. FRIEND AL: You are a real old pal Al and I certainly am greatful to you for the invatation. I have not told Florrie about it yet but I am sure she will be tickled to death and it is certainly kind of you old pal. I did not never dream of nothing like that. I note what you say Al about not excepting no bord but I think it would be better and I would feel better if you would take something say about $2 a week. I know Bertha will like Florrie and that they will get along O.K. together because Florrie can learn her how to make her cloths look good and fix her hair and fix up her face. I feel like as if you had took a big load off of me Al and I won't never forget it. If you don't think I should pay no bord for Florrie all right. Suit yourself about that old pal. We are leaveing here the 20 of Febuery and if you don't mind I will bring Florrie down to you about the 18. I would like to see the old bunch again and spesially you and Bertha. Yours, JACK. P.S. We will only be away till April 14 and that is just a nice visit. I wish we did not have no flat on our hands. _Chicago, Illinois, Febuery 9._ OLD PAL: I want to thank you for asking Florrie to come down there and visit you Al but I find she can't get away. I did not know she had no engagements but she says she may go down to her folks in Texas and she don't want to say that she will come to visit you when it is so indefanate. So thank you just the same Al and thank Bertha too. Florrie is still at me to take her along to California but honest Al I can't do it. I am right down to my last $50 and I have not payed no rent for this month. I owe the hired girl 2 weeks' salery and both I and Florrie needs some new cloths. Florrie has just came in since I started writeing this letter and we have been talking some more about California and she says maybe if I would ask Comiskey he would take her along as the club's guest. I had not never thought of that Al and maybe he would because he is a pretty good scout and I guess I will go and see him about it. The league has its skedule meeting here to-morrow and may be I can see him down to the hotel where they meet at. I am so worried Al that I can't write no more but I will tell you how I come out with Comiskey. Your pal, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, Febuery 11._ FRIEND AL: I am up against it right Al and I don't know where I am going to head in at. I went down to the hotel where the league was holding its skedule meeting at and I seen Comiskey and got some money off of the club but I owe all the money I got off of them and I am still wondering what to do about Florrie. Comiskey was busy in the meeting when I went down there and they was not no chance to see him for a while so I and Allen and some of the boys hung round and had a few drinks and fanned. This here Joe Hill the busher that Detroit has got that Violet is hooked up to was round the hotel. I don't know what for but I felt like busting his jaw only the boys told me I had better not do nothing because I might kill him and any way he probily won't be in the league much longer. Well finally Comiskey got threw the meeting and I seen him and he says Hello young man what can I do for you? And I says I would like to get $100 advance money. He says Have you been takeing care of yourself down in Bedford? And I told him I had been liveing here all winter and it did not seem to make no hit with him though I don't see what business it is of hisn where I live. So I says I had been takeing good care of myself. And I have Al. You know that. So he says I should come to the ball park the next day which is to-day and he would have the secretary take care of me but I says I could not wait and so he give me $100 out of his pocket and says he would have it charged against my salery. I was just going to brace him about the California trip when he got away and went back to the meeting. Well Al I hung round with the bunch waiting for him to get threw again and we had some more drinks and finally Comiskey was threw again and I braced him in the lobby and asked him if it was all right to take my wife along to California. He says Sure they would be glad to have her along. And then I says Would the club pay her fair? He says I guess you must of spent that $100 buying some nerve. He says Have you not got no sisters that would like to go along to? He says Does your wife insist on the drawing room or will she take a lower birth? He says Is my special train good enough for her? Then he turns away from me and I guess some of the boys must of heard the stuff he pulled because they was laughing when he went away but I did not see nothing to laugh at. But I guess he ment that I would have to pay her fair if she goes along and that is out of the question Al. I am up against it and I don't know where I am going to head in at. Your pal, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, Febuery 12._ DEAR OLD AL: I guess everything will be all O.K. now at least I am hopeing it will. When I told Florrie about how I come out with Comiskey she bawled her head off and I thought for a while I was going to have to call a doctor or something but pretty soon she cut it out and we sat there a while without saying nothing. Then she says If you could get your salery razed a couple of hundred dollars a year would you borrow the money ahead somewheres and take me along to California? I says Yes I would if I could get a couple hundred dollars more salery but how could I do that when I had signed a contract for $2800 last fall allready? She says Don't you think you are worth more than $2800? And I says Yes of coarse I was worth more than $2800. She says Well if you will go and talk the right way to Comiskey I believe he will give you $3000 but you must be sure you go at it the right way and don't go and ball it all up. Well we argude about it a while because I don't want to hold nobody up Al but finally I says I would. It would not be holding nobody up anyway because I am worth $3000 to the club if I am worth a nichol. The papers is all saying that the club has got a good chance to win the pennant this year and talking about the pitching staff and I guess they would not be no pitching staff much if it was not for I and one or two others--about one other I guess. So it looks like as if everything will be all O.K. now Al. I am going to the office over to the park to see him the first thing in the morning and I am pretty sure that I will get what I am after because if I do not he will see that I am going to quit and then he will see what he is up against and not let me get away. I will let you know how I come out. Your pal, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, Febuery 14._ FRIEND AL: Al old pal I have got a big supprise for you. I am going to the Federal League. I had a run in with Comiskey yesterday and I guess I told him a thing or 2. I guess he would of been glad to sign me at my own figure before I got threw but I was so mad I would not give him no chance to offer me another contract. I got out to the park at 9 oclock yesterday morning and it was a hour before he showed up and then he kept me waiting another hour so I was pretty sore when I finally went in to see him. He says Well young man what can I do for you? I says I come to see about my contract. He says Do you want to sign up for next year all ready? I says No I am talking about this year. He says I thought I and you talked business last fall. And I says Yes but now I think I am worth more money and I want to sign a contract for $3000. He says If you behave yourself and work good this year I will see that you are took care of. But I says That won't do because I have got to be sure I am going to get $3000. Then he says I am not sure you are going to get anything. I says What do you mean? And he says I have gave you a very fare contract and if you don't want to live up to it that is your own business. So I give him a awful call Al and told him I would jump to the Federal League. He says Oh, I would not do that if I was you. They are haveing a hard enough time as it is. So I says something back to him and he did not say nothing to me and I beat it out of the office. I have not told Florrie about the Federal League business yet as I am going to give her a big supprise. I bet they will take her along with me on the training trip and pay her fair but even if they don't I should not worry because I will make them give me a contract for $4000 a year and then I can afford to take her with me on all the trips. I will go down and see Tinker to-morrow morning and I will write you to-morrow night Al how much salery they are going to give me. But I won't sign for no less than $4000. You know me Al. Yours, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, Febuery 15._ OLD PAL: It is pretty near midnight Al but I been to bed a couple of times and I can't get no sleep. I am worried to death Al and I don't know where I am going to head in at. Maybe I will go out and buy a gun Al and end it all and I guess it would be better for everybody. But I cannot do that Al because I have not got the money to buy a gun with. I went down to see Tinker about signing up with the Federal League and he was busy in the office when I come in. Pretty soon Buck Perry the pitcher that was with Boston last year come out and seen me and as Tinker was still busy we went out and had a drink together. Buck shows me a contract for $5000 a year and Tinker had allso gave him a $500 bonus. So pretty soon I went up to the office and pretty soon Tinker seen me and called me into his private office and asked what did I want. I says I was ready to jump for $4000 and a bonus. He says I thought you was signed up with the White Sox. I says Yes I was but I was not satisfied. He says That does not make no difference to me if you are satisfied or not. You ought to of came to me before you signed a contract. I says I did not know enough but I know better now. He says Well it is to late now. We cannot have nothing to do with you because you have went and signed a contract with the White Sox. I argude with him a while and asked him to come out and have a drink so we could talk it over but he said he was busy so they was nothing for me to do but blow. So I am not going to the Federal League Al and I will not go with the White Sox because I have got a raw deal. Comiskey will be sorry for what he done when his team starts the season and is up against it for good pitchers and then he will probily be willing to give me anything I ask for but that don't do me no good now Al. I am way in debt and no chance to get no money from nobody. I wish I had of stayed with Terre Haute Al and never saw this league. Your pal, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, Febuery 17._ FRIEND AL: Al don't never let nobody tell you that these here lefthanders is right. This Allen my own brother-in-law who married sisters has been grafting and spongeing on me all winter Al. Look what he done to me now Al. You know how hard I been up against it for money and I know he has got plenty of it because I seen it on him. Well Al I was scared to tell Florrie I was cleaned out and so I went to Allen yesterday and says I had to have $100 right away because I owed the rent and owed the hired girl's salery and could not even pay no grocery bill. And he says No he could not let me have none because he has got to save all his money to take his wife on the trip to California. And here he has been liveing on me all winter and maybe I could of took my wife to California if I had not of spent all my money takeing care of this no good lefthander and his wife. And Al honest he has not got a thing and ought not to be in the league. He gets by with a dinky curve ball and has not got no more smoke than a rabbit or something. Well Al I felt like busting him in the jaw but then I thought No I might kill him and then I would have Marie and Florrie both to take care of and God knows one of them is enough besides paying his funeral expenses. So I walked away from him without takeing a crack at him and went into the other room where Florrie and Marie was at. I says to Marie I says Marie I wish you would go in the other room a minute because I want to talk to Florrie. So Marie beats it into the other room and then I tells Florrie all about what Comiskey and the Federal League done to me. She bawled something awful and then she says I was no good and she wished she had not never married me. I says I wisht it too and then she says Do you mean that and starts to cry. I told her I was sorry I says that because they is not no use fusing with girls Al specially when they is your wife. She says No California trip for me and then she says What are you going to do? And I says I did not know. She says Well if I was a man I would do something. So then I got mad and I says I will do something. So I went down to the corner salloon and started in to get good and drunk but I could not do it Al because I did not have the money. Well old pal I am going to ask you a big favor and it is this I want you to send me $100 Al for just a few days till I can get on my feet. I do not know when I can pay it back Al but I guess you know the money is good and I know you have got it. Who would not have it when they live in Bedford? And besides I let you take $20 in June 4 years ago Al and you give it back but I would not have said nothing to you if you had of kept it. Let me hear from you right away old pal. Yours truly, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, Febuery 19._ AL: I am certainly greatful to you Al for the $100 which come just a little while ago. I will pay the rent with it and part of the grocery bill and I guess the hired girl will have to wait a while for hern but she is sure to get it because I don't never forget my debts. I have changed my mind about the White Sox and I am going to go on the trip and take Florrie along because I don't think it would not be right to leave her here alone in Chi when her sister and all of us is going. I am going over to the ball park and up in the office pretty soon to see about it. I will tell Comiskey I changed my mind and he will be glad to get me back because the club has not got no chance to finish nowheres without me. But I won't go on no trip or give the club my services without them giveing me some more advance money so as I can take Florrie along with me because Al I would not go without her. Maybe Comiskey will make my salery $3000 like I wanted him to when he sees I am willing to be a good fellow and go along with him and when he knows that the Federal League would of gladly gave me $4000 if I had not of signed no contract with the White Sox. I think I will ask him for $200 advance money Al and if I get it may be I can send part of your $100 back to you but I know you cannot be in no hurry Al though you says you wanted it back as soon as possible. You could not be very hard up Al because it don't cost near so much to live in Bedford as it does up here. Anyway I will let you know how I come out with Comiskey and I will write you as soon as I get out to Paso Robles if I don't get no time to write you before I leave. Your pal, JACK. P.S. I have took good care of myself all winter Al and I guess I ought to have a great season. P.S. Florrie is tickled to death about going along and her and I will have some time together out there on the Coast if I can get some money somewheres. _Chicago, Illinois, Febuery 21._ FRIEND AL: I have not got the heart to write this letter to you Al. I am up here in my $42.50 a month flat and the club has went to California and Florrie has went too. I am flat broke Al and all I am asking you is to send me enough money to pay my fair to Bedford and they and all their leagues can go to hell Al. I was out to the ball park early yesterday morning and some of the boys was there all ready fanning and kidding each other. They tried to kid me to when I come in but I guess I give them as good as they give me. I was not in no mind for kidding Al because I was there on business and I wanted to see Comiskey and get it done with. Well the secretary come in finally and I went up to him and says I wanted to see Comiskey right away. He says The boss was busy and what did I want to see him about and I says I wanted to get some advance money because I was going to take my wife on the trip. He says This would be a fine time to be telling us about it even if you was going on the trip. And I says What do you mean? And he says You are not going on no trip with us because we have got wavers on you and you are sold to Milwaukee. Honest Al I thought he was kidding at first and I was waiting for him to laugh but he did not laugh and finally I says What do you mean? And he says Cannot you understand no English? You are sold to Milwaukee. Then I says I want to see the boss. He says It won't do you no good to see the boss and he is to busy to see you. I says I want to get some money. And he says You cannot get no money from this club and all you get is your fair to Milwaukee. I says I am not going to no Milwaukee anyway and he says I should not worry about that. Suit yourself. Well Al I told some of the boys about it and they was pretty sore and says I ought to bust the secretary in the jaw and I was going to do it when I thought No I better not because he is a little guy and I might kill him. I looked all over for Kid Gleason but he was not nowheres round and they told me he would not get into town till late in the afternoon. If I could of saw him Al he would of fixed me all up. I asked 3 or 4 of the boys for some money but they says they was all broke. But I have not told you the worst of it yet Al. When I come back to the flat Allen and Marie and Florrie was busy packing up and they asked me how I come out. I told them and Allen just stood there stareing like a big rummy but Marie and Florrie both begin to cry and I almost felt like as if I would like to cry to only I am not no baby Al. Well Al I told Florrie she might just is well quit packing and make up her mind that she was not going nowheres till I got money enough to go to Bedford where I belong. She kept right on crying and it got so I could not stand it no more so I went out to get a drink because I still had just about a dollar left yet. It was about 2 oclock when I left the flat and pretty near 5 when I come back because I had ran in to some fans that knowed who I was and would not let me get away and besides I did not want to see no more of Allen and Marie till they was out of the house and on their way. But when I come in Al they was nobody there. They was not nothing there except the furniture and a few of my things scattered round. I sit down for a few minutes because I guess I must of had to much to drink but finally I seen a note on the table addressed to me and I seen it was Florrie's writeing. I do not remember just what was there in the note Al because I tore it up the minute I read it but it was something about I could not support no wife and Allen had gave her enough money to go back to Texas and she was going on the 6 oclock train and it would not do me no good to try and stop her. Well Al they was not no danger of me trying to stop her. She was not no good Al and I wisht I had not of never saw either she or her sister or my brother-in-law. For a minute I thought I would follow Allen and his wife down to the deepo where the special train was to pull out of and wait till I see him and punch his jaw but I seen that would not get me nothing. So here I am all alone Al and I will have to stay here till you send me the money to come home. You better send me $25 because I have got a few little debts I should ought to pay before I leave town. I am not going to Milwaukee Al because I did not get no decent deal and nobody cannot make no sucker out of me. Please hurry up with the $25 Al old friend because I am sick and tired of Chi and want to get back there with my old pal. Yours, JACK. P.S. Al I wish I had of took poor little Violet when she was so stuck on me. CHAPTER IV A NEW BUSHER BREAKS IN _Chicago, Illinois, March 2._ FRIEND AL: Al that peace in the paper was all O.K. and the right dope just like you said. I seen president Johnson the president of the league to-day and he told me the peace in the papers was the right dope and Comiskey did not have no right to sell me to Milwaukee because the Detroit Club had never gave no wavers on me. He says the Detroit Club was late in fileing their claim and Comiskey must of tooken it for granted that they was going to wave but president Johnson was pretty sore about it at that and says Comiskey did not have no right to sell me till he was positive that they was not no team that wanted me. It will probily cost Comiskey some money for acting like he done and not paying no attention to the rules and I would not be supprised if president Johnson had him throwed out of the league. Well I asked president Johnson should I report at once to the Detroit Club down south and he says No you better wait till you hear from Comiskey and I says What has Comiskey got to do with it now? And he says Comiskey will own you till he sells you to Detroit or somewheres else. So I will have to go out to the ball park to-morrow and see is they any mail for me there because I probily will get a letter from Comiskey telling me I am sold to Detroit. If I had of thought at the time I would of knew that Detroit never would give no wavers on me after the way I showed Cobb and Crawford up last fall and I might of knew too that Detroit is in the market for good pitchers because they got a rotten pitching staff but they won't have no rotten staff when I get with them. If necessary I will pitch every other day for Jennings and if I do we will win the pennant sure because Detroit has got a club that can get 2 or 3 runs every day and all as I need to win most of my games is 1 run. I can't hardly wait till Jennings works me against the White Sox and what I will do to them will be a plenty. It don't take no pitching to beat them anyway and when they get up against a pitcher like I they might as well leave their bats in the bag for all the good their bats will do them. I guess Cobb and Crawford will be glad to have me on the Detroit Club because then they won't never have to hit against me except in practice and I won't pitch my best in practice because they will be teammates of mine and I don't never like to show none of my teammates up. At that though I don't suppose Jennings will let me do much pitching in practice because when he gets a hold of a good pitcher he won't want me to take no chances of throwing my arm away in practice. Al just think how funny it will be to have me pitching for the Tigers in the same town where Violet lives and pitching on the same club with her husband. It will not be so funny for Violet and her husband though because when she has a chance to see me work regular she will find out what a mistake she made takeing that lefthander instead of a man that has got some future and soon will be makeing 5 or $6000 a year because I won't sign with Detroit for no less than $5000 at most. Of coarse I could of had her if I had of wanted to but still and all it will make her feel pretty sick to see me winning games for Detroit while her husband is batting fungos and getting splinters in his unie from slideing up and down the bench. As for her husband the first time he opens his clam to me I will haul off and bust him one in the jaw but I guess he will know more than to start trouble with a man of my size and who is going to be one of their stars while he is just holding down a job because they feel sorry for him. I wish he could of got the girl I married instead of the one he got and I bet she would of drove him crazy. But I guess you can't drive a lefthander crazyer than he is to begin with. I have not heard nothing from Florrie Al and I don't want to hear nothing. I and her is better apart and I wish she would sew me for a bill of divorce so she could not go round claiming she is my wife and disgraceing my name. If she would consent to sew me for a bill of divorce I would gladly pay all the expenses and settle with her for any sum of money she wants say about $75.00 or $100.00 and they is no reason I should give her a nichol after the way her and her sister Marie and her brother-in-law Allen grafted off of me. Probily I could sew her for a bill of divorce but they tell me it costs money to sew and if you just lay low and let the other side do the sewing it don't cost you a nichol. It is pretty late Al and I have got to get up early to-morrow and go to the ball park and see is they any mail for me. I will let you know what I hear old pal. Your old pal, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, March 4._ AL: I am up against it again. I went out to the ball park office yesterday and they was nobody there except John somebody who is asst secretary and all the rest of them is out on the Coast with the team. Maybe this here John was trying to kid me but this is what he told me. First I says Is they a letter here for me? And he says No. And I says I was expecting word from Comiskey that I should join the Detroit Club and he says What makes you think you are going to Detroit? I says Comiskey asked wavers on me and Detroit did not give no wavers. He says Well that is not no sign that you are going to Detroit. If Comiskey can't get you out of the league he will probily keep you himself and it is a cinch he is not going to give no pitcher to Detroit no matter how rotten he is. I says What do you mean? And he says You just stick round town till you hear from Comiskey and I guess you will hear pretty soon because he is comeing back from the Coast next Saturday. I says Well the only thing he can tell me is to report to Detroit because I won't never pitch again for the White Sox. Then John gets fresh and says I suppose you will quit the game and live on your saveings and then I blowed out of the office because I was scared I would loose my temper and break something. So you see Al what I am up against. I won't never pitch for the White Sox again and I want to get with the Detroit Club but how can I if Comiskey won't let me go? All I can do is stick round till next Saturday and then I will see Comiskey and I guess when I tell him what I think of him he will be glad to let me go to Detroit or anywheres else. I will have something on him this time because I know that he did not pay no attention to the rules when he told me I was sold to Milwaukee and if he tries to slip something over on me I will tell president Johnson of the league all about it and then you will see where Comiskey heads in at. Al old pal that $25.00 you give me at the station the other day is all shot to peaces and I must ask you to let me have $25.00 more which will make $75.00 all together includeing the $25.00 you sent me before I come home. I hate to ask you this favor old pal but I know you have got the money. If I am sold to Detroit I will get some advance money and pay up all my dedts incluseive. If he don't let me go to Detroit I will make him come across with part of my salery for this year even if I don't pitch for him because I signed a contract and was ready to do my end of it and would of if he had not of been nasty and tried to slip something over on me. If he refuses to come across I will hire a attorney at law and he will get it all. So Al you see you have got a cinch on getting back what you lone me but I guess you know that Al without all this talk because you have been my old pal for a good many years and I have allways treated you square and tried to make you feel that I and you was equals and that my success was not going to make me forget my old friends. Wherever I pitch this year I will insist on a salery of 5 or $6000 a year. So you see on my first pay day I will have enough to pay you up and settle the rest of my dedts but I am not going to pay no more rent for this rotten flat because they tell me if a man don't pay no rent for a while they will put him out. Let them put me out. I should not worry but will go and rent my old room that I had before I met Florrie and got into all this trouble. The sooner you can send me that $35.00 the better and then I will owe you $85.00 incluseive and I will write and let you know how I come out with Comiskey. Your pal, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, March 12._ FRIEND AL: I got another big supprise for you and this is it I am going to pitch for the White Sox after all. If Comiskey was not a old man I guess I would of lost my temper and beat him up but I am glad now that I kept my temper and did not loose it because I forced him to make a lot of consessions and now it looks like as though I would have a big year both pitching and money. He got back to town yesterday morning and showed up to his office in the afternoon and I was there waiting for him. He would not see me for a while but finally I acted like as though I was getting tired of waiting and I guess the secretary got scared that I would beat it out of the office and leave them all in the lerch. Anyway he went in and spoke to Comiskey and then come out and says the boss was ready to see me. When I went into the office where he was at he says Well young man what can I do for you? And I says I want you to give me my release so as I can join the Detroit Club down South and get in shape. Then he says What makes you think you are going to join the Detroit Club? Because we need you here. I says Then why did you try to sell me to Milwaukee? But you could not because you could not get no wavers. Then he says I thought I was doing you a favor by sending you to Milwaukee because they make a lot of beer up there. I says What do you mean? He says You been keeping in shape all this winter by trying to drink this town dry and besides that you tried to hold me up for more money when you allready had signed a contract allready and so I was going to send you to Milwaukee and learn you something and besides you tried to go with the Federal League but they would not take you because they was scared to. I don't know where he found out all that stuff at Al and besides he was wrong when he says I was drinking to much because they is not nobody that can drink more than me and not be effected. But I did not say nothing because I was scared I would forget myself and call him some name and he is a old man. Yes I did say something. I says Well I guess you found out that you could not get me out of the league and then he says Don't never think I could not get you out of the league. If you think I can't send you to Milwaukee I will prove it to you that I can. I says You can't because Detroit won't give no wavers on me. He says Detroit will give wavers on you quick enough if I ask them. Then he says Now you can take your choice you can stay here and pitch for me at the salery you signed up for and you can cut out the monkey business and drink water when you are thirsty or else you can go up to Milwaukee and drownd yourself in one of them brewrys. Which shall it be? I says How can you keep me or send me to Milwaukee when Detroit has allready claimed my services? He says Detroit has claimed a lot of things and they have even claimed the pennant but that is not no sign they will win it. He says And besides you would not want to pitch for Detroit because then you would not never have no chance to pitch against Cobb and show him up. Well Al when he says that I knowed he appresiated what a pitcher I am even if he did try to sell me to Milwaukee or he would not of made that remark about the way I can show Cobb and Crawford up. So I says Well if you need me that bad I will pitch for you but I must have a new contract. He says Oh I guess we can fix that up O.K. and he steps out in the next room a while and then he comes back with a new contract. And what do you think it was Al? It was a contract for 3 years so you see I am sure of my job here for 3 years and everything is all O.K. The contract calls for the same salery a year for 3 years that I was going to get before for only 1 year which is $2800.00 a year and then I will get in on the city serious money too and the Detroit Club don't have no city serious and have no chance to get into the World's Serious with the rotten pitching staff they got. So you see Al he fixed me up good and that shows that he must think a hole lot of me or he would of sent me to Detroit or maybe to Milwaukee but I don't see how he could of did that without no wavers. Well Al I allmost forgot to tell you that he has gave me a ticket to Los Angeles where the 2d team are practicing at now but where the 1st team will be at in about a week. I am leaveing to-night and I guess before I go I will go down to president Johnson and tell him that I am fixed up all O.K. and have not got no kick comeing so that president Johnson will not fine Comiskey for not paying no attention to the rules or get him fired out of the league because I guess Comiskey must be all O.K. and good hearted after all. I won't pay no attention to what he says about me drinking this town dry because he is all wrong in regards to that. He must of been jokeing I guess because nobody but some boob would think he could drink this town dry but at that I guess I can hold more than anybody and not be effected. But I guess I will cut it out for a while at that because I don't want to get them sore at me after the contract they give me. I will write to you from Los Angeles Al and let you know what the boys says when they see me and I will bet that they will be tickled to death. The rent man was round to-day but I seen him comeing and he did not find me. I am going to leave the furniture that belongs in the flat in the flat and allso the furniture I bought which don't amount to much because it was not no real Sir Cashion walnut and besides I don't want nothing round me to remind me of Florrie because the sooner her and I forget each other the better. Tell the boys about my good luck Al but it is not no luck neither because it was comeing to me. Yours truly, JACK. _Los Angeles, California, March 16._ AL: Here I am back with the White Sox again and it seems to good to be true because just like I told you they are all tickled to death to see me. Kid Gleason is here in charge of the 2d team and when he seen me come into the hotel he jumped up and hit me in the stumach but he acts like that whenever he feels good so I could not get sore at him though he had no right to hit me in the stumach. If he had of did it in ernest I would of walloped him in the jaw. He says Well if here ain't the old lady killer. He ment Al that I am strong with the girls but I am all threw with them now but he don't know nothing about the troubles I had. He says Are you in shape? And I told him Yes I am. He says Yes you look in shape like a barrel. I says They is not no fat on me and if I am a little bit bigger than last year it is because my mussels is bigger. He says Yes your stumach mussels is emense and you must of gave them plenty of exercise. Wait till Bodie sees you and he will want to stick round you all the time because you make him look like a broom straw or something. I let him kid me along because what is the use of getting mad at him? And besides he is all O.K. even if he is a little rough. I says to him A little work will fix me up all O.K. and he says You bet you are going to get some work because I am going to see to it myself. I says You will have to hurry because you will be going up to Frisco in a few days and I am going to stay here and join the 1st club. Then he says You are not going to do no such a thing. You are going right along with me. I knowed he was kidding me then because Callahan would not never leave me with the 2d team no more after what I done for him last year and besides most of the stars generally allways goes with the 1st team on the training trip. Well I seen all the rest of the boys that is here with the 2d team and they all acted like as if they was glad to see me and why should not they be when they know that me being here with the White Sox and not with Detroit means that Callahan won't have to do no worrying about his pitching staff? But they is four or 5 young recrut pitchers with the team here and I bet they is not so glad to see me because what chance have they got? If I was Comiskey and Callahan I would not spend no money on new pitchers because with me and 1 or 2 of the other boys we got the best pitching staff in the league. And instead of spending the money for new pitching recruts I would put it all in a lump and buy Ty Cobb or Sam Crawford off of Detroit or somebody else who can hit and Cobb and Crawford is both real hitters Al even if I did make them look like suckers. Who wouldn't? Well Al to-morrow A.M. I am going out and work a little and in the P.M. I will watch the game between we and the Venice Club but I won't pitch none because Gleason would not dare take no chances of me hurting my arm. I will write to you in a few days from here because no matter what Gleason says I am going to stick here with the 1st team because I know Callahan will want me along with him for a attraction. Your pal, JACK. _San Francisco, California, March 20._ FRIEND AL: Well Al here I am back in old Frisco with the 2d team but I will tell you how it happened Al. Yesterday Gleason told me to pack up and get ready to leave Los Angeles with him and I says No I am going to stick here and wait for the 1st team and then he says I guess I must of overlooked something in the papers because I did not see nothing about you being appointed manager of the club. I says No I am not manager but Callahan is manager and he will want to keep me with him. He says I got a wire from Callahan telling me to keep you with my club but of coarse if you know what Callahan wants better than he knows it himself why then go ahead and stay here or go jump in the Pacific Ocean. Then he says I know why you don't want to go with me and I says Why? And he says Because you know I will make you work and won't let you eat everything on the bill of fair includeing the name of the hotel at which we are stopping at. That made me sore and I was just going to call him when he says Did not you marry Mrs. Allen's sister? And I says Yes but that is not none of your business. Then he says Well I don't want to butt into your business but I heard you and your wife had some kind of a argument and she beat it. I says Yes she give me a rotten deal. He says Well then I don't see where it is going to be very pleasant for you traveling round with the 1st club because Allen and his wife is both with that club and what do you want to be mixed up with them for? I says I am not scared of Allen or his wife or no other old hen. So here I am Al with the 2d team but it is only for a while till Callahan gets sick of some of them pitchers he has got and sends for me so as he can see some real pitching. And besides I am glad to be here in Frisco where I made so many friends when I was pitching here for a short time till Callahan heard about my work and called me back to the big show where I belong at and nowheres else. Yours truly, JACK. _San Francisco, California, March 25._ OLD PAL: Al I got a supprise for you. Who do you think I seen last night? Nobody but Hazel. Her name now is Hazel Levy because you know Al she married Kid Levy the middle-weight and I wish he was champion of the world Al because then it would not take me more than about a minute to be champion of the world myself. I have not got nothing against him though because he married her and if he had not of I probily would of married her myself but at that she could not of treated me no worse than Florrie. Well they was setting at a table in the cafe where her and I use to go pretty near every night. She spotted me when I first come in and sends a waiter over to ask me to come and have a drink with them. I went over because they was no use being nasty and let bygones be bygones. She interduced me to her husband and he asked me what was I drinking. Then she butts in and says Oh you must let Mr. Keefe buy the drinks because it hurts his feelings to have somebody else buy the drinks. Then Levy says Oh he is one of these here spendrifts is he? and she says Yes he don't care no more about a nichol than his right eye does. I says I guess you have got no holler comeing on the way I spend my money. I don't steal no money anyway. She says What do you mean? and I says I guess you know what I mean. How about that $30.00 that you borrowed off of me and never give it back? Then her husband cuts in and says You cut that line of talk out or I will bust you. I says Yes you will. And he says Yes I will. Well Al what was the use of me starting trouble with him when he has got enough trouble right to home and besides as I say I have not got nothing against him. So I got up and blowed away from the table and I bet he was relieved when he seen I was not going to start nothing. I beat it out of there a while afterward because I was not drinking nothing and I don't have no fun setting round a place and lapping up ginger ail or something. And besides the music was rotten. Al I am certainly glad I throwed Hazel over because she has grew to be as big as a horse and is all painted up. I don't care nothing about them big dolls no more or about no other kind neither. I am off of them all. They can all of them die and I should not worry. Well Al I done my first pitching of the year this P.M. and I guess I showed them that I was in just as good a shape as some of them birds that has been working a month. I worked 4 innings against my old team the San Francisco Club and I give them nothing but fast ones but they sure was fast ones and you could hear them zip. Charlie O'Leary was trying to get out of the way of one of them and it hit his bat and went over first base for a base hit but at that Fournier would of eat it up if it had of been Chase playing first base instead of Fournier. That was the only hit they got off of me and they ought to of been ashamed to of tooken that one. But Gleason don't appresiate my work and him and I allmost come to blows at supper. I was pretty hungry and I ordered some stake and some eggs and some pie and some ice cream and some coffee and a glass of milk but Gleason would not let me have the pie or the milk and would not let me eat more than 1/2 the stake. And it is a wonder I did not bust him and tell him to mind his own business. I says What right have you got to tell me what to eat? And he says You don't need nobody to tell you what to eat you need somebody to keep you from floundering yourself. I says Why can't I eat what I want to when I have worked good? He says Who told you you worked good and I says I did not need nobody to tell me. I know I worked good because they could not do nothing with me. He says Well it is a good thing for you that they did not start bunting because if you had of went to stoop over and pick up the ball you would of busted wide open. I says Why? and he says because you are hog fat and if you don't let up on the stable and fancy groceries we will have to pay 2 fairs to get you back to Chi. I don't remember now what I says to him but I says something you can bet on that. You know me Al. I wish Al that Callahan would hurry up and order me to join the 1st team. If he don't Al I believe Gleason will starve me to death. A little slob like him don't realize that a big man like I needs good food and plenty of it. Your pal, JACK. _Salt Lake City, Utah, April 1._ AL: Well Al we are on our way East and I am still with the 2d team and I don't understand why Callahan don't order me to join the 1st team but maybe it is because he knows that I am all right and have got the stuff and he wants to keep them other guys round where he can see if they have got anything. The recrut pitchers that is along with our club have not got nothing and the scout that reckommended them must of been full of hops or something. It is not no common thing for a club to pick up a man that has got the stuff to make him a star up here and the White Sox was pretty lucky to land me but I don't understand why they throw their money away on new pitchers when none of them is no good and besides who would want a better pitching staff than we got right now without no raw recruts and bushers. I worked in Oakland the day before yesterday but he only let me go the 1st 4 innings. I bet them Oakland birds was glad when he took me out. When I was in that league I use to just throw my glove in the box and them Oakland birds was licked and honest Al some of them turned white when they seen I was going to pitch the other day. I felt kind of sorry for them and I did not give them all I had so they got 5 or 6 hits and scored a couple of runs. I was not feeling very good at that and besides we got some awful excuses for a ball player on this club and the support they give me was the rottenest I ever seen gave anybody. But some of them won't be in this league more than about 10 minutes more so I should not fret as they say. We play here this afternoon and I don't believe I will work because the team they got here is not worth wasteing nobody on. They must be a lot of boobs in this town Al because they tell me that some of them has got 1/2 a dozen wives or so. And what a man wants with 1 wife is a misery to me let alone a 1/2 dozen. I will probily work against Denver because they got a good club and was champions of the Western League last year. I will make them think they are champions of the Epworth League or something. Yours truly, JACK. _Des Moines, Iowa, April 10._ FRIEND AL: We got here this A.M. and this is our last stop and we will be in old Chi to-morrow to open the season. The 1st team gets home to-day and I would be there with them if Callahan was a real manager who knowed something about manageing because if I am going to open the season I should ought to have 1 day of rest at home so I would have all my strenth to open the season. The Cleveland Club will be there to open against us and Callahan must know that I have got them licked any time I start against them. As soon as my name is announced to pitch the Cleveland Club is licked or any other club when I am right and they don't kick the game away behind me. Gleason told me on the train last night that I was going to pitch here to-day but I bet by this time he has got orders from Callahan to let me rest and to not give me no more work because suppose even if I did not start the game to-morrow I probily will have to finish it. Gleason has been sticking round me like as if I had a million bucks or something. I can't even sit down and smoke a cigar but what he is there to knock the ashes off of it. He is O.K. and good-hearted if he is a little rough and keeps hitting me in the stumach but I wish he would leave me alone sometimes espesially at meals. He was in to breakfast with me this A.M. and after I got threw I snuck off down the street and got something to eat. That is not right because it costs me money when I have to go away from the hotel and eat and what right has he got to try and help me order my meals? Because he don't know what I want and what my stumach wants. My stumach don't want to have him punching it all the time but he keeps on doing it. So that shows he don't know what is good for me. But is a old man Al otherwise I would not stand for the stuff he pulls. The 1st thing I am going to do when we get to Chi is I am going to a resturunt somewheres and get a good meal where Gleason or no one else can't get at me. I know allready what I am going to eat and that is a big stake and a apple pie and that is not all. Well Al watch the papers and you will see what I done to that Cleveland Club and I hope Lajoie and Jackson is both in good shape because I don't want to pick on no cripples. Your pal, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, April 16._ OLD PAL: Yesterday was the 1st pay day old pal and I know I promised to pay you what I owe you and it is $75.00 because when I asked you for $35.00 before I went West you only sent me $25.00 which makes the hole sum $75.00. Well Al I can't pay you now because the pay we drawed was only for 4 days and did not amount to nothing and I had to buy a meal ticket and fix up about my room rent. And then they is another thing Al which I will tell you about. I come into the clubhouse the day the season opened and the 1st guy I seen was Allen. I was going up to bust him but he come up and held his hand out and what was they for me to do but shake hands with him if he is going to be yellow like that? He says Well Jack I am glad they did not send you to Milwaukee and I bet you will have a big year. I says Yes I will have a big year O.K. if you don't sick another 1 of your sister-in-laws on to me. He says Oh don't let they be no hard feelings about that. You know it was not no fault of mine and I bet if you was to write to Florrie everything could be fixed up O.K. I says I don't want to write to no Florrie but I will get a attorney at law to write to her. He says You don't even know where she is at and I says I don't care where she is at. Where is she? He says She is down to her home in Waco, Texas, and if I was you I would write to her myself and not let no attorney at law write to her because that would get her mad and besides what do you want a attorney at law to write to her about? I says I am going to sew her for a bill of divorce. Then he says On what grounds? and I says Dessertion. He says You better not do no such thing or she will sew you for a bill of divorce for none support and then you will look like a cheap guy. I says I don't care what I look like. So you see Al I had to send Florrie $10.00 or maybe she would be mean enough to sew me for a bill of divorce on the ground of none support and that would make me look bad. Well Al, Allen told me his wife wanted to talk to me and try and fix things up between I and Florrie but I give him to understand that I would not stand for no meeting with his wife and he says Well suit yourself about that but they is no reason you and I should quarrel. You see Al he don't want no mix-up with me because he knows he could not get nothing but the worst of it. I will be friends with him but I won't have nothing to do with Marie because if it had not of been for she and Florrie I would have money in the bank besides not being in no danger of getting sewed for none support. I guess you must of read about Joe Benz getting married and I guess he must of got a good wife and 1 that don't bother him all the time because he pitched the opening game and shut Cleveland out with 2 hits. He was pretty good Al, better than I ever seen him and they was a couple of times when his fast ball was pretty near as fast as mine. I have not worked yet Al and I asked Callahan to-day what was the matter and he says I was waiting for you to get in shape. I says I am in shape now and I notice that when I was pitching in practice this A.M. they did not hit nothing out of the infield. He says That was because you are so spread out that they could not get nothing past you. He says The way you are now you cover more ground than the grand stand. I says Is that so? And he walked away. We go out on a trip to Cleveland and Detroit and St. Louis in a few days and maybe I will take my regular turn then because the other pitchers has been getting away lucky because most of the hitters has not got their batting eye as yet but wait till they begin hitting and then it will take a man like I to stop them. The 1st of May is our next pay day Al and then I will have enough money so as I can send you the $75.00. Your pal, JACK. _Detroit, Michigan, April 28._ FRIEND AL: What do you think of a rotten manager that bawls me out and fines me $50.00 for loosing a 1 to 0 game in 10 innings when it was my 1st start this season? And no wonder I was a little wild in the 10th when I had not had no chance to work and get control. I got a good notion to quit this rotten club and jump to the Federals where a man gets some kind of treatment. Callahan says I throwed the game away on purpose but I did not do no such a thing Al because when I throwed that ball at Joe Hill's head I forgot that the bases was full and besides if Gleason had not of starved me to death the ball that hit him in the head would of killed him. And how could a man go to 1st base and the winning run be forced in if he was dead which he should ought to of been the lucky left handed stiff if I had of had my full strenth to put on my fast one instead of being 1/2 starved to death and weak. But I guess I better tell you how it come off. The papers will get it all wrong like they generally allways does. Callahan asked me this A.M. if I thought I was hard enough to work and I was tickled to death, because I seen he was going to give me a chance. I told him Sure I was in good shape and if them Tigers scored a run off me he could keep me setting on the bench the rest of the summer. So he says All right I am going to start you and if you go good maybe Gleason will let you eat some supper. Well Al when I begin warming up I happened to look up in the grand stand and who do you think I seen? Nobody but Violet. She smiled when she seen me but I bet she felt more like crying. Well I smiled back at her because she probily would of broke down and made a seen or something if I had not of. They was not nobody warming up for Detroit when I begin warming up but pretty soon I looked over to their bench and Joe Hill Violet's husband was warming up. I says to myself Well here is where I show that bird up if they got nerve enough to start him against me but probily Jennings don't want to waste no real pitcher on this game which he knows we got cinched and we would of had it cinched Al if they had of got a couple of runs or even 1 run for me. Well, Jennings come passed our bench just like he allways does and tried to pull some of his funny stuff. He says Hello are you still in the league? I says Yes but I come pretty near not being. I came pretty near being with Detroit. I wish you could of heard Gleason and Callahan laugh when I pulled that one on him. He says something back but it was not no hot comeback like mine. Well Al if I had of had any work and my regular control I guess I would of pitched a 0 hit game because the only time they could touch me was when I had to ease up to get them over. Cobb was out of the game and they told me he was sick but I guess the truth is that he knowed I was going to pitch. Crawford got a couple of lucky scratch hits off of me because I got in the hole to him and had to let up. But the way that lucky left handed Hill got by was something awful and if I was as lucky as him I would quit pitching and shoot craps or something. Our club can't hit nothing anyway. But batting against this bird was just like hitting fungos. His curve ball broke about 1/2 a inch and you could of wrote your name and address on his fast one while it was comeing up there. He had good control but who would not when they put nothing on the ball? Well Al we could not get started against the lucky stiff and they could not do nothing with me even if my suport was rotten and I give a couple or 3 or 4 bases on balls but when they was men waiting to score I zipped them threw there so as they could not see them let alone hit them. Every time I come to the bench between innings I looked up to where Violet was setting and give her a smile and she smiled back and once I seen her clapping her hands at me after I had made Moriarty pop up in the pinch. Well we come along to the 10th inning, 0 and 0, and all of a sudden we got after him. Bodie hits one and Schalk gets 2 strikes and 2 balls and then singles. Callahan tells Alcock to bunt and he does it but Hill sprawls all over himself like the big boob he is and the bases is full with nobody down. Well Gleason and Callahan argude about should they send somebody up for me or let me go up there and I says Let me go up there because I can murder this bird and Callahan says Well they is nobody out so go up and take a wallop. Honest Al if this guy had of had anything at all I would of hit 1 out of the park, but he did not have even a glove. And how can a man hit pitching which is not no pitching at all but just slopping them up? When I went up there I hollered to him and says Stick 1 over here now you yellow stiff. And he says Yes I can stick them over allright and that is where I got something on you. Well Al I hit a foul off of him that would of been a fare ball and broke up the game if the wind had not of been against it. Then I swung and missed a curve that I don't see how I missed it. The next 1 was a yard outside and this Evans calls it a strike. He has had it in for me ever since last year when he tried to get funny with me and I says something back to him that stung him. So he calls this 3d strike on me and I felt like murdering him. But what is the use? I throwed down my bat and come back to the bench and I was glad Callahan and Gleason was out on the coaching line or they probily would of said something to me and I would of cut loose and beat them up. Well Al Weaver and Blackburne looked like a couple of rums up there and we don't score where we ought to of had 3 or 4 runs with any kind of hitting. I would of been all O.K. in spite of that peace of rotten luck if this big Hill had of walked to the bench and not said nothing like a real pitcher. But what does he do but wait out there till I start for the box and I says Get on to the bench you lucky stiff or do you want me to hand you something? He says I don't want nothing more of yourn. I allready got your girl and your goat. Well Al what do you think of a man that would say a thing like that? And nobody but a left hander could of. If I had of had a gun I would of killed him deader than a doornail or something. He starts for the bench and I hollered at him Wait till you get up to that plate and then I am going to bean you. Honest Al I was so mad I could not see the plate or nothing. I don't even know who it was come up to bat 1st but whoever it was I hit him in the arm and he walks to first base. The next guy bunts and Chase tries to pull off 1 of them plays of hisn instead of playing safe and he don't get nobody. Well I kept getting madder and madder and I walks Stanage who if I had of been myself would not foul me. Callahan has Scotty warming up and Gleason runs out from the bench and tells me I am threw but Callahan says Wait a minute he is going to let Hill hit and this big stiff ought to be able to get him out of the way and that will give Scotty a chance to get warm. Gleason says You better not take a chance because the big busher is hogwild, and they kept argueing till I got sick of listening to them and I went back to the box and got ready to pitch. But when I seen this Hill up there I forgot all about the ball game and I cut loose at his bean. Well Al my control was all O.K. this time and I catched him square on the fourhead and he dropped like as if he had been shot. But pretty soon he gets up and gives me the laugh and runs to first base. I did not know the game was over till Weaver come up and pulled me off the field. But if I had not of been 1/2 starved to death and weak so as I could not put all my stuff on the ball you can bet that Hill never would of ran to first base and Violet would of been a widow and probily a lot better off than she is now. At that I never should ought to of tried to kill a lefthander by hitting him in the head. Well Al they jumped all over me in the clubhouse and I had to hold myself back or I would of gave somebody the beating of their life. Callahan tells me I am fined $50.00 and suspended without no pay. I asked him What for and he says They would not be no use in telling you because you have not got no brains. I says Yes I have to got some brains and he says Yes but they is in your stumach. And then he says I wish we had of sent you to Milwaukee and I come back at him. I says I wish you had of. Well Al I guess they is no chance of getting square treatment on this club and you won't be supprised if you hear of me jumping to the Federals where a man is treated like a man and not like no white slave. Yours truly, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, May 2._ AL: I have got to disappoint you again Al. When I got up to get my pay yesterday they held out $150.00 on me. $50.00 of it is what I was fined for loosing a 1 to 0 10-inning game in Detroit when I was so weak that I should ought never to of been sent in there and the $100.00 is the advance money that I drawed last winter and which I had forgot all about and the club would of forgot about it to if they was not so tight fisted. So you see all I get for 2 weeks' pay is about $80.00 and I sent $25.00 to Florrie so she can't come no none support business on me. I am still suspended Al and not drawing no pay now and I got a notion to hire a attorney at law and force them to pay my salery or else jump to the Federals where a man gets good treatment. Allen is still after me to come over to his flat some night and see his wife and let her talk to me about Florrie but what do I want to talk about Florrie for or talk about nothing to a nut left hander's wife? The Detroit Club is here and Cobb is playing because he knows I am suspended but I wish Callahan would call it off and let me work against them and I would certainly love to work against this Joe Hill again and I bet they would be a different story this time because I been getting something to eat since we been home and I got back most of my strenth. Your old pal, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, May 5._ FRIEND AL: Well Al if you been reading the papers you will know before this letter is received what I done. Before the Detroit Club come here Joe Hill had win 4 strate but he has not win no 5 strate or won't neither Al because I put a crimp in his winning streek just like I knowed I would do if I got a chance when I was feeling good and had all my strenth. Callahan asked me yesterday A.M. if I thought I had enough rest and I says Sure because I did not need no rest in the 1st place. Well, he says, I thought maybe if I layed you off a few days you would do some thinking and if you done some thinking once in a while you would be a better pitcher. Well anyway I worked and I wish you could of saw them Tigers trying to hit me Cobb and Crawford incluseive. The 1st time Cobb come up Weaver catched a lucky line drive off of him and the next time I eased up a little and Collins run back and took a fly ball off of the fence. But the other times he come up he looked like a sucker except when he come up in the 8th and then he beat out a bunt but allmost anybody is liable to do that once in a while. Crawford got a scratch hit between Chase and Blackburne in the 2d inning and in the 4th he was gave a three-base hit by this Evans who should ought to be writeing for the papers instead of trying to umpire. The ball was 2 feet foul and I bet Crawford will tell you the same thing if you ask him. But what I done to this Hill was awful. I give him my curve twice when he was up there in the 3d and he missed it a foot. Then I come with my fast ball right past his nose and I bet if he had not of ducked it would of drove that big horn of hisn clear up in the press box where them rotten reporters sits and smokes their hops. Then when he was looking for another fast one I slopped up my slow one and he is still swinging at it yet. But the best of it was that I practally won my own game. Bodie and Schalk was on when I come up in the 5th and Hill hollers to me and says I guess this is where I shoot one of them bean balls. I says Go ahead and shoot and if you hit me in the head and I ever find it out I will write and tell your wife what happened to you. You see what I was getting at Al. I was insinuateing that if he beaned me with his fast one I would not never know nothing about it if somebody did not tell me because his fast one is not fast enough to hurt nobody even if it should hit them in the head. So I says to him Go ahead and shoot and if you hit me in the head and I ever find it out I will write and tell your wife what happened to you. See, Al? Of coarse you could not hire me to write to Violet but I did not mean that part of it in ernest. Well sure enough he shot at my bean and I ducked out of the way though if it had of hit me it could not of did no more than tickle. He takes 2 more shots and misses me and then Jennings hollers from the bench What are you doing pitching or trying to win a cigar? So then Hill sees what a monkey he is makeing out of himself and tries to get one over, but I have him 3 balls and nothing and what I done to that groover was a plenty. She went over Bush's head like a bullet and got between Cobb and Veach and goes clear to the fence. Bodie and Schalk scores and I would of scored to if anybody else besides Cobb had of been chaseing the ball. I got 2 bases and Weaver scores me with another wallop. Say, I wish I could of heard what they said to that baby on the bench. Callahan was tickled to death and he says Maybe I will give you back that $50.00 if you keep that stuff up. I guess I will get that $50.00 back next pay day and if I do Al I will pay you the hole $75.00. Well Al I beat them 5 to 4 and with good support I would of held them to 1 run but what do I care as long as I beat them? I wish though that Violet could of been there and saw it. Yours truly, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, May 29._ OLD PAL: Well Al I have not wrote to you for a long while but it is not because I have forgot you and to show I have not forgot you I am incloseing the $75.00 which I owe you. It is a money order Al and you can get it cashed by takeing it to Joe Higgins at the P.O. Since I wrote to you Al I been East with the club and I guess you know what I done in the East. The Athaletics did not have no right to win that 1 game off of me and I will get them when they come here the week after next. I beat Boston and just as good as beat New York twice because I beat them 1 game all alone and then saved the other for Eddie Cicotte in the 9th inning and shut out the Washington Club and would of did the same thing if Johnson had of been working against me instead of this left handed stiff Boehling. Speaking of left handers Allen has been going rotten and I would not be supprised if they sent him to Milwaukee or Frisco or somewheres. But I got bigger news than that for you Al. Florrie is back and we are liveing together in the spair room at Allen's flat so I hope they don't send him to Milwaukee or nowheres else because it is not costing us nothing for room rent and this is no more than right after the way the Allens grafted off of us all last winter. I bet you will be supprised to know that I and Florrie has made it up and they is a secret about it Al which I can't tell you now but maybe next month I will tell you and then you will be more supprised than ever. It is about I and Florrie and somebody else. But that is all I can tell you now. We got in this A.M. Al and when I got to my room they was a slip of paper there telling me to call up a phone number so I called it up and it was Allen's flat and Marie answered the phone. And when I reckonized her voice I was going to hang up the phone but she says Wait a minute somebody wants to talk with you. And then Florrie come to the phone and I was going to hang up the phone again when she pulled this secret on me that I was telling you about. So it is all fixed up between us Al and I wish I could tell you the secret but that will come later. I have tooken my baggage over to Allen's and I am there now writeing to you while Florrie is asleep. And after a while I am going out and mail this letter and get a glass of beer because I think I have got 1 comeing now on account of this secret. Florrie says she is sorry for the way she treated me and she cried when she seen me. So what is the use of me being nasty Al? And let bygones be bygones. Your pal, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, June 16._ FRIEND AL: Al I beat the Athaletics 2 to 1 to-day but I am writeing to you to give you the supprise of your life. Old pal I got a baby and he is a boy and we are going to name him Allen which Florrie thinks is after his uncle and aunt Allen but which is after you old pal. And she can call him Allen but I will call him Al because I don't never go back on my old pals. The baby was born over to the hospital and it is going to cost me a bunch of money but I should not worry. This is the secret I was going to tell you Al and I am the happyest man in the world and I bet you are most as tickled to death to hear about it as I am. The baby was born just about the time I was makeing McInnis look like a sucker in the pinch but they did not tell me nothing about it till after the game and then they give me a phone messige in the clubhouse. I went right over there and everything was all O.K. Little Al is a homely little skate but I guess all babys is homely and don't have no looks till they get older and maybe he will look like Florrie or I then I won't have no kick comeing. Be sure and tell Bertha the good news and tell her everything has came out all right except that the rent man is still after me about that flat I had last winter. And I am still paying the old man $10.00 a month for that house you got for me and which has not never done me no good. But I should not worry about money when I got a real family. Do you get that Al, a real family? Well Al I am to happy to do no more writeing to-night but I wanted you to be the 1st to get the news and I would of sent you a telegram only I did not want to scare you. Your pal, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, July 2._ OLD PAL: Well old pal I just come back from St. Louis this A.M. and found things in pretty fare shape. Florrie and the baby is out to Allen's and we will stay there till I can find another place. The Dr. was out to look at the baby this A.M. and the baby was waveing his arm round in the air. And Florrie asked was they something the matter with him that he kept waveing his arm. And the Dr. says No he was just getting his exercise. Well Al I noticed that he never waved his right arm but kept waveing his left arm and I asked the Dr. why was that. Then the Dr. says I guess he must be left handed. That made me sore and I says I guess you doctors don't know it all. And then I turned round and beat it out of the room. Well Al it would be just my luck to have him left handed and Florrie should ought to of knew better than to name him after Allen. I am going to hire another Dr. and see what he has to say because they must be some way of fixing babys so as they won't be left handed. And if nessary I will cut his left arm off of him. Of coarse I would not do that Al. But how would I feel if a boy of mine turned out like Allen and Joe Hill and some of them other nuts? We have a game with St. Louis to-morrow and a double header on the 4th of July. I guess probily Callahan will work me in one of the 4th of July games on account of the holiday crowd. Your pal, JACK. P.S. Maybe I should ought to leave the kid left handed so as he can have some of their luck. The lucky stiffs. CHAPTER V THE BUSHER'S KID _Chicago, Illinois, July 31._ FRIEND AL: Well Al what do you think of little Al now? But I guess I better tell you first what he done. Maybe you won't believe what I am telling you but did you ever catch me telling you a lie? I guess you know you did not Al. Well we got back from the East this A.M. and I don't have to tell you we had a rotten trip and if it had not of been for me beating Boston once and the Athaletics two times we would of been ashamed to come home. I guess these here other pitchers thought we was haveing a vacation and when they go up in the office to-morrow to get there checks they should ought to be arrested if they take them. I would not go nowheres near Comiskey if I had not of did better than them others but I can go and get my pay and feel all O.K. about it because I done something to ern it. Me loseing that game in Washington was a crime and Callahan says so himself. This here Weaver throwed it away for me and I would not be surprised if he done it from spitework because him and Scott is pals and probily he did not want to see me winning all them games when Scott was getting knocked out of the box. And no wonder when he has not got no stuff. I wish I knowed for sure that Weaver was throwing me down and if I knowed for sure I would put him in a hospital or somewheres. But I was going to tell you what the kid done Al. So here goes. We are still liveing at Allen's and his wife. So I and him come home together from the train. Well Florrie and Marie was both up and the baby was up too--that is he was not up but he was woke up. I beat it right into the room where he was at and Florrie come in with me. I says Hello Al and what do you suppose he done. Well Al he did not say Hello pa or nothing like that because he is not only one month old. But he smiled at me just like as if he was glad to see me and I guess maybe he was at that. I was tickled to death and I says to Florrie Did you see that. And she says See what. I says The baby smiled at me. Then she says They is something the matter with his stumach. I says I suppose because a baby smiles that is a sign they is something the matter with his stumach and if he had the toothacke he would laugh. She says You think your smart but I am telling you that he was not smileing at all but he was makeing a face because they is something the matter with his stumach. I says I guess I know the difference if somebody is smileing or makeing a face. And she says I guess you don't know nothing about babys because you never had none before. I says How many have you had. And then she got sore and beat it out of the room. I did not care because I wanted to be in there alone with him and see would he smile at me again. And sure enough Al he did. Then I called Allen in and when the baby seen him he begin to cry. So you see I was right and Florrie was wrong. It don't take a man no time at all to get wise to these babys and it don't take them long to know if a man is there father or there uncle. When he begin to cry I chased Allen out of the room and called Florrie because she should ought to know by this time how to make him stop crying. But she was still sore and she says Let him cry or if you know so much about babys make him stop yourself. I says Maybe he is sick. And she says I was just telling you that he had a pane in his stumach or he would not of made that face that you said was smileing at you. I says Do you think we should ought to call the doctor but she says No if you call the doctor every time he has the stumach acke you might just as well tell him he should bring his trunk along and stay here. She says All babys have collect and they is not no use fusing about it but come and get your breakfast. Well Al I did not injoy my breakfast because the baby was crying all the time and I knowed he probily wanted I should come in and visit with him. So I just eat the prunes and drunk a little coffee and did not wait for the rest of it and sure enough when I went back in our room and started talking to him he started smileing again and pretty soon he went to sleep so you see Al he was smileing and not makeing no face and that was a hole lot of bunk about him haveing the collect. But I don't suppose I should ought to find fault with Florrie for not knowing no better because she has not never had no babys before but still and all I should think she should ought to of learned something about them by this time or ask somebody. Well Al little Al is woke up again and is crying and I just about got time to fix him up and get him asleep again and then I will have to go to the ball park because we got a poseponed game to play with Detroit and Callahan will probily want me to work though I pitched the next to the last game in New York and would of gave them a good beating except for Schalk dropping that ball at the plate but I got it on these Detroit babys and when my name is announced to pitch they feel like forfiting the game. I won't try for no strike out record because I want them to hit the first ball and get the game over with quick so as I can get back here and take care of little Al. Your pal, JACK. P.S. Babys is great stuff Al and if I was you I would not wait no longer but would hurry up and adopt 1 somewheres. _Chicago, Illinois, August 15._ OLD PAL: What do you think Al. Kid Gleason is comeing over to the flat and look at the baby the day after to-morrow when we don't have no game skeduled but we have to practice in the A.M. because we been going so rotten. I had a hard time makeing him promise to come but he is comeing and I bet he will be glad he come when he has came. I says to him in the clubhouse Do you want to see a real baby? And he says You're real enough for me Boy. I says No I am talking about babys. He says Oh I thought you was talking about ice cream soda or something. I says No I want you to come over to the flat to-morrow and take a look at my kid and tell me what you think of him. He says I can tell you what I think of him without takeing no look at him. I think he is out of luck. I says What do you mean out of luck. But he just laughed and would not say no more. I asked him again would he come over to the flat and look at the baby and he says he had troubles enough without that and kidded along for a while but finally he seen I was in ernest and then he says he would come if I would keep the missus out of the room while he was there because he says if she seen him she would probily be sorry she married me. He was just jokeing and I did not take no excepshun to his remarks because Florrie could not never fall for him after seeing me because he is not no big stropping man like I am but a little runt and look at how old he is. But I am glad he is comeing because he will think more of me when he sees what a fine baby I got though he thinks a hole lot of me now because look what I done for the club and where would they be at if I had jumped to the Federal like I once thought I would. I will tell you what he says about little Al and I bet he will say he never seen no prettyer baby but even if he don't say nothing at all I will know he is kidding. The Boston Club comes here to-morrow and plays 4 days includeing the day after to-morrow when they is not no game. So on account of the off day maybe I will work twice against them and if I do they will wish the grounds had of burned down. Yours truly, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, August 17._ AL: Well old pal what did I tell you about what I would do to that Boston Club? And now Al I have beat every club in the league this year because yesterday was the first time I beat the Boston Club this year but now I have beat all of them and most of them severel times. This should ought to of gave me a record of 16 wins and 0 defeats because the only games I lost was throwed away behind me but instead of that my record is 10 games win and 6 defeats and that don't include the games I finished up and helped the other boys win which is about 6 more alltogether but what do I care about my record Al? because I am not the kind of man that is allways thinking about there record and playing for there record while I am satisfied if I give the club the best I got and if I win all O.K. And if I lose who's fault is it. Not mine Al. I asked Callahan would he let me work against the Boston Club again before they go away and he says I guess I will have to because you are going better than anybody else on the club. So you see Al he is beginning to appresiate my work and from now on I will pitch in my regular turn and a hole lot offtener then that and probily Comiskey will see the stuff I am made from and will raise my salery next year even if he has got me signed for 3 years and for the same salery I am getting now. But all that is not what I was going to tell you Al and what I was going to tell you was about Gleason comeing to see the baby and what he thought about him. I sent Florrie and Marie downtown and says I would take care of little Al and they was glad to go because Florrie says she should ought to buy some new shoes though I don't see what she wants of no new shoes when she is going to be tied up in the flat for a long time yet on account of the baby and nobody cares if she wears shoes in the flat or goes round in her bear feet. But I was glad to get rid of the both of them for a while because little Al acts better when they is not no women round and you can't blame him. The baby was woke up when Gleason come in and I and him went right in the room where he was laying. Gleason takes a look at him and says Well that is a mighty fine baby and you must of boughten him. I says What do you mean? And he says I don't believe he is your own baby because he looks humaner than most babys. And I says Why should not he look human. And he says Why should he. Then he goes to work and picks the baby right up and I was a-scared he would drop him because even I have not never picked him up though I am his father and would be a-scared of hurting him. I says Here, don't pick him up and he says Why not? He says Are you going to leave him on that there bed the rest of his life? I says No but you don't know how to handle him. He says I have handled a hole lot bigger babys than him or else Callahan would not keep me. Then he starts patting the baby's head and I says Here, don't do that because he has got a soft spot in his head and you might hit it. He says I thought he was your baby and I says Well he is my baby and he says Well then they can't be no soft spot in his head. Then he lays little Al down because he seen I was in ernest and as soon as he lays him down the baby begins to cry. Then Gleason says See he don't want me to lay him down and I says Maybe he has got a pane in his stumach and he says I would not be supprised because he just took a good look at his father. But little Al did not act like as if he had a pane in his stumach and he kept sticking his finger in his mouth and crying. And Gleason says He acts like as if he had a toothacke. I says How could he have a toothacke when he has not got no teeth? He says That is easy. I have saw a lot of pitchers complane that there arm was sore when they did not have no arm. Then he asked me what was the baby's name and I told him Allen but that he was not named after my brother-in-law Allen. And Gleason says I should hope not. I should hope you would have better sense then to name him after a left hander. So you see Al he don't like them no better then I do even if he does jolly Allen and Russell along and make them think they can pitch. Pretty soon he says What are you going to make out of him, a ball player? I says Yes I am going to make a hitter out of him so as he can join the White Sox and then maybe they will get a couple of runs once in a while. He says If I was you I would let him pitch and then you won't have to give him no educasion. Besides, he says, he looks now like he would divellop into a grate spitter. Well I happened to look out of the window and seen Florrie and Marie comeing acrost Indiana Avenue and I told Gleason about it. And you ought to of seen him run. I asked him what was his hurry and he says it was in his contract that he was not to talk to no women but I knowed he was kidding because I allready seen him talking to severel of the players' wifes when they was on trips with us and they acted like as if they thought he was a regular comeedion though they really is not nothing funny about what he says only it is easy to make women laugh when they have not got no grouch on about something. Well Al I am glad Gleason has saw the baby and maybe he will fix it with Callahan so as I won't have to go to morning practice every A.M. because I should ought to be home takeing care of little Al when Florrie is washing the dishs or helping Marie round the house. And besides why should I wear myself all out in practice because I don't need to practice pitching and I could hit as well as the rest of the men on our club if I never seen no practice. After we get threw with Boston, Washington comes here and then we go to St. Louis and Cleveland and then come home and then go East again. And after that we are pretty near threw except the city serious. Callahan is not going to work me no more after I beat Boston again till it is this here Johnson's turn to pitch for Washington. And I hope it is not his turn to work the 1st game of the serious because then I would not have no rest between the last game against Boston and the 1st game against Washington. But rest or no rest I will work against this here Johnson and show him up for giveing me that trimming in Washington, the lucky stiff. I wish I had a team like the Athaletics behind me and I would loose about 1 game every 6 years and then they would have to get all the best of it from these rotten umpires. Your pal, JACK. _New York, New York, September 16._ FRIEND AL: Al it is not no fun running round the country no more and I wish this dam trip was over so as I could go home and see how little Al is getting along because Florrie has not wrote since we was in Philly which was the first stop on this trip. I am a-scared they is something the matter with the little fellow or else she would of wrote but then if they was something the matter with him she would of sent me a telegram or something and let me know. So I guess they can't be nothing the matter with him. Still and all I don't see why she has not wrote when she knows or should ought to know that I would be worrying about the baby. If I don't get no letter to-morrow I am going to send her a telegram and ask her what is the matter with him because I am positive she would of wrote if they was not something the matter with him. The boys has been trying to get me to go out nights and see a show or something but I have not got no heart to go to shows. And besides Callahan has not gave us no pass to no show on this trip. I guess probily he is sore on account of the rotten way the club has been going but still he should ought not to be sore on me because I have win 3 out of my last 4 games and would of win the other if he had not of started me against them with only 1 day's rest and the Athaletics at that, who a man should ought not to pitch against if he don't feel good. I asked Allen if he had heard from Marie and he says Yes he did but she did not say nothing about little Al except that he was keeping her awake nights balling. So maybe Al if little Al is balling they is something wrong with him. I am going to send Florrie a telegram to-morrow--that is if I don't get no letter. If they is something the matter with him I will ask Callahan to send me home and he won't want to do it neither because who else has he got that is a regular winner. But if little Al is sick and Callahan won't let me go home I will go home anyway. You know me Al. Yours truly, JACK. _Boston, Massachusetts, September 24._ AL: I bet if Florrie was a man she would be a left hander. What do you think she done now Al? I sent her a telegram from New York when I did not get no letter from her and she did not pay no atension to the telegram. Then when we got up here I sent her another telegram and it was not more then five minutes after I sent the 2d telegram till I got a letter from her. And it said the baby was all O.K. but she had been so busy takeing care of him that she had not had no time to write. Well when I got the letter I chased out to see if I could catch the boy who had took my telegram but he had went allready so I was spending $.60 for nothing. Then what does Florrie do but send me a telegram after she got my second telegram and tell me that little Al is all O.K., which I knowed all about then because I had just got her letter. And she sent her telegram c. o. d. and I had to pay for it at this end because she had not paid for it and that was $.60 more but I bet if I had of knew what was in the telegram before I read it I would of told the boy to keep it and would not of gave him no $.60 but how did I know if little Al might not of tooken sick after Florrie had wrote the letter? I am going to write and ask her if she is trying to send us both to the Poor House or somewheres with her telegrams. I don't care nothing about the $.60 but I like to see a woman use a little judgement though I guess that is impossable. It is my turn to work to-day and to-night we start West but we have got to stop off at Cleveland on the way. I have got a nosion to ask Callahan to let me go right on threw to Chi if I win to-day and not stop off at no Cleveland but I guess they would not be no use because I have got that Cleveland Club licked the minute I put on my glove. So probily Callahan will want me with him though it don't make no difference if we win or lose now because we have not got no chance for the pennant. One man can't win no pennant Al I don't care who he is. Your pal, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, October 2._ FRIEND AL: Well old pal I am all threw till the city serious and it is all fixed up that I am going to open the serious and pitch 3 of the games if nessary. The club has went to Detroit to wind up the season and Callahan did not take me along but left me here with a couple other pitchers and Billy Sullivan and told me all as I would have to do was go over to the park the next 3 days and warm up a little so as to keep in shape. But I don't need to be in no shape to beat them Cubs Al. But it is a good thing Al that Allen was tooken on the trip to Detroit or I guess I would of killed him. He has not been going good and he has been acting and talking nasty to everybody because he can't win no games. Well the 1st night we was home after the trip little Al was haveing a bad night and was balling pretty hard and they could not nobody in the flat get no sleep. Florrie says he was haveing the collect and I says Why should he have the collect all the time when he did not drink nothing but milk? She says she guessed the milk did not agree with him and upsetted his stumach. I says Well he must take after his mother if his stumach gets upsetted every time he takes a drink because if he took after his father he could drink a hole lot and not never be effected. She says You should ought to remember he has only got a little stumach and not a great big resservoire. I says Well if the milk don't agree with him why don't you give him something else? She says Yes I suppose I should ought to give him weeny worst or something. Allen must of heard us talking because he hollered something and I did not hear what it was so I told him to say it over and he says Give the little X-eyed brat poison and we would all be better off. I says You better take poison yourself because maybe a rotten pitcher like you could get by in the league where you're going when you die. Then I says Besides I would rather my baby was X-eyed then to have him left handed. He says It is better for him that he is X-eyed or else he might get a good look at you and then he would shoot himself. I says Is that so? and he shut up. Little Al is not no more X-eyed than you or I are Al and that was what made me sore because what right did Allen have to talk like that when he knowed he was lying? Well the next morning Allen nor I did not speak to each other and I seen he was sorry for the way he had talked and I was willing to fix things up because what is the use of staying sore at a man that don't know no better. But all of a sudden he says When are you going to pay me what you owe me? I says What do you mean? And he says You been liveing here all summer and I been paying all the bills. I says Did not you and Marie ask us to come here and stay with you and it would not cost us nothing. He says Yes but we did not mean it was a life sentence. You are getting more money than me and you don't never spend a nichol. All I have to do is pay the rent and buy your food and it would take a millionare or something to feed you. Then he says I would not make no holler about you grafting off of me if that brat would shut up nights and give somebody a chance to sleep. I says You should ought to get all the sleep you need on the bench. Besides, I says, who done the grafting all last winter and without no invatation? If he had of said another word I was going to bust him but just then Marie come in and he shut up. The more I thought about what he said and him a rotten left hander that should ought to be hussling freiht the more madder I got and if he had of opened his head to me the last day or 2 before he went to Detroit I guess I would of finished him. But Marie stuck pretty close to the both of us when we was together and I guess she knowed they was something in the air and did not want to see her husband get the worst of it though if he was my husband and I was a woman I would push him under a st. car. But Al I won't even stand for him saying that I am grafting off of him and I and Florrie will get away from here and get a flat of our own as soon as the city serious is over. I would like to bring her and the kid down to Bedford for the winter but she wont listen to that. I allmost forgot Al to tell you to be sure and thank Bertha for the little dress she made for little Al. I don't know if it will fit him or not because Florrie has not yet tried it on him yet and she says she is going to use it for a dishrag but I guess she is just kidding. I suppose you seen where Callahan took me out of that game down to Cleveland but it was not because I was not going good Al but it was because Callahan seen he was makeing a mistake wasteing me on that bunch who allmost any pitcher could beat. They beat us that game at that but only by one run and it was not no fault of mine because I was tooken out before they got the run that give them the game. Your old pal, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, October 4._ FRIEND AL: Well Al the club winds up the season at Detroit to-morrow and the serious starts the day after to-morrow and I will be in there giveing them a battle. I wish I did not have nobody but the Cubs to pitch against all season and you bet I would have a record that would make Johnson and Mathewson and some of them other swell heads look like a dirty doose. I and Florrie and Marie has been haveing a argument about how could Florrie go and see the city serious games when they is not nobody here that can take care of the baby because Marie wants to go and see the games to even though they is not no more chance of Callahan starting Allen than a rabbit or something. Florrie and Marie says I should ought to hire a nurse to take care of little Al and Florrie got pretty sore when I told her nothing doing because in the first place I can't afford to pay no nurse a salery and in the second place I would not trust no nurse to take care of the baby because how do I know the nurse is not nothing but a grafter or a dope fiend maybe and should ought not to be left with the baby? Of coarse Florrie wants to see me pitch and a man can't blame her for that but I won't leave my baby with no nurse Al and Florrie will have to stay home and I will tell her what I done when I get there. I might of gave my consent to haveing a nurse at that if it had not of been for the baby getting so sick last night when I was takeing care of him while Florrie and Marie and Allen was out to a show and if I had not of been home they is no telling what would of happened. It is a cinch that none of them bonehead nurses would of knew what to do. Allen must of been out of his head because right after supper he says he would take the 2 girls to a show. I says All right go on and I will take care of the baby. Then Florrie says Do you think you can take care of him all O.K.? And I says Have not I tooken care of him before allready? Well, she says, I will leave him with you only don't run in to him every time he cries. I says Why not? And she says Because it is good for him to cry. I says You have not got no heart or you would not talk that way. They all give me the laugh but I let them get away with it because I am not picking no fights with girls and why should I bust this Allen when he don't know no better and has not got no baby himself. And I did not want to do nothing that would stop him takeing the girls to a show because it is time he spent a peace of money on somebody. Well they all went out and I went in on the bed and played with the baby. I wish you could of saw him Al because he is old enough now to do stunts and he smiled up at me and waved his arms and legs round and made a noise like as if he was trying to say Pa. I did not think Florrie had gave him enough covers so I rapped him up in some more and took a blanket off of the big bed and stuck it round him so as he could not kick his feet out and catch cold. I thought once or twice he was going off to sleep but all of a sudden he begin to cry and I seen they was something wrong with him. I gave him some hot water but that made him cry again and I thought maybe he was to cold yet so I took another blanket off of Allen's bed and wrapped that round him but he kept on crying and trying to kick inside the blankets. And I seen then that he must have collect or something. So pretty soon I went to the phone and called up our regular Dr. and it took him pretty near a hour to get there and the baby balling all the time. And when he come he says they was nothing the matter except that the baby was to hot and told me to take all them blankets off of him and then soaked me 2 dollars. I had a nosion to bust his jaw. Well pretty soon he beat it and then little Al begin crying again and kept getting worse and worse so finally I got a-scared and run down to the corner where another Dr. is at and I brung him up to see what was the matter but he said he could not see nothing the matter but he did not charge me a cent so I thought he was not no robber like our regular doctor even if he was just as much of a boob. The baby did not cry none while he was there but the minute he had went he started crying and balling again and I seen they was not no use of fooling no longer so I looked around the house and found the medicine the doctor left for Allen when he had a stumach acke once and I give the baby a little of it in a spoon but I guess he did not like the taste because he hollered like a Indian and finally I could not stand it no longer so I called that second Dr. back again and this time he seen that the baby was sick and asked me what I had gave it and I told him some stumach medicine and he says I was a fool and should ought not to of gave the baby nothing. But while he was talking the baby stopped crying and went off to sleep so you see what I done for him was the right thing to do and them doctors was both off of there nut. This second Dr. soaked me 2 dollars the 2d time though he had not did no more than when he was there the 1st time and charged me nothing but they is all a bunch of robbers Al and I would just as leave trust a policeman. Right after the baby went to sleep Florrie and Marie and Allen come home and I told Florrie what had came off but instead of giveing me credit she says If you want to kill him why don't you take a ax? Then Allen butts in and says Why don't you take a ball and throw it at him? Then I got sore and I says Well if I did hit him with a ball I would kill him while if you was to throw that fast ball of yours at him and hit him in the head he would think the musketoes was biteing him and brush them off. But at that, I says, you could not hit him with a ball except you was aiming at something else. I guess they was no comeback to that so him and Marie went to there room. Allen should ought to know better than to try and get the best of me by this time and I would shut up anyway if I was him after getting sent home from Detroit with some of the rest of them when he only worked 3 innings up there and they had to take him out or play the rest of the game by electrick lights. I wish you could be here for the serious Al but you would have to stay at a hotel because we have not got no spair room and it would cost you a hole lot of money. But you can watch the papers and you will see what I done. Yours truly, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, October 6._ DEAR OLD PAL: Probily before you get this letter you will of saw by the paper that we was licked in the first game and that I was tooken out but the papers don't know what really come off so I am going to tell you and you can see for yourself if it was my fault. I did not never have no more stuff in my life then when I was warming up and I seen the Cubs looking over to our bench and shakeing there heads like they knowed they did not have no chance. O'Day was going to start Cheney who is there best bet and had him warming up but when he seen the smoke I had when I and Schalk was warming up he changed his mind because what was the use of useing his best pitcher when I had all that stuff and it was a cinch that no club in the world could score a run off of me when I had all that stuff? So he told a couple others to warm up to and when my name was announced to pitch Cheney went and set on the bench and this here lefthander Pierce was announced for them. Well Al you will see by the paper where I sent there 1st 3 batters back to the bench to get a drink of water and all 3 of them good hitters Leach and Good and this here Saier that hits a hole lot of home runs but would not never hit one off of me if I was O.K. Well we scored a couple in our half and the boys on the bench all says Now you got enough to win easy because they won't never score none off of you. And they was right to because what chance did they have if this thing that I am going to tell you about had not of happened? We goes along seven innings and only 2 of there men had got to 1st base one of them on a bad peg of Weaver's and the other one I walked because this blind Evans don't know a ball from a strike. We had not did no more scoreing off of Pierce not because he had no stuff but because our club could not take a ball in there hands and hit it out of the infield. Well Al I did not tell you that before I come out to the park I kissed little Al and Florrie good by and Marie says she was going to stay home to and keep Florrie Co. and they was not no reason for Marie to come to the game anyway because they was not a chance in the world for Allen to do nothing but hit fungos. Well while I was doing all this here swell pitching and makeing them Cubs look like a lot of rummys I was thinking about little Al and Florrie and how glad they would be when I come home and told them what I done though of coarse little Al is not only a little over 3 months of age and how could he appresiate what I done? But Florrie would. Well Al when I come in to the bench after there 1/2 of the 7th I happened to look up to the press box to see if the reporters had gave Schulte a hit on that one Weaver throwed away and who do you think I seen in a box right alongside of the press box? It was Florrie and Marie and both of them claping there hands and hollering with the rest of the bugs. Well old pal I was never so supprised in my life and it just took all the heart out of me. What was they doing there and what had they did with the baby? How did I know that little Al was not sick or maybe dead and balling his head off and nobody round to hear him? I tried to catch Florrie's eyes but she would not look at me. I hollered her name and the bugs looked at me like as if I was crazy and I was to Al. Well I seen they was not no use of standing out there in front of the stand so I come into the bench and Allen was setting there and I says Did you know your wife and Florrie was up there in the stand? He says No and I says What are they doing here? And he says What would they be doing here--mending there stockings? I felt like busting him and I guess he seen I was mad because he got up off of the bench and beat it down to the corner of the field where some of the others was getting warmed up though why should they have anybody warming up when I was going so good? Well Al I made up my mind that ball game or no ball game I was not going to have little Al left alone no longer and I seen they was not no use of sending word to Florrie to go home because they was a big crowd and it would take maybe 15 or 20 minutes for somebody to get up to where she was at. So I says to Callahan You have got to take me out. He says What is the matter? Is your arm gone? I says No my arm is not gone but my baby is sick and home all alone. He says Where is your wife? And I says She is setting up there in the stand. Then he says How do you know your baby is sick? And I says I don't know if he is sick or not but he is left home all alone. He says Why don't you send your wife home? And I says I could not get word to her in time. He says Well you have only got two innings to go and the way your going the game will be over in 10 minutes. I says Yes and before 10 minutes is up my baby might die and are you going to take me out or not? He says Get in there and pitch you yellow dog and if you don't I will take your share of the serious money away from you. By this time our part of the inning was over and I had to go out there and pitch some more because he would not take me out and he has not got no heart Al. Well Al how could I pitch when I kept thinking maybe the baby was dying right now and maybe if I was home I could do something? And instead of paying attension to what I was doing I was thinking about little Al and looking up there to where Florrie and Marie was setting and before I knowed what come off they had the bases full and Callahan took me out. Well Al I run to the clubhouse and changed my cloths and beat it for home and I did not even hear what Callahan and Gleason says to me when I went by them but I found out after the game that Scott went in and finished up and they batted him pretty hard and we was licked 3 and 2. When I got home the baby was crying but he was not all alone after all Al because they was a little girl about 14 years of age there watching him and Florrie had hired her to take care of him so as her and Marie could go and see the game. But just think Al of leaveing little Al with a girl 14 years of age that did not never have no babys of her own! And what did she know about takeing care of him? Nothing Al. You should ought to of heard me ball Florrie out when she got home and I bet she cried pretty near enough to flood the basemunt. We had it hot and heavy and the Allens butted in but I soon showed them where they was at and made them shut there mouth. I had a good nosion to go out and get a hole lot of drinks and was just going to put on my hat when the doorbell rung and there was Kid Gleason. I thought he would be sore and probily try to ball me out and I was not going to stand for nothing but instead of balling me out he come and shook hands with me and interduced himself to Florrie and asked how was little Al. Well we all set down and Gleason says the club was depending on me to win the serious because I was in the best shape of all the pitchers. And besides the Cubs could not never hit me when I was right and he was telling the truth to. So he asked me if I would stand for the club hireing a train nurse to stay with the baby the rest of the serious so as Florrie could go and see her husband win the serious but I says No I would not stand for that and Florrie's place was with the baby. So Gleason and Florrie goes out in the other room and talks a while and I guess he was persuadeing her to stay home because pretty soon they come back in the room and says it was all fixed up and I would not have to worry about little Al the rest of the serious but could give the club the best I got. Gleason just left here a little while ago and I won't work to-morrow Al but I will work the day after and you will see what I can do when I don't have nothing to worry me. Your pal, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, October 8._ OLD PAL: Well old pal we got them 2 games to one now and the serious is sure to be over in three more days because I can pitch 2 games in that time if nessary. I shut them out to-day and they should ought not to of had four hits but should ought to of had only 2 but Bodie don't cover no ground and 2 fly balls that he should ought to of eat up fell safe. But I beat them anyway and Benz beat them yesterday but why should he not beat them when the club made 6 runs for him? All they made for me was three but all I needed was one because they could not hit me with a shuvvel. When I come to the bench after the 5th inning they was a note there for me from the boy that answers the phone at the ball park and it says that somebody just called up from the flat and says the baby was asleep and getting along fine. So I felt good Al and I was better then ever in the 6th. When I got home Florrie and Marie was both there and asked me how did the game come out because I beat Allen home and I told them all about what I done and I bet Florrie was proud of me but I supose Marie is a little jellus because how could she help it when Callahan is depending on me to win the serious and her husband is wearing out the wood on the bench? But why should she be sore when it is me that is winning the serious for them? And if it was not for me Allen and all the rest of them would get about $500.00 apeace instead of the winners' share which is about $750.00 apeace. Cicotte is going to work to-morrow and if he is lucky maybe he can get away with the game and that will leave me to finish up the day after to-morrow but if nessary I can go in to-morrow when they get to hitting Cicotte and stop them and then come back the following day and beat them again. Where would this club be at Al if I had of jumped to the Federal? Yours truly, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, October 11._ FRIEND AL: We done it again Al and I guess the Cubs won't never want to play us again not so long as I am with the club. Before you get this letter you will know what we done and who done it but probily you could of guessed that Al without seeing no paper. I got 2 more of them phone messiges about the baby dureing the game and I guess that was what made me so good because I knowed then that Florrie was takeing care of him but I could not help feeling sorry for Florrie because she is a bug herself and it must of been pretty hard for her to stay away from the game espesially when she knowed I was going to pitch and she has been pretty good to sacrifice her own plesure for little Al. Cicotte was knocked out of the box the day before yesterday and then they give this here Faber a good beating but I wish you could of saw what they done to Allen when Callahan sent him in after the game was gone allready. Honest Al if he had not of been my brother in law I would of felt like laughing at him because it looked like as if they would have to call the fire department to put the side out. They had Bodie and Collins hollering for help and with there tongue hanging out from running back to the fence. Anyway the serious is all over and I won't have nothing to do but stay home and play with little Al but I don't know yet where my home is going to be at because it is a cinch I won't stay with Allen no longer. He has not came home since the game and I suppose he is out somewheres lapping up some beer and spending some of the winner's share of the money which he would not of had no chance to get in on if it had not of been for me. I will write and let you know my plans for the winter and I wish Florrie would agree to come to Bedford but nothing doing Al and after her staying home and takeing care of the baby instead of watching me pitch I can't be too hard on her but must leave her have her own way about something. Your pal, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, October 13._ AL: I am all threw with Florrie Al and I bet when you hear about it you won't say it was not no fault of mine but no man liveing who is any kind of a man would act different from how I am acting if he had of been decieved like I been. Al Florrie and Marie was out to all them games and was not home takeing care of the baby at all and it is not her fault that little Al is not dead and that he was not killed by the nurse they hired to take care of him while they went to the games when I thought they was home takeing care of the baby. And all them phone messiges was just fakes and maybe the baby was sick all the time I was winning them games and balling his head off instead of being asleep like they said he was. Allen did not never come home at all the night before last and when he come in yesterday he was a sight and I says to him Where have you been? And he says I have been down to the Y.M.C.A. but that is not none of your business. I says Yes you look like as if you had been to the Y.M.C.A. and I know where you have been and you have been out lushing beer. And he says Suppose I have and what are you going to do about it? And I says Nothing but you should ought to be ashamed of yourself and leaveing Marie here while you was out lapping up beer. Then he says Did you not leave Florrie home while you was getting away with them games, you lucky stiff? And I says Yes but Florrie had to stay home and take care of the baby but Marie don't never have to stay home because where is your baby? You have not got no baby. He says I would not want no X-eyed baby like yourn. Then he says So you think Florrie stayed to home and took care of the baby do you? And I says What do you mean? And he says You better ask her. So when Florrie come in and heard us talking she busted out crying and then I found out what they put over on me. It is a wonder Al that I did not take some of that cheap furniture them Allens got and bust it over there heads, Allen and Florrie. This is what they done Al. The club give Florrie $50.00 to stay home and take care of the baby and she said she would and she was to call up every so often and tell me the baby was all O.K. But this here Marie told her she was a sucker so she hired a nurse for part of the $50.00 and then her and Marie went to the games and beat it out quick after the games was over and come home in a taxicab and chased the nurse out before I got home. Well Al when I found out what they done I grabbed my hat and goes out and got some drinks and I was so mad I did not know where I was at or what come off and I did not get home till this A.M. And they was all asleep and I been asleep all day and when I woke up Marie and Allen was out but Florrie and I have not spoke to each other and I won't never speak to her again. But I know now what I am going to do Al and I am going to take little Al and beat it out of here and she can sew me for a bill of divorce and I should not worry because I will have little Al and I will see that he is tooken care of because I guess I can hire a nurse as well as they can and I will pick out a train nurse that knows something. Maybe I and him and the nurse will come to Bedford Al but I don't know yet and I will write and tell you as soon as I make up my mind. Did you ever hear of a man getting a rottener deal Al? And after what I done in the serious too. Your pal, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, October 17._ OLD PAL: I and Florrie has made it up Al but we are threw with Marie and Allen and I and Florrie and the baby is staying at a hotel here on Cottage Grove Avenue the same hotel we was at when we got married only of coarse they was only the 2 of us then. And now Al I want to ask you a favor and that is for you to go and see old man Cutting and tell him I want to ree-new the lease on that house for another year because I and Florrie has decided to spend the winter in Bedford and she will want to stay there and take care of little Al while I am away on trips next summer and not stay in no high-price flat up here. And may be you and Bertha can help her round the house when I am not there. I will tell you how we come to fix things up Al and you will see that I made her apollojize to me and after this she will do what I tell her to and won't never try to put nothing over. We was eating breakfast--I and Florrie and Marie. Allen was still asleep yet because I guess he must of had a bad night and he was snoreing so as you could hear him in the next st. I was not saying nothing to nobody but pretty soon Florrie says to Marie I don't think you and Allen should ought to kick on the baby crying when Allen's snoreing makes more noise than a hole wagonlode of babys. And Marie got sore and says I guess a man has got a right to snore in his own house and you and Jack has been grafting off of us long enough. Then Florrie says What did Allen do to help win the serious and get that $750.00? Nothing but set on the bench except when they was makeing him look like a sucker the 1 inning he pitched. The trouble with you and Allen is you are jellous of what Jack has did and you know he will be a star up here in the big league when Allen is tending bar which is what he should ought to be doing because then he could get stewed for nothing. Marie says Take your brat and get out of the house. And Florrie says Don't you worry because we would not stay here no longer if you hired us. So Florrie went in her room and I followed her in and she says Let's pack up and get out. Then I says Yes but we won't go nowheres together after what you done to me but you can go where you dam please and I and little Al will go to Bedford. Then she says You can't take the baby because he is mine and if you was to take him I would have you arrested for kidnaping. Besides, she says, what would you feed him and who would take care of him? I says I would find somebody to take care of him and I would get him food from a resturunt. She says He can't eat nothing but milk and I says Well he has the collect all the time when he is eating milk and he would not be no worse off if he was eating watermelon. Well, she says, if you take him I will have you arrested and sew you for a bill of divorce for dessertion. Then she says Jack you should not ought to find no fault with me for going to them games because when a woman has a husband that can pitch like you can do you think she wants to stay home and not see her husband pitch when a lot of other women is cheering him and makeing her feel proud because she is his wife? Well Al as I said right along it was pretty hard on Florrie to have to stay home and I could not hardly blame her for wanting to be out there where she could see what I done so what was the use of argueing? So I told her I would think it over and then I went out and I went and seen a attorney at law and asked him could I take little Al away and he says No I did not have no right to take him away from his mother and besides it would probily kill him to be tooken away from her and then he soaked me $10.00 the robber. Then I went back and told Florrie I would give her another chance and then her and I packed up and took little Al in a taxicab over to this hotel. We are threw with the Allens Al and let me know right away if I can get that lease for another year because Florrie has gave up and will go to Bedford or anywheres else with me now. Yours truly, JACK. _Chicago, Illinois, October 20._ FRIEND AL: Old pal I won't never forget your kindnus and this is to tell you that I and Florrie except your kind invatation to come and stay with you till we can find a house and I guess you won't regret it none because Florrie will livun things up for Bertha and Bertha will be crazy about the baby because you should ought to see how cute he is now Al and not yet four months old. But I bet he will be talking before we know it. We are comeing on the train that leaves here at noon Saturday Al and the train leaves here about 12 o'clock and I don't know what time it gets to Bedford but it leaves here at noon so we shall be there probily in time for supper. I wish you would ask Ben Smith will he have a hack down to the deepo to meet us but I won't pay no more than $.25 and I should think he should ought to be glad to take us from the deepo to your house for nothing. Your pal, JACK. P.S. The train we are comeing on leaves here at noon Al and will probily get us there in time for a late supper and I wonder if Bertha would have spair ribs and crout for supper. You know me Al. CHAPTER VI THE BUSHER BEATS IT HENCE _Chicago, Ill., Oct. 18._ FRIEND AL: I guess may be you will begin to think I dont never do what I am going to do and that I change my mind a hole lot because I wrote and told you that I and Florrie and little Al would be in Bedford to-day and here we are in Chi yet on the day when I told you we would get to Bedford and I bet Bertha and you and the rest of the boys will be dissapointed but Al I dont feel like as if I should ought to leave the White Sox in a hole and that is why I am here yet and I will tell you how it come off but in the 1st place I want to tell you that it wont make a diffrence of more then 5 or 6 or may be 7 days at least and we will be down there and see you and Bertha and the rest of the boys just as soon as the N.Y. giants and the White Sox leaves here and starts a round the world. All so I remember I told you to fix it up so as a hack would be down to the deepo to meet us to-night and you wont get this letter in time to tell them not to send no hack so I supose the hack will be there but may be they will be some body else that gets off of the train that will want the hack and then every thing will be all O.K. but if they is not nobody else that wants the hack I will pay them 1/2 of what they was going to charge me if I had of came and road in the hack though I dont have to pay them nothing because I am not going to ride in the hack but I want to do the right thing and besides I will want a hack at the deepo when I do come so they will get a peace of money out of me any way so I dont see where they got no kick comeing even if I dont give them a nichol now. I will tell you why I am still here and you will see where I am trying to do the right thing. You knowed of coarse that the White Sox and the N. Y. giants was going to make a trip a round the world and they been after me for a long time to go a long with them but I says No I would not leave Florrie and the kid because that would not be fare and besides I would be paying rent and grocerys for them some wheres and me not getting nothing out of it and besides I would probily be spending a hole lot of money on the trip because though the clubs pays all of our regular expences they would be a hole lot of times when I felt like blowing my self and buying some thing to send home to the Mrs and to good old friends of mine like you and Bertha so I turned them down and Callahan acted like he was sore at me but I dont care nothing for that because I got other people to think a bout and not Callahan and besides if I was to go a long the fans in the towns where we play at would want to see me work and I would have to do a hole lot of pitching which I would not be getting nothing for it and it would not count in no standing because the games is to be just for fun and what good would it do me and besides Florrie says I was not under no circumstance to go and of coarse I would go if I wanted to go no matter what ever she says but all and all I turned them down and says I would stay here all winter or rather I would not stay here but in Bedford. Then Callahan says All right but you know before we start on the trip the giants and us is going to play a game right here in Chi next Sunday and after what you done in the city serious the fans would be sore if they did not get no more chance to look at you so will you stay and pitch part of the game here and I says I would think it over and I come home to the hotel where we are staying at and asked Florrie did she care if we did not go to Bedford for an other week and she says No she did not care if we dont go for 6 years so I called Callahan up and says I would stay and he says Thats the boy and now the fans will have an other treat so you see Al he appresiates what I done and wants to give the fans fare treatment because this town is nuts over me after what I done to them Cubs but I could do it just the same to the Athaletics or any body else if it would of been them in stead of the Cubs. May be we will leave here the A.M. after the game that is Monday and I will let you know so as you can order an other hack and tell Bertha I hope she did not go to no extra trouble a bout getting ready for us and did not order no spair ribs and crout but you can eat them up if she all ready got them and may be she can order some more for us when we come but tell her it dont make no diffrence and not to go to no trouble because most anything she has is O.K. for I and Florrie accept of coarse we would not want to make no meal off of sardeens or something. Well Al I bet them N.Y. giants will wish I would of went home before they come for this here exibishun game because my arm feels grate and I will show them where they would be at if they had to play ball in our league all the time though I supose they is some pitchers in our league that they would hit good against them if they can hit at all but not me. You will see in the papers how I come out and I will write and tell you a bout it. Your pal, JACK. _Chicago, Ill., Oct. 25._ OLD PAL: I have not only got a little time but I have got some news for you and I knowed you would want to hear all a bout it so I am writeing this letter and then I am going to catch the train. I would be saying good by to little Al instead of writeing this letter only Florrie wont let me wake him up and he is a sleep but may be by the time I get this letter wrote he will be a wake again and I can say good by to him. I am going with the White Sox and giants as far as San Francisco or may be Van Coover where they take the boat at but I am not going a round the world with them but only just out to the coast to help them out because they is a couple of men going to join them out there and untill them men join them they will be short of men and they got a hole lot of exibishun games to play before they get out there so I am going to help them out. It all come off in the club house after the game to-day and I will tell you how it come off but 1st I want to tell you a bout the game and honest Al them giants is the luckyest team in the world and it is not no wonder they keep wining the penant in that league because a club that has got there luck could win ball games with out sending no team on the field at all but staying down to the hotel. They was a big crowd out to the park so Callahan says to me I did not know if I was going to pitch you or not but the crowd is out here to see you so I will have to let you work so I warmed up but I knowed the minute I throwed the 1st ball warming up that I was not right and I says to Callahan I did not feel good but he says You wont need to feel good to beat this bunch because they heard a hole lot a bout you and you would have them beat if you just throwed your glove out there in the box. So I went in and tried to pitch but my arm was so lame it pretty near killed me every ball I throwed and I bet if I was some other pitchers they would not never of tried to work with my arm so sore but I am not like some of them yellow dogs and quit because I would not dissapoint the crowd or throw Callahan down when he wanted me to pitch and was depending on me. You know me Al. So I went in there but I did not have nothing and if them giants could of hit at all in stead of like a lot of girls they would of knock down the fence because I was not my self. At that they should not ought to of had only the 1 run off of me if Weaver and them had not of begin kicking the ball a round like it was a foot ball or something. Well Al what with dropping fly balls and booting them a round and this in that the giants was gave 5 runs in the 1st 3 innings and they should ought to of had just the 1 run or may be not that and that ball Merkle hit in to the seats I was trying to waist it and a man that is a good hitter would not never of hit at it and if I was right this here Merkle could not foul me in 9 years. When I was comeing into the bench after the 3th inning this here smart alex Mcgraw come passed me from the 3 base coaching line and he says Are you going on the trip and I says No I am not going on no trip and he says That is to bad because if you was going we would win a hole lot of games and I give him a hot come back and he did not say nothing so I went in to the bench and Callahan says Them giants is not such rotten hitters is they and I says No they hit pretty good when a man has got a sore arm against them and he says Why did not you tell me your arm was sore and I says I did not want to dissapoint no crowd that come out here to see me and he says Well I guess you need not pitch no more because if I left you in there the crowd might begin to get tired of watching you a bout 10 oclock to-night and I says What do you mean and he did not say nothing more so I set there a while and then went to the club house. Well Al after the game Callahan come in to the club house and I was still in there yet talking to the trainer and getting my arm rubbed and Callahan says Are you getting your arm in shape for next year and I says No but it give me so much pane I could not stand it and he says I bet if you was feeling good you could make them giants look like a sucker and I says You know I could make them look like a sucker and he says Well why dont you come a long with us and you will get an other chance at them when you feel good and I says I would like to get an other crack at them but I could not go a way on no trip and leave the Mrs and the baby and then he says he would not ask me to make the hole trip a round the world but he wisht I would go out to the coast with them because they was hard up for pitchers and he says Mathewson of the giants was not only going as far as the coast so if the giants had there star pitcher that far the White Sox should ought to have theren and then some of the other boys coaxed me would I go so finely I says I would think it over and I went home and seen Florrie and she says How long would it be for and I says a bout 3 or 4 weeks and she says If you dont go will we start for Bedford right a way and I says Yes and then she says All right go a head and go but if they was any thing should happen to the baby while I was gone what would they do if I was not a round to tell them what to do and I says Call a Dr. in but dont call no Dr. if you dont have to and besides you should ought to know by this time what to do for the baby when he got sick and she says Of coarse I know a little but not as much as you do because you know it all. Then I says No I dont know it all but I will tell you some things before I go and you should not ought to have no trouble so we fixed it up and her and little Al is to stay here in the hotel untill I come back which will be a bout the 20 of Nov. and then we will come down home and tell Bertha not to get to in patient and we will get there some time. It is going to cost me $6.00 a week at the hotel for a room for she and the baby besides there meals but the babys meals dont cost nothing yet and Florrie should not ought to be very hungry because we been liveing good and besides she will get all she can eat when we come to Bedford and it wont cost me nothing for meals on the trip out to the coast because Comiskey and Mcgraw pays for that. I have not even had no time to look up where we play at but we stop off at a hole lot of places on the way and I will get a chance to make them giants look like a sucker before I get threw and Mcgraw wont be so sorry I am not going to make the hole trip. You will see by the papers what I done to them before we get threw and I will write as soon as we stop some wheres long enough so as I can write and now I am going to say good by to little Al if he is a wake or not a wake and wake him up and say good by to him because even if he is not only 5 months old he is old enough to think a hole lot of me and why not. I all so got to say good by to Florrie and fix it up with the hotel clerk a bout she and the baby staying here a while and catch the train. You will hear from me soon old pal. Your pal, JACK. _St. Joe, Miss., Oct. 29._ FRIEND AL: Well Al we are on our way to the coast and they is quite a party of us though it is not no real White Sox and giants at all but some players from off of both clubs and then some others that is from other clubs a round the 2 leagues to fill up. We got Speaker from the Boston club and Crawford from the Detroit club and if we had them with us all the time Al I would not never loose a game because one or the other of them 2 is good for a couple of runs every game and that is all I need to win my games is a couple of runs or only 1 run and I would win all my games and would not never loose a game. I did not pitch to-day and I guess the giants was glad of it because no matter what Mcgraw says he must of saw from watching me Sunday that I was a real pitcher though my arm was so sore I could not hardly raze it over my sholder so no wonder I did not have no stuff but at that I could of beat his gang with out no stuff if I had of had some kind of decent suport. I will pitch against them may be to-morrow or may be some day soon and my arm is all O.K. again now so I will show them up and make them wish Callahan had of left me to home. Some of the men has brung there wife a long and besides that there is some other men and there wife that is not no ball players but are going a long for the trip and some more will join the party out the coast before they get a bord the boat but of coarse I and Mathewson will drop out of the party then because why should I or him go a round the world and throw our arms out pitching games that dont count in no standing and that we dont get no money for pitching them out side of just our bare expences. The people in the towns we played at so far has all wanted to shake hands with Mathewson and I so I guess they know who is the real pitchers on these here 2 clubs no matter what them reporters says and the stars is all ways the men that the people wants to shake there hands with and make friends with them but Al this here Mathewson pitched to-day and honest Al I dont see how he gets by and either the batters in the National league dont know nothing a bout hitting or else he is such a old man that they feel sorry for him and may be when he was a bout 10 years younger then he is may be then he had some thing and was a pretty fare pitcher but all as he does now is stick the 1st ball right over with 0 on it and pray that they dont hit it out of the park. If a pitcher like he can get by in the National league and fool them batters they is not nothing I would like better then to pitch in the National league and I bet I would not get scored on in 2 to 3 years. I heard a hole lot a bout this here fade a way that he is suposed to pitch and it is a ball that is throwed out between 2 fingers and falls in at a right hand batter and they is not no body cant hit it but if he throwed 1 of them things to-day he done it while I was a sleep and they was not no time when I was not wide a wake and looking right at him and after the game was over I says to him Where is that there fade a way I heard so much a bout and he says O I did not have to use none of my regular stuff against your club and I says Well you would have to use all you got if I was working against you and he says Yes if you worked like you done Sunday I would have to do some pitching or they would not never finish the game. Then I says a bout me haveing a sore arm Sunday and he says I wisht I had a sore arm like yourn and a little sence with it and was your age and I would not never loose a game so you see Al he has heard a bout me and is jellus because he has not got my stuff but they cant every body expect to have the stuff that I got or 1/2 as much stuff. This smart alex Mcgraw was trying to kid me to-day and says Why did not I make friends with Mathewson and let him learn me some thing a bout pitching and I says Mathewson could not learn me nothing and he says I guess thats right and I guess they is not nobody could learn you nothing a bout nothing and if you was to stay in the league 20 years probily you would not be no better then you are now so you see he had to add mit that I am good Al even if he has not saw me work when my arm was O.K. Mcgraw says to me to-night he says I wisht you was going all the way and I says Yes you do. I says Your club would look like a sucker after I had worked against them a few times and he says May be thats right to because they would not know how to hit against a regular pitcher after that. Then he says But I dont care nothing a bout that but I wisht you was going to make the hole trip so as we could have a good time. He says We got Steve Evans and Dutch Schaefer going a long and they is both of them funny but I like to be a round with boys that is funny and dont know nothing a bout it. I says Well I would go a long only for my wife and baby and he says Yes it would be pretty tough on your wife to have you a way that long but still and all think how glad she would be to see you when you come back again and besides them dolls acrost the ocean will be pretty sore at I and Callahan if we tell them we left you to home. I says Do you supose the people over there has heard a bout me and he says Sure because they have wrote a lot of letters asking me to be sure and bring you and Mathewson a long. Then he says I guess Mathewson is not going so if you was to go and him left here to home they would not be nothing to it. You could have things all your own way and probily could marry the Queen of europe if you was not all ready married. He was giveing me the strate dope this time Al because he did not crack a smile and I wisht I could go a long but it would not be fare to Florrie but still and all did not she leave me and beat it for Texas last winter and why should not I do the same thing to her only I am not that kind of a man. You know me Al. We play in Kansas city to-morrow and may be I will work there because it is a big town and I have got to close now and write to Florrie. Your old pal, JACK. _Abilene, Texas, Nov. 4._ AL: Well Al I guess you know by this time that I have worked against them 2 times since I wrote to you last time and I beat them both times and Mcgraw knows now what kind of a pitcher I am and I will tell you how I know because after the game yesterday he road down to the place we dressed at a long with me and all the way in the automobile he was after me to say I would go all the way a round the world and finely it come out that he wants I should go a long and pitch for his club and not pitch for the White Sox. He says his club is up against it for pitchers because Mathewson is not going and all they got left is a man named Hern that is a young man and not got no experiense and Wiltse that is a left hander. So he says I have talked it over with Callahan and he says if I could get you to go a long it was all O.K. with him and you could pitch for us only I must not work you to hard because he is depending on you to win the penant for him next year. I says Did not none of the other White Sox make no holler because may be they might have to bat against me and he says Yes Crawford and Speaker says they would not make the trip if you was a long and pitching against them but Callahan showed them where it would be good for them next year because if they hit against you all winter the pitchers they hit against next year will look easy to them. He was crazy to have me go a long on the hole trip but of coarse Al they is not no chance of me going on acct. of Florrie and little Al but you see Mcgraw has cut out his trying to kid me and is treating me now like a man should ought to be treated that has did what I done. They was not no game here to-day on acct. of it raining and the people here was sore because they did not see no game but they all come a round to look at us and says they must have some speechs from the most prommerent men in the party so I and Comiskey and Mcgraw and Callahan and Mathewson and Ted Sullivan that I guess is putting up the money for the trip made speechs and they clapped there hands harder when I was makeing my speech then when any 1 of the others was makeing there speech. You did not know I was a speech maker did you Al and I did not know it neither untill to-day but I guess they is not nothing I can do if I make up my mind and 1 of the boys says that I done just as well as Dummy Taylor could of. I have not heard nothing from Florrie but I guess may be she is to busy takeing care of little Al to write no letters and I am not worring none because she give me her word she would let me know was they some thing the matter. Yours truly, JACK. _San Dago, Cal., Nov. 9._ FRIEND AL: Al some times I wisht I was not married at all and if it was not for Florrie and little Al I would go a round the world on this here trip and I guess the boys in Bedford would not be jellus if I was to go a round the world and see every thing they is to be saw and some of the boys down home has not never been no futher a way then Terre Haute and I dont mean you Al but some of the other boys. But of coarse Al when a man has got a wife and a baby they is not no chance for him to go a way on 1 of these here trips and leave them a lone so they is not no use I should even think a bout it but I cant help thinking a bout it because the boys keeps after me all the time to go. Callahan was talking a bout it to me to-day and he says he knowed that if I was to pitch for the giants on the trip his club would not have no chance of wining the most of the games on the trip but still and all he wisht I would go a long because he was a scared the people over in Rome and Paris and Africa and them other countrys would be awful sore if the 2 clubs come over there with out bringing none of there star pitchers along. He says We got Speaker and Crawford and Doyle and Thorp and some of them other real stars in all the positions accept pitcher and it will make us look bad if you and Mathewson dont neither 1 of you come a long. I says What is the matter with Scott and Benz and this here left hander Wiltse and he says They is not nothing the matter with none of them accept they is not no real stars like you and Mathewson and if we cant show them forreners 1 of you 2 we will feel like as if we was cheating them. I says You would not want me to pitch my best against your club would you and he says O no I would not want you to pitch your best or get your self all wore out for next year but I would want you to let up enough so as we could make a run oncet in a while so the games would not be to 1 sided. I says Well they is not no use talking a bout it because I could not leave my wife and baby and he says Why dont you write and ask your wife and tell her how it is and can you go. I says No because she would make a big holler and besides of coarse I would go any way if I wanted to go with out no I yes or no from her only I am not the kind of a man that runs off and leaves his family and besides they is not nobody to leave her with because her and her sister Allens wife has had a quarrle. Then Callahan says Where is Allen at now is he still in Chi. I says I dont know where is he at and I dont care where he is at because I am threw with him. Then Callahan says I asked him would he go on the trip before the season was over but he says he could not and if I knowed where was he I would wire a telegram to him and ask him again. I says What would you want him a long for and he says Because Mcgraw is shy of pitchers and I says I would try and help him find 1. I says Well you should ought not to have no trouble finding a man like Allen to go along because his wife probily would be glad to get rid of him. Then Callahan says Well I wisht you would get a hold of where Allen is at and let me know so as I can wire him a telegram. Well Al I know where Allen is at all O.K. but I am not going to give his adress to Callahan because Mcgraw has treated me all O.K. and why should I wish a man like Allen on to him and besides I am not going to give Allen no chance to go a round the world or no wheres else after the way he acted a bout I and Florrie haveing a room in his flat and asking me to pay for it when he give me a invatation to come there and stay. Well Al it is to late now to cry in the sour milk but I wisht I had not never saw Florrie untill next year and then I and her could get married just like we done last year only I dont know would I do it again or not but I guess I would on acct. of little Al. Your pal, JACK. _San Francisco, Cal., Nov. 14._ OLD PAL: Well old pal what do you know a bout me being back here in San Francisco where I give the fans such a treat 2 years ago and then I was not nothing but a busher and now I am with a team that is going a round the world and are crazy to have me go a long only I cant because of my wife and baby. Callahan wired a telegram to the reporters here from Los Angeles telling them I would pitch here and I guess they is going to be 20 or 25000 out to the park and I will give them the best I got. But what do you think Florrie has did Al. Her and the Allens has made it up there quarrle and is friends again and Marie told Florrie to write and tell me she was sorry we had that there argument and let by gones be by gones. Well Al it is all O.K. with me because I cant help not feeling sorry for Allen because I dont beleive he will be in the league next year and I feel sorry for Marie to because it must be pretty tough on her to see how well her sister done and what a misstake she made when she went and fell for a left hander that could not fool a blind man with his curve ball and if he was to hit a man in the head with his fast ball they would think there nose iched. In Florries letter she says she thinks us and the Allens could find an other flat like the 1 we had last winter and all live in it to gether in stead of going to Bedford but I have wrote to her before I started writeing this letter all ready and told her that her and I is going to Bedford and the Allens can go where they feel like and they can go and stay on a boat on Michigan lake all winter if they want to but I and Florrie is comeing to Bedford. Down to the bottom of her letter she says Allen wants to know if Callahan or Mcgraw is shy of pitchers and may be he would change his mind and go a long on the trip. Well Al I did not ask either Callahan nor Mcgraw nothing a bout it because I knowed they was looking for a star and not for no left hander that could not brake a pane of glass with his fast 1 so I wrote and told Florrie to tell Allen they was all filled up and would not have no room for no more men. It is pretty near time to go out to the ball park and I wisht you could be here Al and hear them San Francisco fans go crazy when they hear my name anounced to pitch. I bet they wish they had of had me here this last year. Yours truly, JACK. _Medford, Organ, Nov. 16._ FRIEND AL: Well Al you know by this time that I did not pitch the hole game in San Francisco but I was not tooken out because they was hitting me Al but because my arm went back on me all of a sudden and it was the change in the clime it that done it to me and they could not hire me to try and pitch another game in San Francisco. They was the biggest crowd there that I ever seen in San Francisco and I guess they must of been 40000 people there and I wisht you could of heard them yell when my name was anounced to pitch. But Al I would not never of went in there but for the crowd. My arm felt like a wet rag or some thing and I knowed I would not have nothing and besides the people was packed in a round the field and they had to have ground rules so when a man hit a pop fly it went in to the crowd some wheres and was a 2 bagger and all them giants could do against me was pop my fast ball up in the air and then the wind took a hold of it and dropped it in to the crowd the lucky stiffs. Doyle hit 3 of them pop ups in to the crowd so when you see them 3 2 base hits oposit his name in the score you will know they was not no real 2 base hits and the infielders would of catched them had it not of been for the wind. This here Doyle takes a awful wallop at a ball but if I was right and he swang at a ball the way he done in San Francisco the catcher would all ready be throwing me back the ball a bout the time this here Doyle was swinging at it. I can make him look like a sucker and I done it both in Kansas city and Bonham and if he will get up there and bat against me when I feel good and when they is not no wind blowing I will bet him a $25.00 suit of cloths that he cant foul 1 off of me. Well when Callahan seen how bad my arm was he says I guess I should ought to take you out and not run no chance of you getting killed in there and so I quit and Faber went in to finnish it up because it dont make no diffrence if he hurts his arm or dont. But I guess Mcgraw knowed my arm was sore to because he did not try and kid me like he done that day in Chi because he has saw enough of me since then to know I can make his club look rotten when I am O.K. and my arm is good. On the train that night he come up and says to me Well Jack we catched you off your strid to-day or you would of gave us a beating and then he says What your arm needs is more work and you should ought to make the hole trip with us and then you would be in fine shape for next year but I says You cant get me to make no trip so you might is well not do no more talking a bout it and then he says Well I am sorry and the girls over to Paris will be sorry to but I guess he was just jokeing a bout the last part of it. Well Al we go to 1 more town in Organ and then to Washington but of coarse it is not the same Washington we play at in the summer but this is the state Washington and have not got no big league club and the boys gets there boat in 4 more days and I will quit them and then I will come strate back to Chi and from there to Bedford. Your pal, JACK. _Portland, Organ, Nov. 17._ FRIEND AL: I have just wrote a long letter to Florrie but I feel like as if I should ought to write to you because I wont have no more chance for a long while that is I wont have no more chance to male a letter because I will be on the pacific Ocean and un less we should run passed a boat that was comeing the other way they would not be no chance of getting no letter maled. Old pal I am going to make the hole trip clear a round the world and back and so I wont see you this winter after all but when I do see you Al I will have a lot to tell you a bout my trip and besides I will write you a letter a bout it from every place we head in at. I guess you will be surprised a bout me changeing my mind and makeing the hole trip but they was not no way for me to get out of it and I will tell you how it all come off. While we was still in that there Medford yesterday Mcgraw and Callahan come up to me and says was they not no chance of me changeing my mind a bout makeing the hole trip. I says No they was not. Then Callahan says Well I dont know what we are going to do then and I says Why and he says Comiskey just got a letter from president Wilson the President of the united states and in the letter president Wilson says he had got an other letter from the king of Japan who says that they would not stand for the White Sox and giants comeing to Japan un less they brought all there stars a long and president Wilson says they would have to take there stars a long because he was a scared if they did not take there stars a long Japan would get mad at the united states and start a war and then where would we be at. So Comiskey wired a telegram to president Wilson and says Mathewson could not make the trip because he was so old but would everything be all O.K. if I was to go a long and president Wilson wired a telegram back and says Yes he had been talking to the priest from Japan and he says Yes it would be all O.K. I asked them would they show me the letter from president Wilson because I thought may be they might be kiding me and they says they could not show me no letter because when Comiskey got the letter he got so mad that he tore it up. Well Al I finely says I did not want to brake up there trip but I knowed Florrie would not stand for letting me go so Callahan says All right I will wire a telegram to a friend of mine in Chi and have him get a hold of Allen and send him out here and we will take him a long and I says It is to late for Allen to get here in time and Mcgraw says No they was a train that only took 2 days from Chi to where ever it was the boat is going to sale from because the train come a round threw canada and it was down hill all the way. Then I says Well if you will wire a telegram to my wife and fix things up with her I will go a long with you but if she is going to make a holler it is all off. So we all 3 went to the telegram office to gether and we wired Florrie a telegram that must of cost $2.00 but Callahan and Mcgraw payed for it out of there own pocket and then we waited a round a long time and the anser come back and the anser was longer than the telegram we wired and it says it would not make no diffrence to her but she did not know if the baby would make a holler but he was hollering most of the time any way so that would not make no diffrence but if she let me go it was on condishon that her and the Allens could get a flat to gether and stay in Chi all winter and not go to no Bedford and hire a nurse to take care of the baby and if I would send her a check for the money I had in the bank so as she could put it in her name and draw it out when she need it. Well I says at 1st I would not stand for nothing like that but Callahan and Mcgraw showed me where I was makeing a mistake not going when I could see all them diffrent countrys and tell Florrie all a bout the trip when I come back and then in a year or 2 when the baby was a little older I could make an other trip and take little Al and Florrie a long so I finely says O.K. I would go and we wires still an other telegram to Florrie and told her O.K. and then I set down and wrote her a check for 1/2 the money I got in the bank and I got $500.00 all together there so I wrote the check for 1/2 of that or $250.00 and maled it to her and if she cant get a long on that she would be a awfull spendrift because I am not only going to be a way untill March. You should ought to of heard the boys cheer when Callahan tells them I am going to make the hole trip but when he tells them I am going to pitch for the giants and not for the White Sox I bet Crawford and Speaker and them wisht I was going to stay to home but it is just like Callahan says if they bat against me all winter the pitchers they bat against next season will look easy to them and you wont be supprised Al if Crawford and Speaker hits a bout 500 next year and if they hit good you will know why it is. Steve Evans asked me was I all fixed up with cloths and I says No but I was going out and buy some cloths includeing a full dress suit of evening cloths and he says You dont need no full dress suit of evening cloths because you look funny enough with out them. This Evans is a great kidder Al and no body never gets sore at the stuff he pulls some thing like Kid Gleason. I wisht Kid Gleason was going on the trip Al but I will tell him all a bout it when I come back. Well Al old pal I wisht you was going a long to and I bet we could have the time of our life but I will write to you right a long Al and I will send Bertha some post cards from the diffrent places we head in at. I will try and write you a letter on the boat and male it as soon as we get to the 1st station which is either Japan or Yokohama I forgot which. Good by Al and say good by to Bertha for me and tell her how sorry I and Florrie is that we cant come to Bedford this winter but we will spend all the rest of the winters there and her and Florrie will have a plenty of time to get acquainted. Good by old pal. Your pal, JACK. _Seattle, Wash., Nov. 18._ AL: Well Al it is all off and I am not going on no trip a round the world and back and I been looking for Callahan or Mcgraw for the last 1/2 hour to tell them I have changed my mind and am not going to make no trip because it would not be fare to Florrie and besides that I think I should ought to stay home and take care of little Al and not leave him to be tooken care of by no train nurse because how do I know what would she do to him and I am not going to tell Florrie nothing a bout it but I am going to take the train to-morrow night right back to Chi and supprise her when I get there and I bet both her and little Al will be tickled to death to see me. I supose Mcgraw and Callahan will be sore at me for a while but when I tell them I want to do the right thing and not give my famly no raw deal I guess they will see where I am right. We was to play 2 games here and was to play 1 of them in Tacoma and the other here but it rained and so we did not play neither 1 and the people was pretty mad a bout it because I was announced to pitch and they figured probily this would be there only chance to see me in axion and they made a awful holler but Comiskey says No they would not be no game because the field neither here or in Tacoma was in no shape for a game and he would not take no chance of me pitching and may be slipping in the mud and straneing myself and then where would the White Sox be at next season. So we been laying a round all the P.M. and I and Dutch Schaefer had a long talk to gether while some of the rest of the boys was out buying some cloths to take on the trip and Al I bought a full dress suit of evening cloths at Portland yesterday and now I owe Callahan the money for them and am not going on no trip so probily I wont never get to ware them and it is just $45.00 throwed a way but I would rather throw $45.00 a way then go on a trip a round the world and leave my famly all winter. Well Al I and Schaefer was talking to gether and he says Well may be this is the last time we will ever see the good old US and I says What do you mean and he says People that gos acrost the pacific Ocean most generally all ways has there ship recked and then they is not no more never heard from them. Then he asked me was I a good swimmer and I says Yes I had swam a good deal in the river and he says Yes you have swam in the river but that is not nothing like swimming in the pacific Ocean because when you swim in the pacific Ocean you cant move your feet because if you move your feet the sharks comes up to the top of the water and bites at them and even if they did not bite your feet clean off there bite is poison and gives you the hiderofobeya and when you get that you start barking like a dog and the water runs in to your mouth and chokes you to death. Then he says Of coarse if you can swim with out useing your feet you are all O.K. but they is very few can do that and especially in the pacific Ocean because they got to keep useing there hands all the time to scare the sord fish a way so when you dont dare use your feet and your hands is busy you got nothing left to swim with but your stumach mussles. Then he says You should ought to get a long all O.K. because your stumach mussles should ought to be strong from the exercise they get so I guess they is not no danger from a man like you but men like Wiltse and Mike Donlin that is not hog fat like you has not got no chance. Then he says Of coarse they have been times when the boats got acrost all O.K. and only a few lives lost but it dont offten happen and the time the old Minneapolis club made the trip the boat went down and the only thing that was saved was the catchers protector that was full of air and could not do nothing else but flote. Then he says May be you would flote to if you did not say nothing for a few days. I asked him how far would a man got to swim if some thing went wrong with the boat and he says O not far because they is a hole lot of ilands a long the way that a man could swim to but it would not do a man no good to swim to these here ilands because they dont have nothing to eat on them and a man would probily starve to death un less he happened to swim to the sandwich ilands. Then he says But by the time you been out on the pacific Ocean a few months you wont care if you get any thing to eat or not. I says Why not and he says the pacific Ocean is so ruff that not nothing can set still not even the stuff you eat. I asked him how long did it take to make the trip acrost if they was not no ship reck and he says they should ought to get acrost a long in febuery if the weather was good. I says Well if we dont get there until febuery we wont have no time to train for next season and he says You wont need to do no training because this trip will take all the weight off of you and every thing else you got. Then he says But you should not ought to be scared of getting sea sick because they is 1 way you can get a way from it and that is to not eat nothing at all while you are on the boat and they tell me you dont eat hardly nothing any way so you wont miss it. Then he says Of coarse if we should have good luck and not get in to no ship reck and not get shot by 1 of them war ships we will have a grate time when we get acrost because all the girls in europe and them places is nuts over ball players and especially stars. I asked what did he mean saying we might get shot by 1 of them war ships and he says we would have to pass by Swittserland and the Swittserland war ships was all the time shooting all over the ocean and of coarse they was not trying to hit no body but they was as wild as most of them left handers and how could you tell what was they going to do next. Well Al after I got threw talking to Schaefer I run in to Jack Sheridan the umpire and I says I did not think I would go on no trip and I told him some of the things Schaefer was telling me and Sheridan says Schaefer was kidding me and they was not no danger at all and of coarse Al I did not believe 1/2 of what Schaefer was telling me and that has not got nothing to do with me changeing my mind but I don't think it is not hardly fare for me to go a way on a trip like that and leave Florrie and the baby and suppose some of them things really did happen like Schaefer said though of coarse he was kidding me but if 1 of them was to happen they would not be no body left to take care of Florrie and little Al and I got a $1000.00 insurence policy but how do I know after I am dead if the insurence co. comes acrost and gives my famly the money. Well Al I will male this letter and then try again and find Mcgraw and Callahan and then I will look up a time table and see what train can I get to Chi. I dont know yet when I will be in Bedford and may be Florrie has hired a flat all ready but the Allens can live in it by them self and if Allen says any thing a bout I paying for 1/2 of the rent I will bust his jaw. Your pal, JACK. _Victoria, Can., Nov. 19._ DEAR OLD AL: Well old pal the boat gos to-night I am going a long and I would not be takeing no time to write this letter only I wrote to you yesterday and says I was not going and you probily would be expecting to see me blow in to Bedford in a few days and besides Al I got a hole lot of things to ask you to do for me if any thing happens and I want to tell you how it come a bout that I changed my mind and am going on the trip. I am glad now that I did not write Florrie no letter yesterday and tell her I was not going because now I would have to write her an other letter and tell her I was going and she would be expecting to see me the day after she got the 1st letter and in stead of seeing me she would get this 2nd. letter and not me at all. I have all ready wrote her a good by letter to-day though and while I was writeing it Al I all most broke down and cried and espesially when I thought a bout leaveing little Al so long and may be when I see him again he wont be no baby no more or may be some thing will of happened to him or that train nurse did some thing to him or may be I wont never see him again no more because it is pretty near a cinch that some thing will either happen to I or him. I would give all most any thing I got Al to be back in Chi with little Al and Florrie and I wisht she had not of never wired that telegram telling me I could make the trip and if some thing happens to me think how she will feel when ever she thinks a bout wireing me that telegram and she will feel all most like as if she was a murder. Well Al after I had wrote you that letter yesterday I found Callahan and Mcgraw and I tell them I have changed my mind and am not going on no trip. Callahan says Whats the matter and I says I dont think it would be fare to my wife and baby and Callahan says Your wife says it would be all O.K. because I seen the telegram my self. I says Yes but she dont know how dangerus the trip is and he says Whos been kiding you and I says They has not no body been kiding me. I says Dutch Schaefer told me a hole lot of stuff but I did not believe none of it and that has not got nothing to do with it. I says I am not a scared of nothing but supose some thing should happen and then where would my wife and my baby be at. Then Callahan says Schaefer has been giveing you a lot of hot air and they is not no more danger on this trip then they is in bed. You been in a hole lot more danger when you was pitching some of them days when you had a sore arm and you would be takeing more chances of getting killed in Chi by 1 of them taxi cabs or the dog catcher then on the Ocean. This here boat we are going on is the Umpires of Japan and it has went acrost the Ocean a million times with out nothing happening and they could not nothing happen to a boat that the N.Y. giants was rideing on because they is to lucky. Then I says Well I have made up my mind to not go on no trip and he says All right then I guess we might is well call the trip off and I says Why and he says You know what president Wilson says a bout Japan and they wont stand for us comeing over there with out you a long and then Mcgraw says Yes it looks like as if the trip was off because we dont want to take no chance of starting no war between Japan and the united states. Then Callahan says You will be in fine with Comiskey if he has to call the trip off because you are a scared of getting hit by a fish. Well Al we talked and argude for a hour or a hour and 1/2 and some of the rest of the boys come a round and took Callahan and Mcgraw side and finely Callahan says it looked like as if they would have to posepone the trip a few days un till he could get a hold of Allen or some body and get them to take my place so finely I says I would go because I would not want to brake up no trip after they had made all there plans and some of the players wifes was all ready to go and would be dissapointed if they was not no trip. So Mcgraw and Callahan says Thats the way to talk and so I am going Al and we are leaveing to-night and may be this is the last letter you will ever get from me but if they does not nothing happen Al I will write to you a lot of letters and tell you all a bout the trip but you must not be looking for no more letters for a while untill we get to Japan where I can male a letter and may be its likely as not we wont never get to Japan. Here is the things I want to ask you to try and do Al and I am not asking you to do nothing if we get threw the trip all right but if some thing happens and I should be drowned here is what I am asking you to do for me and that is to see that the insurence co. dont skin Florrie out of that $1000.00 policy and see that she all so gets that other $250.00 out of the bank and find her some place down in Bedford to live if she is willing to live down there because she can live there a hole lot cheaper then she can live in Chi and besides I know Bertha would treat her right and help her out all she could. All so Al I want you and Bertha to help take care of little Al untill he grows up big enough to take care of him self and if he looks like as if he was going to be left handed dont let him Al but make him use his right hand for every thing. Well Al they is 1 good thing and that is if I get drowned Florrie wont have to buy no lot in no cemetary and hire no herse. Well Al old pal you all ways been a good friend of mine and I all ways tried to be a good friend of yourn and if they was ever any thing I done to you that was not O.K. remember by gones is by gones. I want you to all ways think of me as your best old pal. Good by old pal. Your old pal, JACK. P.S. Al if they should not nothing happen and if we was to get acrost the Ocean all O.K. I am going to ask Mcgraw to let me work the 1st game against the White Sox in Japan because I should certainly ought to be right after giveing my arm a rest and not doing nothing at all on the trip acrost and I bet if Mcgraw lets me work Crawford and Speaker will wisht the boat had of sank. You know me Al. Transcribers Note: Original spelling and grammar has been retained. G.M. 
50586	----	[Illustration: REVEREND WILLIAM ASHLEY SUNDAY, D.D.] "BILLY" SUNDAY THE MAN AND HIS MESSAGE WITH HIS OWN WORDS WHICH HAVE WON THOUSANDS FOR CHRIST BY WILLIAM T. ELLIS, LL.D. AUTHOR OF "MEN AND MISSIONS" Authorized Edition PHILADELPHIA THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO. PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY L. T. MYERS CAUTION The entire contents of this book are protected by the stringent new copyright law, and all persons are warned not to attempt to reproduce the text, in whole or in part, or any of the illustrations. Authorized by Mr. Sunday This work contains the heart of Mr. Sunday's gospel message arranged by subjects, and is published by special agreement with him for the use of copyright material and photographs, which could be used only by his permission. A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR Because he is the most conspicuous Christian leader in America today; because he has done an entirely unique and far-reaching work of evangelism; and because his words have a message for all men, I have written, at the request of the publishers, this narrative concerning Rev. William A. Sunday, D.D. The final appraisal of the man and his ministry cannot, of course, be made while he is alive. "Never judge unfinished work." This book has endeavored to deal candidly, though sympathetically, with its subject. Mr. Sunday has not seen either the manuscript or proofs. He has, however, authorized the use of the messages which he is accustomed to deliver in his meetings, and which comprise more than half the contents of the volume. The author's hope is that those of us who are just plain "folks" will find the book interesting and helpful. He has no doubt that professional Christian workers will get many suggestions from the story of Mr. Sunday's methods. I would acknowledge the assistance of Miss Helen Cramp and the Rev. Ernest Bawden in collating and preparing for publication Mr. Sunday's utterances. WILLIAM T. ELLIS. SWARTHMORE, PA. CONTENTS PAGE Preface 5 Contents 7 CHAPTER I One of God's Tools God's Man Sent in God's Time--Sunday's Converts--Religion and the Common People--A Great City Shaken by the Gospel--Popular Interest in Vital Religion--Sunday a Distinctively American Type 15 CHAPTER II Up from the Soil Sunday's Sympathy with Every-day Folk--Early Life--The Soldiers' Orphanage--The Old Farm--Earning a Living--The School of Experience--First Baseball Ventures 22 CHAPTER III A Base-Ball "Star" Fame as a Baseball Player--Eagerness to "Take a Chance"--Record Run on the Day Following his Conversion--The Parting of the Ways 33 CHAPTER IV A Curbstone Recruit Mrs. Clark and the Pacific Garden Mission--Sunday's Own Story of his Conversion--Winning the Game of Life 39 CHAPTER V Playing the New Game The Individuality of the Man--His Marriage--Mrs. Sunday's Influence--Work in the Y. M. C. A.--A Father Disowned--Redeeming a Son--The Gambler--A Living Testimony--Professional Evangelistic Work 45 CHAPTER VI A Shut Door--and an Open One Sunday Thrown Upon His Own Resources by Dr. Chapman's Return to Philadelphia--Call to Garner, Iowa--"This is the Lord's Doings" 57 CHAPTER VII Campaigning for Christ Splendid Organization of a Sunday Campaign--Church Co-operation--The Power of Christian Publicity--District Prayer Meetings--Sunday's Army of Workers--The Sunday Tabernacle--The Evangelist's Own Compensation--Personnel of the Sunday Party 61 CHAPTER VIII "Speech--Seasoned with Salt" Vivid Language of the Common People--"Rubbing the Fur the Wrong Way"--"Delivering the Goods"--Shakings from the Sunday Salt-cellar 69 CHAPTER IX Battling with Booze An Effective Foe of the Liquor Business--"Dry" Victories Following Sunday Campaigns--"De Brewer's Big Hosses"--The Famous "Booze" Sermon--Interest in Manhood--Does the Saloon Help Business?--The Parent of Crimes--The Economic Side--Tragedies Born of Drink--More Economics--The American Mongoose--The Saloon a Coward--God's Worst Enemy--What Will a Dollar Buy?--The Gin Mill--A Chance for Manhood--Personal Liberty--The Moderate Drinker--What Booze Does to the System 80 CHAPTER X "Give Attendance to Reading" Sunday's Reverence for "Book Learning"--No Claim to Originality--Some Sources of His Sermons--God's Token of Love--The Sinking Ship--"What If It Had Been My Boy?"--A Dream of Heaven--The Battle with Death--"Christ or Nothing"--Calvary--The World for God--A Word Picture--The Faithful Pilot 121 CHAPTER XI Acrobatic Preaching Platform Gymnastics--The Athlete in the Preacher--Sunday's Sense of Humor Stronger than His Sense of Pathos--His Voice and Manner--Personal Side of Sunday 138 CHAPTER XII "The Old-Time Religion" Sunday's Power of Positive Conviction--His Ideas of Theology--The Need of Old-time Revival--The Gospel According to Sunday--Salvation a Personal Matter--"And He Arose and Followed Him"--At the Cross-roads--"He Died for Me" 146 CHAPTER XIII "Hitting the Sawdust Trail" Origin of the Phrase, "The Sawdust Trail"--Impressive Scenes as Converts by the Hundred Stream Forward--Vital Religion--Mr. Sunday's Hand--All Sorts and Conditions of People 158 CHAPTER XIV The Service of Society Social and Ethical Results of Sunday's Preaching--The Potent Force of the Gospel--Religion in Every-day Life--Testimony of Rev. Joseph H. Odell, D.D.--Testimony of Rev. Maitland Alexander, D.D.--The "Garage Bible Class"--Making Religion a Subject of Ordinary Conversation--Lasting Results--A Life Story 167 CHAPTER XV Giving the Devil His Due Sunday's Sense of the Reality of the Devil--Excoriation of the Devil--"Devil" Passages from Sermons 182 CHAPTER XVI Critics and Criticism Storm of Criticism a Tribute--Preaching "Christ Crucified"--Recognition from Secretary Bryan--Pilgrimage of Philadelphia Clergymen--Heaven's Messenger--Plain Speech from Sunday Himself 188 CHAPTER XVII A Clean Man on Social Sins Clean-mindedness of the Man--A Plain Talk to Men--Christian Character--Common Sense--No Excuse for Swearing--Family Skeletons--Nursing Bad Habits--The Leprosy of Sin--"But the Lord Looketh on the Heart"--The Joy of Religion--A Plain Talk to Women--Hospitality--Maternity Out of Fashion--The Girl Who Flirts--The Task of Womanhood 202 CHAPTER XVIII "Help Those Women" Sunday's Honor of Womanhood--The Sermon on "Mother"--A Mother's Watchfulness--A Mother's Bravery--Good Mothers Needed--God's Hall of Fame--A Mother's Song--A Mother's Love--A Mother's Responsibility--Mothers of Great Men 231 CHAPTER XIX Standing on the Rock The Old-Fashioned Loyalty of the Evangelist to the Bible--Some of His Utterances on the Bible 249 CHAPTER XX Making a Joyful Noise No Gloom in a Sunday Revival--The Value of a Laugh--The Value of Music--The Tabernacle Music--The Campaign Choirs--A Revival of Song 261 CHAPTER XXI The Prophet and His Own Time The Evangelist's Arraignment of the Sins of Today--His Treatment of the Church and Society 267 CHAPTER XXII Those Billy Sunday Prayers Unconventionality of the Prayers--Specimen Prayers--"Teach Us to Pray"--Learning of Christ--Pride Hinders Prayer--Praying in Secret--Praying in Humility--Men of Prayer 271 CHAPTER XXIII The Revival on Trial The Sea of Faces--Laboratory Tests--"The Need of Revivals"--What a Revival Does--Revival Demands Sacrifice--Persecution a Godsend 288 CHAPTER XXIV An Army With Banners Unique Plans for Reaching the Masses of the People--Visiting Delegations--Parade at Close of Campaign--"Spiritual Power"--Derelicts in the Church--The Meaning of Power--Church Needs Great Awakening--Lost Power 299 CHAPTER XXV A Life Enlistment Some Notable Instances of the Lasting Results of Sunday Revivals--"Gospel Teams"--Sermon on "Sharp-Shooters"--The Value of Personal Work--"My Father's Business"--Feeding the Spiritual Life--The Dignity of Personal Work--Five Classes of People 311 CHAPTER XXVI "A Good Soldier of Jesus Christ" Astounding Number of Conversions--Statistics of Campaigns in Various Cities--Sunday's "Consecration" Sermon--God's Mercies--The Living Sacrifice--A Glass of Champagne--Denying One's Self--Thinking for God--What God Asks 326 CHAPTER XXVII A Wonderful Day at a Great University Visit to University of Pennsylvania--"What Shall I Do With Jesus?"--"Real Manhood"--"Hot-cakes Off the Griddle"--Comment of _Old Penn_--Opinions of Students--Comment of Religious Press 343 CHAPTER XXVIII The Christian's Daily Helper "The Holy Spirit"--No Universal Salvation--Happiest Nation on Earth--Ambassadors of God--Holy Spirit a Person--The Last Dispensation--"Little Things"--The Fame of a Christian 359 CHAPTER XXIX A Victorious Sermon Conquests by the Sermon on "The Unpardonable Sin"--What It Is--Resisting the Truth--"Too Late"--Representative of the Trinity--Death-bed Confessions--A Forgiving God--Power of Revivals 370 CHAPTER XXX Eternity! Eternity! "What Shall the End Be?"--Men Believe in God--At the Cross--The Judgment of God--Glad Tidings to All--The Atonement of Christ--God's Word--Eternity and Space--God's Infinite Love--Preparing for Eternity--A Leap in the Dark--"The End Thereof" 383 CHAPTER XXXI Our Long Home "Heaven"--"I, Too, Must Die"--No Substitute for Religion--Morality Not Enough--The Way of Salvation--Rewards of Merit--A Place of Noble People--"A Place for You"--The Missing 404 CHAPTER XXXII Glorying in the Cross "Atonement"--Suffering for the Guilty--Jesus' Atoning Blood--No Argument Against Sin--"There is Sin"--"How Long, O God?" 424 CHAPTER I One of God's Tools I want to be a giant for God.--BILLY SUNDAY. Heaven often plays jokes on earth's worldly-wise. After the consensus of experience and sagacity has settled upon a certain course and type, lo, all the profundity of the sages is blown away as a speck of dust and we have, say, a shockingly unconventional John the Baptist, who does not follow the prescribed rules in dress, training, methods or message. John the Baptist was God's laugh at the rabbis and the Pharisees. In an over-ecclesiastical age, when churchly authority had reached the limit, a poor monk, child of a miner's hut, without influence or favor, was called to break the power of the popes, and to make empires and reshape history, flinging his shadow far down the centuries. Martin Luther was God's laugh at ecclesiasticism. While the brains and aristocracy and professional statesmanship of America struggled in vain with the nation's greatest crisis, God reached down close to the soil of the raw and ignored Middle West, and picked up a gaunt and untutored specimen of the common people--a man who reeked of the earth until the earth closed over him--and so saved the Union and freed a race, through ungainly Abraham Lincoln. Thus again Heaven laughed at exalted procedure and conventionality. In our own day, with its blatant worldly wisdom, with its flaunting prosperity, with its fashionable churchliness, with its flood of "advanced" theology overwhelming the pulpit, God needed a prophet, to call his people back to simple faith and righteousness. A nation imperiled by luxury, greed, love of pleasure and unbelief cried aloud for a deliverer. Surely this crisis required a great man, learned in all the ways of the world, equipped with the best preparation of American and foreign universities and theological seminaries, a man trained in ecclesiastical leadership, and approved and honored by the courts of the Church? So worldly wisdom decreed. But God laughed--and produced, to the scandal of the correct and conventional, Billy Sunday, a common man from the common people, who, like Lincoln, so wears the signs and savor of the soil that fastidious folk, to whom sweat is vulgar and to whom calloused hands are "bad form," quite lose their suavity and poise in calling him "unrefined." That he is God's tool is the first and last word about Billy Sunday. He is a "phenomenon" only as God is forever doing phenomenal things, and upsetting men's best-laid plans. He is simply a tool of God. For a special work he is the special instrument. God called, and he answered. All the many owlish attempts to "explain" Billy Sunday on psychological and sociological grounds fall flat when they ignore the fact that he is merely a handy man for the Lord's present use. God is still, as ever, confounding all human wisdom by snatching the condemned baby of a Hebrew slave out of Egypt's river to become a nation's deliverer; by calling a shepherd boy from his sheep to be Israel's greatest warrior and king; and by sending his only-begotten Son to earth by way of a manger, and training him in a workingman's home and a village carpenter shop. "My ways are not your ways," is a remark of God, which he seems fond of repeating and illustrating. There is no other explanation of Billy Sunday needed, or possible, than that he is God's man sent in God's time. And if God chooses the weak and foolish things of earth to confound the mighty, is not that but another one of his inscrutable ways of showing that he is God? Why are we so confident that Billy Sunday is the Lord's own man, when so many learned critics have declared the contrary? Simply because he has led more persons to make a public confession of discipleship to Jesus Christ than any other man for a century past. Making Christians is, from all angles, the greatest work in the world. Approximately two hundred and fifty thousand persons, in the past twenty-five years, have taken Sunday's hand, in token that henceforth their lives belong to the Saviour. That amazing statement is too big to be grasped at once. It requires thinking over. The huge total of dry figures needs to be broken up into its component parts of living human beings. Tens of thousands of those men were husbands--hundreds of whom had been separated from their wives and children by sin. Now, in reunited homes, whole families bless the memory of the man of God who gave them back husbands and fathers. Other tens of thousands were sons, over many of whom parents had long prayed and agonized. It would be hard to convince these mothers, whose sons have been given back to clean living and to Christian service, that there is anything seriously wrong with Mr. Sunday's language, methods or theology. Business men who find that a Sunday revival means the paying up of the bad bills of old customers are ready to approve on this evidence a man whose work restores integrity in commercial relations. Every conceivable type of humanity is included in that total of a quarter of a million of Sunday converts. The college professor, the prosperous business man, the eminent politician, the farmer, the lawyer, the editor, the doctor, the author, the athlete, the "man about town," the criminal, the drunkard, the society woman, the college student, the workingman, the school boy and girl: the whole gamut of life is covered by the stream of humanity that has "hit the sawdust trail"--a phrase which has chilled the marrow of every theological seminary in the land. But the trail leads home to the Father's House. One must reach into the dictionary for big, strong words in characterizing the uniqueness of Billy Sunday's work. So I say that another aspect of his success is fairly astounding. He, above all others in our time, has broken through the thick wall of indifference which separates the Church from the world. Church folk commonly avoid the subject of this great fixed gulf. We do not like to face the fact that the mass of mankind does not bother its head about conventional religious matters. Even the majority of church-goers are blankly uninterested in the general affairs of religion. Sad to tell, our bishops and board secretaries and distinguished preachers are really only local celebrities. Their names mean nothing in newspaper offices or to newspaper readers: there are not six clergymen in the United States with a really national reputation. Each in his own circle, of locality or denomination, may be Somebody with a big S. But the world goes on unheeding. Great ecclesiastical movements and meetings are entirely unrecorded by the secular press. The Church's problem of problems is how to smash, or even to crack, the partition which shuts off the world from the Church. Billy Sunday has done that. He has set all sorts and conditions of men to talking about religion. Go to the lowest dive in New York's "Tenderloin" or in San Francisco's "Barbary Coast," and mention the name "Billy Sunday," and everybody will recognize it, and be ready to discuss the man and his message. Stand before a session of the American Philosophical Society and pronounce the words "Billy Sunday" and every one of the learned savants present will be able to talk about the man, even though few of them know who won last season's baseball championship or who is the world's champion prize-fighter. This is a feat of first magnitude. All levels of society have been made aware of Billy Sunday and his gospel. When the evangelist went to New York for an evening address, early in the year 1914, the throngs were so great that the police were overwhelmed by the surging thousands. Even Mr. Sunday himself could not obtain admittance to the meeting for more than half an hour. Andrew Carnegie could not get into the hall that bears his name. Probably a greater number of persons tried to hear this evangelist that night than were gathered in all the churches of greater New York combined on the preceding Sunday night. To turn thousands of persons away from his meetings is a common experience of Mr. Sunday. More than ten thousand, mostly men, tried in vain to get into the overcrowded Scranton tabernacle at a single session. Every thoughtful man or woman must be interested in the man who thus can make religion interesting to the common people. The despair of the present-day Church is the modern urban center. Our generation had not seen a great city shaken by the gospel until Billy Sunday went to Pittsburgh. That he did it is the unanimous report of press and preachers and business men. Literally that whole city was stirred to its most sluggish depths by the Sunday campaign. No baseball series or political campaign ever moved the community so deeply. Everywhere one went the talk was of Billy Sunday and his meetings. From the bell boys in the hotels to the millionaires in the Duquesne Club, from the workmen in the mills and the girls in the stores, to the women in exclusive gatherings, Sunday was the staple of conversation. Day by day, all the newspapers in the city gave whole pages to the Sunday meetings. The sermons were reported entire. No other topic ever had received such full attention for so long a time at the hands of the press as the Sunday campaign. These issues of the papers were subscribed for by persons in all parts of the land. Men and women were converted who never heard the sound of the evangelist's voice. This series of Pittsburgh meetings, more than anything else in his experience, impressed the power of Sunday upon the metropolitan centers of the nation at large; the country folk had long before learned of him. Any tabulation of Mr. Sunday's influence must give a high place to the fact that he has made good press "copy": he has put religion on the front pages of the dailies; and has made it a present issue with the millions. Under modern conditions, no man can hope to evangelize America who has not also access to the columns of the newspapers. Within the memory of living men, no other man or agency has brought religion so powerfully and consecutively into the press as William A. Sunday, whom some of his scholarly critics have called "illiterate." All of which proves the popular interest in vital, contemporaneous religion. Men's ears are dulled by the "shop talk" of the pulpit. They are weary of the worn platitudes of professional piety. Nobody cares for the language of Canaan, in which many ministers, with reverence for the dead past, have tried to enswathe the living truths of the Gospel, as if they were mummies. In the colloquial tongue of the common people, Jesus first proclaimed his gospel, and "the common people heard him gladly," although many of the learned and aristocratic ecclesiastics of his day were scandalized by his free and popular way of putting things, by his "common" stories, and by his disregard for the precedents of the schools. Whatever else may be said about Billy Sunday's much-discussed forms of speech, this point is clear, and denied by nobody: he makes himself and his message clearly understood by all classes of people. However much one may disagree with him, nobody fails to catch his meaning. He harnesses the common words of the street up to the chariot of divine truth. Every-day folk, the uncritical, unscholarly crowd of us, find no fault with the fact that Sunday uses the same sort of terms that we do. In fresh, vigorous, gripping style, he makes his message unmistakable. College students like him as much as do the farmers and mechanics. In a single day's work at the University of Pennsylvania, when thousands of students crowded his meetings, and gave reverent, absorbed attention to his message, several hundred of them openly dedicated their lives to Christ, and in token thereof publicly grasped his hand. Dr. John R. Mott, the world's greatest student leader, once said to me, in commenting upon Sunday: "You cannot fool a great body of students. They get a man's measure. If he is genuine, they know it, and if he is not, they quickly find it out. Their devotion to Mr. Sunday is very significant." [Illustration: "GOD LIKES A LITTLE HUMOR, AS EVIDENCED BY THE FACT THAT HE MADE THE MONKEY, THE PARROT--AND SOME OF YOU PEOPLE."] This man, who meets life on all levels, and proves that the gospel message is for no one particular class, is a distinctively American type. Somebody has said that the circus is the most democratic of American institutions: it brings all sorts and conditions of people together on a common plane and for a common purpose. The Sunday evangelistic meetings are more democratic than a circus. They are a singular exhibit of American life--perhaps the most distinctive gathering to be found in our land today. His appeal is to the great mass of the people. The housekeepers who seldom venture away from their homes, the mechanics who do not go to church, the "men about town" who profess a cynical disdain for religion, the "down and outs," the millionaires, the society women, the business and professional men, the young fellows who feel "too big" to go to Sunday school--all these, and scores of other types, may be found night after night in the barn-like wooden tabernacles which are always erected for the Sunday meetings. Our common American life seems to meet and merge in this baseball evangelist, who once erected tents for another evangelist, and now has to have special auditoriums built to hold his own crowds; and who has risen from a log cabin to a place of national power and honor. Nowhere else but in America could one find such an unconventional figure as Billy Sunday. Succeeding chapters will tell in some detail the story of the man and his work; and in most of them the man will speak his own messages. But for explanation of his power and his work it can only be said, as of old, "There was a man sent from God, whose name was"--Billy Sunday. CHAPTER II Up from the Soil If you want to drive the devil out of the world, hit him with a cradle instead of a crutch.--BILLY SUNDAY. Sunday must be accepted as a man of the American type before he can be understood. He is of the average, every-day American sort. He is one of the "folks." He has more points of resemblance to the common people than he has of difference from them. His mind is their mind. The keenness of the average American is his in an increased degree. He has the saving sense of humor which has marked this western people. The extravagances and recklessnesses of his speech would be incredible to a Britisher; but we Americans understand them. They are of a piece with our minds. Like the type, Sunday is not over-fastidious. He is not made of a special porcelain clay, but of the same red soil as the rest of us. He knows the barn-yards of the farm better than the drawing-rooms of the rich. The normal, every-day Americanism of this son of the Middle West, whom the nation knows as "Billy Sunday," is to be insisted upon if he is to be understood. Early apprenticed to hardship and labor, he has a sympathy with the life of the toiling people which mere imagination cannot give. His knowledge of the American crowd is sure and complete because he is one of them. He understands the life of every-day folk because that has always been his life. While he has obvious natural ability, sharpened on the grindstone of varied experience, his perceptions and his viewpoints are altogether those of the normal American. As he has seen something of life on many levels, and knows city ways as well as country usages, he has never lost his bearings as to what sort of people make up the bulk of this country. To them his sermons are addressed. Because he strikes this medium level of common conduct and thought, it is easy for those in all the ranges of American life to comprehend him. "Horse-sense," that fundamental American virtue, is Sunday's to an eminent degree. A modern American philosopher defines this quality of mind as "an instinctive something that tells us when the clock strikes twelve." Because he is "rich in saving common sense," Sunday understands the people and trusts them to understand him. His most earnest defenders from the beginning of his public life have been the rank and file of the common people. His critics have come from the extreme edges of society--the scholar, or the man whose business is hurt by righteousness. The life of William A. Sunday covers the period of American history since the Civil War. He never saw his father, for he was born the third son of pioneer parents on November 19, 1862, four months after his father had enlisted as a private in Company E, Twenty-third Iowa Infantry Volunteers. There is nothing remarkable to record as to the family. They were one with the type of the middle-western Americans who wrested that empire from the wilderness, and counted poverty honorable. In those mutually helpful, splendidly independent days, Democracy came to its flower, and the American type was born. Real patriotism is always purchased at a high price; none pay more dearly for war-time loyalty than the women who send their husbands and sons to the front. Mrs. Sunday bade her husband answer the call of his country as only a brave woman could do, and sent him forth to the service and sacrifices which soon ended in an unmarked grave. Four months after she had bidden farewell to her husband, she bade welcome to his son. To this third child she gave the name of her absent soldier husband. The mother's dreams of the returning soldier's delight in his namesake child were soon shattered by the tidings that Private William Sunday had died of disease contracted in service, at Patterson, Missouri, on December 22, 1862, a little more than a month after the birth of the boy who was to lift his name out of the obscurity of the hosts of those who gave "the last full measure of devotion" to their nation. Then the mother was called upon to take up that heaviest of all burdens of patriotism--the rearing of an orphan family in a home of dire poverty. The three children in the Sunday home out at Ames, Iowa--Roy, Edward and William--were unwitting participants in another aspect of war, the lot of soldiers' orphans. For years, Mrs. Sunday, who at this writing is still living and rejoicing in the successes of her son, was able to keep her little family together under the roof of the two-roomed log cabin which they called home. In those early days their grandfather, Squire Corey, was of unmeasured help in providing for and training the three orphan boys. Experience is a school teacher who carries a rod, as Sunday could well testify. He learned life's fundamental lessons in the school of poverty and toil. To the part which his mother played in shaping his life and ideals he has borne eloquent tribute on many platforms. When the youngest son was twelve years old, he and his older brother were sent off to the Soldiers' Orphanage at Glenwood, Iowa. Later they were transferred to the Davenport Orphanage, which they left in June of 1876, making two years spent in the orphanages. Concerning this experience Sunday himself speaks: "I was bred and born (not in old Kentucky, although my grandfather was a Kentuckian), but in old Iowa. I am a rube of the rubes. I am a hayseed of the hayseeds, and the malodors of the barnyard are on me yet, and it beats Pinaud and Colgate, too. I have greased my hair with goose grease and blacked my boots with stove blacking. I have wiped my old proboscis with a gunny-sack towel; I have drunk coffee out of my saucer, and I have eaten with my knife; I have said 'done it,' when I should have said 'did it,' and I 'have saw' when I should 'have seen,' and I expect to go to heaven just the same. I have crept and crawled out from the university of poverty and hard knocks, and have taken postgraduate courses. "My father went to the war four months before I was born, in Company E, Twenty-third Iowa. I have butted and fought and struggled since I was six years old. That's one reason why I wear that little red, white and blue button. I know all about the dark and seamy side of life, and if ever a man fought hard, I have fought hard for everything I have ever gained. "The wolf scratched at the cabin door and finally mother said: 'Boys, I am going to send you to the Soldiers' Orphans' Home.' At Ames, Iowa, we had to wait for the train, and we went to a little hotel, and they came about one o'clock and said: 'Get ready for the train.' "I looked into mother's face. Her eyes were red, her hair was disheveled. I said: 'What's the matter, mother?' All the time Ed and I slept mother had been praying. We went to the train; she put one arm about me and the other about Ed and sobbed as if her heart would break. People walked by and looked at us, but they didn't say a word. "Why? They didn't know, and if they had they wouldn't have cared. Mother knew; she knew that for years she wouldn't see her boys. We got into the train and said, 'Good-bye, mother,' as the train pulled out. We reached Council Bluffs. It was cold and we turned up our coats and shivered. We saw the hotel and went up and asked the woman for something to eat. She said: 'What's your name?' "'My name is William Sunday, and this is my brother Ed.' "'Where are you going?' "'Going to the Soldiers' Orphans' Home at Glenwood.' "She wiped her tears and said: 'My husband was a soldier and he never came back. He wouldn't turn any one away and I wouldn't turn you boys away.' She drew her arms about us and said: 'Come on in.' She gave us our breakfast and our dinner, too. There wasn't any train going out on the 'Q' until afternoon. We saw a freight train standing there, so we climbed into the caboose. [Illustration: "WHERE'S YOUR MONEY OR TICKET?"] "The conductor came along and said: 'Where's your money or ticket?' "'Ain't got any.' "'I'll have to put you off.' "We commenced to cry. My brother handed him a letter of introduction to the superintendent of the orphans' home. The conductor read it, and handed it back as the tears rolled down his cheeks. Then he said: 'Just sit still, boys. It won't cost a cent to ride on my train.' "It's only twenty miles from Council Bluffs to Glenwood, and as we rounded the curve the conductor said: 'There it is on the hill.' "I want to say to you that one of the brightest pictures that hangs upon the walls of my memory is the recollection of the days when as a little boy, out in the log cabin on the frontier of Iowa, I knelt by mother's side. "I went back to the old farm some years ago. The scenes had changed about the place. Faces I had known and loved had long since turned to dust. Fingers that used to turn the pages of the Bible were obliterated and the old trees beneath which we boys used to play and swing had been felled by the woodman's axe. I stood and thought. The man became a child again and the long weary nights of sin and of hardships became as though they never had been. "Once more with my gun on my shoulder and my favorite dog trailing at my heels I walked through the pathless wood and sat on the old familiar logs and stumps, and as I sat and listened to the wild, weird harmonies of nature, a vision of the past opened. The squirrel from the limb of the tree barked defiantly and I threw myself into an interrogation point, and when the gun cracked, the squirrel fell at my feet. I grabbed him and ran home to throw him down and receive compliments for my skill as a marksman. And I saw the tapestry of the evening fall. I heard the lowing herds and saw them wind slowly o'er the lea and I listened to the tinkling bells that lulled the distant fowl. Once more I heard the shouts of childish glee. Once more I climbed the haystack for the hen's eggs. Once more we crossed the threshold and sat at our frugal meal. Once more mother drew the trundle bed out from under the larger one, and we boys, kneeling down, shut our eyes and clasping our little hands, said: 'Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord, my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray thee, Lord, my soul to take. And this I ask for Jesus' sake, Amen.' "'Backward, turn backward, O time in thy flight, Make me a child again, just for tonight, Mother, come back from that echoless shore, Take me again to your heart as of yore. Into the old cradle I'm longing to creep, Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep.' "I stood beneath the old oak tree and it seemed to carry on a conversation with me. It seemed to say: "'Hello Bill. Is that you?' "'Yes, it's I, old tree.' "'Well, you've got a bald spot on the top of your head. "'Yes, I know, old tree.' "'Won't you climb up and sit on my limbs as you used to?' "'No, I haven't got time now. I'd like to, though, awfully well.' "'Don't go, Bill. Don't you remember the old swing you made?' "'Yes, I remember; but I've got to go.' "'Say Bill, don't you remember when you tried to play George Washington and the cherry tree and almost cut me down? That's the scar you made, but it's almost covered over now.' "'Yes, I remember all, but I haven't time to stay.' "'Are you comin' back, Bill?' "'I don't know, but I'll never forget you.' "Then the old apple tree seemed to call me and I said: 'I haven't time to wait, old apple tree.' "'I want to go back to the orchard, The orchard that used to be mine, The apples are reddening and filling The air with their wine. I want to run on through the pasture And let down the dusty old bars, I want to find you there still waiting, Your eyes like the twin stars. Oh, nights, you are weary and dreary, And days, there is something you lack; To the farm in the valley, I want to go back.' "I tell it to you with shame, I stretched the elastic bands of my mother's love until I thought they would break. I went far into the dark and the wrong until I ceased to hear her prayers or her pleadings. I forgot her face, and I went so far that it seemed to me that one more step and the elastic bands of her love would break and I would be lost. But, thank God, friends, I never took that last step. Little by little I yielded to the tender memories and recollections of my mother; little by little I was drawn away from the yawning abyss, and twenty-seven years ago, one dark and stormy night in Chicago, I groped my way out of darkness into the arms of Jesus Christ and I fell on my knees and cried 'God be merciful to me a sinner!'" [Illustration: BILLY SUNDAY AND "POP" ANSON, FORMER CAPTAIN OF THE FAMOUS CHICAGO "WHITE SOX" BASEBALL TEAM, ON THE GOLF LINKS.] Of formal education the boy Sunday had but little. He went to school intermittently, like most of his playmates, but he did get into the high school, although he was never graduated. Early in life he began to work for his living, even before he went off to the Soldiers' Orphanage. Concerning these periods of early toil he himself has spoken as follows: "When I was about fourteen years old, I made application for the position of janitor in a school. "I used to get up at two o'clock, and there were fourteen stoves and coal had to be carried for all them. I had to keep the fire up and keep up my studies and sweep the floors. I got twenty-five dollars a month salary. Well, one day I got a check for my salary and I went right down to the bank to get it cashed. Right in front of me was another fellow with a check to be cashed, and he shoved his in, and I came along and shoved my check in, and he handed me out forty dollars. My check called for twenty-five dollars. I called on a friend of mine who was a lawyer in Kansas City and told him. I said: 'Frank, what do you think, Jay King handed me forty dollars and my check only called for twenty-five dollars.' He said, 'Bill, if I had your luck, I would buy a lottery ticket.' But I said, 'The fifteen dollars is not mine.' He said, 'Don't be a chump. If you were shy ten dollars and you went back you would not get it, and if they hand out fifteen dollars, don't be a fool, keep it.' "Well, he had some drag with me and influenced me. I was fool enough to keep it, and I took it and bought a suit of clothes. I can see that suit now; it was a kind of brown, with a little green in it and I thought I was the goods, I want to tell you, when I got those store clothes on. That was the first suit of store clothes I had ever had, and I bought that suit and I had twenty-five dollars left after I did it. "Years afterwards I said, 'I ought to be a Christian,' and I got on my knees to pray, and the Lord seemed to touch me on the back and say, 'Bill, you owe that Farmers' Bank fifteen dollars with interest,' and I said, 'Lord, the bank don't know that I got that fifteen dollars,' and the Lord said 'I know it'; so I struggled along for years, probably like some of you, trying to be decent and honest and right some wrong that was in my life, and every time I got down to pray the Lord would say, 'Fifteen dollars with interest, Nevada County, Iowa; fifteen dollars, Bill.' So years afterwards I sent that money back, enclosed a check, wrote a letter and acknowledged it, and I have the peace of God from that day to this, and I have never swindled anyone out of a dollar." There are other kinds of education besides those which award students a sheepskin at the end of a stated term. Sunday has no sheepskin--neither has he the sheep quality which marks the machine-made product of any form of training. His school has been a diversity of work, where he came face to face with the actualities of life. He early had to shift for himself. He learned the priceless lesson of how to work, regardless of what the particular task might be, whether it was scrubbing floors (and he was an expert scrubber of floors!), or preaching a sermon to twenty thousand persons. He had a long hard drill in working under authority: that is why he is able to exercise authority like a major-general. Because personally he has experienced, with all of the sensitiveness of an American small boy, the bitter injustice of over-work and under-pay under an oppressive task-master, he is a voice for the toilers of the world. In this same diversified school of industry he learned the lesson of thoroughness which is now echoed by every spike in his tabernacle and every gesture in his sermons. Such a one as he could not have come from a conventional educational course. It needed this hard school to make such a hardy man. It was while a youth in Marshalltown, Iowa, playing baseball on the lots, that Sunday came to his own. Captain A. C. Anson, the famous leader of the Chicago "White Sox," chanced to see the youth of twenty, whose phenomenal base-running had made him a local celebrity. It is no new experience for Sunday to be a center of public interest. He has known this since boyhood. The local baseball "hero" is as big a figure in the eyes of his own particular circle as ever a great evangelist gets to be in the view of the world. Because his ears early became accustomed to the huzzahs of the crowd, Sunday's head has not been turned by much of the foolish adulation which has been his since he became an evangelist. A level head, a quick eye, and a body which is such a finely trained instrument that it can meet all drafts upon it, is part of Sunday's inheritance from his life on the baseball diamond. Most successful baseball players enter the major leagues by a succession of steps. With Sunday it was quite otherwise. Because he fell under the personal eye of "Pop" Anson he was borne directly from the fields of Marshalltown, Iowa, to the great park of the Chicago team. That was in 1883, when Sunday was not yet twenty-one years of age. His mind was still formative--a quality it retains to this day--and his entrance into the larger field of baseball trained him to think in broad terms. It widened his horizon and made him reasonably indifferent to the comments of the crowds. A better equipment for the work he is doing could not have been found; for above all else Sunday "plays ball." While others discuss methods and bewail conditions he keeps the game going. Such a volume of criticism as no other evangelist, within the memory of living men, has ever received, has fallen harmless from his head, because he has not turned aside to argue with the umpire, but has "played ball." There is no call for tears or heroics over the early experiences of Sunday. His life was normal; no different from that of tens of thousands of other American boys. He himself was in no wise a phenomenon. He was possessed of no special abilities or inclinations. He came to his preaching gift only after years of experience in Christian work. It is clear that a Divine Providence utilized the very ordinariness of his life and training to make him an ambassador to the common people. CHAPTER III A Base-Ball "Star" Don't get chesty over success.--BILLY SUNDAY. Sometimes the preacher tells his people what a great journalist he might have been, or what a successful business man, had he not entered the ministry; but usually his hearers never would have suspected it if he had not told them. Billy Sunday's eminence as a baseball player is not a shadow cast backward from his present pre-eminence. His success as a preacher has gained luster from his distinction as a baseball player, while his fame as a baseball player has been kept alive by his work as an evangelist. All the world of baseball enthusiasts, a generation ago, knew Billy Sunday, the speediest base-runner and the most daring base-stealer in the whole fraternity. Wherever he goes today veteran devotees of the national game recall times they saw him play; and sporting periodicals and sporting pages of newspapers have been filled with reminiscences from baseball "fans," of the triumphs of the evangelist on the diamond. A side light on the reality of his religion while engaged in professional baseball is thrown by the fact that sporting writers always speak of him with pride and loyalty, and his old baseball associates who still survive, go frequently to hear him preach. The baseball world thinks that he reflects distinction on the game. Now baseball in Marshalltown and baseball in Chicago had not exactly the same standards. The recruit had to be drilled. He struck out the first thirteen times he went to bat. He never became a superior batter, but he could always throw straight and hard. At first he was inclined to take too many chances and his judgment was rather unsafe. One baseball writer has said that "Sunday probably caused more wide throws than any other player the game has ever known, because of his specialty of going down to first like a streak of greased electricity. When he hit the ball infielders yelled 'hurry it up.' The result was that they often threw them away." He was the acknowledged champion sprinter of the National League. This once led to a match race with Arlie Latham, who held like honors in the American League. Sunday won by fifteen feet. [Illustration: HIS SLIDES WERE ADVENTURES BELOVED OF THE "FANS"] Sunday was the sort of figure the bleachers liked. He was always eager--sometimes too eager--to "take a chance." What was a one-base hit for another man was usually good for two bases for him. His slides and stolen bases were adventures beloved of the "fans"--the spice of the game. He also was apt in retort to the comments from the bleachers, but always good-natured. The crowds liked him, even as did his team mates. Sunday was a man's man, and so continues to this day. His tabernacle audiences resemble baseball crowds in the proportion of men present, more nearly than any other meetings of a religious nature that are regularly being held. Sunday spent five years on the old Chicago team, mostly playing right or center field. He was the first man in the history of baseball to circle the bases in fourteen seconds. He could run a hundred yards from a standing start in ten seconds flat. Speed had always been his one distinction. As a lad of thirteen, in the Fourth of July games at Ames, he won a prize of three dollars in a foot-race, a feat which he recalls with pleasure. Speed is a phase of baseball that, being clear to all eyes, appeals to the bleachers. So it came about that Sunday was soon a baseball "hero," analogous to "Ty" Cobb or "Home-Run" Baker, or Christy Mathewson of our own day. He himself tells the story of one famous play, on the day after his conversion: "That afternoon we played the old Detroit club. We were neck and neck for the championship. That club had Thompson, Richardson, Rowe, Dunlap, Hanlon and Bennett, and they could play ball. "I was playing right field. Mike Kelly was catching and John G. Clarkson was pitching. He was as fine a pitcher as ever crawled into a uniform. There are some pitchers today, O'Toole, Bender, Wood, Mathewson, Johnson, Marquard, but I do not believe any one of them stood in the class with Clarkson. "Cigarettes put him on the bum. When he'd taken a bath the water would be stained with nicotine. "We had two men out and they had a man on second and one on third and Bennett, their old catcher, was at bat. Charley had three balls and two strikes on him. Charley couldn't hit a high ball: but he could kill them when they went about his knee. "I hollered to Clarkson and said: 'One more and we got 'em.' "You know every pitcher puts a hole in the ground where he puts his foot when he is pitching. John stuck his foot in the hole and he went clean to the ground. Oh, he could make 'em dance. He could throw overhanded, and the ball would go down and up like that. He is the only man on earth I have seen do that. That ball would go by so fast that the batter could feel the thermometer drop two degrees as she whizzed by. John went clean down, and as he went to throw the ball his right foot slipped and the ball went low instead of high. "I saw Charley swing hard and heard the bat hit the ball with a terrific boom. Bennett had smashed the ball on the nose. I saw the ball rise in the air and knew that it was going clear over my head. "I could judge within ten feet of where the ball would light. I turned my back to the ball and ran. "The field was crowded with people and I yelled, 'Stand back!' and that crowd opened as the Red Sea opened for the rod of Moses. I ran on, and as I ran I made a prayer; it wasn't theological, either, I tell you that. I said, 'God, if you ever helped mortal man, help me to get that ball, and you haven't very much time to make up your mind, either.' I ran and jumped over the bench and stopped. "I thought I was close enough to catch it. I looked back and saw it was going over my head and I jumped and shoved out my left hand and the ball hit it and stuck. At the rate I was going the momentum carried me on and I fell under the feet of a team of horses. I jumped up with the ball in my hand. Up came Tom Johnson. Tom used to be mayor of Cleveland. He's dead now. "'Here is $10, Bill. Buy yourself the best hat in Chicago. That catch won me $1,500. Tomorrow go and buy yourself the best suit of clothes you can find in Chicago.' "An old Methodist minister said to me a few years ago, 'Why, William, you didn't take the $10, did you?' I said, 'You bet your life I did.'" After his five years with the Chicago baseball team, Sunday played upon the Pittsburgh and the Philadelphia teams, his prestige so growing with the years that after he had been eight years in baseball, he declined a contract at five hundred dollars a month, in order to enter Christian work. For most of his baseball career Sunday was an out-and-out Christian. He had been converted in 1887, after four years of membership on the Chicago team. He had worked at his religion; his team mates knew his Christianity for the real thing. On Sundays, because of his eminence as a baseball player, he was in great demand for Y. M. C. A. talks. The sporting papers all alluded frequently to his religious interests and activities. Because of his Christian scruples he refused to play baseball on Sunday. During the four years of his experience as a Christian member of the baseball profession it might have been clear to anybody who cared to study the situation carefully that the young man's interest in religion was steadily deepening and that he was headed toward some form of avowedly Christian service. [Illustration: BILLY SUNDAY IN NATIONAL LEAGUE UNIFORM.] "I had a three-year contract with Philadelphia. I said to God, 'Now if you want me to quit playing ball and go into evangelistic work, then you get me my release,' and so I left it with God to get my release before the 25th day of March and would take that as an evidence that he wanted me to quit playing ball. "On the 17th day of March, St. Patrick's day--I shall never forget it--I was leading a meeting and received a letter from Colonel Rogers, president of the Philadelphia club, stating I could have my release. "In came Jim Hart, of the Cincinnati team, and up on the platform and pulled out a contract for $3,500. A player only plays seven months, and he threw the check down for $500, the first month's salary in advance. He said, 'Bill, sign up!' But I said, 'No!' I told him that I told God if he wanted me to quit playing ball to get my release before the 25th day of March and I would quit. "There I was up against it. I went around to some of my friends and some said, 'Take it!' Others said, 'Stick to your promise.' I asked my father-in-law about it, and he said, 'You are a blank fool if you don't take it.' I went home and went to bed, but could not sleep, and prayed that night until five o'clock, when I seemed to get the thing straight and said, 'No, sir, I will not do it.' "I went to work for the Y. M. C. A. and had a very hard time of it. It was during those hard times that I hardly had enough to pay my house rent, but I stuck to my promise." It was in March of 1891 that Sunday made the decision which marked the parting of the ways for him. He abandoned baseball forever as a profession, although not as an interest, and entered upon definite religious work. He accepted a position in the Chicago Y. M. C. A. as a subordinate secretary at $83.33 per month--and sometimes this was six months overdue. The stuff of which the young man's moral character was made is revealed by the fact that he deliberately rejected a $500-a-month baseball contract in order to serve Christ at a personal sacrifice. This incident reveals the real temper of Sunday, and is to be borne in mind when discussion is raised concerning the large offerings which are made to him now in his successful evangelistic work. That act was not the deed of a money-loving man. If it does not spell consecration, it is difficult to define what it does mean. Doubtless there were many who thought this ending of a conspicuous baseball career an anti-climax, even as the flight of Moses into the wilderness of Sinai apparently spelled defeat. Out of such defeats and sacrifices as these grow the victories that best serve the world and most honor God. CHAPTER IV A Curbstone Recruit You've got to sign your own Declaration of Independence before you can celebrate your Fourth of July victory.--BILLY SUNDAY. Nobody this side of heaven can tell to whom the credit belongs for any great life or great work. But we may be reasonably sure that the unsung and unknown women of the earth have a large part in every achievement worth while. Mrs. Clark, saintly wife of Colonel Clark, the devoted founder of the Pacific Garden Rescue Mission in Chicago, is one of that host of women who, like the few who followed Jesus in his earthly ministry, have served in lowly, inconspicuous ways, doing small tasks from a great love. Night after night, with a consecration which never flagged, she labored in the gospel for a motley crowd of men and women, mostly society's flotsam and jetsam, many of whom found this hospitable building the last fort this side of destruction. A single visit to a down-town rescue mission is romantic, picturesque and somewhat of an adventure--a sort of sanctified slumming trip. Far different is it to spend night after night, regardless of weather or personal feelings, in coming to close grips with sin-sodden men and women, many of them the devil's refuse. A sickening share of the number are merely seeking shelter or lodging or food: sin's wages are not sufficient to live upon, and they turn to the mercy of Christianity for succor. Never to be cast down by unworthiness or ingratitude, to keep a heart of hope in face of successive failures, and to rejoice with a shepherd's joy over the one rescued--this is the spirit of the consecrated rescue-mission worker. Such a woman was Mrs. Clark, the spiritual mother to a multitude of redeemed men. Of all the trophies which she has laid at the feet of her Lord, the redemption of Billy Sunday seems to human eyes the brightest. For it was this woman who persuaded him to accept Christ as his Saviour: he whose hand has led perhaps a quarter of a million persons to the foot of the Cross was himself led thither by this saintly woman. When we contemplate the relation of that one humble rescue mission in Chicago, the monument of a business man's consecration to Christ, to the scores of Sunday Tabernacles over the land; and when we connect the streams of penitents on the "sawdust trail" with that one young man of twenty-five going forward up the aisle of the rude mission room, we realize afresh that God uses many workers to carry on his one work; and that though Paul may plant and Apollos water, it is God alone who giveth the increase. It was one evening in the fall of 1887 that Sunday, with five of his baseball team mates, sat on the curbstone of Van Buren Street and listened to the music and testimonies of a band of workers from the Pacific Garden Rescue Mission. The deeps of sentiment inherited from a Christian mother, and the memories of a Christian home, were stirred in the breast of one of the men; and Sunday accepted the invitation of a worker to visit the mission. Moved by the vital testimonies which he heard, he went again and again; and at length, after conversation and prayer with Mrs. Clark, he made the great decision which committed him to the Christian life. Sunday's own story of his conversion is one of the most thrilling of all the evangelist's messages. It is a human document, a leaf in that great book of Christian evidences which God is still writing day by day. "Twenty-seven years ago I walked down a street in Chicago in company with some ball players who were famous in this world--some of them are dead now--and we went into a saloon. It was Sunday afternoon and we got tanked up and then went and sat down on a corner. I never go by that street without thanking God for saving me. It was a vacant lot at that time. We sat down on a curbing. Across the street a company of men and women were playing on instruments--horns, flutes and slide trombones--and the others were singing the gospel hymns that I used to hear my mother sing back in the log cabin in Iowa and back in the old church where I used to go to Sunday school. "And God painted on the canvas of my recollection and memory a vivid picture of the scenes of other days and other faces. "Many have long since turned to dust. I sobbed and sobbed and a young man stepped out and said, 'We are going down to the Pacific Garden Mission. Won't you come down to the mission? I am sure you will enjoy it. You can hear drunkards tell how they have been saved and girls tell how they have been saved from the red-light district.' "I arose and said to the boys, 'I'm through. I am going to Jesus Christ. We've come to the parting of the ways,' and I turned my back on them. Some of them laughed and some of them mocked me; one of them gave me encouragement; others never said a word. "Twenty-seven years ago I turned and left that little group on the corner of State and Madison Streets and walked to the little mission and fell on my knees and staggered out of sin and into the arms of the Saviour. "The next day I had to get out to the ball park and practice. Every morning at ten o'clock we had to be out there. I never slept that night. I was afraid of the horse-laugh that gang would give me because I had taken my stand for Jesus Christ. "I walked down to the old ball grounds. I will never forget it. I slipped my key into the wicket gate and the first man to meet me after I got inside was Mike Kelly. "Up came Mike Kelly; he said, 'Bill, I'm proud of you! Religion is not my long suit, but I'll help you all I can.' Up came Anson, the best ball player that ever played the game; Pfeffer, Clarkson, Flint, Jimmy McCormick, Burns, Williamson and Dalrymple. There wasn't a fellow in that gang who knocked; every fellow had a word of encouragement for me. "Mike Kelly was sold to Boston for $10,000. Mike got half of the purchase price. He came up to me and showed me a check for $5,000. John L. Sullivan, the champion fighter, went around with a subscription paper and the boys raised over $12,000 to buy Mike a house. [Illustration: "BILL, I'M PROUD OF YOU!"] "They gave Mike a deed to the house and they had $1,500 left and gave him a certificate of deposit for that. "His salary for playing with Boston was $4,700 a year. At the end of that season Mike had spent the $5,000 purchase price and the $4,700 he received as salary and the $1,500 they gave him and had a mortgage on the house. And when he died in Pennsylvania they went around with a subscription to get money enough to put him in the ground, and each club, twelve in all, in the two leagues gave a month a year to his wife. Mike sat here on the corner with me twenty-seven years ago, when I said, 'Good-bye, boys, I'm going to Jesus Christ.' "A. G. Spalding signed up a team to go around the world. I was the second he asked to sign a contract and Captain Anson was the first. I was sliding to second base one day. I always slid head first, and hit a stone and cut a ligament loose in my knee. "I got Dr. Magruder, who attended Garfield when he was shot, and he said: "'William, if you don't go on that trip I will give you a good leg.' I obeyed and have as good a leg today as I ever had. They offered to wait for me at Honolulu and Australia. Spalding said, 'Meet us in England, and play with us through England, Scotland and Wales.' I didn't go. "Ed Williamson, our old short-stop, a fellow weighing 225 pounds, was the most active big man you ever saw. He went with them, and while they were on the ship crossing the English channel a storm arose and the captain thought the ship would go down. Williamson tied two life-preservers on himself and one on his wife and dropped on his knees and prayed and promised God to be true. God spoke and the waves were stilled. They came back to the United States and Ed came back to Chicago and started a saloon on Dearborn Street. I would go through there giving tickets for the Y. M. C. A. meetings and would talk with them and he would cry like a baby. "I would get down and pray for him, and would talk with him. When he died they put him on the table and cut him open and took out his liver and it was so big it would not go in a candy bucket. Kidneys had shriveled until they were like two stones. "Ed Williamson sat there on the street corner with me, drunk, twenty-seven years ago when I said, 'Good-bye, I'm going to Jesus Christ.' "Frank Flint, our old catcher, who caught for nineteen years, drew $3,200 a year on an average. He caught before they had chest protectors, masks and gloves. He caught bare-handed. Every bone in the ball of his hand was broken. You never saw such a hand as Frank had. Every bone in his face was broken, and his nose and cheek bones, and the shoulder and ribs had all been broken. He got to drinking, his home was broken up and he went to the dogs. "I've seen old Frank Flint sleeping on a table in a stale beer joint and I've turned my pockets inside out and said, 'You're welcome to it, old pal.' He drank on and on, and one day in winter he staggered out of a stale beer joint and stood on a corner, and was seized with a fit of coughing. The blood streamed out of his nose, mouth and eyes. Down the street came a wealthy woman. She took one look and said, 'My God, is it you, Frank?' and his wife came up and kissed him. "She called two policemen and a cab and started with him to her boarding house. They broke all speed regulations. She called five of the best physicians and they listened to the beating of his heart, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, and the doctors said, 'He will be dead in about four hours.' She told them to tell him what they had told her. She said, 'Frank, the end is near,' and he said, 'Send for Bill.' "They telephoned me and I came. He said, 'There's nothing in the life of years ago I care for now. I can hear the bleachers cheer when I make a hit that wins the game. But there is nothing that can help me out now; and if the umpire calls me out now, won't you say a few words over me, Bill?' He struggled as he had years ago on the diamond, when he tried to reach home, but the great Umpire of the universe yelled, 'You're out!' and waved him to the club house, and the great gladiator of the diamond was no more. "He sat on the street corner with me, drunk, twenty-seven years ago in Chicago, when I said, 'Good-bye, boys, I'm through.' "Did they win the game of life or did Bill?" [Illustration: "FIRST--ARE YOU KINDLY DISPOSED TOWARD ME?"] CHAPTER V Playing the New Game It is not necessary to be in a big place to do big things.--BILLY SUNDAY. If Billy Sunday had not been an athlete he would not today be the physical marvel in the pulpit that he is; if he had not been reared in the ranks of the plain people he would not have possessed the vocabulary and insight into life which are essential parts of his equipment; if he had not served a long apprenticeship to toil he would not display his present pitiless industry; if he had not been a cog in the machinery of organized baseball, with wide travel and much experience of men, he would not be able to perfect the amazing organization of Sunday evangelistic campaigns; if he had not been a member and elder of a Presbyterian church he could not have resisted the religious vagaries which lead so many evangelists and immature Christian workers astray; if he had not been trained in three years of Y. M. C. A. service he would not today be the flaming and insistent protagonist of personal work that he now is; if he had not been converted definitely and consciously and quickly in a rescue mission he could not now preach his gospel of immediate conversion. All of which is but another way of saying that Sunday was trained in God's school. God prepared the man for the work he was preparing for him. Only by such uncommon training could this unique messenger of the gospel be produced. A college course doubtless would have submerged Sunday into the level of the commonplace. A theological seminary would have denatured him. Evidently Sunday has learned the lesson of the value of individuality; he prizes it, preaches about it, and practices it. He probably does not know what "_sui generis_" means, but he is it. Over and over again he urges that instead of railing at what we have not enjoyed, we should magnify what we already possess. The shepherd's rod of Moses, rightly wielded, may be mightier than a king's scepter. As we approach the development of the unique work of Billy Sunday, which is without a parallel in the history of evangelism, we must reckon with those forces which developed his personality and trace the steps which led him into his present imperial activity. For he has gone forward a step at a time. He followed the wise rule of the rescue mission, that the saved should say so. At the very beginning he began to bear testimony to his new faith. Wherever opportunity offered he spoke a good word for Jesus Christ. In many towns and cities his testimony was heard in those early days; and there was not a follower of the baseball game who did not know that Billy Sunday was a Christian. The convert who does not join a church is likely soon to be in a bad way; so Sunday early united with the Jefferson Park Presbyterian Church, Chicago. He went into religious activity with all the ardor that he displayed on the baseball field. He attended the Christian Endeavor society, prayer-meeting and the mid-week church service. This is significant; for it is usually the church members who are faithful at the mid-week prayer-meetings who are the vital force in a congregation. Other rewards than spiritual awaited Sunday at the prayer-meeting; for there he met Helen A. Thompson, the young woman who subsequently became his wife. Between the meeting and the marriage altar there were various obstacles to be overcome. Another suitor was in the way, and besides, Miss Thompson's father did not take kindly to the idea of a professional baseball player as a possible son-in-law, for he had old-fashioned Scotch notions of things. "Love conquers all," and in September, 1888, the young couple were married, taking their wedding trip by going on circuit with the baseball team. Mrs. Sunday's influence upon her husband has been extraordinary. It is a factor to be largely considered in any estimate of the man. He is a devoted husband, of the American type, and with his ardent loyalty to his wife has complete confidence in her judgment. She is his man of affairs. Her Scotch heritage has endowed her with the prudent qualities of that race, and she is the business manager of Mr. Sunday's campaigns. She it is who holds her generous, careless husband down to a realization of the practicalities of life. He makes no important decisions without consulting her, and she travels with him nearly all of the time, attending his meetings and watching over his work and his personal well-being like a mother. In addition Mrs. Sunday does yeoman service in the evangelistic campaigns. The helplessness of the evangelist without his wife is almost ludicrous: he dislikes to settle any question, whether it be an acceptance of an invitation from a city or the employment of an additional worker, without Mrs. Sunday's counsel. Frequently he turns vexed problems over to her, and abides implicitly by her decision, without looking into the matter himself at all. Four children--Helen, George, William and Paul--have been born to the Sundays, two of whom are themselves married. The modest Sunday home is in Winona Lake, Indiana. When Mrs. Sunday is absent with her husband, the two younger children are left in the care of a trusted helper. The evangelist himself is home for only a short period each summer. Mrs. Sunday was the deciding factor in determining her husband to abandon baseball for distinctively religious work. A woman of real Scotch piety, in the time of decision she chose the better part. Her husband had been addressing Y. M. C. A. meetings, Sunday-schools and Christian Endeavor societies. He was undeniably a poor speaker. No prophet could have foreseen the present master of platform art in the stammering, stumbling young man whose only excuse for addressing public meetings was the eagerness of men to hear the celebrated baseball player's story. His speech was merely his testimony, such as is required of all mission converts. If Sunday could not talk well on his feet he could handle individual men. His aptness in dealing with men led the Chicago Young Men's Christian Association to offer him an assistant secretaryship in the department of religious work. It is significant that the baseball player went into the Y. M. C. A. not as a physical director but in the distinctively spiritual sphere. He refused an invitation to become physical director; for his religious zeal from the first outshone his physical prowess. Those three years of work in the Chicago Association bulk large in the development of the evangelist. They were not all spent in dealing with the unconverted, by any means. Sunday's tasks included the securing of speakers for noon-day prayer-meetings, the conducting of office routine, the raising of money, the distribution of literature, the visiting of saloons and other places to which invitations should be carried, and the following up of persons who had displayed an interest in the meetings. Much of it was sanctified drudgery: but it was all drill for destiny. The young man saw at close range and with particular detail what sin could do to men; and he also learned the power of the Gospel to make sinners over. The evangelist often alludes to those days of personal work in Chicago. Such stories as the following have been heard by thousands. A Father Disowned "While I was in the Y. M. C. A. in Chicago I was standing on the corner one night and a man came along with his toes sticking out and a ragged suit on and a slouch hat and asked me for a dime to get something to eat. I told him I wouldn't give him a dime because he would go and get a drink. He said, 'You wouldn't let me starve, would you?' I told him no, but that I wouldn't give him the money. I asked him to come to the Y. M. C. A. with me and stay until after the meeting and I would take him out and get him a good supper and a bed. He wanted me to do it right away before going to the Y. M. C. A., but I told him that I was working for someone until ten o'clock. So he came up to the meeting and stayed through the meeting and was very much interested. I saw that he used excellent language and questioned him and found that he was a man who had been Adjutant General of one of the Central States and had at one time been the editor of two of the biggest newspapers. "I went with him after the meeting and got him a supper and a bed and went to some friends and we got his clothes. I asked him if he had any relatives and he said he had one son who was a bank cashier but that he had disowned him and his picture was taken from the family album and his name was never spoken in the house, all because he was now down and out, on account of booze. "I wrote to the boy and said, 'I've found your father. Send me some money to help him.' "He wrote back and said for me never to mention his father's name to him again, that it wasn't ever spoken around the house and that his father was forgotten. "I replied: 'You miserable, low-down wretch. You can't disown your father and refuse to help him because he is down and out. Send me some money or I will publish the story in all of the papers.' He sent me five dollars and that's all I ever got from him. I took care of the old man all winter and in the spring I went to a relief society in Chicago and got him a ticket to his home and put him on the train and that was the last I ever saw of him." Redeeming a Son "I stood on the street one Sunday night giving out tickets inviting men to the men's meeting in Farwell Hall. Along came a young fellow, I should judge he was thirty, who looked prematurely old, and he said, 'Pard, will you give me a dime?' "I said, 'No, sir.' "'I want to get somethin' to eat.' "I said, 'You look to me as though you were a booze-fighter.' "'I am.' "'I'll not give you money, but I'll get your supper.' "He said, 'Come on. I haven't eaten for two days.' "'My time is not my own until ten o'clock. You go upstairs until then and I'll buy you a good supper and get you a good, warm, clean bed in which to sleep, but I'll not give you the money.' "He said, 'Thank you, I'll go.' He stayed for the meeting. I saw he was moved, and after the meeting I stood by his side. He wept and I talked to him about Jesus Christ, and he told me this story: "There were three boys in the family. They lived in Boston. The father died, the will was probated, he was given his portion, took it, started out drinking and gambling. At last he reached Denver, his money was gone, and he got a position as fireman in the Denver and Rio Grande switchyards. His mother kept writing to him, but he told me that he never read the letters. He said that when he saw the postmark and the writing he threw the letter into the firebox, but one day, he couldn't tell why, he opened the letter and it read: "'Dear----: I haven't heard from you directly, but I am sure that you must need a mother's care in the far-off West, and unless you answer this in a reasonable time I'm going to Denver to see you.' And she went on pleading, as only a mother could, and closed it: 'Your loving mother.' "He said, 'I threw the letter in the fire and paid no more heed to it. One day about two weeks later I saw a woman coming down the track and I said to the engineer: "That looks like my mother." She drew near, and I said: "Yes, that's mother." What do you think I did?' "I said, 'Why you climbed out of your engine, kissed her and asked God to forgive you.' "He said, 'I did nothing of the kind. I was so low-down, I wouldn't even speak to my mother. She followed me up and down the switchyard and even followed me to my boarding house. I went upstairs, changed my clothes, came down, and she said, "Frank, stay and talk with me." I pushed by her and went out and spent the night in sin. I came back in the morning, changed my clothes and went to work. For four days she followed me up and down the switchyards and then she said, "Frank, you have broken my heart, and I am going away tomorrow." [Illustration: "FRANK, KISS ME GOOD-BYE!"] "'I happened to be near the depot with the engine when she got on the train and she raised the window and said, "Frank, kiss me good-bye." I stood talking with some of my drinking and gambling friends and one man said, "Frank Adsitt, you are a fool to treat your mother like that. Kiss her good-bye." I jerked from him and turned back. I heard the conductor call "All aboard." I heard the bell on the engine ring and the train started out, and I heard my mother cry, "Oh, Frank, if you won't kiss me good-bye, for God's sake turn and look at me!" "'Mr. Sunday, when the train on the Burlington Railroad pulled out of Denver, I stood with my back to my mother. That's been nine years ago and I have never seen nor heard from her.' "I led him to Jesus. I got him a position in the old Exposition building on the lake front. He gave me the money he didn't need for board and washing. I kept his money for months. He came to me one day and asked for it. "He used to come to the noon meetings every day. Finally I missed him, and I didn't see him again until in June, 1893, during the World's Fair he walked into the Y. M. C. A. I said, 'Why, Frank, how do you do?' "He said, 'How do you know me?' "I said, 'I have never forgotten you; how is your mother?' "He smiled, then his face quickly changed to sadness, and he said, 'She is across the street in the Brevoort House. I am taking her to California to fill her last days with sunshine.' "Three months later, out in Pasadena, she called him to her bedside, drew him down, kissed him, and said, 'Good-bye; I can die happy because I know my boy is a Christian.'" The Gambler "I have reached down into the slime, and have been privileged to help tens of thousands out of the mire of sin--and I believe that most of them will be saved, too. I've helped men in all walks of life. When I was in Chicago I helped a man and got him a position, and so was able to restore him to his wife and children. One night a fellow came to me and told me that the man was playing faro bank down on Clark Street. I said: 'Why that can hardly be--I took dinner with him only a few hours ago.' "But my informant had told me the truth, so I put on my coat and went down LaSalle Street and past the New York Life Building and along up the stairway to the gambling room. I went past the big doorkeeper, and I found a lot of men in there, playing keno and faro bank and roulette and stud and draw poker. I saw my man there, just playing a hand. In a moment he walked over to the bar and ordered a Rhine wine and seltzer. [Illustration: THE PACIFIC GARDEN MISSION IN CHICAGO, WHERE BILLY SUNDAY WAS CONVERTED.] "I walked over and touched him on the shoulder, and he looked and turned pale. I said, 'Come out of this. Come with me.' He said, 'Here's my money,' and pulled $144 from his pocket and handed it to me. 'I don't want your money.' He refused at first, and it was one o'clock in the morning before I got him away from there. I took him home and talked to him, then I sent down into Ohio for an old uncle of his, for he had forged notes amounting to $2,000 or so, and we had to get him out of trouble. We got him all fixed up and we got him a job selling relief maps, and he made $5,000 a year. "I didn't hear from him for a long time; then one day Jailor Whitman called me up and told me that Tom Barrett, an old ball player I knew well, wanted me to come up and see a man who had been sentenced to the penitentiary. I went down to the jail and the prisoner was my friend. I asked him what was the matter, and he said that he and some other fellows had framed up a plan to stick up a jewelry store. He was caught and the others got away. He wouldn't snitch, and so he was going down to Joliet on an indeterminate sentence of from one to fourteen years. He said: 'You are the only man that will help me. Will you do it?' "I said: 'I won't help you, I won't spend so much as a postage stamp on you if you are going to play me dirt again!' He promised to do better as soon as he got out, and I wrote a letter to my friend, Andy Russell, chairman of the board of pardons. He took up the case and we got my friend's sentence cut down to a maximum of five years. "Time passed again, and one day he came in dressed fit to kill. He had on an $80 overcoat, a $50 suit, a $4 necktie, a pair of patent leather shoes that cost $15, shirt buttons as big as hickory nuts and diamond cuff buttons. He walked up to my desk in the Y. M. C. A. and pulled out a roll of bills. There were a lot of them--yellow fellows. I noticed that there was one for $500. There was over $4,500 in the roll. He said: 'I won it last night at faro bank.' He asked me to go out to dinner with him and I went. We had everything on the bill of fare, from soup to nuts, and the check was $7.60 apiece for two suppers. I've never had such a dinner since. "We talked things over. He said he was making money hand over fist--that he could make more in a week than I could in a year. I was working at the Y. M. C. A. for $83 a month, and then not getting it, and baseball managers were making me tempting offers of good money to go back into the game at $500 to $1,000 a month to finish the season. But I wouldn't do it. Nobody called me a grafter then. 'Well,' I said to my friend, 'old man, you may have more at the end of the year than I've got--maybe I won't have carfare--but I'll be ahead of you.' "Where is he now? Down at Joliet, where there is a big walled institution and where the stripes on your clothes run crossways." A Living Testimony "I had a friend who was a brilliant young fellow. He covered the Chino-Japanese war for a New York paper. He was on his way home when he was shipwrecked, and the captain and he were on an island living on roots for a week and then they signaled a steamer and got started home. He got word from the New York _Tribune_ and they told him to go to Frisco, so he went, and they told him to come across the arid country and write up the prospects of irrigation. And as he walked across those plains, he thought of how they would blossom if they were only irrigated. Then he thought of how his life was like that desert, with nothing in it but waste. "He got to Chicago and got a job on the _Times_ and lost it on account of drunkenness, and couldn't get another on account of having no recommendation. So he walked out one winter night and took his reporter's book, addressed it to his father, and wrote something like this: 'I've made a miserable failure of this life. I've disgraced you and sent mother to a premature grave. If you care to look for me you'll find my body in the Chicago River.' He tossed aside the book and it fell on the snow. "He leaped to the rail of the bridge, but a policeman who had been watching him sprang and caught him. He begged him to let him leap, but the policeman wouldn't do it and got his story from him. Then the policeman said, 'Well, I don't know whether you're stringing me or not, but if half of what you say is true you can make a big thing out of life. I'm not much on religion, but I'll show you a place where they will keep you,' and he took him to the Pacific Garden Mission at 100 East Van Buren Street, which for 13,000 nights has had its doors open every night. "He went in and sat down by a bum. He read some of the mottos, like 'When did you write to mother last?' and they began to work on him and he asked the bum what graft they got out of this. The bum flared right up and said there was no graft, that Mrs. Clark had just mortgaged her home for $3,000 to pay back rent. Then he told him he could sleep right there and go down in the morning and get something to eat free, and if he could not land a bed by next night he could come back to one of the benches. Then my friend got up and told him the story of Jesus Christ, and the young man went down and accepted Christ. He was so full of gold bromide cures that he tingled when he talked and he jingled when he walked. "He started out to give his testimony and he was a marvelous power. I met him some time later in an elevator in Chicago, and he was dressed to kill with a silk lid and a big diamond and the latest cut Prince Albert, and he said, 'Bill, that was a great day for me. I started out with not enough clothes to make a tail for a kite or a pad for a crutch and now look at me.' He was secretary in the firm of Morgan & Wright, and was drawing $175 a month. He is an expert stenographer. A newspaper in New York had written him to take an associate editorship, but I told him not to do it, to stay where he was and tell his story." The next class in the University of Experience which Sunday entered was that of professional evangelistic work, in association with Rev. J. Wilbur Chapman, D.D., the well-known Presbyterian evangelist. This invitation came after three years of service in the Chicago Y. M. C. A. Not yet to platform speaking as his chief task was Sunday called. Far from it. He was a sort of general roustabout for the evangelist. His duties were multifarious. He was advance agent, going ahead to arrange meetings, to organize choirs, to help the local committee of arrangements with its advertising or other preparations, and, in general, tying up all loose ends. When tents were used he would help erect them with his own hands; the fists that so sturdily beat pulpits today, have often driven home tent pegs. Sunday sold the evangelist's song books and sermons at the meetings; helped take up the collection, and, when need arose, spoke from the platform. The persons who wonder at the amazing efficiency for organization displayed by Sunday overlook this unique apprenticeship to a distinguished evangelist. He is a "practical man" in every aspect of evangelistic campaigns, from organizing a local committee and building the auditorium, to handling and training the converts who come forward. The providence of all this is clear in retrospect: but as for Sunday himself, he was being led by a way that he knew not. CHAPTER VI A Shut Door--and an Open One Faith is the beginning of something of which you can't see the end but in which you believe.--BILLY SUNDAY. Destiny's door turns on small hinges. Almost everybody can say out of his own experience, "If I had done this, instead of that, the whole course of my life would have been changed." At many points in the career of William A. Sunday we see what intrinsically small and unrelated incidents determined his future course in life. If he had not been sitting on that Chicago curbstone one evening, and if the Pacific Garden Mission workers had failed on that one occasion alone to go forth into the highways, Billy Sunday might have been only one of the multitude of forgotten baseball players. If he had not gone to prayer-meeting in his new church home he would not have met the wife who has been so largely a determining factor in his work. If he had not joined the Y. M. C. A. forces in Chicago he would not have become Peter Bilhorn's friend and so Dr. Chapman's assistant. And--here we come to a very human story--if Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman had not suddenly decided to abandon the evangelistic field and return to the pastorate of Bethany Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, Sunday would doubtless still be unknown to the world as a great religious leader. The story came to me from the lips of the evangelist himself one morning. We were discussing certain current criticisms of his work and he showed himself frankly bewildered as well as pained by the hostility displayed toward him on the part of those up to whom he looked as leaders and counselors. Off the platform Sunday is one of the most childlike and guileless of men. He grew reminiscent and confidential as he said to me: "I don't see why they hammer me so. I have just gone on, as the Lord opened the way, trying to do his work. I had no plan for this sort of thing. It is all the Lord's doings. Just look how it all began, and how wonderfully the Lord has cared for me. "I had given up my Y. M. C. A. work, and was helping Chapman, doing all sorts of jobs--putting up tents, straightening out chairs after the meetings and occasionally speaking. Then, all of a sudden, during the holidays of 1895-96, I had a telegram from Chapman saying that our work was all off, because he had decided to return to Bethany Church. "There I was, out of work, knowing not which way to turn. I had a wife and two children to support. I could not go back to baseball. I had given up my Y. M. C. A. position. I had no money. What should I do? I laid it before the Lord, and in a short while there came a telegram from a little town named Garner, out in Iowa, asking me to come out and conduct some meetings. I didn't know anybody out there, and I don't know yet why they ever asked me to hold meetings. But I went. "I only had eight sermons, so could not run more than ten days, and that only by taking Saturdays off. That was the beginning of my independent work; but from that day to this I have never had to seek a call to do evangelistic work. I have just gone along, entering the doors that the Lord has opened one after another. Now I have about a hundred sermons and invitations for more than two years in advance. I have tried to be true to the Lord and to do just what he wants me to do." That naïve bit of autobiography reveals the real Billy Sunday. He has gone forward as the doors have been providentially opened. His career has not been shrewdly planned by himself. Nobody has been more surprised at his success than he. Of him may be recorded the lines that are inscribed on Emerson's tombstone in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord: "The passive master lent his hand To the vast Soul that o'er him planned." From Garner, Iowa, to Philadelphia, with its most eminent citizens on the committee of arrangements, seems a far cry; but the path is plainly one of Providence. Sunday has added to his addresses gleanings from many sources, but he has not abated the simplicity of his message. The gospel he preaches today is that which he heard in the Pacific Garden Rescue Mission a quarter of a century ago. In childlike faith, this man of straight and unshaded thinking has gone forward to whatever work has offered itself. Nobody knows better than he that it is by no powers of his own that mighty results have been achieved: "This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes." While the Sunday meetings have swung a wide orbit they have centered in the Middle West. That typically American section of the country was quick to appreciate the evangelist's character and message. He was of them, "bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh," mind of their mind. When news of the triumphs of this evangelist's unconventionally-phrased gospel began to be carried over the country a few years ago, the verdict of religious leaders was, "Billy Sunday may do for the Middle West, but the East will not stand him." Since then, again, to the confusion of human wisdom, his most notable work has been achieved in the East, in the great cities of Pittsburgh and Scranton; and at this writing the city of Philadelphia is in the midst of preparations for a Sunday campaign; while the Baltimore churches have also invited him to conduct meetings with them. Billy Sunday is now a national figure--and the foremost personality on the day's religious horizon. A recent issue of _The American Magazine_ carried the results of a voting contest, "Who's the Greatest Man in America." Only one other clergyman (Bishop Vincent, of Chautauqua) was mentioned at all, but Billy Sunday was tied with Andrew Carnegie and Judge Lindsey for eighth place. To tell the stories of the Sunday campaigns in detail would be needless repetition; with occasional exceptions they continue to grow in scope and efficiency and results. The record of independent campaigns extends over nearly twenty years, and in that time the evangelist has gone on from strength to strength. [Illustration: SUNDAY POSING IN FRONT OF TABERNACLE.] [Illustration: BILLY'S SMILE.] [Illustration: SUNDAY AND HIS YOUNGEST SON PAUL.] [Illustration: MR. AND MRS. SUNDAY IN A REVIVAL PARADE.] CHAPTER VII Campaigning for Christ Let's quit fiddling with religion and do something to bring the world to Christ.--BILLY SUNDAY. His American birthright of plain common sense stands Sunday in stead of theological training. He is "a practical man," as mechanics say. Kipling's poem on "The American" hits off Sunday exactly: "He turns a keen, untroubled face Home to the instant need of things." So a Sunday evangelistic campaign is a marvel of organization. It spells efficiency at every turn and is a lesson to the communities which do Christian work in haphazard, hit-or-miss fashion. Work and faith are written large over every series of Sunday meetings. Sunday never took a course in psychology, but he understands the crowd mind. He knows how to deal with multitudes. He sees clearly where the masses must come from, and so he sets to work to bring them out of the homes of the working people. He goes beyond the church circles for his congregations, and makes his appeal to the popular taste. He frankly aims to strike the average of the common people. For he is after that host which too often the preacher knows nothing about. People must be set to talking about religion and about the Sunday campaign if the latter is to succeed. Indifference is the foe of all foes to be feared by an evangelist. Even hostile criticism really serves a religious purpose, for it directs attention to the messenger and the message. Knowledge of this is the reason why Sunday always devotes his earliest sermons in a campaign to the subjects likeliest to create comment. These are the discourses that contain the largest proportion of startling views and language. Part of the task of a man who would move a city for Christ is to consolidate Christian sentiment and to create a Church consciousness. Sunday is at great pains to get his own "crowd" behind him. He evokes that loyalty which alone makes organized work and war effective. So he insists that churches must unite before he will visit a city. Also he asks that they surrender their Sunday services, all uniting in common worship in the Tabernacle. For these campaigns are not Billy Sunday meetings: they are an effort toward a revival of religion on the part of the united Christian forces of a community. If anybody thinks the evangelist disparages the Church, he need but recall the particular effort Sunday makes to solidify the Church folk: that reveals his real estimate of the Church. He would no more attempt a revival without church co-operation than a general would besiege a city without an army. This Christian unity which he requires first of all is a sermon in itself. Before one has looked very deeply into the work of Evangelist Sunday he perceives that it is no new message the man speaks, but that it is his modernization of language and of methods that makes possible the achieving of great results by the old Gospel. The preacher of a generation ago would have counted it indecorous to make use of the public press. Sunday depends largely upon the newspapers for spreading his message and promoting interest in the meetings. He does not employ a press agent; he simply extends to the local press all the facilities and co-operation in his power. He is always accessible to the reporters and ever ready to assist in their work in any proper fashion. He makes public announcements frequently in his meetings of the cordial assistance he has received from the newspapers. Without any expense to anybody and without any scientific experience in this particular field, Sunday has demonstrated the power of Christian publicity. The newspapers carry his messages all over the world. The Pittsburgh dailies published special "Sunday Editions." They had thousands of subscribers for the issues containing the evangelist's sermons and many persons have been converted by reading the newspaper accounts of the Sunday meetings. One cherished story tells of a young man in China who had been converted thirteen thousand miles away from the spot where the evangelist was speaking. Sunday makes religion "live news." Editors are glad to have copy about him and his work, and about anything that pertains to the campaigns. The uniform experience of the communities he has visited is that the Church has had more publicity through his visit than on any other occasion. After Sunday has accepted a city's invitation and a date has been fixed for the meetings, and the time has drawn near, he gets the Church people to organize. Before ever a hammer has struck a blow in the building of the Sunday Tabernacle, the people have been meeting daily in the homes of the city for concerted prayer for the Divine favor upon the campaign. By the Sunday system of work, every few blocks in the city is made a center for cottage prayer-meetings. No politician ever divided a community more carefully than do the Sunday workers in arranging for these prayer-meetings. Every section of the city is covered and every block and street. By preference, the meetings are held in the homes of the unconverted, and it is a normal experience for conversions to be reported before ever the evangelist arrives. In Scranton the city was divided into nine districts besides the suburbs and these districts were again sub-divided so that one had as many as eighty-four prayer groups. The total proportions of this kind of work are illustrated by the Pittsburgh figures: Between December 2 and December 26, 4,137 prayer meetings in private houses were held, having a combined attendance of 68,360 persons. The following table covers eight meetings, as follows: No. of Attendance Prayers Men Women Meetings December 2 562 8,394 3,362 1,658 6,736 December 5 579 8,909 3,667 1,931 6,978 December 9 586 10,667 4,271 2,221 8,446 December 12 410 6,532 2,753 1,410 5,122 December 16 705 16,257 5,588 3,439 12,617 December 19 590 8,580 4,602 2,027 6,553 December 23 398 6,014 2,347 2,381 3,633 December 26 307 5,388 1,983 1,179 4,209 When tens of thousands of earnest Christians are meeting constantly for united prayer a spirit of expectancy and unity is created which makes sure the success of the revival. Incidentally, there is a welding together of Christian forces that will abide long after the evangelist has gone. These preliminary prayer-meetings are a revelation of the tremendous possibilities inherent in the churches of any community. With such a sea of prayer buoying him up any preacher could have a revival. Sagaciously, Sunday throws all responsibility back on the churches. While he takes command of the ship when he arrives, yet he does all in his power to prevent the campaign from being a one-man affair. The local committee must underwrite the expenses; for these campaigns are not to be financed by the gifts of the wealthy, but by the rank and file of the church membership accepting responsibility of the work. The guarantees are underwritten in the form of shares and each guarantor receives a receipt for his shares to be preserved as a memento of the campaign. True, no guarantor ever had to pay a dollar on his Billy Sunday campaign subscription, for the evangelist himself raises all of the expense money in the early meetings of the series. John the Baptist was only a voice: but Billy Sunday is a voice, plus a bewildering array of committees and assistants and organized machinery. He has committees galore to co-operate in his work: a drilled army of the Lord. In the list of Scranton workers that is before me I see tabulated an executive committee, the directors, a prayer-meeting committee, an entertainment committee, an usher committee, a dinner committee, a business women's committee, a building committee, a nursery committee, a personal workers' committee, a decorating committee, a shop-meetings committee--and then a whole list of churches and religious organizations in the city as ex-officio workers! Wherever he goes Sunday erects a special tabernacle for his meetings. There are many reasons for this. The very building of a tabernacle dedicated to this one special use helps create an interest in the campaign as something new come to town. But, primarily, the evangelist's purposes are practical. In the first place, everything has to be on the ground floor. Converts cannot come forward from a gallery. In addition, existing big buildings rarely have proper acoustics. Most of all Sunday, who has a dread of panics or accidents happening in connection with his meetings, stresses the point that in his tabernacle people have their feet on the ground. There is nothing to give way with them. The sawdust and tan bark is warm, dustless, sanitary, fireproof and noiseless. "When a crowd gets to walking on a wooden floor," said Sunday--and then he made a motion of sheer disgust that shows how sensitive he is to any sort of disturbance--"it's the limit." One of his idiosyncrasies is that he must have a perfectly still audience. He will stop in the midst of a sermon to let a single person walk down the aisle. When auditors start coughing he stops preaching. He never lets his crowd get for an instant out of hand. The result is that there probably never were so many persons gathered together in one building at one time in such uniform quietness. The possibilities of panic in a massed multitude of thousands are best understood by those who have had most to do with crowds. Sunday's watchfulness against this marks the shrewd American caution of the man. His tabernacles, no matter whether they seat five, eight, ten, fifteen, or twenty thousand persons, are all built under the direction of his own helper, who has traveled with him for years. He knows that nothing will break down, or go askew. His tabernacles are fairly panic-proof. Thus every aisle, lengthwise and crosswise, ends in a door. So careful is he of the emergency that might arise for a quick exit that no board in the whole tabernacle is fastened with more than two nails; so that one could put his foot through the side of the wall if there was need to get out hurriedly. Describing the building of the choir platform Sunday says, with a grim shutting of his jaws: "You could run a locomotive over it and never faze it." His own platform, on which he does amazing gymnastic stunts at every meeting, is made to withstand all shocks. About the walls of the tabernacle are fire extinguishers, and a squad of firemen and policemen are on duty with every audience. There is nothing about a Sunday tabernacle to suggest a cathedral. It is a big turtle-back barn of raw, unfinished timber, but it has been constructed for its special purpose, and every mechanical device is used to assist the speaker's voice. Sunday can make twenty-five thousand persons hear perfectly in one of his big tabernacles. A huge sounding board, more useful than beautiful, hangs like an inverted sugar scoop over the evangelist's platform. Behind the platform is the post office, to which the names of converts are sent for the city pastors every day; and here also are the telephones for the use of the press. Adjoining the tabernacle is a nursery for babies, and an emergency hospital with a nurse in attendance. It seems as if no detail of efficient service has been overlooked by this practical westerner. So well organized is everything that the collection can be taken in an audience of eight thousand persons within three minutes. While touching upon collections, this is as good a place as any to raise the point of Mr. Sunday's own compensation. He receives a free-will offering made on the last day. The offerings taken in the early weeks are to meet the expenses of the local committee. Mr. Sunday has nothing to do with this. This committee also pays approximately half of the expenses of his staff of workers, and it also provides a home for the Sunday party during their sojourn. Mr. Sunday himself pays the balance of the expenses of his workers out of the free-will offering which he receives on the last day. These gifts have reached large figures--forty-four thousand dollars in the Pittsburgh campaign. There is a quality in human nature which will not associate money with religion, and while we hear nobody grumble at a city's paying thousands of dollars a night for a grand opera performance; yet an evangelist who has sweetened up an entire city, lessened the police expense, promoted the general happiness and redeemed hundreds of thousands of lives from open sin to godliness, is accused of mercenariness, because those whom he has served give him a lavish offering as he departs. Although much criticized on the subject of money, Mr. Sunday steadfastly refuses to make answer to these strictures or to render an accounting, insisting that this is entirely a personal matter with him. Nobody who knows him doubts his personal generosity or his sense of stewardship. Intimate friends say that he tithes his income. Three important departments of the Sunday organization are the choir, the ushers, and the personal-work secretaries. Concerning the first more will be said in a later chapter. The ushers are by no means ornamental functionaries. They are a drilled regiment, each with his station of duty and all disciplined to meet any emergency that may arise. In addition to seating the people and taking the collection, they have the difficult task of assisting the officers to keep out the overflow crowds who try to press into the building that has been filled to its legal capacity. For it is quite a normal condition in the Sunday campaigns for thousands of persons to try to crowd their way into the tabernacle after the latter is full. Sometimes it takes foot-ball tactics to keep them out. Without the assistance of the personal-work secretaries the rush forward when the invitation is extended would mean a frantic mob. The recruits have to be formed into line and directed to the pulpit where they take Mr. Sunday's hand. Then they must be guided into the front benches and the name and address and church preference of each secured. While the invitation is being given personal workers all over the building are busy gathering converts. The magnitude of the Sunday evangelistic meetings in their results is revealed by the necessity for systematically handling the converts as vividly as by any other one factor. The tabernacle by no means houses all of the Sunday campaign. There are noon shop meetings, there are noon meetings for business women and luncheon meetings, there are services in the schools, in the jails, in the hospitals, and there are special afternoon parlor meetings where social leaders hear the same message that is given to the men of the street. In a phrase, the entire community is combed by personal activity in order to reach everybody with the Sunday evangelistic invitation. The personnel of the Sunday party has varied during the years. The first assistant was Fred G. Fischer, a soloist and choir leader who continued with the evangelist for eight years. At present the staff numbers about a dozen workers. Among past and present helpers have been Homer A. Rodeheaver, the chorister; Charles Butler, the soloist; Elijah J. Brown ("Ram's Horn" Brown); Fred. R. Seibert, an ex-cowboy and a graduate of the Moody School, who is the handy man of the tabernacle; Miss Frances Miller, Miss Grace Saxe, Miss Anna MacLaren, Mrs. Rae Muirhead, Rev. L. K. Peacock, B. D. Ackley, Albert G. Gill, Joseph Seipe, the builder, Mrs. and Mr. Asher and Rev. I. E. Honeywell. As the magnitude of the work increases this force is steadily augmented, so that the evangelist must not only be a prophet but a captain of industry. The Sunday Campaign clearly reveals that as Kipling's old engineer, McAndrew, says, "Ye'll understand, a man must think o' things." [Illustration: BURNING WORDS OF MR. SUNDAY THAT REACH THE HEART.] CHAPTER VIII "Speech--Seasoned with Salt" I want to preach the gospel so plainly that men can come from the factories and not have to bring along a dictionary.--BILLY SUNDAY. Sunday is not a shepherd, but a soldier; not a husbandman of a vineyard, but a quarryman. The rôle he fills more nearly approximates that of the Baptist, or one of the Old Testament prophets, than any other Bible character. The word of the Lord that has come to him is not "Comfort ye! comfort ye!" but "Arouse ye! arouse ye!" and "Repent! repent!" Evangelist Sunday's mission is not conventional, nor may it be judged by conventional standards. He is not a pastor; probably he would be a failure in the pastorate. Neither would any sensible person expect pastors to resemble Billy Sunday; for that, too, would be a calamity. Taking a reasonable view of the case, what do we find? Here is a man whose clear work it is to attract the attention of the heedless to the claims of the gospel, to awaken a somnolent Church, and to call men to repentance. To do this a man must be sensational, just as John the Baptist was sensational--not to mention that Greater One who drew the multitudes by his wonderful works and by his unconventional speech. In the time of Jesus, as now, religion had become embalmed in petrified phrases. The forms of religious speech were set. But Christ's talk was not different from every-day speech. The language of spirituality, which once represented great living verities, had become so conventionalized that it slipped easily into cant and "shop talk." It is a fact which we scarcely like to admit that myriads of persons who attend church regularly do not expect really to understand what the preacher is talking about. They admire his "zeal" or "unction," but as for understanding him as clearly and definitely as they understand a neighbor talking over the back fence--that is not to be thought of. When God called this man whom the common people should hear gladly, he took him straight out of the walks of common life with no other vocabulary than that of ordinary "folks." We Americans use the most vivid language of any people. Our words are alive, new ones being born every hour. "Slang" we call these word pictures, and bar them from polite speech until the crowbar of custom has jimmied a way for them into the dictionary. And the most productive slang factory of our time is the realm of sports in which Sunday was trained. So he talks religion as he talked baseball. His words smack of the street corners, the shop, the athletic field, the crowd of men. That this speech is loose, extravagant and undignified may be freely granted: but it is understandable. Any kind of a fair play that will get the runners to the home plate is good baseball; and any speech that will puncture the shell of human nature's complacency and indifference to religion is good preaching. Neither John the Baptist nor Jesus was dignified, and highly correct Pharisees despised them as vulgarians; "but the common people heard him gladly." With such examples before him on one side, and a Church waterlogged with dignity on the other, Sunday has "gone the limit" in popularized speech. Perhaps he is not as polite as is professionally proper for a preacher. He seems to have recovered some of the prophet's lost art of denunciation. He dares call sin by its proper name. He excoriates the hypocrite. He cares not for feelings of the unfaithful preacher or of the double-living church member. As for the devil and all his lieutenants, Sunday has for them a sizzling, blistering vocabulary that helps men to loathe sin and all its advocates. His uncompromising attitude is shown by this gem, culled from one of his sermons: "They say to me, 'Bill, you rub the fur the wrong way.' I don't; let the cats turn 'round." Again, "It isn't a good thing to have synonyms for sin. Adultery is adultery, even though you call it affinity." Again, "Paul said he would rather speak five words that were understood than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue. That hits me. I want people to know what I mean, and that's why I try to get down where they live. What do I care if some puff-eyed, dainty little dibbly-dibbly preacher goes tibbly-tibbling around because I use plain Anglo-Saxon words." Two important points are to be considered in connection with Sunday's vigorous vocabulary; the first is that what he says does not sound as bad as it seems in cold type. Often he is incorrectly reported. The constant contention of his friends is that he should be heard before being criticized. The volume of testimony of all the men who have heard him--preachers, professors and purists--is that his addresses which seem shocking when reported are not shocking when heard. On the public square in Scranton a great sign was displayed by the local committee: +------------------------------------+ | BE FAIR! | | | | DON'T JUDGE BILLY SUNDAY UNTIL YOU | | HAVE HEARD HIM YOURSELF. | | | | NO REPORT, VERBAL OR PRINTED, CAN | | DO HIM PERFECT JUSTICE. | +------------------------------------+ One Scranton business man put it this way: "Type is cold; his sermons are hot." Sunday speaks with his eyes, with his gestures and with every muscle of his body; and all this must be taken into account in weighing his words. Assuredly his message in its totality does not shock anybody. That is why preachers sit through his arraignment of a deficient church and ministry and applaud him. They find in his severest utterances a substantial volume of undoubted truth. The second point is that the most vigorous speech is used earliest in an evangelistic campaign. That is one way of stirring up the Church, and of attracting attention to the meetings. Sunday goads Christians to an interest. Apparently he purposely speaks to arouse resentment, if no other form of interest is awakened in his hearers. The latter part of a Sunday campaign is singularly free from his denunciations, from his invective and from his slang. There is a clear method in his procedure, which is always followed in about the same course. Sunday would be the last man to expect everybody to approve all that he says, either in form or in substance. I don't; and I know no other thinking observer of his meetings who does. No more do I expect him to approve all that is said in this book. Nevertheless, there remains the unanswerable rejoinder to all criticism of Evangelist Sunday's utterances and message: he "delivers the goods." He does arouse communities to an interest in religion as no other preacher of our generation. He helps people "get right with God." His campaigns promote righteousness, diminish wickedness and strengthen the Church. As samples of the pungent sort of speech with which Sunday's discourses are flavored I have selected these shakings from his salt-cellar: Live so that when the final summons comes you will leave something more behind you than an epitaph on a tombstone or an obituary in a newspaper. You can find anything in the average church today, from a humming bird to a turkey buzzard. The Lord is not compelled to use theologians. He can take snakes, sticks or anything else, and use them for the advancement of his cause. The Lord may have to pile a coffin on your back before he can get you to bend it. Don't throw your ticket away when the train goes into a tunnel. It will come out the other side. The safest pilot is not the fellow that wears the biggest hat, but the man who knows the channels. If a man goes to hell he ought to be there, or he wouldn't be there. I am preaching for the age in which I live. I am just recasting my vocabulary to suit the people of my age instead of Joshua's age. The Church gives the people what they need; the theater gives them what they want. Death-bed repentance is burning the candle of life in the service of the devil, and then blowing the smoke into the face of God. Your reputation is what people say about you. Your character is what God and your wife know about you. When your heart is breaking you don't want the dancing master or saloon-keeper. No, you want the preacher. Don't you know that every bad man in a community strengthens the devil's mortgage? Pilate washed his hands. If he had washed his old black heart he would have been all right. It takes a big man to see other people succeed without raising a howl. It's everybody's business how you live. Bring your repentance down to a spot-cash basis. I believe that cards and dancing are doing more to dam the spiritual life of the Church than the grog-shops--though you can't accuse me of being a friend of that stinking, dirty, rotten, hell-soaked business. If you took no more care of yourself physically than spiritually, you'd be just as dried up physically as you are spiritually. We place too much reliance upon preaching and upon singing, and too little on the living of those who sit in the pews. The carpet in front of the mirrors of some of you people is worn threadbare, while at the side of your bed where you should kneel in prayer it is as good as the day you put it down. Some persons think they have to look like a hedgehog to be pious. Look into the preaching Jesus did and you will find it was aimed straight at the big sinners on the front seats. If you live wrong you can't die right. "You are weighed in the balance"--but not by Bradstreet's or Dun's--you are weighed in God's balance. A revival gives the Church a little digitalis instead of an opiate. It isn't the sawdust trail that brings you to Christ, it's the Christ that is in the trail, the Christ that is in your public confession of sins. Some sermons instead of being a bugle call for service, are nothing more than showers of spiritual cocaine. Theology bears the same relation to Christianity that botany does to flowers. Morality isn't the light; it is only the polish on the candlestick. Some homes need a hickory switch a good deal more than they do a piano. Churches don't need new members half so much as they need the old bunch made over. God's work is too often side-tracked, while social, business and domestic arrangements are thundering through on the main line. A lot of people, from the way they live, make you think they've got a ticket to heaven on a Pullman parlor car and have ordered the porter to wake 'em up when they get there. But they'll get side-tracked almost before they've started. I believe that a long step toward public morality will have been taken when sins are called by their right names. The bars of the Church are so low that any old hog with two or three suits of clothes and a bank roll can crawl through. You will not have power until there is nothing questionable in your life. You can't measure manhood with a tape line around the biceps. The social life is the reflex of the home life. There are some so-called Christian homes today with books on the shelves of the library that have no more business there than a rattler crawling about on the floor, or poison within the child's reach. Home is the place we love best and grumble the most. I don't believe there are devils enough in hell to pull a boy out of the arms of a godly mother. To train a boy in the way he should go you must go that way yourself. The man who lives for himself alone will be the sole mourner at his own funeral. Don't try to cover up the cussedness of your life, but get fixed up. Wrong company soon makes everything else wrong. An angel would never be able to get back to heaven again if he came down here for a week and put in his time going with company that some church members would consider good. The devil often grinds the axe with which God hews. I wish the Church were as afraid of imperfection as it is of perfection. Whisky is all right in its place--but its place is in hell. A pup barks more than an old dog. Character needs no epitaph. You can bury the man, but character will beat the hearse back from the graveyard and it will travel up and down the streets while you are under the sod. It will bless or blight long after your name is forgotten. Some people pray like a jack-rabbit eating cabbage. If you put a polecat in the parlor you know which will change first--the polecat or the parlor? A church is not dropped down on a street corner to decorate the corner and be the property of a certain denomination. Many preachers are like a physician--strong on diagnosis, but weak on therapeutics. Your religion is in your will, not in your handkerchief. It won't save your soul if your wife is a Christian. You have got to be something more than a brother-in-law to the Church. If every black cloud had a cyclone in it, the world would have been blown into toothpicks long ago. No man has any business to be in a bad business. When you quit living like the devil I will quit preaching that way. You can't raise the standard of women's morals by raising their pay envelope. It lies deeper than that. The seventh commandment is not: "Thou shalt not commit affinity." A saloon-keeper and a good mother don't pull on the same rope. The presumptive husband should be able to show more than the price of a marriage license. Put the kicking straps on the old Adam, feed the angel in you, and starve the devil. When a baby is born, what do you do with it? Put it in a refrigerator? That's a good place for a dead chicken, and cold meat, but a poor place for babies. Then don't put these new converts, 'babes in Christ,' into refrigerator churches. [Illustration: "I'LL FIGHT TILL HELL FREEZES OVER."] Nobody can read the Bible thoughtfully, and not be impressed with the way it upholds the manhood of man. More chapters in the Bible are devoted to portraying the manhood of Caleb than to the creation of the world. Home is on a level with the women; the town is on a level with the homes. [Illustration: "A SALOON-KEEPER AND A GOOD MOTHER DON'T PULL ON THE SAME ROPE"] You will find lots of things in Shakespeare which are not fit for reading in a mixed audience and call that literature. When you hear some truths here in the tabernacle you will call it vulgar. It makes all the difference in the world whether Bill Shakespeare or Bill Sunday said it. The more oyster soup it takes to run a church, the faster it runs to the devil. The reason you don't like the Bible, you old sinner, is because it knows all about you. Bob Ingersoll wasn't the first to find out that Moses made mistakes. God knew about it long before Ingersoll was born. All that God has ever done to save this old world, has been done through men and women of flesh and blood like ourselves. Nearly everybody is stuck up about something. Some people are even proud that they aren't proud. The average young man is more careful of his company than the average girl. Going to church doesn't make a man a Christian, any more than going to a garage makes him an automobile. If we people were able to have panes of glass over our hearts, some of us would want stained glass, wouldn't we? To see some people, you would think that the essential orthodox Christianity is to have a face so long they could eat oatmeal out of the end of a gas pipe. God likes a little humor, as is evidenced by the fact that he made the monkey, the parrot--and some of you people. Wouldn't this city be a great place to live in if some people would die, get converted, or move away? The normal way to get rid of drunkards is to quit raising drunkards--to put the business that makes drunkards out of business. You can't shine for God on Sunday, and then be a London fog on Monday. I don't believe that God wants any man to be a hermit. Jesus Christ did not wear a hair shirt and sleep upon a bed of spikes. He went among the people and preached the Gospel. If you only believe things that you can understand you must be an awful ignoramus. There is more power in a mother's hand than in a king's scepter. I have no doubt that there are men looking into my face tonight who will have "1914" carved on their tombstones. If God had no more interest in this world than some of you church members have in Johnstown, this city would have been in hell long ago. I hate to see a man roll up to church in a limousine and then drop a quarter in the collection plate. Give your face to God and he will put his shine on it. No fountain under the sun can hold enough to satisfy an immortal spirit. Jesus Christ came among the common people. Abraham Lincoln said that God must have loved the common people: he made so many of them. Yank some of the groans out of your prayers, and shove in some shouts. The Bible says forgive your debtors; the world says "sue them for their dough." The race will appear as far above us as we are above the harem when godly girls marry godly men. It is impossible for a saloon-keeper to enjoy a good red-hot prayer-meeting. I'm no spiritual masseur or osteopath. I'm a surgeon, and I cut deep. A prudent man won't swallow a potato bug, and then take Paris green to kill it. If you want milk and honey on your bread, you'll have to go into the land where there are giants. There is nothing in the world of art like the songs mother used to sing. God pays a good mother. Mothers, get your names on God's pay-roll. The man who can drive a hog and keep his religion will stand without hitching. The right preaching of the Gospel will never hurt anything good. If you would have your children turn out well, don't turn your home into a lunch counter and lodging house. Man was a fool in the Garden of Eden, and he has taken a good many new degrees since. The backslider likes the preaching that wouldn't hit the side of a house, while the real disciple is delighted when the truth brings him to his knees. There would be more power in the prayers of some folks if they would put more white money in the collection basket. What have you given the world it never possessed before you came? Temptation is the devil looking through the keyhole. Yielding is opening the door and inviting him in. CHAPTER IX Battling with "Booze" The man who votes for the saloon is pulling on the same rope with the devil, whether he knows it or not.--BILLY SUNDAY. There is a tremendous military advantage in having a definite enemy. The sermons that are aimed at nothing generally hit it. Billy Sunday is happiest and most successful when attacking the liquor evil. Down among the masses of men he learned for himself the awful malignity of strong drink, which he deems the greatest evil of our day. So he fights it. Everybody will admit--the saloon-keeper first of all--that Billy Sunday is the most effective foe of the liquor business in America today. Small wonder the brewers spend large sums of money in circulating attacks upon him, and in going before him to every town where he conducts meetings, spreading slanders of many sorts. There is a ghastly humor in the success the brewers have in enlisting the preachers to make common cause with them in discrediting this evangelist. Shrewd men have come quite generally to the conclusion that they will not give aid and comfort to the enemies of righteousness whose interests are best served by criticism of Billy Sunday. All incidental questions aside, Sunday does the Lord's work and is on the Lord's side. It is a pitiable spectacle to see the Lord's servants attacking him; though it is quite understandable why the liquor interest should spend large sums of money in antagonizing Sunday. It would be worth a million dollars to them any day if he could be put out of action. Wherever Sunday goes a great temperance awakening follows. In eleven of fifteen Illinois towns where he campaigned "dry" victories were won at the next election. Fifteen hundred saloons were put out of business in a single day in Illinois, largely as the result of his work. With characteristic indifference to figures and tabulated results, Sunday has kept no record of the communities which have gone "dry" following his meetings. That consequence is common. His recent presence in Pennsylvania is the surest token that the Keystone State will not much longer be the boasted Gibraltar of the liquor interests. Even up in Pennsylvania's coal regions, with their large foreign population, many communities are going "dry," while individual saloons are being starved out. Within about a year of Sunday's visit there, the number of saloons was reduced by more than two hundred. So intense is Sunday's zest for temperance that he will go anywhere possible to deliver a blow against the saloon. He has toured Illinois and West Virginia in special trains, campaigning for temperance. During the Sunday campaign in Johnstown ten thousand men in a meeting organized themselves into a Billy Sunday Anti-Saloon League. In Iowa literally scores of towns and counties are reported as having gone dry as a direct result of the Sunday meetings. Muscatine, Ottumwa, Marshalltown, Linwood and Centerville are communities in point. Thirteen out of fifteen towns in Illinois visited by Sunday voted out the saloon. West Virginia's temperance leaders utilized Sunday in a whirlwind campaign through the state. He spoke in ten towns in five days, traveling from point to point in a special car. It is now history that West Virginia went dry by ninety thousand majority. His latest work in the West has been timed to precede elections where the temperance question was an issue. Next to his passion for the conversion of men and women is this consuming antagonism to rum. More important than his own valiant blows against the saloon is the fact that Sunday makes enemies for the liquor business. Practically all of his converts and friends become enthusiastic temperance workers. In western Pennsylvania he converted practical machine politicians to the old time Gospel and to the temperance cause. Every campaign is full of incidents like that of the blacksmith, a part of whose business came from a large brewery. When this man became a Sunday convert and a temperance "fanatic," as they termed him, the brewers' business was withdrawn. But the loyalty which Sunday infuses into his followers, rallied to the man's help, and such a volume of Christian business was turned his way that his conversion and the loss of the brewery trade turned out to his profit. In the _Outlook_ of August 8, 1914, Lewis Edwin Theiss introduces a powerful article, "Industry versus Alcohol," with this Billy Sunday story: "We were discussing Billy Sunday and the economic effect of his work. "'The vice-president of the C---- Iron Works told me,' said a manufacturer of railway cars, 'that his company could have afforded to pay its employees a quarter of a million dollars more than their wages during the period that Billy Sunday was working among them.' 'The corporation concerned is one of the great steel companies of the country. It employs thousands of men. "'Why was that?' I asked. "'Because of the increased efficiency of the men. They were steadier. Accidents decreased remarkably. They produced enough extra steel to make their work worth the quarter million additional.' "'It is interesting to find that religion has such an effect on every-day life,' I observed. "'Religion as such had little to do with it,' replied the car-maker, 'except that it started it. The thing that made those men efficient was cutting out the drink. Billy Sunday got them all on the water wagon. They became sober and stayed sober. They could run their machines with steady hands and true eyes. The men themselves realize what a difference it makes. They are strong for prohibition. If the people of Pittsburgh and its vicinity could vote on the temperance question today, the saloons would be wiped out there.' "'The manufacturers are strong for prohibition, too. They never gave much thought to the matter before. But this demonstration of Billy Sunday's has made us all strong for prohibition. We _know_ now that most of our accidents are due to whisky. For years we have been trying to find a way to secure a high degree of efficiency among our men. We never succeeded. Along comes this preacher and accomplishes more in a few weeks than we have ever been able to do. "'We know now that until booze is banished we can never have really efficient workmen. We're fools if we don't profit by what he has shown us. Take it from me, booze has got to go. We are not much interested in the moral side of the matter as such. It is purely a matter of dollars and cents. They say corporations have no souls. From this time forth corporations are going to show mighty little soul toward the man who drinks.'" A great parade of men marks the close of a Sunday campaign. In Scranton the line of march was broken into by a brewer's wagon. The driver was not content with trying to break the line of parade, but he also hurled offensive epithets at Sunday and his converts. Perhaps passive endurance was the virtue called for on this occasion; but it was certainly not the virtue practiced. For those husky mill workers stepped out of line for a moment, bodily overturned the brewer's wagon, and sent the beer kegs rolling in the street, all to the tune of the Sunday war song, "De Brewer's Big Horses Can't Run Over Me." [Illustration: De Brewer's Big Hosses. (SOLO AND CHORUS.) H. S. Taylor. J. B. Herbert. ] This song, written by H. S. Taylor, is the most popular one in the Sunday campaign. It is by no means a hymn of worship, but rather a battle-cry. When thousands of men lift their voices in this militant refrain, with whistles blowing and bells ringing in the chorus, the effect is fairly thrilling. Words and music are beneath the consideration of the scholarly musician; but they strike the common mind of the American who wants a battle hymn. DE BREWER'S BIG HOSSES.[A] Oh, de Brewer's big hosses, comin' down de road, Totin' all around ole Lucifer's load; Dey step so high, an' dey step so free, But dem big hosses can't run over me. CHORUS. Oh, no! boys, oh, no! De turnpike's free wherebber I go, I'm a temperance ingine, don't you see, And de Brewer's big hosses can't run over me. Oh, de licker men's actin' like dey own dis place, Livin' on de sweat ob de po' man's face, Dey's fat and sassy as dey can be, But dem big hosses can't run over me.--CHO. Oh, I'll harness dem hosses to de temp'rance cart, Hit 'em wid a gad to gib 'em a start, I'll teach 'em how for to haw and gee, For dem big hosses can't run over me.--CHO. Sunday is the Peter the Hermit of the temperance crusade. He inflames men's passions for this righteous war. Most critics call his sermon on "booze" his greatest achievement. He treats the theme from all angles--economic, social, human, and religious. When he puts a row of boys up on the platform and offers them as one day's contribution to the saloon's grist of manhood which must be maintained, the result is electric; all the militant manhood of the men before him is urged to action. [A] Reproduced by permission. Copyright, 1887, by Fillmore Bros. Homer A. Rodeheaver owner. International copyright secured. THE FAMOUS "BOOZE" SERMON Here we have one of the strangest scenes in all the Gospels. Two men, possessed of devils, confront Jesus, and while the devils are crying out for Jesus to leave them, he commands the devils to come out, and the devils obey the command of Jesus. The devils ask permission to enter into a herd of swine feeding on the hillside. This is the only record we have of Jesus ever granting the petition of devils, and he did it for the salvation of men. Then the fellows that kept the hogs went back to town and told the peanut-brained, weasel-eyed, hog-jowled, beetle-browed, bull-necked lobsters that owned the hogs, that "a long-haired fanatic from Nazareth, named Jesus, has driven the devils out of some men and the devils have gone into the hogs, and the hogs into the sea, and the sea into the hogs, and the whole bunch is dead." And then the fat, fussy old fellows came out to see Jesus and said that he was hurting their business. A fellow says to me, "I don't think Jesus Christ did a nice thing." You don't know what you are talking about. Down in Nashville, Tennessee, I saw four wagons going down the street, and they were loaded with stills, and kettles, and pipes. "What's this?" I said. "United States revenue officers, and they have been in the moonshine district and confiscated the illicit stills, and they are taking them down to the government scrap heap." Jesus Christ was God's revenue officer. Now the Jews were forbidden to eat pork, but Jesus Christ came and found that crowd buying and selling and dealing in pork, and confiscated the whole business, and he kept within the limits of the law when he did it. Then the fellows ran back to those who owned the hogs to tell what had befallen them and those hog-owners said to Jesus: "Take your helpers and hike. You are hurting our business." And they looked into the sea and the hogs were bottom side up, but Jesus said, "What is the matter?" And they answered, "Leave our hogs and go." A fellow says it is rather a strange request for the devils to make, to ask permission to enter into hogs. I don't know--if I was a devil I would rather live in a good, decent hog than in lots of men. If you will drive the hog out you won't have to carry slop to him, so I will try to help you get rid of the hog. And they told Jesus to leave the country. They said: "You are hurting our business." Interest in Manhood "Have you no interest in manhood?" "We have no interest in that; just take your disciples and leave, for you are hurting our business." That is the attitude of the liquor traffic toward the Church, and State, and Government, and the preacher that has the backbone to fight the most damnable, corrupt institution that ever wriggled out of hell and fastened itself on the public. I am a temperance Republican down to my toes. Who is the man that fights the whisky business in the South? It is the Democrats! They have driven the business from Kansas, they have driven it from Georgia, and Maine and Mississippi and North Carolina and North Dakota and Oklahoma and Tennessee and West Virginia. And they have driven it out of 1,756 counties. And it is the rock-ribbed Democratic South that is fighting the saloon. They started this fight that is sweeping like fire over the United States. You might as well try and dam Niagara Falls with toothpicks as to stop the reform wave sweeping our land. The Democratic party of Florida has put a temperance plank in its platform and the Republican party of every state would nail that plank in their platform if they thought it would carry the election. It is simply a matter of decency and manhood, irrespective of politics. It is prosperity against poverty, sobriety against drunkenness, honesty against thieving, heaven against hell. Don't you want to see men sober? Brutal, staggering men transformed into respectable citizens? "No," said a saloon-keeper, "to hell with men. We are interested in our business, we have no interest in humanity." After all is said that can be said upon the liquor traffic, its influence is degrading upon the individual, the family, politics and business, and upon everything that you touch in this old world. For the time has long gone by when there is any ground for arguments as to its ill effects. All are agreed on that point. There is just one prime reason why the saloon has not been knocked into hell, and that is the false statement that "the saloons are needed to help lighten the taxes." The saloon business has never paid, and it has cost fifty times more than the revenue derived from it. Does the Saloon Help Business? I challenge you to show me where the saloon has ever helped business, education, church, morals or anything we hold dear. The wholesale and retail trade in Iowa pays every year at least $500,000 in licenses. Then if there were no draw-back it ought to reduce the taxation twenty-five cents per capita. If the saloon is necessary to pay the taxes, and if they pay $500,000 in taxes, it ought to reduce them twenty-five cents a head. But no, the whisky business has increased taxes $1,000,000 instead of reducing them, and I defy any whisky man on God's dirt to show me one town that has the saloon where the taxes are lower than where they do not have the saloon. I defy you to show me an instance. Listen! Seventy-five per cent of our idiots come from intemperate parents; eighty per cent of the paupers, eighty-two per cent of the crime is committed by men under the influence of liquor; ninety per cent of the adult criminals are whisky-made. The Chicago _Tribune_ kept track for ten years and found that 53,556 murders were committed by men under the influence of liquor. Archbishop Ireland, the famous Roman Catholic, of St. Paul, said of social crime today, that "seventy-five per cent is caused by drink, and eighty per cent of the poverty." I go to a family and it is broken up, and I say, "What caused this?" Drink! I step up to a young man on the scaffold and say, "What brought you here?" Drink! Whence all the misery and sorrow and corruption? Invariably it is drink. Five Points, in New York, was a spot as near like hell as any spot on earth. There are five streets that run to this point, and right in the middle was an old brewery and the streets on either side were lined with grog shops. The newspapers turned a searchlight on the district, and the first thing they had to do was to buy the old brewery and turn it into a mission. The Parent of Crimes The saloon is the sum of all villanies. It is worse than war or pestilence. It is the crime of crimes. It is the parent of crimes and the mother of sins. It is the appalling source of misery and crime in the land. And to license such an incarnate fiend of hell is the dirtiest, low-down, damnable business on top of this old earth. There is nothing to be compared to it. The legislature of Illinois appropriated $6,000,000 in 1908 to take care of the insane people in the state, and the whisky business produces seventy-five per cent of the insane. That is what you go down in your pockets for to help support. Do away with the saloons and you will close these institutions. The saloons make them necessary, and they make the poverty and fill the jails and the penitentiaries. Who has to pay the bills? The landlord who doesn't get the rent because the money goes for whisky; the butcher and the grocer and the charitable person who takes pity on the children of drunkards, and the taxpayer who supports the insane asylums and other institutions, that the whisky business keeps full of human wrecks. Do away with the cursed business and you will not have to put up to support them. Who gets the money? The saloon-keepers and the brewers, and the distillers, while the whisky fills the land with misery, and poverty, and wretchedness, and disease, and death, and damnation, and it is being authorized by the will of the sovereign people. You say that "people will drink anyway." Not by my vote. You say, "Men will murder their wives anyway." Not by my vote. "They will steal anyway." Not by my vote. You are the sovereign people, and what are you going to do about it? Let me assemble before your minds the bodies of the drunken dead, who crawl away "into the jaws of death, into the mouth of hell," and then out of the valley of the shadow of the drink let me call the appertaining motherhood, and wifehood, and childhood, and let their tears rain down upon their purple faces. Do you think that would stop the curse of the liquor traffic? No! No! In these days when the question of saloon or no saloon is at the fore in almost every community, one hears a good deal about what is called "personal liberty." These are fine, large, mouth-filling words, and they certainly do sound first rate; but when you get right down and analyze them in the light of common old horse-sense, you will discover that in their application to the present controversy they mean just about this: "Personal liberty" is for the man who, if he has the inclination and the price, can stand up at a bar and fill his hide so full of red liquor that he is transformed for the time being into an irresponsible, dangerous, evil-smelling brute. But "personal liberty" is not for his patient, long-suffering wife, who has to endure with what fortitude she may his blows and curses; nor is it for his children, who, if they escape his insane rage, are yet robbed of every known joy and privilege of childhood, and too often grow up neglected, uncared for and vicious as the result of their surroundings and the example before them. "Personal liberty" is not for the sober, industrious citizen who from the proceeds of honest toil and orderly living, has to pay, willingly or not, the tax bills which pile up as a direct result of drunkenness, disorder and poverty, the items of which are written in the records of every police court and poor-house in the land; nor is "personal liberty" for the good woman who goes abroad in the town only at the risk of being shot down by some drink-crazed creature. This rant about "personal liberty" as an argument has no leg to stand upon. The Economic Side Now, in 1913 the corn crop was 2,373,000,000 bushels, and it was valued at $1,660,000,000. Secretary Wilson says that the breweries use less than two per cent; I will say that they use two per cent. That would make 47,000,000 bushels, and at seventy cents a bushel that would be about $33,000,000. How many people are there in the United States? Ninety millions. Very well, then, that is thirty-six cents per capita. Then we sold out to the whisky business for thirty-six cents apiece--the price of a dozen eggs or a pound of butter. We are the cheapest gang this side of hell if we will do that kind of business. Now listen! Last year the income of the United States government, and the cities and towns and counties, from the whisky business was $350,000,000. That is putting it liberally. You say that's a lot of money. Well, last year the workingmen spent $2,000,000,000 for drink, and it cost $1,200,000,000 to care for the judicial machinery. In other words, the whisky business cost us last year $3,400,000,000. I will subtract from that the dirty $350,000,000 which we got, and it leaves $3,050,000,000 in favor of knocking the whisky business out on purely a money basis. And listen! We spend $6,000,000,000 a year for our paupers and criminals, insane, orphans, feeble-minded, etc., and eighty-two per cent of our criminals are whisky-made, and seventy-five per cent of the paupers are whisky-made. The average factory hand earns $450 a year, and it costs us $1,200 a year to support each of our whisky criminals. There are 326,000 enrolled criminals in the United States and 80,000 in jails and penitentiaries. Three-fourths were sent there because of drink, and then they have the audacity to say the saloon is needed for money revenue. Never was there a baser lie. "But," says the whisky fellow, "we would lose trade; the farmer would not come to town to trade." You lie. I am a farmer. I was born and raised on a farm and I have the malodors of the barnyard on me today. Yes, sir. And when you say that you insult the best class of men on God's dirt. Say, when you put up the howl that if you don't have the saloons the farmer won't trade--say, Mr. Whisky Man, why do you dump money into politics and back the legislatures into the corner and fight to the last ditch to prevent the enactment of county local option? You know if the farmers were given a chance they would knock the whisky business into hell the first throw out of the box. You are afraid. You have cold feet on the proposition. You are afraid to give the farmer a chance. They are scared to death of you farmers. I heard my friend ex-Governor Hanly, of Indiana, use the following illustrations: "Oh, but," they say, "Governor, there is another danger to the local option, because it means a loss of market to the farmer. We are consumers of large quantities of grain in the manufacture of our products. If you drive us out of business you strike down that market and it will create a money panic in this country, such as you have never seen, if you do that." I might answer it by saying that less than two per cent of the grain produced in this country is used for that purpose, but I pass that by. I want to debate the merit of the statement itself, and I think I can demonstrate in ten minutes to any thoughtful man, to any farmer, that the brewer who furnishes him a market for a bushel of corn is not his benefactor, or the benefactor of any man, from an economic standpoint. Let us see. A farmer brings to the brewer a bushel of corn. He finds a market for it. He gets fifty cents and goes his way, with the statement of the brewer ringing in his ears, that the brewer is the benefactor. But you haven't got all the factors in the problem, Mr. Brewer, and you cannot get a correct solution of a problem without all the factors in the problem. You take the farmer's bushel of corn, brewer or distiller, and you brew and distill from it four and one-half gallons of spirits. I don't know how much he dilutes them before he puts them on the market. Only the brewer, the distiller and God know. The man who drinks it doesn't, but if he doesn't dilute it at all, he puts on the market four and a half gallons of intoxicating liquor, thirty-six pints. I am not going to trace the thirty-six pints. It will take too long. But I want to trace three of them and I will give you no imaginary stories plucked from the brain of an excited orator. I will take instances from the judicial pages of the Supreme Court and the Circuit Court judges' reports in Indiana and in Illinois to make my case. Tragedies Born of Drink Several years ago in the city of Chicago a young man of good parents, good character, one Sunday crossed the street and entered a saloon, open against the law. He found there boon companions. There were laughter, song and jest and much drinking. After awhile, drunk, insanely drunk, his money gone, he was kicked into the street. He found his way across to his mother's home. He importuned her for money to buy more drink. She refused him. He seized from the sideboard a revolver and ran out into the street and with the expressed determination of entering the saloon and getting more drink, money or no money. His fond mother followed him into the street. She put her hand upon him in a loving restraint. He struck it from him in anger, and then his sister came and added her entreaty in vain. And then a neighbor, whom he knew, trusted and respected, came and put his hand on him in gentleness and friendly kindness, but in an insanity of drunken rage he raised the revolver and shot his friend dead in his blood upon the street. There was a trial; he was found guilty of murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, and when the little mother heard the verdict--a frail little bit of a woman--she threw up her hands and fell in a swoon. In three hours she was dead. In the streets of Freeport, Illinois, a young man of good family became involved in a controversy with a lewd woman of the town. He went in a drunken frenzy to his father's home, armed himself with a deadly weapon and set out for the city in search of the woman with whom he had quarreled. The first person he met upon the public square in the city, in the daylight, in a place where she had a right to be, was one of the most refined and cultured women of Freeport. She carried in her arms her babe--motherhood and babyhood, upon the streets of Freeport in the day time, where they had a right to be--but this young man in his drunken insanity mistook her for the woman he sought and shot her dead upon the streets with her babe in her arms. He was tried and Judge Ferand, in sentencing him to life imprisonment said: "You are the seventh man in two years to be sentenced for murder while intoxicated." In the city of Anderson, you remember the tragedy in the Blake home. A young man came home intoxicated, demanding money of his mother. She refused it. He seized from the wood box a hatchet and killed his mother and then robbed her. You remember he fled. The officer of the law pursued him and brought him back. An indictment was read to him charging him with the murder of the mother who had given him his birth, of her who had gone down into the valley of the shadow of death to give him life, of her who had looked down into his blue eyes and thanked God for his life. And he said, "I am guilty; I did it all." And Judge McClure sentenced him to life imprisonment. Now I have followed probably three of the thirty-six pints of the farmer's product of a bushel of corn and the three of them have struck down seven lives, the three boys who committed the murders, the three persons who were killed and the little mother who died of a broken heart. And now, I want to know, my farmer friend, if this has been a good commercial transaction for you? You sold a bushel of corn; you found a market; you got fifty cents; but a fraction of this product struck down seven lives, all of whom would have been consumers of your products for their life expectancy. And do you mean to say that is a good economic transaction to you? That disposes of the market question until it is answered; let no man argue further. More Economics And say, my friends, New York City's annual drink bill is $365,000,000 a year, $1,000,000 a day. Listen a minute. That is four times the annual output of gold, and six times the value of all the silver mined in the United States. And in New York there is one saloon for every thirty families. The money spent in New York by the working people for drink in ten years would buy every working man in New York a beautiful home, allowing $3,500 for house and lot. It would take fifty persons one year to count the money in $1 bills, and they would cover 10,000 acres of ground. That is what the people in New York dump into the whisky hole in one year. And then you wonder why there is poverty and crime, and that the country is not more prosperous. The whisky gang is circulating a circular about Kansas City, Kansas. I defy you to prove a statement in it. Kansas City is a town of 100,000 population, and temperance went into effect July 1, 1905. Then they had 250 saloons, 200 gambling hells and 60 houses of ill fame. The population was largely foreign, and inquiries have come from Germany, Sweden and Norway, asking the influence of the enforcement of the prohibitory law. At the end of one year the president of one of the largest banks in that city, a man who protested against the enforcement of the prohibitory law on the ground that it would hurt business, found that his bank deposits had increased $1,700,000, and seventy-two per cent of the deposits were from men who had never saved a cent before, and forty-two per cent came from men who never had a dollar in the bank, but because the saloons were driven out they had a chance to save, and the people who objected on the grounds that it would injure business found an increase of 209 per cent in building operations; and, furthermore, there were three times as many more people seeking investment, and court expenses decreased $25,000 in one year. Who pays to feed and keep the gang you have in jail? Why, you go down in your sock and pay for what the saloon has dumped in there. They don't do it. Mr. Whisky Man, why don't you go down and take a picture of wrecked and blighted homes, and of insane asylums, with gibbering idiots. Why don't you take a picture of that? At Kansas City, Kansas, before the saloons were closed, they were getting ready to build an addition to the jail. Now the doors swing idly on the hinges and there is nobody to lock in the jails. And the commissioner of the Poor Farm says there is a wonderful falling off of old men and women coming to the Poor House, because their sons and daughters are saving their money and have quit spending it for drink. And they had to employ eighteen new school teachers for 600 boys and girls, between the ages of twelve and eighteen, that had never gone to school before because they had to help a drunken father support the family. And they have just set aside $200,000 to build a new school house, and the bonded indebtedness was reduced $245,000 in one year without the saloon revenue. And don't you know another thing: In 1906, when they had the saloon, the population, according to the directory, was 89,655. According to the census of 1907 the population was 100,835, or an increase of twelve per cent in one year, without the grog-shop. In two years the bank deposits increased $3,930,000. You say, drive out the saloon and you kill business--Ha! ha! "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord." I tell you, gentlemen, the American home is the dearest heritage of the people, for the people, and by the people, and when a man can go from home in the morning with the kisses of wife and children on his lips, and come back at night with an empty dinner bucket to a happy home, that man is a better man, whether white or black. Whatever takes away the comforts of home--whatever degrades that man or woman--whatever invades the sanctity of the home, is the deadliest foe to the home, to church, to state and school, and the saloon is the deadliest foe to the home, the church and the state, on top of God Almighty's dirt. And if all the combined forces of hell should assemble in conclave, and with them all the men on earth that hate and despise God, and purity, and virtue--if all the scum of the earth could mingle with the denizens of hell to try to think of the deadliest institution to home, to church and state, I tell you, sir, the combined hellish intelligence could not conceive of or bring an institution that could touch the hem of the garment of the open licensed saloon to damn the home and manhood, and womanhood, and business and every other good thing on God's earth. In the Island of Jamaica the rats increased so that they destroyed the crops, and they introduced a mongoose, which is a species of the coon. They have three breeding seasons a year and there are twelve to fifteen in each brood, and they are deadly enemies of the rats. The result was that the rats disappeared and there was nothing more for the mongoose to feed upon, so they attacked the snakes, and the frogs, and the lizards that fed upon the insects, with the result that the insects increased and they stripped the gardens, eating up the onions and the lettuce and then the mongoose attacked the sheep and the cats, and the puppies, and the calves and the geese. Now Jamaica is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to get rid of the mongoose. The American Mongoose The American mongoose is the open licensed saloon. It eats the carpets off the floor and the clothes from off your back, your money out of the bank, and it eats up character, and it goes on until at last it leaves a stranded wreck in the home, a skeleton of what was once brightness and happiness. There were some men playing cards on a railroad train, and one fellow pulled out a whisky flask and passed it about, and when it came to the drummer he said, "No." "What," they said, "have you got on the water wagon?" and they all laughed at him. He said, "You can laugh if you want to, but I was born with an appetite for drink, and for years I have taken from five to ten glasses per day, but I was at home in Chicago not long ago and I have a friend who has a pawn shop there. I was in there when in came a young fellow with ashen cheeks and a wild look on his face. He came up trembling, threw down a little package and said, 'Give me ten cents.' And what do you think was in that package? It was a pair of baby shoes. "My friend said, 'No, I cannot take them.' "'But,' he said, 'give me a dime. I must have a drink.' "'No, take them back home, your baby will need them.' "And the poor fellow said, 'My baby is dead, and I want a drink.'" Boys, I don't blame you for the lump that comes up in your throat. There is no law, divine or human, that the saloon respects. Lincoln said, "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." I say, if the saloon, with its train of diseases, crime and misery, is not wrong, then nothing on earth is wrong. If the fight is to be won we need men--men that will fight--the Church, Catholic and Protestant, must fight it or run away, and thank God she will not run away, but fight to the last ditch. Who works the hardest for his money, the saloon man or you? Who has the most money Sunday morning, the saloon man or you? The saloon comes as near being a rat hole for a wage-earner to dump his wages in as anything you can find. The only interest it pays is red eyes and foul breath, and the loss of health. You can go in with money and you come out with empty pockets. You go in with character and you come out ruined. You go in with a good position and you lose it. You lose your position in the bank, or in the cab of the locomotive. And it pays nothing back but disease and damnation and gives an extra dividend in delirium tremens and a free pass to hell. And then it will let your wife be buried in the potter's field, and your children go to the asylum, and yet you walk out and say the saloon is a good institution, when it is the dirtiest thing on earth. It hasn't one leg to stand on and has nothing to commend it to a decent man, not one thing. "But," you say, "we will regulate it by high license." Regulate what by high license? You might as well try and regulate a powder mill in hell. Do you want to pay taxes in boys, or dirty money? A man that will sell out to that dirty business I have no use for. See how absurd their arguments are. If you drink Bourbon in a saloon that pays $1,000 a year license, will it eat your stomach less than if you drink it in a saloon that pays $500 license? Is it going to have any different effect on you, whether the gang pays $500 or $1,000 license? No. It will make no difference whether you drink it over a mahogany counter or a pine counter--it will have the same effect on you; it will damn you. So there is no use talking about it. In some insane asylums, do you know what they do? When they want to test some patient to see whether he has recovered his reason, they have a room with a faucet in it, and a cement floor, and they give the patient a mop and tell him to mop up the floor. And if he has sense enough to turn off the faucet and mop up the floor they will parole him, but should he let the faucet run, they know that he is crazy. Well, that is what you are trying to do. You are trying to mop it up with taxes and insane asylums and jails and Keeley cures, and reformatories. The only thing to do is to shut off the source of supply. A man was delivering a temperance address at a fair grounds and a fellow came up to him and said: "Are you the fellow that gave a talk on temperance?" "Yes." "Well, I think that the managers did a dirty piece of business to let you give a lecture on temperance. You have hurt my business and my business is a legal one." [Illustration: "SHOULD HE LET THE FAUCET RUN, THEY KNOW THAT HE IS CRAZY"] "You are right there," said the lecturer, "they did do a mean trick; I would complain to the officers." And he took up a premium list and said: "By the way, I see there is a premium of so much offered for the best horse and cow and butter. What business are you in?" "I'm in the liquor business." "Well, I don't see that they offer any premium for your business. You ought to go down and compel them to offer a premium for your business and they ought to offer on the list $25 for the best wrecked home, $15 for the best bloated bum that you can show, and $10 for the finest specimen of broken-hearted wife, and they ought to give $25 for the finest specimens of thieves and gamblers you can trot out. You can bring out the finest looking criminals. If you have something that is good trot it out. You ought to come in competition with the farmer, with his stock, and the fancy work, and the canned fruit." The Saloon a Coward As Dr. Howard said: "I tell you that the saloon is a coward. It hides itself behind stained-glass doors and opaque windows, and sneaks its customers in at a blind door, and it keeps a sentinel to guard the door from the officers of the law, and it marks its wares with false bills-of-lading, and offers to ship green goods to you and marks them with the name of wholesome articles of food so people won't know what is being sent to you. And so vile did that business get that the legislature of Indiana passed a law forbidding a saloon to ship goods without being properly labeled. And the United States Congress passed a law forbidding them to send whisky through the mails. [Illustration: "I'LL FIGHT TO THE LAST DITCH, THIS HELLISH TRAFFIC."] I tell you it strikes in the night. It fights under cover of darkness and assassinates the characters that it cannot damn, and it lies about you. It attacks defenseless womanhood and childhood. The saloon is a coward. It is a thief; it is not an ordinary court offender that steals your money, but it robs you of manhood and leaves you in rags and takes away your friends, and it robs your family. It impoverishes your children and it brings insanity and suicide. It will take the shirt off your back and it will steal the coffin from a dead child and yank the last crust of bread out of the hand of the starving child; it will take the last bucket of coal out of your cellar, and the last cent out of your pocket, and will send you home bleary-eyed and staggering to your wife and children. It will steal the milk from the breast of the mother and leave her with nothing with which to feed her infant. It will take the virtue from your daughter. It is the dirtiest, most low-down, damnable business that ever crawled out of the pit of hell. It is a sneak, and a thief and a coward. It is an infidel. It has no faith in God; has no religion. It would close every church in the land. It would hang its beer signs on the abandoned altars. It would close every public school. It respects the thief and it esteems the blasphemer; it fills the prisons and the penitentiaries. It despises heaven, hates love, scorns virtue. It tempts the passions. Its music is the song of a siren. Its sermons are a collection of lewd, vile stories. It wraps a mantle about the hope of this world and that to come. Its tables are full of the vilest literature. It is the moral clearing house for rot, and damnation, and poverty, and insanity, and it wrecks homes and blights lives today. God's Worst Enemy The saloon is a liar. It promises good cheer and sends sorrow. It promises health and causes disease. It promises prosperity and sends adversity. It promises happiness and sends misery. Yes, it sends the husband home with a lie on his lips to his wife; and the boy home with a lie on his lips to his mother; and it causes the employee to lie to his employer. It degrades. It is God's worst enemy and the devil's best friend. It spares neither youth nor old age. It is waiting with a dirty blanket for the baby to crawl into the world. It lies in wait for the unborn. It cocks the highwayman's pistol. It puts the rope in the hands of the mob. It is the anarchist of the world and its dirty red flag is dyed with the blood of women and children. It sent the bullet through the body of Lincoln; it nerved the arm that sent the bullets through Garfield and William McKinley. Yes, it is a murderer. Every plot that was ever hatched against the government and law, was born and bred, and crawled out of the grog-shop to damn this country. I tell you that the curse of God Almighty is on the saloon. Legislatures are legislating against it. Decent society is barring it out. The fraternal brotherhoods are knocking it out. The Masons and Odd Fellows, and the Knights of Pythias and the A. O. U. W. are closing their doors to the whisky sellers. They don't want you wriggling your carcass in their lodges. Yes, sir, I tell you, the curse of God is on it. It is on the down grade. It is headed for hell, and, by the grace of God, I am going to give it a push, with a whoop, for all I know how. Listen to me! I am going to show you how we burn up our money. It costs twenty cents to make a gallon of whisky; sold over the counter at ten cents a glass, it will bring four dollars. "But," said the saloon-keeper, "Bill, you must figure on the strychnine and the cochineal, and other stuff they put in it, and it will bring nearer eight dollars." Yes; it increases the heart beat thirty times more in a minute, when you consider the licorice and potash and log-wood and other poisons that are put in. I believe one cause for the unprecedented increase of crime is due to the poison put in the stuff nowadays to make it go as far as they can. I am indebted to my friend, George B. Stuart, for some of the following points: I will show you how your money is burned up. It costs twenty cents to make a gallon of whisky, sold over the counter at ten cents a glass, which brings four dollars. Listen, where does it go? Who gets the twenty cents? The farmer for his corn or rye. Who gets the rest? The United States government for collecting revenue, and the big corporations, and part is used to pave our streets and pay our police. I'll show you. I'm going to show you how it is burned up, and you don't need half sense to catch on, and if you don't understand just keep still and nobody will know the difference. I say, "Hey, Colonel Politics, what is the matter with the country?" He swells up like a poisoned pup and says to me, "Bill, why the silver bugbear. That's what is the matter with the country." The total value of the silver produced in this country in 1912 was $39,000,000. Hear me! In 1912 the total value of the gold produced in this country was $93,000,000, and we dumped thirty-six times that much in the whisky hole and didn't fill it. What is the matter? The total value of all the gold and silver produced in 1912 was $132,000,000, and we dumped twenty-five times that amount in the whisky hole and didn't fill it. What is the matter with the country, Colonel Politics? He swells up and says, "Mr. Sunday, Standpatism, sir." I say, "You are an old windbag." "Oh," says another, "revision of the tariff." Another man says, "Free trade; open the doors at the ports and let them pour the products in and we will put the trusts on the sidetrack." Say, you come with me to every port of entry. Listen! In 1912 the total value of all the imports was $1,812,000,000, and we dumped that much in the whisky hole in twelve months and did not fill it. "Oh," says a man, "let us court South America and Europe to sell our products. That's what is the matter; we are not exporting enough." Last year the total value of all the exports was $2,362,000,000, and we dumped that amount in the whisky hole in one year and didn't fill it. One time I was down in Washington and went to the United States treasury and said: "I wish you would let me go where you don't let the general public." And they took us around on the inside and we walked into a room about twenty feet long and fifteen feet wide and as many feet high, and I said, "What is this?" "This is the vault that contains all of the national bank stock in the United States." I said, "How much is here?" They said, "$578,000,000." And we dumped nearly four times the value of the national bank stock in the United States into the whisky hole last year, and we didn't fill the hole up at that. What is the matter? Say, whenever the day comes that all the Catholic and Protestant churches--just when the day comes when you will say to the whisky business: "You go to hell," that day the whisky business will go to hell. But you sit there, you old whisky-voting elder and deacon and vestryman, and you wouldn't strike your hands together on the proposition. It would stamp you an old hypocrite and you know it. Say, hold on a bit. Have you got a silver dollar? I am going to show you how it is burned up. We have in this country 250,000 saloons, and allowing fifty feet frontage for each saloon it makes a street from New York to Chicago, and 5,000,000 men, women and children go daily into the saloon for drink. And marching twenty miles a day it would take thirty days to pass this building, and marching five abreast they would reach 590 miles. There they go; look at them! On the first day of January, 500,000 of the young men of our nation entered the grog-shop and began a public career hellward, and on the 31st of December I will come back here and summon you people, and ring the bell and raise the curtain and say to the saloon and breweries: "On the first day of January, I gave you 500,000 of the brain and muscle of our land, and I want them back and have come in the name of the home and church and school; father mother, sister, sweetheart; give me back what I gave you. March out." I count, and 165,000 have lost their appetites and have become muttering, bleary-eyed drunkards, wallowing in their own excrement, and I say, "What is it I hear, a funeral dirge?" What is that procession? A funeral procession 3,000 miles long and 110,000 hearses in the procession. One hundred and ten thousand men die drunkards in the land of the free and home of the brave. Listen! In an hour twelve men die drunkards, 300 a day and 110,000 a year. One man will leap in front of a train, another will plunge from the dock into a lake, another will throw his hands to his head and life will end. Another will cry, "Mother," and his life will go out like a burnt match. I stand in front of the jails and count the whisky criminals. They say, "Yes, Bill, I fired the bullet." "Yes, I backed my wife into the corner and beat her life out. I am waiting for the scaffold; I am waiting." "I am waiting," says another, "to slip into hell." On, on, it goes. Say, let me summon the wifehood, and the motherhood, and the childhood and see the tears rain down the upturned faces. People, tears are too weak for that hellish business. Tears are only salty backwater that well up at the bidding of an occult power, and I will tell you there are 865,000 whisky orphan children in the United States, enough in the world to belt the globe three times around, punctured at every fifth point by a drunkard's widow. Like Hamilcar of old, who swore young Hannibal to eternal enmity against Rome, so I propose to perpetuate this feud against the liquor traffic until the white-winged dove of temperance builds her nest on the dome of the Capitol of Washington and spreads her wings of peace, sobriety and joy over our land which I love with all my heart. What Will a Dollar Buy? I hold a silver dollar in my hand. Come on, we are going to a saloon. We will go into a saloon and spend that dollar for a quart. It takes twenty cents to make a gallon of whisky and a dollar will buy a quart. You say to the saloon-keeper, "Give me a quart." I will show you, if you wait a minute, how she is burned up. Here I am John, an old drunken bum, with a wife and six kids. (Thank God, it's all a lie.) Come on, I will go down to a saloon and throw down my dollar. It costs twenty cents to make a gallon of whisky. A nickel will make a quart. My dollar will buy a quart of booze. Who gets the nickel? The farmer, for corn and apples. Who gets the ninety-five cents? The United States government, the big distillers, the big corporations. I am John, a drunken bum, and I will spend my dollar. I have worked a week and got my pay. I go into a grog-shop and throw down my dollar. The saloon-keeper gets my dollar and I get a quart of booze. Come home with me. I stagger, and reel, and spew in my wife's presence, and she says: "Hello, John, what did you bring home?" "A quart." What will a quart do? It will burn up my happiness and my home and fill my home with squalor and want. So there is the dollar. The saloon-keeper has it. Here is my quart. There you get the whisky end of it. Here you get the workingman's end of the saloon. But come on; I will go to a store and spend the dollar for a pair of shoes. I want them for my son, and he puts them on his feet, and with the shoes to protect his feet he goes out and earns another dollar, and my dollar becomes a silver thread in the woof and warp of happiness and joy, and the man that owns the building gets some, and the clerk that sold the shoes gets some, and the merchant, and the traveling man, and the wholesale house gets some, and the factory, and the man that made the shoes, and the man that tanned the hide, and the butcher that bought the calf, and the little colored fellow that shined the shoes, and my dollar spread itself and nobody is made worse for spending the money. I join the Booster Club for business and prosperity. A man said, "I will tell you what is the matter with the country: it's over-production." You lie, it is underconsumption. Say, wife, the bread that ought to be in your stomach to satisfy the cravings of hunger is down yonder in the grocery store, and your husband hasn't money enough to carry it home. The meat that ought to satisfy your hunger hangs in the butcher shop. Your husband hasn't any money to buy it. The cloth for a dress is lying on the shelf in the store, but your husband hasn't the money to buy it. The whisky gang has his money. What is the matter with our country? I would like to do this. I would like to see every booze-fighter get on the water wagon. I would like to summon all the drunkards in America and say: "Boys, let's cut her out and spend the money for flour, meat and calico; what do you say?" Say! $500,000,000 will buy all the flour in the United States; $500,000,000 will buy all the beef cattle, and $500,000,000 will buy all the cotton at $50 a bale. But we dumped more money than that in the whisky hole last year, and we didn't fill it. Come on; I'm going to line up the drunkards. Everybody fall in. Come on, ready, forward, march. Right, left, here I come with all the drunkards. We will line up in front of a butcher shop. The butcher says, "What do you want, a piece of neck?" "No; how much do I owe you?" "Three dollars." "Here's your dough. Now give me a porterhouse steak and a sirloin roast." "Where did you get all that money?" "Went to hear Bill and climbed on the water wagon." "Hello! What do you want?" "Beefsteak." "What do you want?" "Beefsteak." We empty the shop and the butcher runs to the telephone. "Hey, Central, give me the slaughter house. Have you got any beef, any pork, any mutton?" They strip the slaughter house, and then telephone to Swift, and Armour, and Nelson Morris, and Cudahy, to send down trainloads of beefsteaks. "The whole bunch has got on the water wagon." And Swift and the other big packers in Chicago say to their salesmen: "Buy beef, pork and mutton." The farmer sees the price of cattle and sheep jump up to three times their value. Let me take the money you dump into the whisky hole and buy beefsteaks with it. I will show what is the matter with America. I think the liquor business is the dirtiest, rottenest business this side of hell. Come on, are you ready? Fall in! We line up in front of a grocery store. "What do you want?" "Why, I want flour." "What do you want?" "Flour." "What do you want?" "Flour." "Pillsbury, Minneapolis, 'Sleepy Eye'?" [Illustration: "BILLY" AND "MA" SUNDAY.] "Yes, ship in trainloads of flour; send on fast mail schedule, with an engine in front, one behind and a Mogul in the middle." "What's the matter?" "Why, the workingmen have stopped spending their money for booze and have begun to buy flour." The big mills tell their men to buy wheat and the farmers see the price jump to over $2 per bushel. What's the matter with the country? Why, the whisky gang has your money and you have an empty stomach, and yet you will walk up and vote for the dirty booze. Come on, cut out the booze, boys. Get on the water wagon; get on for the sake of your wife and babies, and hit the booze a blow. Come on, ready, forward, march! Right, left, halt! We are in front of a dry goods store. "What do you want?" "Calico." "What do you want?" "Calico." "What do you want?" "Calico." "Calico; all right, come on." The stores are stripped. Marshall Field, Carson, Pirie, Scott & Co., J. V. Farrell, send down calico. The whole bunch has voted out the saloons and we have such a demand for calico we don't know what to do. And the big stores telegraph to Fall River to ship calico, and the factories telegraph to buy cotton, and they tell their salesmen to buy cotton, and the cotton plantation man sees cotton jump up to $150 a bale. What is the matter? Your children are going naked and the whisky gang has got your money. That's what's the matter with you. Don't listen to those old whisky-soaked politicians who say "stand pat on the saloon." Come with me. Now, remember, we have the whole bunch of booze fighters on the water wagon, and I'm going home now. Over there I was John, the drunken bum. The whisky gang got my dollar and I got the quart. Over here I am John on the water wagon. The merchant got my dollar and I have his meat, flour and calico, and I'm going home now. "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home without booze." Wife comes out and says, "Hello, John, what have you got?" "Two porterhouse steaks, Sally." "What's that bundle, Pa?" "Clothes to make you a new dress, Sis. Your mother has fixed your old one so often, it looks like a crazy quilt." "And what have you there?" "That's a pair of shoes for you, Tom; and here is some cloth to make you a pair of pants. Your mother has patched the old ones so often, they look like the map of United States." What's the matter with the country? We have been dumping into the whisky hole the money that ought to have been spent for flour, beef and calico, and we haven't the hole filled up yet. A man comes along and says: "Are you a drunkard?" "Yes, I'm a drunkard." "Where are you going?" "I am going to hell." "Why?" "Because the Good Book says: 'No drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of God,' so I am going to hell." Another man comes along and I say: "Are you a church member?" "Yes, I am a church member." "Where are you going?" "I am going to heaven." "Did you vote for the saloon?" "Yes." "Then you shall go to hell." Say, if the man that drinks the whisky goes to hell, the man that votes for the saloon that sold the whisky to him will go to hell. If the man that drinks the whisky goes to hell, and the man that sold the whisky to the men that drank it, goes to heaven, then the poor drunkard will have the right to stand on the brink of eternal damnation and put his arms around the pillar of justice, shake his fist in the face of the Almighty and say, "Unjust! Unjust!" If you vote for the dirty business you ought to go to hell as sure as you live, and I would like to fire the furnace while you are there. Some fellow says, "Drive the saloon out and the buildings will be empty." Which would you rather have, empty buildings or empty jails, penitentiaries and insane asylums? You drink the stuff and what have you to say? You that vote for it, and you that sell it? Look at them painted on the canvas of your recollection. The Gin Mill What is the matter with this grand old country? I heard my friend, George Stuart, tell how he imagined that he walked up to a mill and said: "Hello, there, what kind of a mill are you?" "A sawmill." "And what do you make?" "We make boards out of logs." "Is the finished product worth more than the raw material?" "Yes." "We will make laws for you. We must have lumber for houses." He goes up to another mill and says: "Hey, what kind of a mill are you?" "A grist mill." "What do you make?" "Flour and meal out of wheat and corn." "Is the finished product worth more than the raw material?" "Yes." "Then come on. We will make laws for you. We will protect you." He goes up to another mill and says: "What kind of a mill are you?" "A paper mill." "What do you make paper out of?" "Straw and rags." "Well, we will make laws for you. We must have paper on which to write notes and mortgages." He goes up to another mill and says: "Hey, what kind of a mill are you?" "A gin mill." "I don't like the looks nor the smell of you. A gin mill; what do you make? What kind of a mill are you?" "A gin mill." "What is your raw material?" "The boys of America." The gin mills of this country must have 2,000,000 boys or shut up shop. Say, walk down your streets, count the homes and every fifth home has to furnish a boy for a drunkard. Have you furnished yours? No. Then I have to furnish two to make up. "What is your raw material?" "American boys." "Then I will pick up the boys and give them to you." A man says, "Hold on, not that boy, he is mine." Then I will say to you what a saloon-keeper said to me when I protested, "I am not interested in boys; to hell with your boys." "Say, saloon gin mill, what is your finished product?" "Bleary-eyed, low-down, staggering men and the scum of God's dirt." Go to the jails, go to the insane asylums and the penitentiaries, and the homes for feeble-minded. There you will find the finished product for their dirty business. I tell you it is the worst business this side of hell, and you know it. Listen! Here is an extract from the _Saturday Evening Post_ of November 9, 1907, taken from a paper read by a brewer. You will say that a man didn't say it: "It appears from these facts that the success of our business lies in the creation of appetite among the boys. Men who have formed the habit scarcely ever reform, but they, like others, will die, and unless there are recruits made to take their places, our coffers will be empty, and I recommend to you that money spent in the creation of appetite will return in dollars to your tills after the habit is formed." What is your raw material, saloons? American boys. Say, I would not give one boy for all the distilleries and saloons this side of hell. And they have to have 2,000,000 boys every generation. And then you tell me you are a man when you will vote for an institution like that. What do you want to do, pay taxes in money or in boys? I feel like an old fellow in Tennessee who made his living by catching rattlesnakes. He caught one with fourteen rattles and put it in a box with a glass top. One day when he was sawing wood his little five-year old boy, Jim, took the lid off and the rattler wriggled out and struck him in the cheek. He ran to his father and said, "The rattler has bit me." The father ran and chopped the rattler to pieces, and with his jackknife he cut a chunk from the boy's cheek and then sucked and sucked at the wound to draw out the poison. He looked at little Jim, watched the pupils of his eyes dilate and watched him swell to three times his normal size, watched his lips become parched and cracked, and eyes roll, and little Jim gasped and died. The father took him in his arms, carried him over by the side of the rattler, got on his knees and said, "O God, I would not give little Jim for all the rattlers that ever crawled over the Blue Ridge mountains." And I would not give one boy for every dirty dollar you get from the hell-soaked liquor business or from every brewery and distillery this side of hell. In a Northwest city a preacher sat at his breakfast table one Sunday morning. The doorbell rang; he answered it; and there stood a little boy, twelve years of age. He was on crutches, right leg off at the knee, shivering, and he said, "Please, sir, will you come up to the jail and talk and pray with papa? He murdered mamma. Papa was good and kind, but whisky did it, and I have to support my three little sisters. I sell newspapers and black boots. Will you go up and talk and pray with papa? And will you come home and be with us when they bring him back? The governor says we can have his body after they hang him." The preacher hurried to the jail and talked and prayed with the man. He had no knowledge of what he had done. He said, "I don't blame the law, but it breaks my heart to think that my children must be left in a cold and heartless world. Oh, sir, whisky did it." The preacher was at the little hut when up drove the undertaker's wagon and they carried out the pine coffin. They led the little boy up to the coffin, he leaned over and kissed his father and sobbed, and said to his sister, "Come on, sister, kiss papa's cheeks before they grow cold." And the little hungry, ragged, whisky orphans hurried to the coffin, shrieking in agony. Police, whose hearts were adamant, buried their faces in their hands and rushed from the house, and the preacher fell on his knees and lifted his clenched fist and tear-stained face and took an oath before God, and before the whisky orphans, that he would fight the cursed business until the undertaker carried him out in a coffin. A Chance for Manhood You men have a chance to show your manhood. Then in the name of your pure mother, in the name of your manhood, in the name of your wife and the poor innocent children that climb up on your lap and put their arms around your neck, in the name of all that is good and noble, fight the curse. Shall you men, who hold in your hands the ballot, and in that ballot hold the destiny of womanhood and childhood and manhood, shall you, the sovereign power, refuse to rally in the name of the defenseless men and women and native land? No. I want every man to say, "God, you can count on me to protect my wife, my home, my mother and my children and the manhood of America." By the mercy of God, which has given to you the unshaken and unshakable confidence of her you love, I beseech you, make a fight for the women who wait until the saloons spew out their husbands and their sons, and send them home maudlin, brutish, devilish, stinking, blear-eyed, bloated-faced drunkards. You say you can't prohibit men from drinking. Why, if Jesus Christ were here today some of you would keep on in sin just the same. But the law can be enforced against whisky just the same as it can be enforced against anything else, if you have honest officials to enforce it. Of course it doesn't prohibit. There isn't a law on the books of the state that prohibits. We have laws against murder. Do they prohibit? We have laws against burglary. Do they prohibit? We have laws against arson, rape, but they do not prohibit. Would you introduce a bill to repeal all the laws that do not prohibit? Any law will prohibit to a certain extent if honest officials enforce it. But no law will absolutely prohibit. We can make a law against liquor prohibit as much as any law prohibits. Or would you introduce a bill saying, if you pay $1,000 a year you can kill any one you don't like; or by paying $500 a year you can attack any girl you want to; or by paying $100 a year you can steal anything that suits you? That's what you do with the dirtiest, rottenest gang this side of hell. You say for so much a year you can have a license to make staggering, reeling, drunken sots, murderers and thieves and vagabonds. You say, "Bill, you're too hard on the whisky." I don't agree. Not on your life. There was a fellow going along the pike and a farmer's dog ran snapping at him. He tried to drive it back with a pitchfork he carried, and failing to do so he pinned it to the ground with the prongs. Out came the farmer: "Hey, why don't you use the other end of that fork?" He answered, "Why didn't the dog come at me with the other end?" Personal Liberty Personal liberty is not personal license. I dare not exercise personal liberty if it infringes on the liberty of others. Our forefathers did not fight and die for personal license but for personal liberty bounded by laws. Personal liberty is the liberty of a murderer, a burglar, a seducer, or a wolf that wants to remain in a sheep fold, or the weasel in a hen roost. You have no right to vote for an institution that is going to drag your sons and daughters to hell. If you were the only persons in this city you would have a perfect right to drive your horse down the street at breakneck speed; you would have a right to make a race track out of the streets for your auto; you could build a slaughter house in the public square; you could build a glue factory in the public square. But when the population increases from one to 600,000 you can't do it. You say, "Why can't I run my auto? I own it. Why can't I run my horse? I own it. Why can't I build the slaughter house? I own the lot." Yes, but there are 600,000 people here now and other people have rights. So law stands between you and personal liberty, you miserable dog. You can't build a slaughter house in your front yard, because the law says you can't. As long as I am standing here on this platform I have personal liberty. I can swing my arms at will. But the minute any one else steps on the platform my personal liberty ceases. It stops just one inch from the other fellow's nose. When you come staggering home, cussing right and left and spewing and spitting, your wife suffers, your children suffer. Don't think that you are the only one that suffers. A man that goes to the penitentiary makes his wife and children suffer just as much as he does. You're placing a shame on your wife and children. If you're a dirty, low-down, filthy, drunken, whisky-soaked bum you'll affect all with whom you come in contact. If you're a God-fearing man you will influence all with whom you come in contact. You can't live by yourself. I occasionally hear a man say, "It's nobody's business how I live." Then I say he is the most dirty, low-down, whisky-soaked, beer-guzzling, bull-necked, foul-mouthed hypocrite that ever had a brain rotten enough to conceive such a statement and lips vile enough to utter it. You say, "If I am satisfied with my life why do you want to interfere with my business?" If I heard a man beating his wife and heard her shrieks and the children's cries and my wife would tell me to go and see what was the matter, and I went in and found a great, big, broad-shouldered, whisky-soaked, hog-jowled, weasel-eyed brute dragging a little woman around by the hair, and two children in the corner unconscious from his kicks and the others yelling in abject terror, and he said, "What are you coming in to interfere with my personal liberty for? Isn't this my wife, didn't I pay for the license to wed her?" You ought, or you're a bigamist. "Aren't these my children; didn't I pay the doctor to bring them into the world?" You ought to, or you're a thief. "If I want to beat them, what is that your business, aren't they mine?" Would I apologize? Never! I'd knock seven kinds of pork out of that old hog. The Moderate Drinker I remember when I was secretary of the Y. M. C. A. in Chicago, I had the saloon route. I had to go around and give tickets inviting men to come to the Y. M. C. A. services. And one day I was told to count the men going into a certain saloon. Not the ones already in, but just those going in. In sixty-two minutes I could count just 1,004 men going in there. I went in then and met a fellow who used to be my side-kicker out in Iowa, and he threw down a mint julep while I stood there, and I asked him what he was doing. "Oh, just come down to the theater," he said, "and came over for a drink between acts." "Why, you are three sheets in the wind now," I said, and then an old drunken bum, with a little threadbare coat, a straw hat, no vest, pants torn, toes sticking out through his torn shoes, and several weeks' growth of beard on his face, came in and said to the bartender: "For God's sake, can't you give an old bum a drink of whisky to warm up on?" and the bartender poured him out a big glass and he gulped it down. He pulled his hat down and slouched out. I said to my friend, "George, do you see that old drunken bum, down and out? There was a time when he was just like you. No drunkard ever intended to be a drunkard. Every drunkard intended to be a moderate drinker." "Oh, you're unduly excited over my welfare," he said. "I never expect to get that far." "Neither did that bum," I answered. I was standing on another corner less than eight months afterward and I saw a bum coming along with head down, his eyes bloodshot, his face bloated, and he panhandled me for a flapjack before I recognized him. It was George. He had lost his job and was on the toboggan slide hitting it for hell. I say if sin weren't so deceitful it wouldn't be so attractive. Every added drink makes it harder. Some just live for booze. Some say, "I need it. It keeps me warm in winter." Another says, "It keeps me cool in summer." Well, if it keeps you warm in winter and cool in summer, why is it that out of those who freeze to death and are sun-struck the greater part of them are booze-hoisters? Every one takes it for the alcohol there is in it. Take that out and you would as soon drink dish water. I can buy a can of good beef extract and dip the point of my knife in the can and get more nourishment on the point of that knife than in 800 gallons of the best beer. If the brewers of this land today were making their beer in Germany, ninety per cent of them would be in jail. The extract on the point of the knife represents one and three-quarter pounds of good beefsteak. Just think, you have to make a swill barrel out of your bellies and a sewer if you want to get that much nourishment out of beer and run 800 gallons through. Oh, go ahead, if you want to, but I'll try to help you just the same. Every man has blood corpuscles and their object is to take the impurities out of your system. Perspiration is for the same thing. Every time you work or I preach the impurities come out. Every time you sweat there is a destroying power going on inside. The blood goes through the heart every seventeen seconds. Oh, we have a marvelous system. In some spots there are 4,000 pores to the square inch and a grain of sand will cover 150 of them. I can strip you and cover you with shellac and you'll be dead in forty-eight hours. Oh, we are fearfully and wonderfully made. What Booze Does to the System Alcohol knocks the blood corpuscles out of business so that it takes eight to ten to do what one ought to do. There's a man who drinks. Here's a fellow who drives a beer wagon. Look how pussy he is. He's full of rotten tissue. He says he's healthy. Smell his breath. You punch your finger in that healthy flesh he talks about and the dent will be there a half an hour afterwards. You look like you don't believe it. Try it when you go to bed tonight. Pneumonia has a first mortgage on a booze-hoister. Take a fellow with good, healthy muscles, and you punch them and they bound out like a rubber band. The first thing about a crushed strawberry stomach is a crushed strawberry nose. Nature lets the public on the outside know what is going on inside. If I could just take the stomach of a moderate drinker and turn it wrong side out for you, it would be all the temperance lecture you would need. You know what alcohol does to the white of an egg. It will cook it in a few minutes. Well, alcohol does the same thing to the nerves as to the white of an egg. That's why some men can't walk. They stagger because their nerves are partly paralyzed. The liver is the largest organ of the body. It takes all of the blood in the body and purifies it and takes out the poisons and passes them on to the gall and from there they go to the intestines and act as oil does on machinery. When a man drinks the liver becomes covered with hob nails, and then refuses to do the work, and the poisons stay in the blood. Then the victim begins to turn yellow. He has the jaundice. The kidneys take what is left and purify that. The booze that a man drinks turns them hard. That's what booze is doing for you. Isn't it time you went red hot after the enemy? I'm trying to help you. I'm trying to put a carpet on your floor, pull the pillows out of the window, give you and your children and wife good clothes. I'm trying to get you to save your money instead of buying a machine for the saloon-keeper while you have to foot it. By the grace of God I have strength enough to pass the open saloon, but some of you can't, so I owe it to you to help you. I've stood for more sneers and scoffs and insults and had my life threatened from one end of the land to the other by this God-forsaken gang of thugs and cutthroats because I have come out uncompromisingly against them. I've taken more dirty, vile insults from this low-down bunch than from any one on earth, but there is no one that will reach down lower, or reach higher up or wider, to help you out of the pits of drunkenness than I. CHAPTER X "Give Attendance to Reading" There are some so-called Christian homes today with books on the shelves of the library that have no more business there than a rattler crawling about on the floor, or poison within the child's reach.--BILLY SUNDAY. "I never heard Billy Sunday use an ungrammatical sentence," remarked one observer. "He uses a great deal of slang, and many colloquialisms, but not a single error in grammar could I detect. Some of his passages are really beautiful English." Sunday has made diligent effort to supplement his lack of education. He received the equivalent of a high-school training in boyhood, which is far more than Lincoln ever had. Nevertheless he has not had the training of the average educated man, much less of a normal minister of the gospel. He is conscious of his limitations: and has diligently endeavored to make up for them. When coaching the Northwestern University baseball team in the winter of '87 and '88 he attended classes at the University. He has read a great deal and to this day continues his studies. Of course his acquaintance with literature is superficial: but his use of it shows how earnestly he has read up on history and literature and the sciences. He makes better use of his knowledge of the physical sciences, and of historical allusions, than most men drilled in them for years. He displays a proneness for what he himself would call "high-brow stuff," and his disproportionate display of his "book learning" reveals his conscious effort to supply what does not come to him naturally. Sunday has an eclectic mind. He knows a good thing when he sees it. He is quick to incorporate into his discourses happenings or illustrations wherever found. Moody also was accustomed to do this: he circulated among his friends interleaved Bibles to secure keen comments on Scripture passages. All preachers draw on the storehouses of the past: the Church Fathers speak every Sunday in the pulpits of Christendom. Nobody originates all that he says. "We are the heirs of all the ages." At the opening of every one of his campaigns Sunday repeatedly announces that he has drawn his sermon material from wherever he could find it, and that he makes no claim to originality. So the qualified critic can detect, in addition to some sermon outlines which were bequests from Dr. Chapman, epigrams from Sam Jones, flashes from Talmage, passages from George Stuart, paragraphs from the religious press, apothegms from the great commentators. It is no news to say that Sunday's material is not all original; he avows this himself. In his gleanings he has had help from various associates. Elijah P. Brown's hand can be traced in his sermons: the creator of the "Ram's Horn" proverbs surely is responsible for Sunday's penchant for throwing stones at the devil. Sunday is not an original thinker. He has founded no school of Scriptural interpretation. He has not given any new exposition of Bible passages, nor has he developed any fresh lines of thought. Nobody hears anything new from him. In every one of his audience there are probably many persons who have a more scholarly acquaintance with the Bible and with Christian literature. Temperamentally a conservative, Sunday has taken the truth taught him by his earliest teachers and has adapted and paraphrased and modernized it. In the crucible of his intense personality this truth has become Sundayized. His discourses may have a variety of origin, but they all sound like Billy Sunday when he delivers them. A toilsome, painstaking worker, he has made elaborate notes of all his sermons, and these he takes with him in leather-bound black books to the platform and follows more or less closely as he speaks. No other man than himself could use these rough notes. Often he interjects into one sermon parts of another. He has about a hundred discourses at his command at present, and his supply is constantly growing. The early copies of Sunday's sermons were taken down more or less correctly in shorthand, and these have been reproduced in every city where he has gone: consequently they lack the tang and flavor of his present deliverances. He is alert to glean from all sources. In conversation one morning in Scranton I told him how on the previous day a lawyer friend had characterized a preacher with whom I had been talking by saying, "How much like a preacher he looks, and how little like a man." That afternoon Sunday used this in his sermon and twiddled it under his fingers for a minute or two, paraphrasing it in characteristic Sunday fashion. Doubtless it is now part of his permanent oratorical stock in trade. The absolute unconventionality of the man makes all this possible. He is not afraid of the most shocking presentation of truth. Thus when speaking at the University of Pennsylvania, he alluded to a professor who had criticized the doctrine of hell, saying, "That man will not be in hell five minutes before he knows better." Of course that thrust caught the students. A more discreet and diplomatic person than Sunday would not have dared to say this. The gospel preached by Sunday is the same that the Church has been teaching for hundreds of years. He knows no modifications. He is fiercely antagonistic to "modern" scholarship. He sits in God's judgment seat in almost every sermon and frequently sends men to hell by name. All this may be deplorable, but it is Sunday. The Bible which he uses is an interpreted and annotated edition by one of the most conservative of Bible teachers: this suits Sunday, for he is not of the temperament to be hospitable to new truths that may break forth from the living word. This state of mind leads him to be extravagant and intolerant in his statements. His hearers are patient with all of this because the body of his teachings is that held by all evangelical Christians. If he were less cock-sure he would not be Billy Sunday; the great mass of mankind want a religion of authority. After all, truth is intolerant. Although lacking technical literary training Sunday is not only a master of living English and of terse, strong, vivid and gripping phrase, but he is also capable of extraordinary flights of eloquence, when he uses the chastest and most appropriate language. He has held multitudes spell-bound with such passages as these: God's Token of Love "Down in Jacksonville, Florida, a man, Judge Owen, quarreled with his betrothed and to try to forget, he went off and worked in a yellow-fever hospital. Finally he caught the disease and had succumbed to it. He had passed the critical stage of the disease, but he was dying. One day his sweetheart met the physician on the street and asked about the judge. 'He's sick,' he told her. "'How bad?' she asked. "'Well, he's passed the critical stage, but he is dying,' the doctor told her. "'But I don't understand,' she said, 'if he's passed the critical stage why isn't he getting well?' "'He's dying, of undying love for you, not the fever,' the doctor told her. She asked him to come with her to a florist and he went and there she purchased some smilax and intertwined lilacs and wrote on a card, 'With my love,' and signed her given name. "The doctor went back to the hospital and his patient was tossing in fitful slumber. He laid the flowers on his breast and he awoke and saw the flowers and buried his head in them. 'Thanks for the flowers, doctor,' he said, but the doctor said, 'They are not from me.' "'Then who are they from?' "'Guess!' "'I can't; tell me.' "'I think you'll find the name on the card,' the doctor told him, and he looked and read the card, 'With my love.' "'Tell me,' he cried, 'did she write that of her free will or did you beg her to do it?' The doctor told him she had begged to do it herself. "Then you ought to have seen him. The next day he was sitting up. The next day he ate some gruel. The next day he was in a chair. The next day he could hobble on crutches. The next day he threw one of them away. The next day he threw the cane away and the next day he could walk pretty well. On the ninth day there was a quiet wedding in the annex of the hospital. You laugh; but listen: This old world is like a hospital. Here are the wards for the libertines. Here are the wards for the drunkards. Here are the wards for the blasphemers. Everywhere I look I see scarred humanity. "Nineteen hundred years ago God looked over the battlements of heaven and he picked a basket of flowers, and then one day he dropped a baby into the manger at Bethlehem. 'For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have everlasting life.' What more can he do? "But God didn't spare him. They crucified him, but he burst the bonds of death and the Holy Spirit came down. They banished John to the isle of Patmos and there he wrote the words: 'Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice and open the door I shall come in to him and sup with him and he with me.'" The Sinking Ship "Years ago there was a ship on the Atlantic and a storm arose. The ship sprung a leak and in spite of all the men could do they could not pump out the water fast enough. The captain called the men to him and told them that he had taken observations and bearings and said unless the leak was stopped in ten hours the boat would be at the bottom of the sea. 'I want a man who will volunteer his life to stay the intake. It's in the second hold and about the size of a man's arm and some one can place his arm in the hole and it will hold back the water until we can get it pumped out enough.' "Not a man stirred. They said they would go back to the pumps and they did. They worked hard and when a man dropped they would drag him away and revive him and bring him back. The captain called them again and told them it was no use unless it was changed. They would be at the bottom before ten hours unless some one volunteered and in less time than that if a storm arose. Then one stepped back. 'What! My boy!' "'Yes, father, I'll go.' "He sent some endearing words to his mother, took one last look at the sky and kissed his father and bade the sailors good-bye, and went below. He found the leak and placed his arm in it and packed rags around it and the men went back to the pumps. When day broke they saw the body floating and swaying in the water, but the arm was still in the hole. And the vessel sailed into port safe. There on the coast today stands a monument to perpetuate the deed. "Nineteen hundred years ago this old world sprung a leak. God asked for volunteers to stop it, and all of the angels and seraphim stood back, Noah, Abraham, Elijah, Isaiah, David, Jeremiah, Solomon, none would go, and then forth stepped his Son and said: 'Father, I'll go,' and descended, and died on the cross; but "'Up from the grave he arose, With a mighty triumph o'er his foes. He arose a victor from the dark domain And he lives forever with his saints to reign. Hallelujah, Christ arose!' He burst the bonds of death, and the gates of heaven, while the angels sang and would crown him yet. 'Let me stand between God and the people,' and there he stands today, the Mediator, with the salvation, full, free, perfect, and eternal in one hand and the sword of inflexible justice in the other. The time will come when he'll come with his angels; some day he will withdraw his offer of salvation. "Come and accept my Christ! Who'll come and get under the blood with me?" "What If It Had Been My Boy?" "'Say, papa, can I go with you?' asked a little boy of his father. 'Yes, son, come on,' said the father, as he threw the axe over his shoulder and accompanied by a friend, went to the woods and felled a tree. "The little fellow said: 'Say, papa, can I go and play in the water at the lagoon?' 'Yes, but be careful and don't get into deep water; keep close to the bank.' The little fellow was playing, digging wells, picking up stones and shells and talking to himself, when pretty soon the father heard him cry, 'Hurry, papa, hurry.' "The father leaped to his feet, grabbed the axe and ran to the lagoon and saw the boy floundering in deep water, hands outstretched, a look of horror on his face as he cried, 'Hurry, papa; hurry; the alligator has got me.' The hideous amphibious monster had been hibernating and had come out, lean, lank, hungry, voracious, and seized the boy. "The father leaped into the lagoon and was just about to sink the axe through the head of the monster when he turned and swished the water with his huge tail like the screw of an ocean steamer, and the little fellow cried out: 'Hurry, papa; hurry, hurry, hur---- ' The water choked him. The blood-flecked foam told the story. The father went and got men and they plunged in and felt around and all they ever carried home to his mother was just two handfuls of crushed bones. "When I read that, for days I could not eat, for nights I could not sleep. I said, 'Oh, God, what if that had been my boy?' "There are influences worse than an alligator and they are ripping and tearing to shreds your virtue, your morality. Young men are held by intemperance, others by vice, drunkards crying to the Church, 'Hurry, faster,' and the church members sit on the bank playing cards, sit there drinking beer and reading novels. 'Hurry.' They are splitting hairs over fool things, criticizing me or somebody else, instead of trying to keep sinners out of hell, and they are crying to the Church, 'Faster! Faster! Faster!' 'Lord, is it I?' "How many will say, 'God, I want to be nearer to you than I have ever been before. I want to renew my vows. I want to get under the cross.' How many will say it? "Who'll yield his heart to Christ? Who'll take his stand for the Lord? Who'll come out clean-cut for God?" A Dream of Heaven "Some years ago, after I had been romping and playing with the children, I grew tired and lay down, and half awake and half asleep, I had a dream. "I dreamed I was in a far-off land; it was not Persia, but all the glitter and gaudy raiment were there; it was not India, although her coral strands were there; it was not Ceylon, although all the beauties of that island of paradise were there; it was not Italy, although the soft dreamy haze of the blue Italian skies shone above me. I looked for weeds and briars, thorns and thistles and brambles and found none. I saw the sun in all its regal splendor and I said to the people, 'When will the sun set and it grow dark?' "They all laughed and said: 'It never grows dark in this land; there is no night here.' "I looked at the people, their faces wreathed in a simple halo of glory, attired in holiday clothing. I said: 'When will the working men go by clad in overalls? and where are the brawny men who work and toil over the anvil?' "They said, 'We toil not, neither do we spin; there remaineth a rest for the people of God.' "I strolled out in the suburbs. I said, 'Where are the graveyards, the grave-diggers? Where do you bury your dead?' "They said, 'We never die here.' "I looked out and saw the towers and spires; I looked at them, but I did not see any tombstones, mausoleums, green or flower-covered graves. I said, 'Where, where are the hearses that carry your dead? Where are the undertakers that embalm the dead?' "They said, 'We never die in this land.' "I said, 'Where are the hospitals where they take the sick? Where is the minster, and where are the nurses to give the gentle touch, the panacea?' "They said, 'We never grow sick in this land.' "I said, 'Where are the homes of want and squalor? Where live the poor?' "They said, 'There is no penury; none die here; none ever cry for bread in this land.' I was bewildered. I strolled along and heard the ripple of the waters as the waves broke against the jeweled beach. I saw boats with oars dipped with silver, bows of pure gold. I saw multitudes that no man could number. We all jumped down through the violets and varicolored flowers, the air pulsing with bird song, and I cried, "'Are--all--here?' And they echoed, "'All--are--here.' "And we went leaping and shouting and vied with bower and spire, and they all caroled and sung my welcome, and we all bounded and leaped and shouted with glee, 'Home--Home--Home.'" The Battle With Death "Just one thing divides you people. You are either across the line of safety, or you are outside the kingdom of God. Old or young, rich or poor, high or low, ignorant or educated, white or colored, each of you is upon one side or upon the other. "The young man who talked to Jesus didn't let an infidel persuade him, and neither should you. "The time will come when his head will lie on his pillow and his fevered head will toss from side to side. "The time will come when there will be a rap on the door. "'Who are you?' "'Death.' "'I didn't send for you. Why do you come here?' "'Nobody sends for me. I choose my own time. If I waited for people to send for me I would never come.' "'But don't come in now, Death.' "'I am coming in. I have waited for a long time. I have held a mortgage on you for fifty years, and I've come to foreclose.' "'But, ah, Death, I'm not ready.' "'Hush! Hush! I've come to take you. You must come.' "'Death! Death! Go get my pocketbook, there! Go get my bankbook! Go get the key to my safety deposit box! Take my gold watch, my jewelry, my lands, my home, everything I've got, I'll give all to you if you'll only go.' [Illustration: "BUT DEATH SAYS, 'I'VE COME FOR YOU'"] "But Death says, 'I've come for you. I don't want your money or your land or anything that you have. You must come with me.' "'Death! Death! Don't blow that icy breath upon me. Don't crowd me against the wall!' "'You must come! You have a week--you have five days--you have one day--you have twelve hours--you have one hour--you have thirty minutes--you have ten minutes--you have one minute--you have thirty seconds-- you have ten seconds! I'll count them--one--two--three--four--five--six--ha! ha!--seven--eight--nine--ten!' "He's gone. Telephone for the undertaker. Carry him to the graveyard. Lay him beside his mother. She died saying, 'I'm sweeping through the gates, washed in the blood of the Lamb.' He died shrieking, 'Don't blow that cold breath in my face! Don't crowd me against the wall!' Oh! God, don't let that old infidel keep you out of the kingdom of God. "Who'll come into the kingdom of God? Come quick--quick--quick!" "Christ or Nothing" "'And whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.' No man can be saved without Jesus Christ. There's no way to God unless you come through Jesus Christ. It's Jesus Christ or nothing. "At the close of the Battle of Gettysburg the country roundabout was overrun by Federals or Confederates, wounded or ill, and the people helped both alike. Relief corps were organized in all the little towns. In one of them--I think it was York--a man who had headed the committee, resigned as chairman and told his clerk not to send any more soldiers to him. There came a Union soldier with a blood-stained bandage and with crutches that he had made for himself, and asked to see this man. 'I am no longer chairman of the committee,' said the man, 'and I cannot help you, for if I were to make any exception to the rule, I would be overrun with applicants.' "'But,' said the soldier, 'I don't want to ask you for anything. I only want to give you a letter. It is from your son, who is dead. I was with him, when he died. When he was wounded I got him a canteen of water and propped him up against a tree and held his hand when he wrote. I know where he lies.' The father took the letter, and he read it. It said, 'Treat this soldier kindly for my sake.' Then it told how he had helped the writer--the dying boy. The father said, 'You must come with me to his mother.' She saw them coming and cried out, 'Have you any news of my boy?' The father said, 'Here is a letter--read it.' She read it and shrieked. They took the wounded soldier into their home, 'Won't you stay with us and be our son? You were his friend, you were with him at the last, you look like him, your voice reminds us of him. When you speak and we turn our faces away, we can almost think he is here. Let us adopt you. Won't you do it?' He heard their plea, and he was touched and he stayed. So heaven will hear your prayer if it is in the name of Christ. "When I go in the name of Jesus Christ, God will stop making worlds to hear me. "Lord, teach us how to pray." Calvary "There comes Judas, leading the devil's crowd, the churchly gang. Don't forget that Jesus was crucified by church members whose sins he rebuked. Judas said, 'The fellow that I kiss, that's Jesus.' Look at the snake on his sanctimonious countenance. He said, 'Hail, Master,' and he kissed him. "Jesus said, 'Judas, betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss?' "And they staggered back. 'Whom seek ye?' "'We are all looking for Jesus of Nazareth.' "'All right, I am he.' They staggered again, and Judas led them on. "They rushed up and seized Jesus Christ. When starting for Calvary they put a cross on his back. He was tired and he staggered and stumbled, then fell, but he climbed up and a fellow smote him and said, 'Ha, ha,' and the young fellow spat upon him. They cursed him and damned him. What for? Because he came to open up a plan of redemption to keep you and me out of hell; and yet you live a life of disgrace. On he went and along came a colored man named Simon and they put the cross on his back and he went dragging it for Jesus. The colored race has borne many a burden in the advancement of civilization, but a grander burden has never been on the back of black or white, than when Simon bore the Master's cross. [Illustration: BILLY JR., MR. AND MRS. SUNDAY AND PAUL.] "On they went and seized him, and I can see his arms as they pounded the nails through his hands and his feet. Another fellow digs a hole, and I can hear the cross as it 'chugs' in the hole, and they lift him between heaven and earth. Then the disciples forsook him and fled. Left him all alone. How many will go with Jesus to the last ditch? Thousands will die for him, but there is another set that will not. "The disciples followed him to the garden, but forsook him at the cross. "If we had been there we might have seen the hilltops and the tree-tops filled and covered with angels, and houses crowded. As Jesus hung on the cross and cried, 'I thirst,' a Jew ran and dipped a sponge in wormwood and gall and vinegar and put it on a reed and put it up to his lips. Then Jesus cried, 'My God, why hast thou forsaken me?' There he hung, feeling the burden of your guilt, you booze-fighter, you libertine, you dead-beat. 'My God, hast thou forsaken me?' he cried, and I imagine that the archangel cried, "Oh, Jesus, if you want me to come and sweep the howling, blood-thirsty mob into hell, lift your head and look me in the face and I will come.' "But Jesus gritted his teeth and struggled on, and the archangel again cried, 'Oh, Jesus, if you want me to come, tear your right hand loose from the cross and wave it, and I will come.' But Jesus just clenched his fist over the nails. What for? To keep you out of hell. Then tell me why you are indifferent. And soon he cried, 'It is finished.' "The Holy Spirit plucked the olive branch of peace back through the gates of heaven from the cross and winged his way and cried, 'Peace! Peace has been made by his death on the cross.' That is what he had to do. That was his duty." The World for God "A heathen woman named Panathea was famous for her great beauty, and King Cyrus wanted her for his harem. He sent his representatives to her and offered her money and jewels to come, but she repulsed them and spurned their advances. Again he sent them, this time with offers still more generous and tempting; but again she sent them away with scorn. A third time they were sent, and a third time she said, 'Nay.' Then King Cyrus went in person to see her, and he doubled and trebled and quadrupled the offers his men had made, but still she would not go. She told him that she was a wife, and that she was true to her husband. "He said, 'Panathea, where dwellest thou?' "'In the arms and on the breast of my husband,' she said. "'Take her away,' said Cyrus. 'She is of no use to me.' Then he put her husband in command of the charioteers and sent him into battle at the head of the troops. Panathea knew what this meant--that her husband had been sent in that he might be killed. She waited while the battle raged, and when the field was cleared she shouted his name and searched for him and finally found him wounded and dying. She knelt and clasped him in her arms, and as they kissed, his lamp of life went out forever. King Cyrus heard of the man's death, and came to the field. Panathea saw him coming, careening on his camel like a ship in a storm. She called, 'Oh, husband! He comes--he shall not have me. I was true to you in life, and will be true to you in death!' And she drew her dead husband's poniard from its sheath, drove it into her own breast and fell dead across the body. "King Cyrus came up and dismounted. He removed his turban and knelt by the dead husband and wife, and thanked God that he had found in his kingdom one true and virtuous woman that his money could not buy, nor his power intimidate. "Oh, preachers, the problem of this century is the problem of the first century. We must win the world for God and we will win the world for God just as soon as we have men and women who will be faithful to God and will not lie and will not sell out to the devil." A Word Picture "Every day at noon, while Ingersoll was lecturing, Hastings would go to old Farwell Hall and answer Ingersoll's statements of the night before. One night Ingersoll painted one of those wonderful word pictures for which he was justly famous. He was a master of the use of words. Men and women would applaud and cheer and wave their hats and handkerchiefs, and the waves of sound would rise and fall like great waves of the sea. As two men were going home from his lecture, one of them said to the other: 'Bob certainly cleaned 'em up tonight.' The other man said: 'There's one thing he didn't clean up. He didn't clean up the religion of my old mother.' "This is the word picture Ingersoll painted: "'I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes; I would rather have lived in a hut, with a vine growing over the door and the grapes growing and ripening in the autumn sun; I would rather have been that peasant, with my wife by my side and my children upon my knees twining their arms of affection about me; I would rather have been that poor French peasant and gone down at least to the eternal promiscuity of the dust, followed by those who loved me; I would a thousand times rather have been that French peasant than that imperial incarnation of force and murder (Napoleon); and so I would ten thousand times.' "What was that? Simply a word picture. It was only the trick of an orator. "Let me paint for you a picture, and see if it doesn't make you feel like leaping and shouting hallelujahs. "Infidelity has never won a drunkard from his cups. It has never redeemed a fallen woman from her unchastity. It has never built a hospital for the crushed and sick. It has never dried tears. It has never built a mission for the rescue of the down-and-out. It wouldn't take a ream, or a quire, or a sheet, or even a line of paper to write down what infidelity has done to better and gladden the world. "What has infidelity done to benefit the world? What has it ever done to help humanity in any way? It never built a school, it never built a church, it never built an asylum or a home for the poor. It never did anything for the good of man. I challenge the combined forces of unbelief. They have failed utterly. "Well may Christianity stand today and point to its hospitals, its churches and its schools with their towers and the spires pointing to the source of their inspiration and say: 'These are the works that I do.' "I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes; I would rather have lived in a hut, with a vine growing over the door and grapes growing and ripening in the autumn sun; I would rather have been that peasant, with my wife and children by my side and the open Bible on my knees, at peace with the world and at peace with God; I would rather have been that poor peasant and gone down at least in the promiscuity of the dust, with the certainty that my name was written in the Lamb's book of life than to have been that brilliant infidel whose tricks of oratory charmed thousands and sent souls to hell." The Faithful Pilot "Some years ago a harbor pilot in Boston, who had held a commission for sixty-five years (you know the harbor pilots and the ocean pilots are different). For sixty-five years he had guided ships in and out of the Boston harbor, but his time to die had come. Presently the watchers at his bedside saw that he was trying to sit up, and they aided him. 'I see a light,' he said. "'Is it the Minot light?' they asked him. "'No, that is first white and then red; this one is all white all the time,' and he fell back. After a few moments he struggled to rise again. 'I see a light,' he gasped. "'Is it the Highland light?' "'No, that one is red and then black; this one is white all the time.' And he fell back again and they thought certainly he was gone, but he came back again as if from the skies and they saw his lips moving. 'I see a light.' "'Is it the Boston light; the last as you pass out?' they asked. "'No, that one is red all the time; this one is white all the time.' And his hands trembled and he reached out his feeble arms. His face lighted up with a halo of glory. 'I see a light,' he gasped, 'and it is the light of glory. Let the anchor drop.' "'And he anchored his soul in the haven of rest, To sail the wild seas no more: Tho' the tempest may beat o'er the wild stormy deep, In Jesus I'm safe evermore.' "That's where you ought to be. Will you come?" CHAPTER XI Acrobatic Preaching If nine-tenths of you were as weak physically as you are spiritually, you couldn't walk.--BILLY SUNDAY. If, as has been often said, inspiration is chiefly perspiration, then there is no doubting the inspiration of Rev. William A. Sunday, D.D. Beyond question he is the most vigorous speaker on the public platform today. One editor estimates that he travels a mile over his platform in every sermon he delivers. There is no other man to liken him to: only an athlete in the pink of condition could endure the gruelling exertions to which he subjects himself every day of his campaigns. The stranger who sees him for the first time is certain that he is on the very edge of a complete collapse; but as that same remark has been made for years past, it is to be hoped that the physical instrument may be equal to its task for a long time to come. People understand with their eyes as well as with their ears; and Sunday preaches to both. The intensity of his physical exertions--gestures is hardly an adequate word--certainly enhances the effect of the preacher's earnestness. No actor on the dramatic stage works so hard. Such passion as dominates Sunday cannot be simulated; it is the soul pouring itself out through every pore of the body. Some of the platform activities of Sunday make spectators gasp. He races to and fro across the platform. Like a jack knife he fairly doubles up in emphasis. One hand smites the other. His foot stamps the floor as if to destroy it. Once I saw him bring his clenched fist down so hard on the seat of a chair that I feared the blood would flow and the bones be broken. No posture is too extreme for this restless gymnast. Yet it all seems natural. Like his speech, it is an integral part of the man. Every muscle of his body preaches in accord with his voice. Be it whispered, men like this unconventional sort of earnestness. Whenever they are given a chance, most men are prone to break the trammels of sober usage. I never yet have met a layman who has been through a Billy Sunday campaign who had a single word of criticism of the platform gymnastics of the evangelist. Their reasoning is something like this: On the stage, where men undertake to represent a character or a truth, they use all arts and spare themselves not at all. Why should not a man go to greater lengths when dealing with living realities of the utmost importance? [Illustration: SUNDAY IS FOR AN INSTANT DOWN ON ALL FOURS.] Sunday is a physical sermon. In a unique sense he glorifies God with his body. Only a physique kept in tune by clean living and right usage could respond to the terrific and unceasing demands which Sunday makes upon it. When in a sermon he alludes to the man who acts no better than a four-footed brute, Sunday is for an instant down on all fours on the platform and you see that brute. As he pictures a man praying he sinks to his knees for a single moment. When he talks of the death-bed penitent as a man waiting to be pumped full of embalming fluid, he cannot help going through the motions of pumping in the fluid. He remarks that death-bed repentance is "burning the candle of life in the service of the devil, and then blowing the smoke in God's face"--and the last phrase is accompanied by "pfouff!" In a dramatic description of the marathon he pictures the athlete falling prostrate at the goal and--thud!--there lies the evangelist prone on the platform. Only a skilled baseball player, with a long drill in sliding to bases, could thus fling himself to the floor without serious injury. On many occasions he strips off his coat and talks in his shirt sleeves. It seems impossible for him to stand up behind the pulpit and talk only with his mouth. The fact is, Sunday is a born actor. He knows how to portray truth by a vocal personality. When he describes the traveler playing with a pearl at sea, he tosses an imaginary gem into the air so that the spectators hold their breath lest the ship should lurch and the jewel be lost. Words without gesture could never attain this triumph of oratory. A hint of Sunday's state of mind which drives him to such earnestness and intensity in labor is found in quotations like the following: "You will agree with me, in closing, that I'm not a crank; at least I try not to be. I have not preached about my first, second, third or hundredth blessing. I have not talked about baptism or immersion. I told you that while I was here my creed would be: 'With Christ you are saved; without him you are lost.' Are you saved? Are you lost? Going to heaven? Going to hell? I have tried to build every sermon right around those questions; and also to steer clear of anything else, but I want to say to you in closing, that it is the inspiration of my life, the secret of my earnestness. I never preach a sermon but that I think it may be the last one some fellow will hear or the last I shall ever be privileged to preach. It is an inspiration to me that some day He will come. "'It may be at morn, when the day is awaking, When darkness through sunlight and shadow is breaking, That Jesus will come, in the fullness of glory, To receive from the world his own. "'Oh joy, Oh delight, to go without dying, No sickness, no sadness, no sorrow, no crying! Caught up with the Lord in the clouds of glory When he comes to receive from the world his own.'" [Illustration: A CARICATURE OF BILLY SUNDAY'S EMPHATIC WAY OF PREACHING.] "Go straight on and break the lion's neck and turn it into a beehive, out of which you will some day take the best and sweetest honey ever tasted, for the flavor of a dead lion in the honey beats that of clover and buckwheat all to pieces. Be a man, therefore, by going straight on to breathe the air that has in it the smoke of battle. "Don't spend much time in looking for an easy chair, with a soft cushion on it, if you would write your name high in the hall of fame where the names of real men are found. The man who is willing to be carried over all rough places might as well have wooden legs. 'He is not worthy of the honeycomb who shuns the hive because the bees have stings.' The true value of life lies in the preciousness of striving. No tears are ever shed for the chick that dies in its shell. "'Did you tackle the trouble that came your way With a resolute heart and cheerful? Or hide your face from the light of day With a craven soul and fearful? Oh, a trouble is a ton, or a trouble is an ounce, Or a trouble is what you make it, And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts-- But only--How did you take it?'" "This poem is by Paul Lawrence Dunbar, the negro poet: "'The Lord had a job for me, but I had so much to do, I said: "You get somebody else--or, wait till I get through. I don't know how the Lord came out, but he seemed to get along-- But I felt kinda sneakin' like, 'cause I know'd I done him wrong-- One day I needed the Lord, needed him myself--needed him right away-- And he never answered me at all, but I could hear him say-- Down in my accusin' heart--"Nigger, I'se got too much to do, You get somebody else, or wait till I get through." Now when the Lord he have a job for me, I never tries to shirk; I drops what I have on hand and does the good Lord's work; And my affairs can run along, or wait till I get through, Nobody else can do the job that God's marked out for you.'" "I will tell you many young people are good in the beginning, but they are like the fellow that was killed by falling off a skyscraper--they stop too quick. They go one day like a six-cylinder automobile with her carbureters working; the next day they stroll along like a fellow walking through a graveyard reading the epitaphs on the tombstones. It is the false ideals that strew the shores with wrecks, eagerness to achieve success in realms we can not reach that breeds half the ills that curse today. One hundred years from tonight what difference will it make whether you are rich or poor; whether learned or illiterate. "'It matters little where I was born, Whether my parents were rich or poor; Whether they shrunk from the cold world's scorn, Or lived in pride of wealth secure. But whether I live an honest man, And hold my integrity firm in my clutch; I tell you--my neighbor--as plain as I can, That matters much.' "The engineer is bigger than the locomotive, because he runs it. "Do your best and you will never wear out shoe leather looking for a job. Do your best, and you will never become blind reading 'Help Wanted' ads in a newspaper. Be like the fellow that went to college and tacked the letter V up over his door in his room. He was asked what that stood for, and he said valedictorian, and he went out carrying the valedictory with him. "'If I were a cobbler, best of all cobblers I would be. If I were a tinker, no tinker beside should mend an old tea kettle for me.'" In dealing with the unreality of many preachers, Sunday pictures a minister as going to the store to buy groceries for his wife, but using his pulpit manner, his pulpit tone of voice and his pulpit phraseology. This is so true to life that it convulses every congregation that hears it. In these few minutes of mimicry the evangelist does more to argue for reality and genuineness and unprofessionalism on the part of the clergy than could be accomplished by an hour's lecture. Another of his famous passages is his portrayal of the society woman nursing a pug dog. You see the woman and you see the dog, and you love neither one. Likewise, Sunday mimics the skin-flint hypocrite in a way to make the man represented loathe himself. This suggests a second fact about Sunday's preaching. He often makes people laugh, but rarely makes them cry. His sense of humor is stronger than his sense of pathos. Now tears and hysterics are supposed to be part of the stock in trade of the professional evangelist. Not so with Sunday. He makes sin absurd and foolish as well as wicked; and he makes the sinner ashamed of himself. He has recovered for the Church the use of that powerful weapon, the barb of ridicule. There are more instruments of warfare in the gospel armory than the average preacher commonly uses. Sunday endeavors to employ them all, and his favorites seem to be humor, satire and scorn. As a physical performance the preaching to crowds of from ten to twenty-five thousand persons every day is phenomenal. Sunday has not a beautiful voice like many great orators. It is husky and seems strained and yet it is able to penetrate every corner of his great tabernacles. Nor is he possessed of the oratorical manner, "the grand air" of the rhetorician. Mostly he is direct, informal and colloquial in his utterances. But he is so dead in earnest that after every address he must make an entire change of raiment--and, like most baseball players, and members of the sporting fraternities, he is fond of good clothes, even to the point of foppishness. He carries about a dozen different suits with him and I question whether there is a single Prince Albert or "preacher's coat" in the whole outfit. A very human figure is Billy Sunday on the platform. During the preliminaries he enjoys the music, the responses of the delegations, and any of the informalities that are common accessories of his meetings. When he begins to speak he is an autocrat and will brook no disturbance. He is less concerned about hurting the feelings of some fidgety, restless usher or auditor than he is about the comfort of the great congregation and its opportunity to hear his message. Any notion that Sunday loves the limelight is wide of the mark. The fact is, he shuns the public gaze. It really makes him nervous to be pointed out and stared at. That is one reason why he does not go to a hotel, but hires a furnished house for himself and his associates. Here they "camp out" for the period of the campaign, and enjoy something like the family life of every-day American folk. Their hospitable table puts on no more frills than that of the ordinary home. The same cook has accompanied the party for months; and when a family's religion so commends itself to the cook, it is likely to grade "A No. 1 Hard," like Minnesota wheat. "Ma," as the whole party call Mrs. Sunday, is responsible for the home, as well as for many meetings. Primarily, though, she looks after "Daddy." Sunday is the type of man who is quite helpless with respect to a dozen matters which a watchful wife attends to. He needs considerable looking after, and all his friends, from the newspaper men to the policeman on duty at the house, conspire to take care of him. The Pittsburgh authorities assigned a couple of plain clothes men to safeguard Sunday; of course he "got them" early, as he gets most everybody he comes into touch with. So these men took care of Sunday as if he were the famous "millionaire baby" of Washington and Newport. Not a sense of official duty, but affectionate personal solicitude animated those two men who rode in the automobile with us from the house to the Tabernacle. This sort of thing is one of the most illuminating phases of the Sunday campaign. Those who come closest to the man believe most in his religion. As one of the newspaper men covering the meetings said to me, "The newspaper boys have all 'hit the trail.'" Then he proved his religion by offering to do the most fraternal services for me. From Mrs. Sunday, though, I learned that there was one bright reporter who had worked on aspects of the revival who had not gone forward. He avoided the meetings, and evaded the personal interviews of the Sunday party. The evangelist's wife was as solicitous over that one young man's spiritual welfare as if he had been one of her own four children. Ten of the policemen stationed at the Tabernacle went forward the night before I arrived in Pittsburgh. I was told that twenty others were waiting to "hit the trail" in a group, taking their families with them. The personal side of Sunday is wholesome and satisfactory. He is a simple, modest chap, marked by the ways of the Middle West. Between meetings he goes to bed, and there friends sometimes visit him. Met thus intimately, behind the scenes, one would expect from him an unrestrained display of personality, even a measure of egotism. Surely, it is sometimes to be permitted a man to recount his achievements. Never a boast did I hear from Sunday. Instead, he seemed absurdly self-distrustful. These are his times for gathering, and he wanted me to tell him about Bible lands! CHAPTER XII "The Old-Time Religion" I am an old-fashioned preacher of the old-time religion, that has warmed this cold world's heart for two thousand years.--BILLY SUNDAY. Modern to the last minute Sunday's methods may be, but his message is unmistakably the "old-time religion." He believes his beliefs without a question. There is no twilight zone in his intellectual processes; no mental reservation in his preaching. He is sure that man is lost without Christ, and that only by the acceptance of the Saviour can fallen humanity find salvation. He is as sure of hell as of heaven, and for all modernized varieties of religion he has only vials of scorn. In no single particular is Sunday's work more valuable than in its revelation of the power of positive conviction to attract and convert multitudes. The world wants faith. "Intolerant," cry the scholars of Sunday; but the hungry myriads accept him as their spiritual guide to peace, and joy, and righteousness. The world wants a religion with salvation in it; speculation does not interest the average man who seeks deliverance from sin in himself and in the world. He does not hope to be evoluted into holiness; he wants to be redeemed. "Modernists" sputter and fume and rail at Sunday and his work: but they cannot deny that he leads men and women into new lives of holiness, happiness and helpfulness. Churches are enlarged and righteousness is promoted, all by the old, blood-stained way of the Cross. The revivals which have followed the preaching of Evangelist Sunday are supplemental to the Book of the Acts. His theology is summed up in the words Peter used in referring to Jesus: "There is none other Name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved." One of Sunday's favorite sayings is: "I don't know any more about theology than a jack-rabbit does about ping-pong, but I'm on the way to glory." That really does not fully express the evangelist's point. He was arguing that "theology bears the same relation to Christianity that botany does to flowers, or astronomy to the stars. Botany is rewritten, but the flowers remain the same. Theology changes (I have no objection to your new theology when it tries to make the truths of Christianity clearer), but Christianity abides. Nobody is kept out of heaven because he does not understand theology. It isn't theology that saves, but Christ; it is not the sawdust trail that saves, but Christ in the motive that makes you hit the trail. "I believe the Bible is the word of God from cover to cover. I believe that the man who magnifies the word of God in his preaching is the man whom God will honor. Why do such names stand out on the pages of history as Wesley, Whitefield, Finney and Martin Luther? Because of their fearless denunciation of all sin, and because they preach Jesus Christ without fear or favor. "But somebody says a revival is abnormal. You lie! Do you mean to tell me that the godless, card-playing conditions of the Church are normal? I say they are not, but it is the abnormal state. It is the sin-eaten, apathetic condition of the Church that is abnormal. It is the 'Dutch lunch' and beer party, card parties and the like, that are abnormal. I say that they lie when they say that a revival is an abnormal condition in the Church. "What we need is the good old-time kind of revival that will cause you to love your neighbors, and quit talking about them. A revival that will make you pay your debts, and have family prayers. Get that kind and then you will see that a revival means a very different condition from what people believe it does. "Christianity means a lot more than church membership. Many an old skin-flint is not fit for the balm of Gilead until you give him a fly blister and get after him with a currycomb. There are too many Sunday-school teachers who are godless card-players, beer, wine and champagne drinkers. No wonder the kids are going to the devil. No wonder your children grow up like cattle when you have no form of prayer in the home." THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SUNDAY What does converted mean? It means completely changed. Converted is not synonymous with reformed. Reforms are from without--conversion from within. Conversion is a complete surrender to Jesus. It's a willingness to do what he wants you to do. Unless you have made a complete surrender and are doing his will it will avail you nothing if you've reformed a thousand times and have your name on fifty church records. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, in your heart and confess him with your mouth and you will be saved. God is good. The plan of salvation is presented to you in two parts. Believe in your heart and confess with your mouth. Many of you here probably do believe. Why don't you confess? Now own up. The truth is that you have a yellow streak. Own up, business men, and business women, and all of you others. Isn't it so? Haven't you got a little saffron? Brave old Elijah ran like a scared deer when he heard old Jezebel had said she would have his head, and he beat it. And he ran to Beersheba and lay down under a juniper tree and cried to the Lord to let him die. The Lord answered his prayer, but not in the way he expected. If he had let him die he would have died with nothing but the wind moaning through the trees as his funeral dirge. But the Lord had something better for Elijah. He had a chariot of fire and it swooped down and carried him into glory without his ever seeing death. So he says he has something better for you--salvation if he can get you to see it. You've kept your church membership locked up. You've smiled at a smutty story. When God and the Church were scoffed at you never peeped, and when asked to stand up here you've sneaked out the back way and beat it. You're afraid and God despises a coward--a mutt. You cannot be converted by thinking so and sitting still. [Illustration: EVERY MUSCLE IN HIS BODY PREACHES IN ACCORD WITH HIS VOICE.] Maybe you're a drunkard, an adulterer, a prostitute, a liar; won't admit you are lost; are proud. Maybe you're even proud you're not proud, and Jesus has a time of it. Jesus said: "Come to me," not to the Church; to me, not to a creed; to me, not to a preacher; to me, not to an evangelist; to me, not to a priest; to me, not to a pope; "Come to me and I will give you rest." Faith in Jesus Christ saves you, not faith in the Church. You can join church, pay your share of the preacher's salary, attend the services, teach Sunday school, return thanks and do everything that would apparently stamp you as a Christian--even pray--but you won't ever be a Christian until you do what God tells you to do. That's the road, and that's the only one mapped out for you and for me. God treats all alike. He doesn't furnish one plan for the banker and another for the janitor who sweeps out the bank. He has the same plan for one that he has for another. It's the law--you may not approve of it, but that doesn't make any difference. Salvation a Personal Matter The first thing to remember about being saved is that salvation is a personal matter. "Seek ye the Lord"--that means every one must seek for himself. It won't do for the parent to seek for the children; it won't do for the children to seek for the parent. If you were sick all the medicine I might take wouldn't do you any good. Salvation is a personal matter that no one else can do for you; you must attend to it yourself. Some persons have lived manly or womanly lives, and they lack but one thing--open confession of the Lord Jesus Christ. Some men think that they must come to him in a certain way--that they must be stirred by emotion or something like that. Some people have a deeper conviction of sin before they are converted than after they are converted. With some it is the other way. Some know when they are converted and others don't. Some people are emotional. Some are demonstrative. Some will cry easily. Some are cold and can't be moved to emotion. A man jumped up in a meeting and asked whether he could be saved when he hadn't shed a tear in forty years. Even as he spoke he began to shed tears. It's all a matter of how you're constituted. I am vehement, and I serve God with the same vehemence that I served the devil when I went down the line. Some of you say that in order to accept Jesus you must have different surroundings. You think you could do it better in some other place. You can be saved where you are as well as any place on earth. I say, "My watch doesn't run. It needs new surroundings. I'll put it in this other pocket, or I'll put it here, or here on these flowers." It doesn't need new surroundings. It needs a new mainspring; and that's what the sinner needs. You need a new heart, not a new suit. What can I do to keep out of hell? "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved." The Philippian jailer was converted. He had put the disciples into the stocks when they came to the prison, but after his conversion he stooped down and washed the blood from their stripes. Now, leave God out of the proposition for a minute. Never mind about the new birth--that's his business. Jesus Christ became a man, bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. He died on the cross for us, so that we might escape the penalty pronounced on us. Now, never mind about anything but our part in salvation. Here it is: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." You say, "Mr. Sunday, the Church is full of hypocrites." So's hell. I say to you if you don't want to go to hell and live with that whole bunch forever, come into the Church, where you won't have to associate with them very long. There are no hypocrites in heaven. You say, "Mr. Sunday, I can be a Christian and go to heaven without joining a church." Yes, and you can go to Europe without getting on board a steamer. The swimming's good--but the sharks are laying for fellows who take that route. I don't believe you. If a man is truly saved he will hunt for a church right away. You say, "It's so mysterious. I don't understand." You'll be surprised to find out how little you know. You plant a seed in the ground--that's your part. You don't understand how it grows. How God makes that seed grow is mysterious to you. Some people think that they can't be converted unless they go down on their knees in the straw at a camp-meeting, unless they pray all hours of the night, and all nights of the week, while some old brother storms heaven in prayer. Some think a man must lose sleep, must come down the aisle with a haggard look, and he must froth at the mouth and dance and shout. Some get it that way, and they don't think that the work I do is genuine unless conversions are made in the same way that they have got religion. I want you to see what God put in black and white; that there can be a sound, thorough conversion in an instant; that man can be converted as quietly as the coming of day and never backslide. I do not find fault with the way other people get religion. What I want and preach is the fact that a man can be converted without any fuss. If a man wants to shout and clap his hands in joy over his wife's conversion, or if a wife wants to cry when her husband is converted, I am not going to turn the hose on them, or put them in a strait-jacket. When a man turns to God truly in conversion, I don't care what form his conversion takes. I wasn't converted that way, but I do not rush around and say, with gall and bitterness, that you are not saved because you did not get religion the way I did. If we all got religion in the same way, the devil might go to sleep with a regular Rip Van Winkle snooze and still be on the job. Look at Nicodemus. You could never get a man with the temperament of Nicodemus near a camp meeting, to kneel down in the straw, or to shout and sing. He was a quiet, thoughtful, honest, sincere and cautious man. He wanted to know the truth and he was willing to walk in the light when he found it. Look at the man at the pool of Bethesda. He was a big sinner and was in a lot of trouble which his sins had made for him. He had been in that condition for a long time. It didn't take him three minutes to say "Yes," when the Lord spoke to him. See how quietly he was converted. "And He Arose and Followed Him" Matthew stood in the presence of Christ and he realized what it would be to be without Christ, to be without hope, and it brought him to a quick decision. "And he arose and followed him." How long did that conversion take? How long did it take him to accept Christ after he had made up his mind? And you tell me you can't make an instant decision to please God? The decision of Matthew proves that you can. While he was sitting at his desk he was not a disciple. The instant he arose he was. That move changed his attitude toward God. Then he ceased to do evil and commenced to do good. You can be converted just as quickly as Matthew was. God says: "Let the wicked man forsake his way." The instant that is done, no matter if the man has been a life-long sinner, he is safe. There is no need of struggling for hours--or for days--do it now. Who are you struggling with? Not God. God's mind was made up long before the foundations of the earth were laid. The plan of salvation was made long before there was any sin in the world. Electricity existed long before there was any car wheel for it to drive. "Let the wicked man forsake his way." When? Within a month, within a week, within a day, within an hour? No! Now! The instant you yield, God's plan of salvation is thrown into gear. You will be saved before you know it, like a child being born. Rising and following Christ switched Matthew from the broad to the narrow way. He must have counted the cost as he would have balanced his cash book. He put one side against the other. The life he was living led to all chance of gain. On the other side there was Jesus, and Jesus outweighs all else. He saw the balance turn as the tide of a battle turns and then it ended with his decision. The sinner died and the disciple was born. I believe that the reason the story of Matthew was written was to show how a man could be converted quickly and quietly. It didn't take him five or ten years to begin to do something--he got busy right away. You don't believe in quick conversions? There have been a dozen men of modern times who have been powers for God whose conversion was as quiet as Matthew's. Charles G. Finney never went to a camp meeting. He was out in the woods alone, praying, when he was converted. Sam Jones, a mighty man of God, was converted at the bedside of his dying father. Moody accepted Christ while waiting on a customer in a boot and shoe store. Dr. Chapman was converted as a boy in a Sunday school. All the other boys in the class had accepted Christ, and only Wilbur remained. The teacher turned to him and said, "And how about you, Wilbur?" He said, "I will," and he turned to Christ and has been one of his most powerful evangelists for many years. Gipsy Smith was converted in his father's tent. Torrey was an agnostic, and in comparing agnosticism, infidelity and Christianity, he found the scale tipped toward Christ. Luther was converted as he crawled up a flight of stairs in Rome. Seemingly the men who have moved the world for Christ have been converted in a quiet manner. The way to judge a tree is by its fruit. Judge a tree of quiet conversion in this way. Another lesson. When conversion compels people to forsake their previous calling, God gives them a better job. Luke said, "He left all." Little did he dream that his influence would be world-reaching and eternity-covering. His position as tax-collector seemed like a big job, but it was picking up pins compared to the job God gave him. Some of you may be holding back for fear of being put out of your job. If you do right God will see that you do not suffer. He has given plenty of promises, and if you plant your feet on them you can defy the poor-house. Trust in the Lord means that God will feed you. Following Christ you may discover a gold mine of ability that you never dreamed of possessing. There was a saloon-keeper, converted in a meeting at New Castle, who won hundreds of people to Christ by his testimony and his preaching. You do not need to be in the church before the voice comes to you; you don't need to be reading the Bible; you don't need to be rich or poor or learned. Wherever Christ comes follow. You may be converted while engaged in your daily business. Men cannot put up a wall and keep Jesus away. The still small voice will find you. At the Cross-roads Right where the two roads through life diverge God has put Calvary. There he put up a cross, the stumbling block over which the love of God said, "I'll touch the heart of man with the thought of father and son." He thought that would win the world to him, but for nineteen hundred years men have climbed the Mount of Calvary and trampled into the earth the tenderest teachings of God. You are on the devil's side. How are you going to cross over? So you cross the line and God won't issue any extradition papers. Some of you want to cross. If you believe, then say so, and step across. I'll bet there are hundreds that are on the edge of the line and many are standing straddling it. But that won't save you. You believe in your heart--confess him with your mouth. With his heart man believes and with his mouth he confesses. Then confess and receive salvation full, free, perfect and external. God will not grant any extradition papers. Get over the old line. A man isn't a soldier because he wears a uniform, or carries a gun, or carries a canteen. He is a soldier when he makes a definite enlistment. All of the others can be bought without enlisting. When a man becomes a soldier he goes out on muster day and takes an oath to defend his country. It's the oath that makes him a soldier. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile, but public definite enlistment for Christ makes you a Christian. "Oh," a woman said to me out in Iowa, "Mr. Sunday, I don't think I have to confess with my mouth." I said: "You're putting up your thought against God's." M-o-u-t-h doesn't spell intellect. It spells mouth and you must confess with your mouth. The mouth is the biggest part about most people, anyhow. What must I do? Philosophy doesn't answer it. Infidelity doesn't answer it. First, "believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved." Believe on the Lord. Lord--that's his kingly name. That's the name he reigns under. "Thou shalt call his name Jesus." It takes that kind of a confession. Give me a Saviour with a sympathetic eye to watch me so I shall not slander. Give me a Saviour with a strong arm to catch me if I stumble. Give me a Saviour that will hear my slightest moan. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. Christ is his resurrection name. He is sitting at the right hand of the Father interceding for us. Because of his divinity he understands God's side of it and because of his humanity he understands our side of it. Who is better qualified to be the mediator? He's a mediator. What is that? A lawyer is a mediator between the jury and the defendant. A retail merchant is a mediator between the wholesale dealer and the consumer. Therefore, Jesus Christ is the Mediator between God and man. Believe on the Lord. He's ruling today. Believe on the Lord Jesus. He died to save us. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the Mediator. Her majesty, Queen Victoria, was traveling in Scotland when a storm came up and she took refuge in a little hut of a Highlander. She stayed there for an hour and when she went the good wife said to her husband, "We'll tie a ribbon on that chair because her majesty has sat on it and no one else will ever sit on it." A friend of mine was there later and was going to sit in the chair when the man cried: "Nae, nae, mon. Dinna sit there. Her majesty spent an hour with us once and she sat on that chair and we tied a ribbon on it and no one else will ever sit on it." They were honored that her majesty had spent the hour with them. It brought unspeakable joy to them. It's great that Jesus Christ will sit on the throne of my heart, not for an hour, but here to sway his power forever and ever. "He Died for Me" In the war there was a band of guerillas--Quantrell's band--that had been ordered to be shot on sight. They had burned a town in Iowa and they had been caught. One long ditch was dug and they were lined up in front of it and blindfolded and tied, and just as the firing squad was ready to present arms a young man dashed through the bushes and cried, "Stop!" He told the commander of the firing squad that he was as guilty as any of the others, but he had escaped and had come of his own free will, and pointed to one man in the line and asked to take his place. "I'm single," he said, "while he has a wife and babies." The commander of that firing squad was an usher in one of the cities in which I held meetings, and he told me how the young fellow was blindfolded and bound and the guns rang out and he fell dead. [Illustration: "YOU OLD SKEPTIC, WE ARE COUNTING TIME ON YOU."] [Illustration: "JOHN, THE DRUNKARD, MARCHING UP TO THE BUTCHER'S SHOP."] Time went on and one day a man came upon another in a graveyard in Missouri weeping and shaping the grave into form. The first man asked who was buried there and the other said, "The best friend I ever had." Then he told how he had not gone far away but had come back and got the body of his friend after he had been shot and buried it; so he knew he had the right body. And he had brought a withered bouquet all the way from his home to put on the grave. He was poor then and could not afford anything costly, but he had placed a slab of wood on the pliable earth with these words on it: "He died for me." Major Whittle stood by the grave some time later and saw the same monument. If you go there now you will see something different. The man became rich and today there is a marble monument fifteen feet high and on it this inscription: SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF WILLIE LEE HE TOOK MY PLACE IN THE LINE HE DIED FOR ME Sacred to the memory of Jesus Christ. He took our place on the cross and gave his life that we might live, and go to heaven and reign with him. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, confess him with thy mouth, and thou shalt be saved and thy house." It is a great salvation that can reach down into the quagmire of filth, pull a young man out and send him out to hunt his mother and fill her days with sunshine. It is a great salvation, for it saves from great sin. The way to salvation is not Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Vassar or Wellesley. Environment and culture can't put you into heaven without you accept Jesus Christ. It's great. I want to tell you that the way to heaven is a blood-stained way. No man has ever reached it without Jesus Christ and he never will. CHAPTER XIII "Hitting the Sawdust Trail" Come and accept my Christ.--BILLY SUNDAY. Pioneers are necessarily unconventional. America has done more than transform a wilderness into a nation: in the process she has created new forms of life and of speech. Back from the frontier has come a new, terse, vigorous and pictorial language. Much of it has found its way into the dictionaries. The newer West uses the word "trail"--first employed to designate the traces left by traveling Indians--to designate a path. The lumbermen commonly call the woods roads "trails." Imagine a lumberman lost in the big woods. He has wandered, bewildered, for days. Death stares him in the face. Then, spent and affrighted, he comes to a trail. And the trail leads to life; it is the way home. There we have the origin of the expression "Hitting the sawdust trail," used in Mr. Sunday's meetings as a term similar to the older stereotyped phrases: "Going forward"; "Seeking the altar." The more conventional method, used by the other evangelists, is to ask for a show of hands. Out in the Puget Sound country, where the sawdust aisles and the rough tabernacle made an especial appeal to the woodsmen, the phrase "Hitting the sawdust trail" came into use in Mr. Sunday's meetings. The figure was luminous. For was not this the trail that led the lost to salvation, the way home to the Father's house? The metaphor appealed to the American public, which relishes all that savors of our people's most primitive life. Besides, the novel designation serves well the taste of a nation which is singularly reticent concerning its finer feelings, and delights to cloak its loftiest sentiments beneath slang phrases. The person who rails at "hitting the trail" as an irreverent phrase has something to learn about the mind of Americans. Tens of thousands of persons have enshrined the homely phrase in the sanctuary of their deepest spiritual experience. The scene itself, when Mr. Sunday calls for converts to come forward and take his hand, in token of their purpose to accept and follow Christ, is simply beyond words. Human speech cannot do justice to the picture. For good reason. This is one of those crises in human life the portrayal of which makes the highest form of literature. A Victor Hugo could find a dozen novels in each night's experience in the Sunday Tabernacle. This is an hour of bared souls. The great transaction between man and his Maker is under way. The streams of life are here changing their course. Character and destiny are being altered. The old Roman "Sacramentum," when the soldiers gave allegiance with uplifted hand, crying, "This for me! This for me!" could not have been more impressive than one of these great outpourings of human life up the sawdust aisle to the pulpit, to grasp the preacher's hand, in declaration that henceforth their all would be dedicated to the Christ of Calvary. The greatness of the scene is at first incomprehensible. There are no parallels for it in all the history of Protestantism. This unschooled American commoner, who could not pass the entrance examinations of any theological seminary in the land, has publicly grasped the hands of approximately a quarter of a million persons, who by that token have said, in the presence of the great congregation, that they thereby vowed allegiance to their Saviour and Lord. Moody, Whitefield, Finney, have left no such record of converts as this. A dramatic imagination is needed to perceive even a fragment of what is meant by this army of Christian recruits. The magnitude of the host is scarcely revealed by the statement that these converts more than equal the number of inhabitants of the states of Delaware or Arizona at the last census, and far surpass those of Nevada and Wyoming. Imagine a state made up wholly of zealous disciples of Christ! Of the one hundred largest cities in the United States there are only nineteen with more inhabitants than the total number of persons who have "hit the trail" at the Sunday meetings. Break up that vast host into its component parts. Each is an individual whose experience is as real and distinctive as if there never had been another human soul to come face to face with God. To one the act means a clean break with a life of open sin. To another it implies a restored home and a return to respectability. To this young person it signifies entrance upon a life of Christian service; to that one a separation from all old associations. Some must give up unworthy callings. Other must heal old feuds and make restitution for ancient wrongs. One young woman in accepting Christ knows that she must reject the man she had meant to marry. To many men it implies a severance of old political relations. Far and wide and deep this sawdust trail runs; and the record is written in the sweat of agonizing souls and in the red of human blood. The consequences of conversion stagger the imagination: this process is still the greatest social force of the age. Little wonder that persons of discernment journey long distances to attend a Sunday meeting, and to witness this appeal for converts to "hit the trail." I traveled several hundred miles to see it for the first time, and would go across the continent to see it again. For this is vital religion. If a wedding casts its dramatic spell upon the imagination; if a political election stirs the sluggish deeps of the popular mind; if a battle calls for newspaper "extras"; if an execution arrests popular attention by its element of the mystery of life becoming death--then, by so much and more, this critical, decisive moment in the lives of living men and women grips the mind by its intense human interest. What issues, for time and eternity, are being determined by this step! The great romance is enacted daily at the Sunday meetings. For these converts are intent upon the most sacred experience that ever comes to mortal. Through what soul struggles they have passed, what renunciations they have made, what futures they front, only God and heaven's hosts know. The crowd dimly senses all this. There is an instinctive appreciation of the dramatic in the multitude. So the evangelist's appeal is followed by an added tenseness, a straining of necks and a general rising to behold the expected procession. A more simple and unecclesiastical setting for this tremendous scene could scarcely be devised. The plain board platform, about six feet high, and fifteen feet long, is covered by a carpet. Its only furniture is a second-hand walnut pulpit, directly under the huge sounding board; and one plain wooden chair, "a kitchen chair," a housewife would call it. Then the invitation is given for all who want to come out on the side of Christ to come forward and grasp Sunday's hand. See them come! From all parts of the vast building they press forward. Nearly everyone is taking this step before the eyes of friends, neighbors, work-fellows. It calls for courage, for this is a life enlistment. Behold the young men crowding toward the platform, where the helpers form them into a swiftly moving line--dozens and scores of boys and men in the first flush of manhood. Occasionally an old person is in the line; oftener it is a boy or girl. There goes a mother with her son. How differently the converts act. Some have streaming eyes. Others wear faces radiant with the light of a new hope. Still others have the tense, set features of gladiators entering the arena. For minute after minute the procession continues. When a well-known person goes forward, the crowd cheers. As I have studied Mr. Sunday in the act of taking the hands of converts--one memorable night more than five hundred at the rate of fifty-seven a minute--the symbolism of his hand has appealed to my imagination. Surprisingly small and straight and surprisingly strong it is. Baseball battles have left no scars upon it. The lines are strong and deep and clear. The hand is "in condition"; no flabbiness about it. There are no rings on either of Mr. Sunday's hands, except a plain gold wedding ring on the left third finger. No outstretched hand of military commander ever pointed such a host to so great a battle. Is there anywhere a royal hand, wielding a scepter over a nation, which has symbolized so much vital influence as this short, firm hand of a typical American commoner? The soldier sent on a desperate mission asked Wellington for "one grasp of your conquering hand." A conquering hand, a helping hand, an uplifting hand, an upward-pointing hand, is this which once won fame by handling a baseball. Conceive of the vast variety of hands that have been reached up to grasp this one, and what those hands have since done for the world's betterment! Two hundred thousand dedicated right hands, still a-tingle with the touch of this inviting hand of the preacher of the gospel! The picture of Sunday's right hand belongs in the archives of contemporary religious history. No stage manager could ever set so great a scene as this. The vastness of it--sixteen or seventeen thousand eyes all centered on one ordinary-looking American on a high green-carpeted platform, a veritable "sea of faces"--is not more impressive than the details which an observer picks out. The multitudes are of the sort who thronged the Galilean; plain people, home-keeping women, seldom seen in public places; mechanics, clerks, the great American commonalty. Again and again one is impressed from some fresh angle with the democracy of it all; this man somehow appeals to that popular sense wherein all special tastes and interests merge. The _débâcle_ is a sight beyond words. The ice of conventionality breaks up, and the tide of human feeling floods forth. From every part of the great tabernacle--from the front seats, where you have been studying the personalities, and from the distant rear, where all the faces merge into an impersonal mass--persons begin to stream forward. See how they come. The moment is electric. Everybody is on the _qui vive_. The first to take the evangelist's hand is a young colored boy. The girl who follows may be a stenographer. Young men are a large part of the recruits; here come a dozen fine-looking members of an athletic club in a body, while the crowd cheers; evidently somebody has been doing personal work there. Contrasts are too common to mention. There is a delicate lady's kid-gloved hand reached up to that of the evangelist; the next is the grimy, calloused hand of a blue-shirted miner. The average is of young men and women, the choice and the mighty members of a community. Is the world to find a new moral or religious leader in the person of some one of these bright-faced youth who tonight have made this sign of dedication? And here comes an old man, with a strong face; evidently a personality of force. Twice the evangelist pats the head bowed before him, in pleasure over this aged recruit. He seems reluctant to let the old man go; but, see the children crowd behind him, and no convert can have more than a handclasp and a word. All around the platform the crowd resembles a hive of bees just before swarming. Stir, motion, animation seem to create a scene of confusion. But there is order and purpose in it all. The occupants of the front seats are being moved out to make way for the converts, who are there to be talked with, and to sign the cards that are to be turned over to the local pastors. Personal workers are getting into action. See the ministers streaming down into the fray! There goes the Young Men's Christian Association secretary, and the Salvation Army soldiers, and the members of the choir, wearing Christian Endeavor and Bible class badges. This is religion in action. Can these church members ever again lapse into dead conventionality? Meanwhile, Rodeheaver, the chorister, leans upon the piano and softly leads the great choir in "Almost Persuaded." The musical invitation continues while the work goes on in front. It is undisturbed by an occasional appeal from the evangelist. The song quickly changes to "Oh, Where Is My Wandering Boy Tonight?" and then, as the volume of penitents increases, into "I Am Coming Home" and "Ring the Bells of Heaven, There is Joy Today!" All this is psychological; it fosters the mood which the sermon has created. Music mellows as many hearts as spoken words. All the while Sunday is shaking hands. At first he leans far over, for the platform is more than six feet high. Sometimes it seems as if he will lose his balance. To reach down he stands on his left foot, with his right leg extended straight behind him, the foot higher than his head. No one posture is retained long. Often he dips down with a swinging circular motion, like a pitcher about to throw a ball. Never was man more lavish of his vital energy than this one. His face is white and tense and drawn; work such as this makes terrific draughts on a man's nerve force. As the converts increase, he lifts a trapdoor in the platform, which permits him to stand three feet nearer the people. Still they come, often each led by some personal worker. I saw a Scandinavian led forward in one meeting; ten minutes later I saw him bringing his wife up the trail. Some of the faces are radiant with a new joy. Others are set at a nervous tension. Some jaws are grim and working, revealing the inner conflict which has resulted in this step. A collarless, ragged, weak-faced slave of dissipation is next in line to a beautiful girl in the dew of her youth. An old, white-wooled negro, leaning on a staff, is led forward. Then a little child. Here are veritably all sorts and conditions of people. [Illustration: A COLLARLESS, WEAK-FACED SLAVE OF DISSIPATION IS NEXT IN LINE TO A BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN THE DEW OF HER YOUTH] In the particular session I am describing, a big delegation of railroad men is present, and the evangelist keeps turning to them, with an occasional "Come on, Erie!" The memories of his own days as a railroad brakeman are evidently working within him, and he seizes a green lantern and waves it. "A clear track ahead!" Toward these men he is most urgent, beckoning them also with a white railroad flag which he has taken from the decorations. When the master mechanic "hits the trail" there is cheering from the crowd, and Sunday himself shows a delight that was exhibited over none of the society folk who came forward. Rare and remarkable as are these scenes in religious history, they occur nightly in the Sunday tabernacle. Two hundred, three hundred, five hundred, one thousand converts are common. Anybody interested in life and in the phenomena of religion will find this occasion the most interesting scene at present to be witnessed in the whole world. As for the novelist, this is the human soul bared, and beyond the compass of his highest art. For life is at its apex when, in new resolution, a mortal spirit makes compact with the Almighty. CHAPTER XIV The Service of Society A lot of people think a man needs a new grandfather, sanitation, and a new shirt, when what he needs is a new heart.--BILLY SUNDAY. Some day a learned university professor, with a string of titles after his name, will startle the world by breaking away from the present conventionalism in sociology, and will conduct elaborate laboratory experiments in human betterment on the field of a Billy Sunday campaign. His conclusion will surely be that the most potent force for the service of society--the shortest, surest way of bettering the human race--is by the fresh, clear, sincere and insistent preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Of course, the New Testament has been teaching that for nearly twenty centuries, but the world has not yet comprehended the practicability of the program. Your learned professor may prove, by literally thousands of incidents, that honesty, chastity, brotherliness, and idealism have been more definitely promoted by revivals of religion than by legislative or educational programs. All that the social reformers of our day desire may be most quickly secured by straight-out preaching of the Gospel. The shortcut to a better social order is by way of converted men and women. And when a modern scholar comes to demonstrate this he will draw largely upon the aftermath of the Sunday campaigns for his contemporaneous evidence. If there is one phrase which, better than another, can describe a Billy Sunday campaign it is "restitution and righteousness." In season and out, the evangelist insists upon a changed life as the first consequence of conversion. His message runs on this wise: "You ought to live so that every one who comes near you will know that you are a Christian. Do you? Does your milkman know that you are a Christian? Does the man who brings your laundry know that you belong to church? Does the man who hauls away your ashes know that you are a Christian? Does your newsboy know that you have religion? Does the butcher know that you are on your way to heaven? Some of you buy meat on Saturday night, and have him deliver it Sunday morning, just to save a little ice, and then you wonder why he doesn't go to church. [Illustration: "DOES YOUR NEWSBOY KNOW THAT YOU HAVE RELIGION?"] "If you had to get into heaven on the testimony of your washer-woman, could you make it? If your getting into heaven depended on what your dressmaker knows about your religion, would you land? If your husband had to gain admittance to heaven on the testimony of his stenographer, could he do it? If his salvation depended on what his clerks tell about him, would he get there? A man ought to be as religious in business as he is in church. He ought to be as religious in buying and selling as he is in praying. "There are so many church members who are not even known in their own neighborhood as Christians. Out in Iowa where a meeting was held, a man made up his mind that he would try to get an old sinner into the Kingdom, and after chasing him around for three days he finally cornered him. Then he talked to that old fellow for two hours, and then the old scoundrel stroked his whiskers, and what do you think he said? 'Why, I've been a member of the church down there for fourteen years.' Just think of it! A member of the church fourteen years, and a man had to chase him three days, and talk with him two hours to find it out. "You have let Jesus in? Yes, but you have put him in the spare-room. You don't want him in the rooms where you live. Take him down into the living-room. Take him into the dining-room. Take him into the parlor. Take him into the kitchen. Live with him. Make him one of the family." Then follows a Sundayesque description of how Jesus would find beer in the refrigerator and throw it out; how he would find cards on the table and throw them out; how he would find nasty music on the piano and throw it out; how he would find cigarettes and throw them out. "If you haven't Jesus in the rooms you live in, it's because you don't want him," he says. "You're afraid of one of two things: you're afraid because of the things he'll throw out if he comes in, or you're afraid because of the things he'll bring with him if he comes in." Here is how a great newspaper, the Philadelphia _North American_, characterizes the ethical and political effectiveness of Mr. Sunday: Billy Sunday, derided by many as a sensational evangelist, has created a political revolution in Allegheny County. What years of reform work could not do he has wrought in a few short weeks. Old line "practical" politicians, the men who did the dirty work for the political gang, are now zealous for temperance, righteousness and religion. Judges on the bench, grand dames of society, millionaire business men, in common with the great host of undistinguished men and women in homes, mills, offices, and shops, have been fired by this amazing prophet with burning zeal for practical religion. An unexpected, unpredicted and unprecedented social force has been unleashed in our midst. Not to reckon with this is to be blind to the phase of Sunday's work which bulks larger than his picturesque vocabulary or his acrobatic earnestness. In the presence of this man's work all attempts to classify religious activities as either "evangelistic" or "social service" fall into confusion. Sunday could claim for himself that he's an evangelist, and an evangelist only. He repudiates a Christian program that is merely palliative or ameliorative. To his thinking the Church has more fundamental business than running soup kitchens or gymnasiums or oyster suppers. All his peerless powers of ridicule are frequently turned upon the frail and lonely oyster in the tureen of a money-making church supper. Nevertheless, the results of Sunday's preaching are primarily social and ethical. He is a veritable besom of righteousness sweeping through a community. The wife who neglects her cooking, mending and home-making; the employer who does not deal squarely with his workers; the rich man who rents his property for low purposes or is tied up in crooked business in any wise; the workman who is not on "his job"; the gossip and the slanderer; the idle creatures of fashion; the Christian who is not a good person to live with, the selfish, the sour, the unbrotherly--all these find themselves under the devastating harrow of this flaming preacher's biting, burning, excoriating condemnation. "A scourge for morality" is the way one minister described him; he is that, and far more. After the whole field of philanthropy and reform have been traversed it still remains true that the fundamental reform of all is the cleaning up of the lives and the lifting up of the ideals of the people. That is indisputably what Sunday does. He sweetens life and promotes a wholesome, friendly, helpful and cheerful state of mind on the part of those whom he influences. Assuredly it is basic betterment to cause men to quit their drunkenness and lechery and profanity. All the white-slave or social-evil commissions that have ever met have done less to put a passion for purity into the minds of men and women than this one man's preaching has done. The safest communities in the country for young men and young women are those which have been through a Billy Sunday revival. One cannot cease to exult at the fashion in which the evangelist makes the Gospel synonymous with clean living. All the considerations that weigh to lead persons to go forward to grasp the evangelist's hand, also operate to make them partisans of purity and probity. Put into three terse phrases, Sunday's whole message is: "Quit your meanness. Confess Christ. Get busy for him among men." There are no finely spun spiritual sophistries in Sunday's preaching. He sometimes speaks quite rudely of that conception of a "higher spiritual life" which draws Christians apart from the world in a self-complacent consciousness of superiority. His is not a mystical, meditative faith. It is dynamic, practical, immediate. According to his ever-recurring reasoning, if one is not passing on the fruits of religion to somebody else--if one is not hitting hard blows at the devil or really doing definite tasks for God and the other man--then one has not the real brand of Christianity. Sunday's preaching has hands, with "punch" to them, as well as lift; and feet, with "kick" in them, as well as ministry. Like a colliery mined on many levels, Sunday's preaching reaches all classes. Everybody can appreciate the social service value of converting a gutter bum and making him a self-supporting workman. Is it any less social service to convert a man--I cite an actual instance from Pittsburgh--who had lately lost a twelve-thousand-dollar-a-year position through dissipation, and so thoroughly to help him find himself that before the meetings were over he was back in his old office, once more drawing one thousand dollars a month? To a student of these campaigns, it seems as if business has sensed, better than the preachers, the economic waste of sin. A careful and discriminating thinker, the Rev. Joseph H. Odell, D.D., formerly pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church of Scranton, wrote an estimate of Billy Sunday and his work for _The Outlook_, in which he explains why his church, which had been opposed to the coming of the evangelist, reversed its vote: Testimony, direct and cumulative, reached the ears of the same refined and reverent men and women. The young business men, even those from the great universities, paused to consider. The testimony that changed the attitudes of the Church came from judges, lawyers, heads of corporations and well-known society leaders in their respective communities. The testimony was phenomenally concurrent in this: that, while it did not endorse the revivalist's methods, or accept his theological system, or condone his roughness and rudeness, it proved that the preaching produced results. "Produced results!" Every one understood the phrase; in the business world it is talismanic. As the result of the Billy Sunday campaigns--anywhere and everywhere--drunkards became sober, thieves became honest, multitudes of people engaged themselves in the study of the Bible, thousands confessed their faith in Jesus Christ as the Saviour of the world, and all the quiescent righteousness of the community grew brave and belligerent against vice, intemperance, gambling, and political dishonesty. During the last week of February I went to Pittsburgh for the purpose of eliciting interest in the candidacy of J. Benjamin Dimmick for the nomination of United States Senator. Billy Sunday had closed his Pittsburgh campaign a few days earlier. My task was easy. A group of practical politicians met Mr. Dimmick at dinner. They were the men who had worked the wards of Allegheny County on behalf of Penrose and the liquor interests for years. Together they were worth many thousands of votes to any candidate; in fact, they were the political balance of power in that county. They knew everything that men could know about the ballot, and some things that no man should know. Solidly, resolutely, and passionately they repudiated Penrose. "No one can get our endorsement in Allegheny County, even for the office of dog-catcher, who is not anti-booze and anti-Penrose," they asserted. When asked the secret of their crusader-like zeal against the alliance of liquor and politics, they frankly ascribed it to Billy Sunday; they had been born again--no idle phrase with them--in the vast whale-back tabernacle under the preaching of the baseball evangelist. Billy Sunday deals with the very springs of action; he seeks to help men get right back to the furthermost motives of the mind. "If you're born again, you won't live knowingly in sin. This does not mean that a Christian cannot sin, but that he does not want to sin." This truth the evangelist illustrates by the difference between a hog and a sheep. The sheep may fall into the mud, but it hates it and scrambles out. A hog loves the mud and wallows in it. Nobody can measure the results of the social forces which this simple-thinking evangelist sets to work. His own figure of the dwarf who could switch on the electric lights in a room as easily as a giant, comes to mind. He has sent into Christian work men who can do a kind of service impossible to Sunday himself. Thus, one of Sunday's converts out in Wichita, two years ago, was Henry J. Allen, editor of _The Beacon_ and Progressive candidate for governor. Mr. Allen became a member of one of the celebrated "Gospel Teams," which, since the Sunday meetings, have been touring Kansas and neighboring states and have won more than eleven thousand converts. It was in a meeting held by this band that William Allen White, the famous editor, author and publisher, took a definite stand for Christ and Christian work. One of the most interesting facts about Sunday's work is this one that the three greatest editors in the State of Kansas today are his direct or indirect converts. An "endless chain" letter would be easier to overtake than the effects of a Sunday revival campaign. In the face of the mass of testimony of this sort is it any wonder that business men deem a Sunday campaign worth all it costs, merely as an ethical movement? The quickest and cheapest way to improve morals and the morale of a city is by a revival of religion. Thus it is illuminating to learn that there were 650 fewer inmates in the Allegheny County jail, during the period of the Sunday revival meetings, than during the same time in the preceding year. From Pittsburgh also comes the remarkable story that the Cambria Steel Company, one of the largest steel concerns in the country, has established a religious department in connection with its plant, and placed a regularly ordained minister in charge of it. This as an avowed result of the Sunday campaign. The Rev. Dr. Maitland Alexander, D.D., pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh, is sponsor for this news, and he also declares that nine department stores of Pittsburgh are now holding prayer-meetings every morning at eight o'clock. These two statements are taken from Dr. Alexander's address to a body of ministers in New York City. He is reported to have said also: Billy Sunday succeeded in moving the city of Pittsburgh from one end to the other. That, to my mind, was the greatest result of the meetings. It is easy to talk about religion now in Pittsburgh. Men especially are thinking of it as never before, and the great majority are no longer in the middle of the road. They are on one side or the other. I never knew a man who could speak to men with such telling effect as Billy Sunday. I covet his ability to make men listen to him. It was necessary in my own church, which when packed, holds 3200 persons, to hold special meetings for different groups, such as lawyers, doctors, bankers, etc., and they were always crowded. In the big tabernacle, which was built for the campaign and holds more than 20,000 persons, the men from the big steel shops, after the second week, came in bodies of from one to three thousand, in many cases headed by their leading officers. Dr. Alexander said that up to the time of this address the Sunday campaign had added 419 members to his own church. One of the striking consequences of the Sunday campaign in Scranton was the development of the "Garage Bible Class." This was originally a Wilkes-Barre poker club. As the story was told by Mr. William Atherton, a Wilkes-Barre attorney, to the same New York meeting that Dr. Alexander addressed, the Garage Bible Class was originally a group of wealthy men meeting at different homes every week for a poker game. One man bet a friend fifteen dollars that he wouldn't go to hear Billy Sunday. One by one, however, the men found themselves unable to resist the lure of the Tabernacle. As a result the poker club was abandoned, and in a garage belonging to one of the men they organized a Bible class which now has about a hundred members. They have adopted a rule that no Christian shall be added to their ranks. They make their own Christians out of the unconverted. From this episode one gets some conception of the tug and pull of the Sunday Tabernacle. The temptation to attend becomes well nigh irresistible. All the streams of the community life flow toward the great edifice where the baseball evangelist enunciates his simple message. A writer in _The Churchman_ said, following the Pittsburgh campaign: This evangelist made religion a subject of ordinary conversation. People talked about their souls as freely as about their breakfast. He went into the homes of the rich, dropped his wildness of speech, and made society women cry with shame and contrition. One's eternal welfare became the topic of the dinner table, not only in the slums but in the houses of fashion. It sounds incredible, and it is not a fact to be grasped by the mere reading of it, but the citizens of Pittsburgh forgot to be ashamed to mention prayer and forgiveness of sin; the name of Christ began to be used with simpleness and readiness and reverence by men who, two months ago, employed it only as a by-word. City politicians came forward in the meeting and asked for prayer. The daily newspapers gave more space to salvation than they did to scandal, not for one day, but for day after day and week after week. As a mere spectacle of a whole modern city enthralled by the Gospel it was astonishing, unbelievable, unprecedented, prodigious. Because he preaches both to employers and to employed, Sunday is able to apply the healing salt of the gospel at the point of contact between the two. From Columbus it is reported that a number of business men voluntarily increased the wages of their helpers, especially the women, because of the evangelist's utterances. A horse jockey out West reached the core of the matter when he said to a friend of mine concerning Billy Sunday, "He sets people to thinking about other people." There you have the genesis and genius and goal of social service. No other force that operates among men is equal to the inspirations and inhibitions of the Christian religion in the minds of individuals. The greatest service that can be done to any community is to set a considerable proportion of its people to endeavoring honestly to live out the ideals of Jesus Christ. It is simply impossible to enumerate anything like a representative number of incidents of the community value of Billy Sunday's work. They come from every angle and in the most unexpected ways. A banker, who is not a member of any church, showed me the other day a letter he had received from a man who had defrauded him out of a small sum of money years before. The banker had never known anything about the matter and did not recall the man's name. What did amaze him, and set him to showing the letter to all of his friends, was this man's restitution, accompanied by an outspoken testimony to his new discipleship to Jesus Christ, upon which he had entered at the inspiration of Billy Sunday. The imagination is stirred by a contemplation of what these individual cases of regeneration imply. Consider the homes reunited; consider the happy firesides that once were the scene of misery; measure, if you can, the new joy that has come to tens of thousands of lives in the knowledge that they have given themselves unreservedly to the service of Jesus Christ. The dramatic, human side of it strikes one ever and anon. I chanced to see a young man "hit the trail" at Scranton whose outreachings I had later opportunity to follow. The young man is the only son of his parents and the hope of two converging family lines. Grandparents and parents, uncles and aunts, have pinned all of their expectations on this one young man. He was a youth of parts and of force and a personality in the community. When, on the night of which I write, he came forward up the "sawdust trail" to grasp the evangelist's hand, his aged grandfather and his mother wept tears of joy. The grandfather himself also "hit the trail" at the Scranton meetings and has since spent his time largely in Christian work. It is impossible to say how this young man's future might have spelled sorrow or joy for the family circle that had concentrated their hopes on him. But now it is clear that his conversion has brought to them all a boon such as money could not have bought nor kings conferred. One of the countless instances that may be gleaned in any field of Sunday's sowing was related to me the other evening by a business man, who, like others, became a protagonist of Sunday by going through one of his campaigns. In his city there was a cultivated, middle-aged German, a well-known citizen, who was an avowed atheist. He openly scoffed at religion. He was unable, however, to resist the allurement of the Sunday meetings, and he went with his wife one night merely to "see the show." That one sermon broke down the philosophy of years, and the atheist and his wife became converts of Billy Sunday. His three sons followed suit, so that the family of five adults were led into the Christian life by this evangelist untaught of the schools. One of the sons is now a member of the State Y. M. C. A. Committee. A western business man, who is interested in the Young Men's Christian Association, told me that one cold, rainy winter's day he happened into the Association Building in Youngstown, Ohio. He found a crowd of men streaming into a meeting, and because the day was so unpropitious, he asked the character of the gathering. He was told that it was the regular meeting of the Christian Workers' Band, gathered to report on the week's activities. The men had been converted to Christ, or to Christian work, by Billy Sunday, and their meeting had continued ever since, although it was more than a year since the evangelist's presence in Youngstown. Said my friend, "That room was crowded. One after another the men got up and told what definite Christian work they had been doing in the previous seven days. The record was wonderful. They had been holding all sorts of meetings in all sorts of places, and had been doing a variety of personal work besides, so that there were a number of converts to be reported at this meeting I attended." To have set that force in operation so that it would continue to work with undiminished zeal after twelve months of routine existence, was a greater achievement than to preach one of the Billy Sunday sermons. There is a sufficient body of evidence to show that the work of Billy Sunday does not end when the evangelist leaves the community. He has created a vogue for religion and for righteousness. The crowd spirit has been called forth to the service of the Master. Young people and old have been given a new and overmastering interest in life. They have something definite to do for the world and a definite crowd with which to ally themselves. One result has been a tremendous growth of Bible classes for men and women and a manifestation of the crusader spirit which makes itself felt in cleaned-up communities and in overthrown corruption in politics. So far as the Billy Sunday campaigns may be said to have a badge, it is the little red and white bull's eye of the Organized Adult Bible Classes. Six months after the Scranton campaign five thousand persons attended a "Trail Hitters'" picnic, where the day's events were scheduled under two headings, "athletic" and "prayer." When wholesome recreation comes thus to be permeated with the spirit of clean and simple devotion something like an ideal state of society has come to pass for at least one group of people. In more ways than the one meant by his critics, Sunday's work is sensational. What could be more striking than the visit on Sunday, October 25, 1914, of approximately a thousand trail-hitters from Scranton to the churches of Philadelphia, to help prepare them for their approaching Sunday campaign? Special trains were necessary to bring this great detachment of men the distance of three hundred miles. They went forth in bands of four, being distributed among the churches of the city, to hold morning and evening services, and in the afternoon conducting neighborhood mass meetings. These men were by no means all trained speakers, but they were witness-bearers; and their testimony could scarcely fail to produce a powerful influence upon the whole city. That, on a large scale, is what Sunday converts are doing in a multitude of places. To close this chapter as it began, the truth stands out that Billy Sunday has set a host of people to thinking that this world's problems are to be solved, and its betterment secured, not by any new-fangled methods, but along the old and tested line of transforming individual characters through the redeeming power of the crucified Son of God. Salvation is surest social service. The great evangelist's sermons are filled with the life stories of the men and women he has saved. The following is only one of many: "I was at one time in a town in Nebraska and the people kept telling me about one man. 'There is one man here, if you can get him he is good for one hundred men for Christ.' I said: 'Who is he?' "'John Champenoy. He is the miller.' I said to Mr. Preston, who was then a minister: 'Have you been to see him?' 'No.' I asked another minister if he had been to see the fellow and he said no. I asked the United Presbyterian preacher (they have a college out there), and he said no, he hadn't been around to see him. "I said: 'Well, I guess I'll go around to see him.' I found the fellow seated in a chair teetered back against the wall, smoking. I said: 'Is this Mr. Champenoy?' 'Yes, sir, that's my name.' He got up and took me by the hand. I said: 'My name is Sunday; I'm down at the church preaching. A good many have been talking to me about you and I came down to see you and ask you to give your heart to God.' He looked at me, walked to the cupboard, opened the door, took out a half-pint flask of whisky and threw it out on a pile of stones. "He then turned around, took me by the hand, and as the tears rolled down his cheeks he said: 'I have lived in this town nineteen years and you are the first man that has ever asked me to be a Christian.' "He said: 'They point their finger at me and call me an old drunkard. They don't want my wife around with their wives because her husband is a drunkard. Their children won't play with our babies. They go by my house to Sunday school and church, but they never ask us to go. They pass us by. I never go near the church. I am a member of the lodge. I am a Mason and I went to the church eleven years ago when a member of the lodge died, but I've never been back and I said I never would go.' "I said: 'You don't want to treat the Church that way. God isn't to blame, is he?' "'No.' "'The Church isn't to blame, is it?' "'No.' "'Christ isn't to blame?' "'No.' "'You wouldn't think much of me if I would walk up and slap your wife because you kept a dog I didn't like, would you? Then don't slap God in the face because there are some hypocrites in the Church that you don't like and who are treating you badly. God is all right. He never treated you badly. Come up and hear me preach, will you, John?' "'Yes, I'll come tonight.' "I said: 'All right, the Lord bless you and I will pray for you.' He came; the seats were all filled and they crowded him down the side aisle. I can see him now standing there, with his hat in his hand, leaning against the wall looking at me. He never took his eyes off me. When I got through and gave the invitation he never waited for them to let him out. He walked over the backs of the seats, took his stand for Jesus Christ, and in less than a week seventy-eight men followed him into the kingdom of God. They elected that man chairman of the civic federation and he cleaned the town up for Jesus Christ and has led the hosts of righteousness from then until now. Men do care to talk about Jesus Christ and about their souls. 'No man cares for my soul.' That's what's the trouble. They are anxious and waiting for some one to come." CHAPTER XV Giving the Devil His Due I know there is a devil for two reasons; first, the Bible declares it; and second I have done business with him.--BILLY SUNDAY. The Prince of Darkness was no more real to Martin Luther, when he flung his ink-well at the devil, than he is to Billy Sunday. He seems never long out of the evangelist's thought. Sunday regards him as his most personal and individual foe. Scarcely a day passes that he does not direct his attention publicly to the devil. He addresses him and defies him, and he cites Satan as a sufficient explanation for most of the world's afflictions. There are many delicate shadings and degrees and differentiations in theology--but Billy Sunday does not know them. He never speaks in semitones, nor thinks in a nebulous way. His mind and his word are at one with his baseball skill--a swift, straight passage between two points. With him men are either sheep or goats; there are no hybrids. Their destination is heaven or hell, and their master is God or the devil. He believes in the devil firmly, picturesquely; and fights him without fear. His characterizations of the devil are hair-raising. As a matter of fact it is far easier for the average man, close down to the ruck and red realities of life, to believe in the devil, whose work he well knows, than it is for the cloistered man of books. The mass of the people think in the same sort of strong, large, elemental terms as Billy Sunday. The niceties of language do not bother them; they are the makers and users of that fluid speech called slang. William A. Sunday is an elemental. Sophistication would spoil him. He is dead sure of a few truths of first magnitude. He believes without reservation or qualification in the Christ who saved him and reversed his life's direction. Upon this theme he has preached to millions. Also he is sure that there is a devil, and he rather delights in telling old Satan out loud what he thinks of him. Meanness, in Satan, sinner or saint, he hates and says so in the language of the street, which the common people understand. He usually perturbs some fastidious folk who think that literary culture and religion are essentially interwoven. Excoriation of the devil is not Sunday's masterpiece. He reaches his height in exaltation of Jesus Christ. He is surer of his Lord than he is of the devil. It is his bed-rock belief that Jesus can save anybody, from the gutter bum to the soul-calloused, wealthy man of the world, and make them both new creatures. With heart tenderness and really yearning love he holds aloft the Crucified as the world's only hope. That is why his gospel breaks hearts of stone and makes Bible-studying, praying church workers out of strange assortments of humanity. The following passages will show how familiarly and frequently Sunday treats of the devil: "DEVIL" PASSAGES The devil isn't anybody's fool. You can bank on that. Plenty of folks will tell you there isn't any devil--that he is just a figure of speech; a poetic personification of the sin in our natures. People who say that--and especially all the time-serving, hypocritical ministers who say it--are liars. They are calling the Holy Bible a lie. I'll believe the Bible before I'll believe a lot of time-serving, societyfied, tea-drinking, smirking preachers. No, sir! You take God's word for it, there is a devil, and a big one, too. Oh, but the devil is a smooth guy! He always was, and he is now. He is right on his job all the time, winter and summer. Just as he appeared to Christ in the wilderness, he is right in this tabernacle now, trying to make you sinners indifferent to Christ's sacrifice for your salvation. When the invitation is given, and you start to get up, and then settle back into your seat, and say, "I guess I don't want to give way to a temporary impulse," that's the real, genuine, blazing-eyed, cloven-hoofed, forked-tailed old devil, hanging to your coat tail. He knows all your weaknesses, and how to appeal to them. He knows about you and how you have spent sixty dollars in the last two years for tobacco, to make your home and the streets filthy, and that you haven't bought your wife a new dress in two years, because you "can't afford it"; and he knows about you, and the time and money you spend on fool hats and card parties, doing what you call "getting into society," while your husband is being driven away from home by badly cooked meals, and your children are running on the streets, learning to be hoodlums. And he knows about you, too, sir, and what you get when you go back of the drug-store prescription counter to "buy medicine for your sick baby." And he knows about you and the lie you told about the girl across the street, because she is sweeter and truer than you are, and the boys go to see her and keep away from you, you miserable thrower of slime, dug out of your own heart of envy--yes, indeed, the devil knows all about you. When the revival comes along and the Church of God gets busy, you will always find the devil gets busy, too. Whenever you find somebody that don't believe in the devil you can bank on it that he has a devil in him bigger than a woodchuck. When the Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost the devil didn't do a thing but go around and say that these fellows were drunk, and Peter got up and made him mad by saying that it was too early in the day. It was but the third hour. They had sense in those days; it was unreasonable to find them drunk at the third hour of the day. But now the fools sit up all night to booze. When you rush forward in God's work, the devil begins to rush against you. There was a rustic farmer walking through Lincoln Park and he saw the sign, "Beware of pickpockets." "What do they want to put up a fool sign like that? Everybody looks honest to me." He reached for his watch to see what time it was and found it was gone. The pickpockets always get in the pockets of those who think there are no pickpockets around. Whenever you believe there is a devil around, you can keep him out, but if you say there isn't, he'll get you sure. The Bible says there is a devil; you say there is no devil. Who knows the most, God or you? Jesus met a real foe, a personal devil. Reject it or deny it as you may. If there is no devil, why do you cuss instead of pray? Why do you lie instead of telling the truth? Why don't you kiss your wife instead of cursing her? You have just got the devil in you, that is all. The devil is no fool; he is onto his job. The devil has been practicing for six thousand years and he has never had appendicitis, rheumatism or tonsilitis. If you get to playing tag with the devil he'll beat you every clip. If I knew that all the devils in hell and all the devils in Pittsburgh were sitting out in the pews and sneering and jeering at me I'd shoot God's truth into their carcasses anyway, and I propose to keep firing away at the devils until by and by they come crawling out of their holes and swear that they were never in them, but their old hides would assay for lead and tan for chair bottoms. Men in general think very little of the devil and his devices, yet he is the most formidable enemy the human race has to contend with. There is only one attitude to have toward him, and that is to hit him. Don't pick up a sentence and smooth it and polish it and sugar-coat it, but shy it at him with all the rough corners on. The devil has more sense than lots of little preachers. Jesus said: "It is written." He didn't get up and quote Byron and Shakespeare. You get up and quote that stuff, and the devil will give you the ha! ha! until you're gray-haired. Give him the Word of God, and he will take the count mighty quick. "It is written, thou shall not tempt the Lord thy God." Don't you ever think for a minute that the devil isn't on the job all the time. He has been rehearsing for thousands of years, and when you fool around in his back yard he will pat you on the back and tell you that you are "IT." I'll fight the devil in my own way and I don't want people to growl that I am not doing it right. The devil comes to me sometimes. Don't think that because I am a preacher the devil doesn't bother me any. The devil comes around regularly, and I put on the gloves and get busy right away. I owe God everything; I owe the devil nothing except the best fight I can put up against him. I assault the devil's stronghold and I expect no quarter and I give him none. [Illustration: "I AM AGAINST EVERYTHING THAT THE DEVIL IS IN FAVOR OF"] I am in favor of everything the devil is against, and I am against everything the devil is in favor of--the dance, the booze, the brewery, my friends that have cards in their homes. I am against everything that the devil is in favor of, and I favor everything the devil is against, no matter what it is. If you know which side the devil is on, put me down on the other side any time. Hell is the highest reward that the devil can offer you for being a servant of his. The devil's got a lot more sense than some of you preachers I know, and a lot of you old skeptics, who quote Shakespeare and Carlyle and Emerson and everybody and everything rather than the Bible. When you hear a preacher say that he doesn't believe there is a devil, you can just bet your hat that he never preaches repentance. The men who do any preaching on repentance know there is a devil, for they hear him roar. I drive the same kind of nails all orthodox preachers do. The only difference is that they use a tack hammer and I use a sledge. The preacher of today who is a humanitarian question point is preaching to empty benches. I do not want to believe and preach a lie. I would rather believe and preach a truth, no matter how unpleasant it is, than to believe and preach a pleasant lie. I believe there is a hell. If I didn't I wouldn't have the audacity to stand up here and preach to you. If there ever comes a time when I don't believe in hell I will leave the platform before I will ever preach a sermon with that unbelief in my heart. I would rather believe and preach a truth, no matter how unpleasant, than to believe and preach a lie simply for the friendship and favor of some people. The man that preaches the truth is your friend. I have no desire to be any more broad or liberal than Jesus, not a whit, and nobody has any right, either, and claim to be a preacher. Is a man cruel that tells you the truth? The man that tells you there is no hell is the cruel man, and the man that tells you there is a hell is your friend. So it's a kindness to point out the danger. God's ministers have no business to hold back the truth. I don't believe you can remember when you heard a sermon on hell. Well, you'll hear about hell while I am here. God Almighty put hell in the Bible and any preacher that sidesteps it because there are people sitting in the pews who don't like it, ought to get out of the pulpit. He is simply trimming his sails to catch a passing breeze of popularity. CHAPTER XVI Critics and Criticism Some preachers need the cushions of their chairs upholstered oftener than they need their shoes half-soled.--BILLY SUNDAY. It is only when the bull's eye is hit that the bell rings. The preacher who never gets a roar out of the forces of unrighteousness may well question whether he is shooting straight. One of the most significant tributes to the Evangelist Sunday is the storm of criticism which rages about his head. It is clear that at least he and his message are not a negligible quantity. This book certainly holds no brief for the impeccability and invulnerability of Billy Sunday. Yet we cannot be blind to the fact he has created more commotion in the camp of evil than any other preacher of his generation. Christians are bound to say "We love him for the enemies he has made." He hits harder at all the forces that hurt humanity and hinder godliness than any other living warrior of God. The forces of evil pay Billy Sunday the compliment of an elaborately organized and abundantly financed assault upon him. He is usually preceded and followed in his campaigns by systematic attacks which aim to undermine and discredit him. A weekly paper, issued in Chicago, appears to be devoted wholly to the disparaging of Billy Sunday. In rather startling juxtaposition to that statement is the other that many ministers have publicly attacked Sunday. This is clearly within their right. He is a public issue and fairly in controversy. As he claims the right of free speech for himself he cannot deny it to others. Some of his critics among the clergy object to evangelism in general, some to his particular methods, some to his forms of speech, some to his theology; but nobody apparently objects to his results. During the past year there has arisen a tendency to abate this storm of clerical criticism, for it has been found that it is primarily serving the enemies of the Church. Whatever Billy Sunday's shortcomings, he is unquestionably an ally of the Kingdom of Heaven and an enemy of sin. His motives and his achievements are both aligned on the side of Christ and his Church. A host of ministers of fine judgment who are grieved by some of the evangelist's forms of speech and some of his methods, have yet withheld their voices from criticism because they do not want to fire upon the Kingdom's warriors from the rear. Sunday gets results for God; therefore, reason they, why should we attack him? There is another side to this shield of criticism. There is no religious leader of our day who has such a host of ardent defenders and supporters as Billy Sunday. The enthusiasm of myriads for this man is second only to their devotion to Christ. Wherever he goes he leaves behind him a militant body of protagonists. He is championed valiantly and fearlessly. So vigorous is this spirit which follows in the wake of a Sunday campaign that in a certain large city where the ministers of one denomination had publicly issued a statement disapproving of Mr. Sunday, their denomination has since suffered seriously in public estimation. Some anonymous supporter of Billy Sunday has issued a pamphlet made up exclusively of quotations from Scripture justifying Sunday and his message. He quotes such pertinent words as these: And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power; That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are. A great marvel is that this unconventional preacher has enlisted among his supporters a host of intellectual and spiritual leaders of our time. The churches of the country, broadly speaking, are for him, and so are their pastors. This might be attributed to partisanship, for certainly Sunday is promoting the work of the Church; but what is to be said when Provost Edgar F. Smith of the University of Pennsylvania comes out in an unqualified endorsement of the man and his work; or such an acute lawyer and distinguished churchman as George Wharton Pepper of Philadelphia, well known in the councils of the Protestant Episcopal Church, gives his hearty approval to Sunday? Consider the letter which Secretary of State Bryan wrote to Sunday after hearing him at the Pittsburgh Tabernacle: THE SECRETARY OF STATE. Washington, January 12, 1914. MY DEAR SUNDAY: Having about four hours in Pittsburgh last night, my wife and I attended your meeting and so we heard and felt the powerful sermon which you delivered. We noted the attention of that vast audience and watched the people, men and women, old and young, who thronged about you in response to your appeal. Mrs. Bryan had never heard you, and I had heard only a short afternoon address. Last night you were at your best. I cannot conceive of your surpassing that effort in effectiveness. Do not allow yourself to be disturbed by criticism. God is giving you souls for your hire and that is a sufficient answer. Christ called attention to the fact that both he and John the Baptist had to meet criticism because they were so much unlike in manner. No man can do good without making enemies, but yours as a rule will be among those who do not hear you. Go on, and may the Heavenly Father use you for many years to come, as he has for many years past, and bring multitudes to know Christ as he presented himself when he said, "I am the way, the truth and the life." Am sorry we could not see you personally, but we left because we found that we were discovered. Some insisted upon shaking hands and I was afraid I might become a cause of disturbance. Mrs. Bryan joins me in regards to Mrs. Sunday and yourself. Yours truly, W. J. BRYAN. One need be surprised at nothing in connection with such a personality as Billy Sunday, yet surely there is no precedent for this resolution, adopted by the Pittsburgh City Council, while he was in that city: WHEREAS, The Rev. William A. Sunday and his party have been in the city of Pittsburgh for the past eight weeks, conducting evangelistic services, and the Council of the city being convinced of the immense good which has been accomplished through his work for morality, good citizenship and religion, therefore be it _Resolved_, That the Council of the city of Pittsburgh express its utmost confidence in Mr. Sunday and all of the members of his party; and be it further _Resolved_, That it does hereby express to them its appreciation of all the work that has been done, and extends to Mr. Sunday its most cordial wishes for his future success. While the adverse critics are doing all in their power to discredit him as he goes from place to place, Sunday's friends also are not idle. In Scranton, for instance, before the campaign opened, men in nearly all walks of life received letters from men in corresponding callings in Pittsburgh bearing tribute to Billy Sunday. Thus, bankers would inclose in their correspondence from Pittsburgh an earnest recommendation of Sunday and a suggestion that the bankers of Scranton stand squarely to his support. The local Scranton plumber heard from a plumbers' supply house; labor union men heard from their fellows in Pittsburgh; lawyers and doctors, and a host of business men, had letters from personal friends in Pittsburgh, telling what Sunday had done for that community, and in many cases bearing personal testimony to what his message had meant to the writers. This is nearer to effective organization than the Christian forces of the country commonly get. This form of propaganda did not bulk large in the public eye, but it created a splendid undercurrent of sentiment; for Banker Jones could say: "I have it straight from Banker Smith of Pittsburgh, whom I know to be a level-headed man, that Sunday is all right, and that he does nothing but good for the city." Still more novel than this was the expedition sent by a great daily newspaper to hear the evangelist in Scranton. There is no parallel in the history of Christian work for the deputation of more than two hundred pastors who went to Scranton from Philadelphia. These went entirely at the charges of the Philadelphia _North American_, being carried in special trains. The railroad company recognized the significance of this unusual occasion, and both ways the train broke records for speed. While in the city of Scranton the ministers were the guests of the Scranton churches. They had special space reserved for them in the Tabernacle and their presence drew the greatest crowds that were experienced during the Scranton campaign. Of course thousands were turned away. Nobody who saw and heard it will ever forget the way that solid block of Philadelphia pastors stood up and sang in mighty chorus "I Love to Tell the Story." Between sessions these Philadelphia ministers were visiting their brethren in Scranton, learning in most detailed fashion what the effects of the Sunday campaign had been. Whenever they gathered in public assemblies they sounded the refrain, which grew in significance from day to day: "I Love to Tell the Story." Billy Sunday fired the evangelistic purpose of these pastors. When this unique excursion was ended, and the company had de-trained at the Reading Terminal, the ministers, without pre-arrangement, gathered in a body in the train shed and lifted their voices in the refrain "I Love to Tell the Story," while hundreds and thousands of hurrying city folk, attracted by the unwonted music, gathered to learn what this could possibly mean. A new militancy was put into the preaching of these clergymen by their Scranton visit; and many of them later reported that the largest congregations of all their ministerial experience were those which gathered to hear them report on the Sunday evangelistic campaign. Not a few of the preachers had to repeat their Billy Sunday sermons. Needless to say, an enthusiastic and urgent invitation to Sunday to come to Philadelphia to conduct a campaign, followed this demonstration on the part of the daily newspaper. That there is a strategic value in rallying all the churches about one man was demonstrated by the Methodists of Philadelphia on this occasion. Bishop Joseph F. Berry had heartily indorsed the project, and had urged all of the Methodist pastors who could possibly do so to accept the _North American's_ invitation. The Methodist delegation was an enthusiastic unit. When they returned to Philadelphia a special issue of the local Methodist paper was issued, and in this thirty-two articles appeared, each written by an aroused pastor who had been a member of the delegation. Incidentally, all of the city papers, as well as the religious press of a very wide region, reported this extraordinary pilgrimage of more than two hundred pastors to a distant city to hear an evangelist preach the gospel. A reflex of this was the return visit, some months later, of a thousand "trail-hitters" to speak in Philadelphia pulpits. Before leaving the subject of the criticism of Sunday, pro and con, it should be insisted that no public man or institution should be free from the corrective power of public opinion, openly expressed. This is one of the wholesome agencies of democracy. Mr. Sunday himself is not slow to express his candid opinion of the Church, the ministry, and of society at large. It would be a sad day for him should all critical judgment upon his work give way to unreasoning adulation. The best rule to follow in observing the evangelist's ministry is, "Never judge unfinished work." Only a completed campaign should pass in review before the critics; only the whole substance of the man's message; only the entire effect of his work upon the public. Partial judgments are sure to be incorrect judgments. Billy Sunday succeeds in making clear to all his hearers--indeed he impresses them so deeply that the whole city talks of little else for weeks--that God has dealings with every man; and that God cares enough about man to provide for him a way of escape from the terrible reality of sin, that way being Jesus Christ. When a preacher succeeds in lodging that conviction in the minds of the multitudes, he is heaven's messenger. Whether he speak in Choctaw, Yiddish, Bostonese or in the slang of Chicago, is too trivial a matter to discuss. We do not inspect the wardrobe or the vocabulary of the hero who rides before the flood, urging the people to safety in the hills. PLAIN SPEECH FROM SUNDAY HIMSELF The hour is come; come for something else. It has come for plainness of speech on the part of the preacher. If you have anything to antagonize, out with it; specify sins and sinners. You can always count on a decent public to right a wrong, and any public that won't right a wrong is a good one to get out of. Charles Finney went to Europe to preach, and in London a famous free-thinker's wife went to hear him. The free-thinker's wife noticed a great change in him; he was more kind, more affectionate, more affable, less abusive and she said, "I know what is the matter with you; you have been to hear that man from America preach." And he said, "Wife, that is an insult; that man Finney don't preach; he just makes plain what the other fellows preach." Now the foremost preacher of his day was Paul. What he preached of his day was not so much idealism as practicality; not so much theology, homiletics, exegesis or didactics, but a manner of life. I tell you there was no small fuss about his way of teaching. When Paul was on the job the devil was awake. There is a kind of preaching that will never arouse the devil. "He that believeth not is condemned already." He that has not believed in Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God, is condemned where he sits. Too much of the preaching of today is too nice; too pretty; too dainty; it does not kill. Too many sermons are just given for literary excellence of the production. They get a nice adjective or noun, or pronoun--you cannot be saved by grammar. A little bit of grammar is all right, but don't be a big fool and sit around and criticize because the preacher gets a word wrong--if you do that your head is filled with buck oysters and sawdust, if that is all that you can use it for. They've been crying peace. There is no peace. Some people won't come to hear me because they are afraid to hear the truth. They want deodorized, disinfected sermons. They are afraid to be stuck over the edge of the pit and get a smell of the brimstone. You can't get rid of sin as long as you treat it as a cream puff instead of a rattlesnake. You can't brush sin away with a feather duster. Go ask the drunkard who has been made sober whether he likes "Bill." Go ask the girl who was dragged from the quagmire of shame and restored to her mother's arms whether she likes "Bill." Go ask the happy housewife who gets the pay envelope every Saturday night instead of its going to the filthy saloon-keeper whether she's for "Bill." Some people say, "Oh, he's sensational." Nothing would be more sensational than if some of you were suddenly to become decent. I would rather be a guide-post than a tombstone. I repeat that everybody who is decent or wants to be decent, will admire you when you preach the truth, although you riddle them when you do it. The hour is come, my friend. The hour is come to believe in a revival. Some people do not believe in revivals; neither does the devil; so you are like your daddy. I can see those disciples praying, and talking and having a big time. There are many fool short-sighted ministers who are satisfied if they can only draw a large crowd. Some are as crazy after sensations as the yellowest newspaper that ever came off the press. That's the reason we have these sermons on "The Hobble Skirt" and "The Merry Widow Hat" and other such nonsensical tommyrot. If there were not so many March-hare sort of fellows breaking into pulpits you would have to sweat more and work harder. There are some of you that have the devil in you. Maybe you don't treat your wife square. Maybe you cheat in your weights. Get rid of the devil. What does it matter if you pack a church to the roof if nothing happens to turn the devil pale? What is the use of putting chairs in the aisles and out the doors? The object of the Church is to cast out devils. The devil has more sense than lots of little preachers. I have been unfortunate enough to know D.D.'s and LL.D.'s sitting around whittling down the doctrine of the personality of the devil to as fine a point as they know how. You are a fool to listen to them. The devil is no fool, he is no four-flusher. He said to Christ: "If you are a God, act like it; if you are a man, and believe the Scriptures, act as one who believes." John the Baptist wasn't that kind of a preacher. Jesus Christ wasn't that kind of a preacher. The apostles weren't that kind of preachers--except old Judas. John the Baptist opened the Bible right in the middle and preached the word of God just as he found it, and he didn't care whether the people liked it or not. That wasn't his business. I tell you, John the Baptist stirred up the devil. If any minister doesn't believe in a personal devil it's because he has never preached a sermon on repentance, or he'd have heard him roar. Yes, sir. If there's anything that will make the devil roar it is a sermon on repentance. You can preach sociology, or psychology, or any other kind of ology, but if you leave Jesus Christ out of it you hit the toboggan slide to hell. I'll preach against any minister who is preaching false doctrines. I don't give a rap who he is. I'll turn my guns loose against him, and don't you forget that. Any man who is preaching false doctrines to the people and vomiting out false doctrines to them will hear from me. I want to say that the responsibility for no revivals in our cities and towns has got to be laid at the doors of the ministry. Preachers sit fighting their sham battles of different denominations, through their cussedness, inquiring into fol-da-rol and tommyrot, and there sits in the pews of the church that miserable old scoundrel who rents his property out for a saloon and is going to hell; and that other old scoundrel who rents his houses for houses of ill fame and is living directly on the proceeds of prostitution, and he doesn't preach against it. He is afraid he will turn the men against him. He is afraid of his job. They are a lot of backsliders and the whole bunch will go to hell together. They are afraid to come out against it. I'll tell you what's the matter. Listen to me. The Church of God has lost the spirit of concern today largely because of the ministry--that's what's the matter with them. I'll allow no man or woman to go beyond me in paying tribute to culture. I don't mean this miserable "dog" business, shaking hands with two fingers. The less brains some people have the harder they try to show you that they have some, or think they have. I allow no man to go beyond me in paying tribute to real, genuine culture, a tribute to intellectual greatness; but when a man stands in the pulpit to preach he has got to be a man of God. He has got to speak with the passion for souls. If you sleep in the time of a revival God Almighty will wake you up. There are lots of preachers who don't know Jesus. They know about him, but they don't know him. Experience will do more than forty million theories. I can experiment with religion just the same as I can with water. No two knew Him exactly alike, but all loved Him. All would have something to say. Now for you preachers. When a man prays "Thy Kingdom Come" he will read the Bible to find out the way to make it come. The preacher who prays "Thy Kingdom Come" will not get all his reading from the new books or from the magazines. He will not try to please the highbrows and in pleasing them miss the masses. He will not try to tickle the palates of the giraffes and then let the sheep starve. He will put his cookies on the lower shelf. He will preach in a language that the commonest laborer can understand. One of the prolific sources of unbelief and backsliding today is a bottle-fed church, where the whole membership lets the preacher do the studying of the Bible for them. He will go to the pulpit with his mind full of his sermon and they will come to the church with their minds filled with society and last night's card-playing, beer-and-wine-drinking and novel-reading party and will sit there half asleep. Many a preacher reminds me of a great big nursing bottle, and there are two hundred or three hundred rubber tubes, with nipples on the end, running into the mouths of two hundred or three hundred or four hundred great big old babies with whiskers and breeches on, and hair pins stuck in their heads and rats in their hair, sitting there, and they suck and draw from the preacher. Some old sister gets the "Amusement" nipple in her mouth and it sours her stomach, and up go her heels and she yells. Then the preacher has to go around and sing psalms to that big two-hundred-and-fifty-pound baby and get her good-natured so that she will go back to church some day. By and by some old whisky-voting church member gets the "Temperance" nipple in his mouth and it sours his stomach and up go his heels and he lets out a yell, throws his hands across his abdominal region, and the preacher says, "Whatever is the matter? If I hit you any place but the heart or the head I apologize." The preacher has to be wet nurse to about two hundred and fifty big babies that haven't grown an inch since they came into the church. One reason why some preachers are not able to bring many sinners to repentance is because they preach of a God so impotent that he can only throw down card houses when all the signs are right! They decline to magnify his power for fear they will overdo it! And if they accidentally make a strong assertion as to his power, they immediately neutralize it by "as it were," or "in a measure, perhaps!" [Illustration: "WE'VE GOT A BUNCH OF PREACHERS BREAKING THEIR NECKS TO PLEASE A LOT OF OLD SOCIETY DAMES"] You make a man feel as though God was stuck on him and you'll be a thirty-third degree sort of a preacher with that fellow. If some preachers were as true to their trust as John the Baptist, they might be turned out to grass, but they'd lay up treasures for themselves in heaven. Clergymen will find their authority for out-of-the-ordinary methods in the lowering of a paralytic through a roof, as told of in the Bible. If that isn't sensationalism, then trot some out. If God could convert the preachers the world would be saved. Most of them are a lot of evolutionary hot-air merchants. We've got churches, lots of them. We've got preachers, seminaries, and they are turning out preachers and putting them into little theological molds and keeping them there until they get cold enough to practice preaching. The reason some ministers are not more interested in their work is because they fail to realize that theirs is a God-given mission. We've got a bunch of preachers breaking their necks to please a lot of old society dames. Some ministers say, "If you don't repent, you'll die and go to a place, the name of which I can't pronounce." I can. You'll go to hell. There is not a preacher on earth that can preach a better gospel than "Bill." I'm willing to die for the Church. I'm giving my life for the Church. Your preachers would fight for Christ if some of you fossilated, antiquated old hypocrites didn't snort and snarl and whine. A godless cowboy once went to a brown-stone church--with a high-toned preacher--I am a half-way house between the brown-stone church and the Salvation Army. They are both needed and so is the half-way house. Well, this fellow went to one of these brown-stone churches and after the preacher had finished the cowboy thought he had to go up and compliment the preacher, as he saw others doing, and so he sauntered down the aisle with his sombrero under his arm, his breeches stuck in his boots, a bandana handkerchief around his neck, his gun and bowie knife in his belt, and he walked over and said: "Hanged if I didn't fight shy of you fellows--but I'll tell you I sat here and listened to you for an hour and you monkeyed less with religion than any fellow I ever heard in my life." They have taken away the Lord and don't know where to find him. You must remember that Jesus tells us to shine for God. The trouble with some people and preachers is that they try to shine rather than letting their light shine. Some preachers put such a big capital "I" in front of the cross that the sinner can't see Jesus. They want the glory. They would rather be a comet than stars of Bethlehem. CHAPTER XVII A Clean Man on Social Sins There are a good many things worse than living and dying an old maid, and one of them is marrying the wrong man.--BILLY SUNDAY. Sunday's trumpet gives no uncertain sound on plain, every-day righteousness. He is like an Old Testament prophet in his passion for clean conduct. No phase of his work is more notable than the zeal for right living which he leaves behind him. His converts become partisans of purity. Sunday's own mind is clean. He does not, as is sometimes the case, make his pleas for purity a real ministry of evil. In the guise of promoting purity he does not pander to pruriency. As outspoken as the Bible upon social sin, he yet leaves an impression so chaste that no father would hesitate to take his boy to the big men's meeting which Sunday holds in every campaign; and every woman who has once heard him talk to women would be glad to have her daughter hear him also. The verdict of all Christians who have studied conditions in a community after one of the Sunday campaigns is that Sunday has been like a thunder storm that has cleared the moral atmosphere. Life is sweeter and safer and more beautiful for boys and girls after this man has dealt plainly with social sins and temptations. Of course, it is more important to clean up a neighborhood's mind than its streets. Even in cold print one may feel somewhat of the power of the man's message on "The Moral Leper." A PLAIN TALK TO MEN "Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment." "Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." In other words, do just as you please; lie if you want to, steal if you want to. God won't stop you, but he will hold you responsible in the end. Do just as you please until the end comes and the undertaker comes along and pumps the embalming fluid into you and then you are all in. No one is living in ignorance of what will become of him if he does not go right and trot square. He knows there is a heaven for the saved and a hell for the damned, and that's all there is to it. Many men start out on a life of pleasure. Please remember two things. First, pleasure soon has an end, and, second, there is a day of judgment coming and you'll get what's coming to you. God gives every man a square deal. If a man stood up and told me he was going to preach on the things I am this afternoon, I'd want him to answer me several questions, and if he could do that I'd tell him to go ahead. First--Are you kindly disposed toward me? Second--Are you doing this to help me? Third--Do you know what you're talking about? Fourth--Do you practice what you preach? That's fair. Well, for the first. God knows I am kindly disposed toward you. Second, God knows I would do anything in my power to help you be a better man. I want to make it easier for you to be square, and harder for you to go to hell. Third, I know what I'm talking about, for I have the Bible to back me up in parts and the statements of eminent physicians in other parts. And fourth, "Do I practice what I preach?" I will defy and challenge any man or woman on earth, and I'll look any man in the eye and challenge him, in the twenty-seven years I have been a professing Christian, to show anything against me. If I don't live what I preach, gentlemen, I'll leave the pulpit and never walk back here again. I live as I preach and I defy the dirty dogs who have insulted me and my wife and spread black-hearted lies and vilifications. I was born and bred on a farm and at the age of eleven I held my place with men in the harvest field. When I was only nine years old I milked ten cows every morning. I know what hard knocks are. I have seen the seamy side of life. I have crawled out of the sewers and squalor and want. I have struggled ever since I was six years old, an orphan son of a dead soldier, up to this pulpit this afternoon. I know what it is to go to bed with an honest dollar in my overalls pocket, when the Goddess of Liberty became a Jenny Lind and the eagle on the other side became a nightingale and they'd sing a poor, homeless orphan boy to sleep. I'm not here to explode hot air and theories to you. Some men here in town, if their wives asked them if they were coming down here, would say: "Oh no, I don't want to go anywhere I can't take you, dear." The dirty old dogs, they've been many a place they wouldn't take their wife and they wouldn't even let her know they were there. If sin weren't so deceitful it wouldn't be so attractive. The effects get stronger and stronger while you get weaker and weaker all the time, and there is less chance of breaking away. Many think a Christian has to be a sort of dish-rag proposition, a wishy-washy, sissified sort of a galoot that lets everybody make a doormat out of him. Let me tell you the manliest man is the man who will acknowledge Jesus Christ. Christian Character Christianity is the capital on which you build your character. Don't you let the devil fool you. You never become a man until you become a Christian. Christianity is the capital on which you do business. It's your character that gets you anything. Your reputation is what people say about you, but your character is what God and your wife and the angels know about you. Many have reputations of being good, but their characters would make a black mark on a piece of coal or tarred paper. I was over in Terre Haute, Indiana, not long ago, and I was in a bank there admiring the beauty of it when the vice-president, Mr. McCormick, a friend of mine, said: "Bill, you haven't seen the vault yet," and he opened up the vaults there, carefully contrived against burglars, and let me in. There were three, and I wandered from one to another. No one watched me. I could have filled my pockets with gold or silver, but no one watched me. Why did they trust me? Because they knew I was preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, and living up to it. That's why they trusted me. There was a time in my life when a man wouldn't trust me with a yellow dog on a corner fifteen minutes. Before I was converted I could go five rounds so fast you couldn't see me for the dust, and I'm still pretty handy with my dukes and I can still deliver the goods with all express charges prepaid. Before I was converted I could run one hundred yards in ten seconds and circle the bases in fourteen seconds, and I could run just as fast after I was converted. So you don't have to be a dish-rag proposition at all. When a person's acts affect only himself they can be left to the conscience of the individual, but when they affect others the law steps in. When a child has diphtheria, you are not allowed personal liberty; you are quarantined, because your personal liberty could endanger others if exercised. So you haven't any right to live in sin. You say you'll do it anyhow. All right, you'll go to hell, too. Adam and Eve said they would eat the apple anyhow, and the world became a graveyard, and here's the result today. I look out into the world and see a man living in sin. I argue with him, I plead with him. I cry out warning words. I brand that man with a black brand, whose iniquities are responsible for the fall of others. No man lives to himself alone. I hurt or help others by my life. When you go to hell you're going to drag some one else down with you and if you go to heaven you're going to take some one else with you. You say you hate sin. Of course you do if you have self-respect. But you never saw anyone who hates sin worse than I do, or loves a sinner more than I. I'm fighting for the sinners. I'm fighting to save your soul, just as a doctor fights to save your life from a disease. I'm your friend, and you'll find that I'll not compromise one bit with sin. I'll do anything to help you. No man will argue that sin is a good thing. Not a one who does not believe that the community would be better off if there was no sin. I preach against vice to show you that it will make your girl an outcast and your boy a drunkard. I'm fighting everything that will lead to this and if I have to be your enemy to fight it, God pity you, for I'm going to fight. People do not fight sin until it becomes a vice. You say you're not afraid of sin. You ought to be, for your children. It doesn't take boys long to get on the wrong track, and while you are scratching gravel to make one lap, your boy makes ten. We've got kids who have not yet sprouted long breeches who know more about sin and vice than Methuselah. There are little frizzled-top sissies not yet sprouting long dresses who know more about vice than did their great-grandmothers when they were seventy-five years old. The girl who drinks will abandon her virtue. What did Methuselah know about smoking cigarettes? I know there are some sissy fellows out there who object to my talking plain and know you shirk from talking plain. If any one ever tells you that you can't be virtuous and enjoy good health, I brand him as a low, infamous, black-hearted liar. Ask any afflicted man you see on the street. If you could only reveal the heart of every one of them! In most you would find despair and disease. How little he thinks when he is nursing that lust that he is nursing a demon which, like a vampire, will suck his blood and wreck his life and blacken and blight his existence. And if any little children are born to him, they will be weak anemics without the proper blood in their veins to support them. Our young men ought to be taught that no sum they can leave to a charitable institution can blot out the deeds of an ignominious life. You don't have to look far for the reason why so many young men fail; why they go through life weak, ambitionless, useless. Common Sense Let's be common folks together today. Let's be men, and talk sense. As a rule a man wants something better for his children than he has had for himself. My father died before I was born and I lived with my grandfather. He smoked, but he didn't want me to. He chewed, but he didn't want me to. He drank, but he didn't want me to. He cussed, but he didn't want me to. He made wine that would make a man fight his own mother after he had drunk it. I remember how I used to find the bottles and suck the wine through a straw or an onion top. One day a neighbor was in and my grandfather asked him for a chew. He went to hand it back, and I wanted some. He said I couldn't have it. I said I wanted it anyhow, and he picked me up and turned me across his knee and gave me a crack that made me see stars as big as moons. If there is a father that hits the booze, he doesn't want his son to. If he is keeping some one on the side, he doesn't want his son to. In other words, you would not want your son to live like you if you are not living right. An old general was at the bedside of his dying daughter. He didn't believe in the Bible and his daughter said, "What shall I do? You don't believe in the Bible. Mamma does. If I obey one I'm going against the other." The old general put his arms around his daughter and said: "Follow your mother's way; it is the safest." Man wants his children to have that which is sure. I have sometimes imagined that young fellow in Luke xv. He came to his father and said, "Dig up. I'm tired of this and want to see the world." His father didn't know what he meant. "Come across with the mazuma, come clean, divvy. I want the coin, see?" Finally the father tumbled, and he said, "I got you," and he divided up his share and gave it to the young man. Then he goes down to Babylon and starts out on a sporting life. He meets the young blood and the gay dame. I can imagine that young fellow the first time he swore. If his mother had been near he would have looked at her and blushed rose red. But he thought he had to cuss to be a man. No man can be a good husband, no man can be a good father, no man can be a respectable citizen, no man can be a gentleman, and swear. You can hang out a sign of gentleman, but when you cuss you might as well take it in. There are three things which will ruin any town and give it a bad name--open licensed saloons; a dirty, cussing, swearing gang of blacklegs on the street; and vile story tellers. Let a town be known for these three things, and these alone, and you could never start a boom half big enough to get one man there. Old men, young men, boys, swear. What do you cuss for? It doesn't do you any good, gains you nothing in business or society; it loses you the esteem of men. God said more about cussing than anything. God said, "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not bear false witness," but God said more about cussing than them all; and men are still cussing. "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who taketh his name in vain." No Excuse for Swearing I can see how you can get out of anything but cussing. I can see how a man could be placed in such a position that he would kill and be exonerated by the law of God and man, if he killed to protect his life, or the life of another. I can see how a man could be forced to steal if he stole to keep his wife from starving. Up in Chicago several years ago there was a long-continued strike and the last division of the union treasury had given each man twenty-five cents. A man went into the railroad yards and got a bag of coal from one of the cars. They pinched him and he came up before a judge. He told the judge that he had only the twenty-five cents of the last division and he spent that for food. His wife and two children were at home starving and he had no fire. He stole the coal to cook their food. The judge thundered, "Get out of this room and get home and build that fire as quickly as you can." Say, boys, if I was on a jury and you could prove to me that a father had stolen a loaf of bread to keep his wife from starving you could keep me in the room until the ants took me out through the keyhole before I'd stick him. That may not be law, I don't know; but you'll find there is a big streak of human nature in Bill. There isn't a fellow in this crowd but what would be disgusted if his wife or sister would cuss and hit the booze like he does. If she would put fifteen or twenty beers under her belt, he'd go whining around a divorce court for a divorce right away and say he couldn't live with her. Why, you dirty dog, she has to live with you. I heard of a fellow whose wife thought she would show him how he sounded around the house and give him a dose of his own medicine. So one morning he came down and asked for his breakfast. "Why you old blankety, blank, blank, bald-headed, blankety, blankety, blank, you can get your own breakfast." He was horrified, but every time he tried to say anything she would bring out a bunch of lurid oaths until finally he said, "Wife, if you'll cut out that cussing I'll never swear again." I have sometimes tried to imagine myself in Damascus on review day, and have seen a man riding on a horse richly caparisoned with trappings of gold and silver, and he himself clothed in garments of the finest fabrics, and the most costly, though with a face so sad and melancholy that it would cause the beholder to turn and look a second and third time. But he was a leper. And a man unaccustomed to such scenes might be heard to make a remark like this: "How unequally God seems to divide his favors! There is a man who rides and others walk; he is clothed in costly garments; they are almost naked while he is well fed," and they contrast the difference between the man on the horse and the others. If we only knew the breaking hearts of the people we envy we would pity them from the bottom of our souls. I was being driven through a suburb of Chicago by a real estate man who wanted to sell me a lot. He was telling me who lived here and who lived there, and what an honor it would be for me and my children to possess a home there. We were driving past a house that must have cost $100,000 and he said: "That house is owned by Mr. So-and-So. He is one of our multi-millionaires, and he and his wife have been known to live in that house for months and never speak to each other. They each have separate apartments, each has a separate retinue of servants, each a dining-room and sleeping apartments, and months come and go by and they never speak to each other." My thoughts hurried back to the little flat we called our home, where we had lived for seventeen years. I have paid rent enough to pay for it. There wasn't much in it; I could load it in two furniture vans, maybe three, counting the piano, but I would not trade the happiness and the joy and the love of that little flat if I had to take that palatial home and the sorrow and the things that went with it. Family Skeletons Suppose you were driving along the street and a man who was intimately acquainted with the skeletons that are in every family, should tell you the secrets of them all, of that boy who has broken his father's heart by being a drunkard, a blackleg gambler, and that girl who has gone astray, and that wife who is a common drunkard, made so by society, and the father himself who is also a sinner. Leprosy is exceedingly loathsome, and as I study its pathology I am not surprised that God used it as a type of sin. A man who is able to understand this disease, its beginning and its progress, might be approached by a man who was thus afflicted and might say to him, "Hurry! hurry! Show yourself to the priest for the cleansing of the Mosaic law." "Why?" says the man addressed. "What is the trouble?" The other man would say, "Do hurry and show yourself to the priest." But the man says, "That is only a fester, only a water blister, only a pimple, nothing more. I say there is no occasion to be alarmed. You are unduly agitated and excited for my welfare." Those sores are only few now, but it spreads, and it is first upon the hand, then upon the arm, and from the arm it goes on until it lays hold of every nerve, artery, vein with its slimy coil, and continues until the disintegration of the parts takes place and they drop off, and then it is too late. But the man who was concerned saw the beginning of that, not only the end, but the beginning. He looked yonder and saw the end too. If you saw a blaze you would cry, "Fire!" Why? Because you know that if let alone it will consume the building. That is the reason why you hurry when you get evidence of the disease. So I say to you, young man, don't you go with that godless, good-for-nothing gang that blaspheme and sneer at religion, that bunch of character assassins; they will make of your body a doormat to wipe their feet upon. Don't go with that bunch. I heard you swear, I heard you sneer at religion. Stop, or you will become a staggering, muttering, bleary-eyed, foul-mouthed down-and-outer, on your way to hell. I say to you stop, or you will go reeling down to hell, breaking your wife's heart and wrecking your children's lives. And what have you got to show for it? What have you got to show for it? God pity you for all you got to show for selling your soul to the devil. You are a fool. You are a fool. Take it from "Bill," you are a fool. Don't you go, my boy; don't you laugh at that smutty story with a double meaning. Don't go with that gang. But you say to me, "Mr. Sunday, you are unduly excited for my welfare. I know you smell liquor on my breath, but I never expect to become a drunkard. I never expect to become an outcast." Well, you are a fool. You are a fool. No man ever intended to become a drunkard. Every drunkard started out to be simply a moderate drinker. The fellow that tells me that he can leave it alone when he wants to lies. It is a lie. If you can, why don't you leave it alone? You will never let it alone. If you could, you would. My boy, hear me, I have walked along the shores of time and have seen them strewn with the wrecks of those who have drifted in from the seas of lust and passion and are fit only for danger signals to warn the coming race. You can't leave it alone or if you can, the time will come when it will get you. Take it from me. My mother told me never to buy calico by lamplight, because you can't tell whether the colors will stand or run in the wash. Never ask a girl to be your wife when she's got her best bib and tucker on. Call on her and leave at ten o'clock and leave your glove on the piano, and go back the next morning about nine o'clock after your glove and ring the doorbell, and if she comes to the door with her hair done up in curl papers and a slipper on one foot and a shoe on the other foot, and that untied, and a Mother Hubbard on, take to the woods as fast as you can go. Never mind the glove, let the old man have that if he can wear it. But if she comes to the door nice and neat in a neat working house dress, with her sleeves rolled up and her hair neatly done up, and a ribbon or a flower stuck in it, grab her quick. Henry Clay Trumbull told me years ago that he was in Europe and in London he went to a theater to see a man who was going to give an exhibition of wild animals and serpents. He had a royal Bengal tiger and a Numidian lion, and he introduced a beast that seems to be least able of being tamed either by kindness or brutality, a black panther. He made him go through the various motions, and after a while a wire screen was put down in front of the stage between the audience and the performer, and to the weird strains of an oriental band the man approached from the left of the stage and a serpent from the right. The eyes of the serpent and the man met and the serpent quailed before the man. Man was master there. At his command the serpent went through various contortions, and the man stepped to the front of the stage and the serpent wound himself round and round and round the man, until the man and serpent seemed as one. His tongue shot out, his eyes dilated. The man gave a call, but the audience thought that part of the performance, and that horrified audience sat there and heard bone after bone in that man's body crack and break as the reptile tightened its grasp upon his body, and saw his body crushed before he could be saved. He had bought that snake when it was only four feet long and he had watered and nursed it until it was thirty-five feet. At first he could have killed it; at last it killed him. Nursing Bad Habits Are you nursing a habit today? Is it drink? Are you nursing and feeding that which will wreck your life and wreck you upon the shores of passion, notwithstanding all the wrecks you have seen of those who have gone down the line? I never got such a good idea of leprosy as I did by reading that wonderful book of the nineteenth century by General Lew Wallace, "Ben Hur." You remember the banishment of Ben Hur and the disintegration of that family life and estate, and the return of Ben Hur from his exile. He goes past his old home. The blinds are closed and drawn and all is deserted. He lies down upon the doorstep and falls asleep. His mother and sister have been in the leper colony and are dying of leprosy and only waiting the time when they will be covered with the remains of others who have come there. So they have come to the city to get bread and secure water, and they see their son and brother lying on the doorstep of their old home. They dare not awaken him for fear anguish at learning of their fate would be more than he could bear. They dare not touch him because it is against the law, so they creep close to him and put their leprous lips against his sandal-covered feet. They then go back again with the bread and water for which they had come. Presently Ben Hur awakens and rubs his eyes and sees great excitement. (This part of the story is mine.) Along comes a blear-eyed, old, whisky-soaked degenerate and Ben Hur asks him what is the trouble, what is the excitement about, and he says: "A couple of lepers have been cleansed, but there is nothing to that, just some occult power, it's all a fake." Ben Hur goes farther on and hears about this wonder, and they say it is nothing; nothing, some long-haired evangelist who says his name is Jesus Christ; it's all a fake. Then Ben Hur goes farther and discovers that it is Jesus of Nazareth and that he has cleansed Ben Hur's own mother and sister. He hears the story and acknowledges the Nazarene. The Leprosy of Sin The lepers had to cry, "Unclean! Unclean!" in those days to warn the people. They were compelled by law to do that: also they were compelled by law to go on the side of the street toward which the wind was blowing lest the breeze bring the germs of their body to the clean and infect them with the disease. And the victim of this disease was compelled to live in a lonely part of the city, waiting until his teeth began to drop out, his eyes to drop from their sockets, and his fingers to drop from his hands, then he was compelled to go out in the tombs, the dying among the dead, there to live until at last he was gathered to the remains of the dead. That was the law that governed the leper in those days. All others shrank from him; he went forth alone. Alone! No man of all he loved or knew, was with him; he went forth on his way, alone, sick at heart, to die alone. Leprosy is infectious. And so is sin. Sin begins in so-called innocent flirtation. The old, god-forsaken scoundrel of a libertine, who looks upon every woman as legitimate prey for his lust, will contaminate a community; one drunkard, staggering and maundering and muttering his way down to perdition, will debauch a town. Some men ought to be hurled out of society; they ought to be kicked out of lodges; they ought to be kicked out of churches, and out of politics, and every other place where decent men live or associate. And I want to lift the burden tonight from the heads of the unoffending womanhood and hurl it on the heads of offending manhood. Rid the world of those despicable beasts who live off the earnings of the unfortunate girl who is merchandising herself for gain. In some sections they make a business of it. I say commercialized vice is hell. I do not believe any more in a segregated district for immoral women than I would in having a section for thieves to live in where you could hire one any day or night in the week to steal for you. There are two things which have got to be driven out or they'll drive us out, and they are open licensed saloons and protected vice. Society needs a new division of anathemas. You hurl the burden on the head of the girl; and the double-dyed scoundrel that caused her ruin is received in society with open arms, while the girl is left to hang her head and spend her life in shame. Some men are so rotten and vile that they ought to be disinfected and take a bath in carbolic acid and formaldehyde. Shut the lodge door in the face of every man that you know to be a moral leper; don't let him hide behind his uniform and his badge when you know him to be so rotten that the devil would duck up an alley rather than meet him face to face. Kick him out of church. Kick him out of society. You don't live your life alone. Your life affects others. Some girls will walk the streets and pick up every Tom, Dick and Harry that will come across with the price of an ice-cream soda or a joy ride. So with the boy. He will sit at your table and drink beer, and I want to tell you if you are low-down enough to serve beer and wine in your home, when you serve it you are as low down as the saloon-keeper, and I don't care whether you do it for society or for anything else. If you serve liquor or drink you are as low down as the saloon-keeper in my opinion. So the boy who had not grit enough to turn down his glass at the banquet and refuse to drink is now a blear-eyed, staggering drunkard, reeling to hell. He couldn't stand the sneers of the crowd. Many a fellow started out to play cards for beans, and tonight he would stake his soul for a show-down. The hole in the gambling table is not very big; it is about big enough to shove a dollar through; but it is big enough to shove your wife through; big enough to shove your happiness through; your home through; your salary, your character; just big enough to shove everything that is dear to you in this world through. Listen to me. Bad as it is to be afflicted with physical leprosy, moral leprosy is ten thousand times worse. I don't care if you are the richest man in the town, the biggest taxpayer in the county, the biggest politician in the district, or in the state. I don't care a rap if you carry the political vote of Pennsylvania in your vest pocket, and if you can change the vote from Democratic to Republican in the convention--if after your worldly career is closed my text would make you a fitting epitaph for your tombstone and obituary notice in the papers, then what difference would it make what you had done--"he was a leper." He was a great politician--but "He was a leper." What difference would it make? I'll tell you, I was never more interested in my life than in reading the story of an old Confederate colonel who was a stickler for martial discipline. One day he had a trifling case of insubordination. He ordered his men to halt, and he had the offender shot. They dug the grave and he gave the command to march, and they had stopped just three minutes by the clock. At the close of the war they made him chief of police of a Southern city, and he was so vile and corrupt that the people arose and ordered his dismissal. Then a great earthquake swept over the city, and the people rushed from their homes and thousands of people crowded the streets and there was great excitement. Some asked, "Where is the colonel?" and they said, "You will find him in one of two or three places." So they searched and found him in a den of infamy. He was so drunk that he didn't realize the danger he was in. They led him out, then put him upon a snow white-horse, put his spurs on his boots and his regimentals on; they pinned a star on his breast and put a cockade on his hat, and said to him: "Colonel, we command you as mayor of the city to quell this riot. You have supreme authority." He rode out among the people to quell the riot, dug his spurs into the white side of the horse and the crimson flowed out, and he rode in and out among the surging mass of humanity. He rode out among the people with commands here, torrents of obscenity there, and in twenty-five minutes the stillness of death reigned in city squares, so marvelously did they fear him, so wonderful was his power over men. He then rode out, dismounted, took off his cockade, tore the star from his breast and threw it down, threw off his regimentals, took off his sword; then he staggered back to the house of infamy, where three months later he died, away from his wife, away from virtue, away from morality, his name synonymous with all that is vile. What difference did it make that he had power over men when you might sum up his life in the words, "But he was a leper." What difference did it make? I pity the boy or girl from the depths of my soul, who if you ask are you willing to be a Christian, will answer: "Mr. Sunday, I would like to be, but if I tell that at home my brothers will abuse me, my mother will sneer at me, my father will curse me. If I were, I would have no encouragement to stand and fight the battle." I pity from the depths of my soul that boy or girl, the boy who has a father like that; the girl that has a mother like that, who have a joint like that for a home. Unclean! Suppose every young man who is a moral leper were impelled by some uncontrollable impulse over which he had no power to make public revelations of his sins! Down the street he comes in his auto and you speak to him from the curbstone and he will say: "Unclean! Unclean!" Yonder he comes walking down the street. Suppose that to every man and woman he meets he is impelled and compelled to make revelation of the fact that he is a leper. Leprosy is an infectious disease; it is the germ of sin. If there is an evil in you the evil will dwell in others. When we do wrong we inspire others--and your lives scatter disease when you come in contact with others. If there is sin in the father there will be sin in the boy; if there is sin in the mother, there will be sin in the daughter; if there is sin in the sister, there will be sin in the brother; by your influence you will spread it. If you live the wrong way you will drag somebody else to perdition with you as you go, and kindred ties will facilitate it. Supposing all your hearts were open. Supposing we had glass doors to our hearts, and we could walk down the street and look in and see where you have been, and with whom you have been and what you have been doing. A good many of you would want stained-glass windows and heavy tapestry to cover them. "But the Lord Looketh on the Heart" Suppose I could put a screen behind me, pull a string or push a button, and produce on that screen a view of the hearts of the people. I would say: "Here is Mr. and Mrs. A's life, as it is, and here, as the people think it is. Here is what he really is. Here is where he has been. Here is how much booze he drinks. Here is how much he lost last year at horse races." But these are the things that society does not take note of. Society takes no note of the flirtation on the street. It waits until the girl has lost her virtue and then it slams the door in her face. It takes no note of that young man drinking at a banquet table; it waits until he becomes a bleary-eyed drunkard and then it will slam the door in his face. It will take no note of the young fellow that plays cards for a prize; it waits until he becomes a blackleg gambler and then it slams the door in his face. God says, "Look out in the beginning for that thing." Society takes no note of the beginning. It waits until it becomes vice, and then it organizes Civic Righteousness clubs. Get back to the beginning and do your work there. God has planned to save this world through the preaching of men and women, and God reaches down to save men; he pulls them out of the grog shops and puts them on the water wagon. I never could imagine an angel coming down from heaven and preaching to men and women to save them. God never planned to save this world with the preaching of angels. When Jesus Christ died on the cross he died to redeem those whose nature he took. An angel wouldn't know what he was up against. Some one would say: "Good Angel, were you ever drunk?" "No!" "Good Angel, did you ever swear?" "Oh, no!" "Good Angel, did you ever try to put up a stove-pipe in the fall?" "Oh, no!" "Did you ever stub your toe while walking the floor with the baby at three A. M?" "Oh, no!" "Well, then, Mr. Angel, you don't know. You say there is great mercy with God, but you are not tempted." No. God planned to save the world by saving men and women and letting them tell the story. The servant of Naaman entered the hut of the prophet Elisha and found him sitting on a high stool writing with a quill pen on papyrus. The servant bowed low and said, "The great and mighty Naaman, captain of the hosts of the king of Syria, awaits thee. Unfortunately he is a leper and cannot enter your august presence. He has heard of the miraculous cures that you have wrought and he hopes to become the recipient of your power." The old prophet of God replied: "Tell him to dip seven times in the Jordan--beat it, beat it, beat it." The servant came out to Naaman, who was sitting on his horse. "Well, is he at home?" "He's at home, but he is a queer duck." Naaman thought that Elisha would come out and pat the sores and say incantations, like an Indian medicine man. Naaman was wroth, like many a fool today. God reveals to the sinner the plan of salvation and, instead of thanking God for salvation and doing what God wants him to do, he condemns God and everybody else for bothering him. Now here is a man who wants to be a Christian. What will he do? Will he go ask some old saloon-keeper? Will he go ask some of these old brewers? Will he ask some of the fellows of the town? Will he ask the County Liquor Dealers' Association? Where will he go? To the preacher, of course. He is the man to go to when you want to be a Christian. Go to a doctor when you are sick, to a blacksmith when your horse is to be shod, but go to the preacher when you want your heart set right. So Naaman goes into the muddy water and the water begins to lubricate those old sores, and it begins to itch, and he says, "Gee whizz," like many a young fellow today who goes to a church and just gets religion enough to make him feel miserable. An old fellow in Iowa came to me and said, "Bill, I have been to hear you every night and you have done me a lot of good. I used to cuss my old woman every day and I ain't cussed her for a week. I'm getting a little better." The Joy of Religion The trouble with many men is that they have got just enough religion to make them miserable. If there is no joy in religion, you have got a leak in your religion. Some haven't religion enough to pay their debts. Would that I might have a hook and for every debt that you left unpaid I might jerk off a piece of clothing. If I did some of you fellows would have not anything on but a celluloid collar and a pair of socks. Some of you have not got religion enough to have family prayer. Some of you people haven't got religion enough to take the beer bottles out of your cellar and throw them in the alley. You haven't got religion enough to tell that proprietor of the red light, "No, you can't rent my house after the first of June;" to tell the saloon-keeper, "You can't rent my house when your lease runs out"; and I want to tell you that the man that rents his property to a saloon-keeper is as low-down as the saloon-keeper. The trouble with you is that you are so taken up with business, with politics, with making money, with your lodges, and each and every one is so dependent on the other, that you are scared to death to come out and live clean cut for God Almighty. You have not fully surrendered yourself to God. The matter with a lot of you people is that your religion is not complete. You have not yielded yourself to God and gone out for God and God's truth. Why, I am almost afraid to make some folks laugh for fear that I will be arrested for breaking a costly piece of antique bric-à-brac. You would think that if some people laughed it would break their faces. To see some people you would think that the essential of orthodox Christianity is to have a face so long you could eat oatmeal out of the end of a gas pipe. Sister, that is not religion; I want to tell you that the happy, smiling, sunny-faced religion will win more people to Jesus Christ than the miserable old grim-faced kind will in ten years. I pity anyone who can't laugh. There must be something wrong with their religion or their liver. The devil can't laugh. So I can see Naaman as he goes into the water and dips seven times, and lo! his flesh becomes again as a little child's. When? When he did what God told him to do. I have seen men come down the aisle by the thousands, men who have drank whisky enough to sink a ship. I have seen fallen women come to the front by scores and hundreds, and I have seen them go away cleansed by the power of God. When? When they did just what God told them to do. I wish to God the Church were as afraid of imperfection as it is of perfection. I saw a woman that for twenty-seven years had been proprietor of a disorderly house, and I saw her come down the aisle, close her doors, turn the girls out of her house and live for God. I saw enough converted in one town where there were four disorderly houses to close their doors; they were empty; the girls had all fled home to their mothers. Out in Iowa a fellow came to me and spread a napkin on the platform--a napkin as big as a tablecloth. He said: "I want a lot of shavings and sawdust." "What for?" "I'll tell you; I want enough to make a sofa pillow. Right here is where I knelt down and was converted and my wife and four children, and my neighbors. I would like to have enough to make a sofa pillow to have something in my home to help me think of God. I don't want to forget God, or that I was saved. Can you give me enough?" I said, "Yes, indeed, and if you want enough to make a mattress, all right, take it; and if you want enough of the tent to make a pair of breeches for each of the boys, why take your scissors and cut it right out, if it will help you to keep your mind on God." That is why I like to have people come down to the front and publicly acknowledge God. I like to have a man have a definite experience in religion--something to remember. A PLAIN TALK TO WOMEN And I say to you, young girl, don't go with that godless, God-forsaken, sneering young man that walks the streets smoking cigarettes. He would not walk the streets with you if you smoked cigarettes. But you say you will marry him and reform him; he would not marry you to reform you. Don't go to that dance. Don't you know that it is the most damnable, low-down institution on the face of God's earth, that it causes more ruin than anything this side of hell? Don't you go with that young man; don't you go to that dance. That is why we have so many whip-poor-will widows around the country: they married some of these mutts to reform them, and instead of doing that the undertaker got them. I say, young girl, don't go to that dance; it has proven to be the moral graveyard that has caused more ruination than anything that was ever spewed out of the mouth of hell. Don't go with that young fellow for a joy ride at midnight. Girls, when some young fellow comes up and asks you the greatest question that you will ever be asked or called upon to answer, next to the salvation of your own soul, what will you say? "Oh, this is so sudden!" That is all a bluff; you have been waiting for it all the time. But, girls, never mind now, get down to facts. When he asks you the greatest question, the most important one that any girl is ever asked, next to the salvation of her soul, just say, "Sit down and let me ask you three questions. I want to ask you these three questions and if I am satisfied with your answer, it will determine my answer to your question. 'Did you believe me to be virtuous when you came here to ask me to be your wife?'" "Oh, yes, I believed you to be virtuous. That's the reason I came here. You are like violets dipped in dew." The second question: "Have you as a young man lived as you demand of me as a girl that I should have lived?" The third question: "If I, as a girl, had lived and done as you, as a young man, and you knew it, would you ask me to marry you?" They will line up and nine times out of ten they will take the count. You can line them up, and I know what I am talking about, and I defy any man on God's earth successfully to contradict me. I have the goods. The average young man is more particular about the company he keeps than the average girl. I'll tell you. If he meets somebody on the street whom he doesn't want to meet he will duck into the first open doorway and avoid the publicity of meeting her, for fear she might smile or give an indication that she had seen him somewhere and sometime before that. Yet our so-called best girls keep company with young men whose character would make a black mark on a piece of anthracite. Their characters are foul and rotten and damnable. I like to see a girl who has a good head, and can choose right because it is right, never minding the criticism. Choose the good and be careful of good company and good conduct, and keep company with a good young fellow. Don't go with the fellow whose reputation is bad. Everybody knows it is bad, and if you are seen with him you will lose your reputation as well, although your virtue is intact; and they might as well take you to the graveyard and bury you, when your reputation is gone. When a man like that asks you to go with him, say to him that if he will live the way you want him to you will go with him. If he would take a stand like that there wouldn't be so many wrecks. If our women and girls would take higher stands and say, "No, no, we will not keep company with you unless you live the way I want you to," there would be better men. A lot of you women hold yourselves too cheaply. You are scared to death for fear you will be what the world irreverently calls "an old maid." Hospitality You remember the prophet Elisha and his journey to the school of prophets up to Mount Carmel. There was a woman who noticed the actions and conduct of the man of God and she said to her husband, "Let us build a little room and place therein a bed, and bowl and pitcher, that he may make it his home." The suggestion evidently met with the approval of the husband, because ever afterward the man of God enjoyed this hospitality. I sometimes thought she might have been a new woman of the olden times, because no mention is made of the husband. You never hear of some old lobsters unless they are fortunate enough to marry a woman who does things and their name is always mentioned in connection with what the wife does. You know there are homes in which the advent of one, two and possibly three children is considered a curse instead of a blessing. God, in his providence, has often denied the honor of maternity to some women. But there are married women who shrink from maternity, not because of ill health, but simply because they love ease, because they love fine garments and ability to flirt like a butterfly at some social function. Crimes have been and are being committed; hands are stained with blood; and that very crime has made France the charnel house of the world. And America, we of our boasted intelligence and wealth, we are fast approaching the same doom, until or unless it behooves somebody with grit and courage to preach against the prevailing sins and run the risk of incurring the displeasure of people who divert public attention from their own vileness rather than condemn themselves for the way they are living. They say the man who is preaching against it is vulgar, rather than the man who did it. I am sure there is not an angel in heaven that would not be glad to come to earth and be honored with motherhood if God would grant her that privilege. What a grand thing it must be, at the end of your earthly career, to look back upon a noble and godly life, knowing you did all you could to help leave this old world to God and made your contributions in tears and in prayers and taught your offspring to be God-fearing, so that when you went you would continue to produce your noble character in your children. Maternity Out of Fashion Society has just about put maternity out of fashion. When you stop to consider the average society woman I do not think maternity has lost anything. The humbler children are raised by their mothers instead of being turned over to a governess. [Illustration: "SOCIETY HAS JUST ABOUT PUT MATERNITY OUT OF FASHION"] There are too many girls who marry for other causes than love. I think ambition, indulgence and laziness lead more girls to the altar than love--girls not actuated by love, but simply willing to pay the price of wifehood to wear fine clothes. They are not moved by the noble desires of manhood or womanhood. Some girls marry for novelty and some girls marry for a home. Some fool mothers encourage girls to marry for ease so they can go to the matinee and buzz around. Some fool girls marry for money and some girls marry for society, because by connecting their name with a certain family's they go up a rung in the social ladder, and some girls marry young bucks to reform them--and they are the biggest fools in the bunch, because the bucks would not marry the girls to reform them. You mothers are worse fools to encourage your daughter to marry some old lobster because his father has money and when he dies, maybe your daughter can have good clothes and ride in an auto instead of hoofing it. Look at the girls on the auction block today. Look at the awful battle the average stenographer and average clerk has to fight. You cannot work for six dollars a week and wear fine duds and be on the square as much as you are without having the people suspicious. In a letter to Miss Borson, President Roosevelt said: "The man or woman who avoids marriage and has a heart so cold as to know no passion and a brain so shallow as to dislike having children is, in fact, a criminal." Is it well with thee? Is it well with your husband? "The best man in the world," you answer. Very well; is it well with the child? I think its responsibilities are equal, if they don't outweigh its privileges, and when God is in the heart of the child, I don't wonder that that home is a haven of peace and rest. I have no motive in preaching except the interest I have in the moral welfare of the people. There is not money enough to hire me to preach. I tell you, ladies, we have to do something more than wipe our eyes, and blow our nose, and say "Come to Jesus." Go out and shell the woods and make them let you know why they don't "come to Jesus." I believe the time will come when sex hygiene will form part of the high-school curriculum. I would rather have my children taught sex hygiene than Greek and Latin. A lot of the high-school curriculum is mere fad. I think the time will come when our girls will be taught in classes with some graduated woman physician for an instructor. Women live on a higher plane, morally, than men. No woman was ever ruined that some brute of a man did not take the initiative. Women have kept themselves purer than men. I believe a good woman is the best thing this side of heaven and a bad woman the worst thing this side of hell. I think woman rises higher and sinks lower than man. I think she is the most degraded on earth or the purest on earth. Our homes are on the level with women. Towns are on the level with homes. What women are our homes will be; and what the town is, the men will be, so you hold the destiny of the nation. I believe there is something unfinished in the make-up of a girl who does not have religion. The average girl today no longer looks forward to motherhood as the crowning glory of womanhood. She is turning her home into a gambling shop and a social beer-and-champagne-drinking joint, and her society is made up of poker players, champagne, wine and beer drinkers, grass-widowers and jilted jades and slander-mongers--that comprises the society of many a girl today. She is becoming a matinee-gadder and fudge-eater. The Girl Who Flirts I wish I could make a girl that flirts see herself as others see her. If you make eyes at a man on the street he will pay you back. It doesn't mean that you are pretty. It means that if you don't care any more for yourself than that why should he? The average man will take a girl at her personal estimate of herself. It takes a whole lot of nerve for a fellow to look a girl in the face and say, "Will you be my wife and partner, and help me fight the battle during life?" but I think it means a whole lot more to the girl who has to answer and fight that question. But the fool girl loafs around and waits to be chosen and takes the first chance she gets and seems to think that if they get made one, the laws of man can make them two again. The divorce laws are damnable. America is first in many things that I love, but there are many things that are a disgrace. We lead the world in crime; and lead the world in divorce--we who boast of our culture. Many a girl has found out after she is married that it would have been a good deal easier to die an old maid than to have said "yes," and become the wife of some cigarette-smoking, cursing, damnable libertine. They will launch the matrimonial boat and put the oars in and try it once for luck, anyway, and so we have many women praying for unconverted husbands. [Illustration: "WHO WILL LEAD THE WAY?"] [Illustration: "HA! HA! OLD DEVIL, I'VE GOT YOU BEAT!"] I preached like this in a town once and the next day I heard of about five engagements that were broken. I can give you advice now, but if the knot is tied, the thing is done. I am a Roman Catholic on divorce. There are a whole lot of things worse than living and dying an old maid and one of them is marrying the wrong man. So don't be one to do that. Now, girls, don't simper and look silly when you speak about love. There is nothing silly about it, although some folks are silly because they are in love. Love is the noblest and purest gift of God to man and womankind. Don't let your actions advertise "Man Wanted, Quick." That is about the surest way not to get a man. You might get a thing with breeches on, but he is no man. Many a woman is an old maid because she wanted to do her share of the courting. Don't get excited and want to hurry things along. If a man begins to act as though he is after you, the surest way to get him is just to make him feel you don't want him, unless you drive him off by appearing too indifferent. And, girls, don't worry if you think you are not going to get a chance to marry. Some of the noblest men in the world have been bachelors and some of the noblest women old maids. And, woman, for God's sake, when you do get married, don't transfer the love God gave you to bestow on a little child to a Spitz dog or a brindle pup. The Task of Womanhood All great women are satisfied with their common sphere in life and think it is enough to fill the lot God gave them in this world as wife and mother. I tell you the devil and women can damn this world, and Jesus and women can save this old world. It remains with womanhood today to lift our social life to a higher plane. Mothers, be more careful of your boys and girls. Explain these evils that contaminate our social life today. I have had women say to me, "Mr. Sunday, don't you think there is danger of talking too much to them when they are so young?" Not much; just as soon as a girl is able to know the pure from the impure she should be taught. Oh, mothers, mothers, you don't know what your girl is being led to by this false and mock modesty. Don't teach your girls that the only thing in the world is to marry. Why, some girls marry infidels because they were not taught to say "I would not do it." A girl is a big fool to marry an infidel. God says, "Be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers." I believe there is a race yet to appear which will be as far superior in morals to us as we are superior to the morals in the days of Julius Cæsar; but that race will never appear until God-fearing young men marry God-fearing girls and the offspring are God-fearing. Culture will never save the world. If these miserable human vampires who feed and fatten upon the virtue of womanhood can get off with impunity; nay, more, be feasted and petted and coddled by society, we might as well back-pedal out and sink in shame, for we can never see to the heights nor command the respect of the great and good. What paved the way for the downfall of the mightiest dynasties--proud and haughty Greece and imperial Rome? The downfall of their womanhood. The virtue of womanhood is the rampart wall of American civilization. Break that down and with the stones thereof you can pave your way to the hottest hell, and reeking vice and corruption. CHAPTER XVIII "Help Those Women" If the womanhood of America had been no better than its manhood, the devil would have had the country fenced in long ago.--BILLY SUNDAY. The average American is somewhat of a sentimentalist. "Home, Sweet Home," is an American song. No people, except possibly the Irish, respond more readily to the note of "Mother" than the Americans. No other nation honors womanhood so greatly. We are really a chivalrous people. In this respect, as in so many others, Sunday is true to type. His sermons abound with passages which express the best American sentiment toward womanhood. It is good for succeeding generations that such words as the following should be uttered in the ears of tens and hundreds of thousands of young people, and reprinted in scores and hundreds of newspapers. "MOTHER" The story of Moses is one of the most beautiful and fascinating in all the world. It takes a hold on us and never for an instant does it lose its interest, for it is so graphically told that once heard it is never forgotten. I have often imagined the anxiety with which that child was born, for he came into the world with the sentence of death hanging over him, for Pharaoh had decreed that the male children should die. The mother defied even the command of the king and determined that the child should live, and right from the beginning the battle of right against might was fought at the cradle. Moses' mother was a slave. She had to work in the brickyards or labor in the field, but God was on her side and she won, as the mother always wins with God on her side. Before going to work she had to choose some hiding place for her child, and she put his little sister, Miriam, on guard while she kept herself from being seen by the soldiers of Pharaoh, who were seeking everywhere to murder the Jewish male children. For three months she kept him hidden, possibly finding a new hiding place every few days. It is hard to imagine anything more difficult than to hide a healthy, growing baby, and he was hidden for three months. Now he was grown larger and more full of life and a more secure hiding place had to be found, and I can imagine this mother giving up her rest and sleep to prepare an ark for the saving of her child. I believe the plan must have been formulated in heaven. I have often thought God must have been as much interested in that work as was the mother of Moses, for you can't make me believe that an event so important as that, and so far-reaching in its results, ever happened by luck or chance. Possibly God whispered the plan to the mother when she went to him in prayer and in her grief because she was afraid the sword of Pharaoh would murder her child. And how carefully the material out of which the ark was made had to be selected! I think every twig was carefully scrutinized in order that nothing poor might get into its composition, and the weaving of that ark, the mother's heart, her soul, her prayers, her tears, were interwoven. Oh, if you mothers would exercise as much care over the company your children keep, over the books they read and the places they go, there would not be so many girls feeding the red-light district, nor so many boys growing up to lead criminal lives. And with what thanksgiving she must have poured out her heart when at last the work was done and the ark was ready to carry its precious cargo, more precious than if it was to hold the crown jewels of Egypt. And I can imagine the last night that baby was in the home. Probably some of you can remember when the last night came when baby was alive; you can remember the last night the coffin stayed, and the next day the pall-bearers and the hearse came. The others may have slept soundly, but there was no sleep for you, and I can imagine there was no sleep for Moses' mother. "There are whips and tops and pieces of string And shoes that no little feet ever wear; There are bits of ribbon and broken wings And tresses of golden hair. "There are dainty jackets that never are worn There are toys and models of ships; There are books and pictures all faded and torn And marked by finger tips Of dimpled hands that have fallen to dust-- Yet we strive to think that the Lord is just. "Yet a feeling of bitterness fills our soul; Sometimes we try to pray, That the Reaper has spared so many flowers And taken ours away. And we sometimes doubt if the Lord can know How our riven hearts did love them so. "But we think of our dear ones dead, Our children who never grow old, And how they are waiting and watching for us In the city with streets of gold; And how they are safe through all the years From sickness and want and war. We thank the great God, with falling tears, For the things in the cabinet drawer." A Mother's Watchfulness Others in the house might have slept, but not a moment could she spare of the precious time allotted her with her little one, and all through the night she must have prayed that God would shield and protect her baby and bless the work she had done and the step she was about to take. Some people often say to me: "I wonder what the angels do; how they employ their time?" I think I know what some of them did that night. You can bet they were not out to some bridge-whist party. They guarded that house so carefully that not a soldier of old Pharaoh ever crossed the threshold. They saw to it that not one of them harmed that baby. At dawn the mother must have kissed him good-bye, placed him in the ark and hid him among the reeds and rushes, and with an aching heart and tear-dimmed eyes turned back again to the field and back to the brickyards to labor and wait to see what God would do. She had done her prayerful best, and when you have done that you can bank on God to give the needed help. If we only believed that with God all things are possible no matter how improbable, what unexpected answers the Lord would give to our prayers! She knew God would help her some way, but I don't think she ever dreamed that God would help her by sending Pharaoh's daughter to care for the child. It was no harder for God to send the princess than it was to get the mother to prepare the ark. What was impossible from her standpoint was easy for God. Pharaoh's daughter came down to the water to bathe, and the ark was discovered, just as God wanted it to be, and one of her maids was sent to fetch it. You often wonder what the angels are doing. I think some of the angels herded the crocodiles on the other side of the Nile to keep them from finding Moses and eating him up. You can bank on it, all heaven was interested to see that not one hair of that baby's head was injured. There weren't devils enough in hell to pull one hair out of its head. The ark was brought and with feminine curiosity the daughter of Pharaoh had to look into it to see what was there, and when they removed the cover, there was lying a strong, healthy baby boy, kicking up his heels and sucking his thumbs, as probably most of us did when we were boys, and probably as you did when you were a girl. The baby looks up and weeps, and those tears blotted out all that was against it and gave it a chance for its life. I don't know, but I think an angel stood there and pinched it to make it cry, for it cried at the right time. Just as God plans. God always does things at the right time. Give God a chance; he may be a little slow at times, but he will always get around in time. The tears of that baby were the jewels with which Israel was ransomed from Egyptian bondage. The princess had a woman's heart and when a woman's heart and a baby's tears meet, something happens that gives the devil cold feet. Perhaps the princess had a baby that had died, and the sight of Moses may have torn the wound open and made it bleed afresh. But she had a woman's heart, and that made her forget she was the daughter of Pharaoh and she was determined to give protection to that baby. Faithful Miriam (the Lord be praised for Miriam) saw the heart of the princess reflected in her face. Miriam had studied faces so much that she could read the princess' heart as plainly as if written in an open book, and she said to her: "Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?" and the princess said, "Go." I see her little feet and legs fly as she runs down the hot, dusty road, and her mother must have seen her coming a mile away, and she ran to meet her own baby put back in her arms. And she was being paid Egyptian gold to take care of her own baby. See how the Lord does things? "Now you take this child and nurse it for me and I will pay you your wages." It was a joke on Pharaoh's daughter, paying Moses' mother for doing what she wanted to do more than anything else--nurse her own baby. How quickly the mother was paid for these long hours of anxiety and alarm and grief, and if the angels know what is going on what a hilarious time there must have been in heaven when they saw Moses and Miriam back at home, under the protection of the daughter of Pharaoh. I imagine she dropped on her knees and poured out her heart to God, who had helped her so gloriously. She must have said: "Well, Lord, I knew you would help me. I knew you would take care of my baby when I made the ark and put him in it and put it in the water, but I never dreamed that you would put him back into my arms to take care of, so I would not have to work and slave in the field and make brick and be tortured almost to death for fear that the soldiers of Pharaoh would find my baby and kill him. I never thought you would soften the stony heart of Pharaoh and make him pay me for what I would rather do than anything else in this world." I expect to meet Moses' mother in heaven, and I am going to ask her how much old Pharaoh had to pay her for that job. I think that's one of the best jokes, that old sinner having to pay the mother to take care of her own baby. But I tell you, if you give God a chance, he will fill your heart to overflowing. Just give him a chance. A Mother's Bravery This mother had remarkable pluck. Everything was against her but she would not give up. Her heart never failed. She made as brave a fight as any man ever made at the sound of the cannon or the roar of musketry. "The bravest battle that was ever fought, Shall I tell you where and when? On the maps of the world you'll find it not-- 'Twas fought by the mothers of men. "Nay, not with cannon or battle shot, With sword or noble pen, Nay, not with the eloquent word or thought, From the mouths of wonderful men. "But deep in the walled-up woman's heart-- Of women that would not yield. But, bravely, silently bore their part-- Lo, there is the battle-field. "No marshaling troops, no bivouac song, No banner to gleam and wave; But oh, these battles they last so long-- From babyhood to the grave." Mothers are always brave when the safety of their children is concerned. [Illustration: "DON'T GIVE A PUG-NOSED BULLDOG THE LOVE A BABY OUGHT TO BE GETTING."] This incident happened out West. A mother was working in a garden and the little one was sitting under a tree in the yard playing. The mother heard the child scream; she ran, and a huge snake was wrapping its coils about the baby, and as its head swung around she leaped and grabbed it by the neck and tore it from her baby and hurled it against a tree. Fathers often give up. The old man often goes to boozing, becomes dissipated, takes a dose of poison and commits suicide; but the mother will stand by the home and keep the little band together if she has to manicure her finger nails over a washboard to do it. If men had half as much grit as the women there would be different stories written about a good many homes. Look at her work! It is the greatest in the world; in its far-reaching importance it is transcendently above everything in the universe--her task in molding hearts and lives and shaping character. If you want to find greatness don't go to the throne, go to the cradle; and the nearer you get to the cradle the nearer you get to greatness. Now, when Jesus wanted to give his disciples an impressive object lesson he called in a college professor, did he? Not much. He brought in a little child and said: "Except ye become as one of these, ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom of God." The work is so important that God will not trust anybody with it but a mother. The launching of a boy or a girl to live for Christ is greater work than the launching of a battleship. Moses was a chosen vessel of the Lord and God wanted him to get the right kind of a start, so he gave him a good mother. There wasn't a college professor in all Egypt that God would trust with that baby! so he put the child back in its mother's arms. He knew the best one on earth to trust with that baby was its own mother. When God sends us great men he wants to have them get the right kind of a start. So he sees to it that they have a good mother. Most any old stick will do for a daddy. God is particular about the mothers. Good Mothers Needed And so the great need of this country, or any other country, is good mothers, and I believe we have more good mothers in America than any other nation on earth. If Washington's mother had been like a Happy Hooligan's mother, Washington would have been a Happy Hooligan. Somebody has said: "God could not be everywhere, so he gave us mothers." Now there may be poetry in it, but it's true "that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world," and if every cradle was rocked by a good mother, the world would be full of good men, as sure as you breathe. If every boy and every girl today had a good mother, the saloons and disreputable houses would go out of business tomorrow. A young man one time joined a church and the preacher asked him: "What was it I said that induced you to be a Christian?" Said the young man: "Nothing that I ever heard you say, but it is the way my mother lived." I tell you an ounce of example outweighs forty million tons of theory and speculation. If the mothers would live as they should, we preachers would have little to do. Keep the devil out of the boys and girls and he will get out of the world. The old sinners will die off if we keep the young ones clean. The biggest place in the world is that which is being filled by the people who are closely in touch with youth. Being a king, an emperor or a president is mighty small potatoes compared to being a mother or the teacher of children, whether in a public school or in a Sunday school, and they fill places so great that there isn't an angel in heaven that wouldn't be glad to give a bushel of diamonds to boot to come down here and take their places. Commanding an army is little more than sweeping a street or pounding an anvil compared with the training of a boy or girl. The mother of Moses did more for the world than all the kings that Egypt ever had. To teach a child to love truth and hate a lie, to love purity and hate vice, is greater than inventing a flying machine that will take you to the moon before breakfast. Unconsciously you set in motion influences that will damn or bless the old universe and bring new worlds out of chaos and transform them for God. God's Hall of Fame A man sent a friend of mine some crystals and said: "One of these crystals as large as a pin point will give a distinguishable green hue to sixteen hogsheads of water." Think of it! Power enough in an atom to tincture sixteen hogsheads of water. There is power in a word or act to blight a boy and, through him, curse a community. There is power enough in a word to tincture the life of that child so that it will become a power to lift the world to Jesus Christ. The mothers will put in motion influences that will either touch heaven or hell. Talk about greatness! Oh, you wait until you reach the mountains of eternity, then read the mothers' names in God's hall of fame, and see what they have been in this world. Wait until you see God's hall of fame; you will see women bent over the washtub. I want to tell you women that fooling away your time hugging and kissing a poodle dog, caressing a "Spitz," drinking society brandy-mash and a cocktail, and playing cards, is mighty small business compared to molding the life of a child. Tell me, where did Moses get his faith? From his mother. Where did Moses get his backbone to say: "I won't be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter?" He got it from his mother. Where did Moses get the nerve to say, "Excuse me, please," to the pleasures of Egypt? He got it from his mother. You can bank on it he didn't inhale it from his dad. Many a boy would have turned out better if his old dad had died before the kid was born. You tell your boy to keep out of bad company. Sometimes when he walks down the street with his father he's in the worst company in town. His dad smokes, drinks and chews. Moses got it from his mother. He was learned in all the wisdom of Egypt, but that didn't give him the swelled head. When God wants to throw a world out into space, he is not concerned about it. The first mile that world takes settles its course for eternity. When God throws a child out into the world he is mighty anxious that it gets a good start. The Catholics are right when they say: "Give us the children until they are ten years old and we don't care who has them after that." The Catholics are not losing any sleep about losing men and women from their church membership. It is the only church that has ever shown us the only sensible way to reach the masses--that is, by getting hold of the children. That's the only way on God's earth that you will ever solve the problem of reaching the masses. You get the boys and girls started right, and the devil will hang a crape on his door, bank his fires, and hell will be for rent before the Fourth of July. A friend of mine has a little girl that she was compelled to take to the hospital for an operation. They thought she would be frightened, but she said: "I don't care if mama will be there and hold my hand." They prepared her for the operation, led her into the room, put her on the table, put the cone over her face and saturated it with ether, and she said: "Now, mama, take me by the hand and hold it and I'll not be afraid." And the mother stood there and held her hand. The operation was performed, and when she regained consciousness, they said: "Bessie, weren't you afraid when they put you on the table?" She said: "No, mama stood there and held my hand. I wasn't afraid." There is a mighty power in a mother's hand. There's more power in a woman's hand than there is in a king's scepter. And there is a mighty power in a mother's kiss--inspiration, courage, hope, ambition, in a mother's kiss. One kiss made Benjamin West a painter, and the memory of it clung to him through life. One kiss will drive away the fear in the dark and make the little one brave. It will give strength where there is weakness. I was in a town one day and saw a mother out with her boy, and he had great steel braces on both legs, to his hips, and when I got near enough to them I learned by their conversation that that wasn't the first time the mother had had him out for a walk. She had him out exercising him so he would get the use of his limbs. He was struggling and she smiled and said: "You are doing finely today; better than you did yesterday." And she stooped and kissed him, and the kiss of encouragement made him work all the harder, and she said: "You are doing nobly, son." And he said: "Mama, I'm going to run; look at me." And he started, and one of his toes caught on the steel brace on the other leg and he stumbled, but she caught him and kissed him, and said: "That was fine, son; how well you did it!" Now, he did it because his mother had encouraged him with a kiss. He didn't do it to show off. There is nothing that will help and inspire life like a mother's kiss. "If we knew the baby fingers pressed against the window pane, Would be cold and still tomorrow, never trouble us again, Would the bright eyes of our darling catch the frown upon our brow? "Let us gather up the sunbeams lying all around our path, Let us keep the wheat and roses, casting out the thorns and chaff! We shall find our sweetest comforts in the blessings of today, With a patient hand removing all the briars from our way." A Mother's Song There is power in a mother's song, too. It's the best music the world has ever heard. The best music in the world is like biscuits--it's the kind mother makes. There is no brass band or pipe organ that can hold a candle to mother's song. Calve, Melba, Nordica, Eames, SchumannHeinck, they are cheap skates, compared to mother. They can't sing at all. They don't know the rudiments of the kind of music mother sings. The kind she sings gets tangled up in your heart strings. There would be a disappointment in the music of heaven to me if there were no mothers there to sing. The song of an angel or a seraph would not have much charm for me. What would you care for an angel's song if there were no mother's song? The song of a mother is sweeter than that ever sung by minstrel or written by poet. Talk about sonnets! You ought to hear the mother sing when her babe is on her breast, when her heart is filled with emotion. Her voice may not please an artist, but it will please any one who has a heart in him. The songs that have moved the world are not the songs written by the great masters. The best music, in my judgment, is not the faultless rendition of these high-priced opera singers. There is nothing in art that can put into melody the happiness which associations and memories bring. I think when we reach heaven it will be found that some of the best songs we will sing there will be those we learned at mother's knee. A Mother's Love There is power in a mother's love. A mother's love must be like God's love. How God could ever tell the world that he loved it without a mother's help has often puzzled me. If the devils in hell ever turned pale, it was the day mother's love flamed up for the first time in a woman's heart. If the devil ever got "cold feet" it was that day, in my judgment. You know a mother has to love her babe before it is born. Like God, she has to go into the shadows of the valley of death to bring it into the world, and she will love her child, suffer for it, and it can grow up and become vile and yet she will love it. Nothing will make her blame it, and I think, women, that one of the awful things in hell will be that there will be no mother's love there. Nothing but black, bottomless, endless, eternal hate in hell--no mother's love. "And though he creep through the vilest caves of sin, And crouch perhaps, with bleared and bloodshot eyes, Under the hangman's rope--a mother's lips Will kiss him in his last bed of disgrace, And love him e'en for what she hoped of him." I thank God for what mother's love has done for the world. Oh, there is power in a mother's trust. Surely as Moses was put in his mother's arms by the princess, so God put the babes in your arms, as a charge from him to raise and care for. Every child is put in a mother's arms as a trust from God, and she has to answer to God for the way she deals with that child. No mother on God's earth has any right to raise her children for pleasure. She has no right to send them to dancing school and haunts of sin. You have no right to do those things that will curse your children. That babe is put in your arms to train for the Lord. No mother has any more right to raise her children for pleasure than I have to pick your pockets or throw red pepper in your eyes. She has no more right to do that than a bank cashier has to rifle the vaults and take the savings of the people. One of the worst sins you can commit is to be unfaithful to your trust. A Mother's Responsibility "Take this child and nurse it for me." That is all the business you have with it. That is a jewel that belongs to God and he gives it to you to polish for him so he can set it in a crown. Who knows but that Judas became the godless, good-for-nothing wretch he was because he had a godless, good-for-nothing mother? Do you know? I don't. What is more to blame for the crowded prisons than mothers? Who is more to blame for the crowded disreputable houses than you are, who let your children gad the streets, with every Tom, Dick and Harry, or keep company with some little jack rabbit whose character would make a black mark on a piece of tar paper? I have talked with men in prisons who have damned their mothers to my face. Why? They blame their mothers for their being where they are. "Take the child and nurse it for me, and I will pay you your wages." God pays in joy that is fireproof, famine-proof and devil-proof. He will pay you, don't you worry. So get your name on God's pay-roll. "Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will pay you your wages." If you haven't been doing that, then get your name on God's pay-roll. "Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will pay you your wages." Then your responsibility! It is so great that I don't see how any woman can fail to be a Christian and serve God. What do you think God will do if the mother fails? I stagger under it. What, if through your unfaithfulness, your boy becomes a curse and your daughter a blight? What, if through your neglect, that boy becomes a Judas when he might have been a John or Paul? Down in Cincinnati some years ago a mother went to the zoological garden and stood leaning over the bear pit, watching the bears and dropping crumbs and peanuts to them. In her arms she held her babe, a year and three months old. She was so interested in the bears that the baby wriggled itself out of her arms and fell into the bear pit, and she watched those huge monsters rip it to shreds. What a veritable hell it will be through all her life to know that her little one was lost through her own carelessness and neglect! "Take this child and raise it for me, and I will pay you your wages." Will you promise and covenant with God, and with me, and with one another, that from now on you will try, with God's help, to do better than you ever have done to raise your children for God? [Illustration: "THE IDEAL MOTHER IS THE PRODUCT OF A CIVILIZATION THAT ROSE FROM THE MANGER OF BETHLEHEM."] "I once read the story of an angel who stole out of heaven and came to this world one bright, sunshiny day; roamed through field, forest, city and hamlet, and as the sun went down plumed his wings for the return flight. The angel said: "Now that my visit is over, before I return I must gather some mementos of my trip." He looked at the beautiful flowers in the garden and said: "How lovely and fragrant," and plucked the rarest roses, made a bouquet, and said: "I see nothing more beautiful and fragrant than these flowers." The angel looked farther and saw a bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked child, and said: "That baby is prettier than the flowers; I will take that, too," and looking behind to the cradle, he saw a mother's love pouring out over her babe like a gushing spring, and the angel said: "The mother's love is the most beautiful thing I have seen! I will take that, too." And with these three treasures the heavenly messenger winged his flight to the pearly gates, saying: "Before I go I must examine the mementos of my trip to the earth." He looked at the flowers; they had withered. He looked at the baby's smile, and it had faded. He looked at the mother's love, and it shone in all its pristine beauty. Then he threw away the withered flowers, cast aside the faded smile, and with the mother's love pressed to his breast, swept through the gates into the city, shouting that the only thing he had found that would retain its fragrance from earth to heaven was a mother's love. "Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will pay you your wages." When Napoleon Bonaparte was asked, "What do you regard as the greatest need of France?" he replied, "Mothers, mothers, mothers." You women can make a hell of a home or a heaven of a home. Don't turn your old Gatling-gun tongue loose and rip everybody up and rip your husbands up and send them out of their homes. If I were going to investigate your piety I would ask the girl who works for you. This talk about the land of the free is discounted when the children look like a rummage sale in a second-hand store; with uncombed hair, ripped pants, buttons off, stockings hanging down. It doesn't take the wisdom of truth to see that mother is too busy with her social duties, clubs, etc., to pay much attention to the kids. Mothers of Great Men The mother of Nero was a murderess, and it is no wonder that he fiddled while Rome burned. The mother of Patrick Henry was eloquent, and that is the reason why every school boy and girl knows, "Give me liberty or give me death." Coleridge's mother taught him Biblical stories from the old Dutch tile of the fireplace. In the home authority is needed today more than at any time in the history of this nation. I have met upon the arena of the conflict every form of man and beast imaginable to meet, and I am convinced that neither law nor gospel can make a nation without home authority and home example. Those two things are needed. The boy who has a wholesome home and surroundings and a judicious control included does not often find his way into the reformatory. Susanna Wesley was the mother of nineteen children, and she held them for God. When asked how she did it she replied, "By getting hold of their hearts in their youth, and never losing my grip." If it had not been for the expostulations of the mother of George Washington, George Washington would have become a midshipman in the British navy, and the name of that capital yonder would have been some other. John Randolph said in the House of Representatives, "If it had not been for my godly mother, I, John Randolph, would have been an infidel." Gray, who wrote the "Elegy in a Country Churchyard," said he was one of a large family of children that had the misfortune to survive their mother. And I believe the ideal mother is the product of a civilization that rose from the manger of Bethlehem. I am sure there is not an angel in heaven that would not be glad to come to earth and be honored with motherhood if God would grant that privilege. What a grand thing it must be, at the end of your earthly career, to look back upon a noble and godly life, knowing you did all you could to help leave this old world to God, and made your contributions in tears and in prayers and taught your offspring to be God-fearing, so that when you went you would continue to produce your noble character in your children. I believe in blood; I believe in good blood, bad blood, honest blood, and thieving blood; in heroic blood and cowardly blood; in virtuous blood, in licentious blood, in drinking blood and in sober blood. The lips of the Hapsburgs tell of licentiousness; those of the Stuarts tell of cruelty, bigotry and sensuality, from Mary, queen of Scots, down to Charles the First and Charles the Second, James the First--who showed the world what your fool of a Scotchman can be when he is a fool--down to King James the Second. Scotch blood stands for stubbornness. They are full of stick-to-it-iveness. I know, Mrs. Sunday is full-blooded Scotch. English blood speaks of reverence for the English. That is shown by the fact that England spent $50,000,000 recently to put a crown on George's head. Danish blood tells of love of the sea. Welsh blood tells of religious fervor and zeal for God. Jewish blood tells of love of money, from the days of Abraham down until now. You may have read this story: Down in New York was a woman who said to her drunken son: "Let's go down to the police court and have the judge send you over to the island for a few weeks. Maybe you'll straighten up then and I can have some respect for you again." Down they went to the police court and appeared before the judge. He asked who would make the charge and the mother sprang forward with the words on her lips. Then she stopped short, turned to her son and throwing her arms about his neck cried out: "I can't! I can't! He is my son, I love him and I can't." Then she fell at his feet dead. As dearly as she had loved her drunken, bloated, loafing son she couldn't stand in judgment. CHAPTER XIX Standing on the Rock If a doctor didn't know any more about Materia Medica than the average church member knows about the Bible, he'd be arrested for malpractice.--BILLY SUNDAY. A publisher remarked to me that a Billy Sunday campaign did not create a demand for religious books in general. With rather an air of fault-finding he said, "You can't sell anything but Bibles to that Billy Sunday crowd." That remark is illuminating. Billy Sunday does not create a cult: he simply sends people back to the Bibles of their mothers. His converts do not become disciples of any particular school of interpretation: the Bible and the hymn book are their only armory. It cannot be gainsaid that it is better to read the Bible than to read books about the Bible. The work of Billy Sunday is not done with a convert until he has inspired that person to a love and loyalty for the old Book. THE STORY OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT BIBLE VERSION 5. And the people spake against God and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread. 6. And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died. 7. Therefore the people came to Moses and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee; pray unto the Lord that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people. 8. And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. 9. And Moses made a serpent of brass and put it upon a pole and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass he lived. SUNDAY'S VERSION The Jews were in Egyptian bondage for years. God said he would release them, but he hadn't come. But God never forgets. So he came and chose Moses to lead them, and when Moses got them out in the wilderness they began to knock and said, "Who is this Moses anyway? We don't know him. Were there not enough graves in Egypt?" and they said they didn't like the white bread they were getting and wanted the onions and the leeks and the garlic and melons of Egypt, and they found fault. And God sent the serpents and was going to kill them all, but Moses interceded and said, "Now see here, God." But the Lord said, "Get out of the way, Moses, and let me kill them all." But Moses said, "Hold on there, Lord. That bunch would have the laugh on you if you did that. They'd say you brought them out here and the commissary stores ran out and you couldn't feed them, so you just killed them all." So God said, "All right, for your sake, Moses, I won't," and he said, "Moses, you go and set up a brazen serpent in the wilderness and that will be the one thing that will save them if they are bitten. They must look or die." Such passages as this show the uncompromising loyalty of Sunday to the Bible: "Here is a book, God's Word, that I will put up against all the books of all the ages. You can't improve on the Bible. You can take all the histories of all the nations of all the ages and cut out of them all that is ennobling, all that is inspiring, and compile that into a common book, but you cannot produce a work that will touch the hem of the garment of the Book I hold in my hand. It is said, 'Why cannot we improve on the Bible? We have advanced everything else.' No, sir. 'Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My Word shall not.' And so this old Book, which is the Word of God, the Word of Jesus Christ, is the book I intend to preach by everywhere. The religion that has withstood the sophistry and the criticism of the ages, the sarcasm of Voltaire, the irony of Hume, the blasphemy of Ingersoll, the astronomer's telescope, the archæologist's spade and the physician's scalpel--they have all tried to prove the Bible false, but the old Book is too tough for the tooth of time, and she stands triumphant over the grave of all that have railed upon her. God Almighty is still on the job. Some people act as though they had sent for the undertaker to come to embalm God and bury him. But it is the truth; it is not an accident that places the Christian nations in the forefront of the world's battles. It is something more than race, color, climate, that causes the difference between the people that dwell on the banks of the Congo and those in this valley. The scale of civilization always ascends the line of religion; the highest civilization always goes hand in hand with the purest religion." Rigid as he is in literal interpretation of the Bible, Sunday is celebrated for his paraphrases of favorite passages, a recasting of the familiar form of words into the speech of the day. Some of these "slang versions" of the old Book make one gasp; but generally the evangelist gets the innermost meaning of the Book itself. He is not an interpreter of the Bible but a popularizer of it. He does not expound the Scripture as much as he pounds in the Scripture. The Bible and its place in the life of the Christian are often on the Evangelist's lips. Here, for instance, is his interpretation of the story of David and Goliath: "All of the sons of Jesse except David went off to war; they left David at home because he was only a kid. After a while David's ma got worried. She wondered what had become of his brothers, because they hadn't telephoned to her or sent word. So she said to David, 'Dave, you go down there and see whether they are all right.' "So David pikes off to where the war is, and the first morning he was there out comes this big Goliath, a big, strapping fellow about eleven feet tall, who commenced to shoot off his mouth as to what he was going to do. "'Who's that big stiff putting up that game of talk?' asked David of his brothers. "'Oh, he's the whole works; he's the head cheese of the Philistines. He does that little stunt every day.' "'Say,' said David, 'you guys make me sick. Why don't some of you go out and soak that guy? You let him get away with that stuff.' He decided to go out and tell Goliath where to head in. "So Saul said, 'You'd better take my armor and sword.' David put them on, but he felt like a fellow with a hand-me-down suit about four times too big for him, so he took them off and went down to the brook and picked up a half dozen stones. He put one of them in his sling, threw it, and soaked Goliath in the coco between the lamps, and he went down for the count. David drew his sword and chopped off his block, and the rest of the gang beat it." SUNDAY UTTERANCES ON THE BIBLE The Bible is the Word of God. Nothing has ever been more clearly established in the world today, and God blesses every people and nation that reverence it. It has stood the test of time. No book has so endured through the ages. No book has been so hated. Everything the cunning of man, philosophy, brutality, could contrive has been done, but it has withstood them all. There is no book which has such a circulation today. Bibles are dropping from the press like the leaves in autumn. There are 200,000,000 copies. It is read by all nations. It has been translated into five hundred languages and dialects. No book ever came by luck or chance. Every book owes its existence to some being or beings, and within the range and scope of human intelligence there are but three things--good, bad, and God. All that originates in intellect, all which the intellect can comprehend, must come from one of the three. This book, the Bible, could not possibly be the product of evil, wicked, godless, corrupt, vile men, for it pronounces the heaviest penalties against sin. Like produces like, and if bad men were writing the Bible they never would have pronounced condemnation and punishment against wrong-doing. The holy men of old, we are told, "spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." Men do not attribute these beautiful and matchless and well-arranged sentences to human intelligence alone, but we are told that men spake as they were inspired by the Holy Ghost. The only being left, to whom you, or I, or any sensible person could ascribe the origin of the Bible, is God. [Illustration: BITING, BLISTERING, BLASTING CONDEMNATION OF SIN. THIS RARE PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS THE TREMENDOUS EARNESTNESS OF MR. SUNDAY AND THE ENERGY, ZEAL AND FIRE HE PUTS INTO HIS MESSAGE WHICH HAS WARMED THIS COLD WORLD MORE THAN THAT OF ANY OTHER APOSTLE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS IN THIS GENERATION.] Men have been thrown to beasts and burned to death for having a Bible in their possession. There have been wars over the Bible; cities have been destroyed. Nothing ever brought such persecution as the Bible. Everything vile, dirty, rotten and iniquitous has been brought to bear against it because it reveals man's cussedness. But it's here, and its power and influence are greater today than ever. Saloons, bawdy houses, gambling hells, every rake, every white-slaver, every panderer and everything evil has been against it, but it is the word of God, and millions of people know it. This being true, it is of the highest importance that you should think of the truths in it. I'll bet my life that there are hundreds of you that haven't read ten pages of the Bible in ten years. Some of you never open it except at a birth, a marriage or a death, and then just to keep your family records straight. That's a disgrace and an insult. I repeat it, it's a disgrace and an insult. Don't blame God if you wind up in hell, after God warned you, because you didn't take time to read it and think about it. It is the only book that tells us of a God that we can love, a heaven to win, a hell to shun and a Saviour that can save. Why did God give us the Bible? So that we might believe in Christ. No other book tells us this. It tells us why the Bible was written, that we might believe and be saved. You don't read a railroad guide to learn to raise buckwheat. You don't read a cook book to learn to shoe horses. You don't read an arithmetic to learn the history of the United States. A geography does not tell you about how to make buckwheat cakes. No, you read a railroad guide to learn about the trains, a cook book to learn to make buckwheat cakes, an arithmetic for arithmetic and a geography for geography. If you want to get out of a book what the author put in it, find out why it was written. That's the way to get good out of a book. Read it. It was written that you might read and believe that Jesus is the Son of God. The Bible wasn't intended for a history or a cook book. It was intended to keep me from going to hell. The greatest good can be had from anything by using it for the purpose for which it was intended. A loaf of bread and a brick may look alike, but try and exchange them and see. You build a house with brick, but you can't eat it. The purpose of a time table is to give the time of trains, the junctions, the different railroads. A man that has been over the road knows more about it than a man who has never been over it. A man who has made the journey of life guided by the Bible knows more about it than any high-browed lobster who has never lived a word of it. Then whom are you going to believe, the man who has tried it or the man who knows nothing about it? The Bible was not intended for a science any more than a crowbar is intended for a toothpick. The Bible was written to tell men that they might live, and it's true today. One man says: "I do not believe in the Bible because of its inconsistencies." I say the greatest inconsistency is in your life--not in the Bible! I bring up before you the memory of some evil deed, and you immediately begin to find fault with the Bible! Go to a man and talk business or politics and he talks sense. Go to a woman and talk society, clubs or dress, and she talks sense. Talk religion to them, and they will talk nonsense! I want to say that I believe that the Bible is the Word of God from cover to cover. Not because I understand its philosophy, speculation, or theory. I cannot; wouldn't attempt it; and I would be a fool if I tried. I believe it because it is from the mouth of God; the mouth of God has spoken it. There is only one way to have the doubts destroyed. Read the Bible and obey it. You say you can't understand it. There's an A, B, C in religion, just as in everything else. When you go to school you learn the A, B, C's and pretty soon can understand something you thought you never could when you started out. So in religion. Begin with the simple things and go on and you'll understand. That's what it was written for, that you might read and believe and be saved. I'm willing to stand here and take the hand of any man or woman if you are willing to come and begin with the knowledge you have. In South Africa there are diamond mines and the fact has been heralded to every corner of the world. But only those that dig for them get the diamonds. So it is with the Bible. Dig and you'll find gold and salvation. You have to dig out the truths. Years ago in Sing Sing prison there was a convict by the name of Jerry McCauley and one day an old pal of his came back to the prison and told him how he had been saved, and quoted a verse of Scripture. McCauley didn't know where to find the verse in the Bible, so he started in at the first and read through until he came to it. It was away over in the ninth chapter of Hebrews. But he found Jesus Christ while he was reading it. He lived a godly life until the day he died. Supposing a man should come to you and say, "The title to your property is no good and if some one contests it you will lose?" Would you laugh and go on about your business? No, sir! You would go to the court house and if you could find it in only one book there, the book in the recorder's office, you'd search and find it, and if the recorder said the deed was all right you could laugh at whatever any one else said. There is only one book in the world that tells me about my soul. It says if you believe you're saved, if you don't you are damned. God said it and it's all true. Every man who believes in the Bible shall live forever. The Bible says heaven or hell, so why do you resist? No words are put in the Bible for effect. The Bible talks to us so we can understand. God could use language that no one could understand. But we can not understand all by simply hearing and reading. When we see we will know. "I stood one day beside a blacksmith's door, And heard the anvil beat and the bellows chime; Looking in, I saw upon the floor Old hammers worn out with beating years and years of time. "'How many anvils have you had?' said I, 'To wear and batter all these hammers so?' 'Just one,' said he, then said with twinkling eye, 'The anvil wears the hammers out, you know.' "So methought, the anvils of God's word-- Of Jesus' sacrifice--have been beat upon-- The noise of falling blows was heard-- The anvil is unharmed--the hammers are all gone." Julian the apostate was a hammer. Gone! Voltaire, Renan, hammers. Gone! In Germany, Goethe, Strauss, Schleiermacher--gone. In England, Mill, Hume, Hobbes, Darwin, Huxley and Spencer--the anvil remains; the hammer is gone. In America, Thomas Paine, Parker, Ingersoll, gone. The anvil remains. Listen. In France a hundred years ago or more they were printing and circulating infidel literature at the expense of $4,500,000 a year. What was the result? God was denied, the Bible sneered at and ridiculed, and between 1792 and 1795 one million twenty thousand and fifty-one hundred people were brought to death. The Word of God stood unshaken amidst it all. Josh Billings said: "I would rather be an idiot than an infidel; because if I am an infidel I made myself so, but if I am an idiot somebody else did it." Oh, the wreckers' lights on the dangerous coasts that try to allure and drag us away from God have all gone out, but God's words shine on. The vital truths of the Bible are more believed in the world today than at any other time. When a man becomes so intelligent that he can not accept the Bible, too progressive to be a Christian, that man's influence for good, in society, in business or as a companion, is at an end. Some think that being a doubter is an evidence of superior intellect. No! I've never found a dozen men in my life who disbelieved in the Bible but what they were hugging some secret sin. When you are willing to give up that pet sin you will find it easy to believe in the Bible. It explains to me why Saul of Tarsus, the murderer, was changed to Paul, the apostle. It explains to me why David Livingstone left his Highland home to go to darkest Africa. It explains to me why the Earl of Shaftesbury was made from a drunkard into a power for God in London for sixty-five years. It explains why missionaries leave home and friends to go into unknown lands and preach Jesus Christ, and perhaps to die at the hands of the natives. I can see in this book God revealed to man and when I do and accept, I am satisfied. It is just what you need to be satisfied. God knows your every need. This explains to me why Jesus Christ has such influence on men and women in the world today. No man ever had such influence to teach men and women virtue and goodness as Christ. This influence has been in the world from 2,000 years ago to the present time. The human heart is to Jesus like a great piano. First he plays the sad melodies of repentance and then the joyful hallelujahs. The Bible has promises running all through it and God wants you to appropriate them for your use. They are like a bank note. They are of no value unless used. You might starve to death if you have money in your pockets, but won't use it. So the promises may not do you any good because you will not use them. The Bible is a galaxy of promises like the Milky Way in the heavens. When you are in trouble, instead of going to your Bible, you let them grow, and they grow faster than Jonah's gourd vine. You're afraid to step out on the promises. There are many exceedingly great and precious promises in the Bible. Here is one: "Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son." If some of you would receive such a promise from John D. Rockefeller or Andrew Carnegie, you'd sit up all night writing out checks to be cashed in the morning. And yet you let the Bible lie on the table. But the infidel says: "Mr. Sunday, why are there so many intelligent people in the world that don't believe the Bible?" Do you wonder that it was an infidel who started the question: "Is life worth living?" Do you wonder that it was some fool woman, an infidel woman, that first started the question: "Is marriage a failure?" A fool, infidel woman. Christians do not ask such fool questions. Would you be surprised to be reminded that infidel writers and speakers have always and do always advocate and condone and excuse suicide? Do you know that in infidelity the gospel is suicide? That is their theory and I don't blame them, and the sooner they leave the world the better the world will be. The great men of the ages are on the side of the Bible. A good many infidels talk as though the great minds of the world were arrayed against Christianity and the Bible. Great statesmen, inventors, painters, poets, artists, musicians, have lifted up their hearts in prayer. Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, was a Christian; Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat, was a Christian; Cyrus McCormick, who first invented the self-binder, was a Christian; Morse, who invented the telegraph, and the first message that ever flashed over the wire was from Deuteronomy--'What hath God wrought'. Edison, although a doubter in some things, said that there was evidence enough in chemistry to prove the existence of a God, if there was no evidence besides that. George Washington was a Christian. Abraham Lincoln was a Christian, and with Bishop Simpson knelt on his knees in the White House, praying God to give victory to the Army of the Blue. John Hay, the brightest Secretary of State that ever managed the affairs of state, in my judgment, was a Christian. William Jennings Bryan, a man as clean as a hound's tooth; Garfield, McKinley, Grover Cleveland, Harrison, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson--all Christians. The poets drew their inspiration from the Bible. Dante's "Inferno," Milton's "Paradise Lost," two of the greatest works ever written, were inspired by the Word of God. Lord Byron, although a profligate, drew his inspiration from the Word of God. Shakespeare's works abound with quotations from the Bible. John G. Whittier, Longfellow, Michael Angelo, who painted "The Last Judgment," Raphael, who painted the "Madonna of the Chair," Da Vinci, who painted "The Last Supper," all dipped their brushes in the light of heaven and painted for eternity. The great men of the world of all ages, of science, art, or statesmanship, have all believed in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. Twenty-seven years ago, with the Holy Spirit for my guide, I entered this wonderful temple that we call Christianity. I entered through the portico of Genesis and walked down through the Old Testament's art gallery, where I saw the portraits of Joseph, Jacob, Daniel, Moses, Isaiah, Solomon and David hanging on the wall; I entered the music room of the Psalms and the Spirit of God struck the keyboard of my nature until it seemed to me that every reed and pipe in God's great organ of nature responded to the harp of David, and the charm of King Solomon in his moods. I walked into the business house of Proverbs. I walked into the observatory of the prophets and there saw photographs of various sizes, some pointing to far-off stars or events--all concentrated upon one great Star which was to rise as an atonement for sin. Then I went into the audience room of the King of Kings, and got a vision from four different points--from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I went into the correspondence room, and saw Peter, James, Paul and Jude, penning their epistles to the world. I went into the Acts of the Apostles and saw the Holy Spirit forming the Holy Church, and then I walked into the throne room and saw a door at the foot of a tower and, going up, I saw One standing there, fair as the morning, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and I found this truest friend that man ever knew; when all were false I found him true. In teaching me the way of life, the Bible has taught me the way to live, it taught me how to die. So that is why I am here, sober and a Christian, instead of a booze-hoisting infidel. CHAPTER XX Making a Joyful Noise Don't look as if your religion hurt you.--BILLY SUNDAY. "He hath put a new song in my mouth." That is real religion which sets the saints to singing. Gloomy Christians are a poor advertisement of the Gospel. There is nothing of gloom about a Billy Sunday revival. Shrewd students of the campaigns have often remarked that there are so few tears and so much laughter at the evangelist's services. There is scarcely one of Sunday's sermons in which he does not make the congregation laugh. All of his work is attuned to the note of vitality, robustness and happiness. Concerning the long-faced Christian Sunday says: "Some people couldn't have faces any longer if they thought God was dead. They ought to pray to stop looking so sour. If they smile it looks like it hurts them, and you're always glad when they stop smiling. If Paul and Silas had had such long faces as some church members have on them when they went into the Philippian jail, the jailer would never have been saved. There never was a greater mistake than to suppose that God wants you to be long-faced when you put on your good clothes. You'd better not fast at all if you give the devil all the benefit. God wants people to be happy. "The matter with a lot of you people is that your religion is not complete. You have not yielded yourself to God and gone out for God and God's truth. Why, I am almost afraid to make some folks laugh for fear that I will be arrested for breaking a costly piece of antique bric-à-brac. You would think that if some people laughed it would break their faces. I want to tell you that the happy, smiling, sunny-faced religion will win more people to Jesus Christ than the miserable old grim-faced kind will in ten years. I pity any one who can't laugh. There must be something wrong with their religion or their liver. The devil can't laugh. "'Oh, laugh and the world laughs with you, Weep and you weep alone; 'Tis easy enough to be pleasant When life moves along like a song; But the man worth while is the man who can smile When everything goes dead wrong.' "Don't look as if religion hurt you. Don't look as if you had on a number two shoe when you ought to be wearing a number five. I see some women who look as if they had the toothache. That won't win anyone for Christ. Look pleasant. Look as if religion made you happy, when you had it. "Then there is music. When you get to heaven you'll find that not all have been preached there. They have been sung there. God pity us when music is not for the glory of God. Some of you will sing for money and for honor, but you won't sing in the church. Much of the church music today is all poppycock and nonsense. Some of these high-priced sopranos get up in church and do a little diaphragm wiggle and make a noise like a horse neighing. I don't wonder the people in the congregation have a hard time of it." So Sunday sets the city to singing. His sermons are framed in music--and not music that is a performance by some soloist, but music that ministers to his message. His gospel is sung as well as preached. The singing is as essential a part of the service as the sermon. Everybody likes good music, especially of a popular sort. Sunday sees that this taste is gratified. The Tabernacle music in itself is enough to draw the great throngs which nightly crowd the building. The choir furnishes not only the melodies but also a rare spectacle. This splendid regiment of helpers seated back of the speaker affects both the eyes and the ears of the audiences. Without his choirs Sunday could scarcely conduct his great campaigns. These helpers are all volunteers, and their steadfast loyalty throughout weeks of strenuous meetings in all kinds of weather is a Christian service of the first order. [Illustration: "SOME OF THESE HIGH-PRICED SOPRANOS GET UP IN CHURCH AND MAKE A NOISE LIKE A HORSE NEIGHING."] True, membership in a Sunday choir is in itself an avocation, a social and religious interest that enriches the lives of the choir members. They "belong" to something big and popular. They have new themes for conversation. New acquaintances are made. The associations first formed in the Sunday choir have in many cases continued as the most sacred relations of life. The brightest spot in the monotony of many a young person's life has been his or her membership in the Billy Sunday choir. The choir also has the advantage of a musical drill and experience which could be secured in no other fashion. All the advantages of trained leadership are given in return for the volunteer service. Incidentally, the choir members know that they are serving their churches and their communities in a deep and far-reaching fashion. Many visitors to the Sunday Tabernacle are surprised to find that the music is of such fine quality. There is less "religious rag-time" than is commonly associated with the idea of revival meetings. More than a fair half of the music sung is that which holds an established place in the hymnody of all churches. There is more to the music of a campaign than the volume of singing by the choir, with an occasional solo by the chorister or some chosen person. A variety of ingenious devices are employed to heighten the impression of the music. Thus a common antiphonal effect is obtained by having the choir sing one line of a hymn and the last ten rows of persons in the rear of the Tabernacle sing the answering line. The old hymn "For You I am Praying" is used with electrical effect in this fashion. Part singing is employed in ways that are possible only to such a large chorus as the musical director of the Sunday campaigns has at his command. A genius for mutuality characterizes the Sunday song services. The audiences are given a share in the music. Not only are they requested to join in the singing, but they are permitted to choose their favorite hymns, and frequently the choir is called upon to listen while the audience sings. Various delegations are permitted to sing hymns of their own choice. Diversity, and variety and vim seem to be the objective of the musical part of the program. From half an hour to an hour of this varied music introduces each service. When the evangelist himself is ready to preach, the crowd has been worked up into a glow and fervor that make it receptive to his message. If some stickler for ritual and stateliness objects that these services are entirely too informal, and too much like a political campaign, the partisan of Mr. Sunday will heartily assent. These are great American crowds in their every-day humor. These evangelistic meetings are not regular church services. It has already been made plain that there is no "dim religious light" about the Sunday Tabernacle meetings. It is a tribute to the comprehensiveness of the Sunday method that they bring together the most representative gatherings imaginable every day under the unadorned rafters of the big wooden shell called the Tabernacle. Shrewdly, the evangelist has made sure of the democratic quality of his congregation. He has succeeded in having the gospel sing its way into the affection and interest of every-day folk. It is no valid objection to the Sunday music that it is so thoroughly entertaining. The Tabernacle crowds sing, not as a religious duty, but for the sheer joy of singing. One of the commonest remarks heard amid the crowd is "I never expect to hear such singing again till I get to Heaven." It is real Christian ministry to put the melodies of the Gospel into the memories of the multitudes, and to brighten with the songs of salvation the gray days of the burden-bearers of the world. Boys and men on the street whistle Gospel songs. The echoes of Tabernacle music may be heard long after Mr. Sunday has gone from a community in ten thousand kitchens and in the shops and factories and stores of the community. This is the strategy of "the expulsive power of a new affection." These meetings give to Christians a new and jubilant affirmation, instead of a mere defense for their faith. The campaign music carries the campaign message farther than the voice of any man could ever penetrate. Upon the place of music in the Christian life Sunday says: "For sixteen years there had been no songs in Jerusalem. It must have been a great loss to the Jews, for everywhere we read we find them singing. They sang all the way to the Red Sea, they sang when Jesus was born, they sang at the Last Supper and when Jesus was arisen. "Song has always been inseparably associated with the advancement of God's word. You'll find when religion is at low ebb the song will cease. Many of the great revivals have been almost entirely song. The great Welsh revival was mostly song. In the movements of Martin Luther, Wesley, Moody and Torrey you will find abundance of song. When a church congregation gets at such low ebb that they can't sing and have to hire a professional choir to sing for them, they haven't got much religion. And some of those choir members are so stuck up they won't sing in a chorus. If I had a bunch like that they'd quit or I would. "Take the twenty-fourth Psalm, 'Lift up your heads, O ye gates,' and the thirty-third Psalm. They were written by David to be sung in the temple. "I can imagine his singing them now. They were David's own experiences. Look at them. Now you hear an old lobster get up to give an experience, 'Forty years ago I started forth--.' The same old stereotyped form. "There's many a life today which has no song. The most popular song for most of you would be, "'Where is that joy which once I knew, When first I loved the Lord?'" Right behind you where you left it when you went to that card party; right where you left it when you began to go to the theater; right where you left it when you side-stepped and backslid; right where you left it when you began paying one hundred dollars for a dress and gave twenty-five cents to the Lord; right where you left it when you began to gossip." CHAPTER XXI The Prophet and His Own Time There wouldn't be so many non-church goers if there were not so many non-going churches.--BILLY SUNDAY. A prophet to his own generation is Billy Sunday. In the speech of today he arraigns the sins of today and seeks to satisfy the needs of today. A man singularly free and fearless, he applies the Gospel to the conditions of the present moment. Knowing life on various levels, he preaches with a definiteness and an appropriateness that echo the prophet Nathan's "Thou art the man." By the very structure of Billy Sunday's mentality it is made difficult for him to be abstract. He has to deal definitely with concrete sins. Now a pastor would find it difficult to approach, in the ruthless and reckless fashion of Billy Sunday, the shortcomings of his members and neighbors. He has to live with his congregation, year in and year out; but the evangelist is as irresponsible as John the Baptist on the banks of the Jordan. He has no affiliations to consider and no consequences to fear, except the Kingdom's welfare. His only concern is for the truth and applicability of his message. He is perfectly heedless about offending hearers. Those well-meaning persons who would compare Billy Sunday with the average pastor should bear this in mind. A rare gift of satire and scorn and invective and ridicule has been given to Sunday. He has been equipped with powerful weapons which are too often missing from the armory of the average Gospel soldier. His aptitude for puncturing sham is almost without a peer in contemporary life. Few orators in any field have his art of heaping up adjectives to a towering height that overwhelms their objective. Nor does the Church escape Sunday's plain dealing. He treats vigorously her shortcomings and her imperfections. Usually, the persons who hear the first half dozen or dozen sermons in one of his campaigns are shocked by the reckless way in which the evangelist handles the Church and church members. Others, forewarned, perceive the psychology of it. It is clear that in Sunday's thinking the purity of the Church is all-important. Complacency with any degree of corruption or inefficiency on her part he would regard as sin. So he unsparingly belabors the Church and her ministry for all the good that they have left undone and all amiss that they have done. The net result of this is that the evangelist leaves on the minds of the multitudes, to whom the Church has been a negligible quantity, a tremendous impression of her pre-eminent importance. It is true that sometimes, after a Sunday campaign, a few ministers have to leave their churches, because of the new spirit of efficiency and spirituality which he has imparted. They have simply been unable to measure up to the new opportunity. On the whole, however, it is clear that he imparts a new sense of dignity and a new field of leadership to the ministers of the Gospel in the communities he has served. Testimony on this point seems to be conclusive. Given prophets of today, with the conviction that both Church and social life should square with the teaching of Jesus Christ, and you have revolutionary possibilities for any community. Fair samples of Sunday's treatment of the Church and of society are these: "There is but one voice from the faithful preacher about the Church--that is she is sick. But we say it in such painless, delicate terms; we work with such tender massage, that she seems to enjoy her invalidism. I'm coming with my scalpel to cut into the old sores and ulcers and drive them out. I feel the pulse and say it's pus temperature. The temperature's high. I'm trying to remove from the Church the putrefying abscess which is boring into its vitals. About four out of every five who have their names on our church records are doing absolutely nothing to bring anybody to Christ and the Church is not a whit better for their having lived in it. Christians are making a great deal of Lent. I believe in Lent. I'll tell you what kind, though. I believe in a Lent that is kept 365 days in the year for Jesus Christ. That is the kind I like to see. Some people will go to hell sure if they die out of the Lenten season. I hate to see a man get enough religion in forty days to last him and then live like the devil the rest of the year. If you can reform for forty days you can reform for the year. "The Jewish Church ran up against this snag and was wrecked. The Roman Catholic Church ran up against it and split. All of the churches today are fast approaching the same doom. "The dangers to the Church, as I see them, are assimilation with the world, the neglect of the poor, substitution of forms for godliness; and all summed up mean a fashionable church with religion left out. Formerly Methodists used to attend class meetings. Now these are abandoned in many churches. Formerly shouts of praise were heard. Now such holy demonstration is considered undignified. Once in a while some good, godly sister forgets herself and pipes out in a falsetto, apologetic sort of a key: 'Amen, Brother Sunday.' I don't expect any of those ossified, petrified, dyed-in-the-wool, stamped-on-the-cork Presbyterians or Episcopalians to shout, 'Amen,' but it would do you good and loosen you up. It won't hurt you a bit. You are hidebound. I think about half the professing Christians amount to nothing as a spiritual force. They have a kind regard for religion, but as for evangelical service, as for a cheerful spirit of self-denial, as for prevailing prayer, willingness to strike hard blows against the devil, they are almost a failure. I read the other day of a shell which had been invented which is hurled on a ship and when it explodes it puts all on board asleep. I sometimes think one of these shells has hit the Church. "What are some people going to do about the Judgment? Some are just in life for the money they get out of it. They will tell you north is south if they think they can get a dollar by it. They float get-rich-quick schemes and anything for money. I haven't a word to say about a man who has earned his money honestly, uses it to provide for his family and spends the surplus for good. You know there is a bunch of mutts that sit around on stools and whittle and spit and cuss and damn and say that every man who has an honest dollar ought to divide it with them, while others get out and get busy and work and sweat and toil and prepare to leave something for their wives and families when they die, and spend the rest for good. "Old Commodore Vanderbilt had a fortune of over $200,000,000, and one day when he was ill he sent for Dr. Deems. He asked him to sing for him that old song: 'Come, ye sinners, poor and needy, Come, ye wounded, sick and sore.' The old commodore tossed from side to side, looked around at the evidence of his wealth, and he said: 'That's what I am, poor and needy.' Who? Commodore Vanderbilt poor and needy with his $200,000,000? The foundation of that fabulous fortune was laid by him when he poled a yawl from New York to Staten Island and picked up pennies for doing it. The foundation of the immense Astor fortune was laid by John Jacob Astor when he went out and bought fur and hides from trappers and put the money in New York real estate. The next day in the street one man said to another: 'Have you heard the news? Commodore Vanderbilt is dead.' 'How much did he leave?' 'He left it all.' "Naked you came into this world, and naked you will crawl out of it. You brought nothing into the world and you will take nothing out, and if you have put the pack screws on the poor and piled up a pile of gold as big as a house you can't take it with you. It wouldn't do you any good if you could, because it would melt." CHAPTER XXII Those Billy Sunday Prayers I never preach a sermon until I have soaked it in prayer.--BILLY SUNDAY. Concerning the prayers of Sunday there is little to be said except to quote samples of them and let the reader judge for himself. That they are unconventional no one will deny; many have gone farther and have said that they are almost sacrilegious. The charge has often been made that the evangelist addresses his prayers to the crowd instead of to God. No one criticism has oftener been made of Mr. Sunday by sensitive and thoughtful ministers of the Gospel, than that his public prayers seem to be lacking in fundamental reverence. The defender of Sunday rejoins, "He talks to Jesus as familiarly as he talks to one of his associates." Really, though, there is deep difference. His fellow-workers are only fellow-workers, but of the Lord, "Holy and reverend is his name." Many of the warmest admirers of the evangelist do not attempt to defend all of his prayers. Probably Sunday does not know that in all the Oriental, and some European, languages there is a special form of speech reserved for royalty; and that it would be an affront to address a king by the same term as the commoner. The outward signs of this mental attitude of reverence in prayer are unquestionably lacking in Sunday. His usual procedure is to begin to pray at the end of a sermon, without any interval or any prefatory remarks, such as "Let us pray." For an instant, the crowd does not realize that he is praying. He closes his eyes and says, "Now Jesus, you know," and so forth, just as he would say to the chorister, "Rody, what is the name of that delegation?" Indeed, I have heard him interject just this inquiry into a prayer. Or he will mention "that Bible class over to my right, near the platform." He will use the same colloquial figures of speech in a prayer--baseball phrases, for instance--that he does in his sermons. Sometimes it is really difficult to tell whether he is addressing the Lord or the audience. More direct familiar, childish petitions were never addressed to the Deity than are heard at the Sunday meetings. They run so counter to all religious conceptions of a reverential approach to the throne of grace that one marvels at the charity of the ministers in letting him go unrebuked. But they say "It's Billy," and so it is. That is the way the man prays in private, for I have heard him in his own room, before starting out to preach; and in entirely the same intimate, unconventional fashion he asks the help of Jesus in his preaching and in the meetings. But to the prayers themselves: "O God, help this old world. May the men who have been drunkards be made better; may the men who beat their wives and curse their children come to Jesus; may the children who have feared to hear the footsteps of their father, rejoice again when they see the parent coming up the steps of the home. Bring the Church up to help the work. Bless them, Lord. Bless the preachers: bless the officials of the Church and bless everyone in them. Save the men in the mines. Save the poor breaker boys as they toil day by day in dangers; save them for their mothers and fathers and bring them to Jesus. Bless the policemen, the newspapermen and the men, women and children; the men and girls from the plants, factories, stores and streets. Go into the stores every morning and have prayer meetings so that the clerks may hear the Word of God before they get behind the counters and sell goods to the trade. "Visit this city, O Lord, its schools and scholars, and bless the school board. Bless the city officials. Go down into the city hall and bless the mayor, directors and all the rest. We thank thee that the storm has passed. We believe that we will learn a lesson of how helpless we are before thee. How chesty we are when the sun shines and the day is clear, but, oh! how helpless when the breath of God comes and the snowflakes start to fall; when the floods come we get on our knees and wring our hands and ask mercy from thee. Oh, help us, O Lord. "When the people get to hell--I hope that nobody will ever go there and I am trying my best to save them--they will know that they are there because they lived against God. I am not here to injure them; I am not here to wreck homes; I am here to tell them of the blessing you send down when they are with you. We pray for the thousands and thousands that will be saved." "Thank you, Jesus. I came to you twenty-seven years ago for salvation and I got salvation. Thank the Lord I can look in the face of every man and woman of God everywhere and say that for all those years I have lived in salvation. Not that I take any credit to myself for that; it was nothing inherent in me; it was the power of God that saved me and kept me. "O Lord, sweep over this town and save the business men of this community, the young men and women. O God, save us all from the cesspools of hell and corruption. Help me, Lord, as I hurl consternation into the ranks of that miserable, God-forsaken crew who are feeding, fattening and gormandizing on the people! Get everybody interested in honesty and decency and sobriety and make them fight to the last ditch for God. There are too many cowards, four-flushers in the Church." "O Jesus, we thank God that you came into this old world to save sinners. Keep us, Lord. Hear us, O God, ere we stumble on in darkness. Lead the hundreds here to thy throne. Help the professing Christians who have not done as they should in the past, to come down this trail and take a more determined stand for thee. Help the official boards, the trustees of our churches, to show the way to hundreds by themselves confessing sin. Help them to say, 'O Lord, I haven't been square with thee. It is possible for me to improve my business and I can certainly improve my service to thee. I know and I believe in God and I believe in hell and heaven.' Lead them down the trail, Lord." "O Lord, there are a lot of people who step up to the collection plate at church and fan. And Lord, there are always people sitting in the grandstand and calling the batter a mutt. He can't hit a thing or he can't get it over the base, or he's an ice wagon on the bases, they say. O Lord, give us some coachers out at this Tabernacle so that people can be brought home to you. Some of them are dying on second and third base, Lord, and we don't want that. Lord, have the people play the game of life right up to the limit so that home runs may be scored. There are some people, Lord, who say, 'Yes, I have heard Billy at the Tabernacle and oh, it is so disgusting: really it's awful the way he talks.' Lord, if there weren't some grouches and the like in the city I'd be lost. We had a grand meeting last night, Lord, when the crowd come down from Dicksonville (or what was that place, Rody?), Dickson City, Lord, that's right. It was a great crowd. There's an undercurrent of religion sweeping through here, Lord, and we are getting along fine. "There are some dandy folks in Scranton, lots of good men and women that are with us in this campaign, and Lord, we want you to help make this a wonderful campaign. It has been wonderful so far. Lord, it's great to see them pouring in here night after night. God, you have the people of the homes tell their maids to go to the meeting at the Y. W. C. A. Thursday afternoon, and God, let us have a crowd of the children here Saturday. Rody is going to talk to them, Lord. He can't preach and I can't sing, but the children will have a big time with him, Lord. Lord, I won't try to stop people from roasting and scoring me. I would not know what to do if I didn't get some cracks from people now and then." "Well, Jesus, I don't know how to talk as I would like to talk. I am at a loss as to just what to say tonight. Father, if you hadn't provided salvation, we'd all be pretty badly off. Knowing the kind of life I live and the kind of lives other people live, I know you are very patient and kind, but if you can do for men and women what you did for me, I wish it would happen. I wouldn't dare stand up and say that I didn't believe in you. I'd be afraid you'd knock me in the head. I'd be afraid you'd paralyze me or take away my mind. I'm afraid you'd do that. There are hundreds here tonight who don't know you as their Saviour. The Bible class believes you are Jesus of Nazareth, but they don't know you as their personal Saviour. And these other delegations, Lord, help them all to come down. Well, well, well, it's wonderful--'I find no fault in Him.' Amen." "Oh, devil, why do you hit us when we are down? Old boy, I know that you have no time for me and I guess you have about learned that I have no time for you. I will never apologize to you for anything I have done against you. If I have ever said anything that does not hurt you, tell me about it and I will take it out of my sermon." "We thank thee, Jesus, for that manifestation of thy power in one of the big factories of the city. Lord, we are told that of eighty men who used to go to a saloon for their lunch seventy-nine go there no more. All these men heard the 'booze' sermon. Lord, they are working on the one man who is standing out and they'll get him, too. The saloon-keeper is standing with arms akimbo behind the bar, but his old customers give the place the go-by. Thank you, Jesus." "Well, Jesus, I've been back in Capernaum tonight. I've been with you when you cast the devil out of that man. They all said, 'We know you're helping us, but you're hurting the hog business.' I've been with you when you got in the boat. And Jesus arose and said to the sea: 'Peace, be still.' "Ah, look at her. Bless her heart. There comes that poor, crying woman. "Say, Jesus, here are men who have been drunkards. They have been in our prayers. They have been in our sermons. If I could just touch Him. He's here." "Well, thank you, Lord. It's all true. I expect this sermon has caused many men and women to look into their hearts. Perhaps they are powerless, helpless for the Church. O God, what it will mean to people in the cause of Christ all over this city! We appreciate their kind words, but we wish they would do more. "O God, may some deacons, elders, vestrymen, come out for God this afternoon. May they come down these aisles and publicly acknowledge themselves for God. Help them, then, we pray, for Jesus' sake. Amen." "Now, Lord, I'm not here to have a good time. I am here to show what you are doing for these people and to tell them that you are willing to save them and to bear their burdens if they will give their hearts to you." "Well, Jesus, I'm not up in heaven yet. I don't want to go, not yet. I know it's an awful pretty place, Lord. I know you'll look after me when I get there. But, Jesus, I'd like to stay here a long time yet. I don't want to leave Nell and the children. I like the little bungalow we have out at the lake. I know you'll have a prettier one up there. If you'll let me, Jesus, I'd like to stay here, and I'll work harder for you if I can. I know I'll go there, Jesus, and I know there's lots of men and women here in this Tabernacle tonight who won't go. "Solomon found it was all vanity and vexation of spirit. They're living that way today, Jesus. I say that to you here tonight, banker; to you, Commercial Club; to you, men from the stockyards. If you want to live right, choose Jesus as your Saviour, for man's highest happiness is his obedience to Jesus Christ. And now, while we're all still, who'll come down and say 'I'm looking above the world?' Solomon said it was all vanity. Why certainly, you poor fool. He knew. But I'm glad you saw the light, Solomon, and spread out your wings." "O Lord, bend over the battlements of glory and hear the cry of old Pittsburgh. O Lord, do you hear us? Lord, save tens of thousands of souls in this old city. Lord, everybody is helping. Lord, they are keeping their churches closed so tight that a burglar couldn't get in with a jimmy. Lord, the angels will shout to glory and the old devil will say, 'What did they shut up the churches of Pittsburgh for, when they have so many good preachers, and build a Tabernacle and bring a man on here to take the people away from me? O Lord, we'll win this whisky-soaked, vice-ridden old city of Pittsburgh and lay it at your feet and purify it until it is like paraffine." Sunday's sermon on prayer is entitled, "TEACH US TO PRAY" We live and develop physically by exercise. We are saved by faith, but we must work out our salvation by doing the things God wills. The more we do for God, the more God will do through us. Faith will increase by experience. If you are a stranger to prayer you are a stranger to the greatest source of power known to human beings. If we cared for our physical life in the same lackadaisical way that we care for our spiritual, we would be as weak physically as we are spiritually. You go week in and week out without prayer. I want to be a giant for God. You don't even sing; you let the choir do it. You go to prayer-meeting and offer no testimony. You are a stranger to the great privilege that is offered to human beings. Some of the greatest blessings that people enjoy come from prayer. In earnest prayer you think as the Lord directs, and lose yourself in him. Some people say: "It's no use to pray. The Lord knows everything, anyway." That's true. He does. He is not limited, as I am limited. He knows everything and has known it since before the world was. We don't know everybody who is going to be converted at this revival, but that doesn't relieve us of our duty. We don't know, and we must do the work he has commanded us to do. Others say: "But I don't get what I pray for." Well, there's a cause for everything. Get at the cause and you'll be all right. If you are sick and send for the doctor, he pays no attention to the disease, but looks at what produced it. If you have a headache, don't rub your forehead. In Matthew it is written, "Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you." If your prayers are not answered you are not right with God. If you have no faith, if your motive is wrong, then your prayers will be in vain. Many times when people pray they are selfish. They are not gripping the word. I believe that when many a wife prays for the conversion of her husband it isn't because she really desires the salvation of his soul, but because she thinks if he were converted things would be easier for her personally. Pray for your neighbors as well as your own family. The pastor of one church does not pray for the congregation of another denomination. I'm not saying anything against denominations. I believe in them. I believe they are of God. Denominations represent different temperaments. A man with warm emotions would not make a good Episcopalian, but he would make a crackerjack Methodist. Oh, the curse of selfishness! The Church is dying for religion, for religion pure and undefiled. Pure religion and undefiled is visiting the widow and the fatherless and doing the will of God without so much thought of yourself. I tell you, a lot of people are going to be fooled the Day of Judgment. Isaiah says the hand of God is not shortened and his ear is not deaf. No, his hand is not shortened so that it cannot save. He has provided agencies by which we can be saved. If he had made no provision for your salvation, then the trouble would be with God; but he has, so if you go to hell the trouble will be with you. In Ezekiel we read that men have taken idols into their hearts and put stumbling-blocks before their faces. God is not going to hear you if you place clothes, money, pride of relationship before him. You know there is sin in your life. Many people know there is sin in their lives, yet ask God to bless them. They ought first to get down on their knees and pray, "God be merciful to me a sinner." Some people are too contemptibly stingy for God to hear them. God won't hear you if you stop your ears to the cries of the poor. You drag along here for three weeks and raise a paltry sum that a circus would take out of town in two hours. When they give things to the poor they rip off the buttons and the fine braid. Some people pick out old clothes that the moths have made into sieves and give them to the poor and think they are charitable. That isn't charity, no sir; it's charity when you'll give something you'll miss. It's charity when you feel it to give. And when you stand praying, forgive if you have aught against anyone. It's no use to pray if you have a mean, miserable disposition, if you are grouchy, if you quarrel in your home or with your neighbors. It's no use to pray for a blessing when you have a fuss on with your neighbors. It doesn't do you any good. You go to a sewing society meeting to make mosquito netting for the Eskimo and blankets for the Hottentots, and instead you sit and chew the rag and rip some woman up the back. The spirit of God flees from strife and discord. People say: "She is a good woman, but a worldly Christian." What? Might as well speak of a heavenly devil. Might as well expect a mummy to speak and bear children as that kind to move the world Godward. Prayer draws you nearer to God. Learning of Christ "Teach us to pray," implies that I want to be taught. It's a great privilege to be taught by Jesus. A friend of mine was preaching out in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and had to go to a hospital in Chicago for an operation, and I was asked to go and preach in his place. Alexander was leading the singing, and one night Charles called a little girl out of the audience to sing. She didn't look over four or five years of age, though she might have been a little older. I thought, "What's the use? Her little voice can never be heard over this crowd." But Charlie stood her up in a chair by the pulpit and she threw back her head and out rolled some of the sweetest music I have ever heard. It was wonderful. I sat there and the tears streamed down my cheeks. That little girl was the daughter of a Northwestern engineer and he took her to Chicago when her mother was away. Some one took her to Patti. Patti took the little girl to one of her suite of rooms and told her to stand there and sing. Then she went to the other end of the suite and sat down on a divan and listened. The song moved her to tears. She ran and hugged and kissed the little girl and sat her down on the divan and said to her: "Now you sit here and I'll go over there and sing." She took up her position where the child had stood, and she lifted her magnificent voice and she sang "Home, Sweet Home" and "The Last Rose of Summer"--sang them for that little girl! And Patti used to get a thousand dollars for a song, too. She always knew how many songs she was to sing, for she had a check before she went on the platform. It was a great privilege the little daughter of that Northwestern engineer had, but it's a greater privilege to learn from Jesus Christ how to pray. A friend of mine told me he went to hear Paganini, and the great violinist broke one of the strings of his instrument, then another, then another, until he had only one left, and on that one he played so wonderfully that his audience burst into terrific applause. It was a privilege to hear that, but it's a greater privilege to have Jesus teach you to pray. Let us take a few examples from the life of Christ. In Mark we learn that he rose up early in the morning and went out to a solitary place and prayed. He began every day with prayer. You never get up without dressing. You never forget to wash your face and comb your hair. You always think of breakfast. You feed your physical body. Why do you starve your spiritual body? If nine-tenths of you were as weak physically as you are spiritually, you couldn't walk. When I was assistant secretary of the Y. M. C. A. at Chicago, John G. Paton came home from the New Hebrides and was lecturing and collecting money. He was raising money to buy a sea-going steam yacht, for his work took him from island to island and he had to use a row-boat, and sometimes it was dangerous when the weather was bad, so he wanted the yacht. We had him for a week, and it was my privilege to go to lunch with him. We would go out to a restaurant at noon and he would talk to us. Sometimes there would be as many as fifteen or twenty preachers in the crowd, and now and then some of us were so interested in what he told us of the work for Jesus in those far-away islands that we forgot to eat. I remember that he said one day: "All that I am I owe to my Christian father and mother. My father was one of the most prayerful men I ever knew. Often in the daytime he would slip into his closet, and he would drop a handkerchief outside the door, and when we children saw the white sentinel we knew that father was talking with his God and would go quietly away. It is largely because of the life and influence of that same saintly father that I am preaching to the cannibals in the South Seas." It is an insult to God and a disgrace to allow children to grow up without throwing Christian influences around them. Seven-tenths of professing Christians have no family prayers and do not read the Bible. It is no wonder boys and girls are going to hell. It is no wonder the damnable ball-rooms are wrecking the virtue of our girls. In the fourteenth chapter of Matthew it is told that when Jesus had sent the multitudes away he went up into the mountain and was there alone with God. Jesus Christ never forgot to thank God for answering his prayers. Jesus asked him to help him feed the multitude, and he didn't neglect to thank him for it. Next time you pray don't ask God for anything. Just try to think of all the things you have to be thankful for, and tell him about them. Pride Hinders Prayer Pride keeps us from proper prayer. Being chesty and big-headed is responsible for more failures than anything else in this world. It has spoiled many a preacher, just as it has spoiled many an employee. Some fellows get a job and in about two weeks they think they know more about the business than the boss does. They think he is all wrong. It never occurs to them that it took some brains and some knowledge to build that business up and keep it running till they got there. Here's two things to guard against. Don't get chesty over success, or discouraged over a seeming defeat. "And when he prayed he said: 'Lazarus, come forth'; and he that was dead came forth." If we prayed right we would raise men from sin and bring them forth into the light of righteousness. "And as he prayed the fashion of his countenance was altered." Ladies, do you want to look pretty? If some of you women would spend less on dope and cold cream and get down on your knees and pray, God would make you prettier. Why, I can look into your faces and tell what sort of lives you live. If you are devoting your time and thoughts to society, your countenances will show it. If you pray, I can see that. Every man who has helped to light up the dark places of the world has been a praying man. I never preach a sermon until I've soaked it in prayer. Never. Then I never forget to thank God for helping me when I preach. I don't care whether you read your prayers out of a book or whether you just say them, so long as you mean them. A man can read his prayers and go to heaven, or he may just say his prayers and go to hell. We've got to face conditions. When I read I find that all the saintly men who have done things from Pentecost until today, have known how to pray. It was a master stroke of the devil when he got the church to give up prayer. One of the biggest farces today is the average prayer-meeting. Praying in Secret Matthew says, "But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father, which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." Two men came to the Temple to pray--the first was the Pharisee. He was nice and smooth, and his attitude was nice and smooth. He prayed: "God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all I possess," and he went out. I can imagine a lot of people sitting around the church and saying: "That is my idea of religion; that is it. I am no sensationalist; I don't want anything vulgar, no slang." Why don't you use a little, bud, so that something will come your way? And it will come as straight as two and two make four. Services rendered in such opposite directions cannot meet with the same results. If two men were on the top of a tall building and one should jump and one come down the fire escape they couldn't expect to meet with the same degree of safety. The Pharisee said, "Thank God, I am not as other men are," and the publican said, "God be merciful to me, a sinner." The first man went to his house the same as when he came out of it. "God be merciful to me, a sinner." That man was justified. I am justified in my faith in Jesus Christ. I am no longer a sinner. I am justified as though I had never sinned by faith in the Son of God. That man went down to his house justified. Praying in Humility How many people pray in a real sense? How many people pray in humility and truth? Some men pray for humility when it is pride they want. Many a man gets down on his knees and says: "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name: thy kingdom come--" That is not so; they don't want God's kingdom to come. It is not so with half the people that pray. I say to you when you pray in the church pew and say that, it don't count a snap of my finger if you don't live it. You pray, "Thy kingdom come," and then you go out and do something to prevent that kingdom from coming. No man can get down and pray "Thy kingdom come," and have a beer wagon back up to his door and put beer in the ice box. No man can get down on his knees and pray "Thy kingdom come," and look through the bottom of a beer glass. God won't stand for it. If you wanted God's will done you would do God's will, even if it took every drop of blood in your body to do it. "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." When you say this in your pew on Sunday it means nothing unless you live it on Monday. You say "Thy kingdom come," and then go out and do the very thing that will prevent God's kingdom from coming. Your prayers or anything you do in the church on Sunday mean nothing if you don't do the same thing in business on Monday. I don't care how loud your wind-jamming in prayer-meeting may be if you go out and skin somebody in a horse deal the next day. The man who truly prays, "Thy kingdom come," cannot take his heart out of his prayer when he is out of the church. The man who truly prays "Thy kingdom come," will not be shrinking his measures at the store; the load of coal he sends to you won't be half slate. The man who truly prays "Thy kingdom come" won't cut off his yardstick when he measures you a piece of calico. It will not take the pure-food law to keep a man who truly prays "Thy kingdom come" from putting chalk in the flour, sand in the sugar, brick dust in red pepper, ground peanut shells in breakfast food. The man who truly prays "Thy kingdom come" cannot pass a saloon and not ask himself the question, "What can I do to get rid of that thing that is blighting the lives of thousands of young men, that is wrecking homes, and that is dragging men and women down to hell?" You cannot pray "Thy kingdom come," and then rush to the polls and vote for the thing that is preventing that kingdom from coming. You cannot pray "Thy kingdom come" and then go and do the things that make the devil laugh. For the man who truly prays "Thy kingdom come" it would be impossible to have one kind of religion on his knees and another when he is behind the counter; it would be impossible to have one kind of religion in the pew and another in politics. When a man truly prays "Thy kingdom come" he means it in everything or in nothing. A lot of church members are praying wrong. You should pray first, "God be merciful to me a sinner," and then "Thy kingdom come." Saying a prayer is one thing: doing God's will is another. Both should be synonymous. Angels are angels because they do God's will. When they refuse to do God's will they become devils. Many a man prays when he gets in a hole. Many a man prays when he is up against it. Many a man prays in the time of trouble, but when he can stick his thumbs in his armholes and take a pair of scissors and cut his coupons off, then it is "Good-bye, God; I'll see you later." Many a man will make promises to God in his extremity, but forget them in his prosperity. Many a man will make promises to God when the hearse is backed up to the door to carry the baby out, but will soon forget the promises made in the days of adversity. Many a man will make promises when lying on his back, thinking he is going to die, and load up just the same when he is on his feet. Men of Prayer Every man and every woman that God has used to halt this sin-cursed world and set it going Godward has been a Christian of prayer. Martin Luther arose from his bed and prayed all night, and when the break of day came he called his wife and said to her, "It has come." History records that on that very day King Charles granted religious toleration, a thing for which Luther had prayed. John Knox, whom his queen feared more than any other man, was in such agony of prayer that he ran out into the street and fell on his face and cried, "O God, give me Scotland or I'll die." And God gave him Scotland and not only that, he threw England in for good measure. When Jonathan Edwards was about to preach his greatest sermon on "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," he prayed for days; and when he stood before the congregation and preached it, men caught at the seats in their terror, and some fell to the floor; and the people cried out in their fear, "Mr. Edwards, tell us how we can be saved!" The critical period of American history was between 1784 and 1789. There was no common coinage, no common defense. When the colonies sent men to a constitutional convention, Benjamin Franklin, rising with the weight of his four score years, asked that the convention open with prayer, and George Washington there sealed the bargain with God. In that winter in Valley Forge, Washington led his men in prayer and he got down on his knees to do it. When the battle of Gettysburg was on, Lincoln, old Abe Lincoln, was on his knees with God; yes, he was on his knees from five o'clock in the afternoon till four o'clock in the morning, and Bishop Simpson was with him. "And whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son." No man can ever be saved without Jesus Christ. There's no way to God unless you come through Jesus Christ. It's Jesus Christ or nothing. "Lord, teach us to pray." CHAPTER XXIII The Revival on Trial One spark of fire can do more to prove the power of powder than a whole library written on the subject.--BILLY SUNDAY. What Evangelist Sunday says to his congregations is sometimes less significant than what he helps his congregation to say to the world. Let us take a sample meeting in the Pittsburgh campaign, with the tremendous deliverance which it made upon the subject of revivals and conversions. A "sea of faces" is a petrified phrase, which means nothing to most readers. Anybody who will stand on the platform behind Billy Sunday at one of his great tabernacles understands it. More than twenty thousand faces, all turned expectantly toward one man, confront you. The faces rather than the hair predominate. There are no hats in sight. Like the billows along the shore, which may be observed in detail, the nearer reaches of this human sea are individualized. What a Madonna-face yonder girl has! See the muscles of that young man's jaw working, in the intensity of his interest. The old man who is straining forward, so as not to miss a word, has put a black and calloused hand behind his ear. That gray-haired woman with the lorgnette and rolls of false hair started out with the full consciousness that she was a "somebody": watch her wilt and become merely a tired, heart-hungry old woman. And the rows and rows of undistinguished commonplace people, just like the crowds we meet daily in the street cars. Somehow, though, each seems here engaged in an individual transaction. A revival meeting accents personality. Twenty or thirty rows down the big congregation begins to blurr in appearance, and individual faces are merged in the mass. The host, which is but an agglomeration of individuals, is impressive. The "sea of faces" is more affecting than old ocean's expanse. Where else may one so see "the people"; or fundamental human nature so expressing itself? One compares these crowds with the lesser throngs that followed Jesus when he walked the earth, and recalls that "greater works than these shall they do." There is a sermon in every aspect of the Billy Sunday meetings. Curiously, people will reveal more of themselves, be more candid concerning their inner experiences, in a crowd than when taken one by one. Thus this congregation is a rare laboratory. Tonight the evangelist is going to make an experiment upon revivals and their value. It is common to object to revivals and to revivalists. Billy Sunday's reply to this is simply unanswerable: he appeals to the people themselves for evidence. By a show of hands--and he conducts this experiment in practically every community he visits--he gives a convincing demonstration that it is by special evangelistic efforts that most Christians have entered the Church of Christ. By the same method, he shows that youth is the time to make the great decision. When this question is put to a test a dramatic moment, the significance of which the multitude quickly grasps, ensues. On this occasion there are more than twenty thousand persons within the Tabernacle. First the evangelist asks the confessed Christians to rise. The great bulk of the congregation stands on its feet. Then he asks for those who were converted in special meetings, revivals of some sort or other, to raise their hands. From three-fourths to four-fifths of the persons standing lift their hands in token that they were converted during revivals. Then--each time elaborating his question so that there may be no misunderstanding--Sunday asks those who were converted before they were twenty to indicate it. Here again the majority is so large as to be simply overwhelming. It almost seems that the whole body of Christians had become such before they attained their legal majority. Of the few hundreds that are left standing, Sunday asks in turn for those who were converted before they were thirty, those who were converted before they were forty, before they were fifty, before they were sixty. When it comes to this point of age the scene is thrilling in its significance. Usually there are only one or two persons standing who have entered the Christian life after reaching fifty years of age. The conclusion is irresistible. Unless a person accepts Christ in youth the chances are enormously against his ever accepting Him subsequently. The demonstration is an impressive vindication of revivals, and of the importance of an early decision for Christ. After such a showing as this, everybody is willing to listen to a sermon upon revivals and their place in the economy of the Kingdom of Heaven. "THE NEED OF REVIVALS" Somebody asks: "What is a revival?" Revival is a purely philosophical, common-sense result of the wise use of divinely appointed means, just the same as water will put out a fire; the same as food will appease your hunger; just the same as water will slake your thirst; it is a philosophical common-sense use of divinely appointed means to accomplish that end. A revival is just as much horse sense as that. A revival is not material; it does not depend upon material means. It is a false idea that there is something peculiar in it, that it cannot be judged by ordinary rules, causes and effects. That is nonsense. Above your head there is an electric light; that is effect. What is the cause? Why, the dynamo. Religion can be judged on the same basis of cause and effect. If you do a thing, results always come. The results come to the farmer. He has his crops. That is the result. He has to plow and plant and take care of his farm before the crops come. Religion needs a baptism of horse sense. That is just pure horse sense. I believe there is no doctrine more dangerous to the Church today than to convey the impression that a revival is something peculiar in itself and cannot be judged by the same rules of causes and effect as other things. If you preach that to the farmers--if you go to a farmer and say "God is a sovereign," that is true; if you say "God will give you crops only when it pleases him and it is no use for you to plow your ground and plant your crops in the spring," that is all wrong, and if you preach that doctrine and expect the farmers to believe it, this country will starve to death in two years. The churches have been preaching some false doctrines and religion has died out. [Illustration: "You Sit in Your Pews so Easy that You Become Mildewed"] Some people think that religion is a good deal like a storm. They sit around and fold their arms, and that is what is the matter. You sit in your pews so easy that you become mildewed. Such results will be sure to follow if you are persuaded that religion is something mysterious and has no natural connection between the means and the end. It has a natural connection of common sense and I believe that when divinely appointed means are used spiritual blessing will accrue to the individuals and the community in greater numbers than temporal blessings. You can have spiritual blessings as regularly as the farmer can have corn, wheat, oats, or you can have potatoes and onions and cabbage in your garden. I believe that spiritual results will follow more surely than temporal blessings. I don't believe all this tommyrot of false doctrines. You might as well sit around beneath the shade and fan yourself and say "Ain't it hot?" as to expect God to give you a crop if you don't plow the ground and plant the seed. Until the Church resorts to the use of divinely appointed means it won't get the blessing. What a Revival Does What is a revival? Now listen to me. A revival does two things. First, it returns the Church from her backsliding and second, it causes the conversion of men and women; and it always includes the conviction of sin on the part of the Church. What a spell the devil seems to cast over the Church today! I suppose the people here are pretty fair representatives of the Church of God, and if everybody did what you do there would never be a revival. Suppose I did no more than you do, then no people would ever be converted through my efforts; I would fold my arms and rust out. A revival helps to bring the unsaved to Jesus Christ. God Almighty never intended that the devil should triumph over the Church. He never intended that the saloons should walk rough-shod over Christianity. And if you think that anybody is going to frighten me, you don't know me yet. When is a revival needed? When the individuals are careless and unconcerned. If the Church were down on her face in prayer they would be more concerned with the fellow outside. The Church has degenerated into a third-rate amusement joint, with religion left out. When is a revival needed? When carelessness and unconcern keep the people asleep. It is as much the duty of the Church to awaken and work and labor for the men and women of this city as it is the duty of the fire department to rush out when the call sounds. What would you think of the fire department if it slept while the town burned? You would condemn them, and I will condemn you if you sleep and let men and women go to hell. It is just as much your business to be awake. The Church of God is asleep today; it is turned into a dormitory, and has taken the devil's opiates. [Illustration: "I NEVER LOOK AT A CHILD OR AN OLDER PERSON WITHOUT THINKING, 'THERE IS A CASKET OF LOCKED-UP POSSIBILITIES. ONLY THE KEY OF SALVATION IS NEEDED TO OPEN IT.'"] [Illustration: "SAMSON WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT COULD TAKE THE JAWBONE OF AN ASS AND LAY DEAD A THOUSAND PHILISTINES."] When may a revival be expected? When the wickedness of the wicked grieves and distresses the Christian. Sometimes people don't seem to mind the sins of other people. Don't seem to mind while boys and girls walk the streets of their city and know more of evil than gray-haired men. You are asleep. When is a revival needed? When the Christians have lost the spirit of prayer. When is a revival needed? When you feel the want of revival and feel the need of it. Men have had this feeling, ministers have had it until they thought they would die unless a revival would come to awaken their people, their students, their deacons and their Sunday-school workers, unless they would fall down on their faces and renounce the world and the works and deceits of the devil. When the Church of God draws its patrons from the theaters the theaters will close up, or else take the dirty, rotten plays off the stage. When the Church of God stops voting for the saloon, the saloon will go to hell. When the members stop having cards in their homes, there won't be so many black-legged gamblers in the world. This is the truth. You can't sit around and fold your arms and let God run this business; you have been doing that too long here. When may a revival be expected? When Christians confess their sins one to another. Sometimes they confess in a general way, but they have no earnestness; they get up and do it in eloquent language, but that doesn't do it. It is when they break down and cry and pour out their hearts to God in grief, when the flood-gates open, then I want to tell you the devil will have cold feet. Revival Demands Sacrifice When may a revival be expected? When the wickedness of the wicked grieves and distresses the Church. When you are willing to make a sacrifice for the revival; when you are willing to sacrifice your feelings. You say, "Oh, well, Mr. Sunday hurt my feelings." Then don't spread them all over his tabernacle for men to walk on. I despise a touchy man or woman. Make a sacrifice of your feelings; make a sacrifice of your business, of your time, of your money; you are willing to give to help to advance God's cause, for God's cause has to have money the same as a railroad or a steamship company. When you give your influence and stand up and let people know you stand for Jesus Christ and it has your indorsement and time and money. Somebody has got to get on the firing line. Somebody had to go on the firing line and become bullet meat for $13 a month to overcome slavery. Somebody has to be willing to make a sacrifice. They must be willing to get out and hustle and do things for God. When may a revival be expected? A revival may be expected when Christian people confess and ask forgiveness for their sins. When you are willing that God shall promote and use whatever means or instruments or individuals or methods he is pleased to use to promote them. Yes. The trouble is he cannot promote a revival if you are sitting on the judgment of the methods and means that God is employing to promote a revival. The God Almighty may use any method or means or individual that he pleases in order to promote a revival. You are not running it. Let God have his way. You can tell whether you need a revival. You can tell if you will have one and why you have got one. If God should ask you sisters and preachers in an audible voice, "Are you willing that I should promote a revival by using any methods or means or individual language that I choose to use to promote it?" what would be your answer? Yes. Then don't growl if I use some things that you don't like. You have no business to. How can you promote a revival? Break up your fallow ground, the ground that produces nothing but weeds, briars, tin cans and brick-bats. Fallow ground is ground that never had a glow in it. Detroit had a mayor, Pingree, when Detroit had thousands and thousands of acres of fallow ground. This was taken over by the municipal government and planted with potatoes with which they fed the poor of the city. There are individuals who have never done anything for Jesus Christ, and I have no doubt there are preachers as well, who have never done anything for the God Almighty. There are acres and acres of fallow ground lying right here that have never been touched. Look over your past life, look over your present life and future and take up the individual sins and with pencil and paper write them down. A general confession will never do. You have committed your sins, one by one, and you will have to confess them one by one. This thing of saying, "God, I am a sinner," won't do. "God, I am a gossiper in my neighborhood. God, I have been in my ice-box while I am here listening to Mr. Sunday." Confess your sins. How can you promote a revival? You women, if you found that your husband was giving his love and attention to some other woman and if you saw that some other woman was encroaching on his mind and heart, and was usurping your place and was pushing you out of the place, wouldn't you grieve? Don't you think that God grieves when you push him out of your life? You don't treat God square. You business men don't treat God fair. You let a thousand things come in and take the place that God Almighty had. No wonder you are careless. You blame God for things you have no right to blame him for. He is not to blame for anything. You judge God. The spirit loves the Bible; the devil loves the flesh. If you don't do your part, don't blame God. How many times have you blamed God when you are the liar yourself. You are wont to blame him for the instances of unbelief that have come into your life. When should we promote a revival? When there is a neglect of prayer? When your prayers affect God? You never think of going out on the street without dressing. You would be pinched before you went a block. You never think of going without breakfast, do you? I bet there are multitudes that have come here without reading the Bible or praying for this meeting. You can measure your desire for salvation by means of the amount of self-denial you are willing to practice for Jesus Christ. You have sinned before the Church, before the world, before God. Don't the Lord have a hard time? Own up, now. Persecution a Godsend There are a lot of people in church, doubtless, who have denied themselves--self-denial for comfort and convenience. There are a lot of people here who never make any sacrifices for Jesus Christ. They will not suffer any reproaches for Jesus Christ. Paul says, "I love to suffer reproaches for Christ." The Bible says, "Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you." "Blessed are you when your enemies persecute you." That is one trouble in the churches of God today. They are not willing to suffer reproach for God's sake. It would be a godsend if the Church would suffer persecution today; she hasn't suffered it for hundreds of years. She is growing rich and lagging behind. Going back. Pride! How many times have you found yourself exercising pride? How many times have you attempted pride of wealth? Proud because you were related to some of the old families that settled in the Colonies in 1776. That don't get you anything; not at all. I have got as much to be proud of as to lineage as anyone; my great-grandfather was in the Revolutionary War, lost a leg at Brandywine; and my father was a soldier in the Civil War. Envy! Envy of those that have more talent than you. Envious because someone can own a limousine Packard and you have to ride a Brush runabout; envious because some women can wear a sealskin coat and you a nearseal. Then there is your grumbling and fault-finding. When speaking of people behind their backs, telling their faults, whether real or imaginary, and that is slander. When you sit around and rip people up behind their backs at your old sewing societies, when you rip and tear and discuss your neighbors and turn the affair into a sort of a great big gossiping society, with your fault-finding, grumbling and growling. There is a big difference between levity and happiness, and pleasure, and all that sort of thing. Make up your mind that God has given himself up for you. I would like to see something come thundering along that I would have more interest in than I have in the cause of God Almighty! God has a right to the first place. God is first, remember that. Multitudes of people are willing to do anything that doesn't require any self-denial on their part. I am not a member of any lodge, and never expect to be, but if I were a member of a lodge and there were a prayer-meeting and a lodge-meeting coming on Wednesday night, I would be at the prayer-meeting instead of at the lodge-meeting. I am not against the lodges; they do some good work in the world, but that doesn't save anyone for God. God is first and the lodge-meeting is second. God is first and society second. God is first and business is second. "In the beginning, God!" That is the way the Bible starts out and it ought to be the way with every living being. "In the beginning, God." Seek you first God and everything else shall be added unto you. Christianity is addition; sin is subtraction. Christianity is peace, joy, salvation, heaven. Sin takes away peace, happiness, sobriety, and it takes away health. You are robbing God of the time that you misspend. You are robbing God when you spend time doing something that don't amount to anything, when you might do something for Christ. You are robbing God when you go to foolish amusements, when you sit around reading trashy novels instead of the Word of God. "Oh, Lord, revive thy work!" I have only two minutes more and then I am through. Bad temper. Abuse your wife and abuse your children; abuse your husband; turn your old gatling-gun tongue loose. A lady came to me and said, "Mr. Sunday, I know I have a bad temper, but I am over with it in a minute." So is the shotgun, but it blows everything to pieces. And, finally, you abuse the telephone girl because she doesn't connect you in a minute. Bad temper. I say you abuse your wife, you go cussing around if supper isn't ready on time; cussing because the coffee isn't hot; you dig your fork into a hunk of beefsteak and put it on your plate and then you say: "Where did you get this, in the harness shop? Take it out and make a hinge for the door." Then you go to your store, or office, and smile and everybody thinks you are an angel about to sprout wings and fly to the imperial realm above. Bad temper! You growl at your children; you snap and snarl around the house until they have to go to the neighbors to see a smile. They never get a kind word--no wonder so many of them go to the devil quick. CHAPTER XXIV An Army with Banners The man who is right with God will not be wrong with anything that is good.--BILLY SUNDAY. The oldest problem of the Christian Church, and the latest problem of democracy, is how to reach the great mass of the people. Frequently the charge is made that the Church merely skims the surface of society, and that the great uncaring masses of the people lie untouched beneath it. Commonly, a revival reaches only a short distance outside the circumference of church circles. The wonder and greatness of the Billy Sunday campaigns consist in the fact that they reach to the uttermost rim of a community, to its greatest height and its lowest depth. There can be no question that he stirs a city as not even the fiercest political campaign stirs it. Sunday touches life on all levels, bringing his message to bear upon the society woman in her parlor and the humblest day laborer in the trench. This does not come to pass by any mere chance. Organized activity achieves it. The method which produces the greatest results is what is called the Delegation Idea, whereby detachments of persons from various trades, callings and organizations and communities attend in a body upon the services of the Sunday Tabernacle. By pre-arrangement, seats are reserved every night for these visiting delegations. Sometimes there will be as many as a dozen delegations present in one evening. As the campaign progresses towards its conclusion real difficulty is experienced in finding open dates for all the delegations that apply. At the outset, Mr. Sunday's assistants have to "work up" these delegations. Later, the delegations themselves besiege the workers. In variety the delegations range from a regiment of Boy Scouts to a post of old soldiers; from the miners of a specified colliery to the bankers of the city; from the telephone girls to the members of a woman's club; from an athletic club to a Bible class. Not only the community in which the meetings are being held furnish these delegations, but the surrounding territory is drawn upon. It is by no means an unknown thing for a single delegation, numbering a thousand or fifteen hundred men, to come a distance of fifteen or twenty-five miles to attend a Sunday Tabernacle service. Almost every evening there are lines of special cars waiting for these deputations who have come from afar, with their banners and their badges and their bands, all bent upon hearing and being heard at the Tabernacle. The crowd spirit is appealed to by this method. The every-day instinct of loyalty to one's craft or crowd is aroused. Each delegation feels its own identity and solidarity, and wants to make as good a showing as possible. There is considerable wholesome emulation among the delegations representing the same craft or community. Of course, the work of making ready the delegation furnishes a topic for what is literally "shop talk" among working men; and naturally each group zealously watches the effect of its appearance upon the great congregation. Delegations get a very good idea of what their neighbors think of them by the amount of applause with which they are greeted. Thus when the whole force of a daily newspaper appears in the Tabernacle its readers cheer vociferously. Every delegation goes equipped with its own battle cry, and prepared to make as favorable a showing as possible. All this is wholesome for the community life. It fosters loyalty in the varied groups that go to make up our society. Any shop is the better for its workers, led by their heads of departments and by their employers, having gone in a solid phalanx to a Tabernacle meeting. Every incident of that experience becomes an unfailing source of conversation for long days and weeks to follow. [Illustration: THE TABERNACLE AT SCRANTON, PENNSYLVANIA, TYPICAL OF THE AUDITORIUMS THAT ARE ERECTED WHEREVER CAMPAIGNS ARE CONDUCTED. TO DEADEN SOUND THE FLOOR IS COVERED WITH SAWDUST, WHENCE THE NAME "SAWDUST TRAIL." TO PREVENT THE POSSIBILITY OF A PANIC, NO BOARD IS FASTENED WITH MORE THAN TWO NAILS, AND THERE IS A DOOR AT THE END OF EVERY AISLE.] Naturally, too, each delegation, delighted with the showing it has made at the Tabernacle, and with the part it has borne in the meeting, becomes one more group of partisans for the Billy Sunday campaign. Men who would not go alone to the Tabernacle, cannot in loyalty well refuse to stand by their own crowd. So it comes to pass that the delegation idea penetrates every level and every section of the community. A shrewder scheme for reaching the last man could scarcely be devised. Thousands who are impervious to religious appeals quickly respond to the request that they stand by their shop-mates and associates. Participation in the meetings makes the people themselves feel the importance of their own part. They are not merely a crowd coming to be talked at; they share in the meetings. The newspapers comment upon them even as upon the sermon. All are uplifted by the glow of geniality and camaraderie which pervades the Tabernacle. For the songs and slogans and banners of the delegations greatly help to swell the interest of the meetings. All this is wholesome, democratic and typically American. This good-natured crowd does not become unreal or artificial simply because it is facing the fundamental verities of the human soul. Outspokenness in loyalty, a characteristic of Sunday converts, expresses itself through many channels. Taught by the delegation idea, as well as by the sermon, the importance of standing up to be counted, the friends and converts of the evangelist are always ready for the great parade which usually is held toward the close of the campaign. The simple basis for this street demonstration is found in the old Scripture, "Let the redeemed of the Lord say so." The idea of the Roman imperial triumph survives in the Billy Sunday parade. It is a testimony to the multitudes of the loyalty of Christians to the Gospel. Beyond all question, a tremendous impression is made upon a city by the thousands of marching men whom the evangelist first leads and then reviews. A street parade is a visualization of the forces of the Church in a community. Many a man of the street, who might be unmoved by many arguments, however powerful, cannot escape the impression of the might of the massed multitudes of men who march through the streets, thousands strong. Some twenty thousand men were in the Sunday parade at Scranton. Nobody who witnessed them, be he never so heedless a scoffer, could again speak slightingly of the Church. Religion loses whatever traits of femininity it may have possessed, before the Sunday campaign is over. Those most practical of men, the politicians, are quick to take cognizance of this new power that has arisen in the community's life. They know that every one of these men not only has a vote, but is a center of influence for the things in which he believes. The heartening effect of such a great demonstration as this upon the obscure, lonely and discouraged saints is beyond calculation. The great hosts of the Billy Sunday campaign are returning to first principles by taking religion out into the highways and making it talked about, even as the Founder of the Church created a commotion in the highways of Capernaum and Jerusalem. These marching men are a sermon one or two miles long. The impression made upon youth is not to be registered by any means in the possession of men. Every Christian the world around must be grateful to this evangelist and his associates for giving the sort of demonstration, which cannot be misunderstood by the world at large, of the virility and the immensity of the hosts of heaven on earth. Many of the utterances of Billy Sunday are attuned to this note of valiant witness-bearing for Christ. "SPIRITUAL POWER" Samson didn't realize that the Spirit of the Lord had departed from him; he walked out and shook himself as aforetime; he weighed as much; he was as strong physically; his mind was as active, but although he possessed all that, there was one thing that was necessary to make him as he had been: "He wist not that the Spirit of the Lord had left him." A man may have a fine physique; he may have strength; he may have greatness; he may have a beautiful home; and a church may be magnificent and faultless in its equipment; the preacher may be able to reason; the choir may rival the angels in music; but if you have not the Spirit of the Lord you are, as Paul says, as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals, and the church is merely four walls with a roof over it. Nothing in the world can be substituted for the Spirit of God; no wealth, culture nor anything in the world. By power we do not mean numbers; there never has been a time when there were more members in the Church than today; yet we haven't kept progress in the number of members in the Church with the increased number of people in the nation. Our nation has grown to over 90,000,000 of people, but we are not correspondingly keeping pace with the number of church members. God's Church has not increased correspondingly in power as it has in numbers; while increasing in numbers it has not increased in spiritual power. I am giving you facts, not fancies. We are not dealing with theories. I am not saying anything against the Church; you never had a man come into this community who would fight harder for the Church of God Almighty than I would. I am talking about her sins and the things that sap her power--and by power I do not mean numbers. If you had an army of 100,000 and increased it another 100,000 it ought to be doubled in power. Derelicts in the Church In the Church of God today you know there are a lot of people who are nothing but derelicts and nothing but driftwood. By power I do not mean wealth. We are the richest people on the earth; nineteen-twentieths of all the wealth or all the money in the United States today is in the hands of professing Christians, Catholic and Protestant. That ought to mean that it is in God's hands; but it doesn't. They are robbing God. I was in a church in Iowa that had three members who were worth $200,000 each and they paid their preacher the measly salary of $600 a year, and I will be hornswaggled if they did not owe him $400 then. If I ever skinned any old fellows I did those old stingy coots. A man who doesn't pay to the church is as big a swindler as a man who doesn't pay his grocery bill and he is dead-beating his way to hell. You let somebody else pay your bills, you old dead-beat. God hasn't any more use today for a dead-beat in the church than he has for the man who doesn't pay his grocery bill--not a bit! By power I do not mean culture. There never was a time when the people of America were better informed than they are today; they have newspapers, telephones, telegraphs, rural delivery, fast trains. You can leave home and in five days you are in Europe. If something happens in China or Japan tonight you can read it before you go to bed. The islands of the sea are our neighbors. A stranger once asked: "What is the most powerful and influential church in this town?" "That big stone Presbyterian church on the hill." "How many members has it?" "I don't know, my wife is a member." "How many Sunday-school members?" "I don't know; my children go." "How many go to prayer-meetings?" "I don't know; I have never been there." "How many go to communion?" "I don't know, I never go; my wife goes." Then the stranger said: "Will you please tell me why you said it was the most powerful and influential church in the community?" "Yes, sir; it is the only church in the town that has three millionaires in the church." That was why he thought it was a great church. The Church in America would die of dry rot and sink forty-nine fathoms in hell if all members were multi-millionaires and college graduates. That ought not to be a barrier to spiritual power. By power I do not mean influence. I'd hate to have to walk back nineteen hundred years to Pentecost. There were 120 at Pentecost who saved 3,000 souls. Some of the most powerful churches I have ever worked with were not the churches that had the largest number or the richest members. Out in a town in Iowa there were three women who used to pray all night every Thursday night, one of them a colored woman. People used to come under her windows at night and listen to her pray. She murdered the king's English five times in every sentence, but oh, she knew God. They had 500 names on their list for prayer and when the meetings closed they had checked off 397 of them. Every Friday I would be called over the telephone or receive a letter or meet those women and they would tell me what assurances God gave them as to who would be saved. I have never met three women that were stronger in faith than those three. That town was Fairfield, Iowa, one of the brightest, cleanest, snappiest little towns I ever went into. The Meaning of Power Samson wist not the Spirit of the Lord had departed. So might we have money, so might we have members, so might we have increase in culture; but we have not increased in power. I mean spiritual power; power to bring things to pass by way of reform. What do I mean by power? I have told you what I did not mean. By power I mean when the power of God comes upon you and enables you to do what you could not do without that power. That comes to you through confidence and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. There was a time when the Church had more spiritual power than she has today; there never was a time when she had more members than she has today; there never was a time when she had more money than she has today; more culture; but there was a time when she had more spiritual power than today. And when she had more spiritual power she was a separate institution. She was not living for the devil as she is today. And the Church had not become a clearing house for the forces of evil. We are told that at Pentecost tongues of fire came upon the expectant worshipers. I don't mean this gabby stuff they have got today that they call the things of the spirit; I don't mean that jabbering and froth and foaming at the mouth when you can't understand a word they say. Try the Spirit, whether it be of God, and in all ages when the Church has stood for something she has had power. So few of us dream of the tremendous power at our command. At the World's Fair at Chicago the door to one of the great buildings was without doorknob or latch, for these were not needed. There was a great mat at the entrance, and as you stepped upon it your weight would cause an electrical connection to be made and the great doors would swing open. I take this old Book and stand upon it, and all the wonders of life and eternity are opened to me. The power of the Holy Spirit is at my command. Church Needs Great Awakening Let's quit fiddling with religion and do something to bring the world to Christ. We need a Pentecost today. The Church needs a great awakening. Now, I'll not stand anyone's saying anything against the Church as an institution; but I will rebuke its sins and point out its shortcomings. Nobody who loves the Church can be silent when so much needs to be said. I love the Church. I want to explode that old adage that "Love is blind"; I tell you, love has an eagle's eyes. Lots of churches are wrong in their financial policy. It is a wrong that the churches have to resort to tricks that would shame the devil in order to filch a quarter out of a fellow's pocket to help pay the preacher's back salary. There is hardly a church in this country that couldn't have abundant funds if the people would only give of their means as they are commanded by God. Then, too often you put the wrong men in places of authority in the church. You elect some old fellow who would look better in a penitentiary suit, just because he had a "drag" somewhere. We must quit putting such men in church offices. When I was a boy I was taught how to put glass knobs on the feet of a chair and charge the chair with electricity. So long as I didn't touch anything but the chair I was all right, but if I touched the wall or something else I got a shock. The power passed through and from me. As Christians we cannot come into touch with defiling things without suffering a loss of spiritual power. You can't go to the dance and the card party and the cheap-skate show without losing power. Yes, you can do those things and be a church member. But you can be a church member without being a Christian. There's a difference. I read in the Bible that Lot first pitched his tents near Sodom. Next I read that Lot moved right into Sodom, and lived there for twenty years. He lost his power there, too. When God warned him to get out of the city he went and told his sons and daughters, but they wouldn't heed him. He had lost his power over them. He warned his sons-in-law, but they wouldn't heed him. He even lost power over his own wife, for he told her not to look back as they fled, and she rubbered. If you have lost spiritual power it is because you have disobeyed some clear command of God. Maybe you're stingy. God requires tithes. He commands you to give one tenth of your income to him, and maybe you don't do it. It may be your temper. It may be that you have neglected to read the Bible and haven't prayed as you should. The Church is a failure because she is compromising with the men that sit in the seats and own saloons whom she never rebukes; she is compromising with the men who rent their property for disorderly houses, and whom she never rebukes. They are living off the products of shame and if they buy food and clothes for their wives and children from such money, they, too, are living off this product of shame. We have lost our power because we have compromised. When I played baseball I used to attend every theater in the country. Since I was converted I have not darkened a theater's door, except to preach the Gospel. We've lost our power because we've lost our faith. Our leading members are leaders in nothing but card parties and society; they are not leaders in spiritual things. A man comes to me and says, "Mrs. So-and-So is one of my leading members." I ask: "Does she get to prayer-meetings?" "No." "Does she visit the sick?" "No." "Does she put her arms around some poor sinner and try to save her for Christ?" "No." And I find she is a leader in nothing but society, card parties, dances and bridge-whist clubs. I don't call that kind a leading woman in the church; she is the devil's bell-wether. That is true. I tell you people what I call your leading woman: She is the one who gets down on her knees and prays; she is the one that can wrap her arms around a sinner and lead her to Christ; that is a leading church member. You have it doped out wrong. Did Martin Luther trim his sails to the breeze of his day? If he had, you would never have had a Reformation. I will tell you why we have lost our power; I have told you what I don't mean by power. Lost Power We have lost our power because we have failed to insist on the separation of the Church from the world. The Church is a separate body of men and women; we are to be in the world, but not of the world. She is all right in the world, all wrong when the world is in her, and the trouble with the Church today is that she has sprung a leak. The flood tides of the world have been swept in until even her pews are engulfed, yes, even the choir loft is almost submerged. We have become but a third-rate amusement bureau. The world has got to see a clean-cut line of demarkation between the Church and the world. So I believe. If there's anything the Church of God needs it's to climb the stairs and get in an upper room. Come out from the things of the world. When you hand out a pickle and a bunch of celery for the cause of good, then will my Father not be glorified; nor will he be glorified when you sell oyster soup at twenty-five cents a dish, when one lone oyster chases around the dish to find his brother. It doesn't require much power to do that, for two dollars would hire a girl to dish up ice-cream. That does not get you spiritual power. There is deep heart hungering in the Church today for the old-time Pentecostal power. Now, I do not know that the Spirit will ever come to us as he came to Pentecost, for you must remember that he came to usher in the new dispensation, or the dispensation of the Holy Ghost. It is true he was present in the Old Testament. He was in Abraham and Moses. You'll have power when there is nothing questionable in your life. You'll have power when you testify in a more positive manner. Do as the disciples did, believe and receive the Holy Spirit by waiting. The Holy Spirit is ours. He is the promise of Jesus from the Father as a gift to the prayers of the Son. God can no more fill you with the Spirit if you are not right, willing and waiting to receive Him, than he can send the sunshine into your house if you have the blinds and shutters all closed. You can pray till you are black in the face and bald-headed, but you're wasting your time unless you agree with God. There can be no wedding unless two parties are agreed. If the girl says "No," that ends it. Don't think you are walking with God just because your name is on a church record. Walk in the path of righteousness even if it leads to a coffin and the graveyard. Jesus gave his disciples power to perform miracles. That same power can be delegated to you and me today. He always spoke of the Holy Spirit in the future. He was not there. He didn't have to be. They had Jesus, but the Church needs him today. It needs a baptism of the Holy Ghost. There are no substitutes. You can organize, prepare, hire the best singers and preachers in the universe, but you'll get no power. No matter what Scriptural knowledge he may have, no matter if he prays so that it reaches the stars, no matter if his sermons sway the congregation with their word pictures, no matter if the singers warble faultlessly and to beat the band--the preacher and the singers will produce no more effect than the beating of a drum or the running of a music box. The preacher who murders the king's English four times to every sentence and has the Holy Ghost will get the revival. The Church today needs power. It has plenty of wealth, culture and numbers. There is no substitute for the Holy Spirit and you cannot have power without the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is ours by the promise of Christ. To receive him we must give up all sin and walk in the path of righteousness even if it carries us to our graves or across the seas as a missionary. Give up everything the Lord forbids even if it is as important to you as your hand or your eye. [Illustration: Facsimile of Page One of Circular Handed to Every Convert. Dear Friend: You have by this act of coming forward publicly acknowledged your faith in Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour. No one could possibly be more rejoiced that you have done this, or be more anxious for you to succeed and get the most joy out of the Christian life, than I. Therefore, I ask you to read carefully this little tract. Paste it in your Bible and read it frequently. W. Sunday. _2 Tim:2:15_ WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A CHRISTIAN "A Christian is any man, woman or child who comes to God as a lost sinner, accepts the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour, surrenders to Him as their Lord and Master, confesses Him as such before the world, and strives to please Him in everything day by day." Have =you= come to God realizing that you are a lost sinner? Have =you= accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as =your= personal Saviour; that is, do =you= believe with all your heart that God laid all =your= iniquity on Him? (Isa. 53:5-6) and that =He= bore the penalty of =your= sins (1 Peter 2:24), and that =your= sins are forgiven because Jesus died in =your= stead? Have =you= surrendered to Him as your Lord and Master? That is, are =you= willing to do His will even when it conflicts with your desire? Have =you= confessed to Him as your Saviour and Master before the world? Is it =your= purpose to strive to please Him in everything day by day? If you can sincerely answer "YES" to the foregoing questions, then you may know on the authority of God's Word that =you= are NOW a child of God (John 1:12), that you have NOW eternal life (John 3:36); that is to say, if you have done =your= part (i.e., believe that Christ died in your place, and receive Him as your Saviour and Master) God has done HIS part and imparted to you His own nature (II Peter 1:4). HOW TO MAKE A SUCCESS OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE Now that you are a child of God =your= growth depends upon =yourself=. It is impossible for you to become a useful Christian unless you are willing to do the things which are absolutely essential to your spiritual growth. To this end the following suggestions will be found to be of vital importance: =1. STUDY THE BIBLE=: Set aside at least fifteen minutes a day for Bible Study. Let God talk to you fifteen minutes a day through His Word. Talk to God fifteen minutes a day in prayer. Talk for God fifteen minutes a day. "As new-born babes desire the sincere milk of the Word, that ye may grow thereby."--1 Peter 2:2. The word of God is food for the soul. Commit to memory one verse of Scripture each day. Join a Bible class. (Psa. 119:11.) =2. PRAY MUCH=: Praying is talking to God. Talk to Him about everything--your perplexities, joys, sorrows, sins, mistakes, friends, enemies. "Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." Phil. 4:6. =3. WIN SOMEONE FOR CHRIST=: For spiritual growth you need not only food (Bible study) but exercise. Work for Christ. The only work Christ ever set for Christians is to win others. "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature." Mark 16:15. "When I say unto the wicked, thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand."--Ezek. 3:18. 4. =SHUN EVIL COMPANIONS=: Avoid bad people, bad books, bad thoughts. Read the First Psalm. "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness, and what communion hath light with darkness--what part hath he that believeth with an infidel--wherefore come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord."--II Cor. 6:14-17. Try to win the wicked for God, but do not choose them for your companions. 5. =JOIN SOME CHURCH=: Be faithful in your attendance at the Sabbath and mid-week services. "Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is."--Heb. 10:25. Co-operate with your pastor. God has appointed the pastor to be a shepherd over the church and you should give him due reverence and seek to assist him in his plans for the welfare of the church. 6. =GIVE TO THE SUPPORT OF THE LORD'S WORK=: Give as the Lord hath prospered you.--I Cor. 16:2. "Give not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loveth a cheerful giver."--I Cor. 9:7. 7. =DO NOT BECOME DISCOURAGED=: Expect temptations, discouragement and persecution; the Christian life is warfare. "Yea and all who will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution."--II Tim. 3:12. The eternal God is thy refuge. We have the promises that all things, even strange and hard unaccountable obstacles, work together for our good. Many of God's brightest saints were once as weak as you are, passed through dark tunnels and the hottest fire, and yet their lives were enriched by their experiences, and the world made better because of their having lived in it. Read often the following passages of Scripture: Romans 8:18; James 1:12; I Corinthians 10:13.] CHAPTER XXV A Life Enlistment When a man, after starting to be a Christian, looks back, it is only a question of time until he goes back.--BILLY SUNDAY. Professor William James, the philosopher, contended that there was a scientific value to the stories of Christian conversions; that these properly belonged among the data of religion, to be weighed by the man of science. Harold Begbie's notable book, "Twice-Born Men," was recognized by Professor James as a contribution to the science of religion; for it was simply a collection of the stories of men whose lives had been transformed by the gospel which the Salvation Army had carried to them. A whole library of such books as "Twice-Born Men" could be written concerning the converts of Billy Sunday. His converts not only "right-about-face" but they keep marching in the new direction. Their enlistment is for life. This point is one of the most critical in the whole realm of the discussion of revivals. Times without number it has been charged that the converts of evangelists lose their religion as quickly as they got it. A perfectly fair question to ask concerning these Billy Sunday campaigns is, "Are they temporary attacks of religious hysteria, mere effervescent moods of spiritual exaltation, which are dissipated by the first contact with life's realities?" Here is opportunity for the acid test. Billy Sunday has been conducting revival meetings long enough to enable an investigator to go back over his trail and trace his results. After years have passed, are there still evidences of the presence and work of the evangelist? To this only one answer can be made. The most skeptical and antagonistic person cannot fail to find hundreds and thousands of Billy Sunday converts in the churches of the towns where the evangelist has conducted meetings during the past twenty years. Not all of the converts have held fast; we cannot forget that one of the Twelve was a complete renegade, and that the others were for a time weak in the faith. Alas, this condition is true of Christian converts, however made. The terrible record revealed in each year's church statistics, of members who are missing--entirely lost to the knowledge of the Church--is enough to restrain every pastor from making uncharitable remarks upon the recruits won by an evangelist. The fact to be stressed at this present moment is that Billy Sunday converts are to be found in all departments of church work, in the ministry itself, and on the foreign field. One reason for the conservation of the results of the Sunday campaigns is that all the powers of the evangelist and his organization are exerted to lead those who have confessed Christ in the tabernacles to become members of the church of their choice, at the earliest possible date. Sunday says candidly that converts cannot expect to grow in grace and usefulness outside the organized Church of Christ. Thus it comes about that before a Sunday campaign closes, and for months afterwards, the church papers report wholesale accessions to the local congregations of all denominations. Three thousand new church members were added in a single Sunday in the city of Scranton. What these campaigns mean in the way of rehabilitating individual churches is illustrated by what a Scranton pastor said to me toward the close of the Sunday campaign: "You know my church burned down a short time ago. We have been planning to rebuild. Now, however, we shall have to rebuild to twice the size of our old church, and we have enough new members already to make sure that our financial problem will be a simple one." In other words, the coming of the evangelist had turned into a triumph and a new starting point for this congregation what might have otherwise been a time of discouragement and temporary defeat. For a moment the reader should take the viewpoint of the pastors who have been struggling along faithfully, year after year, at best getting but a few score of new members each year. Then Billy Sunday appears. The entire atmosphere and outlook of the church is transformed within a few days. Optimism reigns. Lax church members become Christian workers, and enthusiasm for the kingdom pervades the entire membership. The churches of the community find themselves bound together in a new solidarity of fellowship and service. Then, to crown all, into the church membership come literally hundreds of men and women, mostly young, and all burning with the convert's ardent zeal to do service for the Master. Can anybody but a pastor conceive the thrill that must have come to the minister of a Wilkes-Barre church which added one thousand new members to its existing roll, as a result of the Billy Sunday campaign in that city? Six months after the Sunday meetings in Scranton I visited Carbondale, a small town sixteen miles distant from Scranton, and talked with two of the resident pastors. There are four Protestant churches in Carbondale, which have already received a thousand new members within five months. All these converts are either the direct result of Billy Sunday's preaching, or else the converts of converts. Out of a Protestant population of nine thousand persons, the Carbondale churches have received one-ninth into their membership within six months. These bare figures do not express the greater total of Christian service and enthusiasm which permeates the community as an abiding legacy of the Billy Sunday campaign. These converts consider that they have been saved to serve. Asked to fix a period after which he would expect a reaction from the Sunday meetings, a critic would probably say about one year. On this point we learn that when the evangelist visited the city of Scranton, which is within an hour's ride of Wilkes-Barre, he found that the influence of the meetings which he had held a year previously in Wilkes-Barre were perhaps the most potent single factor in preparing the people of Scranton for his coming. Night after night Wilkes-Barre sent delegations of scores and hundreds over to the Scranton Tabernacle. Investigators from afar who came to look into the Scranton meetings were advised to go to the neighboring city to ascertain what were the effects of the campaign after a year. The result was always convincing. When the evangelist was in Pittsburgh, McKeesport, where he had been six years before, sent many delegations to hear him and on one occasion fifteen hundred persons made the journey from McKeesport to Pittsburgh to testify to the lasting benefits which their city had received from the evangelist's visit. Usually some organization of the "trail-hitters" is effected after the evangelist's departure. These are bands for personal Christian work. The most remarkable of them all is reported from Wichita, Kansas, where the aftermath of the Sunday meetings has become so formidable as to suggest a new and general method of Christian service by laymen. The Sunday converts organized themselves into "Gospel Teams," who announce that they are ready to go anywhere and conduct religious meetings, especially for men. They offer to pay their own expenses, although frequently the communities inviting them refuse to permit this. Sometimes these Gospel Teams travel by automobiles or street cars and sometimes they make long railway journeys. The men have so multiplied themselves that there are now more than three hundred Gospel Teams in this work and they have formed "The National Federation of Gospel Teams" of which Claude Stanley of Wichita is president and West Goodwin of Cherryvale, Kansas, is secretary. Up to date, the tremendous total of eleven thousand conversions is reported by these unsalaried, self-supporting gospel workers, who joyously acclaim Billy Sunday as their leader. They represent his teachings and his spirit in action. The most celebrated of these gospel teams is "The Business Men's Team" of Wichita, an interdenominational group. It comprises such men as Henry Allen, the editor of the Wichita _Beacon_ and one of the foremost public men of the state; the president of the Inter-urban Railway; the president of the Kansas Mutual Bank, and other eminent business men. This team has visited eleven states in its work, all without a penny of cost to the Church, and with results exceeding those achieved by many great and expensive organizations. The Billy Sunday converts not only stick but they multiply themselves and become effective servants of the Church and the kingdom. Nobody is left to conjecture as to the sort of counsel that Mr. Sunday gives his converts. Every man, woman and child who "hits the trail" is handed a leaflet, telling him how to make a success of the Christian life. A trumpet call to Christian service by every confessed disciple of Jesus Christ is sounded by the evangelist. The following is an appeal of this sort: "SHARP-SHOOTERS" The twentieth century has witnessed two apparently contradictory facts: The decline of the Church and the growth of religious hunger in the masses. The world during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries passed through a period of questioning and doubts, during which everything in heaven and earth was put into a crucible and melted down into constituent elements. During that period many laymen and preachers lost their moorings. The definite challenging note was lost out of the life of the ministry. The preacher today is oftentimes a human interrogation point, preaching to empty pews. The hurrying, busy crowd in the street is saying to the preacher and the Church, "When you have something definite to say about the issues of life, heaven, hell and salvation, we will listen; till then we have no time for you." I believe we are on the eve of a great national revival. The mission of the Church is to carry the gospel of Christ to the world. I believe that lack of efficient personal work is one of the curses of the Church today. The people of the Church are like squirrels in a cage. Lots of activity, but accomplishing nothing. It doesn't require a Christian life to sell oyster soup or run a bazaar or a rummage sale. Last year many churches reported no new members on confession of faith. Why these meager results with this tremendous expenditure of energy and money? Why are so few people coming into the kingdom? I will tell you what is the matter--there is not a definite effort put forth to persuade a definite person to receive a definite Saviour at a definite time, and that definite time is now. I tell you the Church of the future must have personal work and prayer. The trouble with some churches is that they think the preacher is a sort of ecclesiastical locomotive, who will snort and puff and pull the whole bunch through to glory. A politician will work harder to get a vote than the Church of God will work to have men brought to Christ. Watch some of the preachers go down the aisles. They drag along as if they had grindstones tied to their feet. No political campaign is won by any stump speaker or any spell-binder on the platform. It is won by a man-to-man canvass. The Value of Personal Work The children of this generation are wiser than the children of light. You can learn something from the world about how to do things. Personal work is the simplest and most effective form of work we can engage in. Andrew wins Peter. Peter wins three thousand at Pentecost. A man went into a boot and shoe store and talked to the clerk about Jesus Christ. He won the clerk to Christ. Do you know who that young man was? It was Dwight L. Moody, and he went out and won multitudes to Christ. The name of the man who won him was Kimball, and Kimball will get as much reward as Moody. Kimball worked to win Moody and Moody worked and won the multitude. Andrew wins Peter and Peter wins three thousand at Pentecost. That is the way God works today. Charles G. Finney, after learning the name of any man or woman, would invariably ask: "Are you a Christian?" There isn't any one here who hasn't drag enough to win somebody to Christ. Personal work is a difficult form of work; more difficult than preaching, singing, attending conventions, giving your goods to feed the poor. The devil will let you have an easy time until God asks you to do personal work. It is all right while you sing in the choir, but just as soon as you get out and work for God the devil will be on your back and you will see all the flimsy excuses you can offer for not working for the Lord. If you want to play into the hands of the devil begin to offer your excuses. There are many people who want to win somebody for Jesus and they are waiting to be told how to do it. I believe there are hundreds and thousands of people who are willing to work and who know something must be done, but they are waiting for help; I mean men and women of ordinary ability. Many people are sick and tired and disgusted with just professing religion; they are tired of trotting to church and trotting home again. They sit in a pew and listen to a sermon; they are tired of that, not speaking to anybody and not engaging in personal work; they are getting tired of it and the church is dying because of it. A lot should wake up and go to the rescue and win souls for Jesus Christ. I want to say to the deacons, stewards, vestrymen, prudential committees, that they should work, and the place to begin is at your own home. Sit down and write the names of five or ten friends, and many of them members of your own church, and two or three of those not members of any church; yet you mingle with these people in the club, in business, in your home in a friendly way. You meet them every week, some of them every day, and you never speak to them on the subject of religion; you never bring it to their attention at all; you should be up and doing something for God and God's truth. There are always opportunities for a Christian to work for God. There is always a chance to speak to some one about God. Where you find one that won't care, you'll find one thousand that will. My Father's Business Be out and out for God. Have a heart-to-heart talk with some people and win them to Christ. The first recorded words of Jesus are these: "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" The trouble is we are too lackadaisical in religion, indifferent and dead and lifeless. That is the spirit of the committees today in the Church. I think the multitude in the Church will have to get converted themselves before they can lead any one else to Christ. It is my firm conviction, after many years of experience in the work, that half the people in the Church have never been converted, have never been born again. I take up a bottle of water, uncork it and take a drink. That is experimental. One sip of water can convince me more of its power to slake thirst than 40,000 books written on the subject. You know quinine is bitter because you have experimented; you know fire will burn because you have experimented; you know ice will freeze; it is cold; you have experimented. A man must experience religion to know God. All you know of God is what you read in some book or what you heard somebody else talk about; you haven't lived so that you could learn first-handed, so most of your religion is second-handed. There is too much second-hand stuff in the Church. It is your privilege to know and to have salvation. Jesus said to Peter: "When you are converted strengthen your brethren." You are not in a position to help anybody else unless you have been helped yourself. So many church members know nothing about the Bible. A preacher will take a text from the Bible and get as far from it as the East is from the West. A young preacher just out of the seminary said: "Must I confine myself in my preaching to the Bible?" Just like a shrimp who would say, "Must I confine my roaming to the Atlantic Ocean?" Imagine a little minnow saying: "Must I confine myself to the Atlantic Ocean?" "Must I confine myself to the Bible?" Just as if his intellect would exhaust it in two or three sermons. We have cut loose from the Bible, and any man who is living contrary to the Bible is a sinner, whether he feels like a sinner or not. Every man who is living contrary to the laws is a criminal, whether he feels like it or not. A man who breaks the law of God is a sinner, and is on the road to hell, whether he feels like it or like a saint. Jesus came into the world to reveal God to man, and man reveals him to man. The only revelation we have of Jesus is through the Bible. You have got to know Jesus to know God; that's how I get through there. There is no revelation for God to make of himself greater than he has made through Jesus Christ. It is not possible for the human intellect to have a greater conception of God. Every man needs Christ. Jesus is the Saviour that he needs and he has got to know the Bible to show what it is that makes Jesus the Saviour. He needs a Saviour and now is the time to accept the Saviour and be saved. That's what the Bible says. Whatever the Bible says, write "finish" after it and stop. Feeding the Spiritual Life Then you need the Holy Spirit. Without him you cannot do anything. The spirit of God works through clean hands. There are too many dirty hands, too many dirty people trying to preach a clean gospel. I have known men that have preached the truth and God has honored the truth, although their lives were not as they should be. But God honored the truth and not the people who preached the truth. But if they had been Christians themselves then God would have honored them more, because he would have honored them and the truth. Prayer. Three-fourths of the church members have no family prayer. They let spiritual life starve. That is the reason the pews are full of driftwood; that is the reason that religion is but a mirage to many. Pray God to give you power. Pray God to give you power to carry on his work after you have become converted. I don't preach a sermon that I don't pray God for help, and I never finish a sermon that I don't thank God that I have preached it. Then I say: "Lord, you take care of the seed I have sown in that sermon." I think the Church needs a baptism of good, pure "horse sense." Pure hearts. If I have any iniquity in my heart the Lord will not come in. We need a wise head. We need horse sense in preaching. We need horse sense in what we do. I think God is constantly looking for a company of men and women that are constantly alive. There are too many dead ones. He needs men and women that are always at it, not only during the revival; we need to be full of faith; dead in earnest, never give up, a bulldog tenacity and stick-to-it-iveness for the cause of God Almighty. The Dignity of Personal Work If it is beneath your dignity to do personal work then you are above your Master. If you are not willing to do what he did, then don't call him your Lord. The servant is not greater than the owner of the house. The chauffeur is not greater than the owner of the automobile. The servant on the railroad is not greater than the owners of the road. Certainly they are not greater than our Lord Jesus Christ. It requires an effort to win souls to Christ. There is no harder work and none brings greater results than winning souls. You'll need courage. It is hard to do personal work and the devil will try to oppose you. You'll seek excuses to try to get out of it. Many people who attend the meetings regularly now will begin to stay at home when asked to do personal work. It will surprise you to see them lie to get out of doing personal work. We need enthusiasm for God. If there is any place on God's earth that needs a baptism of enthusiasm, it is the church and the prayer-meetings. It is not popular in some communities and in some churches to be enthusiastic for God. You'll never accomplish anything without pure enthusiasm, and don't be afraid of being a religious enthusiast. Religion is too cold. Formality is choking it in the pews. There is nothing accomplished in war, politics or religion, without enthusiasm. Admiral Decatur once gave this toast: "My country: May she always be right, but right or wrong, my country!" That's enthusiasm. Perseverance is needed to conquer in this old life. Perseverance is contagious, not an epidemic. Religion is contagious. Roman soldiers shortened their swords and added to their kingdom. You shorten the distance between you and the sinner and you'll add to the kingdom of God. The trouble is you have been trying to reach them with a ten-foot pole. Drop your dignity and formality and walk up to them; take them by the hand. You are too dignified. You sit in your fine homes and see the town going to hell. We need carefulness to win souls. The way to win souls is to be careful what you say. Study the disposition of the person with whom you talk. We need tact. Personal work is the department of the church efficient to deal with the individual and not the masses. It is analogous to the sharpshooter in the army so dreaded by the opposing forces. The sharpshooter picks out the pivotal individual instead of shooting at the mass. The preacher shoots with a siege gun at long range. You can go to the individual and dispose of his difficulties. I shoot out there two or three hundred feet and you sit right beside people. If I were a physician and you were sick I'd not prescribe _en masse_, I'd go down and see you individually. I'd try to find out what was the matter and prescribe what you needed. All medicine is good for something, but not for everything. We need sympathy. One of the noblest traits of the human character is sympathy. It levels mountains, warms the broken heart and melts the iceberg. Have sympathy with the sinner. Not with sin, but the fact that he is one. God hates sin and the devil. He will not compromise. Have sympathy with the girl who sins, but not with the sin that ruined her. Get down on the ground where the others are. You are away up there saved, but you must get down and help the sinner. Five Classes of People There are five classes of people and this classification will touch every man and woman, whether in Scranton, New York or London. First, those who can not attend church, and you will always find some. Some are sick, shut in; some have to work in hotels and restaurants; the maids in your house have to get your meals, the railroad men have to go out, the furnaces must be kept going in the steel works. Second, those who can attend and who do not attend church. There are millions of people that can and don't attend church. Some fellows never darken the church door until they die, and they carry their old carcass in to have a large funeral. It is no compliment to any man, and it is an insult to manhood, and disgrace to the individual, that he never darkens the church door. But he darkens the door of the grog shop any day. Third, those who can and do attend church and who are not moved by the preaching. There are lots of people who come out of curiosity. Fourth, those who can go to church and those who do go to church and are moved by the preaching and convicted but not converted. Every man that hears the truth is convicted. Talk to those men about Jesus Christ. Get them to take their stand for righteousness. Fifth, those who can and do go to church and are convicted by the preaching and converted. They need strengthening. They are converted now, but they need the benefit of your experience. You say, "Where will I find these people to talk to them?" Where won't you find them? Where can you find a place where they are not? You will only find one place where they are not and that is in the cemetery. Right in your neighborhood, right in your block, how many are Christians? Is your husband a Christian? Are your children Christians? If they are, let them alone and get after somebody else's husband and children. Don't sit down and thank God that your husband and children are Christians. Suppose I were to say: "My family, my George, my Nell, my Paul, my Helen are Christians!" We are all Christians, let the rest of the world go to the devil. There is too much of that spirit in the Church today. Go from house to house. Go to the people in your block, in your place of business. Have you said anything to the telephone girl when you called her up? You are quick enough to jump on her when she gives you the wrong number. Have you said anything to the delivery boy--to the butcher? Have you asked the milkman? Have you said anything to the newsboy who throws your paper on the doorstep at night? Have you called them up at the newspaper office? Have you said anything to the girl who waits on you at the store; to the servant who brings your dinner in at home; to the woman who scrubs your floors? Where will you find them?--where won't you find them? The Privilege of Personal Work Personal work is a great privilege. Not that God needs us, but that we need him. Jesus Christ worked. "I must do the works of Him that sent me." So must you. He didn't send me to work and you to loaf. Honor the God that gives you the privilege to do what he wants. Jesus worked. Please God and see how it will delight your soul. If you'll win a soul you will have a blessing that the average church member knows nothing about. They are absolute strangers to the higher Christian life. We need an aroused church. An anxious church makes anxious sinners. If all the Methodist preachers would each save a soul a month there would be 460,000 souls saved in a year. If all the Baptist preachers would each save a soul a month there would be 426,000 souls saved in a year. If all the other evangelical preachers would save a soul a month there would be 1,425,000 souls saved a year. Over 7,000 Protestant churches recently made report of no accessions on confession of faith. Christ said to preach the gospel to all the world and that means every creature in the world. [Illustration: "MY GOD, I'VE GOT TWO BOYS DOWN THERE!"] Listen to this: There are 13,000,000 young men in this country between the ages of sixteen and thirty years; 12,000,000 are not members of any church, Protestant or Catholic; 5,000,000 of them go to church occasionally; 7,000,000 never darken a church door from one year's end to another. They fill the saloons and the houses of ill fame, the haunts of vice and corruption, and yet most young men have been touched by some Sunday-school influences; but you don't win them for God and they go into the world never won for God. [Illustration: "YOU OLD HYPOCRITE!"] [Illustration: "IT'S UP TO YOU."] I want to tell you if you want to solve the problem for the future get hold of the young men now. Get them for God now. Save your boys and girls. Save the young man and woman and you launch a life-boat. At the Iroquois fire in Chicago six hundred people were burned to death. One young woman about seventeen years of age fought through the crowd, but her hair was singed from her head, her clothes were burned, her face blistered. She got on a street car to go to her home in Oak Park. She was wringing her hands and crying hysterically, and a woman said to her: "Why, you ought to be thankful you escaped with your life." "I escaped--but I didn't save anybody; there are hundreds that died. To think that I escaped and didn't save anybody." In Pennsylvania there was once a mine explosion, and the people were rushing there to help. Up came an old miner seventy or eighty years of age, tired, tottering and exhausted. He threw off his vest, his coat and hat and picked up a pick and shovel. Some of them stopped him and said: "What is the matter? You are too old; let some of the younger ones do that. Stand back." The old fellow said: "My God, I've got two boys down there!" So you see it seems to make all the difference when you've got some boy down there. Who is wise? You say Andrew Carnegie, the millionaire, is wise, the mayor, the judge, the governor, the educator, the superintendent of schools, the principal of the high school, the people who don't worry or don't live for pleasure, the inventor. But what does the Lord say? The Lord says, "He who winneth souls is wise." CHAPTER XXVI "A Good Soldier of Jesus Christ" I'd rather undertake to save ten drunkards than one old financial Shylock--it would be easier.--BILLY SUNDAY. Sympathetic observers comment in distressed tones upon the physical exhaustion of Sunday after every one of his addresses. He speaks with such intensity and vigor that he is completely spent by every effort. To one who does not know that he has worked at this terrific pace for near a score of years it seems as if the evangelist is on the verge of a complete collapse. He certainly seems to speak "as a dying man to dying men." The uttermost ounce of his energy is offered up to each audience. Billy Sunday is an unsparing worker. For a month or six weeks of every year he gives himself to rest. The remainder of the year he is under a strain more intense than that of a great political campaign. Even his Monday rest day, which is supposed to be devoted to recuperation, is oftener than not given to holding special meetings in some other city than the one wherein he is campaigning. Speaking twice or oftener every day, to audiences averaging many thousands, is a tax upon one's nerve force and vitality beyond all computation. In addition to this, Sunday has his administrative work, with its many perplexities and grave responsibilities. Withal, the evangelist, like every other man pre-eminent in his calling, suffers a great loneliness; he has few intimates who can lead his mind apart from his work. What says Kipling, in his "Song of Diego Valdez," the lord high admiral of Spain, who pined in vain for the comradeship of his old companions, but who, in the aloneness of eminence, mourned his solitary state? "They sold Diego Valdez To bondage of great deeds." The computable aggregate of Sunday's work is almost unbelievable. His associates say that his converts number more than a quarter of a million persons. That is a greater total than the whole membership of the entire Christian Church, decades after the resurrection of our Lord. Imagine a city of a quarter of a million inhabitants, every one of whom was a zealous disciple of Jesus Christ. What a procession these "trail-hitters" would make could they all be gathered into one great campaign parade! Of course these converts are not all trophies of Billy Sunday's preaching power. He has not won them alone. He has merely stood in the forefront, as the agent of the Church, with vast co-operative forces behind him. Nevertheless, he has been the occasion and the instrument for this huge accomplishment in the Church's conquest. When it comes to counting up the aggregate size of Sunday's audiences, one is tempted not to believe his own figures, for the total runs up into the millions, and even the tens of millions. Probably no living man has spoken to so great numbers of human beings as Billy Sunday. More eloquent than any comment upon the magnitude and number of his meetings is the following summary of his campaigns gathered from various sources. Sunday himself does not keep records of his work. His motto seems to be, "Forgetting those things which are behind." In 1904-5 Billy Sunday visited various cities of Illinois, where conversions ranged in numbers from 650 to 1,800; in Iowa, where conversions ranged from 400 to 1,000; and in a few other towns. In 1905-6 numerous campaigns in Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota produced converts ranging from 550 to 2,400, the highest number being reached in Burlington, Iowa. In 1906-7 the converts numbered over 12,000, with a maximum of 3,000 in Kewanee, Illinois. In 1907-8 campaigns in Illinois and Iowa, and one in Sharon, Pennsylvania, reported over 24,000 converts in all, with a maximum of 6,700 in Decatur, Illinois. In 1908-9 the total number of converts reached over 18,000, with 5,300 in Spokane, Washington, and 4,700 in Springfield, Illinois. In 1908-9 campaigns in various cities reported a total of 35,000 converts, with 6,600 in Newcastle, Pennsylvania, 5,900 in Youngstown, Ohio, and 5,000 in Danville, Illinois. In 1911-12 campaigns in cities of Ohio, in Erie, Pennsylvania, and in Wichita, Kansas, reported a total of 36,000 converts, with 7,600 in Toledo, and 6,800 in Springfield. In 1912-13 campaigns in other Ohio and Pennsylvania cities and in Fargo, North Dakota; South Bend, Indiana; and Wheeling, West Virginia, brought 81,000 converts, with a minimum in Fargo of 4,000, and a maximum of 18,000 in Columbus. _The Lutheran Observer_ gives the following table of statistics for eighteen of the largest cities in which campaigns have been conducted: Population Conversions Pittsburgh, Pa 533,905 26,601 Steubenville, Ohio 22,391 7,888 Columbus, Ohio 181,511 18,137 McKeesport, Pa 42,694 10,022 Toledo, Ohio 168,497 7,686 Wheeling, W. Va 41,641 8,300 Springfield, Ohio 46,921 6,804 Newcastle, Pa 36,280 6,683 Erie, Pa 66,525 5,312 Portsmouth, Ohio 23,481 5,224 Canton, Ohio 50,217 5,640 Youngstown, Ohio 79,066 5,915 South Bend, Ind 53,684 6,398 Wilkes-Barre, Pa 67,105 16,584 Beaver Falls, Pa 12,191 6,000 Lima, Ohio 30,508 5,659 East Liverpool, Ohio 20,387 6,354 Johnstown, Pa 55,482 11,829 ------ ------- Total 167,036 Included in the 18,000 converts in Columbus were the chief of police and all the policemen who had been detailed to duty at the tabernacle. A notable work was also done in the penitentiary. Wilkes-Barre's 16,000 conversions bore an extraordinary relation to the population of the city, which is but 67,105. The sheriff was among the Wilkes-Barre converts and he has since proved his faith by his works in prosecuting law-breakers. The statistics show that there were 6,000 converts at South Bend, Indiana, in the spring of 1913, but they do not reveal the fact that immediately afterwards there was inaugurated an era of civic reform which cleaned up the city for the first time in fifteen years, and elected as mayor one of the Billy Sunday converts. Prior to the Sunday campaign in Steubenville, Ohio, September and October, 1913 (where the converts numbered 8,000), the town had gone "wet" by 1,400 majority, after the meetings it went "dry" by 300 majority. Johnstown, Pennsylvania, with a campaign held November and December, 1913, reported 12,000 conversions, and a Billy Sunday Anti-saloon League of 10,000 men. The fame of the Pittsburgh campaign, January and February, 1914, is in all the churches; 27,000 converts were reported. Mrs. Sunday is my authority for these and the following details of recent meetings: The Scranton campaign (March and April, 1914) was unusual in several respects. It not only reported 18,000 converts, but it also held the greatest industrial parade, under distinctively Christian auspices, that the country has ever seen. In preparation for the Sunday meetings 10,000 adults were enlisted in Bible classes, and this number grew steadily during and after the campaign. In May and June of 1914 the evangelist worked in Huntingdon, West Virginia, where the conversions were 6,500. From there he went to Colorado Springs and a total of 4,500 persons "hit the trail." The Colorado Springs meetings were unusual in that the attendants were from all parts of the country, and so the revival fire was carried far. The organization of adult Bible classes followed the Colorado Springs campaign. This promises to be one of the distinctive features of Billy Sunday's meetings. In reading such a compiled record as the foregoing, it is to be remembered that in all things that affect spiritual values the only true record is that which is kept in another world. Enough has been shown, however, to make clear that Sunday practices what he preaches when he urges Christians to whole-hearted service. SUNDAY'S "CONSECRATION" SERMON "I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service." The armies of God are never made up of drafted men and women, ordered into service whether willing or not. God never owned a slave. God doesn't want you to do anything that you can't do without protest. This is not a call to hard duty, but an invitation to the enjoyment of a privilege. It is not a call to hired labor to take the hoe and go into the field, but the appeal of a loving father to his children to partake of all he has to give. If there is nothing in you that will respond to God's appeal when you think of his mercies, I don't think much of you. The impelling motive of my text is gratitude, not fear. It looks to Calvary, not to Sinai. We are being entreated, not threatened. That's the amazing thing to me. To think that God would entreat us--would stand to entreat us! He is giving me a chance to show I love him. If you are not ready to offer it in gratitude, God doesn't want you to serve him through fear, but because you realize his love for you, and appreciate and respond to it. A business man who loves his wife will never be too busy to do something for her, never too busy to stop sometimes to think of how good she has been and what she has done for him. If men would only think of the things God has done for them there would be less card-playing, less thought of dinners and of concerts and other diversions of the world. God wants us to sit down and think over his goodness to us. The man who doesn't isn't worth a nickel a punch. Has God done anything for us as a nation, has he done anything for us as individuals, that commands our gratitude? Astronomers have counted three hundred and eighty million stars, and they have barely commenced. Why, you might as well try to count those countless stars as to try to count God's mercies. You might as well try to count the drops of water in the sea or the grains of sand upon the shore. If we only think, we shall say with David: "According to Thy tender mercies." God's Mercies An old lady said one morning that she would try to count all God's mercies for that one day, but at noon she was becoming confused, and at three o'clock she threw up her hands and said: "They come three times too fast for me to count." Just think of the things we have to be thankful for! A visitor to an insane asylum was walking through the grounds and as he passed one of the buildings he heard a voice from a barred window high up in the wall and it said: "Stranger, did you ever thank God for your reason?" He had never thought of that before, but he says that he has thought of it every day since. Did you ever think that thousands of people who were just as good as you are, are beating their heads against the walls of padded cells? Did you ever think what a blessed thing it is that you are sane and you go about among men and follow your daily duties, and go home to be greeted by your wife and have your children climb about you? Did you ever thank God for your eyes? Did you ever thank him that you can see the sunrise and the sunset and can see the flowers and the trees and look upon the storm? Did you ever thank God that you have two good eyes while so many others less fortunate than you must grope their way in blindness to the coffin? Did you ever thank God for hearing? That you can hear music and the voices of friends and dear ones? That you can leave your home and business, and come here and hear the songs and the preaching of the word of God? Did you ever think what it would mean to be deaf? Did you ever thank God for the blessing of taste? Some people can't tell whether they are eating sawdust and shavings or strawberries and ice cream. Think of the good things we enjoy! Others have tastes so vicious that they find it almost impossible to eat. God might have made our food taste like quinine. Did you ever thank God that you can sleep? If not, you ought to be kept awake for a month. Think of the thousands who suffer from pain or insomnia so that they can sleep only under opiates. Did you ever wake up in the morning and thank God that you have had a good night's rest? If you haven't, God ought to keep you awake for a week, then you'd know you've had reason to be thankful. Did you ever thank God for the doctors and nurses and hospitals? For the surgeon who comes with scalpel to save your life or relieve your sufferings? If it had not been for them you'd be under the grass. For the nurse who watches over you that you may be restored to health? Did you ever thank God for the bread you eat, while so many others are hungry? Did you ever thank him for the enemy that has been baffled, for the lie against you that has failed? Out in Elgin, Illinois, I was taken driving by a friend, and he said that he wanted me to go with him to see a man. He took me to see a man who was lying in bed, with arms most pitifully wasted by suffering. The poor fellow said he had been in bed for thirty-two years, but he wasn't worrying about that. He said he was so sorry for the well people who didn't know Jesus. I went out thanking God that I could walk. If your hearts are not made of stone or adamant they will melt with gratitude when you think of the many mercies, the tender mercies, of God. [Illustration: BILLY SUNDAY AND HIS STAFF AT SCRANTON. FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: (STANDING) F. R. SEIBERT, A. G. GILL: (SITTING) B. D. ACKLEY, MISS FRANCES MILLER, MISS GRACE SAXE, MR. SUNDAY.] The Living Sacrifice "Brethren"--that's what God calls his true followers. No speaking from the loft. If there's any lesson we need to learn it is that of being "brethren." Sinners are not called "brethren" in the Bible. God commands sinners. They are in rebellion. He entreats Christians. When Lincoln called for volunteers he addressed men as "citizens of the United States," not as foreigners. The man who is appreciative of God's mercies will not have much mercy on himself. Don't stand up and say: "I'll do what Jesus bids me to do, and go where he bids me to go," then go to bed. Present your bodies--not mine--not those of your wives; you must present your own. Present your bodies; not your neighbor's; not your children's; it is their duty to do that. Do you trust God enough to let him do what he wants to do? Henry Varley said to Moody, when that great American was in England, that God is waiting to show this world what one man could do for him. Moody said: "Varley, by the grace of God I'll be that man"; and God took hold of Moody and shook the world with him. God would shake the world with us today if only we would present our bodies as a living sacrifice to him, as Moody did. Are you willing to present yourself? I am tired of a church of five hundred or seven hundred members without power enough to bring one soul to Christ. At the opening of the Civil War many a man was willing that the country should be saved by able-bodied male relatives of his wife, who made themselves bullet-men, but he didn't go himself. God isn't asking for other men's bodies. He's asking for yours. If you would all give to God what rightfully belongs to him, I tell you he would create a commotion on earth and in hell. If God had the feet of some of you he would point your toes in different ways from those you have been going for many years. If he had your feet he would never head you into a booze joint. If he had your feet he would never send you into a ball-room. If he had the feet of some of you he would make you wear out shoe leather lugging back what you've taken that doesn't belong to you. If God had your feet he would take you to prayer-meeting. I'm afraid the preacher would have nervous prostration, for he hasn't seen some of you there in years. If God had your feet you'd find it harder to follow the devil. Some of you preachers have your children going to dancing school and I hear some of you go to dances. He would make your daily walk conform to the Golden Rule and the Sermon on the Mount. Some people work only with their mouths. God wants that part that's on the ground. Some soldiers sit around and smell the coffee and watch the bacon frying. If God had your hands he would make you let go a lot of things you hold on to with a death-like grip. If you don't let go of some of the things you hold so tightly they will drag you down to hell. He would have you let go some of the things you pay taxes on, but don't own, and he would make you let go of money to pay taxes on some that you do own. Some people are so busy muck-raking that they will lose a crown of glory hereafter. If God had your hands, how many countless tears you would wash away. A friend of mine bought a typewriter, and when he tried to use it his fingers seemed to be all sticks, but now he can write forty-five words a minute. Let God have your hands and he will make them do things that would make the angels wonder and applaud. A Glass of Champagne A young man went down to Thomasville, Alabama, and while there was invited to a dress ball--or rather an undress ball, if what I have read about such affairs properly describes the uniforms. A young lady--a young lady with eyes like the dove and with beautiful tresses--came up to him and said to the young man, "Won't you pledge a glass of champagne with me?" The young man thanked her, but said: "No, I don't drink." "Not with me?" she said, and smiled; and he repeated his answer, "No." Then she said: "If I had thought you would refuse me I would not have asked you and exposed myself to the embarrassment of a refusal. I did not suppose you would think me bold for speaking to you in this way, and I thought you might be lonely." A little later she came back to him and repeated her invitation. Again he said: "No." Others came up and laughed. He took it and hesitated. She smiled at him and he gave in and drank the champagne, then drank another glass and another, until he was flushed with it. Then he danced. At two o'clock the next morning a man with a linen duster over his other clothes walked back upon the railroad-station platform, waiting for a train for the North; and as he walked he would exclaim, "Oh God!" and would pull a pint flask from his pocket and drink. "My God," he would say, "what will mother say?" Four months later in his home in Vermont, with his weeping parents by him and with four strong men to hold him down, he died of delirium tremens. The Epworth League's motto is: "Look up, lift up." But you'll never lift much up unless God has hold of your hands. Unless he has, you will never put your hands deep in your pocket, up to the elbows, and bring them up full of money for his cause. A man who was about to be baptized took out his watch and laid it aside; then he took out his knife and bankbook and laid them aside. "Better give me your pocketbook to put aside for you," said the minister. "No," said the man, "I want it to be baptized, too." There's no such thing as a bargain-counter religion. Pure and undefiled religion will do more when God has something besides pennies to work with. God doesn't run any excursions to heaven. You must pay the full fare. Your religion is worth just what it cost you. If you get religion and then lie down and go to sleep, your joints will get stiff as Rip Van Winkle's did, and you'll never win the religious marathon. Denying One's Self A man said to his wife that he had heard the preacher say that religion is worth just what it costs, and that he had determined to give more for religion and to deny himself as well. "What will you give up?" she asked. He said that he would give up coffee--for he dearly loved coffee--used to drink several cups at every meal, the very best. She said that she would give up something, too--that she would give up tea. Then their daughter said she would give up some of her little pleasures, and the father turned to his son Tom, who was shoveling mashed potatoes, covered with chicken gravy, into his mouth. He said, "I'll give up salt mackerel. I never did like the stuff, anyway." There are too many salt-mackerel people like that in the pews of our churches today. They will take something that they don't like, and that nobody else will have, and give it to the Lord. That isn't enough for God. He wants the best we have. God wants your body with blood in it. Cain's altar was bigger than Abel's, but it had nothing valuable on it, while Abel's had real blood. God rejected Cain's and accepted Abel's. God turns down the man who merely lives a moral life and does not accept the religion of Jesus Christ. You must come with Jesus' blood. How thankful you are depends on how much you are willing to sacrifice. I don't believe that the most honored angel in heaven has such a chance as we have. Angels can't suffer. They can't make sacrifices. They can claim that they love God, but we can prove it. What would you think of a soldier if when he was ordered "Present arms," he would answer, "Tomorrow"; if he would say, "When the man next to me does"; if he would say, "When I get a new uniform"? "Present"--that means now. It is in the present tense. God wants us to make a present of our bodies to him--because we love him. A little girl showed a man some presents she had received and he asked her, "How long may you keep them?" "How long?" she answered. "Why, they were given to me. They are mine!" Many a man gives his boy a colt or a calf, then when it has grown to a horse or a cow he sells it and pockets the money. Some of you fellows need to do a little thinking along that line. When we give our bodies, they ought to be His for keeps. Thinking for God If when you make a present you do not mean to give it outright, you are not honest. "Will a man rob God?" You bet he will--a heap quicker than he will rob any one else. Your body, that takes the head as well as hands. God wants brains as well as bones and muscles. We ought to do our best thinking for God. God is in the greatest business there is, and he wants the best help he can get. Some of you old deacons and elders make me sick. If you used such methods in business as you do in the work of the Church the sheriff's sale flag would soon be hanging outside your door. I don't ask any of you business men to curtail any of your business activities, but I do ask that you give more of your energy to the things of religion. You want to use good business methods in religion. The Republicans and the Democrats and the Socialists use good business methods in politics. The farmer who hasn't any sense is still plowing with a forked stick. The farmer who has sense uses a modern plow. Use common sense. Bishop Taylor promised God that he would do as much hard thinking and planning for him as he would do for another man for money. He did it. So did Wesley and Whitefield and Savonarola, and look what they did for God! If there is any better way of doing God's business than there was one hundred years ago, for God's sake do it! He's entitled to the best there is. This thing of just ringing the church bell to get people to come in is about played out. In business, if they have a machine that is out of date and doesn't produce good results, it goes onto the scrap heap. If a man can produce a machine that can enlarge the product or better it, that machine is adopted at once. But in religion we have the same old flint-lock guns, smooth-bore; the same old dips and tallow candles; the same old stage coaches over corduroy roads; and if a protest is made some of you will roll your eyes as if you had on a hair shirt, and say: "Surely this is not the Lord's set time for work." I tell you any time is God's time. Now is God's time. It was God's time to teach us about electricity long before Franklin discovered it, but nobody had sense enough to learn. It was God's time to give us the electric light long before Edison invented it, but nobody had sense enough to understand it. It was God's set time to give us the steam engine long before Watts watched the kettle boil and saw it puff the lid off, but nobody had sense enough to grasp the idea. If God Almighty only had possession of your mouths, he'd stop your lying. If he had your mouths he'd stop your knocking. If he had your mouths, he'd stop your misrepresentations. If he had your mouths, he'd stop your swearing. If he had your mouths, he'd stop your back-biting. If he had your mouths, he'd stop your slanders. There would be no criticizing, no white lies, no black lies, no social lies, no talking behind backs. If God had your mouths, so much money wouldn't go up in tobacco smoke or out in tobacco spit. If God had your mouths, there would be no thousands of dollars a year spent for whisky, beer and wine. You wouldn't give so much to the devil and you would give more to the Church. Many of you church pillars wouldn't be so noisy in politics and so quiet in religion. So many of you fellows wouldn't yell like Comanche Indians at a ratification meeting and sit like a bump on a log in prayer-meeting. If God had our eyes he'd bring the millennium. His eyes run to and fro through the world seeking for men to serve him; and if he had our eyes, how our eyes would run to and fro looking for ways to help bring men to Christ. How hard it would be for sinners to get away. We would be looking for drunkards, and the prostitutes and down-and-outs, to lift and save them. How many sorrowful hearts we would find and soothe, how many griefs we would alleviate! Great God! How little you are doing. Don't you feel ashamed? Aren't you looking for a knot-hole to crawl through? If God had our eyes how many would stop looking at a lot of things that make us proud and unclean and selfish and critical and unchristian. What God Asks God wants you to give your body. Are you afraid to give it to him? Are you afraid of the doctor when you are sick? Your body--that thing that sits out there in the seat, that thing that sits up there in the choir and sings, that thing that sits there and writes editorials, that body which can show Jesus Christ to fallen sons of Adam better than any angel--that's what God wants. God wants you to bring it to him and say: "Take it, God, it's yours." If he had your body, dissipation, overeating and undersleeping would stop, for the body is holy ground. We dare not abuse it. A friend of mine paid $10,000 for a horse. He put him in a stable and there the animal had care-takers attending him day and night, who rubbed him down, and watched his feet to take care that they should not be injured, and put mosquito netting on the windows, and cooled him with electric fans, and sprinkled his oats and his hay. They wanted to keep him in shape, for he was worth $10,000 and they wanted him for the race-track. Give your body to God, and the devil will be welcome to anything he can find. God wants your body as a living sacrifice, not a dead one. There are too many dead ones. A time was when God was satisfied with a dead sacrifice. Under old Jewish law a dead sheep would do. He wants my body now when I'm alive and not when I am dead and the undertaker is waiting to carry it out to the cemetery. The day of that dispensation is past, and now he wants you, a living sacrifice, a real sacrifice. A traveling man who wants to make his wife a present, and sits up all night in the train instead of taking a berth for three dollars and uses the three dollars to buy a present for his wife, makes a real sacrifice for her. There never was a victory without sacrifice. Socrates advanced the doctrine of immortality and died with a cup of poisoned hemlock. Jesus Christ paid with a crown of thorns. Abraham Lincoln paid with a bullet in his body. If you mean to give yourself as a sacrifice to God, get out and work for him. Ask men to come to him. [Illustration: "NO MORE OF YOU OLD DEACONS COMING DOWN THE AISLES STROKING YOUR WHISKERS"] "A holy sacrifice." Some men shy at that word "holy" like a horse at an automobile. Holy vessels were set apart for use in the worship of God. To be holy is to be set apart for God's use--that's all. To be holy isn't to be long-faced and never smile. "Acceptable unto the Lord." If that were true then this old desert would blossom like Eden. If that were taken as our watchword, what a stampede of short yardsticks, shrunken measures, light weights, adulterated foods, etc., there would be! What a stopping of the hitting up of booze! There would be no more living in sin and keeping somebody on the side, no more of you old deacons coming down the aisles stroking your whiskers and renting your buildings for houses of ill fame, and newspapers would stop carrying ads for whisky and beer. [Illustration: "CLOSE THAT WINDOW, PLEASE."] [Illustration: "BREAK AWAY FROM THE OLD BUNCH OF THE DAMNED."] Reasonable Service "Your reasonable service." God never asks anything unreasonable. He is never exacting. He only asks rights when he asks you to forsake sin. A man must be an idiot if he does not see that man is unreasonable when unrighteous. God never made a law to govern you that you wouldn't have made if you had known as much as God knows. You don't know that much and never can, so the only sensible thing to do is to obey God's laws. Faith never asks explanation. God asks some things that are hard, but never any that are unreasonable. I beseech you, brethren. It was hard for Abraham to take his son up on the mountain and prepare to offer him up as a sacrifice to God, but God had a reason. Abraham understands tonight, and Abraham is satisfied. It was hard for Joseph to be torn from his own people and to be sold into Egypt and to be lied about by that miserable woman, torn from his mother and father, but God had a reason. Joseph knows tonight, and Joseph is satisfied. It was hard for Moses to lead the Jews from Egypt, following the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night and make that crossing of the Red Sea, only to have God call him up to Mount Pisgah and show him the Promised Land and say: "Moses, you can't go in." It was hard, but God had a reason. Moses understands tonight, and Moses is satisfied. It was hard for Job to lose his children and all that he possessed and to be afflicted with boils, and to be so miserable that only his wife remained with him. But God had a reason. Job understands tonight, and Job is satisfied. It was a hard thing God asked of Saul of Tarsus--to bear witness to him at Rome and Ephesus, to face those jeering heathen, to suffer imprisonment and be beaten with forty stripes save one, and finally to put his head on the block and have it severed by the order of old Nero, but God had a reason. Paul understands tonight, and Paul is satisfied. It was a hard thing God asked of Jesus--to leave the songs of the angels and the presence of the redeemed and glorified and come down to earth and be born amid the malodors of a stable, and be forced to flee from post to post, and dispute with the learned doctors in the temple at twelve years of age and confute them, and to still the storm and the troubled waters, and to say to the blind, "Be whole," and finally to be betrayed by one of his own followers and to be murdered through a conspiracy of Jews and Gentiles; but now he sits on the throne with the Father, awaiting the time to judge the world. Jesus understands and Jesus is satisfied. It was a hard thing for me when God told me to leave home and go out into the world to preach the gospel and be vilified and libeled and have my life threatened and be denounced, but when my time comes, when I have preached my last sermon, and I can go home to God and the Lamb, he'll say, "Bill, this was the reason." I'll know what it all meant, and I'll say "I'm satisfied, God, I'm satisfied." CHAPTER XXVII A Wonderful Day at a Great University The higher you climb the plainer you are seen.--BILLY SUNDAY. Billy Sunday has had many great days in his life--mountain-top experiences of triumphant service; exalted occasions when it would seem that the climax of his ministry had been reached. Doubtless, though, the greatest day of his crowded life was the thirtieth of March, 1914, which he spent with the students of the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia. The interest not alone of a great university but also of a great city was concentrated upon him on this occasion. An imposing group of discriminating folk took the opportunity to judge the much discussed evangelist and his work. In this respect, the day may be said to have proved a turning point in the public career of the evangelist. It silenced much of the widespread criticism which had been directed toward him up to this time; and it won for him the encomiums of a host of intellectual leaders. What Sunday's own impressions of that day were may be understood from the prayer he offered at the close of the night meeting. Oh, Jesus, isn't this a fine bunch? Did you ever look down on a finer crowd? I don't believe there is a mother who is any prouder of this lot of boys than I am tonight. I have never preached to a more appreciative crowd, and if I never preach another sermon, I am willing to go home to glory tonight, knowing that I have helped save the boys at the University of Pennsylvania. Help them to put aside temptations, and to follow in the paths in which Doctor Smith is trying to guide their feet. Back of the visit of the evangelist to the University lies a story, and a great principle. The latter is that materialism has no message for the human soul or character. The authorities of the University, in common with a wide public, had been deeply disturbed over the suicide of several students during the winter of 1913-14. Sensational stories, largely unwarranted, in the daily press had reported an epidemic of suicides, due to infidelity. Underneath all this "yellow" portrayal of conditions lay the truth, realized by nobody more clearly than by the University head, Provost Edgar Fahs Smith, that the character of young manhood needs to be fortified by spiritual ideals. In his rôle of religious leader of the University, and counselor to the young men, Provost Smith had heard confessions of personal problems which had wrung his soul. None knew better than he that it takes more than culture to help a man win the battle of life. Looking in every direction for succor in this deepest of all problems, the sight of Billy Sunday at Scranton indicated a possible ray of hope. Led by Thomas S. Evans, the secretary of the Christian Association of the University, a deputation of student leaders went to Scranton, heard the evangelist, and conveyed to him an invitation to spend a day with the University. The call of the need of young men in particular is irresistible to Sunday, and he gladly accepted the invitation for a day in Philadelphia--going, it may be added parenthetically, entirely at his own expense, and insisting that the offering made be devoted to University Christian Association work. There is a thorough organization of the Christian work of the University; so careful plans were laid for the visit of the evangelist. The meetings were made the subject of student prayer groups, and all that forethought could do to secure the smooth running of the day's services was carefully attended to. Students were to be admitted by their registration cards, and a few hundred other guests, mostly ministers and persons identified with the University, were given special admission cards. There is no such rush for grand opera tickets in Philadelphia as was experienced for these coveted cards of admission to the Billy Sunday meetings at the University. The noon meeting and the night meetings were exclusively for men, but in the afternoon a few score favored women were admitted. The result was that in these three services the evangelist talked to representatives of the best life of the conservative old city of Philadelphia. He never before had faced so much concentrated culture as was represented that day within the walls of the great gymnasium. This improvised auditorium could be made to hold about three thousand persons, especially when the hearers were students, and skilful in crowding and utilizing every inch of space, such as window sills and rafters. The line of ticket holders that gathered before the opening of the doors itself preached a sermon to the whole city. As one of the Philadelphia newspapers remarked, in the title it gave to a section of its whole page of Billy Sunday pictures, "Wouldn't think they were striving for admittance to a religious service, would you?" The newspapers, by pen and camera, chronicled this Billy Sunday day at the University as the city's most important news for that issue. The evangelist's chorister, Homer Rodeheaver, led the introductory service of music. He set the college boys to singing and whistling familiar gospel hymns, and Mrs. De Armond's "If Your Heart Keeps Right"--a refrain which was heard for many weeks afterward in University corridors and campus. From the first the students, than whom there are no more critical hearers alive, were won by Billy Sunday. Provost Smith, who has the men's hearts, introduced him in this happy fashion: "Billy Sunday is a friend of men. He is a friend of yours and a friend of mine, and that's why we are glad to have him here today to tell us about his other friend, Jesus Christ. His is the spirit of friendship, and we are glad to extend to him our fellowship while we have the opportunity." The three addresses given on that day were "What Shall I Do with Jesus?" "Real Manhood," and "Hot-cakes off the Griddle." These fragments of the three addresses culled from the newspaper reports give the flavor of the messages heard by the students: "What shall I do with Jesus?" "This question is just as pertinent to the world today as it was to Pilate," he said. "Pilate had many things to encourage and discourage him, but no man ever sought to do anything without meeting difficulties. "Pilate should have been influenced by his wife's dream," the speaker continued, whimsically suggesting that he didn't care what sort of wife Pilate had. "She may have been one of those miserable, pliable, plastic, two-faced, two-by-four, lick-spittle, toot-my-own-horn sort of women, but Pilate should have heeded her warning and set Jesus free," he asserted. "Pilate had the personality of Jesus before him and should have been influenced by this. He had also heard of the miracles of Jesus, even if he had never seen them. "Why, Jesus was cussed and discussed from one end of the land to the other. All he had to do was to say 'Come forth,' and the graves opened like chestnut burrs in the fall," he added. "I have no use for the fellow that sneers and mocks at Jesus Christ. If the world is against Christ, I am against the world, with every tooth, nail, bit of skin, hair follicle, muscular molecule, articulation joint"--here the evangelist paused for breath before adding--"yes, and even my vermiform appendix. "But Pilate was just one of those rat-hole, pin-headed, pliable, standpat, free-lunch, pie-counter politicians. He was the direct result of the machine gang in Jewish politics, and he was afraid that if he released Christ he would lose his job. "Say, boys," he demanded, leaning so far over the platform it seemed he must have fallen, "are you fellows willing to slap Jesus Christ in the face in order to have some one come up and slap you on the back and say you are a good fellow and a dead-game sport? That is the surest way to lose out in life. I am giving you the experience of a life that knows. "Pilate had his chance and he missed it. His name rings down through the ages in scorn and contempt because he had not the courage to stand up for his convictions and Jesus Christ. Aren't you boys doing the same thing? You are convinced that Jesus Christ is the son of God, but you are afraid of the horse-laugh the boys will give you. "God will have nothing to do with you unless you are willing to keep clean," he said. "Some people think they are not good enough to go to heaven and not bad enough to go to hell, and that God is too good to send them to hell, so they fix up a little religion of their own. God isn't keeping any half-way house for any one. The man who believes in that will change his theology before he has been in hell five minutes. "There's just one enemy that keeps every one from accepting Christ, and that is your stubborn, miserable will power. You are not men enough to come clean for Jesus. "I don't care whether you have brains enough to fill a hogshead or little enough to fill a thimble, you are up against this proposition: You must begin to measure Christ by the rules of God instead of the rules of men. Put him in the God class instead of in the man class; judge Christ by his task and the work he performed, and see if he was only a man." The University of Pennsylvania would be turning out bigger men than Jesus Christ, he said, if Christ were not the son of God. The conditions and the opportunities are so much greater in these days, he showed, that a real superman should be the product of our day if education, society, business, politics and these varied interests could produce such a thing. "Jesus Christ is just as well known today as old Cleopatra, the flat-nosed enchantress of the Nile, was known hundreds and hundreds of years ago. "Don't swell up like a poisoned pup and say that 'it doesn't meet with my stupendous intellectual conception of what God intended should be understood.' God should have waited until you were born and then called you into counsel, I suppose. Say, fellows, I don't like to think that there are any four-flushing, excess-baggage, lackadaisical fools like that alive today, but there are a few. "On the square, now, if you want to find a man of reason, would you go down in the red-light district, where women are selling their honor for money, or through the beer halls or fan-tan joints? You don't find intellect there," he continued. In contrast to these places, the evangelist described with remarkable accuracy and emotion the scenes surrounding the death of President McKinley and the burial ceremony at Canton, Ohio; how the great men of the nation, all Christian men, passed by the flag-covered casket and paid their silent tribute to the man who had died with Christian confidence expressed in his last words. "When I came out of that court-house at Canton, I said: 'Thank God, I'm in good company, for the greatest men of my nation are on the side of Jesus Christ,'" he added. From the farthest corner of the auditorium there came a fervent "Amen," which found many repetitions in the brief silence that followed. Mr. Sunday reached a powerful climax when he described the possibilities of the Judgment Day, and the efforts of the evil one to lead into the dark, abysmal depths souls of men who have been popular in the world. To those who have accepted Christ, the Saviour will appear on that day as an advocate at the heavenly throne, he argued, and the saved ones can turn to the devil and say: [Illustration: BILLY SUNDAY AND HIS FAMILY AT HOME, MOUNT HOOD, WINONA LAKE, INDIANA.] "'Beat it, you old skin-flint. I have you skinned to a frazzle. I have taken Jesus Christ and he's going to stand by me through all eternity.' "Wherein does Jesus Christ fail to come up to your standard and the highest conception of the greatest God-like spirit? Show me one flaw in his character. I challenge any infidel on earth to make good his claims that Christ was an ordinary man. The name of Jesus Christ, the son of God, is greater than any. It is the name that unhorsed Saul of Tarsus, and it is holding 500,000,000 of people by its majestic spell and enduring power. "If you can't understand what this means, just take a walk out into some cemetery some day and look at the tombstones. You'll find that the name of the man who had a political drag twenty-five years ago is absolutely forgotten," continued the challenge. "Do you fellows know what sacrifice means?" suddenly asked the speaker. "Some of your fathers are making sacrifices and wearing old clothes just to keep you here in school. He wants you to have an education because he can't even handle the multiplication table. "If Jesus Christ should enter this gymnasium we would all fall to our knees. We have that much reverence in our hearts for him. I would run down and meet him, and would tell him how much I love him and that I am willing to go wherever he would have me go." In closing, the evangelist told the story of a man who recklessly tossed a valuable pearl high into the air, reaching over the side of a ship to catch it as it fell. Time and again he was successful, but finally the ship swerved to one side and the gem disappeared beneath the waves. "Boys, that man lost everything just to gain the plaudits of the crowd. Are you doing the same thing? "That is the condition of thousands of people beneath the Stars and Stripes today--losing everything just to hear the clamor of the people, and get a little pat on the back for doing something the mob likes." Mr. Sunday suddenly abandoned his dramatic attitude, and lowered his voice. There was an instantaneous bowing of heads, although he had given no suggestion of a prayer. It seemed proper at that time, and one of the evangelist's heart-to-heart talks with Christ, asking a blessing on the Christian workers of the University, and an earnest effort, on the part of every student, to live a Christian life, accompanied the great audience as it filed from the gymnasium. Real Manhood "Be thou strong, therefore, and show thyself a man," the Bible verse reads, and Mr. Sunday promptly added: "Don't be a mutt! Don't be a four-flusher--a mere cipher on the sea of human enterprise. "God is a respecter of character, even if he isn't a respecter of persons," continued the speaker. "Abraham towers out, like a mountain above a molehill, and beside him some of our modern gimlet-eyed, heel-worn fellows shrink like Edward Hyde in Doctor Jekyll's clothes. "When those fellows over in Babylon offered booze to Daniel, although he was only seventeen years old, he said, 'Nothing doing.' He told them where to head in. Moses pushed aside the greatest scepter of any kingdom and did what his heart told him was right. 'Be thou strong and show thyself a man.' "David was a man of lofty purposes and his life was influenced by those that had preceded him. It wasn't an accident that made David a king. The big job is always looking for big men. A round peg will not fit into a square hole, even if he is a university professor. "The young buck who inherits a big fortune without working for it," continued Mr. Sunday, "is going down the line so fast you can't see him for the fog. The man who has real, rich, red blood in his veins, instead of pink tea and ice water, when the lions of opposition roar, thinks it is only a call for dinner in the dining car, and he goes ahead and does things. "There are some going around disguised as men who ought to be arrested," the evangelist interposed. "To know some men is an invitation to do right; to know others is an invitation to know dirty booze and to blot the family escutcheon, insult your mothers and sisters. The size of the man depends on his mind, not on his muscle. There is lots of bulk but little brains in some men. "It's a sad day for a young man when Bill Taft's overcoat wouldn't make him a vest," he added, amid shouts of laughter, in which even staid, stern-faced professors joined with the students. "Too many fellows look like men from across the street, but when you get close to them they shrivel up. "It makes a difference what kind of an example you follow. If Thomas Edison should say to his boy, 'Be an inventor,' the boy would know what he meant, but if some red-nosed, beer-soaked old reprobate should tell his boy to 'be a man,' the boy would be all in. Lots of fellows today turn out bad because their fathers' talk and walk do not agree. "The best thing that can happen to a young man," said Mr. Sunday, "is to come under the influence of a real man. Every one has a hero, whether it be on the foot-ball field or in the classroom, and if every one would lead right today, there would be no going astray tomorrow. "There are some men in this world that when they are around you turn up your collar, feel chills running up and down your back and when you look at the thermometer, you find the temperature is about 60 degrees below zero." Then followed the evangelist's famous story of how David killed Goliath, considerably tempered to suit the culture of his audience. He told how David boldly asked who the "big lobster was," and why he was "strutting around as if he was the whole cheese, the head guy of the opposition party. "David put down the sword that Saul had given him, for he felt like a fellow in a hand-me-down suit two sizes too large. He picked up one of his little pebbles, slung it across the river and hit poor old Goliath on the koko." "Some fellows are working so hard to become angels they forget to be men. If you will study your Bible you will find that the men of old were subject to the same temptations as the men of today, but they didn't let their temptations get the best of them. "If your manhood is buried in doubt and cheap booze, dig it out. You have to sign your own Declaration of Independence and fight your own Revolutionary wars before you can celebrate the Fourth of July over the things that try to keep you down. "The best time for a man to sow his wild oats is between the age of eighty-five and ninety years. A six-ply drunk is about as good a passport into commercial life as a record for housebreaking, and the youth who goes to the mat with a half-pint of red-eye in his stomach, will be as beneficial to humanity as a one-legged man in a hurdle race." "If I knew, when the undertaker pumps that pink stuff into me and embalms me, that the end of all had come, I would still be glad I lived a Christian life, because it meant a life of decency," he said. "I would rather go through the world without knowing the multiplication table than never to know the love of Christ. I don't underestimate the value of an education, boys, but just try living on oatmeal porridge. Get your education, but don't lose sight of Jesus." "Once you have made your plan, cling to it. Be a man, even in situations of great danger. The man whose diet is swill will be at home with the hogs in any pen. He's bound to have bristles sticking through his skin. If Abraham Lincoln had read about Alkali Ike, or Three Fingered Pete, do you think he would ever have been President? While other young men were waking up with booze-headaches, he was pulling up his old-fashioned galluses and saying, 'I'm going to be a man.' "And one morning the world awoke, rubbed its sleepy eyes and looked around for a man for a certain place. It found Abraham Lincoln and raised him from obscurity to the highest pinnacle of popular favor. He was a man and his example should be a guiding influence in the life of every American citizen." Booze, evil women, licentious practices, cigarettes--all these came under the ban of Mr. Sunday's system of Christian living. He spared no words; he called a spade a spade and looked at modern affairs without colored glasses. "You can't find a drunkard who ever intended to be a drunkard," argued Mr. Sunday. "He just intended to be a moderate drinker. He was up against a hard game, a game you can't beat." He asserted that he could get more nourishment from a little bit of beef extract, placed on the edge of a knife blade, than can be obtained from 800 gallons of the best beer brewed. Talking about riches, he suggested that King Solomon, with his wealth, could have hired Andrew Carnegie as a chauffeur or J. Pierpont Morgan to cut the lawns around his palace. "Money isn't all there is in this world, but neither is beer," he said. "I don't want to see you students get the booze habit, just because we are licensing men at so much per year to make you staggering, reeling, drunken sots, murderers, thieves and vagabonds." The double standard of living was bitterly attacked by the revivalist, who said one of the crying needs of America was the recognition of a single standard of living. "It makes no difference to God whether the sinner wears a plug hat and pair of suspenders or a petticoat and a willow plume. No man who deliberately drugs a girl and sends her into a life of shame ought to be permitted in good society. He ought to be shot at sunrise." This sentiment evoked a tremendous round of applause, and cries of "Amen!" and "Good, Bill!" were not infrequent. "The avenging God is on his trail and the man who wrecks women's lives is going to crack brimstone on the hottest stone in hell, praise God," the speaker continued. "If we are to conciliate this unthinkable and unspeakable practice of vampires feeding on women's virtue, we might as well back-pedal in the progress of the nations. The virtue of womanhood is the rampart of our civilization and we must not let it be betrayed." When the invitation was given after the night meeting, for men who wanted to dedicate themselves to cleaner, nobler manhood to rise, nearly the entire body, visibly moved by the words of the preacher, rose to its feet. Then, with a daring which prim and conservative Philadelphia had not thought possible in this citadel of intellectuality and conventionality, Sunday gave the invitation to the students who would begin a new life by confessing Christ to come forward. Accounts vary as to the number who went up and grasped the evangelist's hand. All reporters seemed to be carried away by the thrill of the occasion. Many reported that hundreds went forward. The most conservative report was that 175 young men took this open stand of confession of Jesus Christ. The University weekly, _Old Penn_, in its issue of the following Saturday summarized the Billy Sunday visit in pages of contributions. These three paragraphs are the sober judgment of those best informed from the University standpoint: The results of Mr. Sunday's visit within the University have been nothing short of marvelous. The Provost has been receiving congratulations from trustees, business men, lawyers, members of the faculty and prominent undergraduates. Several whole fraternities have taken action leading to higher living in every line. Drink has been completely excluded from class banquets. Students are joining the churches, and religion has been the paramount topic of conversation throughout the entire University. Under the leadership of the University Christian Association, the church leaders of Philadelphia of all denominations have been canvassing their own students in the University and have found most hearty response to everything that has to do with good living. The effect is really that of a religious crusade, and the result is of that permanent sort which expresses itself in righteousness of life. At the close of the night meeting on Monday, about 1,000 students arose to their feet in answer to Mr. Sunday's invitation to live the Christian life in earnest, or to join for the first time the Christian way of life. Those who have called upon the students who took this stand have found that it was genuine, and not in any sense due to a mere emotional movement. Mr. Sunday's appeal seems to be almost wholly to the will and conscience, but it is entirely based upon the movement of the Holy Spirit of God. No one who has ever addressed the students of the University of Pennsylvania on vital religion has ever approached the success which was attained by Mr. Sunday in reaching the students, and without doubt this visit is only the opening up of a marvelous opportunity for Mr. Sunday to reach the students of the entire country, especially those of our great cosmopolitan universities. The editor of _Old Penn_ asked opinions from members of the faculty and undergraduate body. Dean Edward C. Kirk, M.D., D.D.S., of the Dental Department, said in his appraisal of the Sunday visit: If, as according to some of the critics, the impression that he has made is but temporary and the enthusiasm which he has created is only a momentary impulse, even so, the success of his accomplishment lies in the fact that he has produced results where others have failed to make a beginning. The University ought to have the uplifting force not only of a Billy Sunday, but a Billy Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and every other day in the week. Of the students who testified in print, one, a prominent senior, wrote: Mr. Sunday awoke in me a realization of my evil practices and sins so forcefully that I am going to make a determined effort to give them up and to make amends for the past. From my many conversations with fellow-students I find that this is what Mr. Sunday did. If he did not directly cause the student to come forward and take a stand, every student at least was aroused to think about this all-important question in a light that he had not seriously considered it in before. The undergraduate body, as a whole, is glad that Mr. Sunday came to Philadelphia. A Christian worker from the Law School gave his opinion as follows: I have been connected with the University of Pennsylvania for six years, and for the greater part of this time have been in close touch with the work of the Christian Association. The influence of the Association seems to be increasing constantly, but Billy Sunday accomplished in one day what the Association would be proud to have accomplished in one year. To my mind, Mr. Sunday's visit marks the beginning of a new epoch--the Renaissance of religious work of the University. That is the sort of thing that occupied pages of the official publication of the University, following the evangelist's visit. This day's work attracted the attention not only of Philadelphia newspapers, but the religious press throughout the country quite generally commented upon it. Dr. Mosley H. Williams graphically reviewed it in the _Congregationalist_. The University of Pennsylvania, founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1749, is the fourth in age of American universities, antedated only by Harvard, Yale, and Princeton by one year. It is located in a city of a million and three-quarters people. It now enrolls 6,632 students, representing every state in the Union, and fifty-nine foreign countries. There are 250 from Europe and Asia, and 150 from Latin America; so that in the cosmopolitanism of its make-up, probably no American university equals it. Its Young Men's Christian Association employs twenty-seven secretaries, its Bible classes on week days gather 650 students, and every Fraternity House has its own Bible Class. But attendance upon daily prayers is not obligatory, and less than a hundred, on an average, are seen at those services. Into this cosmopolitan University Billy Sunday came like a cyclone. After preaching in Scranton three times on the Sabbath, to audiences aggregating 30,000 people, he traveled all night, reached Philadelphia Monday morning, took an automobile spin to the baseball park, where he was a famous player twenty years ago, and preached three times in the University of Pennsylvania gymnasium, which was seated with chairs, and accommodated 3,000 hearers. There were three services--noon, afternoon and evening. Tickets were issued, red, white and blue, each good for one service, and that one exclusively. Not a person was admitted without a ticket. The long lines reached squares away, and the police kept the people moving in order. What does such a spectacle mean in a great old university, in a great city? Such a student body knows slang, and athleticism, and all sorts of side plays. No doubt there was plenty of criticism and questioning; but a spectator who had his eyes and ears and mind open, would say, that in getting a response to the religious appeal, Billy Sunday's Monday in the University of Pennsylvania scored high. This effort for quickening religious interests in the University was not a spasmodic effort for one day; there had been the most careful preparations beforehand, in consultation with leading ministers of all denominations in the city, to seek out students of every denomination. Lists were carefully made and cards put in the hands of ministers and Christian workers, with the understanding that all the young men of the University should be visited in a friendly and Christian spirit by representatives of various churches. The results, of course, remain to be seen, but after this effort, no student need say, "No man cares for my soul." The conclusion of the whole matter, of course, is that the old-time religion, the gospel of our fathers and our mothers, is still the deepest need of all sorts and conditions of men. The religion that saved the outcast in the gutter is adequate to redeem the man in the university. CHAPTER XXVIII The Christian's Daily Helper Too much of the work of the Church today is like a squirrel in a cage--lots of activity, but no progress.--BILLY SUNDAY. In the course of one of his campaigns, Sunday sweeps the arc of the great Christian doctrines. While he stresses ever and again the practical duties of the Christian life, yet he makes clear that the reliance of the Christian for all that he hopes to attain in character and in service is upon the promised Helper sent by our Lord, the ever-present Holy Spirit. One of the evangelist's greatest sermons is upon this theme, and no transcript of his essential message would be complete without it. "THE HOLY SPIRIT" The personality, the divinity and the attributes of the Holy Ghost afford one of the most inspiring, one of the most beneficial examples in our spiritual life. We are told that when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, he came as the rushing of a mighty wind and overurging expectancy. When Jesus was baptized in the River Jordan, of John, out from the expanse of heaven was seen to float the Spirit of God like a snowflake, and they heard a sound as of whirring wings, and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove hovered over the dripping locks of Christ. Neither your eyes nor mine will ever behold such a scene; neither will our ears ever hear such a sound again. You cannot dissect or weigh the Holy Spirit, nor analyze him as a chemist may analyze material matter in his laboratory, but we can all feel the pulsing of the breath of his eternal love. The Holy Spirit is a personality; as much a personality as Christ, or you or I. "Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself." He is to us what Jesus was when he was on earth. Jesus always speaks of the Holy Spirit in the future tense. He said, "It is expedient that I go away; if I go not away the Spirit will not come. It is expedient for you that I go away, but when I am gone, then I will send Him unto you who is from the Father." So we are living today in the beneficence of the Holy Spirit. No Universal Salvation I do not believe in this twentieth-century theory of the universal fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. We are all made of one blood--that is true, physically speaking; we are all related. I am talking about the spiritual, not the physical. You are not a child of God unless you are a Christian; then you are a child of God--if you are a Christian. Samson with the Holy Spirit upon him could take the jawbone of an ass and lay dead a thousand Philistines. Samson without the Holy Spirit was as weak as a new-born babe, and they poked his eyes out and cut off his locks. And so with the Church and her members. Without the Holy Spirit you are as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals, simply four walls and a roof, and a pipe organ and a preacher to do a little stunt on Sunday morning and evening. I tell you, Christian people, that with the Holy Spirit there is no power on earth or in hell that can stand before the Church of Jesus Christ. And the damnable, hell-born, whisky-soaked, hog-jowled, rum-soaked moral assassins have damned this community long enough. Now it is time it was broken up and it is time to do something. There are three classes in the Church, as I have looked at it from my standpoint. The first are those in the Church personally who want to be saved, but they are not concerned about other people. They do not give any help to other people; they don't lie awake at night praying for other people that they may be brought to the Lord. The second class are going to depend upon human wisdom. There is no such thing as latent power, expressed or implied--power is just as distinctive in an individual as the electricity in these lights. If these globes are without a current they would be nothing but glass bulbs, fit for nothing but the scrap heap. Without the Holy Spirit you are as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals, and a third-rate amusement parlor, with religion left out. The third class are church members not from might and honor and power, but from the Spirit. While at Pentecost one sermon saved 3,000 people, now it takes 3,000 sermons to get one old buttermilk-eyed, whisky-soaked blasphemer. Happiest Nation on Earth We have our churches, our joss houses, our tabernacles; we have got the wisdom of the orientals, the ginger, vim, tabasco sauce, peppering of the twentieth century; we have got all of that, and I do not believe that there are any people beneath the sun who are better fed, better paid, better clothed, better housed, or any happier than we are beneath the stars and stripes--no nation on earth. There are lots of things that could be eliminated to make us better than we are today. We are the happiest people in God's world. Out in Iowa, a fellow said to me: "Mr. Sunday, we ought to be better organized." Just think of that, we ought to be better organized. Now listen to me, my friends! Listen to me! There is so much machinery in the churches today that you can hear it squeak. Drop into a young people's meeting. The leader will say in a weak, effeminate, apologetic, minor sort of way, that there was a splendid topic this evening but he had not had much time for preparation. It is superfluous for him to say that; you could have told that. He goes along and tells how happy he is to have you there to take part this evening, making this meeting interesting. Some one gets up and reads a poem from the _Christian Endeavor World_ and then they sing No. 38. They get up and sing: "Oh, to be nothing--nothing, Only to lie at His feet." We used to sing that song, but I found out that people took it so literally that I cut it out. Then a long pause, and some one says, "Let us sing No. 52." So they get up and then some one starts, "Throw out the life line, Throw out the life line." They haven't got strength enough to put up a clothesline. Another long pause, and then you hear, "Have all taken part that feel free to do so? We have a few minutes left. So let us sing No. 23." Then another long pause. "I hear the organ prelude; it is time for us to close, now let us all repeat together, 'The Lord keep watch between me and thee, while we are absent one from another.'" I tell you God has got a hard job on his hands. Ever hear anything like that? Ambassadors of God Believe that God Almighty can do something. Don't whine around as though God were a corpse, ready for the undertaker. God is still on the job. The Holy Spirit is needed to bring man into spiritual touch with God; to make man realize that he is a joint representative of God on earth today. Do you ever realize that you are God's representative--God's ambassador? And as we are God's ambassadors why should we fear what the devil may do? Can it be that you fail to realize his power? Or are you so blind to the spiritual that you can't see that you need God's help? Let me ask you one question: Are you ready to surrender to him? A man said to me: "It was a mighty little thing to drive Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden because they ate an apple." It wasn't the fruit. It was the principle, whether man should bow to God or God bow to man. That act was an act of disobedience. You may say it was a mighty little thing for England to go to war with us because we threw some tea into Boston harbor. We didn't go to war over the tea. We said: "You can't brew tea in the East India Company and pour it down our throats." It was the principle we went to war about, not the price of tea, and we fought it out. Are you ready to surrender? You, who are in rebellion against God? You, who are in rebellion against the authority of God's government? Are you ready to do his will? A good many people suppose that when they have accepted Jesus Christ as their Saviour and joined the Church that is all there is to the Christian life. As well might a student who has just matriculated imagine that he has finished his education. Nobody has reached a stage in the Christian life from which he cannot go further unless he is in the coffin--and then it's all over. To accept Christ, to join the Church, is only to begin. It is the starting of the race, not the reaching of the goal. There are constant and increasing blessings if you are willing to pay the price. I don't care when or where you became a church member, if the Comforter, who is the Holy Ghost, is not with you, you are a failure. This power of the Spirit is meant for all who are Christians. It is a great blessing for the Presbyterian elder as well as for the preacher. I know some Methodist stewards who need it. Deacons would "deak" better if they had it. It is a great blessing for the deacon and the members of the prudential committee, and it is just as great a blessing for the man in the pew who holds no office. To hear some people talk you would think that the Holy Spirit is only for preachers. God sets no double standard for the Christian life. There's nothing in the Bible to show that the people may live differently from the man in the pulpit. Holy Spirit a Person I once heard a doctor of divinity pray for the Holy Spirit, and he said: "Send it upon us now." He was wrong, doubly wrong. The Holy Spirit is not an impersonal thing. He is a person, not an "it." And the Holy Spirit has always been here since the days of Pentecost. He does not come and go. He is right here in the world and his power is at the command of all who will put themselves into position to use it. A university professor was greeted by a friend of mine who took him by the hand, and said: "What do you think of the Holy Spirit?" The professor answered that he regarded the Holy Spirit as an influence for good, a sort of emanation from God. My friend talked to him and tried to show him his mistake, and a few months later he met him again. "What do you think of the Holy Spirit now?" he asked. The professor answered: "Well, I know that the Holy Spirit is a person. Since I talked with you and have come to that conviction, I have succeeded in bringing sixty-three students to Christ." A great many people think the Holy Spirit comes and goes again, and quote from the Acts, where it says that Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit. Well, if you will find that Peter had been doing things right along, that showed he had been filled with the Holy Spirit all the time. Acts, second chapter and fourth verse, we read: "And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit." You have no right, nor have I, to say that the Holy Spirit ever left any one. We have no right to seek to find Scripture to bolster up some little theory of our own. We must take the Word of God for it, just as we find it written there. Now, at Pentecost, Peter had said: "Repent, and be baptized for the remission of sins." Then he promised them that the Holy Spirit would come and fill them. Now we have the fulfilment of the promise. Who were filled with the Holy Spirit? Peter and James and John? No--the people. That is the record of the filling with the Holy Spirit of the three thousand who were converted at Pentecost, not the filling of Peter and James and John. If the Spirit remains forever, why doesn't his power always show itself? Why haven't you as much power with God as the one hundred and twenty had at Pentecost? There are too many frauds, too much trash in the Church. It is because the people are not true to God. They are disobeying him. They are not right with him yet. I don't know just how the Holy Spirit will come, but Jesus said we should do even greater works than he did. What are you doing? You are not doing such works now. The Last Dispensation We find the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. When the prophets spoke they were moved by him. God seems to have spoken to man in three distinct dispensations. Once it was through the covenant with Abraham, then it was through Moses and under the Mosaic dispensation, and finally it is through his own son, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ came into the world, proved that he is the Son of God, suffered, died and was buried, rose again, and sent his Holy Comforter. This is the last dispensation. There is no evidence that after the Holy Spirit once came, he ever left the world. He is here now, ready to help you to overcome your pride, and your diffidence that has kept you from doing personal work, and is willing and ready to lead you into a closer relationship with Jesus. But you say, some are elected and some are not. On that point I agree with Henry Ward Beecher. He said: "The elect are those who will and the non-elect are those who won't." But you go in for culture--"culchah." If you are too cultured to be a Christian, God pity you. You may call it culture. I have another name for it. Is there anything about Christianity that is necessarily uncultured? I think the best culture in the world is among the followers of Jesus Christ. But you say: "Ignorance is a bar to some." No sir. Billy Bray, the Cornish miner, was an illiterate man. He was asked if he could read writing, and he answered: "No, I can't even read readin'." Yet Billy Bray did a wonderful work for God in Wales and England. Ignorance is no bar to religion, or to usefulness for Jesus. Some time ago, over in England, a man died in the poor house. He had had a little property, just a few acres of land, and it hadn't been enough to support him. After he died the new owner dug a well on it, and at a depth of sixty-five feet he found a vein of copper so rich that it meant a little fortune. If the man who died had only known of that vein, he need not have lived in poverty. There are many who are just as ignorant of the great riches within their reach. Lots of people hold checks on the bank of heaven, and haven't faith enough to present them at the window to have them cashed. "Little Things" You may say, "I have failed in something, but it is a little thing." Oh, these little things! Bugs are little things, but they cost this country $800,000,000 in one year. Birds are little enemies of the bugs, and birds are little things, and if it weren't for the birds we would starve in two years. If there's anything that makes me mad it is to see a farmer grab a shotgun and kill a chicken hawk. That hawk is worth a lot more than some old hen you couldn't cook tender if you boiled it for two days. That chicken hawk has killed all the gophers, mice and snakes it could get its claws on and it has come to demand from the farmer the toll that is rightfully due to it, for what it has done to rid the land of pests. Why is it that with all our universities and colleges we haven't produced a book like the Bible? It was written long ago by people who lived in a little country no bigger than some of our states. The reason was that God was behind the writers. The book was inspired. When good old Dr. Backus, of Hamilton College, lay dying the doctor whispered to Mrs. Backus, saying, "Dr. Backus is dying." The old man heard and looked up with a smile on his face and asked: "Did I understand you to say that I am dying?" Sadly the doctor said: "Yes, I'm sorry, you have no more than half an hour to live." Dr. Backus smiled again. "Then it will soon be over," he said. "Take me out of bed and put me on my knees. I want to die praying for the students of Hamilton College." They lifted him out and he knelt down and covered his face with his transparent hands, and prayed "Oh, God, save the students of Hamilton College." For a time he continued to pray, then the doctor said, "He is getting weaker." They lifted him back upon the bed, and his face was whiter than the pillows. Still his lips moved. "Oh, God, save----" Then the light of life went out, and he finished the prayer in the presence of Jesus. What did his dying prayer do? Why, almost the entire student body of Hamilton College accepted Jesus Christ. If you haven't the power of the Spirit you have done something wrong. I don't know what it is--it's none of my business. It's between you and God. It is only my duty to call upon you to confess and get right with him. A man went to a friend of mine and said: "I don't know what is wrong with me. I teach a Sunday-school class of young men, and I have tried to bring them to Jesus, and I have failed. Can you tell me why?" "Yes," was the answer. "There's something wrong with you. You've done something wrong." The man hesitated, but finally he said, "You're right. Years ago I was cashier in a big business house, and one time the books balanced and there was some money left over. I took that money and I have kept it. That was twelve years ago. Here is the money in this envelope." "Take it back to the owner," said my friend. "It's not yours, and it's not mine." "But I can't do that," said the man. "I am making a salary of $22,000 a year now, and I have a wife and daughters, and my firm will never employ a dishonest man." "Well, that's your business," said my friend. "I have advised you, and that's all I can do; but God will never forgive you until you've given that money back." The man sank into a chair and covered his eyes for a while. Then he got up and said, "I'll do it." He took a Chesapeake and Ohio train and went to Philadelphia, and went to a great merchant prince in whose employ he had been, and told his story. The merchant prince shut and locked the door. "Let us pray," he said. They knelt together, the great merchant's arm about his visitor; and when they got up the great merchant said: "Go in peace. God bless you." [Illustration: "I'VE WALKED SIXTY MILES TO LOOK UPON HER FACE AGAIN"] On the next Sunday the man who had confessed took the Bible on his knee as he sat before his class and said to them: "Young men, I often wondered why I couldn't win any of you to Christ. My life was wrong, and I've repented and made it right." That man won his entire class for Christ, and they joined Dr. McKibben's church at Walnut Hills, Cincinnati, Ohio. If you would get right with God what would be the result? Why, you would save your city. The Fame of a Christian Some time ago the funeral of a famous woman was held in London. Edward, who was king then, came with his consort, Alexandra, to look upon her face, and dukes and duchesses and members of the nobility came. Then the doors were opened and the populace came in by thousands. Down the aisle came a woman whose face and dress bore the marks of poverty. By one hand she led a child, and in her arms she carried another. As she reached the coffin she set down the child she was carrying and bent her head upon the glass above the quiet face in the coffin, and her old fascinator fell down upon it. "Come," said a policeman, "you must move on." But the woman stood by the coffin. "I'll not move on," she said, "for I have a right here." The policeman said, "You must move on. It's orders;" but the woman said, "No, I've walked sixty miles to look upon her face again. She saved my two boys from being drunkards." The woman in the coffin was Mrs. Booth, wife of the great leader of the Salvation Army. I'd rather have some reclaimed drunkard, or some poor girl redeemed from sin and shame, stand by my coffin and rain down tears of gratitude upon it, than to have a monument of gold studded with precious stones, that would pierce the skies. "If ye love me keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever." CHAPTER XXIX A Victorious Sermon If you fall into sin and you're a sheep you'll get out; if you're a hog you'll stay there, just like a sheep and a hog when they fall into the mud.--BILLY SUNDAY. On the walls of Sir Walter Scott's home at Abbottsford hangs the claymore of the redoubtable Rob Roy, one of the most interesting objects in that absorbing library of the great novelist. A peculiar interest attaches to the instruments of great achievement, as the scimitar of Saladin, or the sword of Richard the Lion-Hearted, or the rifle of Daniel Boone. Something of this same sort of interest clings to a particular form of words that has wrought wondrously. Apart altogether from its contents, Sunday's sermon on "The Unpardonable Sin" is of peculiar interest to the reader. This is the message that has penetrated through the indifference and skepticism and self-righteousness and shameless sin of thousands of men and women. Many thousands of persons have, under the impulse of these words, abandoned their old lives and crowded forward up the sawdust trail to grasp the preacher's hand, as a sign that they would henceforth serve the Lord Christ. "The Unpardonable Sin" is a good sample of Sunday's sermons. It shows the character of the man's mind, and that quality of sound reasonableness which we call "common sense." There are no excesses, no abnormalities, no wrenchings of Scripture in this terrific utterance. "THE UNPARDONABLE SIN" "Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. "And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come." I'd like to know where anybody ever found any authority for a belief in future probation. Jesus Christ was either human or he was divine. And if he was only human then I am not obligated to obey his word any more than I am that of any other philosopher. The Pharisees charged Jesus with being in league with the devil. They said to him, "You have a devil." They grew bolder in their denunciation and said: "You do what you do through Beelzebub, the prince of devils." Jesus said: "How is that so? If what I do I do through the devil, explain why it is I am overthrowing the works of the devil. If I am a devil and if what I do is through the devil, then I wouldn't be working to hurt the works of the devil. I would not be doing what I am doing to destroy the works of the devil, but I would be working to destroy the works of God." From that day forth they dared not ask him any questions. I know there are various opinions held by men as to what they believe constitutes the sin against the Holy Ghost. There are those who think it could have been committed only by those who heard Jesus Christ speak and saw him in the flesh. If that be true then neither you nor I are in danger, for neither has ever seen Jesus in the flesh nor heard him. Another class think that it has been committed since the days of Jesus, but at extremely rare intervals; and still a third class think they have committed it and they spend their lives in gloom and dread and are perfectly useless to themselves and the community. And yet I haven't the slightest doubt but that there are thousands that come under the head of my message, who are never gloomy, never depressed, never downcast; their conscience is at ease, their spirits are light and gay, they eat three meals a day and sleep as sound as a babe at night; nothing seems to disturb them, life is all pleasure and song. What It Is If you will lay aside any preconceived ideas or opinions which you may have had or still have as to what you imagine, think or believe constitutes the sin against the Holy Ghost, or the unpardonable sin, and if you will listen to me, for I have read every sermon I could ever get my hands upon the subject, and have listened to every man I have ever had an opportunity to hear preach, and have read everything the Bible has taught on the subject. I do not say that my views on the subject are infallible, but I have wept and prayed and studied over it, and if time will permit and my strength will allow and your patience endure, I will try and ask and answer a few questions. What is it? Why will God not forgive it? It is not swearing. If swearing were the unpardonable sin, lots of men in heaven would have to go to hell and there are multitudes on earth on their way to heaven who would have to go to hell. It is not drunkenness. There are multitudes in heaven that have crept and crawled out of the quagmires of filth and the cesspools of iniquity and drunkenness. Some of the brightest lights that ever blazed for God have been men that God saved from drunkenness. It's not adultery. Jesus said to the woman committing adultery and caught in the very act: "Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more." It isn't theft. He said to Zaccheus, "This day is salvation come upon thy house." Zaccheus had been a thief. It's not murder. Men's hands have been red with blood and God has forgiven them. The Apostle Paul's hands were red with blood. What is it? To me it is plain and simple. It is constant and continual, and final rejection of Jesus Christ as your Saviour. God's offer of mercy and salvation comes to you and you say, "No," and you push it aside. I do know that there is such a thing as the last call to every man or woman. God says that his spirit will not always strive with man, and when a man or woman says "No" as God's spirit strives for the last time it forever seals your doom. It is no special form of sin, no one act. It might be swearing, it might be theft. Any one becomes unpardonable if God keeps calling on you to forsake that sin and you keep on refusing to forsake it, and if you don't then he will withdraw and let you alone and that sin will become unpardonable, for God won't ask you again to forsake it. It is no one glaring act, but the constant repetition of the same thing. There will come a time when you commit that sin once too often. It is a known law of mind that truth resisted loses its power on the mind that resists it. You hear a truth the first time and reject it. The next time the truth won't seem so strong and will be easier to resist. God throws a truth in your face. You reject it. He throws again; you reject again. Finally God will stop throwing the truth at you and you will have committed the unpardonable sin. "There is a line by us unseen; It crosses every path; It is God's boundary between His patience and his wrath. "To cross that limit is to die, To die as if by stealth. It may not dim your eye, Nor pale the glow of health, "Your conscience may be still at ease; Your spirits light and gay; That which pleases still may please, And care be thrown away; "But on that forehead God hath set Indelibly a mark, Unseen by man; for man as yet Is blind and in the dark. "Indeed, the doomed one's path below May bloom as Edens bloom; He does not, will not know, Nor believe that he is doomed." Over in Scotland there are men who earn their living by gathering the eggs of birds, laid upon ledges on rocks away below the cliff top. They fasten a rope to a tree, also to themselves, then swing back and forth and in upon the ledge of rock. When a man was doing that same thing years ago, the rope beneath his arms became untied, and the protruding rock caused the rope to hang many feet beyond his reach. The man waited for help to come, but none came. Darkness came, the light dawned, and he gave himself up to the fate of starvation, which he felt inevitably awaiting him, when a breeze freshened and the dangling rope began to vibrate. As the wind increased in velocity it increased the vibration of the rope and as it would bend in, he said: "If I miss it, I die; if I seize it, it's my only chance," and with a prayer to God as the rope bent in, he leaped out of the chasm and seized it and made his way hand over hand to the top, and when he reached it his hair was as white as the driven snow. There is one cord that swings through this old world today--the Holy Spirit. With every invitation it swings farther away. We are living in the last dispensation, the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, and God is speaking to the world through the Holy Spirit today. Resisting the Truth By every known law of the mind, conversion must be effected by the influence of the truth on the mind. Every time you resist the truth the next time you hear it, it loses its force on your mind. And every time you hear a truth and withstand it, then you become stronger in your power to resist the truth. We all know this, that each resistance strengthens you against the truth. When a man hears the truth and he resists it, the truth grows weaker and he grows stronger to resist it. No matter what Jesus Christ did the Jews refused to believe. He had performed wonderful deeds but they wouldn't believe, so when Lazarus was dead, he said: "Lazarus, come forth," and then turned to the Jews and said: "Isn't that evidence enough that I am the Son of God?" and they cried: "Away with him." One day he was walking down the hot dusty road and he met a funeral procession. The mourners were bearing the body of a young man and his mother was weeping. He told them to place the coffin on the ground and said: "Young man arise," and he arose. Then he asked the Pharisees: "Is that not proof enough that I am the Son of God, that I make the dead to arise?" and they cried: "Away with him." So no matter what Jesus did, the Jews refused to believe him. No matter what Jesus Christ says or does today, you'll refuse to accept, and continue to rush pell-mell to eternal damnation. "Too Late" Jesus Christ gives you just as much evidence today. Down in Indiana, my friend, Mrs. Robinson, was preaching. I don't remember the town, but I think it was Kokomo, and I remember the incident, and the last day she tried to get the leader of society there to give her heart to God. She preached and then went down in the aisle and talked to her. Then she went back to the platform and made her appeal from there. Again she went to the girl, but she still refused. As Mrs. Robinson turned to go she saw her borrow a pencil from her escort and write something in the back of a hymn book. A few years afterward Mrs. Robinson went back to the town and was told the girl was dying. They told her the physicians had just held a consultation and said she could not live until night. Mrs. Robinson hurried to her home. The girl looked up, recognized her and said: "I didn't send for you. You came on your own account, and you're too late." To every appeal she would reply: "You're too late." Finally she said: "Go look in the hymn book in the church." They hurried to the church and looked over the hymn books and found in the back of one her name and address and these words, "I'll run the risk; I'll take my chance." That was the last call to her. Not any one sin is the unpardonable sin, but it may be that constant repetition, over and over again until God will say: "Take it and go to hell." Who can commit it? I used to think that only the vile, the profane were the people who could commit it. Whom did Jesus warn? The Pharisees. And who were they? The best men, morally, in Jerusalem. Who can commit it? Any man or woman who says "No" to Jesus Christ. You may even defend the Bible. You may be the best man or woman, morally, in the world. Your name may be synonymous with virtue and purity, but let God try to get into your heart, let him try to get you to walk down the aisle and publicly acknowledge Jesus Christ, and your heart and lips are sealed like a bank vault, and God hasn't been able to pull you to your feet. And God won't keep on begging you to do it. Something may say to you, "I ought to be a Christian." This is the dispensation of the Holy Spirit. God spoke in three dispensations. First, through the old Mosaic law. Then Jesus Christ came upon this earth and lived and the Jews and Gentiles conspired to kill him. Then the Holy Spirit came down at Pentecost and God is speaking through the Holy Spirit today. The Holy Spirit is pressing you to be a Christian. It takes the combined efforts of the Trinity to keep you out of hell--God the Father to provide the plan of salvation, the Holy Spirit to convict, Jesus Christ to redeem you through his blood, and your acceptance and repentance to save you. Sin is no trifle. Representative of the Trinity The only representative of the Trinity in the world today is the Holy Ghost. Jesus has been here, but he is not here now--that is, in flesh and blood. The Holy Ghost is here now. When he leaves the world, good-bye. There was an old saint of God, now in glory. He was holding meetings one time and a young man came down the aisle and went so far as to ask him to pray for him. He said: "Let's settle it now," but the young man refused and told him to pray for him. Years afterwards, in Philadelphia, the old saint was in a hotel waiting for his card to be taken up to the man he wanted to see. He looked in the bar-room door. There was a young man ordering a drink. The two saw each other's reflections in the French plate behind the bar, and the young man came out and said: "How do you do?" The old man spoke to him. The young fellow said: "I suppose you don't remember me?" and the old saint had to admit that he did not. The young fellow asked him if he remembered the meeting eleven years before in New York when a young man came down the aisle and asked him to pray for him. He said he was the young man. The old saint said: "From what I have just seen I would suppose that you did not settle it." The young fellow said: "I did not and I never expect to. I believe there is a hell and I'm going there as fast as I can go." The old man begged him to keep still, but he said: "It is true. If Jesus Christ would come through that door now I would spit in his face." The old man said: "Don't talk that way. I would not stand to have you talk about my wife that way, and I will not stand it to have you talk about Christ that way." The young fellow said it was all true. The old fellow said: "Maybe it is all true, but I do not like to hear it." The young fellow said it was true, and that if he had a Bible he would tear it up. With a string of oaths he went to the bar, took two or three drinks and went out the door. Sometimes it may be utter, absolute indifference. Some can hear any sermon and any song and not be moved. I'll venture that some of you have not been convicted of sin for twenty-five years. Back yonder the Spirit of God convicted you and you didn't yield. The first place I ever preached, in the little town of Garner, in Hancock county, Iowa, a man came down the aisle. I said, "Who's that?" and someone told me that he was one of the richest men in the county. I asked him what I had said to help him, and he said nothing. Then he told me that twenty-one years ago he had gone to Chicago and sold his stock four hours before he had to catch a train. Moody was in town and with a friend he had gone and stood inside the door, listening to the sermon. When Moody gave the invitation he handed his coat and hat to his friend and said he was going down to give Moody his hand. The friend told him not to do it, that he would miss his train, and then the railroad pass would be no good after that day. He said he could afford to pay his way home. His friend told him not to go up there amid all the excitement, but to wait and settle it at home. He said he had waited thirty-five years and hadn't settled it at home, but the friend persisted against his going forward and giving his heart to God. Finally the time passed and they had to catch the train and the man hadn't gone forward. He told me that he had never had a desire to give his heart to God until that time, twenty-one years later, when he heard me preach. The Spirit called him when he heard Moody, and then the Spirit did not call him again until twenty-one years later, when he heard me. I have never said and I never will say that all unbelievers died in agony. Man ordinarily dies as he has lived. If you have lived in unbelief, ninety-nine cases out of one hundred you'll die that way. If Christianity is a good thing to die with it is a good thing to live with. Death-bed Confessions I don't go much on these death-bed confessions. A death-bed confession is like burning a candle at both ends and then blowing the smoke in the face of Jesus. A death-bed confession is like drinking the cup of life and then offering the dregs to Christ. I think it is one of the most contemptible, miserable, low-down, unmanly and unwomanly things that you can do, to keep your life in your own control until the last moment and then try to creep into the kingdom on account of the long-suffering and mercy of Jesus Christ. I don't say that none is genuine. But there is only one on record in the Bible, and that was the first time the dying thief had ever heard of Christ, and he accepted at once. So your case is not analogous to this. You have wagon loads of sermons dumped into you, but it's a mighty hard thing to accept in the last moment. If you've lived without conviction, your friends ought not to get mad when the preacher preaches your funeral sermon, if he doesn't put you in the front row in heaven, with a harp in your hands and a crown on your head. God can forgive sins but you have got to comply with his requirements. He is not willing that any shall perish, but he has a right to tell me and you what to do to be saved. A doctor had been a practitioner for sixty years and he was asked how many Godless men he had seen show any trace of concern on their death-bed. He said he had kept track of three hundred and only three had shown any real concern. That is appalling to me. You ordinarily die as you have lived. A minister was called to a house of shame to be with a dying girl in her last moments. He prayed and then looked at her face and saw no signs of hope of repentance. He was led to pray again and this time he was led to put in a verse of scripture, Isaiah 1:18: "Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord: Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." "Is that what the Bible says?" the girl asked. He said it was. "Would you let me see it?" and the minister pointed it out to her. "Would you pray again and put in that verse?" the girl asked and as he started she called, "Stop! Let me put my finger on that verse." The minister prayed and when he looked again, he saw hope and pardon and peace in the girl's face. "I'm so glad God made that 'scarlet,'" she said, "for that means me." All manner of sins God will forgive. Then tell me why you will not come when God says, "All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men." Great heavens! I can't understand how you sit still. But a man says: "Bill, will He forgive a murderer? My hands are red with blood, although no one knows it." Didn't I say he forgave Paul? A Forgiving God A friend of mine was preaching in Lansing, Michigan, one time, and in the middle section of the church there was a man who made him so nervous he couldn't watch him and preach. Nothing seemed to attract him until he said, "Supposing there were a murderer here tonight, God would forgive him if he accepted Christ," and the man grabbed the chair in front of him at the word murderer and sat rigid throughout the sermon, never taking his eyes from my friend. At the end of the meeting my friend went down to him and asked him what was the matter, telling him that he had made him so nervous he could hardly preach. The man said: "I'm a murderer. I escaped through a technicality and I'm supporting the widow and children, but I am a murderer." My friend brought him to Jesus Christ and now that man is a power in the Church. All manner of sins God says he will forgive. Some say: "Mr. Sunday, why is it that so few aged sinners are converts?" Infidels when asked this, seize upon it as a plan of attack. When God begins to show his power, then the devil and all of the demons of hell get busy. That's the best evidence in the world that these meetings are doing good, when that bunch of knockers gets busy. Infidels sneer and say: "How does it happen that when a man's mind has developed through age and experience and contact with the world, and he has passed the period of youthful enthusiasm, how does it happen that so few of them are converted?" Religion makes its appeal to your sensibility, not to your intellect. The way into the kingdom of heaven is heart first, not head first. God is not an explanation; God is a revelation. A grain of corn is a revelation, but you can't explain it. You know that if you put the vegetable kingdom in the mineral kingdom the vegetable will be born again, but you can't explain it. Some of the greatest things are revelations. Therefore, instead of being an argument against religion, it is an argument for it. Don't you know that sixteen out of twenty who are converted are converted before they are twenty years old? Don't you know that eighteen out of thirty who are converted are converted before they are thirty years old? Don't you know that? What does that prove? It proves that if you are not converted before you are thirty years old the chances are about 100,000 to one that you never will be converted. Power of Revivals Most people are converted at special revival services. I want to hurl this in the teeth, cram it down the throats of those who sneer at revival efforts--preachers included. Almost nine-tenths of the Christians at this meeting were converted at a revival. What does that show? It shows that if you are thirty and have not been converted, the chances are that if you are not converted at this revival you never will be converted. If it weren't for revivals, just think of what hell would be like. Then think of any low-down, God-forsaken, dirty gang knocking a revival. God says: "You can spurn my love and trample the blood under your feet, but if you seek my pardon I will forgive you." You might have been indifferent to the appeals of the minister, you might have been a thief, or an adulterer, or a blasphemer, or a scoffer, and all that, but God says: "I will forgive you." You might have been indifferent to the tears of poor wife and children and friends, but if you will seek God he will forgive you. But when He came down and revealed himself as the Son of God through the Holy Spirit, if you sneer and say it is not true, your sin may become unpardonable. If you don't settle it here you never will settle it anywhere else. I will close with a word of comfort and a word of warning. If you have a desire to be a Christian it is proof that the devil hasn't got you yet. That is the comfort. Now for the warning: If you have that desire thank God for it and yield to it. You may never have another chance. CHAPTER XXX Eternity! Eternity! I tell you a lot of people are going to be fooled on the Day of Judgment.--BILLY SUNDAY. Only a man to whom has been given eloquence and a dramatic instinct can drive home to the average mind the realities of eternity and its relation to right living in this world and time. Under the title "What Shall the End Be?" Sunday has widely circulated his message upon this theme: "WHAT SHALL THE END BE?" No book ever came by luck or chance. Every book owes its existence to some being or beings, and within the range and scope of human intelligence there are but three things--good, bad and God. All that originates in intellect; all which the intellect can comprehend, must come from one of the three. This book, the Bible, could not possibly be the product of evil, wicked, godless, corrupt, vile men, for it pronounces the heaviest penalties against sin. Like produces like, and if bad men were writing the Bible they never would have pronounced condemnation and punishment against wrong-doing. So that is pushed aside. The holy men of old, we are told, spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Men do not attribute these beautiful and matchless and well-arranged sentences to human intelligence alone, but we are told that men spake as they were inspired by the Holy Ghost. The only being left, to whom you, or I or any sensible person could ascribe the origin of the Bible, is God, for here is a book, the excellence of which rises above other books, like mountains above molehills--a book whose brilliancy and life-giving power exceed the accumulated knowledge and combined efforts of men, as the sun exceeds the lamp, which is but a base imitation of the sun's glory. Here is a book that tells me where I came from and where I am going, a book without which I would not know of my origin or destiny, except as I might glean it from the dim outlines of reason or nature, either or both of which would be unsatisfactory to me. Here is a book that tells me what to do and what not to do. Men Believe in God Most men believe in God. Now and then you find a man who doesn't, and he's a fool, for "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God." Most men have sense. Occasionally you will find a fool, or an infidel, who doesn't believe in God. Most men believe in a God that will reward the right and punish the wrong; therefore it is clear what attitude you ought to assume toward my message tonight, for the message I bring to you is not from human reason or intelligence, but from God's Book. "What shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?" Now listen, and I will try to help you. Israel's condition was desperate. Peter told them that if they continued to break God's law, they would merit his wrath. I can imagine him crying out in the words of Jeremiah: "What will you do in the swelling of the Jordan?" I hear him cry in the words of Solomon: "The way of the transgressor is hard." That seems to have moved him, and I can hear him cry in the words of my text: "What shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?" There are those who did obey. Peter knew what their end would be--blessings here and eternal life hereafter--but he said, "What shall the end be of them that obey not?" A man said, "I cannot be a Christian. I cannot obey God." That is not true. That would make God out a demon and a wretch. God says if you are not a Christian you will be doomed. If God asked mankind to do something, and he knew when he asked them that they could not do it, and he told them he would damn them if they didn't do it, it would make God out a demon and a wretch, and I will not allow you or any other man to stand up and insult my God. You can be a Christian if you want to, and it is your cussedness that you are unwilling to give up that keeps you away from God. Supposing I should go on top of a building and say to my little baby boy, "Fly up to me." If he could talk, he would say, "I can't." And supposing I would say, "But you can; if you don't, I'll whip you to death." When I asked him to do it, I knew he couldn't, yet I told him I would whip him to death if he didn't, and in saying that I would, as an earthly father, be just as reasonable as God would be if he should ask you to do something you couldn't do, and though he knew when he asked you that you couldn't do it, nevertheless would damn you if you didn't do it. Don't tell God you can't. Just say you don't want to be a Christian, that's the way to be a man. Just say, "I don't want to be decent; I don't want to quit cussing; I don't want to quit booze-fighting; I don't want to quit lying; I don't want to quit committing adultery. If I should be a Christian I would have to quit all these things, and I don't want to do it." Tell God you are not man enough to be a Christian. Don't try to saddle it off on the Lord. You don't want to do it, that's all; that's the trouble with you. At the Cross A man in a town in Ohio came and handed one of the ministers a letter, and he said, "I want you to read that when you get home." When the minister got home he opened it and it read like this: "I was at the meeting last night, and somehow or other, the words 'What shall the end be?' got hold of me, and troubled me. I went to bed, but couldn't sleep. I got up and went to my library. I took down my books on infidelity and searched them through and searched through the writings of Voltaire, and Darwin, and Spencer, and Strauss, and Huxley, and Tyndall, and through the lectures of Ingersoll, but none of them could answer the cry and longing of my heart, and I turn to you. Is there help? Where will I find it?" And that man found it where every man ever has, or ever will find it, down at the Cross of Jesus Christ, and I have been praying God that might be the experience of many a man and woman in this Tabernacle. Ever since God saved my soul and sent me out to preach, I have prayed him to enable me to pronounce two words, and put into those words all they will mean to you; if they ever become a reality, God pity you. One word is "Lost," and the other is "Eternity." Ten thousand years from now we will all be somewhere. Ten thousand times ten thousand times ten thousand years, the eternity has just begun. Increase the multiple and you will only increase the truth. If God should commission a bird to carry this earth, particle by particle, to yonder planet, making a round trip once in a thousand years, and if, after the bird had performed that task God should prolong its life, and it would carry the world back, particle by particle, making a round trip once in a thousand years, and put everything back as it was originally, after it had accomplished its task, you would have been five minutes in eternity; and yet you sit there with just a heart-beat between you and the judgment of God. I have been praying that God would enable me to pronounce those two words and put in them all they will mean to you, that I might startle you from your lethargy. I prayed God, too, that he might give me some new figure of speech tonight, that he might impress my mind, that I, in turn, might impress your mind in such a manner that I could startle you from your indifference and sin, until you would rush to Jesus. The Judgment of God What is your life? A hand's breadth--yes, a hair's breadth--yes, one single heart-beat, and you are gone, and yet you sit with the judgment of God hovering over you. "What shall the end be?" I never met any man or woman in my life who disbelieved in Christianity but could not be classified under one of these two headings. First--They who, because of an utter disregard of God's claims upon their lives, have, by and through that disregard, become poltroons, marplots or degenerate scoundrels, and have thrown themselves beyond the pale of God's mercy. Second--Men and women with splendid, noble and magnificent abilities, which they have allowed to become absorbed in other matters, and they do not give to the subjects of religion so much as passing attention. They have the audacity to claim for themselves an intellectual superiority to those who believe the Bible, which they sneeringly term 'that superstition.' But, listen! I will challenge you. If you will bring to religion or to the divinity of Jesus, or the salvation of your soul, the same honest inquiry you demand of yourself in other matters, you will know God is God; you will know the Bible is the Word of God, and you will know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. You will know that you are a sinner on the road to hell, and you will turn from your sins. But you don't give to religion, you don't demand of yourself, the same amount of research that you would demand of yourself if you were going to buy a piece of property, to find out whether or not the title was perfect. You wouldn't buy it if you didn't know the title was without a flaw, and yet you will pass the Bible by and claim you have more sense than the person who does investigate and finds out, accepts and is saved. Glad Tidings to All What is the Gospel that the people ought to obey it? It is good news, glad tidings of salvation, through Jesus Christ. Oh, but somebody says, do you call the news of that book that I am on the road to hell, good news? No, sir; that in itself is not good news, but since it is the truth, the sooner you find out the better it will be for you. Supposing you are wandering, lost in a swamp, and a man would come to you and say: "You are lost." That wouldn't help you. But supposing the man said: "You are lost; I am a guide; I know the way out. If you put yourself in my care, I will lead you back to your home, back to your loved ones." That would meet your condition. Now God doesn't tell you that you are lost, and on the road to hell, and then leave you, but he tells you that you are on the road to hell, and he says, "I have sent a guide, my Son, to lead you out, and to lead you back to peace and salvation." That's good news, that God is kind enough to tell you that you are lost, and on the road to hell, and that he sends a guide, who, if you will submit, will lead you out of your condition and lead you to peace and salvation. That's gospel; that's good news that tells a man that he needn't go to hell unless he wants to. When the Israelites were bitten by the serpents in the wilderness, wasn't it good news for them to know that Moses had raised up a brazen serpent and bid them all to look and be healed? When the flood came, wasn't it good news for Noah to know that he would be saved in the ark? When the city of Jericho was going to fall, wasn't it good news to Rahab. She had been kind and had hid two of God's servants who were being pursued as spies. They were running across the housetops to get away to the wall to drop down, and Rahab covered them, on top of her house, with grass and corn, and when the men came they could not find them. After the men had gone, Rahab gave them cord and lowered them down the wall, and God said to her, "Because you did that for my servants, I will save you and your household when I take the city of Jericho. What I want you to do is to hang a scarlet line out of your window and I will save all that are under your roof." Wasn't it good news to her to know that she and all her household would be saved by hanging a scarlet line out of the window? Never has such news been published. "Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins." It was good news, but never has such news reached the world as that man need not go to hell, for God has provided redemption for them that will accept of it and be saved. [Illustration: REV. L. K. PEACOCK, ONE OF MR. SUNDAY'S ASSISTANTS, PREACHING IN A MACHINE SHOP IN ONE OF THE NOONDAY MEETINGS THAT FORM AN IMPORTANT PART OF ALL CAMPAIGNS.] Supposing a man owed you $5,000 and he had nothing to pay it with. You would seize him and put him in jail, and supposing while there, your own son would come and say: "Father, how much does he owe you?" "Five thousand dollars." And your son would pay it and the man would be released. Ah, my friends, hear me! We were all mortgaged to God, had nothing with which to pay, and inflexible justice seized upon us and put us in the prison of condemnation. God took pity on us. He looked around to find some one to pay our debts. Jesus Christ stepped forward and said: "I'll go; I'll become bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh." God gave man the Mosaic law. Man broke the law. If a Jew violated the law he was compelled to bring a turtle dove, or pigeon, or heifer, or bullock to the high priest for a sacrifice, and the shedding of its blood made atonement for his sins. Once a year the high priest would kill the sacrifice, putting it on the altar. That made atonement for the sins of the people during the year. Then they would put their hand on the head of the scape-goat, and lead it out into the wilderness. The Atonement of Christ Jesus Christ came into the world, born of a woman. When he shed his blood, he made atonement for our sins. God says, "If you will accept Jesus Christ as your Saviour, I will put it to your credit as though you kept the law." And it's Jesus Christ or hell for every man or woman on God Almighty's dirt. There is no other way whereby you can be saved. It's good news that you don't have to go to hell, unless you want to. When the North German Lloyd steamer, the _Elbe_, went down in the North Sea, years and years ago, only nineteen of her passengers and crew were saved. Among them was a county commissioner who lived in Cleveland, Ohio, and when he reached the little English town he sent a cablegram to his wife, in which he said, "The _Elbe_ is lost; I am saved." She crumpled that cablegram, ran down the street to her neighbors, and as she ran she waved it above her head and cried, "He's saved! He's saved!" That cablegram is framed, and hangs upon the walls of their beautiful Euclid Avenue home. It was good news to her that he whom she loved was saved. Good news I bring you. Good news I bring you, people. You need not go to hell if you will accept the Christ that I preach to you. "What shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel?" And the gospel of God is, "Repent or you will go to hell." "What shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel?" What is the gospel, and what is it to obey the gospel? We have seen that it is good news; now what is it to obey? What was it for Israel to obey? Look at the brazen serpent on the pole. What was it for Noah to obey? Build the ark and get into it. What was it for Rahab to obey? Hang a scarlet line out of the window, and God would pass her by when he took the city of Jericho. All that was obeying. It was believing God's message and obeying. Ah! I see a man. He walks to the banks of the Seine, in Paris, to end his life. He walked to the bank four times, but he didn't plunge in. He filled a cup with poison, three times raised it to his lips, but he did not drink. He cocked the pistol, put it against his temple. He did that twice, but he didn't pull the trigger. He heard the story of Jesus Christ and dropped on his knees, and William Cowper wrote: "God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform; He plants his footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm. "There is a fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Immanuel's veins; And sinners plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty strains." So that's what you found, is it, Cowper? I go to Bridgeport, Connecticut. I rap at a humble home and walk into the presence of Fanny J. Crosby, the blind hymn-writer. She has written over six thousand hymns. She never saw the light of day, was born blind, and I say to her, "Oh, Miss Crosby, tell me that I may tell the people what you have found by trusting in the finished work of Jesus Christ? You have sat in darkness for ninety-four years; tell me, Miss Crosby." And that face lights up like a halo of glory; those sightless eyes flash, and she cries: "Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine; Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!" "Pass me not, O gentle Saviour, Hear my humble cry!" "Jesus keep me near the cross, There's a precious fountain." "Once I was blind, but now I can see, The light of the world is Jesus." "And I shall see Him, face to face, And tell the story, Saved by Grace." I go to Wesley as he walks along the banks of a stream, while the storm raged, the lightning flashed and the thunder roared. The birds were driven, in fright, from their refuge in the boughs of the trees. A little bird took refuge in his coat. Wesley held it tenderly, walked home, put it in a cage, kept it until morning, carried it out, opened the door and watched it as it circled around and shot off for its mountain home. He returned to his house and wrote: "Jesus, lover of my soul, Let me to thy bosom fly." What have you found by trusting in the finished work of Jesus Christ? God's Word It is said of Napoleon that one day he was riding in review before his troops, when the horse upon which he sat became unmanageable, seized the bit in his teeth, dashed down the road and the life of the famous warrior was in danger. A private, at the risk of his life, leaped out and seized the runaway horse, while Napoleon, out of gratitude, raised in the stirrups, saluted and said, "Thank you, captain." The man said, "Captain of what, sir?" "Captain of my Life Guards, sir," said he. [Illustration: "CAPTAIN OF MY LIFE GUARDS, SIR"] The man stepped over to where the Life Guards were in consultation and they ordered him back into the ranks. He refused to go and issued orders to the officer by saying, "I am Captain of the Guards." Thinking him insane, they ordered his arrest and were dragging him away, when Napoleon rode up and the man said, "I am Captain of the Guards because the Emperor said so." And Napoleon arose and said, "Yes, Captain of my Life Guards. Loose him, sir; loose him." I am a Christian because God says so, and I did what he told me to do, and I stand on God's Word and if that book goes down, I'll go down with it. If God goes down, I'll go with him, and if there were any other kind of God, except that God, I would have been shipwrecked long ago. Twenty-seven years ago in Chicago I piled all I had, my reputation, my character, my wife, children, home; I staked my soul, everything I had, on the God of that Bible, and the Christ of that Bible, and I won. "What shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?" Hear me! There are three incomprehensibilities to me. Don't think there are only three things I don't know, or don't you think that I think there are only three things I don't know. I say, there are three things that I cannot comprehend. Eternity and Space First--Eternity; that something away off yonder, somewhere. You will think it will end. It leads on, on, on and on. I can take a billion, I can subtract a million; I can take a million or a billion, or a quadrillion, or a septillion of years from eternity, and I haven't as much as disturbed its original terms. Minds trained to deal with intricate problems will go reeling back in their utter inability to comprehend eternity. And there is space. When you go out tonight, look up at the moon, 240,000 miles away. Walking forty miles a day, I could reach the moon in seventeen years, but the moon is one of our near neighbors. Ah, you saw the sun today, 92,900,000 miles away. I couldn't walk to the sun. If I could charter a fast train, going fifty miles an hour, it would take the train two hundred and fifteen years to reach the sun. In the early morn you will see a star, near the sun--Mercury--91,000,000 miles away; travels around the sun once in eighty-eight days, going at the speed of 110,000 miles an hour, as it swings in its orbit. Next is Venus; she is beautiful; 160,000,000 miles away, travels around the sun once in 224 days, going at the rate of 79,000 miles an hour, as she swings in her orbit. Then comes the earth, the planet upon which we live, and as you sit there, this old earth travels around the sun once in 365 days, or one calendar year, going at the speed of 68,000 miles an hour, and as you sit there and I stand here, this old planet is swinging in her orbit 68,000 miles an hour, and she is whirling on her axis nineteen miles a second. By force of gravity we are held from falling into illimitable space. Yonder is Mars, 260,000,000 miles away. Travels around the sun once in 687 days, or about two years, going at the speed of 49,000 miles an hour. Who knows but that it is inhabited by a race unsullied by sin, untouched by death? Yonder another, old Jupiter, champion of the skies, sashed and belted around with vapors of light. Jupiter, 480,000,000 miles away, travels around the sun once in twelve years, going at the speed of 30,000 miles an hour. I need something faster than an express train, going fifty miles an hour, or a cyclone, going one hundred miles an hour. If I could charter a Pullman palace car and couple it to a ray of light, which travels at the speed of 192,000 miles a second--if I could attach my Pullman palace car to a ray of light, I could go to Jupiter and get back tomorrow morning for breakfast at nine o'clock, but Jupiter is one of our near neighbors. Yonder is old Saturn, 885,000,000 miles away. Travels around the sun once in twenty years, going at the speed of 21,000 miles an hour. Away yonder, I catch a faint glimmer of another stupendous world, as it swings in its tireless and prodigious journey. Old Uranus, 1,780,000,000 miles away. Travels around the sun once in eighty-four years, going at the speed of two hundred and fifty miles an hour. As the distance of the planets from the sun increases, their velocity in their orbit correspondingly decreases. I say is that all? I hurry to Chicago and take the Northwestern. I rush out to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, I climb into the Yerkes observatory, and I turn the most ponderous telescope in the world to the skies, and away out on the frontier of the universe, on the very outer rim of the world, I catch a faint glimmer of Neptune, 2,790,000,000 miles away. Travels around the sun once in one hundred and sixty-four years, going at the speed of two hundred and ten miles an hour. If I could step on the deck of a battleship and aim a 13-inch gun, and that projectile will travel 1,500 miles in a minute, it would take it three hundred and sixty years to reach that planet. Away out yonder is Alpha Centauri. If I would attach my palace car to a ray of light and go at the speed of 192,000 miles a second, it would take me three years to reach that planet. An express train, going thirty miles an hour, would be 80,000,000 years pulling into Union depot at Alpha Centauri. Yonder, the Polar or the North star. Traveling at a rate of speed of 192,000 miles a second, it would take me forty-five years to reach that planet. And if I would go to the depot and buy a railroad ticket to the North star, and pay three cents a mile, it would cost me $720,000,000 for railroad fare to go to that planet. "Oh, God, what is man, that thou art mindful of him?" And the fool, the fool, the fool hath said in his heart, "There is no God." I'm not an infidel, because I am no fool. "The Heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork." I don't believe an infidel ever looked through a telescope or studied astronomy. "What is man, that thou are mindful of him?" These are days when it is "Big man, little God." These are days when it is gigantic "I," and pigmy "God." These are days when it is "Ponderous man, infinitesimal God." There are 1,400,000,000 people on earth. You are one of that number, so am I. None of us amount to much. What do you or I amount to out of 1,400,000,000 people? If I could take an auger and bore a hole in the top of the sun, I could pour into the sun 1,400,000,000 worlds the size of the planet upon which we live, and there would be room in the sun for more. Then think of the world, and God made that world, the God that you cuss, the God that wants to keep you out of hell, the God whose Son you have trampled beneath your feet. If you take 1,400,000,000, multiply it by 1,400,000, multiply that by 1,000,000, multiply that by millions, multiply that by infinity, that's God. If you take 1,400,000,000, subtract 1,400,000, subtract millions, subtract, subtract, subtract, subtract on down, that's you. If ever a man appears like a consummate ass and an idiot, it's when he says he don't believe in a God or tries to tell God his plan of redemption don't appeal to him. God's Infinite Love And the third: The third is the love of God to a lost and sin-cursed world and man's indifference to God's love. How he has trampled God's love beneath his feet, I don't understand. I don't understand why you have grown gray-haired, and are not a Christian. I don't understand why you know right from wrong, and still are not a Christian. I don't understand it. Listen! What is it to obey the Gospel? The Gospel is good news, and to obey it is to believe in Jesus. What is it not to obey? What was the end of those who weren't in the ark with Noah? They found a watery grave. What was the end of those who didn't look at the brazen serpent in the wilderness? They died. What was the end of those who were not with Rahab when she hung out the scarlet line? They perished. When a man starts on a journey he has one object in view--the end. A journey is well, if it ends well. We are all on a journey to eternity. What will be the end? My text doesn't talk about the present. Your present is, or may be, an enviable position in church, club life, or commercial life, lodge, politics; your presence may be sought after to grace every social gathering. God doesn't care about that. What shall the end be? When all that is gone, when pleasures pass away, and sorrow and weeping and wailing take their place, what shall the end be? [Illustration: SNOWBALLING IN JUNE. BILLY SUNDAY AND PARTY ON PIKE'S PEAK.] Some people deny that their suffering in the other world will be eternal fire. Do you think your scoffs can extinguish the flames of hell? Do you think you can annihilate hell because you don't believe in it? We have a few people who say, "Matter is non-existent," but that doesn't do away with the fact that matter is existent, just because we have some people who haven't sense enough to see it. You say, "I don't believe there is a hell." Well, there is, whether you believe it or not. You say, "I don't believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God." Well, he is, whether you believe it or not. Some people say, "I don't believe there is a heaven." There is, whether you believe it or not. You say, "I don't believe the Bible is the Word of God." Well, it is, and your disbelief does not change the fact, and the sooner you wake up to that the better for you. I might say that I don't believe George Washington ever lived. I never saw him, but it wouldn't do away with the fact that he did live, and George Washington lies buried on the banks of the Potomac. You say you don't believe there is a hell, but that doesn't do away with the fact that there is a hell. What difference does it make whether the fire in hell is literal, or the fittest emblem God could employ to describe to us the terrible punishment? Do you believe the streets of heaven are paved with literal gold? Do you believe that? When we talk about gold we all have high and exalted ideas. How do you know but that God said "streets of gold" in order to convey to us the highest ideal our minds could conceive of beauty? It doesn't make any difference whether the gold on the streets in heaven is literal or not. What difference does it make whether the fire in hell is literal or not? When we talk about fire everybody shrinks from it. Suppose God used that term as figurative to convey to you the terror of hell. You are a fool to test the reality of it. It must be an awful place if God loved us well enough to give Jesus to keep us out of there. I don't want to go there. Preparing for Eternity I said to a fellow one time, "Don't you think that possibly there is a hell?" He said, "Well, yes, possibly there may be a hell." I said, "It's pretty good sense, then, to get ready for the maybe." Well, just suppose there is a hell. It's good sense to get ready, then, even for the "maybe." I don't look like a man that would die very quickly, do I? I have just as good a physique as you ever gazed at. I wouldn't trade with any man I know. A lot of you fellows are stronger than I, but I have as good a physique as ever you looked at. I have been preaching at this pace for fourteen years, and I've stood it, although I begin to feel myself failing a little bit. But I don't look like a man who would die quickly, do I? But I may die, and on that possibility I carry thousands of dollars of life insurance. I don't believe that any man does right to himself, his wife or his children if he doesn't provide for them with life insurance, so when he is gone they will not be thrown upon the charity of the world. And next to my faith, if I should die tonight, that which would give me the most comfort would be the knowledge that I have in a safe deposit vault in Chicago life insurance papers, paid up to date, and my wife could cash in and she and the babies could listen to the wolves howl for a good many years. I don't expect to die soon, but I may die, and on that "may" I carry thousands of dollars in life insurance. I take a train to go home, I don't expect the train to be wrecked, but it may be wrecked, and on that "maybe" I carry $10,000 a year in an accident policy. It may go in the ditch. That's good sense to get ready for the "maybe." Are you a business man? Do you carry insurance on your stock? Yes. On the building? Yes. Do you expect it to burn? No, sir. But it may burn, so you are ready for it. Every ship is compelled, by law, to carry life-preservers and life-boats equal to the passenger capacity. They don't expect the ship to sink, but it may sink and they are ready for the "may." All right. There may be a hell. I'm ready; where do you get off at? I have you beat any way you can look at it. Suppose there is no hell? Suppose that when we die that ends it? I don't believe it does. I believe there is a hell and I believe there is a heaven, and just the kind of a heaven and hell that book says. But suppose there is no hell? Suppose death is eternal sleep? I believe the Bible; I believe its teachings; I have the best of you in this life. I will live longer, be happier, and have lost nothing by believing and obeying the Bible, even if there is no hell. But suppose there is a hell? Then I'm saved and you are the fool. I have you beat again. "What shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?" What will some do? Some will be stoical, some will whimper, some will turn for human sympathy. Let God answer the question. You would quarrel with me. "A lake of fire" and "a furnace of fire." "In hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torment." "Eternal damnation." "The smoke of their torment ascendeth forever and ever." Let God answer the question. "What shall be the end of them that obey not the gospel of God?" Will you say, "God, I didn't have time enough"? "Behold! Now is the accepted time." Will you say, "God, I had no light?" But "light is come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light." I stand on the shores of eternity and cry out, "Eternity! Eternity! How long, how long art thou?" Back comes the answer, "How long?" "How long sometimes a day appears and weeks, how long are they? They move as if the months and years would never pass away; But months and years are passing by, and soon must all be gone, Day by day, as the moments fly, eternity comes on. All these must have an end; eternity has none, It will always have as long to run as when it first begun." "What shall be the end of them that obey not the Gospel of God?" When Voltaire, the famous infidel, lay dying, he summoned the physician and said, "Doctor, I will give you all I have to save my life six months." The doctor said, "You can't live six hours." Then said Voltaire, "I'll go to hell and you'll go with me." A Leap in the Dark Hobbes, the famous English infidel, said: "I am taking a leap into the night." When King Charles IX, who gave the order for the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day, when blood ran like water and 130,000 fell dead, when King Charles lay dying, he cried out, "O God, how will it end? Blood, blood, rivers of blood. I am lost!" And with a shriek he leaped into hell. King Philip of Spain said; "I wish to God I had never lived," and then in a sober thought he said: "Yes, I wish I had, but that I had lived in the fear and love of God." Wesley said, "I shall be satisfied when I awake in His likeness." Florence A. Foster said, "Mother, the hilltops are covered with angels; they beckon me homeward; I bid you good-bye." Frances E. Willard cried, "How beautiful to die and be with God." Moody cried: "Earth recedes, heaven opens, God is calling me. This is to be my coronation day." Going to the World's Fair in Chicago, a special train on the Grand Trunk, going forty miles an hour, dashed around a curve at Battle Creek, and headed in on a sidetrack where a freight train stood. The rear brakeman had forgotten to close the switch and the train rounded the curve, dashed into the open switch and struck the freight train loaded with iron, and there was an awful wreck. The cars telescoped and the flames rushed out. Pinioned in the wreck, with steel girders bent around her, was a woman who lived in New York. Her name was Mrs. Van Dusen. She removed her diamond ear-rings, took her gold watch and chain from about her neck, slipped her rings from her fingers and handing out her purse gave her husband's address, and then said: "Gentlemen, stand back! I am a Christian and I will die like a Christian." They leaped to their task. They tore like demons to liberate her and she started to sing, "My heavenly home is bright and fair. I'm going to die no more." Strong men, who had looked into the cannon's mouth, fainted. She cried out, above the roar of the wind and the shrieks of the dying men, "Oh, men, don't imperil your lives for me. I am a Christian and I will die like a Christian! Stand back, men," and then she began to sing, "Nearer, My God, to Thee." "The End Thereof" "There is a way that seemeth right unto man, but the end thereof are the ways of death." Moses may have made some mistakes, but I want to tell you Moses never made a mistake when he wrote these words: "Their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being the judges." He never made a mistake when he wrote these words. I say to you, you are going to live on and on until the constellations of the heavens are snuffed out. You are going to live on and on until the rocks crumble into dust through age. You are going to live on and on and on, until the mountain peaks are incinerated and blown by the breath of God to the four corners of infinity. "What shall the end be?" Listen! Listen! I used to live in Pennsylvania and of the many wonderful things for which this wonderful state has been noted, not the least is the fact that most always she has had godly men for governors, and one of the most magnificent examples of godly piety that ever honored this state was Governor Pollock. When he was governor, a young man, in a drunken brawl, shot a companion. He was tried and sentenced to be executed. They circulated a petition, brought it to Harrisburg to the governor, and the committee that waited upon the governor, among them some of his own friends, pleaded with him to commute the sentence to life imprisonment. Governor Pollock listened to their pleadings and said, "Gentlemen, I can't do it. The law must take its course." Then the ministers--Catholic and Protestant--brought a petition, and among the committee was the governor's own pastor. He approached him in earnestness, put a hand on either shoulder, begged, prayed to God to give him wisdom to grant the request. Governor Pollock listened to their petition, tears streamed down his cheeks and he said, "Gentlemen, I can't do it. I can't; I can't." At last the boy's mother came. Her eyes were red, her cheeks sunken, her lips ashen, her hair disheveled, her clothing unkempt, her body tottering from the loss of food and sleep. Broken-hearted, she reeled, staggered and dragged herself into the presence of the governor. She pleaded for her boy. She said, "Oh, governor, let me die. Oh, governor, let him go; let me behind the bars. Oh, governor, I beg of you to let my boy go; don't, don't hang him!" And Governor Pollock listened. She staggered to his side, put her arms around him. He took her arms from his shoulder, held her at arms' length, looked into her face and said to her: "Mother, mother, I can't do it, I can't," and he ran from her presence. She screamed and fell to the floor and they carried her out. Governor Pollock said to his secretary, "John, if I can't pardon him I can tell him how to die." He went to the cell, opened God's Word, prayed, talked of Jesus. Heaven bent near, the angels waited, and then on lightning wing sped back to glory with the glad tidings that a soul was born again. And the governor left, wishing him well for the ordeal. Shortly after he had gone, the prisoner said to the watchman, "Who was that man that talked and prayed with me?" He said, "Great God, man, don't you know? That was Governor Pollock." He threw his hands to his head and cried: "My God! My God! The governor here and I didn't know it? Why didn't you tell me that was the governor and I would have thrown my arms about him, buried my fingers in his flesh and would have said, 'Governor, I'll not let you go unless you pardon me; I'll not let you go.'" A few days later, when he stood at the scaffold, feet strapped, hands tied, noose about his neck, black cap and shroud on, just before the trap was sprung he cried, "My God! The governor there and I--" He shot down. You can't stand before God in the Judgment and say, "Jesus, were you down there in the tabernacle? In my home? In my lodge? Did you want to save me?" Behold! Behold! A greater than the governor is here. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and he waits to be gracious. "What shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?" CHAPTER XXXI Our Long Home Don't let God hang a "For Rent" sign on the mansion that has been prepared for you in heaven.--BILLY SUNDAY. Vivid, literal and comforting, is Sunday's portrayal of the Christian's long home. He is one of the few preachers who depict heaven so that it ministers to earth. Countless thousands of Christians have been comforted by his realistic pictures of "the land that is fairer than day." "HEAVEN" What do I want most of all? A man in Chicago said to me one day, "If I could have all I wanted of any one thing I would take money." He would be a fool, and so would you if you would make a similar choice. There's lots of things money can't do. Money can't buy life; money can't buy health. Andrew Carnegie says, "Anyone who can assure men ten years of life can name his price." If you should meet with an accident which would require a surgical operation or your life would be despaired of, there is not a man here but would gladly part with all the money he has if that would give him the assurance that he could live twelve months longer. If you had all the money in the world you couldn't go to the graveyard and put those loved ones back in your arms and have them sit once more in the family circle and hear their voices and listen to their prattle. [Illustration: "HA! HA! OLD SKEPTIC, I'VE GOT YOU BEAT."] A steamer tied up at her wharf, having just returned from an expedition, and as the people walked down the plank their friends met them to congratulate them on their success or encourage them through their defeat. Down came a man I used to know in Fargo, S. D. Friends rushed up and said, "Why, we hear that you were very fortunate." "Yes, wife and I left here six months ago with hardly anything. Now we have $350,000 in gold dust in the hold of the ship." Then somebody looked around and said, "Mr. L----, where is your little boy?" The tears rolled down his cheeks and he said, "We left him buried on the banks of the Yukon beneath the snow and ice, and we would gladly part with all the gold, if we only had our boy." But all the wealth of the Klondike could not open the grave and put that child back in their arms. Money can't buy the peace of God that passeth understanding. Money can't take the sin out of your life. Is there any particular kind of life you would like? If you could live one hundred years you wouldn't want to die, would you? I wouldn't. I think there is always something the matter with a fellow that wants to die. I want to stay as long as God will let me stay, but when God's time comes for me to go I'm ready, any hour of the day or night. God can waken me at midnight or in the morning and I'm ready to respond. But if I could live a million years I'd like to stay. I don't want to die. I'm having a good time. God made this world for us to have a good time in. It's nothing but sin that has damned the world and brought it to misery and corruption. God wants you to have a good time. Well, then, how can I get this life that you want and everybody wants, eternal life? If you are ill the most natural thing for you to do is to go for your doctor. You say, "I don't want to die. Can you help me?" He looks at you and says, "I have a hundred patients on my hands, all asking the same thing. Not one of them wants to die. They ask me to use my skill and bring to bear all I have learned, but I can't fight back death. I can prescribe for your malady, but I can't prevent death." "I, Too, Must Die" Well, go to your philosopher. He it is that reasons out the problems and mysteries of life by the application of reason. Say to him, "Good philosopher, I have come to you for help. I want to live forever and you say that you have the touch-stone of philosophy and that you can describe and solve. Can you help me?" He says to you, "Young man, my hair and my beard have grown longer and as white as snow, my eyes are dim, my brows are wrinkled, my form bent with the weight of years, my bones are brittle and I am just as far from the solution of that mystery and problem as when I started. I, too, sir, must soon die and sleep beneath the sod." In my imagination I have stood by the bedside of the dying Pullman-palace-car magnate, George M. Pullman, whose will was probated at $25,000,000, and I have said, "Oh, Mr. Pullman, you will not die, you can bribe death." And I see the pupils of his eyes dilate, his breast heaves, he gasps--and is no more. The undertaker comes and makes an incision in his left arm, pumps in the embalming fluid, beneath whose mysterious power he turns as rigid as ice, and as white as alabaster, and they put his embalmed body in the rosewood coffin, trimmed with silver and gold, and then they put that in a hermetically sealed casket. The grave-diggers go to Graceland Cemetery, on the shore of Lake Michigan, and dig his grave in the old family lot, nine feet wide, and they put in there Portland cement four and a half feet thick, while it is yet soft, pliable and plastic. A set of workmen drop down into the grave a steel cage with steel bars one inch apart. They bring his body, in the hermetically sealed casket all wrapped about with cloth, and they lower it into the steel cage, and a set of workmen put steel bars across the top and another put concrete and a solid wall of masonry and they bring it up within eighteen inches of the surface; they put back the black loamy soil, then they roll back the sod and with a whisk broom and dust pan they sweep up the dirt, and you would never know that there sleeps the Pullman-palace-car magnate, waiting for the trumpet of Gabriel to sound; for the powers of God will snap his steel, cemented sarcophagus as though it were made of a shell and he will stand before God as any other man. What does your money amount to? What does your wealth amount to? I summon the three electrical wizards of the world to my bedside and I say, "Gentlemen, I want to live and I have sent for you to come," and they say to me, "Mr. Sunday, we will flash messages across the sea without wires; we can illuminate the homes and streets of your city and drive your trolley cars and we can kill men with electricity, but we can't prolong life." And I summon the great Queen Elizabeth, queen of an empire upon which the sun never sets. Three thousand dresses hung in her wardrobe. Her jewels were measured by the peck. Dukes, kings, earls fought for her smiles. I stand by her bedside and I hear her cry "All my possessions for one moment of time!" I go to Alexander the Great, who won his first battle when he was eighteen, and was King of Macedonia when he was twenty. He sat down on the shore of the �gean sea, wrapped the drapery of his couch about him and lay down to eternal sleep, the conqueror of all the known world, when he was thirty-five years of age. I go to Napoleon Bonaparte. Victor Hugo called him the archangel of war. He arose in the air of the nineteenth century like a meteor. His sun rose at Austerlitz; it set at Waterloo. He leaped over the slain of his countrymen to be first consul; and then he vaulted to the throne of the emperor of France. But it was the cruel wanton achievement of insatiate and unsanctified ambition and it led to the barren St. Helena isle. As the storm beat upon the rock, once more he fought at the head of his troops at Austerlitz, at Mt. Tabor, and the Pyramids. Once more he cried, "I'm still the head of the army," and he fell back, and the greatest warrior the world has known since the days of Joshua, was no more. Tonight on the banks of the Seine he lies in his magnificent tomb, with his marshals sleeping where he can summon them, and the battle flags he made famous draped around him, and from the four corners of the earth students and travelers turn aside to do homage to the great military genius. I want to show you the absolute and utter futility of pinning your hope to a lot of fool things that will damn your soul to hell. There is only one way: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Search the annals of time and the pages of history and where do you find promises like that? Only upon the pages of the Bible do you find them. You want to live and so do I. You want eternal life and so do I, and I want you to have it. The next question I want to ask is, how can you get it? You have seen things that won't give it to you. How can you get it? All you have tonight or ever will have you will come into possession of in one of three ways--honestly, dishonestly, or as a gift. Honestly: You will work and sweat and therefore give an honest equivalent for what you get. Dishonestly: You will steal. Third, as a gift, you will inherit it. And eternal life must come to you in one of these three ways. No Substitute for Religion A great many people believe in a high moral standard. They deal honestly in business and are charitable, but if you think that is going to save you, you are the most mistaken man on God's earth, and you will be the biggest disappointed being that ever lived. You can't hire a substitute in religion. You can't do some deed of kindness or act of philanthropy and substitute that for the necessity of repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Lots of people will acknowledge their sin in the world, struggle on without Jesus Christ, and do their best to live honorable, upright lives. Your morality will make you a better man or woman, but it will never save your soul in the world. Supposing you had an apple tree that produced sour apples and you wanted to change the nature of it, and you would ask the advice of people. One would say prune it, and you would buy a pruning hook and cut off the superfluous limbs. You gather the apples and they are still sour. Another man says to fertilize it, and you fertilize it and still it doesn't change the nature of it. Another man says spray it to kill the caterpillars, but the apples are sour just the same. Another man says introduce a graft of another variety. When I was a little boy, one day my grandfather said to me: "Willie, come on," and he took a ladder, and beeswax, a big jackknife, a saw and some cloth, and we went into the valley. He leaned the ladder against a sour crab-apple tree, climbed up and sawed off some of the limbs, split them and shoved in them some little pear sprouts as big as my finger and twice as long, and around them he tied a string and put in some beeswax. I said, "Grandpa, what are you doing?" He said, "I'm grafting pear sprouts into the sour crab." I said, "What will grow, crab apples or pears?" He said, "Pears; I don't know that I'll ever live to eat the pear--I hope I may--but I know you will." I lived to see those sprouts which were no longer than my finger grow as large as any limb and I climbed the tree and picked and ate the pears. He introduced a graft of another variety and that changed the nature of the tree. And so you can't change yourself with books. That which is flesh is flesh, no matter whether it is cultivated flesh, or ignorant flesh or common, ordinary flesh. That which is flesh is flesh, and all your lodges, all your money on God Almighty's earth can never change your nature. Never. That's got to come by and through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. That's the only way you will ever get it changed. We have more people with fool ways trying to get into heaven, and there's only one way to do and that is by and through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Here are two men. One man born with hereditary tendencies toward bad, a bad father, a bad mother and bad grandparents. He has bad blood in his veins and he turns as naturally to sin as a duck to water. There he is, down and out, a booze fighter and the off-scouring scum of the earth. I go to him in his squalor and want and unhappiness, and say to him: "God has included all that sin that he may have mercy on all. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Will you accept Jesus Christ as your Saviour?" "Whosoever cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out," and that man says to me, "No, I don't want your Christ as my Saviour." Here is a man with hereditary tendencies toward good, a good father, a good mother, good grandparents, lived in a good neighborhood, was taught to go to Sunday school and has grown up to be a good, earnest, upright, virtuous, responsible business man; his name is synonymous with all that is pure and kind, and true. His name is as good as a government bond at any bank for a reasonable amount. Everybody respects him. He is generous, charitable and kind. I go to your high-toned, cultured, respectable man and say to him: "God hath included all under sin that he might have mercy upon all. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Whosoever cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out. Will you accept Jesus Christ as your Saviour? Will you give me your hand?" He says: "No, sir; I don't want your Christ." What's the difference between those two men? Absolutely none. They are both lost. Both are going to hell. God hasn't one way of saving the one and another way of saving the other fellow. God will save that man if he accepts Christ and he will do the same for the other fellow. That man is a sinner and this man is a sinner. That man is lower in sin than this man, but they both say, "No" to Jesus Christ and they are both lost or God is a liar. You don't like it? I don't care a rap whether you do or not. You'll take it or go to hell. Stop doing what you think will save you and do what God says will save you. Morality Not Enough Morality doesn't save anybody. Your culture doesn't save you. I don't care who you are or how good you are, if you reject Jesus Christ you are doomed. God hasn't one plan of salvation for the millionaire and another for the hobo. He has the same plan for everybody. God isn't going to ask you whether you like it or not, either. He isn't going to ask you your opinion of his plan. There it is and we'll have to take it as God gives it. You come across a lot of fools who say there are hypocrites in the Church. What difference does that make? Are you the first person that has found that out and are you fool enough to go to hell because they are going to hell? If you are, don't come to me and expect me to think you have any sense. Not at all. Not for a minute. A good many people attend church because it adds a little bit to their respectability. That is proof positive to me that the Gospel is a good thing. This is a day when good things are counterfeited. You never saw anybody counterfeiting brown paper. No, it isn't worth it. You have seen them counterfeiting Christians? Yes. You have seen counterfeit money? Yes. You never saw a counterfeit infidel. They counterfeit religion. Certainly. A hypocrite is a counterfeit. But there is one class of these people that I haven't very much respect for. They are so good, so very good, that they are absolutely good for nothing. A woman came to me and said: "Mr. Sunday, I haven't sinned in ten years." I said: "You lie, I think." Well, a man says: "Look here, there must be something in morality, because so many people trust in it." Would vice become virtue because more people follow it? Simply because more people follow it doesn't make a wrong right; not at all. The Way of Salvation There was an old Spaniard, Ponce de Leon, who searched through the glades of Florida. He thought away out there in the midst of the tropical vegetation was a fountain of perpetual youth, which, if he could only find and dip beneath its water would smooth the wrinkles from his brow and make his gray hair turn like the raven's wing. Did he ever find it? No, it never existed. It was all imagination. And there are people today searching for something that doesn't exist. Salvation doesn't exist in morality, in reformation, in paying your debts. It doesn't exist in being true to your marriage vows. It is only by repentance and faith in the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, and some of you fellows have searched for it until you are gray-haired, and you will never find it because it only exists in one place--repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Supposing I had in one hand a number of kernels of wheat and a number of diamonds equal in number and size to the kernels of wheat. I would say: "Take your choice." Nine of ten would take the diamonds. I would say: "Diamonds are worth more than wheat." So they are now, but you take those diamonds, they will never grow, never add. But I can take a handful of wheat, sow it, and, fecundated by the rays of the sun and the moisture, it will grow and in a few years I have what's worth all the diamonds in the world, for wheat contains the power of life; wheat can reproduce and diamonds can't; they're not life. A diamond is simply a piece of charcoal changed by the mysterious process of nature, but it has no life. Wheat has life. Wheat can grow. You can take a moral man; he may shine and glisten and sparkle like a diamond. He may outshine in his beauty the Christian man. But he will never be anything else. His morality can never grow. It has no life, but the man who is a Christian has life. He has eternal life. Your morality is a fine thing until death comes, then it's lost and you are lost. Your diamond is a fine thing to carry until it's lost, and of what value is it then? Of what value is your morality when your soul is lost? [Illustration: "JUDAS BOUGHT A TICKET TO HELL WITH THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER AND IT WASN'T A ROUND TRIP EITHER."] Supposing I go out in the spring and I see two farmers, living across the road from each other. One man plows his field and then harrows and puts on the roller, gets it all fine and then plants the corn or drills in the oats. I come back in the fall and that man has gathered his crop into the barn and the granaries and has hay stacked around the barn. The other fellow is plowing and puts the roller on and gets his ground in good shape. I come back in the fall and he is still doing the same thing. I say, "What are you doing?" He says: "Well, I believe in a high state of cultivation." I say: "Look at your neighbor, see what he has." "A barn full of grain." "Yes." "More stock." "Yes." But he says: "Look at the weeds. You don't see any weeds like that on my place. Why, he had to burn the weeds before he could find the potatoes to dig them. The weeds were as big as the corn." I said: "I'll agree with you that he has raised some weeds, but he has raised corn as well." What is that ground worth without seed in it? No more than your life is worth without having Jesus Christ in it. You will starve to death if you don't put seed in the ground. Plowing the ground without putting in the seed doesn't amount to a snap of the finger. Rewards of Merit When I was a little boy out in Iowa, at the end of the term of school it was customary for the teachers to give us little cards, with a hand in one corner holding a scroll, and in that scroll was a place to write the name: "Willie Sunday, good boy." Willie Sunday never got hump-shouldered lugging them home, I can tell you. I never carried off the champion long-distance belt for verse-quoting, either. If you ever saw an American kid, I was one. [Illustration: "I FEEL SORRY FOR THE LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY BOYS WITH LONG CURLY HAIR AND WHITE STOCKINGS"] I feel sorry for the little Lord Fauntleroy boys with long curly hair and white stockings. Yank 'em off and let them go barefoot. A friend of mine told me he was one time being driven along the banks of the Hudson and they went past a beautiful farm, and there sitting on the fence in front of a tree, in which was fastened a mirror about twelve inches square, sat a bird of paradise that was looking into the mirror, adjusting his plumage and admiring himself, and the farmer who had driven my friends out said that every time he passed those birds were doing that. I thought, "Well, that reminds me of a whole lot of fools I'm fortunate enough to meet everywhere. They sit before the mirror of culture, and their mirror of money, and their mirror of superior education and attainments; they are married into some old families. What does God care about that?" I suppose some of you spent a whole lot of money to plant a family tree, but I warrant you keep to the back the limbs on which some of your ancestors were hanged for stealing horses. You are mistaken in God's plan of salvation. Some people seem to think God is like a great big bookkeeper in heaven and that he has a whole lot of angels as assistants. Every time you do a good thing he writes it down on one page and every time you do a bad deed he writes it down on the opposite page, and when you die he draws a line and adds them up. If you have done more good things than bad, you go to heaven; more bad things than good, go to hell. You would be dumfounded how many people have sense about other things that haven't any sense about religion. As though that was God's plan of redemption. Your admission into heaven depends upon your acceptance of Jesus Christ; reject him and God says you will be damned. Back in the time of Noah, I have no doubt there were a lot of good folks. There was Noah. God says: "Look here, Noah, I'm going to drown this world with a flood and I want you to go to work and make an ark." And Noah started to make it according to God's instructions and he pounded, and sawed, and drove nails and worked for 120 years, and I have often imagined the comments of the gang in an automobile going by. They say: "Look at the old fool Noah building an ark. Does he ever expect God's going to get water enough to flood that?" Along comes another crowd and one says: "That Noah bunch is getting daffy on religion. I think we'd better take them before the commission and pass upon their sanity." Along comes another crowd and they say: "Well, there's that Noah crowd. I guess we won't invite them to our card party after Lent is over." They said: "Why, they're too religious. We'll just let them alone." Noah paid no heed to their criticism, but went on working until he got through. God gave the crowd a chance, but they didn't heed. It started to rain and it rained and rained until the rivers and creeks leaped their banks and the lowlands were flooded. Then the people began to move to the hilltops. The water began to creep up the hills. Then I can see the people hurrying off to lumber yards to buy lumber to build little rafts of their own, for they began to see that Noah wasn't such a fool after all. The hilltops became inundated and it crept to the mountains and the mountains became submerged. Until the flood came that crowd was just as well off as Noah, but when the flood struck them Noah was saved and they were lost, because Noah trusted God and they trusted in themselves. You moral men, you may be just as well off as the Christian until death knocks you down, then you are lost, because you trust in your morality. The Christian is saved because he trusts in Jesus. Do you see where you lose out? "Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin." You must accept the atonement Christ made by shedding his blood or God will slam the gate of heaven in your face. Some people, you know, want to wash their sins and they whitewash them, but God wants them white, and there's a lot of difference between being "white-washed" and "washed white." Supposing I was at one of your banks this morning and they gave me $25 in gold. Supposing I would put fifty of your reputable citizens on this platform and they would all substantiate what I say, and supposing I would be authorized by bank to say that they would give every man and woman that stands in line in front of the bank at 9 o'clock in the morning, $25 in gold. If I could stand up there and make that announcement in this city with confidence in my word, people would line the streets and string away back on the hills, waiting for the bank to open. I can stand here and tell you that God offers you salvation through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ and that you must accept it or be lost, and you will stand up and argue the question, as though your argument can change God's plan. You never can do it. Not only has God promised you salvation on the grounds of your acceptance of Jesus Christ as your Saviour, but he has promised to give you a home in which to spend eternity. Listen! "In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you." Some people say heaven is a state or condition. I don't believe it. It might possibly be better to be in a heavenly state than in a heavenly place. It might be better to be in hell in a heavenly state than to be in heaven in a hellish state. That may be true. Heaven is as much a place as the home to which you are going when I dismiss the meeting is a place. "I go to prepare a place for you." Heaven is a place where there are going to be some fine folks. Abraham will be there and I'm going up to see him. Noah, Moses, Joseph, Jacob, Isaiah, Daniel, Jeremiah the weeping prophet, Paul, John, Peter, James, Samuel, Martin Luther, Spurgeon, Calvin, Moody. Oh, heaven is a place where there will be grand and noble people, and all who believe in Jesus will be there. Suppose instead of turning off the gas at bedtime I blew it out. Then when Nell and I awoke choking, instead of opening the window and turning off the gas I got a bottle of cologne and sprinkled ourselves. The fool principle of trying to overcome the poison of gas with perfumery wouldn't work. The next day there would be a coroner's jury in the house. Your principle of trying to overcome sin by morality won't work either. I'm going to meet David and I'll say: "David, I'm not a U. P., but I wish you'd sing the twenty-third psalm for me." A Place of Noble People The booze fighter won't be in heaven; he is here. The skeptic won't be there; he is here. There'll be nobody to run booze joints or gambling hells in heaven. Heaven will be a place of grand and noble people, who love Jesus. The beloved wife will meet her husband. Mother, you will meet your babe again that you have been separated from for months or years. Heaven will be free from everything that curses and damns this old world here. Wouldn't this be a grand old world if it weren't for a lot of things in it? Can you conceive anything being grander than this world if it hadn't a lot of things in it? The only thing that makes it a decent place to live in is the religion of Jesus Christ. There isn't a man that would live in it if you took religion out. Your mills would rot on their foundations if there were no Christian people of influence here. There will be no sickness in heaven, no pain, no sin, no poverty, no want, no death, no grinding toil. "There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God." I tell you there are a good many poor men and women that never have any rest. They have had to get up early in the morning and work all day, but in heaven there remaineth a rest for the people of God. Weary women that start out early to their daily toil, you won't have to get out and toil all day. No toil in heaven, no sickness. "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." You will not be standing watching with a heart filled with expectation, and doubt, and hope. No watching the undertaker screw the coffin lid over your loved one, or watching the pall-bearers carrying out the coffin and hearing the preacher say, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust." None of that in heaven. Heaven--that is a place He has gone to prepare for those who will do his will and keep his commandments and turn from their sin. Isn't it great? Everything will be perfect in heaven. Down here we only know in part, but there we will know as we are known. It is a city that hath foundation. Here we have no continuing state. Look at your beautiful homes. You admire them. The next time you go up your avenues and streets look at the homes. But they are going to rot on their foundations. Every one of them. Where are you tonight, old Eternal City of Rome on your seven hills? Where are you? Only a memory of your glory. Where have they all gone? The homes will crumble. "Enoch walked with God and was not, for God took him." That is a complete biography of Enoch. Elijah was carried to heaven in a chariot of fire and Elisha took up the mantle of the prophet Elijah and smote the Jordan and went back to the seminary where Elijah had taught and told the people there. They would not believe him, and they looked for Elijah, but they found him not. Centuries later it was the privilege of Peter, James and John in the company of Jesus Christ, on the Mount of Transfiguration, to look into the face of that same Elijah who centuries before had walked the hilltops and slain four hundred and fifty of the prophets of Baal. "A Place for You" Stephen, as they stoned him to death, with his face lighted up saw Jesus standing on the right of God the Father, the place which he had designated before his crucifixion would be his abiding place until the fulfilment of the time of the Gentiles in the world. Among the last declarations of Jesus is, "In my Father's house are many mansions." What a comfort to the bereaved and afflicted. Not only had God provided salvation through faith in Jesus Christ as a gift from God's outstretched hand, but he provided a home in which you can spend eternity. He has provided a home for you. Surely, surely, friends, from the beginning of the history of man, from the time Enoch walked with God and was not, until John on the island of Patmos saw the new Jerusalem let down by God out of heaven, we have ample proof that heaven is a place. Although we cannot see it with the natural eyes, it is a place, the dwelling place of God and of the angels and of the redeemed through faith in the Son of God. He says, "I go to prepare a place for you." People sometimes ask me, "Who do you think will die first, Mr. Sunday, you or your wife, or your children or your mother?" I don't know. I think I will. I never expect to be an old man, I work too hard. I burn up more energy preaching in an hour than any other man will burn up in ten or twelve hours. I never expect to live to be an old man. I don't expect to, but I know this much, if my wife or my babies should go first this old world would be a dark place for me and I would be glad when God summoned me to leave it; and if I left first I know they would be glad when God called them home. If I go first, I know after I go up and take Jesus by the hand and say, "Jesus, thank you. I'm glad you honored me with the privilege of preaching your Gospel; I wish I could have done it better, but I did my best, and now, Jesus, if you don't care, I'd like to hang around the gate and be the first to welcome my wife and the babies when they come. Do you care, Jesus, if I sit there?" And he will say, "No, you can sit right there, Bill, if you want to; it's all right." I'll say, "Thank you, Lord." If they would go first, I think after they would go up and thank Jesus that they are home, they would say, "Jesus, I wish you would hurry up and bring papa home. He doesn't want to stay down there because we are up here." They would go around and put their grips away in their room, wherever it is, and then they would say, "Can we sit here, Jesus?" "Yes, that's all right." I don't know where I'll live when I get to heaven. I don't know whether I'll live on a main street or an avenue or a boulevard. I don't know where I'll live when I get to heaven. I don't know whether it will be in the back alley or where, but I'll just be glad to get there. I'll be thankful for the mansion wherever God provides it. I never like to think about heaven as a great, big tenement house, where they put hundreds of people under one roof, as we do in Chicago or other big cities. "In my Father's house are many mansions." And so it will be up in heaven, and I'll be glad, awfully glad, and I tell you I think if my wife and children go first, the children might be off some place playing, but wife would be right there, and I would meet her and say, "Why, wife, where are the children?" She would say, "Why, they are playing on the banks of the river." (We are told about the river that flows from the throne of God.) We would walk down and I would say, "Hello, Helen! Hey, George. Hey, Willsky; bring the baby; come on." And they would come tearing as they do now. I would say, "Now, children, run away and play a little while. I haven't seen mother for a long time and we have lots of things to talk about," and I think we would walk away and sit down under a tree and I would put my head in her lap as I do now when my head is tired, and I would say, "Wife, a whole lot of folks down there in our neighborhood in Chicago have died; have they come to heaven?" The Missing "Well, I don't know. Who has died?" "Mr. S. Is he here?" "I haven't seen him." "No? His will probated five million. Bradstreet and Dun rated him AaG. Isn't he here?" "I haven't seen him." "Is Mr. J. here?" "I haven't seen him." "Haven't seen him, wife? That's funny. He left years before I did. Is Mrs. N. here?" "No." "You know they lived on River street. Her husband paid $8,000 for a lot and $60,000 for a house. He paid $2,000 for a bathroom. Mosaic floor and the finest of fixtures. You know, wife, she always came to church late and would drive up in her carriage, and she would sweep down the aisle and you would think all the perfume of Arabia had floated in, and she had diamonds in her ears as big as pebbles. Is she here?" "I haven't seen her." "Well! Well! Well! Is Aunty Griffith here?" "Yes; aunty lives next to us." "I knew she would be here. God bless her heart! She had two big lazy, drunken louts of boys that didn't care for her, and the church supported her for sixteen years to my knowledge and they put her in the home for old people. Hello, yonder she comes. How are you, Aunty?" She will say, "How are you, William?" "I'm first rate." "Mon, ye look natural just the same." "Yes." "And when did ye leave Chicago, Wally?" "Last night, Aunty." "I'm awfully glad to see you, and, Wally, I live right next door to you, mon." "Good, Aunty, I knew God would let you in. My, where's mother, wife?" "She's here." "I know she's here; I wish she would come. Helen, is that mother coming down the hill?" "Yes." I would say, "Have you seen Fred, or Rody, or Peacock, or Ackley, or any of them?" "Yes. They live right around near us." "George, you run down and tell Fred I've come, will you? Hunt up Rody, and Peacock and Ackley and Fred, and see if you can find Frances around there and tell them I've just come in." And they would come and I would say, "How are you? Glad to see you. Feeling first-rate." And, oh, what a time we'll have in heaven. In heaven they never mar the hillsides with spades, for they dig no graves. In heaven they never telephone for the doctor, for nobody gets sick. In heaven no one carries handkerchiefs, for nobody cries. In heaven they never telephone for the undertaker, for nobody dies. In heaven you will never see a funeral procession going down the street, nor crêpe hanging from the doorknob. In heaven, none of the things that enter your home here will enter there. Sickness won't get in; death won't get in, nor sorrow, because "Former things are passed away," all things have become new. In heaven the flowers never fade, the winter winds and blasts never blow. The rivers never congeal, never freeze, for it never gets cold. No, sir. Say, don't let God be compelled to hang a "For Rent" sign in the window of the mansion he has prepared for you. I would walk around with him and I'd say, "Whose mansion is that, Jesus?" "Why, I had that for one of the rich men, but he passed it up." "Who's that one for?" "That was for a doctor, but he did not take it." "That was for one of the school teachers, but she didn't come." "Who is that one for, Jesus?" "That was for a society man, but he didn't want it." "Who is that one for?" "That was for a booze fighter, but he wouldn't pass up the business." Don't let God hang a "For Rent" sign in the mansion that he has prepared for you. Just send up word and say, "Jesus, I've changed my mind; just put my name down for that, will you? I'm coming. I'm coming." "In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so I would have told you; I go to prepare a place for you." CHAPTER XXXII Glorying in the Cross It's Jesus Christ or nothing.--BILLY SUNDAY. Pauline in more than one characteristic is Billy Sunday. But in none so much as in his devotion to the cross of Jesus Christ. His life motto may well be Paul's, "I am resolved to know nothing among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified." His preaching is entirely founded on the message that "the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin." There are no modern theories of the atonement in his utterances. To the learned of the world, as to the Greeks of old, the Cross may seem foolishness, but Sunday knows and preaches it as the power of God unto salvation. As his closing and most characteristic message to the readers of this book we commend his sermon on "Christ and him crucified." "ATONEMENT" "For if the blood of bulls and of goats and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh"--Paul argued in his letter to the Hebrews--"how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God." No more of this turtle-dove business, no more offering the blood of bullocks and heifers to cleanse from sin. The atoning blood of Jesus Christ--that is the thing about which all else centers. I believe that more logical, illogical, idiotic, religious and irreligious arguments have been fought over this than all others. Now and then when a man gets a new idea of it he goes out and starts a new denomination. He has a perfect right to do this under the thirteenth amendment, but he doesn't stop here. He makes war on all of the other denominations that do not interpret as he does. Our denominations have multiplied by this method until it would give one brain fever to try to count them all. The atoning blood! And as I think it over I am reminded of a man who goes to England and advertises that he will throw pictures on the screen of the Atlantic coast of America. So he gets a crowd and throws pictures on the screen of high bluffs and rocky coasts and waves dashing against them until a man comes out of the audience and brands him a liar and says that he is obtaining money under false pretense, as he has seen America and the Atlantic coast and what the other man is showing is not America at all. The men almost come to blows and then the other man says that if the people will come tomorrow he will show them real pictures of the coast. So the audience comes back to see what he will show, and he flashes on the screen pictures of a low coast line, with palmetto trees and banana trees and tropical foliage and he apologizes to the audience, but says these are the pictures of America. The first man calls him a liar and the people don't know which to believe. What was the matter with them? They were both right and they were both wrong, paradoxical as it may seem. They were both right as far as they went, but neither went far enough. The first showed the coast line from New England to Cape Hatteras, while the second showed the coast line from Hatteras to Yucatan. They neither could show it all in one panoramic view, for it is so varied it could not be taken in one picture. God never intended to give you a picture of the world in one panoramic view. From the time of Adam and Eve down to the time Jesus Christ hung on the cross he was unfolding his views. When I see Moses leading the people out of bondage where they for years had bared their backs to the taskmaster's lash; when I see the lowing herds and the high priest standing before the altar severing the jugular vein of the rams and the bullocks on until Christ cried out from the cross, "It is finished," God was preparing the picture for the consummation of it in the atoning blood of Jesus Christ. A sinner has no standing with God. He forfeits his standing when he commits sin and the only way he can get back is to repent and accept the atoning blood of Jesus Christ. I have sometimes thought that Adam and Eve didn't understand as fully as we do when the Lord said, "Eat and you shall surely die." They had never seen any one die. They might have thought it simply meant a separation from God. But no sooner had they eaten and seen their nakedness than they sought to cover themselves, and it is the same today. When man sees himself in his sins, uncovered, he tries to cover himself in philosophy or some fake. But God looked through the fig leaves and the foliage and God walked out in the field and slew the beasts and took their skins and wrapped them around Adam and Eve, and from that day to this when a man has been a sinner and has covered himself it has been by and through faith in the shed blood of Jesus Christ. Every Jew covered his sins and received pardon through the blood of the rams and bullocks and the doves. An old infidel said to me once, "But I don't believe in atonement by blood. It doesn't come up to my ideas of what is right." I said, "To perdition with your ideas of what is right. Do you think God is coming down here to consult you with your great intellect and wonderful brain, and find out what you think is right before he does it?" My, but you make me sick. You think that because you don't believe it that it isn't true. I have read a great deal--not everything, mind you, for a man would go crazy if he tried to read everything--but I have read a great deal that has been written against the atonement from the infidel standpoint--Voltaire, Huxley, Spencer, Diderot, Bradlaugh, Paine, on down to Bob Ingersoll--and I have never found an argument that would stand the test of common sense and common reasoning. And if anyone tells me he has tossed on the scrap heap the plan of atonement by blood I say, "What have you to offer that is better?" and until he can show me something that is better I'll nail my hopes to the cross. Suffering for the Guilty You say you don't believe in the innocent suffering for the guilty. Then I say to you, you haven't seen life as I have seen it up and down the country. The innocent suffer with the guilty, by the guilty and for the guilty. Look at that old mother waiting with trembling heart for the son she has brought into the world. And see him come staggering in and reeling and staggering to bed while his mother prays and weeps and soaks the pillow with her tears over her godless boy. Who suffers most? The mother or that godless, maudlin bum? You have only to be the mother of a boy like that to know who suffers most. Then you won't say anything about the plan of redemption and of Jesus Christ suffering for the guilty. Look at that young wife, waiting for the man whose name she bears, and whose face is woven in the fiber of her heart, the man she loves. She waits for him in fright and when he comes, reeking from the stench of the breaking of his marriage vows, from the arms of infamy, who suffers most? That poor, dirty, triple extract of vice and sin? You have only to be the wife of a husband like that to know whether the innocent suffers for the guilty or not. I have the sympathy of those who know right now. This happened in Chicago in a police court. A letter was introduced as evidence for a criminal there for vagrancy. It read, "I hope you won't have to hunt long to find work. Tom is sick and baby is sick. Lucy has no shoes and we have no money for the doctor or to buy any clothes. I manage to make a little taking in washing, but we are living in one room in a basement. I hope you won't have to look long for work," and so on, just the kind of a letter a wife would write to her husband. And before it was finished men cried and policemen with hearts of adamant were crying and fled from the room. The judge wiped the tears from his eyes and said: "You see, no man lives to himself alone. If he sins others suffer. I have no alternative. I sympathize with them, as does every one of you, but I have no alternative. I must send this man to Bridewell." Who suffers most, that woman manicuring her nails over a washboard to keep the little brood together or that drunken bum in Bridewell getting his just deserts from his acts? You have only to be the wife of a man like that to know whether or not the innocent suffer with the guilty. So when you don't like the plan of redemption because the innocent suffer with the guilty, I say you don't know what is going on. It's the plan of life everywhere. From the fall of Adam and Eve till now it has always been the rule that the innocent suffer with the guilty. It's the plan of all and unless you are an idiot, an imbecile and a jackass, and gross flatterer at that, you'll see it. Jesus' Atoning Blood Jesus gave his life on the cross for any who will believe. We're not redeemed by silver or gold. Jesus paid for it with his blood. When some one tells you that your religion is a bloody religion and the Bible is a bloody book, tell them yes, Christianity is a bloody religion, the gospel is a bloody gospel, the Bible is a bloody book, the plan of redemption is bloody. It is. You take the blood of Jesus Christ out of Christianity and that book isn't worth the paper it is written on. It would be worth no more than your body with the blood taken out. Take the blood of Jesus Christ out and it would be a meaningless jargon and jumble of words. If it weren't for the atoning blood you might as well rip the roofs off the churches and burn them down. They aren't worth anything. But as long as the blood is on the mercy seat the sinner can return, and by no other way. There is nothing else. It stands for the redemption. You are not redeemed by silver or gold, but by the blood of Jesus Christ. Though a man says to read good books, do good deeds, live a good life and you'll be saved, you'll be damned. That's what you will. All the books in the world won't keep you out of hell without the atoning blood of Jesus Christ. It's Jesus Christ or nothing for every sinner on God's earth. [Illustration: "SAY, BOSS, WHY DIDN'T YOU CHUCK THAT NICKEL IN THE SEWER?"] Without it not a sinner will ever be saved. Jesus has paid for your sins with his blood. The doctrine of universal salvation is a lie. I wish every one would be saved, but they won't. You will never be saved if you reject the blood. I remember when I was in the Y. M. C. A. in Chicago I was going down Madison Street and had just crossed Dearborn Street when I saw a newsboy with a young sparrow in his hand. I said: "Let that little bird go." He said, "Aw, g'wan with you, you big mutt." I said, "I'll give you a penny for it," and he answered, "Not on your tintype." "I'll give you a nickel for it," and he answered, "Boss, I'm from Missouri; come across with the dough." I offered it to him, but he said, "Give it to that guy there," and I gave it to the boy he indicated and took the sparrow. I held it for a moment and then it fluttered and struggled and finally reached the window ledge in a second story across the street. And other birds fluttered around over my head and seemed to say in bird language, "Thank you, Bill." The kid looked at me in wonder and said: "Say, boss, why didn't you chuck that nickel in the sewer?" I told him that he was just like that bird. He was in the grip of the devil, and the devil was too strong for him just as he was too strong for the sparrow, and just as I could do with the sparrow what I wanted to after I had paid for it because it was mine. God paid a price for him far greater than I had for the sparrow, for he had paid it with the blood of his Son and he wanted to set him free. No Argument Against Sin So, my friend, if I had paid for some property from you with a price, I could command you, and if you wouldn't give it to me I could go into court and make you yield. Why do you want to be a sinner and refuse to yield? You are withholding from God what he paid for on the cross. When you refuse you are not giving God a square deal. I'll tell you another. It stands for God's hatred of sin. Sin is something you can't deny. You can't argue against sin. A skilful man can frame an argument against the validity of religion, but he can't frame an argument against sin. I'll tell you something that may surprise you. If I hadn't had four years of instruction in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, before I saw Bob Ingersoll's book, and I don't want to take any credit from that big intelligent brain of his, I would be preaching infidelity instead of Christianity. Thank the Lord I saw the Bible first. I have taken his lectures and placed them by the side of the Bible, and said, "You didn't say it from your knowledge of the Bible." And I have never considered him honest, for he could not have been so wise in other things and such a fool about the plan of redemption. So I say I don't think he was entirely honest. But you can't argue against the existence of sin, simply because it is an open fact, the word of God. You can argue against Jesus being the Son of God. You can argue about there being a heaven and a hell, but you can't argue against sin. It is in the world and men and women are blighted and mildewed by it. Some years ago I turned a corner in Chicago and stood in front of a police station. As I stood there a patrol dashed up and three women were taken from some drunken debauch, and they were dirty and blear-eyed, and as they were taken out they started a flood of profanity that seemed to turn the very air blue. I said, "There is sin." And as I stood there up dashed another patrol and out of it they took four men, drunken and ragged and bloated, and I said, "There is sin." You can't argue against the fact of sin. It is in the world and blights men and women. But Jesus came to the world to save all who accept him. "How Long, O God?" It was out in the Y. M. C. A. in Chicago. "What is your name and what do you want?" I asked. "I'm from Cork, Ireland," said he, "and my name is James O'Toole. Here is a letter of introduction." I read it and it said he was a good Christian young man and an energetic young fellow. I said, "Well, Jim, my name is Mr. Sunday. I'll tell you where there are some good Christian boarding houses and you let me know which one you pick out." He told me afterwards that he had one on the North Side. I sent him an invitation to a meeting to be held at the Y. M. C. A., and he had it when he and some companions went bathing in Lake Michigan. He dived from the pier just as the water receded unexpectedly and he struck the bottom and broke his neck. He was taken to the morgue and the police found my letter in his clothes, and told me to come and claim it or it would be sent to a medical college. I went and they had the body on a slab, but I told them I would send a cablegram to his folks and asked them to hold it. They put it in a glass case and turned on the cold air, by which they freeze bodies by chemical processes, as they freeze ice, and said they would save it for two months, and if I wanted it longer they would stretch the rules a little and keep it three. I was just thinking of what sorrow that cablegram would cause his old mother in Cork when they brought in the body of a woman. She would have been a fit model of Phidias, she had such symmetry of form. Her fingers were manicured. She was dressed in the height of fashion and her hands were covered with jewels and as I looked at her, the water trickling down her face, I saw the mute evidence of illicit affection. I did not say lust, I did not say passion, I did not say brute instincts. I said, "Sin." Sin had caused her to throw herself from that bridge and seek repose in a suicide's grave. And as I looked, from the saloon, the fan-tan rooms, the gambling hells, the opium dens, the red lights, there arose one endless cry of "How long, O God, how long shall hell prevail?" You can't argue against sin. It's here. Then listen to me as I try to help you. When the Standard Oil Company was trying to refine petroleum there was a substance that they couldn't dispose of. It was a dark, black, sticky substance and they couldn't bury it, couldn't burn it because it made such a stench; they couldn't run it in the river because it killed the fish, so they offered a big reward to any chemist who would solve the problem. Chemists took it and worked long over the problem, and one day there walked into the office of John D. Rockefeller, a chemist and laid down a pure white substance which we since know as paraffine. You can be as black as that substance and yet Jesus Christ can make you white as snow. "Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow." * * * * * Transcriber's Notes Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Base ball, base-ball and baseball have been variously used throughout the original, these have been standardised to baseball. Other variations in hyphenation have been standardised, but variations in punctuation and spelling remain. Italics are represented thus _italic_ and bold thus =bold=.