With Mask and Mitt

WITH MASK AND MITT

BOOKS BY ALBERTUS T. DUDLEY

Phillips Exeter Series

Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth.

FOLLOWING THE BALL.
MAKING THE NINE.
IN THE LINE.
WITH MASK AND MITT.
THE GREAT YEAR.
THE YALE CUP.
A FULL-BACK AFLOAT.
THE PECKS IN CAMP.
THE HALF-MILER.

Stories of the Triangular League

Illustrated by Charles Copeland. 12mo. Cloth.

THE SCHOOL FOUR.
AT THE HOME-PLATE.
THE UNOFFICIAL PREFECT.
THE KING'S POWDER.

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON.

Coy was nailed as he scrambled back to the base—and the game was won.—Page [293].

PHILLIPS EXETER SERIES

WITH MASK AND MITT

BY

ALBERTUS T. DUDLEY

AUTHOR OF "FOLLOWING THE BALL," "MAKING THE NINE,"
AND "IN THE LINE"

ILLUSTRATED BY CHARLES COPELAND

BOSTON
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.

Copyright, 1906, by Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.
Published, August, 1906.
All Rights Reserved.
With Mask and Mitt.
Norwood Press
J.S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

TO MY FRIEND

HENRY W. ANDERSON

TO WHOSE INITIAL SUGGESTION
THIS SERIES OF BOOKS
IS DUE

PREFACE

The author has but a word to say in offering "With Mask and Mitt" to his boy readers. The book follows "In the Line" and precedes "The Great Year" in the sequence of the series. While it repeats no incidents of previous books and covers wholly new ground in athletics, it will be found not dissimilar to its predecessors in its general spirit and character. A good juvenile must be one approved by the parent, enjoyed by the boy, and read with profit by both. It should, of course, interest and amuse; it should also help the parent to understand the impulses and the mental attitude of the boy, and the boy to accept the ideals of the parent. If "With Mask and Mitt" does not meet these requirements, it has at least been written with a full knowledge of their importance.

Thanks must again be expressed to Dr. E.H. Nichols of Boston for cordially rendered assistance in the technicalities and theory of the game of which he is an unquestioned master.

ALBERTUS T. DUDLEY.

Boston, July, 1906.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

• [Coy was nailed as he scrambled back to the base—and the game was won (p.293)] Frontispiece
• 
  
• [School Dormitories]
• 
  
• [A Corner of the yard]
• 
  
• ["There's the rat, sir," said Duncan]
• 
  
• [The Chapel Stairs]
• 
  
• [The Principal's House]
• 
  
• [He felt the bonds that held him to the tree loosen]
• 
  
• [He leaped, and clutched the ball hardly a foot from the ground]

WITH MASK AND MITT

[CHAPTER I]

TWO APPRENTICES

If, for the beginning of this story, the reader finds himself carried back to the middle of "In the Line," let him not suspect a twice-told tale. The current of school life runs swiftly through its short channel. The present soon becomes the past, the past is soon forgotten. While the hero of to-day enjoys the sunshine of popularity, fondly imagining himself the flower and perfection of schoolboy development, the hero of the future, as yet unrecognized, is acquiring strength and determination for new records and greater triumphs. The scene shifts rapidly; new stories are ever beginning while the old ones are still unfinished.

In those early days of June, while all Seaton was either gloomily anticipating or dolefully bewailing the disastrous Hillbury baseball game; while Wolcott Lindsay, fired by Laughlin's example and spirit, was throwing himself enthusiastically into the captain's projects for the football season, two lads in a town in western Pennsylvania were eagerly discussing plans for the next school year. They had sent to various institutions for catalogues; with the catalogues had arrived circulars, pictures, and letters. But catalogues and pictures are at best but lifeless things; they suggest many questions and answer few. A far better persuader is an enthusiastic alumnus, who puts personality into dull pages of names, and pours a rosy poetic haze over the groups of sombre brick barracks called the school. Such an enthusiastic alumnus had the entrée of the Owen household, with the natural result that Mr. Owen soon became a convert, and a room was engaged for Robert in a Seaton dormitory.

Ned Carle was longer in uncertainty. His father was not as well able as Mr. Owen to bear the expense of boarding-school life, which, like many other luxuries of these modern days, often seems to cost more than it is worth. Ned himself had not long manifested an intense ambition to go beyond the bounds of the Terryville High School for his education. He was a light-hearted, quick-witted, intelligent fellow, easy-going and friendly, generally liked in town and liking to be liked. He would naturally have been popular if he had never had a baseball under his two fingers; but the fact that he was a pitcher,—and a good pitcher,—not merely established his popularity on a definite basis, but made him in a way a public character.

When Ned Carle pitched on the High School nine and Robert Owen caught, the nine could generally be counted on to win. The battery was well-known outside the limits of the town, which was, in its way, a miniature baseball centre. The standard of play in Terryville was high. Mike McLennan, the famous professional, had once pitched on a Terryville nine; and Mike, when he was at home, took an interest in the "kids" of his native place and gave them the benefit of his instruction. Both Carle and Owen were started in their careers with professional advice of unquestioned competency.

That Owen received a smaller share of the professional's favor than Carle does not signify that he was an unpromising pupil. For easily imagined reasons Mr. Owen did not regard McLennan as a wholly desirable patron for his son. While he did not object to the boy's learning what the expert had to teach, he distinctly discouraged an intimacy which would expose him to questionable associations and false ideals. Robert, too, was reserved and quiet. The great player valued himself too highly to waste much of his attention on one who showed but small enthusiasm for his teacher.

With Ned Carle, however, the case was different. His father cherished no such inconvenient views as to his son's associations; if he had done so, it would have made no difference, for it usually happened in the Carle family that what Ned wanted the rest of the family ultimately wanted too. Ned took to McLennan and McLennan to Ned as naturally as if they had been born neighbors with only a low fence and a few years' difference in age between them. The boy hailed the ball player as Mike, chatted with him on the street corners, and listened, credulous and admiring, to all the tales of great deeds on the diamond—McLennan bragged like a Homeric hero—without being shocked by the language or dazed by the improbabilities of the narrative. In return, McLennan laid himself out to make the boy a pitcher, taught him to use his arm properly and to care for it, helped him to acquire effective curves, and coached him in many of the devices by which pitchers outwit their batsmen.

With this tuition and a natural aptitude, Ned Carle made rapid progress as a pitcher. The arts which he had not mastered, he knew something about, and he could talk baseball with the best. As citizens of Terryville will recall, while the "spit-ball" was still in harmless infancy, and only a few master pitchers were experimenting with it secretly, before the newspapers had seized upon the mystery as a means of filling daily paragraphs, Ned Carle was already making sage prophecies as to the tricky new curve, and the havoc it would wreak on batting averages and catchers' fingers.

Indirectly Owen profited by this coaching. When McLennan, as occasionally happened, stopped over a day at his home and gave Carle a few points behind Fosdick's stable, Owen was, of course, called on to do the catching. When McLennan was one summer laid off a whole fortnight for assaulting the umpire, and wished, during this period of idleness, to keep his own arm in condition as well as assist his protégé, Owen was given another and more serious privilege. On eight afternoons the lad faced the professional's fire, guessed at the sweep of his curves, and bravely struggled to grip the ball. There were times when the man pitched at his amateur catcher as if he held the latter responsible for his enforced vacation. The balls came hissing hot, now a high jump that he had to reach for, now a vicious sweep toward his feet, now a wide out that threw him off his balance, now a straight, swift shot that sped like an arrow, looked like a marble in the air and struck his mitt like a blow from a club. Owen worked hard that fortnight, and his hands suffered; but he stood up to his task without a murmur, and had the satisfaction of feeling that he gained from day to day. He really could not hold McLennan and he knew it, but he had lost his fear of the man; and he never again faced a pitcher with the slightest semblance of timidity.

From much of the baseball wisdom that the professional lavished upon Carle, Owen apparently got little benefit, though the time was to come when he should try hard to recall details of the coaching. One thing, however, he had received directly. It was McLennan who showed him how to snap the ball down to second. The theory only he owed to the veteran; his mastery of the trick was due to his own long and diligent practice. It was not a very swift throw, at least in these early years, but he got rid of the ball with such extreme quickness and placed his throw so accurately that few base runners whom the Terryville battery had to watch found it possible to steal second.

One more circumstance as to this Terryville battery, and we are ready for our story. As a pitcher, Carle, like many another good man, had one serious weakness. At critical times his judgment was prone to be at fault. Three balls and one strike, especially if there were men on bases and not more than one out, worried him badly. He could usually put the ball where it was wanted even when a failure to do so meant passing a man; but he possessed a strange faculty for trying the wrong ball. It was here that Owen's good sense and cool head served the pair. Owen knew by instinct what kind of a ball promised most in the particular case; Carle could pitch the ball that Owen wanted, and, strange enough, was willing to do so. The combination worked so smoothly, and the pitching was so very effective, that Carle, and even Owen himself, failed to appreciate how much of the strategy of the battery originated behind the bat.

When Rob Owen quietly announced one morning in May that his father was thinking of sending him to Seaton the next year, Carle was immediately seized with a desire to accompany him. The circulars and letters arrived with their tempting invitations. Enthusiastic Alumnus performed his task, cleverly brightening his description of the opportunities of the school with seductive pictures of school life and sport and joyous fellowship. To the general ambition of the young American to make the most of his life was added the particular ambition of the natural ball player for a wider field for his genius. When Mr. Carle hesitated at the expense which he could not afford, Enthusiastic Alumnus pointed to the long list of scholarships offered and to the many opportunities for self-help open to the earnest student. Ned, grown eager and determined, vowed to content himself with what his father could supply and earn whatever more he needed by his own efforts.

There was reason in the boy's hope. In the high school Ned Carle was counted a good scholar. The teachers were agreed that with equally faithful work the pitcher of the school nine could have ranked far above the catcher. In a certain quickness of perception and facility of expression combined with a memory at least temporarily retentive, he possessed what boys usually consider the most important elements of scholarship. Of industry, the great and fundamental essential, he had as yet shown little development; but as this is the quality least admired among boys and often the last acquired, neither Ned himself nor his teachers as a whole considered the fault a serious one.

Ned's persistence, seconded by the fluent superlatives of Enthusiastic Alumnus, was more than a match for Mr. Carle's doubts. By midsummer the question was settled. Among the one hundred and twenty-three trunks distributed by Laughlin and his express wagons on the first day of the fall term were two marked "Terryville, Pa."

[CHAPTER II]

HAIL TO THE PITCHER

The two Terryville lads roomed apart. Owen had already engaged his room in Hale before Carle decided to accompany him to Seaton; the latter found cheaper quarters in Carter. The difference in character between the two boys appeared in the experiences of their first days in school. Before the first Sunday Ned seemed to be on friendly terms with every fellow in the entry. Rob, on the other hand, hardly knew the names of the occupants of his own floor.

The most interesting of Owen's neighbors were Donald and Duncan Peck, two lively specimens belonging to his own class and section, as indistinguishable and mischievous a brace of twins as ever looked upon the world as a happy hunting-ground, and on the inhabitants thereof as fair game. The tales concerning the Pecks passed on by his room-mate Simmons, Rob considered barefaced attempts to impose on his simplicity. Later he found that many of them were true. Between the room which he occupied and that of the twins lay, according to one informant, a natural feud. At least such had prevailed the year before in the days of Tompkins, Rob's predecessor. He was advised by Lindsay, the football man who roomed opposite, to ignore this fact and avoid a continuance of the custom; and the stories in circulation concerning the amenities of Tompkins and the Pecks seemed to prove that the advice was both kindly and sound. Beyond Lindsay came Payner, a little, saturnine, black-haired, dark-visaged lower middler from the extreme Southwest; and opposite Payner the two Moons. The other room on the floor was tenanted by a dull-witted toiler named Smith. With Smith an unfeeling Faculty had yoked Crossett, a volatile senior, who spent as little time as possible in the society of his room-mate. Durand shared Lindsay's quarters.

Payner was no ordinary individual. In recitation, Rob was informed, he halted and stumbled, pretending to know what he evidently did not know, and receiving corrections with an ungracious if not defiant air. Outside he cultivated a morose and forbidding manner, and went his solitary way as if he scorned society. Whether this unsociability was due to homesickness or sensitiveness or a naturally ugly disposition, Rob was for a considerable time in doubt. He was at first inclined to charge it up against homesickness, feeling himself for a time the forlornness of his exile from the home circle, and the burden of his independence. At the end of a fortnight, however, when all trace of discontent had vanished from Owen's mind, Payner remained as sour and taciturn as ever. Rob next ascribed the fellow's conduct to shyness, and put himself to some inconvenience to show himself friendly. All to no purpose; Payner's only salutation was still a niggardly nod of the head and a scowl. He then tried to make a call on pretence of borrowing a book; Payner merely projected his head through the partly opened door and remarked that he had no books to lend. Thus repeatedly discouraged, Rob gave up his benevolent attempts in disgust; the fellow was too disagreeable to waste a thought upon!

With Lindsay he got on much better, though as the football season advanced the senior became more and more absorbed in the work of the eleven, and had less time for incidental acquaintances. Lindsay's visitors especially interested the newcomer; they were such important characters in the school that he soon came to know them by sight, though they, of course, had no interest in him. Among them were Ware, the manager of the eleven, Hendry, a football player, and big, serious Laughlin, the captain of the team, who appeared but occasionally in the dormitory until near the end of the season, when the conferences in Lindsay's room became frequent. Of the non-football players no one seemed to Owen more wholly desirable as a friend than Poole, the captain of the nine. He was a straight, dark, wiry fellow of average height and weight, with an open face and an air of quiet confidence and simple honesty and unaffected common sense combined visibly with energy and principle. According to Lindsay, Poole possessed all the admirable qualities except brilliancy. Being but a fair scholar and compelled to work hard for whatever he learned, his classroom performances were not extraordinary and he was not distinguished either as a speaker or as a writer. At the first school meeting, however, Owen learned that Poole's utterances, though lacking in finish, were listened to with greater respect than those of almost any one else; and in all the sub-surface carping and criticism, which is as prevalent in the school world as elsewhere, Poole was more often spared than other conspicuous characters.

"I hear you are a catcher," said the captain one morning, about a fortnight after the opening of school.

"Yes, I've caught a little," replied Owen, modestly. "How did you find that out?"

"Why, your friend Carle told me. He says he has pitched a good deal. Is he good?"

"He's all right!" Owen made haste to say in the hopelessly vague, yet emphatic phrase of the day. "He's the best pitcher of his age I've ever seen! He's got speed, curves, and fine control. He's had a lot of experience, too."

Poole's expressive face beamed with delight. A man who could really pitch and had had good experience was just what he was on the lookout for. In a moment, however, the radiance had passed away and a dubious shade settled into its place. Terryville High School and the famous Seaton Academy were two very different places. Poole had known other much-vaunted performers on high school teams who had not "made good" on the Seaton field. It was a question of standard of play.

"What kind of teams has he faced?" he asked, with doubt showing in both countenance and voice.

Owen understood very well the suspicion that lay behind the question. "Good ones, some of them, and some poor," he answered dryly, smothering the sharp retort that sprang to his lips. "We played other nines besides the high schools. Carle had as good coaching as any young fellow can get. Mike McLennan of the ——'s has had him in hand for several years."

Poole caught his breath, and his eyes danced with joy. A pitcher coached by the famous professional whose name appeared as often in the newspapers, if not as honorably, as that of President Eliot or a member of the cabinet! Here was a find indeed! But suddenly a horrible suspicion laid hold of him. He seized Owen by the arm and swung him round so as to bring his face close to his own. "Tell me straight now," he demanded with an earnestness that was almost stern, and looking squarely into Owen's eyes. "I want the truth right now and all the truth. Is his record clear? Has he ever been paid for pitching, directly or indirectly, or been hired by hotels to play summer ball, or been given expense money in a lump so that he could clear a margin—or done anything of the sort? If he's got anything in his record against him, or if he's the least bit crooked or shady, I want to know it before I tackle him. We can't have any questionable men on our teams."

Rob's first impulse was to be angry, his second to laugh aloud; but Poole's earnestness was contagious, and his own second thoughts assured him that the captain's suspicion was natural and his object wholly praiseworthy. Rob had seen something of the malodorous borderland that lies between amateur and professional. McLennan's vulgarity he could put up with, because of McLennan's marvellous skill in his business. But the third-rater and the semi-professional, who represents a fair laborer or mechanic eternally spoiled to make a poor ball player, and in whom is the essence of all that is lowest and most evil in athletic associations, he viewed with unwavering contempt. So it was with cordiality and inward approval that he looked directly back into Poole's dark, fiercely shining eyes and answered confidently:

"His record's as clear as yours. He's had chances to play for money and refused them. McLennan advised him to keep clear of it until he was through school."

Poole dropped his arm. "I'm mighty glad to hear that. Of course we shall have to look him up, but what you say reassures me. You used to catch him, didn't you?"

"Yes, usually," replied Owen.

"We've got a good catcher now," said the captain, "but we want good men for other positions. Did you ever play in the infield?"

"Not much," answered Owen.

"Well, you must come out and try for the nine anyway," concluded the captain, turning away. "There'll be chance enough for any one who knows the game and can hit the ball."

Owen had an attack of homesickness after that interview which he found some difficulty in shaking off. The Terryville battery had always been Carle and Owen. The Seaton battery was to be Carle and somebody else! It was only a pitcher that Poole wanted; it evidently had not even occurred to him to raise the question whether the new man could possibly be better than the Seaton catcher. And Carle,—well, Carle was friendly, of course, and wished him well, but Carle could hardly be depended on to glorify his old catcher at his own expense. Carle would surely be on the popular side, whatever that was, and would think pretty much as those in authority thought.

"Try for the infield!" thought Owen to himself, angrily. "What experience have I ever had in the infield? Here I've been playing behind the bat ever since I was old enough to hold a ball, and they tell me to try the infield! I'm willing to try for anything, of course, or play anywhere they want me, or not play at all; and if they've got a better catcher than I am, I'm glad of it, but they might at least say they'd give me a show in the position I'm used to! Well, it's months to the season anyway. I suppose I came here to study and not to play ball, so what's the use of worrying? Father would probably rather have me out of it altogether."

With these inconsequent and not altogether comforting reflections Rob Owen took down his books.

Poole and Borland, the catcher, soon had Carle out for a trial. The pitcher took ten minutes to warm up, but by the end of that time he was throwing all kinds of fast and slow balls as Borland demanded, and putting them over according to the catcher's suggestions. Poole could hardly moderate the expression of his joy into reasonably temperate approval.

"I'm not used to Borland," said Carle, as if to excuse his performance, as he pulled on his sweater and the trio started down toward the gymnasium. "Owen has always caught me."

"How is Owen—good?" asked the captain.

"Pretty fair," said Carle, yielding to the temptation to enhance his own glory by depreciating his mate. "We always worked well together. I presume I shall do as well with Borland."

"I hope so," said Borland.

And Poole said nothing, but he told Lindsay and Laughlin that night in secret that he had found the pitcher who was going to win for them the Hillbury game. Whereat Lindsay and Laughlin congratulated him heartily and turned again to the problem of guard defensive play on an end run which they had been eagerly discussing. Seaton brooks but one great athletic interest at a time.

The football season drew toward its end. As the eagerness of the school warmed to fever heat, Rob had new lessons as to school enthusiasm, and old ambitions sprang into new life. As he stood on the benches at the Hillbury game,—for he stood far more than he sat,—and cheered himself hoarse over the deeds of his heroes, these ambitions grew stronger and more definite. He laid his tired head on the pillow after the evening's celebration with all the separate impressions of the day focussed in one deep, absorbing longing. What Laughlin and Lindsay and Durand and Hendry and the rest had done that day for their schoolmates on the football field, that he would like to share in accomplishing on the diamond. "Any place, anywhere," he muttered, as his eyes closed, "just a fair chance to show what I can do!" And he dropped off to sleep with the words still on his lips.

School Dormitories

[CHAPTER III]

NEIGHBORLY ATTENTIONS

There was trouble on the second floor in the east entry of Hale. This being the Pecks' entry, and the Pecks habitually furnishing the nucleus for small storm-centres, the mere existence of trouble here would hardly seem worth noting. As this particular trouble, however, led to another which in turn produced a general condition affecting all the occupants of the floor directly, and all the curious of all locations indirectly,—it seems desirable to make a brief statement of the facts in the case.

The Pecks, for reasons of their own, had decided that it was essential to the proper development of the Moons that the latters' room be "stacked." Stacking a room, or "ripping it up," as will be acknowledged even by those who disapprove of the process, is, when compared with its predecessor, hazing, a mild and gentle method of inculcating humility and modesty. It consists simply in piling together in as big and promiscuous a heap as possible whatever movable objects the room contains,—furniture, utensils, clothing, ornaments,—and leaving this monument as an interesting surprise for the occupants on their return. It involves, of course, a wanton interference with the property rights of others. It often results in permanent injury to valuable possessions, as when books and clothing are soaked with water, or china is smashed, or some memento dear to the owner's heart is so damaged as to be rendered wholly incapable of ever again suggesting the slightest humanizing sentiment. But the wisdom of boys is not the wisdom of the wise, and the Pecks are not represented in this narrative as models of considerateness.

The Moons were "preps." Their father was a manufacturer who dominated the little town in Connecticut in which he lived. Reginald, the younger, timid and childish, was a "kid"; his brother Clarence, sleek in figure and dress, and ignorantly pretentious by training, foolishly sought to make up for the position of insignificance in which he found himself at school by dwelling upon his importance at home. The Pecks, sons of a congressman and nephews of a distinguished judge, holding this method of self-glorification quite out of place in the school republic, determined to make clear to the Moons, by a plain object lesson, the value of humility. While the juniors were safely enclosed for a full hour in the Latin room, the law-breaking twins invaded the Moon rooms and spent three-quarters of an hour in rearing a heap which, from its foundations of bed frames to the dome of crockery on top, showed great promise of architectural ability. Then they displayed themselves at the gymnasium and fell in with the Moons on the way homeward, as the swarm of Latinists poured forth from recitation.

They entered the dormitory in pairs, Duncan and Reginald in front, Clarence delayed by Donald's loitering. At the head of the stairs Duncan parted from his companion, and, with the air of one who had important work to do, entered his room and shut the door hard behind him. Once inside, however, this important work proved to be nothing more than to glue his ear to the crack of the door and wait. He heard Reggie walk down the entry to his room, he heard the voices of the lagging pair rising from the stairs, then quick steps hurrying to meet them, sudden ejaculations, and the dash of all three toward the preps' room. There was nothing left for him then but to bottle his impatience and depend on Donald to give him a fair show.

And Donald proved a safe reliance. The Moons' door opened; voices and steps approached. Duncan had barely time to dart to his desk and seize a book when Donald burst in with Clarence at his elbow. In clumsily feigned surprise, the student looked up at the invaders, his glance resting but for an instant on the countenance of his brother, whose look of malicious joy, poorly cloaked by an unnatural trait of solemnity, would have aroused immediate suspicion in an acute observer. On Clarence's pink-and-white face anger and fright struggled together for expression. Both twins found relief in Donald's exclamation:—

"Some one has ripped up the Moons' room. Come in and see it!"

The trio hastened back to the dishevelled room.

"Gee whiz, what a pile!" exclaimed Duncan in a veritable shock of admiration as he came suddenly in sight of the desolation. He had looked upon his finished work but a few minutes before and found it sufficient; but now, as the scene suddenly flashed its fresh impression upon him, his surprise was almost real. As a monument of havoc the heap was a work of art.

"They didn't do a thing to you, did they! Who was it, anyway?"

"Some fresh guy!" came in answer from Clarence's trembling lips. "He ought to be fired!"

"That's right," declared Donald. "The only trouble is to find out who it is."

"About everything you own seems to be in the thing, doesn't it?" observed Duncan, throwing a glance about the denuded room. "Did they wet it down?"

Wet it down! Poor Clarence gasped with horror, but, recovering himself, sprang forward and felt anxiously about amongst the muddle of bedstead legs, bureau drawers, books, and blankets. There was no sign of water there. He dropped upon his knees and examined the floor. It was dry. Meantime Donald had screwed his face into a grimace and leered across at Duncan; his double had grinned back and chuckled. This chuckle and the tail-end of the grin Clarence caught as he picked himself up from the floor, and lost in consequence any comfort which he might have derived from his inspection.

"Funny, ain't it!" he cried fiercely. "I guess you wouldn't laugh if it was your room!"

"No, I shouldn't," returned Duncan, sobering instantly. "It's mighty mean of me, I know, but I just couldn't help it. The whole mix-up struck me so hard that the laugh slipped out before I knew it. I won't do it again."

"When was it done?" asked Donald, making haste to get away from dangerous ground.

"While we were in Latin," returned Clarence, somewhat mollified. "Were you fellows at the Gym the whole hour?"

"We were here awhile," confessed Donald, looking hard at the leg of a chair that pointed reprovingly at him from the depths of the pile.

"Did you hear any one come in here?"

In the classroom Donald answered all questions addressed to the Pecks which were not indubitably intended for his brother, but under circumstances like the present, when mother-wit rather than book learning was required, he had the habit of falling back upon Duncan.

"Did we, Dun?" he asked, apparently trying to recollect.

Duncan hesitated. "I guess we were too much interested in what we were doing to listen to outside things," he said at length; and, turning hastily away to avoid his brother's eye, he sauntered around the pile.

Donald likewise sought diversion on his side. "What's this?" he called, pulling out a wad of striped cloth from under the edge of a blanket. "Seems to be wet."

"My pajamas!" groaned Clarence.

Now of course Donald knew what the wad was quite as well as Clarence; but the garments had been so folded and twisted and knotted inside and out that at first sight they offered a very decent impromptu imitation of Alexander's famous Gordian puzzle about which the juniors had been reading that very day in their histories. So it wasn't really so difficult for the evil-minded Peck to counterfeit surprise and curiosity as he turned the bundle in his hands and made ineffectual attempts to snap it out.

The other tormentor was ready with advice. "You'd better get those knots out right off. If you let 'em dry, you can't blow 'em apart with dynamite."

Clarence ground his teeth and set to work in silence. Donald was pretending to assist him. Duncan, with hands in his pockets, strolled over to the bedroom door, where it was safe to grin and gloat. This was rare fun! Other fellows had had their rooms stacked,—in fact, the Pecks' own room had been treated in much the same way the first year they were in school,—but no one yet had stacked a room and been present as sympathizer at the moment of discovery. And that fool Clarence needed the humiliation if ever a fellow did. "Prince of Bentonville" they called him at home, did they? (This delectable fact Reggie had imprudently confided to some faithless gossip, who joyously published it abroad.) There was no place for princes here, or babies either.

At the threshold of the bedroom the vandal paused and let his exultant gaze sweep the havoc-stricken room, from the glaring unshaded windows on the right, over the rectangles of dust on the floor where the beds had been, along the festoon of knotted neckties strung between light-fixture and radiator, to the heap of rugs crushed into the corner. On this corner his look hung, and the smirk of satisfaction on his pudgy countenance faded abruptly away. Here, on the only resting-place the dismantled room afforded, lay Reginald, face downward, sobbing his grief into the dusty folds.

Now Duncan, malefactor that he was, had his heart in the right spot. The sight of the little chap plunged in woe through his agency stirred him most unpleasantly. He knew at once that it was not vexation that produced the spasm of tears, but genuine homesickness, made poignant by this wanton act of an unknown enemy; and homesickness appealed to Duncan when weakness and babyishness received no tolerance. He had been homesick himself once, when Donald with scarlet fever monopolized the house and Duncan spent dreary weeks of banishment with a boy-hating aunt in the country. The misery of that exile was still a painful memory. Poor Reggie! They hadn't meant to discipline that little chap!

He put his hand on Reginald's shoulder. "Come, cheer up, Reggie! It isn't so bad as it looks. We'll soon make it all right again." But Reggie, ashamed of his tears, buried his nose still deeper in the rugs.

"Oh, cheer up!" repeated the comforter. "Lots of fellows have had just as big a stack in their rooms and simply laughed at it. Pluck up, and put your traps back and say nothing about it. That's the way to manage a thing like this. You're man enough for that, I know!"

Reggie sat up, struggling to choke back the sobs. The storm was going by.

"That's the way! Got a handkerchief? Here, take mine. Now let's go out and tackle the mess. I'll take the things down and you put 'em away, see?"

Clarence and Donald were still at work on the pajamas when Duncan appeared in the study, pushing before him the flushed, reluctant Reginald. Duncan yanked a chair from the side of the pile, and standing on it began to strip off the top layer and pass the articles down to Reginald.

"What're you doing, Dun?" demanded Donald.

"Helping these fellows clear up," replied Duncan coolly. "Pitch in, can't you? Here's a pillow, Reggie, catch! and a blanket, too. Get a move on you there, Clarence, and pull out that waste-basket of shirts! We aren't going to do all the work while you stand around with your hands in your pockets. Here! take this towel rack into the bedroom."

Clarence obeyed, though with reluctance. Reginald was hurrying to and fro on his errands with cheerfulness suddenly restored.

"You big fool!" ejaculated Donald, planting himself before his brother's chair.

"Thank you!" returned Duncan, unruffled, with a warning squint in the direction of Clarence. "Why this compliment?"

Donald turned and perceived Clarence staring at the pair with all his eyes.

"Because you ought to be doing your Latin," he answered. "You haven't looked at it; you'll flunk it dead."

Duncan grunted. "A bas the Latin. You'll read it to me!"

"Hanged if I will!" retorted Donald, and went out, slamming the door behind him.

Sad to relate, when Duncan returned to his room an hour later, having borne the burden of the restoration of the Moons to order and happiness, Donald read to him not the Latin but a vigorously phrased lecture, bristling with slang and exclamation points, which naturally provoked recrimination, and a long and heated argument. And sadder yet, poetic justice failed to tip the scales in the right direction; the Latin instructor did flunk poor Duncan dead.

[CHAPTER IV]

PAYNER THE MARPLOT

Owen might have known nothing of all this had Payner not taken a hand in the affair. Two months of Seaton had improved Payner. His mental attitudes were just as twisted and morbid as ever, and his motto seemed still to be "the world against Payner and Payner against the world," but his truculence had modified sufficiently to allow him to reply when addressed, and occasionally to volunteer a civil remark. He disliked the Pecks heartily and with much reason, for the pair showed him little respect, and would sometimes amuse themselves by shouting across the entry to each other a series of questions and answers on the subject of New Mexico which were not entirely flattering to the inhabitants of the territory. Still nothing had as yet occurred which could be counted an overt act of hostility.

Payner happened along that morning just as Duncan was leaving the rehabilitated room, receiving as he went, in a curious confusion of shame and complacency, the blessings of the Moons. Payner fumbled long at his lock, screwing his head around over his shoulder so as to take in the whole unusual character of the scene,—unusual because boys are not likely to be profuse in their expressions of gratitude, but especially remarkable in that a Peck seemed to have been engaged in a labor of love.

"Has he been doing something good?" he asked, jerking his thumb in the direction of the door behind which Duncan had just disappeared.

"Well, I guess!" replied Reggie. "He's just straightened us all out. He's a brick! You ought to have seen the pile when we came in. It almost—" The abrupt ending of Reggie's speech was prompted by a side swing of his elder brother's foot. It must not be inferred that this was Clarence's usual method of guiding Reginald's conversation. He had begun with an unheeded nudge. The kick was effectual, but late.

Reggie turned in wonder, and perceived from Clarence's black looks that he had said something amiss. While he stood gaping in a startled and uncomprehending manner at his brother, Payner left the door which he had succeeded in opening, crossed the entry, and peered into the Moons' room.

"Where's the pile?" he demanded in the rapid, explosive way which the boys liked to mimic. Payner's phrases were jerked out in diminishing puffs, like the irregular snorts of a laboring gasolene engine.

Clarence said nothing, and Payner, turning his back upon him, addressed himself once more to Reggie.

"There isn't any," replied Reggie. "We've taken it all down. It was right there where the table is."

"Been rough-housed, have you?" asked the visitor, wheeling now upon Clarence, and breaking into a most unsympathetic snicker. "Who did it?"

Clarence scowled. "How do you suppose I know? We found it here when we came from Latin, and Duncan Peck has been helping us clear up."

"Wasn't the other one with him?"

"No, he had to study," explained Reginald; "but Duncan stayed till the last thing was put away. It was awfully nice of him, wasn't it?"

"How'd they happen to be here?"

"Oh, they came up the same time we did, and we called 'em in."

"They'd been at recitation?" persisted Payner.

"No, at the Gym," growled Clarence, who did not see why he should be questioned in this peremptory fashion.

"They'd been here awhile, too," added Reggie, "but they didn't hear any one come to this room."

"I reckon they could if they'd wanted to," Payner observed dryly.

Reggie did not understand Payner's meaning at all, and Clarence only in part. So they stood for a moment in silence; then Reggie spied Clarence's knotted pajamas in the corner of the sofa and was just opening his mouth to exclaim over them, when Clarence spoke.

"Do you mean to say that they knew when it was done?"

"They knew when it was done, and how it was done, and who did it," asserted Payner, boldly. "It's my belief they did it themselves. They're just the fellows to do the thing and then look on and laugh while you grind your teeth. Who else could have done it anyway? I wouldn't, and I couldn't either, as I can prove to you. Owen wouldn't and Smith wouldn't and neither would Lindsay nor any of the other fellows round here. There's only the Pecks left. It's dollars to doughnuts they would and did."

"I won't believe it!" cried Reginald, indignantly.

Payner sniffed. "Then don't. I'll bet all the same you can't find out what they were at all the morning."

Clarence explained the case at length, and Reginald protested, but Payner asserted with undiminished confidence, and departed, leaving behind the memory of various pungent sentiments, such as "they're playing you for suckers," "you'll find out sometime," "you're dead easy for those guys," to work in his absence.

All that afternoon the ferment went on in Clarence's mind. He was too indolent to seek facts to inculpate or clear the Pecks, too sensitive to put the experience wholly from his mind as a mishap of the day which he had fortunately survived. Much more distressed by the suspicion that the Pecks were deriding him than by the mere fact of the "rough-housing," he at last decided to lay the matter before an impartial third person.

Late in the evening, when Owen was busy with the last lines of the Virgil for the next morning's eight-o'clock, Clarence offered himself as a caller, bashfully unfolded his tale, and craved an opinion.

The justice heard the case and gave judgment. He liked the Pecks and did not care for Payner. Like Payner, he judged according to previous prejudice. The Pecks were, to his mind, innocent objects of another's malice, and Payner's suspicions wholly groundless. These were not the judge's words, but they represent fairly well his thought. What he said was that Payner was crazy, which in a general way may or may not have been true.

Clarence departed with pride soothed and composure restored. Rob, in the firmness of his conviction, hurried over to the Pecks to share with them his laugh over Payner's ridiculous charge. He had hardly broached the subject when he began to question the correctness of his recently delivered opinion. The Pecks looked very indignant and protested very loudly, but the manner of their indignation was so clearly forced and their underlying glee so obvious, that the unguarded wink which Donald threw at his brother and which Rob surprised was hardly necessary to confirm the visitor's growing belief that Payner had been right after all. And how the gentle-mannered twins did malign the insolent Payner for his interference! It was none of his business; he was butting in where he didn't belong; he was a fresh gazabo, an uncivilized cub, an outlaw in disguise, who would wreck a train for a pipe of tobacco or shoot a benefactor from behind a fence; he had probably saved himself from being hanged for horse-stealing by taking refuge in Seaton; he certainly belonged behind the bars.

Rob returned to his room with the feeling unpleasantly vivid in his mind that in the matter of the Moons' stacked room he had been guilty of more than one error of judgment.

[CHAPTER V]

THE FAVORS OF FORTUNE

When Donald Peck greeted the elder Moon next morning, there was considerable coolness in the reply; Clarence's suspicions had revived over night. Later in the day Duncan got hold of Reggie, and succeeded in extracting from him the confidence that Clarence still nourished the absurd idea that the Pecks might have stacked the room themselves.

"It's all rot, of course," said the lad, looking trustingly up into Duncan's face. "I know you wouldn't do a thing like that, and so does he, but he's so wild about it he can't think straight. I told him that if you were the ones you wouldn't have come around as you did, and helped us out."

Duncan glanced away and felt uncomfortable.

"I hate to have him act so," went on the boy; "it seems so much worse since you were so good about it. He'll get over it in a day or two. I hope you won't mind."

Duncan answered cordially that he shouldn't, and, putting an abrupt end to the conversation, went home to upbraid his brother for getting both into the scrape. Donald jeered at his scruples, averred that it was all for the Moons' real good, and charged him with entering into the scheme without raising objections, and then crawling. Duncan flung back this charge with indignation, and a high-pitched, virulent, and illogical argument followed, wherein all the disastrous enterprises in which the pair had ever engaged were reconsidered and the blame properly apportioned. This scene of mutual recrimination ended only when the inhabitants of the room above fell to thumping on the floor and emitting catcalls and dog yelps; and Payner, who happened to be passing, actually had the effrontery to knock at the door to inquire if any one was hurt.

The instant effect of this last interruption was to divert the angry feelings of the brothers from their former course and combine them against Payner. He was the cause of all the trouble; without him and his outrageous interference, the Moons would never have had a suspicion. He should be punished; his room should be ripped up, and ripped up thoroughly. The discussion of a plan reinfused in the twins the old spirit of unity and harmony.

But Payner was not so easily caught as the heedless Moons. The twins obtained a schedule of his recitations and laboratory hours, which they agreed afforded the only safe occasions to work. At some of these hours they were themselves employed; at others, when they tried his door, it proved to be securely locked.

Once, indeed, during a laboratory period, they found the door ajar, and pushing it open went boldly in to make the most of their opportunity. Donald was in the van, his eyes eagerly sweeping the walls of the room in search of material suited to his purpose. Duncan, close behind him, glanced over the table, and perceived a bristly head of hair just appearing above the table edge. Before they could draw back, the bristling scalp rose higher, and two savage little eyes looked straight into Donald's face. It was Payner himself, who had been sent back from the laboratory for the note-book which he had neglected to bring with him.

Donald sprang back speechless. Duncan came forward pulling out his watch.

"Well?" said Payner. He was not given to long speeches, but he could put much vigor into short ones.

"Have you the right time about you?" Duncan asked with a certain degree of composure. "We saw your door open and thought we'd come in."

"So I see," remarked Payner. "He"—jerking his head toward Donald—"seemed rather surprised to find me in."

"It's enough to surprise any one to have a fellow pop up like a jack-in-the-box from behind a table!"

"Jack-in-the-box!" repeated Payner, angrily.

"Well, anything you like," said Duncan, smiling. "Did you say you had the right time?"

"No, I haven't; my time is always wrong."

"Thanks," returned Duncan; "then we won't trouble you any longer. Come on, Don, let's try Owen."

The brothers turned to go. "The next time you come you'd better knock first," shouted Payner. "It'll save your nerves!"

"We'll try to remember," said Donald, who had regained his composure. It was his only part in the interview.

The brothers crept back to their room and there chuckled mightily over their escape. Payner listened to see whether they really did visit Owen, and then locking his door carefully, walked over to the laboratory, far more disturbed by the problem of the Pecks' presence in his room than by any difficulty which an experiment in physics might offer. And Payner did not shine in physics.

After this Payner's door was always locked, and, mischievous as the twins were, they had no heart for breaking and entering. Weeks flew by; Christmas came, bringing the long recess. Owen and Carle both returned to Terryville for the holidays, the latter especially elated. He had got his scholarship. His work in the classroom had flagged a little toward the end of the term, as the seductive influence of popularity made itself felt, but his honest efforts in the first two months had given him a good margin, as well as impressed his teachers. He knew a lot of fellows, was already patronized by a certain conspicuous set, and enjoyed, as far as it was possible to anticipate the credit of great deeds as yet unperformed, the glory of being the master pitcher who was to win the Hillbury game. It was possible, of course, that these anticipations might prove unwarranted; that Carle's glory, like the great Kuropatkin's military reputation before the battles of Laioyang and Mukden, might not survive the actual test. But at least he had every prospect of being the school pitcher, and this was in itself a definite honor.

Owen had not fared as well. He had worked faithfully, had won fair rank, had made a few good friends; his teachers spoke of him as steady but slow. He had developed no striking qualities to impress his boy acquaintances; he was not witty like Rogers, nor literary like Ware, nor a wonderful scholar like Salter, nor a football hero like Laughlin or Lindsay, nor a track athlete with a record like Strong, nor a musician like Truslow, nor clever with a pencil like Fox, nor a ladies' man like Richmond, nor even a jolly idiot like Kleinschmidt. To be a candidate for the nine, with the possibility of becoming substitute catcher if luck served, was not in itself and at this early day a sufficient ground for distinction. So Rob had few successes to report to his family on his return. Mr. Owen was satisfied that the boy had honestly endeavored to do his duty in school, and follow the principles laid down in the parental code. In the father's eyes the discouraging outlook for baseball was rather a cause for congratulation. Mrs. Owen was wholly pleased to have her son at home again, and to find him a little bigger and a little stronger and a little more manly than before, but just as fond of his home as ever, and just as interested in all that concerned it. Except for two things, Rob himself was completely happy. One was the disappointment about baseball, which he could not forget; the other, the constant reminder of his inferiority to Carle. When Carle confessed on the train, with a certain imposing air of one whose honors were burdensome, that he had been asked to join the Omega-Omicron fraternity, Rob was smitten hard with jealousy, but he threw off this feeling in an instant and spoke eagerly.

"That's an honor, isn't it! Are you going to join?"

"I haven't decided yet," replied Carle, negligently.

"Aren't they rather a rich set?" asked Rob, as he ran over the list of several who were reputed to be members. He had picked up a good deal of information during his first term about many things which did not immediately concern him.

"Most of 'em have money, but they don't insist that every one else should."

"I should think that it would be hard all the same," returned Rob, thoughtfully. "You see, there'll be a lot of things these fellows do that you can't afford. You won't want to refuse if you're with them, and you can't stand the pace they set. That makes it awkward for you."

"Oh, they make a way for a fellow who hasn't much," Carle replied. "You see they like to get in fellows that are well known, specially the athletic men. It's to their interest to sacrifice something, if they want the important fellows."

"I'm thinking of you, not of the fraternity," said Owen, resisting another attack of jealousy. It grated on him to hear Carle speak so confidently of his assured athletic position. "It'll be harder for you to study and keep your place in the class, if you're going with those fellows all the time; and then there'll be a temptation to spend more than you can afford."

At this argument, which was certainly worthy of consideration, Carle's face clouded and he burst out savagely: "It's mighty mean to be always kept tied down to figuring on pennies, and have to slave to get a scholarship, when other fellows who haven't anything to make them popular can throw money around and loaf, and float along on the top wave. It isn't right!"

Rob looked at him in surprise. "You don't have to spend money to be popular. There's Laughlin; he hasn't a cent that he doesn't earn, and fellows like Poole and Lindsay and Cutting don't make any show of money if they have it. And who thinks anything of Bowers with all his dough?"

"They have all they need, at least," returned Carle, "and I haven't. Laughlin's different, but there aren't many like him. All I say is that it's mighty tough to send a fellow to school, and not give him money enough to keep him there decently."

Rob listened without knowing what reply to make. He recalled the eagerness with which Ned had forced his plan upon his parents, his declaration that he would not let himself be a burden to them, and his promise to be content with what they could afford to give him, and rely upon himself for all other needs. Why should he speak as if he had been sent to school against his will and there neglected, when he had besought his parents to let him go at his own risk? And why should he complain at all when he had apparently had complete success, earned a scholarship, and had such prospects of an important place in school life?

Ned's successes were soon known in Terryville. Mr. Carle repeated often and proudly the tale of his son's high rank in his school, and of the great popularity which he enjoyed among his school-fellows. Ned added the information that he should probably do the bulk of the pitching on the school nine; he was to begin pitching practice with the regular school catcher after the holidays. When people questioned Rob concerning these statements, as many did, he readily confirmed them; when they asked him further, as some did, why he had not succeeded as well, and why he wasn't "good enough to catch Carle," he laughingly declared his inferiority. When he was safe from observation, however, and the questions returned to him, he had no heart to laugh. The fact that he was "outclassed," as Ned calmly explained it, or better that he had been quietly put aside on the assumption that he wasn't the equal of Borland, while Carle was taken at his own highest valuation and given in advance the honors of achievement—this was indeed an unpleasant subject for reflection. But Rob, though lacking the worldly experience which might have taught him that in the general sifting and settling of life, undeserved elevation usually leads to deserved humiliation, still was fortunate in possessing a modest self-esteem and reasonably good sense. That he envied Carle's rapid rise cannot be denied; but that he in any way wished his friend ill on account of it, or would have liked to pull Carle down that the difference between them should be less manifest,—this feeling, I am pleased to say, was wholly absent from his mind. Rob Owen was no cad.

A Corner of the Yard.

[CHAPTER VI]

THE THIRD STRING

When the school gathered again after the holidays, Poole called his candidates for baseball together, and after a vehement harangue in which he sought to impress upon each man the importance of doing his utmost to develop a good nine, whether by making it himself or by spurring on some better man to outdo him, arranged the periods and combinations for winter practice. As the general routine, or as much of it as concerns the fielding and batting, has been described in a former book, the subject must be dismissed here with this passing mention. In the work of the batteries we are more directly interested.

Carle and Borland were put at the head of the battery combinations, apparently with as little hesitancy as if they had been veterans carried over from a triumphant season. The first choice of hours was theirs, their opinions were listened to with respect; their position as fixtures seemed almost as well recognized as that of Poole himself. In spite of all self-preparation, Rob was almost startled to find what a gap existed between himself and his old battery mate; and as he remembered how often in past games when bases were full and things were going wrong with the pitching, he had guided the bewildered Carle out of his difficulties, he could not help a feeling of pique, nor avoid wondering whether Borland would succeed as well. After Carle, O'Connell, one of the class pitchers of the year before, held the next position of favor, and Poole quietly put down the combination, Owen and O'Connell, for cage hours together. There were also Patterson, a new man about whom nothing was known, and Peters, right fielder on the nine the year before, who was learning to pitch. For these, also, practice catchers were arranged.

From the outset, Owen found his practice with O'Connell unpleasant. It could not have been from any prejudice against the pitcher, for Rob, who was eager for any opportunity which seemed to offer him a "show," was at first greatly pleased at the prospect of being mated with the man who, before the advent of Carle, had been regarded as the most promising of the school pitchers. Whatever secret hopes he may have cherished of building up a rival battery were in a fortnight wholly dispelled. O'Connell couldn't pitch, and wouldn't learn. He couldn't pitch because his whole idea seemed to be to throw a ball with as big a curve as possible, without much care as to where it was going, or how near the plate it was destined to come; the only ball which he could surely put over was a straight waist ball which any child could hit. He wouldn't learn, because he thought it a pitcher's business to pitch, and a catcher's not to give instruction but to catch. To Rob's suggestions that any kind of a waist-high ball was dangerous, that the best pitcher he ever saw did not cover a width of more than three feet in a whole game, keeping the ball constantly at the plate—O'Connell paid not the slightest attention. He was quite unwilling to suppose that a man who had enjoyed the privilege of Seaton coaching for a year could learn anything from a country boy from western Pennsylvania. The result was that Rob soon ceased to try to help the pitcher, and contented himself with taking the balls within reach in silence and letting the rest strike the net. The loungers about the cage could not have been impressed with the skill of the catching.

One day toward the end of the discouraging fortnight, when Rob was feeling particularly blue over the situation and wondering whether it would not be better after all to let the catching go altogether and take his chances on his hitting for a fielding position, he fell in with Patterson on the way down street, and asked him casually how he was getting on with pitching.

"Not very well," answered Patterson, ruefully. "I can't seem to learn anything."

"Who catches you?" asked Rob.

"Foxcroft," replied Patterson, gloomily. "He's a good backstop, I suppose, but he never tells me anything, and you can't learn by yourself. Poole ought to fix it so that we can get some instruction, I think."

Rob did not answer. He was marvelling at the contrariness of circumstances. Here was O'Connell who might have instruction but wouldn't take it, and Patterson who wanted it but couldn't get it!

"A man who ought to know told me once that I had the makings of a pitcher in me,—the arm swing, snappy wrist, and all that, you know,—but I've had mighty little chance for coaching and no such experience as these fellows here get, so I don't know whether he was fooling me or not. I don't seem to be getting ahead at all now."

"Oh, you mustn't be discouraged," said Rob, unfairly assuming in his own discouragement the right to blame the other's faint-heartedness. "It takes time to learn to pitch."

"It takes something more than time," Patterson declared with emphasis. "A year of the kind of thing I'm getting won't be much better than a month. You don't have to eat a bushel of apples to find out whether they're rotten or not. One is enough."

Rob hesitated. An idea had suddenly occurred to him, an idea that might be good. Why shouldn't he catch Patterson, and let O'Connell take Foxcroft? He knew nothing of Patterson, it was true, but he did know about O'Connell, and under the circumstances the unknown seemed attractive.

"How would you like to take me for a change, and let O'Connell have Foxcroft?"

Patterson's face spoke instantly a joyful acceptance of the proposal. His words, which came later, evidently represented second thoughts.

"Wouldn't I! But O'Connell would kick, though. He isn't going to swap you for Foxcroft."

"I don't believe he'd mind," returned Owen, with a smile of amusement tinged with sadness. "He can't learn anything from me, so Foxcroft would do just as well. I'd like to catch some one I could work with, and feel an interest in and try to push along. A net would be about as good for O'Connell as I am; all the advantage I have over the net is that I throw the balls back."

"Let's change, then," said Patterson, eagerly. "If O'Connell doesn't want your help, I do. You'll find me ready to learn all right. You see Poole,—no, I'll see him and tell him we'd like to bunk in together. I don't believe it'll make any difference to him."

Poole was seen, and gave his consent without suggesting any obstacle except a possible difficulty in arranging new hours. O'Connell growled a little, not at losing Owen, whom he considered too officious, but at the notion that he should be given a third-string catcher instead of a second. But the change was made, and the new pair settled quietly down into obscurity, an obscurity which was the deeper in contrast with the glare of publicity in which the first battery displayed itself.

Carle and Borland were the unquestioned athletic heroes of that winter term. Borland showed himself an excellent backstop. His manner was that of one whom no ball thrown by human arm could disconcert. He could take in-curves with his mitt unsupported, tip them jauntily into his right hand, and toss them back with the best air of a professional in a great city team showing his tricks to a big audience before a game. The lads who in a perennial group peered admiring through the netting would nudge each other and exclaim and wonder; the knowing ones would talk with wise patronage; the ignorant ask foolish questions in awe-struck tones. Then the company would exchange places with a similar squad at the pitcher's end, and, big-eyed with amazement, watch the unintelligible signals, and try to detect the jump or the break, the out or the in, the lift or the drop, which the conductor of the party assured them was to be seen. Those were great days for battery one at Seaton school. No disillusionizing games to shatter the sweet ideal with brutal facts, no heartbreaking succession of base hits, no feverish gift of bases on balls, no missed pop fouls, no overthrown bases, but just fancy pitching, with opportunity for flourishes unlimited, and spectators unanimous in admiration. Poole himself, with all his steady-mindedness and fear of fostering vain hopes, yielded to the general exultation and looked forward with full complacency to the contest of batteries in the spring.

Meantime the humble third string was pursuing its unnoticed way. To his surprise, Owen found Patterson possessed of a very good mastery of one or two curves, and pitching with apparent ease and considerable speed. He was very eager to learn, and so modest as to be entirely distrustful of himself. This fault of timidity Rob sought to overcome by encouragement and by plain lessons from the successes of pitchers whom he had known. When once Patterson understood that by good pitching was meant, not "doing things" with a ball, but merely success in fooling batsmen; and that to accomplish this object, control and speed and cleverness in alternating balls, rather than ability to juggle curves, were of prime importance, the pupil took courage and began to learn.

It was now that Rob regretted that he had not paid more attention to McLennan's words of counsel to Carle when the latter had had his lessons. Much that the professional had said he recalled under the stimulus of the need. Some things about which he felt uncertain he found out from Carle, who, as a rule, however, remembered less of the technical teaching than Owen. But in the main it was the fundamental principles which Patterson needed, and as to these his catcher was well informed. They were left much to themselves. The general public had no interest in the third battery. Poole occasionally looked in on them for a few minutes, but on these occasions Rob, with a perversity perhaps excusable, deliberately kept his charge from showing his best work. With O'Connell and Carle, and others who might be expected to look with critical eyes, he followed the same course, as if he courted obscurity. The result was that the two worked on alone during the long winter practice unmolested by critics, and free from distracting suggestions of would-be helpers.

With Patterson, Rob soon felt himself on terms of hearty intimacy, though at times their relation suggested that of patron and client. So frankly modest was the pitcher, so naturally distrustful of himself and ready to follow another's lead, that outside the cage he fell naturally into the position of follower. He studied with Owen, skated with him, loafed in his room, sided with him in the discussions, profitable and unprofitable, to which boys' conversation usually runs, and confided to him the facts as to his home life which one usually reserves for his most intimate companion. Yet with all his friendliness and willingness to follow the steps of another better fitted to lead, Patterson was by no means weak. There was a substantial basis of character and principle underlying his naturally trustful disposition. He followed only a presumably wiser guide; he yielded only up to a certain point and in certain directions. While possessing the unusual faculty of recognizing his faults before his virtues, when once assured of his power he would push on undaunted by obstacles. It was this peculiar combination of traits that so endeared him as a friend and rendered him so apt as a pupil. Most young athletes need the experience of the contest to dissipate their conceit, and open the way for development. With Patterson experience was necessary before a reasonable self-confidence was possible.

[CHAPTER VII]

FACILIS DESCENSUS

Carle joined the Omega Omicron. This was evident, even before the acquisition of the distinctive hatband, from the furious and absorbing intimacy which he developed with a certain coterie of fellows belonging to the fraternity. A dispassionate observer—Mr. Graham, for instance—would have perceived two distinct strains in the membership of the Omicron: an extravagant set of sports, courting a reputation for fastness; and a steadier, wiser, more manly group of well-to-do fellows who fell in naturally with others possessing similar monthly allowances, without adopting their views or their principles. It was this latter element which procured for the fraternity the countenance of the faculty. If any member of the Omicron had been asked—by his father, let us say, for no student would have ventured upon such dangerous ground—what kind of fellows belonged to the society, he would have answered emphatically "mighty nice fellows." And the answer would have been in the main true, for the tendency toward conformity is strong in boys, often holding in temporary check the individual instinct which is destined to make the character of the man; and boy loyalty is notorious. But between Durand and Hendry, who represented the best of the Omicron, and Jones and Nicholson, who led the fast set, there was as much real difference as between blades of wheat and blades of grass. Poole and Lindsay belonged to another fraternity.

"You'd better look after your pitcher," said Durand one morning to Poole. "He's getting in debt."

Poole stopped short in his walk and stared in amazement into his companion's face.

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I say," returned Durand, soberly. "He's borrowing and running bills."

"Where?"

"Where does he borrow? Well, Jones and Stratton are two he's borrowed from. There may be more. He's running bills at one drug store anyway, and I think with two of those out-of-town agents that show things down at Perkins's."

"Why don't you look after him?" demanded Poole, angrily. "He belongs to your bunch."

Durand shrugged his shoulders. "I'm not his guardian. I don't run the Omicron, either, as I've told you before."

"You ought to!" retorted Poole. "What did you get him in there for anyway?"

"I didn't get him in. In fact, and between ourselves, I voted against him."

"I should think you might have helped him along anyway, or at least not let your gang lead him off. You knew he was a scholarship man and hadn't money to throw away. Why didn't you stop him?"

"I did try to, Phil; honestly, I did," returned Durand, at last becoming warm; "but what could I do against all you fellows flattering him and praising him and kowtowing to him as if he were a little tin god? You don't suppose he cares anything for my opinion, do you? You don't suppose that Jones and Stratton and Nicholson are going to throw around less money because he's with 'em, do you? Not on your life!"

Poole thought a few moments in silence. Then he looked up with a smile and dropped his hand on his friend's shoulder. "I don't believe it's as bad as you make out," he said. "You always were prejudiced against the fellow, you and Lindsay too; and I think I know why. Owen's soured because he can't catch Carle here as he did at home. That made him throw over O'Connell in a sulky fit; and now, I suppose, he runs down Carle, and you fellows in Hale take his opinion."

Durand was listening with lips parted and eyes set in a stare of astonishment. "Well, of all the crazy ideas that is the limit! Owen has never, so far as I've known, said one word against Carle to any one. He did say why he changed O'Connell for Patterson. Patterson wanted to learn, and O'Connell couldn't be taught because he knew it all without telling. You're entirely off about the whole business."

"I hope I am," said Poole.

"By the way, have you seen Owen catch?"

"Of course. I look in on him every now and then."

"What do you think of him?"

"A good, fair man. I was counting on him and O'Connell as second-string battery, but he doesn't seem to want the job."

"Have you heard him coaching Patterson?"

"Why, yes, I suppose so. There was nothing remarkable about it."

Durand laughed a provoking, mysterious, sententious laugh, waved his hand, and disappeared into his dormitory entry, leaving Poole to meditate on the conversation. The meditation concerned but one subject, the possible difficulties of the popular pitcher. Of Owen, he did not think again.

The captain's first active step was to make inquiries among the upper middlers concerning Carle's standing. The answers were various, depending largely upon the standard of the boy questioned. A few whose own records were high, or who remembered some especially striking failures on the part of Carle, were of the opinion that he was falling in rank. The great majority of middle weights considered him, in general, good. After this investigation Poole had an interview with Carle himself, who protested that he was "all right," declared that his debts didn't amount to anything, and avowed the most superior principles.

Poole returned home reassured. When he met Durand in the afternoon he reported the results of his investigations, and jeered at his little third baseman as a croaker. And Carle, after sitting silent at his desk for an unpleasant half hour, and later having performed a little problem in addition and subtraction which apparently gave him no relief, accepted unhesitatingly the invitation of Jones to join him and two others in a drive with a span of horses, though he knew that the livery charge to be divided would be at least five dollars. You can't be mean, if you want fellows to like you!

As a matter of fact Carle's classroom work was falling off. He was not perhaps conscious of the change, and some of his teachers had likewise failed to perceive the trend. When a boy trots his translations, he may, if he is quick and observant in the recitation room, deceive his instructors for a very considerable time. A good teacher necessarily repeats questions and reemphasizes principles, and Carle was bright enough to take full advantage of opportunities afforded by the recitations. But all the time, as his outside interests increased, and the circle of intimates with whom he idled grew, his study became more superficial. The translation book was no longer reserved for special emergency; it lay open on his desk from the first line of the lesson to the last. His newly developed method in mathematics was to gather all possible solutions from his acquaintances before trying any problems himself. He was growing distinctly clever in the art of cribbing. Still he seemed to be doing fair work, for such a process is one of gradual and secret undermining rather than of open destruction. One does not perceive the extent to which the foundations are injured until the crash comes.

"What is the matter with Carle?" asked Mr. Rice, the young teacher of history, at a faculty meeting in February. "Isn't he falling off in his work?"

Mr. Moore turned on him an indulgent smile. "I haven't noticed it," he said, "and I have him five times a week."

As the young instructor had Carle's section but two hours weekly, this answer appeared to the questioner equivalent to a rebuke; so, taking Kipling's advice to the cub, he thought, and was still. The result of his thinking was first that Mr. Moore, being faculty member of the Omicron, must know Carle's habits of work much better than he himself did; and, secondly, that he was but a tyro at the business, with much to learn, both as to boys and the ways of the school. He did not see that the Principal made a note of his question, or that Lovering, one of the Latin men, and Pope, a middle-aged confrère who had sections in mathematics, exchanged a few words in low tones. Otherwise, he might have felt less chagrin over his apparent error.

[CHAPTER VIII]

THE FIRST PLAGUE

The inhabitants of the east entry of Hale were enjoying a season of unusual quiet. Duncan Peck, because of unacceptable work, lay under the ban of study hours,—a fact which damped the ardor of both the brothers. Clarence Moon had apparently learned wisdom from experience, for he had much less to say about the exalted state in which he lived at home, and in general bore himself with more becoming modesty. Lindsay and Owen and their room-mates had other ambitions than to be disturbers of the peace, and Payner lived solitary and secure in his fortress. There remained but the conscientious Smith and Crossett the absentee, neither of whom was likely to spend time in fomenting discord in the dormitory.

Smith studied continuously. His lamp was lighted at five every morning, he was always in bed at ten at night; but between these two periods, except for the time inevitably wasted on meals and devoted to school exercises, he plodded unweariedly at his books. And did he accomplish great things? I wish I could answer yes. I would not willingly detract one jot from the value of habits of industry. They are rough diamonds which Young America is too prone to throw aside for the flashing brilliants of smartness and wit. But the truth must be spoken. Smith's industry earned no apparent dividends. With the gift of great perseverance, nature had also bestowed on him a very thick head, through which ideas soaked but slowly. He rarely got a conception right without having first tried all the possibilities of error. His influence was ambiguous: some jeered at him as an example of the ineffectualness of grinding; others, among whom was Owen, felt a kind of reproof in the patient, untiring, undiscourageable zeal of this oft-discomfited drudge. To most who knew him he was merely "Grinder Smith."

Owen came in one day from cage practice with Patterson, who had fallen into the habit of doing his afternoon study in Rob's room. At the head of the stairs they met a tall, light-haired boy coming out of Payner's room. Owen nodded.

"Who was that?" asked Patterson, as soon as they were out of hearing. "I didn't suppose Payner had callers."

"His name's Eddy," Rob replied. "No, Payner doesn't have many callers. Eddy and I are about the only ones, I guess."

"Who's Eddy, anyway?"

"He's a senior. I met him once over at Poole's room."

"I wonder what he can find in a freak like Payner," pursued Patterson.