“Great Cæsar!” muttered Barron Black. “If Rivermouth defeated those fellows what are we going to do against Rivermouth Saturday? We have to play her then, and it begins to look as if we were due for a trimming.”
“Oh! we could have beaten the Great Northern all right with Merriwell in the box,” asserted Hector Marsh, who had forced his way into the group. “We all know how the game was lost.”
“Hold on!” exclaimed Mel Fraser, Arlington’s roommate. “You can’t say that. Didn’t Merriwell go in? Wasn’t the game lost with him in the box? Don’t pile this whole thing onto Chester.”
“Waugh!” exclaimed Brad Buckhart. “They made two runs off Dick and seven off Arlington. That’s the size of it. And one run was made through a fielding blunder.”
At that moment a stocky, square-shouldered boy, who had remained silent, spoke up:
“I lost the game,” he said. “I am the only one to blame. Every one tells me that Merriwell shouted for Jolliby to take that fly. I didn’t hear him.”
The speaker was Dave Flint.
“I suppose that lets Merriwell out,” half sneered Fraser. “All the same he was in the box when the game was lost.”
Instantly Buckhart was aroused.
“I want to tell you fellows one thing,” he said. “I am going to tell it right here and now. I have kept still just as long as I propose to. My pard had no business to go in to pitch. He was not in condition.”