“That man can’t play a-field and he can’t hit the ball!” growled Gil Cowles. “He lost the last Princeton game, and I count him as the loser of this game. He gave them the first run.”
“Oh, the game isn’t lost yet,” said Nash.
“It is,” asserted Cowles. “I’ve got that feeling in my bones. We can’t win. It’s tough on Merriwell, but he brought it on himself by sticking to Mason against the advice and protests of everybody. His own bad judgment has brought him defeat.”
The spell was broken in the seventh, for Yale squeezed in a single score.
In the eighth Princeton got another, making five in all, and seeming to clinch the game.
Yale put up a desperate fight in her half, but one score was the best she could do, leaving the Tigers still three in the lead.
“Alas!” said Jack Ready.
Merriwell never gave up hope, but he could see that his men were feeling that defeat could not be averted, and he knew that was a bad way for a nine to feel.
The first man got his base on balls. A double play should have followed, but, instead of that, Ready fumbled and permitted the man on first to reach second and the batter to get down to first.