"Then I don't wear it again, I tell you," remarked the other. "It's pretty punk anyhow, and whoever had it, started to tear the lining out. Just see how it's torn, would you?"
Elmer took the cap and glanced at the badly used interior.
"It is, for a fact," he remarked, as a look of intelligence flashed across his face, only to vanish again. "Looks like it had been through the war. Are you sure the lining wasn't torn that way when you lost it, Mark?"
"Not one bit, I give you my word. But enough of that. The thing haunts me if I happen to wake up in the night. D'ye know I just see before me that one question: 'Who found Mark Cummings's cap?' But never an answer comes, and I keep groping in the dark. Perhaps some day I may happen on the answer, Elmer, or you may, for you're always so smart at solving riddles."
"Perhaps I may, Mark, and if I do you can just bank on it I'll be telling you the first thing," laughed the other.
"Well, I should guess you would," declared Mark.
Then others joined them, and the conversation became general; of course, pretty much all of the talk being in connection with the coming battle with the strong Fairfield team that had given them so hard a tussle two years ago.
"But we're twice as strong now as then, boys," said Mark. "We didn't have our prize pitcher then, and some of us have improved a heap in that time."
"So has Matt Tubbs and several of his nine," declared Ty Collins, who played center. "They beat the Rochesters early in the season, when the regulars were practicing. Don't you believe for one minute we're going to have a walkover. The Fairfield team's a hustling lot, they tell me, and always working for runs. They're bigger than our men every way."
"They can be as tall as the housetops," chuckled Lil Artha, "and that won't help one bit to meet up against Elmer's benders, or engage that balloon ball he has learned to throw just as good as Christy Matthewson ever did."