THIRD BASE THATCHER
CHAPTER I
FOUL!
It was the last minute of play. The score stood 14 to 14. The teams of ’25 and ’26, the Freshman and Sophomore classes of Pennington Institute, were in a mad scramble on the gym. floor. It was the last game of the interclass basketball tournament and on the victory hung the school championship. Both teams had severely trounced the older teams of the Junior and Senior classes in a series of three games each, and likewise they had humbled each other, each class being credited with a game. This one told the tale, and it had been madly fought from the first whistle, as the score, chalked on the blackboard above the heads of the madly cheering crowd of students who lined the gallery running track, attested.
Suddenly, out of the mêlée of flying arms and legs, panting and perspiring bodies and tense, almost grim, fighting faces on the gym. floor, shot Thatcher, a Freshman forward, a clean-limbed, black-haired boy of rather more than average height. As if by signal from somewhere in the crowd of milling players the ball shot upward and forward and thumped into his hands. Just a step behind him was Gould, the Sophomore guard, slightly shorter, but stockier and as fast as an antelope. His face was set with an unpleasant expression of anger; there was that about him that suggested a determination to win whether by fair means or foul.
Thatcher dribbled the ball once, then poised momentarily and lifted it for an overhead shot at the basket for the winning two points. Gould, in desperation, hurled himself forward, tried to stop the shot, and, failing, fell to the floor with a crash. The ball was describing a graceful arc toward the back board from which it caromed into the basket.
“Foul! He tripped me!” cried Gould as he rolled over on the floor.
The referee’s whistle shrilled just as the ball slipped through the basket, the cords playing a crisp tattoo on its bulging leather sides.