| (Signed) Royal | Sheffield, |
| Captain. |
"Spite-work, I tell you!" chimed in Specs. "You know who picked the players as well as I do, with Professor Leland home sick in bed. Sheffield did. He's captain of the team, president of the athletic association, and—and enemy of the Boy Scouts, isn't he? Well!"
"Sheffield's all right himself," Bi admitted slowly, "but"—he looked up defiantly—"but the others aren't any better than we Scouts who have been playing."
"We were on the regular team when we beat Elkana that first game, I guess!" blazed Jump. "It was the other way around then, with Kiproy, Barrett, Collins and Turner as the substitutes. Right after that, Sheffield began to sack us, one at a time. There were three Scouts on the team that beat Grant City, then two in the Charles City mix-up, and finally only Bunny against Deerfield. Now there isn't a single one of us on the regular five. It's a wonder we are still in the running for the pennant."
"Well, we won't be," prophesied S. S.; "not after this Elkana game. You just wait and see!"
"They certainly buried us the last time," said Bunny, making a wry face. "But so did Grant, and you all know we nosed them out in the rubber. I wonder—Bonfire, what's wrong? What does this new line-up mean, anyhow?"
Number 8 of the Black Eagle Patrol stopped tapping the table with his pencil and looked up. "Want the truth?" he asked, with a smile.
There was a sheeplike nodding of heads. One and all, the Scouts had been won to the uncanny results of Bonfire's powers of observation.
"Well," began the tenderfoot slowly, "I have an idea Sheffield is trying to face Elkana with the strongest team he can put together; he'll have to if he expects to win, because Elkana has easily the best team, with the possible exception of our own, in the high-school league. I don't think he has dropped you Scouts because of spite."