“Great Cæsar! Steve, but didn’t old Chester go crazy that same night, though, with the bonfires making the sky look red, and the boys yelling through the main streets in a serpentine procession, carrying Jack on their shoulders? The campus in front of the high school was packed solid when Professor Yardley made a speech, and congratulated our gallant team because we had that same day put Chester once for all on the map!”
“But, shucks! Toby, the tables were sure turned on us when we went over to play that second game. Those chaps were on their toes that day, and it was Hendrix and Chase, their star battery, that fed us of their best.”
“Yes, we did lose, all right, but don’t forget that we fought tooth and nail to the very last.”
“Say, that rally in the ninth was a thrilling piece of business, wasn’t it, Toby? Why, only for our right fielder, Big Bob Jeffries, hitting that screamer straight into the hands of the man playing deep centre instead of lifting it over his head for a homer, we’d have won out. There were two on bases, you remember, with the score three to four.”
“Now we’re tied, with one game each to our credit, and Harmony coming over the day after tomorrow to take our measure, they boast. Jack has been so confident ever since he picked up that new pitcher, Donohue, on the sand lots in town, that I’m puzzled a heap to know what ails him latterly.”
“One thing sure, Toby, Jack is bound to speak up sooner or later, and let his two chums know what’s in the wind. I rather expect he agreed to meet us here today so as to have a heart-to-heart talk; and if so, it’s bound to be about the matter that’s troubling him.”
“I certainly hope so, because when you know the worst you can plan to meet the difficulty. And if only we could win the rubber in this series with Harmony, it’d make little old Chester famous.”
The two boys who were holding this animating and interesting conversation stood kicking their heels on a corner where the main street in the town was crossed by another. It was about ten o’clock on a morning in early summer. Chester seemed to be quite a bustling sort of town, located in the East. Considerable business was carried on in the place, for there were several factories running, employing hundreds of workers at good wages.
Certainly no town in the broad land could be more advantageously located than the borough in which Toby Hopkins and Steve Mullane lived. It lay close to the shore of Lake Constance, a beautiful sheet of clear water three miles across at its broadest point, and at least twelve long, with many deep and really mysterious coves, and also bordered by quite a stretch of swampy land toward the south. Far up toward its northern extremity lay the Big Woods, where during winters considerable lumbering was done by a concern that had a camp there.
As if that wonderful sheet of water were not enough to gratify the tastes of all boys who loved to skate and swim and fish and go boating, there was Paradise River emptying into the lake close by, a really picturesque stream with its puzzling bends and constantly novel views that burst upon the sight as one drove a canoe up its lazy current of a sunny summer afternoon.