But Alice had received a telegram from Galena, and as Rough and Ready climbed the slope by the Judge's house, a sunny head was popped from one of its upper windows and Alice's cheerful voice cried, "Oh, Roughy,—excuse me for calling you Roughy, but I'm so glad!—Albert Heaton has telegraphed to me that the Catalpas have made ten runs in the first three innings and the Galenas only one! Isn't that perfectly splendid? Does anybody over in town know anything about it?"
"GOOD ARTERNOON, MISS HOWELL. FINE HOT DAY."—Page 95.
"Bless your bright eyes! Miss Ally, no; the whole town's asleep. It's a hot day, you know, and there's nobody stirring. All the farmers are busy with their crops, and the streets are as lonesome as a last year's bird's nest. Ten to one, did you say? By the great horn spoon! I must go back and wake up the folks."
Suiting the action to the word, the old man tossed Mrs. Boardman's bundle of sheeting over the fence and made his way back to town as fast as his rheumatic legs would carry him. Half way across, he met Lewis Morris who was on his way over to verify the rumor that he had caught concerning the early success of the Catalpas in Galena.
"Hooray for our side!" cried Rough and Ready, exultingly. "I have heard it from the gentle Miss Ally. Our boys have made ten runs in the first three innings, and the Galena fellows have made one—one whole one."
"Then I'll turn right around and tell the news in town!" said Lewis, with excitement. "I'll have to stir the people up, for the whole town has gone to sleep, except Dr. Selby, and he was sweating at every pore, as I came by the drug store, for thinking of another defeat for the Catalpas."
Rough and Ready gazed after the rapidly retreating form of the young man who turned and stepped swiftly across the bridge. Then, putting his hand to his 'coonskin cap, as if trying to recall something to his mind, he murmured, "If I didn't go and leave that ther bundle of sheetin' in the Judge's dooryard! 'Pears to me as if that pesky base ball had knocked my wits clean out." And, smiling at his own feeble joke, he retraced his steps to the North Catalpa side of the river.
When Lewis Morris reached the center of the town, he saw a knot of men and boys gathered around the bulletin board of The Leaf. "Just my luck," he muttered. "Downey has got the news out, and they have taken the edge of it off before I could get back."
But Lewis forgot his little disappointment when he eagerly scanned the bulletin which the editor had posted during his brief run across the bridge. This was what he read: