“What does that make it?” asked Dan, leaning over Alf’s shoulder as the latter set the figures down.
“Make it four to their eleven, but they’ve finished three men to our two. Who’s this coming?”
“Two Yardleys with no one else near,” cried Dan. “I don’t know who they are. Yes, I do, though. The first man’s Wagner.”
“And the next is Sherwood,” added Tom. “And there come two of our hated rivals, and I hope they choke.”
Wagner and Sherwood trotted across the line and subsided into the arms of their friends, limp and tuckered. Then came Holder and White, both wearers of the Green, and after that there were no more for several minutes.
“The score, gentlemen,” announced Alf, frowning over his scrawls, “is Yardley, 17; Broadwood, 28.”
“Great!” cried Dan, with a caper.
“Maybe, but they’ve got five men in to our four.”
“That can’t be right,” Tom objected.
“Can’t it, Mr. Fixit? Why not? Look here. Yardley gets first, third, sixth and seventh places, and that makes seventeen. See? And Broadwood gets second, fourth, fifth, eighth and ninth, which foots up twenty-eight. I guess we’ve got to get the next runner in, fellows.”