MAKING THE NINE

BOOKS BY ALBERTUS T. DUDLEY

Phillips Exeter Series

Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth.

FOLLOWING THE BALL.

MAKING THE NINE.

IN THE LINE.

WITH MASK AND MITT.

THE GREAT YEAR.

THE YALE CUP.

A FULL-BACK AFLOAT.

THE PECKS IN CAMP.

THE HALF-MILER.

Stories of the Triangular League

Illustrated by Charles Copeland. 12mo. Cloth.

THE SCHOOL FOUR.

AT THE HOME PLATE.

THE UNOFFICIAL PREFECT.

THE KING’S POWDER.

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON.

Phil did not walk in from the field.–Page 321.

PHILLIPS EXETER SERIES

MAKING THE NINE

BY

ALBERTUS T. DUDLEY

AUTHOR OF “FOLLOWING THE BALL”

ILLUSTRATED BY CHARLES COPELAND

BOSTON:

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.

Copyright, 1904, by Lee and Shepard.

Published August, 1904.

All Rights Reserved.

Making the Nine.

PRINTED IN U.S.A.

To

GEORGE ALBERT WENTWORTH

KNOWN TO THE WORLD AS THE AUTHOR OF

A SCORE OF STANDARD TEXT-BOOKS

TO THE ALUMNI OF

THE PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY

AS

The Great Master of Boys

PREFACE

The cordial welcome given to Following The Ball by boy readers and parents—severe critics both, though from very different standpoints—has led to the writing of this second story, in which baseball has a sufficiently important part to suggest the title.

The author’s purpose in each case has been to produce a readable story true to the life of a distinctly American school, true to athletics in their better spirit and character, and teaching—not preaching—a manly and reasonable ideal. If he has not succeeded in this, the failure can certainly not be charged to lack of experience with athletics or school life or the ways of boys.

Hearty acknowledgments for expert advice on the technicalities of baseball training and play are due to Dr. Edward H. Nichols of Boston, who, as player, head coach, and graduate adviser, has probably contributed more to Harvard victories on the diamond than any other one man. The play marking the climax of the game described in Chapter XXVI is a historic one, borrowed from a Yale-Harvard contest. Its hero was Mr. George W. Foster, of a champion Harvard nine.

ALBERTUS T. DUDLEY.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

MAKING THE NINE

CHAPTER I
AN UNWELCOME PROPOSITION

“How they do yell! Where’s your patriotism, Phil, to be hanging round in this gloomy crowd when all your friends are howling their heads off outside? Don’t you know Yale won the game? Why aren’t you out there with the rest?”

Philip Poole looked up with a smile, but did not reply.

“He’s comforting the afflicted,” said Dick Melvin, who shared with Poole the ownership of the room. “You don’t want to gloat over us poor Harvardites, do you, Phil? Thank you much for your sympathy.”

“That isn’t the reason,” said the lad, after a pause, with the sober look in his big, wide-open eyes that made him seem serious even when his feelings inclined in the opposite direction. “I just don’t see any cause for such a racket. A Yale football victory over Harvard is too ordinary an occurrence to get wild over.”

The chorus of hoots and groans that greeted this explanation brought a smile of satisfaction to the boy’s face. He was the youngest of the company, only in his second year at Seaton; the others were mostly seniors. As Melvin’s room-mate, however, and in a measure still under the senior’s care, Poole was thrown as much with the older students as with his own classmates; and the intimacy thus developed had served both to sharpen his wits and to give him practice in self-defence.

Melvin himself had not been at Seaton much longer than Phil. He had entered at the beginning of the Middle year, an unknown boy, green, sanguine, eager to win a scholarship and so relieve his father of some of the expense of his schooling. Soon, however, fascinated by football and the glamour of the school athletic world, he had failed to subordinate his sport to the real objects of school life. How he made the school eleven and went down with it to defeat; how he lost his scholarship; how the care of young Phil, suddenly offered him by the lad’s uncle, sobered and steadied him and enabled him to stay in school; how he and John Curtis fought the long uphill fight to develop a strong team, and finally defeated the rival school,—all this has already been told in another book, and can only be referred to very briefly here. The great game which marked the climax of the struggle was still a recent event.

“You didn’t take it so calmly when Seaton won the victory two weeks ago, and your beloved Dick spent the afternoon kicking the ball over the Hillbury goal-posts,” said Varrell, a tall, quiet boy, with keen, restless eyes that followed the conversation from face to face.

“That’s different,” replied Poole. “I’m first for Seaton and afterwards for Yale. The college can wait until I get there—and that will be a long time yet,” he added ruefully, “if what I was told in the algebra class to-day holds true.”

The others laughed patronizingly, as befitted those who had “points” to their credit on preliminary certificates, and knew Cæsar and algebra only as outgrown acquaintances—friends they had never been.

“He’s playing off,” said Todd, suspiciously. “I don’t doubt he drew an ‘A’ on his last examination.”

For one member of the group, the conversation was taking an unpleasant turn. John Curtis talked as unwillingly about examinations or entering college as the family of a convict on prison discipline. John had been captain of the football team, a player with a record, already courted by college committees on the lookout for good material for Varsity elevens. The glory of victory still rested full and bright upon him, but neither the adulation of comrades nor his own consciousness of achievement could make up to him for his failure to be recommended for preliminaries at the last college examinations, and his present gloomy outlook.

“Let’s see what they’re doing out in the yard,” he said abruptly, lifting his two hundred pounds from a creaking chair.

Bang, bang, bump, bang! went a heavy object down the stairs. Melvin jerked the door open in season to hear a scurry of feet at the end of the corridor, and the slam of two or three doors.

“This thing must stop, do you hear?” he shouted in the direction from which the sound had come.

The corridor was silent. No one answered; no one appeared. Yet behind the cracks of doors ajar were uttered low chucklings that the monitor rather suspected than heard. From a door at the end emerged an innocent head adorned with a green shade.

“Who are you bawling at, anyway? A fellow can’t study in this place, however much he tries. First a chump fires a bowling ball downstairs, and then the monitor curdles your blood with his Apache yells. I’d rather hear the ball, a good sight. It isn’t so hard on the nerves.”

“You tell those fellows to stop that thing right off, or I’ll report every one of them.”

“Tell them yourself!” retorted the green shade; “I’m not their grandmother.”

Inside Number 9 the company roared with laughter. “There’s no more fun for the poor fellows in this hall since Dick was put over it,” said Curtis.

“No, he takes his duties seriously,” commented Todd. “What did you do to them, Mr. Monitor,” he asked, as the official returned, “put ’em on probation?”

“Warned them,” replied Melvin, with good humor undisturbed.

“Who was that you were laboring with?”

“Tompkins.”

“What!” cried Curtis, “that wild-looking, shaggy-haired man from Butte, who looks as if he had just escaped from the menagerie?”

“That’s the one,” replied Dick; “though he isn’t as bad as all that. He’s a bit freakish, I’ll admit.”

“Not so much of a freak as he looks,” said Todd. “You ought to have seen him open the safe down at Morrison’s. They’d lost the combination, and the clerks had been guessing, and twisting, and pulling at the knob all the morning. Then this Tompkins happened in and took a try at it. He had the door open in two minutes. Just listened at the lock till he heard the right sound.”

“Couldn’t have been much of a lock,” said Curtis. “Come on; let’s see what’s doing outside.”

The big fellow went whistling downstairs, followed by Todd and Poole. Varrell and Dickinson the runner still remained, the latter too much incapacitated by the sprain he had received in the great game to make any unnecessary movements, the former apparently uninterested. The Harvard sympathizers had rallied, and, making up in numbers what they lacked in righteous cause, were shouting across the yard to the Yale band, drowning cheers of exultation with more vociferous cheers of loyalty.

“The fools!” exclaimed the misanthropic Dickinson.

“Who?” cried Varrell, suddenly roused from revery.

“Why, those fellows out there wasting their time and strength on something that does not concern them at all.”

“Oh!” said Varrell, and sank back again into his chair.

Dickinson and Melvin exchanged a glance of surprise. They knew that at one time Varrell had had serious trouble with his ears, and was still a little deaf; but he got on so well, both in the class room and among the boys, that it seemed hardly possible that he was unable to hear these boisterous shouts outside.

They sat a few minutes longer in silence, listening to the cheers hurled back and forth across the yard. Soon throats grew weary, and the mood changed. The enthusiasts, beginning to be conscious, as they stamped their feet and dug their hands into their pockets, that the November night was really cold, bethought themselves of warm rooms and work still to be done, and scattered to shelter. The scamper of feet was heard on the stairs; good nights were exchanged in the entries and shouted from the windows. Then the natural quiet again prevailed.

“Dick,” said Dickinson at last, “you know that Saville has left school.”

“Yes, I have heard so,” replied Melvin. “He was your track manager, wasn’t he? Who will take his place?”

“You,” answered Dickinson, calmly.

Melvin laughed. “I see myself in that job.”

“I mean what I say,” went on Dickinson. “When I took the captaincy of the track team, it was only on condition that I should have no trouble about business matters. So they appointed Saville. Now that he’s gone, I must have another man just as trustworthy.”

“That’s mere flattery,” replied Dick, still jesting. “I’m too old a fish to nibble at that kind of a bait.”

Dickinson grew indignant. “I’m not flattering. I know that if you undertake the thing, it will be well done.”

“But I don’t want it,” pleaded Melvin, serious at last. “There are twenty fellows who would be delighted to serve, who would do just as well as I. Besides, I play football, and who ever heard of a football player acting as manager?”

“I played too, didn’t I, but that doesn’t release me from the captaincy. I’m sure I’d like to get out of the thing as much as you.”

“A man who can do a quarter in fifty seconds can’t expect to get out of it.”

“Say forty!” exclaimed Dickinson, angrily. “You may as well.”

Dick laughed. There was nothing so certain to arouse Dickinson’s ire as the assumption that he was a marvelous runner whose records could be counted on to move in a sliding scale downward with no particular limit in sight. This sensitiveness, due partly to the boy’s extreme modesty, partly to his fear of disappointing such high expectations, his comrades had played on to their amusement more than once.

“I think I’ll get out altogether,” said the runner, gloomily.

“You can’t,” said Melvin; “the school wouldn’t let you.”

“Then I’ll tell you what I will do,” Dickinson declared, giving the arm of the chair a blow with his fist. “I’ll insist that you run the mile again as you did last year.”

“No, sir!” said Melvin, and set his lips.

“You’ll have to if I insist upon it. You don’t play baseball, and you have nothing at all to do in the spring. I can bring so much pressure to bear upon you that you simply can’t resist.”

To this Melvin made no immediate reply, but quietly pondered.

“What do you think, Wrenn?” said Dickinson, turning to Varrell, who had been a silent witness to the conversation. “Isn’t he just the man to hold the confidence of the school? And he couldn’t be expected to run if he were manager, could he?”

“Of course not,” replied Varrell, promptly.

“Then will you be my assistant and help me collect the money?” demanded Melvin, turning to the last speaker.

But Varrell was not easily caught. “You don’t need any assistant,” he replied, with a grin. “You’re equal to it all yourself. The Athletic Association wouldn’t elect me, anyway.”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” remarked Dickinson.

The trio parted with the question still unsettled. “That was great generalship,” said Dickinson to himself, exultantly, as he limped downstairs. “He’s scared as death of the mile run. I guess I’ll land him.”

CHAPTER II
ON THE ICE

As Dickinson foresaw, Melvin yielded to the pressure brought to bear upon him, and resigned himself to the thankless task of managing the track team. The election was held a week after Thanksgiving, arousing but a lukewarm interest. With fine ice on the river, and the Christmas holidays close at hand, few had more than a thought for the distant spring. Even the problems of the baseball season were as yet but lightly mentioned. There was a general optimism in the air that year at Seaton which carried everything before it, like the high tides of confidence which sometimes sweep over the stock-market. It made little difference who were captains or managers; this was Seaton’s year; the teams were bound to win. Only a few of the wiser heads—perhaps not all the captains and managers themselves—understood fully the danger of such a mood.

If the task of athletic manager proved to Melvin for the time being a sinecure, another office which was suddenly thrust upon him was quite the opposite. No one knew exactly how the hockey rivalry started, or who were the first to fan it into flame. It was just the kind of contest most likely to arise where boys gather from every part of the country, each loyal to his home and state, and each ready to boast superiority, and defend the boast with tongue and muscle. Dick had hardly been twice on the ice when the hockey players began to pair off into New England and Western teams. By some natural agreement the Hudson River was made the boundary line,—a rather unfair division, as it afterwards proved, for the New Englanders included considerably more than half the skaters. At first the rivalry was general and unorganized; then teams were more carefully picked; and finally, as the victory wavered from East to West in these miscellaneous engagements, and enthusiasm and pugnacious patriotism spread, the school was sifted for experts, champion teams were chosen, and a day set for a single decisive contest. It was then that Dick found to his surprise that he was appointed captain of the Western team.

Sands, the captain of the school nine, who lived in Chicago, brought him the news.

“How absurd!” cried Dick, aghast. “Why, I’m no hockey player. There must be a dozen fellows better than I.”

“They think you’ll be the best leader, anyway,” returned Sands; “and as there’s no one else eligible whom the fellows will follow, you’ll just have to take it. When a man handles a football as you did last fall, he’s supposed to be capable of anything. Don’t try for the nine, please. You can’t play ball on a reputation, and I should hate to have to fire you from the squad.”

Sands threw himself on the sofa, and waited for an answer.

“There’s no danger of that,” replied Melvin, unruffled. “I don’t play ball. As for the hockey business, I’m quite willing to act as leader, if it’s understood that I make no pretensions to being a crack.”

He pondered a moment and then went on: “What material is there? Curtis and Toddy don’t live in New England. That gives us four solid men for a nucleus.”

“You’re out there,” Sands answered gloomily. “Curtis lives in New York and Todd in Brooklyn, and both are east of the Hudson.”

Melvin looked serious. “Then they’ll be on the other side. I don’t like that. I’ve stood side by side with John Curtis in so many hard fights that it seems like treachery to play against him. I really don’t want to do it.”

Sands laughed. “That’s you all over. You tackle everything big and little in deadly earnest as if you were fighting the battle of Gettysburg all by yourself. This isn’t a Hillbury game; it’s a kind of lark.”

“Oh, yes, I know all about that kind of a lark. When you begin, it’s a joke; before you’re through, it’s a fight for blood.”

“What do you think of my case?” replied Sands. “I have one brother in Yale and another in Harvard, and both on the teams.”

“I’ve heard of them,” said Melvin. “How do they contrive to avoid scrapping?”

“They never discuss college matters at all. When I’m with one, he urges me to go to Yale; when the other gets hold of me, he talks Harvard; when we are all together, they cut the subject.”

Dick still meditated. Sands tried another tack.

“The New Englanders are talking big. Curtis says the Greasers will wish they’d stayed on the plains when his team’s through with them.”

“Did he really say that?” asked Dick, straightening up.

“He did, and Toddy told Marks the Yanks would clean us off the ice so quickly you’d think they’d used Sapolio.”

“He must consider us either sandless or mighty green,” said Dick.

“And he’s more than half right, too,” replied Sands, “as far as the greenness is concerned. It’s one thing to play with a mob in the old-fashioned go-as-you-please way, and quite another to run a regular team of seven, with complicated rules, and lifts and shoots and body checks and passes and on-side and off-side play, and all the tricks of the new game.”

“I don’t believe he’ll find us as simple as we look,” replied Melvin, as he opened a drawer and took out a sheet of paper. “I’ll take the captaincy, provisionally at any rate; and we’ll call out candidates this very afternoon. I’ll post the notice as soon as I can write it. See all the fellows you can; tell them the Yanks are crowing, and we’ll have a big push and lots of zeal. Do you know any hockey experts on our side of the river?”

“The only crack I’ve heard of is a fellow named Bosworth, but he’s on the other side.”

“I’m glad of it,” said Melvin; “I don’t like him.”

In answer to the captain’s call a score of enthusiasts gathered on the upper river. Varrell was among them, and Sands, and Burnett, and several heavy men who seemed promising for forwards, and a little, wiry, dark-haired fellow from Minneapolis named Durand, whom Dick immediately picked out as likely to prove a steady player on the second team. The first task was to find who were well used to the game, and who needed special instruction; the second, to set the experienced to coach the inexperienced; the third, to divide the men into squads, set several games going, and watch the work. Finally, the captain chose a trial seven, gave the scrub an extra man, and tried a ten-minute half.

Little Durand and Varrell, who had never impressed his classmates as an athlete, found themselves on the scrub. Varrell took coverpoint and Durand put himself among the forwards. The puck was faced and started on its erratic, whimsical journey, darting like a wild thing back and forth, up and down. Before the game seemed really well begun, the circular piece of rubber came within Varrell’s sweep, and clung to the heel of his stick. He whirled to the right to dodge Barnes, passed across to little Durand when Melvin blocked his way, took the puck again from Durand as the latter was stopped in his turn, and then, with a swing and a snap, shot it hard at the posts. The goal-tender brought his feet together as quickly as he could, but not quite quickly enough; the puck was already past him, flying knee-high over the ice like a swallow skimming the ground.

“Centre again!” cried Melvin, surprised and vexed at the ease with which the thing was done. “Brace up, Sands,” he called encouragingly to the goal-keeper. “Accidents will happen; they won’t do it again.”

The first forwards did better for a time, driving the puck down by sheer force through the intimidated second defence. Twice they shot for goal and missed, and then Varrell got a chance again and with a kind of scoop with stick directly in front, lifted the puck in a long beautiful arch twenty feet high to the farther end. Sands sent it back again with almost as good a lift. A lucky second stopped it, passed it to Varrell who nursed it along in a strange, wabbling course, and delivered it safely to Durand. The latter swept ahead in turn, and then while Melvin was wondering in what direction Durand was going to wheel, Varrell took the puck again and shot a beautiful goal right under the captain’s own nose.

Sands and Melvin and Varrell trudged back to recitation together. “Where did you learn to play?” asked Sands. “You handle a stick like a professional.”

“I spent last year at a Canadian boarding-school,” answered Varrell. “There was good ice for months, and hockey was about the only game we had.”

“You and Durand played the whole game for the second. What a squirmer the little rascal is! He doesn’t weigh more than a hundred and ten, and yet you can’t knock him over to save you.”

“He checks low,” said Dick, “and is firm on his feet. But he’s awfully light. I doubt if he has much staying power.”

“I think you’re wrong,” said Varrell. “I’ve seen that kind before; they never get tired.”

In the next day’s practice, Varrell and Durand being on the scrub, the score at the end of the first half was even. In the second half the two men played with the first team, and the scrub defence was kept so busy that the game seemed to centre around their goal-posts, and Melvin had finally to transfer Sands to the other side to give him a share in the practice. To furnish some test of endurance, the length of the half was doubled. When time was called, Durand was bobbing and twisting and checking and shooting as busily as ever, while one of the big forwards was obviously fagged, and Melvin himself felt that his ankles were rebelling at the unusual strain.

That settled the question of the team; Varrell and Durand had earned their places upon it. Two or three days later a meeting of the team was held to receive Melvin’s resignation.

“I’ve got the team together,” he said, “and with that my duty is done. The best captain for us now is the man who knows most hockey and can teach us the most; I’m not that man.”

The players at first expostulated; then finding that Melvin was in earnest, very sensibly did what they knew he wanted them to do,—elected Varrell captain.

“I think it’s a mistake,” said Sands to Barnes, as they came down the dormitory stairs. “Nobody knows Varrell. But there’s no use arguing with Melvin about a thing of this kind. He’s one of those obstinately honest fellows who stand up so straight that they fall backwards.”

“You dropped the Greaser captaincy like a hot shot,” quoth John Curtis on the way out from chapel, as he grabbed Melvin by the coat collar with the familiarity of an old crony, and grinned in his face. “Knew you were going to get licked, didn’t you? You’re a foxy one.”

Dick looked up and caught a fleeting troubled look on the face of Varrell, who stood eying them intently some distance away. “I wasn’t good enough,” he said aloud, as if Varrell could hear him. “On a team like ours, I’m content to fight in the ranks.”

As John did not understand this, he merely uttered an incredulous “Oho!” and, giving his classmate a slap on the shoulder to convey the impression that he was not to be fooled, went outside to consider the answer more fully and wonder if the Greasers were really trying to spring some new trick upon the Yanks. Melvin swung into the Greek room and opened his Homer with a chuckle of pride. “That would pass for a Delphic response. He doesn’t know what I meant. And he won’t know until the game,” he added, with the old determined look coming back into his face.

CHAPTER III
THE BATTLE

Varrell took to the management of the team with a quietness and assurance that put hope into the hearts of the small but determined band which represented the great West. The few days that were left for practice were used to the utmost. In the morning the captain found time to show individual players about shooting and lifting and stopping shots. In the afternoon he drilled the team in passing and dodging and checking. There was a little murmuring when a big forward was taken out of the game because he was uncertain on his skates; and more still when another was relegated to the list of substitutes for playing his own game instead of fitting into the scheme for team work. But Varrell’s answer was conclusive: “Our only chance to win is by team play. We have no stars, and on their team are two or three men who have played in the best city rinks. United we win; scattered we lose.” The murmurers said no more.

That last Saturday before the Christmas holidays was clear and cold. The course had been chosen on the river where high banks ran nearly parallel twenty yards apart. The snow, which had been cleared away the day before, was piled up behind the goal-posts, forming end barriers sixty yards from each other, and completing, with the river banks, a natural enclosure of about the regular rink size.

The Western contingent were established among the pines on the right.—Page 26.

On the banks gathered the patriotic factions,—the New Englanders in the open field on the left, swaggering merrily about their fires and hurling derisive cheers across the ice to the Western contingent, who were established among the pines on the right. This latter band of supporters, though weaker in numbers, had, from their position, a certain advantage which they made the most of. They swarmed into the trees with impromptu banners; when they were out-cheered, they devised an unintelligible chant which made up for lack of voices; and, finally, Tompkins of Montana developed a weird, penetrating yell, something between a whoop and a scream, which no one on the opposite bank could imitate or match, and which he uttered at impressive intervals from the upper branches of the tallest pine.

Yet, with all this show of patriotism, the noisy rivalry seemed quite free from bitterness. The gibes flew back and forth; there were cheers and counter cheers and chants, and Montana hoots from the pine tree, but the mood was of frolic, not of fight. For the spectators it was a lark, pure and simple; hardly any one really cared at the outset what the result was to be.

On the ice the spirit was different. Dick looked into John Curtis’s face and, behind the patronizing grin, read very clearly a poorly masked defiance. Todd, the Yank forward end, fingered his stick nervously over the ice as he waited for the call to places, and on his cheeks appeared the telltale white spots which Dick had seen before in the great football games when Toddy had set his teeth and fought for ground by the inch. Bosworth, the Yank coverpoint, leaned scowling on his stick, eying his opponents with sombre malevolence.

“They are fighters, not players,” said Dick to himself, disapprovingly. “They seem to think they’re out against Hillbury.”

And it did not occur to him that his own men looked equally fierce and determined. Sands stood ready at goal, but he had not a word for the boy who was beside him waiting to take his sweater when the game was called. Varrell was moving about with the quiet confidence of a master, which is more impressive to an opponent than noisy display. And as for Melvin himself, one did not need to be told that his whole heart was in the contest. The school knew well that what Melvin did, he did with all his might; a stranger would have read determination in the open face. Little Durand was about the only one of the fourteen who seemed to share the mood of the spectators. He flourished and circled about, chattering gayly up to the very moment of beginning.

The preliminaries were soon arranged. “Ready!” called the captains, and a moment later, at the first sound of the referee’s whistle, the two forwards were scraping and twisting to secure the puck on the “face-off.” Curtis got it, or thought he had; but before he could really call it his, a Greaser blocked his play, and Durand, dexterously picking out the puck, swept it across to Rawle, who dribbled it along, passed back to Durand, received it again, and lost it in the crush at the Yank goal. In another moment it came flying through the air on a lift, far down in the Greaser defence field.

Dick succeeded in stopping it and sending it on toward Varrell. The Greaser captain was off-side; but he allowed his opponent just to touch the puck, and then with a sudden swing to one side he was off down the ice, sweeping the puck with him. The first opponent he dodged. Big Curtis, who was next in order, made him pass; but the exchange gave him the puck again, and after several quick diagonal passes with Durand that brought them near the Yank goal, Varrell gave his stick a sudden hard flourish, and the puck shot like an arrow between the goal-posts, grazing the goal-tender’s knee as it passed.

It was all done so quickly, so unexpectedly, that for a moment the Western supporters under the pines and in the pines seemed unaware that their team had scored. Then as the sticks of the team brandished in air made the fact clear, a confused mixture of cheers, screeches, whoops, and catcalls gave proof that the West was both patriotic and appreciative. On the New England side indifference seemed to prevail.

“One!” said Sands with joy, as the puck came back to the centre.

“The first one, you mean,” returned Dick, in a low tone. “We’re not through yet.”

The next goal came hard. The Eastern team was heavier and generally stronger, but the members could not or would not play together; and if they got the puck down near the Greaser goal, they usually lost it before the goal was really threatened. Once a hard shot close at hand struck Sands in the pit of the stomach, and the spectators cheered and jeered as the gasping lad feebly lifted the puck away from its dangerous proximity to the goal. He had his breath again in a moment, however, apparently none the worse for his experience. Soon after, Curtis and Durand came together as both rushed for the puck at the same time, and the spectators under the trees cheered wildly as the little fellow crouched low for the collision, and the big football player sprawled over him upon the ice. But Varrell was the objective point of the strongest attack. Though he played coverpoint, he had an arrangement with Brown, one of the forwards, to exchange places on signal; and the result was that he appeared now in the defence, now in the attack, apparently scenting the course the puck was destined to take, and always equal to the need.

The Yanks grew rougher and more violent. Todd took to body checking where it was not necessary; Bosworth, when a Greaser got the puck away from him, followed on at his heels with ill-concealed malice, and banged away viciously at the unlucky man’s shins, even though it was apparent that the puck was wholly beyond the pursuer’s reach. Such tactics, unless checked, are usually the prelude to rougher play; and Dick, for this reason, was doubly grateful when, from the edge of the mêlée around the Yank goal-posts, Rawle swiped the puck through a second time. Play had hardly been resumed when the referee’s whistle announced the end of the first half.

As was to be expected, the jubilation under the pines was earnest and loud. In the opposite camp, where the neglected fires were dying away in smoke, quite different conditions prevailed. A few, with heroic repression of natural sympathy, still pretended to regard the whole matter as a joke, in which victory or defeat meant little or nothing. The great majority, however, unable to rise to this level, were distinctly conscious of having in some way been cheated. They had come out to be amused, and part of the amusement was to consist in seeing the impudent Greasers given a sound beating. And here were their men, including such big husky athletes as Curtis and Todd, and fellows who had been glorified as city rink experts, like Bosworth and Richmond, overthrown by a set of amateurs.

“Rotten!” said Marks, the connoisseur of sports, as he interviewed Curtis and Todd during the intermission. “Perfectly rotten! Did you get us up here to fool us?”

“I didn’t ask you to come,” returned Curtis, trying to keep his good nature. “If you can do much better, come out yourself.”

“Oh, I’m no athlete,” rejoined Marks, hastily, “but I can see what the fault is better than you do. That Varrell plays most of their game. You’ve got to use him up. Give them a rougher game. Push ’em hard. When two of you start for the puck, let the puck go where it pleases; just smash at the man. When the man’s out of the way, you can take your time about the puck. You’re heavy and have the advantage.”

“That seems rather mean,” said Curtis.

“Mean!” exclaimed Marks. “Did you ask a Hillbury man to excuse you when you tackled him on the football field? I guess not.”

Curtis glanced around the group and read the looks of approval. “Well, then,” he said finally, “make it rough, but let’s have fair play,”—his eye rested on Bosworth as he said this,—“and no low tricks. Everything must be straight and aboveboard.”

When the game began again, the new spirit was immediately apparent. The Yanks got the puck and tried to drive it down by weight, but the off-side rule checked them. Durand still stole the puck from behind their sticks and put his shoulder so low that he could not be overturned; while Varrell still hovered on the edge of the scrimmage and drew the puck as a magnet draws a scrap of iron. Despite the heavy body checking, the play lingered about the Yank goal, for the Yank forwards did not follow the puck back closely on the defence, and Melvin or Sands soon sent it into Yank territory again. Rawle tried for goal, and failed. Durand missed in his turn, and then Varrell got the puck thirty yards away, and while his opponents were watching for a pass, by a long beautiful shoot made the third score for his side.

And now the Yanks’ patience gave out. Rules or no rules, they were determined that their opponents should make no more goals.

Again Varrell took the puck, and with his familiar tricky movement of the wrist started down the ice.

“Look out for Bosworth,” yelled Durand, whom Todd was obstructing at the side-lines. But Varrell’s dull ears served him ill. Bosworth, who was close at the Greaser’s heels, thrust his stick suddenly between Varrell’s rapidly moving legs and threw him with a crash to the ice, right under the feet of Richmond, who was speeding up from another direction. Richmond went down, too, tripping hard against the prostrate form.

The Greasers hissed, the Yankees groaned. John Curtis, be it said to his credit, ordered Bosworth from the ice before the referee could interfere; but the advantage of the “accident,” as Bosworth called it, was on the side of the Yankees. Varrell was helped off the scene, barely able to lift his leg.

The teams went on with six men each. With Varrell the Greasers had lost the mainspring of their attack. Superior weight and superior physical strength began to tell. The puck kept returning to the Greaser defence. Then came a scrimmage before the goal, a quick shoot from the outskirts of the crowd, and the Yanks were exulting over their first score.

“Only four minutes more,” pleaded Dick, skating down the Greaser line. “Hold them that long for Varrell’s sake. We can do it, if we will.”

And the weary six rallied once more. Durand was knocked about like the puck itself, but he stuck gamily to his work, and zigzagged and circled and dodged as before. Sands saved one goal with his hands, another with his feet. Dick met body check with body check, and lifted high and sure. But never before had he listened so anxiously for the sound of the referee’s whistle. When it came, and he knew certainly that the game was won, he flung his stick into the air and led the gathering Greasers in a long, hearty cheer for Varrell, who, lying on the meadow bank bedded in Yank blankets, was watching the result with his heart in his mouth.

“Great work you did this afternoon,” said Tompkins two hours later, popping his head into Melvin’s room. “Any part of you that isn’t black and blue?”

“I didn’t suffer much,” replied Melvin. “It wasn’t as bad as it looked.”

“I hope not,” said Tompkins. “Do you know what battle in Roman history the fray reminded me of?”

Dick shook his head. “I don’t know any history. I passed it off last year.”

“The battle of the Ostrogoths and Visigoths,” replied Tompkins, wisely. “It’s a case of history repeating itself. The Visigoths won both times.” And then he added, “I don’t believe the Goths would have been guilty of some of the things I saw done on the ice this afternoon.”

CHAPTER IV
PHIL’S RESOLUTION

The Christmas holidays were over. Varrell limped no more, and Dickinson, who had long since discarded his cane, walked with quick, elastic step as of old, apparently completely recovered. A few new boys had entered school. One of these, who was somewhat rough in appearance and who struggled clumsily with the lessons of a lower class, was said to be a pitcher. He was older than most of the students, in years rather a man than a boy. This fact was not in itself remarkable, for there is no age limit at Seaton, and many an honest, earnest fellow who after his twentieth year has conceived a longing for an education has found opportunity and encouragement there. But Flanahan seemed not entirely of this class.

“What about him, Sands?” asked Dick. “He looks suspicious.”

“Suspicious! What do you mean by that?” demanded the captain. “He isn’t the youngest fellow in school, of course; but he isn’t the oldest, either. Why shouldn’t he have a chance for an education as well as any one else?”

“He should if he really wants it,” replied Melvin. “He looks as if he had knocked around on a good many diamonds before coming here.”

“Do you mean that he’s a professional?”

“Yes, something of that kind,—semi-professional would hit it better, I think.”

“If he’s a professional, I don’t know it,” said Sands. “I didn’t get him here. He says he’s an amateur, and he has certainly played on some good amateur nines. He can pitch, and we need a pitcher. That’s all I know about it.”

“And all you want to know,” said Melvin, with a smile.

“Yes, all I want to know,” repeated Sands.

Melvin passed to another topic: “Phil would like to try for the nine. Is there any chance for him?”

“None at all,” replied Sands, promptly.

“That’s a fine way to choose a team!” retorted Melvin. “You haven’t tried him and yet you say he has no show. We searched high and low for football material,—fairly scoured the school, and here you are deciding offhand against a fellow whose playing you’ve never seen. No wonder the nine gets beaten.”

Sands’s face reddened: “I didn’t say I wouldn’t try him. I’ll try anything that offers. I only said that he hadn’t any chance.”

“Have you seen him play?”

“Yes; he can throw pretty well and field fairly, but he isn’t old enough or big enough or strong enough or experienced enough for the school nine.”

“Well, he’ll grow, won’t he?” persisted Dick. “Just give him a chance to work up.”

“I’ll give him just the chance I give any one else and no more,” replied Sands, decisively. “Every man who makes the nine this year has got to earn his place, and the fact that Phil is your chum and a friend of mine will simply make me harder on him. When I say he hasn’t a chance, I mean that he cannot meet the standard. He may try as hard as he wants to.”

They separated at the gymnasium door, each going to his own part of the locker rooms to dress. A few minutes later, as Dick was running upstairs to his regular gymnasium work, he caught the sound of Sands’s voice exhorting the squad in the baseball cage. He paused a moment with a smile of approval on his lips, as he marked the steady, confident tones, and recalled the captain’s sturdy resolve to hold to the merit system in choosing the nine. Then Flanahan’s lanky figure loomed up by the doorway, and the smile on Melvin’s face died suddenly away. He turned abruptly and went on his way upstairs.

“Phil,” said Melvin that night, as the junior came in after supper, “should you really like to try for the nine?”

“Should I!” the boy’s eyes sparkled. “If I had the ghost of a chance of being kept on the squad till we got outdoors, I’d say ‘yes’ right off.”

“What can you play best?” asked Melvin.

“I’ve always played in the out-field,” Poole replied rather humbly. “I’m fairly safe on flies, and could always throw a little farther and a little straighter than the other fellows.”

“An out-fielder must be a good hitter or they won’t keep him. Can you bat?”

“They used to say I had a good eye,” returned Phil, who was not used to singing his own praises. “I’m not heavy enough for long hits.”

“If you’re sure on the elements, go in and try,” said Melvin, “but you must do your level best. The only way for you to accomplish anything is just to devote your whole thought and attention out of study hours to baseball and nothing but baseball. Do everything you’re told to do and more. Study yourself all the time. Get help outside that the others haven’t. Hang to the squad till they kick you off, and when that happens, organize a nine of your own and keep up your practice. If they call you a fool and a crank, just laugh and keep on playing. Are you willing to do all that?”

The color deepened on Phil’s cheeks as he listened. “I’ll do more than that,” he cried; “I’ll shack balls, I’ll tend the bats, I’ll carry water, I’ll do anything they put upon me. I’ll try this year and next and the year after, but if there’s any baseball in me, I’ll make the nine before I leave school.”

“Good!” exclaimed the senior, giving the boy’s hand a squeeze that made the bones crack. “I don’t know much about baseball, but that’s the spirit that wins. Only don’t talk about what you’re going to do. Think a lot, but keep your thoughts to yourself. When you play, play with all your might.”

They settled down to the work of the evening. Occasionally Dick glanced with interest across the table to see whether the hated Virgil lesson or the excitement of the new resolution was to possess Phil’s thoughts. For a time the lad, with face still flushed, gazed vacantly up toward the picture moulding. Then with a start and a slam he opened his Æneid at the fourth book, and ground away for two steady, patient hours at the lovelorn wails of the unhappy Dido, in whose fate he had about as much sympathetic interest as a horse on a coal wagon feels for the sufferings of the freezing poor.

“I’ll bet on him in the long run,” thought Dick, as he eyed the determined plodder.

The next day Philip Poole’s name appeared on the list of candidates for the nine.

CHAPTER V
A TOUGH PROBLEM

Melvin and Varrell returned from their Greek recitation together.

“I don’t like the way things are going this year,” Melvin was saying. “There’s too much confidence. If the track team wins, it will be just as expected, with no credit to any one; if we lose, woe to captain and manager.”

“You’re right,” said Varrell, “but forewarned is forearmed. Keep cool and reasonable and see to it that you don’t lose.”

“If it weren’t for Dickinson,” went on Melvin, “I shouldn’t have taken the thing at all. You see, I feel a kind of responsibility toward him because of the way in which I got him to run last year, so I didn’t like to refuse him.”

“You know I wasn’t here last year,” said Varrell.

“Why, of course! I keep forgetting that you came this fall. It happened this way. Martin discovered Dickinson,—you’ve heard of Martin, haven’t you, of last year’s senior class?”

Varrell nodded.

“Martin discovered that Dickinson could run, and Curtis and I got him out for the sports in the spring and stood sponsors for him until he had courage enough to stand alone.”

“Won everything last year, didn’t he?” asked Varrell.

“Quarter and two-twenty, hands down,” answered Melvin; “but there’s no surety that he’ll do it again. Besides, no one can say yet what the effect of that ankle will be. The doctor thinks it will be as strong as ever, but I know a sprained ankle is very easy to sprain again. Without Dickinson we shouldn’t have much to brag of.”

Both boys turned to their work. Melvin, in the quiet business-like way with which he had learned to attack his lessons, opened his trigonometry on the desk and in a moment was oblivious to all else but the problem which was first to be solved. Varrell’s stint was of a different kind,—forty lines of “Macbeth” to be committed to memory before twelve o’clock. As this involved much repetition and possible interference with the trigonometry problem, he retired to the bedroom, where he could mutter at his ease.

They possessed two very different personalities. Varrell was tall and slight, his limbs hardly filled out to their proper roundness, with a clear-cut, intelligent face and striking gray eyes that were remarkable, not so much for what they showed of the character behind them, as for the power of sight which they seemed to possess. Ever alert and observant, even when his face was otherwise at rest, the eyes seemed the aggressive part of the boy. Their direct glance was like a ray of concentrated intelligence.

“I like Varrell,” said Tompkins one day, in a burst of confidence, “except when he looks at me hard, and then his eyes cut right through me, and I feel as if he were counting the hairs on the back of my head.”

Melvin was more substantially built. As he sat at the table, the cloth of his coat sleeves drew tight over the splendid deltoid and biceps, and his square, blunt knees showed hardened muscles rounding out beyond the knee-cap. If his face lacked the alertness of look so noticeable in Varrell, it yet had a composure and an air of self-reliance and honesty that rendered it no less attractive.

The learner of Shakespeare was restless. The first five lines were mastered in a chair by the window, the next five on Melvin’s bed, the third on Poole’s bed, and the fourth on a second chair. In the circuit of the room he had learned twenty lines.

“Another lap and I shall have it,” he said to himself, gleefully, as he took his place again by the window.

The outside door opened and Poole came rushing into the study. “I want to tell you something, Dick, and I’ve just three minutes before Latin to tell it in—Whose hat is that?”

“Varrell’s,” said Dick, who had risen from the desk. “He’s in the bedroom plugging away at Shakespeare.”

“Hello, Varrell,” said Phil, looking in at the door. “Shakespeare plays havoc with the beds, doesn’t he?”

“Get out!” cried Varrell, waving him off; “you rattle me.”

Phil joined Dick on the other side of the room. Through the open door they could see the Shakespearean scholar doggedly muttering over his book.

“Shan’t we disturb him?” asked Phil, hesitating.

“Speak low and there’ll be no danger,” said Melvin. “His ears aren’t quick.”

The eleven o’clock bell soon broke in on the conversation, and sent the younger boy flying to his recitation. Dick sat down at the desk again and tried to take up his work where he had left it, but he was apparently in a very unstudious mood. His pencil no longer moved steadily over the paper; his gaze rested fitfully now here, now there, on the various objects before him; his flushed sober face showed that his thoughts were hot within him. Finally, he threw down his pencil in disgust, and sauntering over to the window, leaned his head against the sash and gazed moodily out.

“He’s a confounded rascal!” exclaimed Varrell, who had been eying his agitated comrade over the Shakespeare, “but it’s no fault of yours, and why do you bother yourself about him?”

“Who?” said Dick, staring at him in amazement.

“Why, Bosworth, of course,” went on Varrell, coolly; “if what Phil says of him is true, he’s even a bigger rascal than I always thought him.”

Dick was nonplussed. His conversation with Phil had certainly been carried on in a tone too low to be audible to Varrell in the bedroom.

“What do you mean?” he asked sharply.

“Why, that he has been getting some of those little fellows into his room to play poker and fleecing them, especially that boy with a short name with a ‘t’ or a ‘d’ in it.”

“Yes, Eddy,” replied Dick. “He’s in Phil’s class.” And then, looking curiously at his friend, he added, “Your hearing is growing surprisingly good, I must say.”

“I’m sorry if I overheard what you meant I should not know,” said Varrell, flushing. “If that is the case, I shall certainly try to forget it.”

“Oh, I don’t mind your knowing it,” said Dick, “I only wish you could tell what we ought to do about it.”

The clanging bell again interposed its peremptory summons.

“Twelve o’clock!” cried Varrell, as he made a dash for his hat, “and only thirty lines. I’ll bet I’ll be called on for the ten I didn’t learn.”

When Phil had time for longer explanations, he gave Dick more details of the happenings in Sibley 15, Bosworth’s room. Eddy, who had given the information, was in Phil’s class, and of about Phil’s age. Smarting under a sense of ill-treatment and desperately perplexed as to how he was to account for the lost money, which had been sent him for purchases for the winter, he had opened his heart to Phil, who in turn had made haste to unburden himself to his older and presumably wiser room-mate. Hardly had he done this, when Eddy repented of his confidences and tearfully besought his classmate never to speak of it to a living soul. But the murder was out, and the best Phil could do was to urge Melvin to guard the secret.

“So, having stolen the fellow’s money, Bosworth has made him promise not to mention the fact,” said Melvin.

“Eddy said it was a matter of honor. The money had been lost in fair play, and he had no right to speak of it when it might get them all into trouble.”

“So Bosworth says, I suppose,” said Melvin.

“Yes, that’s it; Bosworth says it’s just a personal matter between them, and to tell about it so that it might reach the Faculty would be simply tale-bearing.”

“What kind of a boy is Eddy?”

“Not very good and not especially bad, but just weak. He is terribly cut up about the thing, doesn’t study any, and cries a lot in his room. I can’t help pitying him, though I don’t sympathize with him much.”

Dick smiled: “I suppose you’d do differently in his place.”

Phil grew indignant. “I rather think I should. To begin with, I shouldn’t be in his place. I wouldn’t touch that Bosworth with a ten-foot pole. But supposing that I did get into the scrape, I’d take it as a warning to leave Bosworth and gambling alone, and write home an honest letter about the whole business.”

“And that’s the very thing Eddy ought to do,” said Melvin, giving Phil’s shoulder a slap. “Why didn’t you tell him so?”

“I did,” replied Phil, “but he is afraid to, and he wouldn’t listen at all to my idea of telling Mr. Graham about it without mentioning Bosworth’s name.”

Dick grinned. Mr. Graham, the principal of Seaton, ruled the school with a strong hand. His was not a mailed fist in a velvet glove, but a strong, dexterous hand gloved in velvet with a mail back. The whole school saw the steel exterior; few really appreciated the gentleness of the clasp.

“I suppose they’d be fired if it came out,” went on Phil.

“They wouldn’t have time to say good-by, or at least Bosworth wouldn’t. I’m not so certain about Eddy.”

A knock at the door was followed by the appearance of a head. Seeing that the visitor was Tompkins, Phil opened his Greek Grammar and plunged vigorously into study as if he had no other interest in the world. Tompkins looked from one sober face to the other, then gave a glance over Phil’s shoulder at the page of the open book.

“Metres of Aristophanes! Is that what they give here to beginners in Greek? If it is, I’m glad I began out West.”

Phil shut the book with a bang, and replied half petulantly, half amused that he should have betrayed himself so easily, “No, it isn’t; I was thinking.”

“Unpleasant thoughts,” said Tompkins, with another glance at Melvin’s face. “Well, I guess I won’t bother you any more to-day.”

There was no reply to this, and the visitor moved toward the door. As his hand touched the knob a new thought struck him and he turned suddenly on the boy.

“You haven’t been losing your money, too, have you, Phil?”