The boys came rushing back for the final lap of the school year. Already on the train most of them had heard the startling news: "Carle isn't going to pitch! Carle has left school!" These brief statements of undeniable truth were not all they heard; there were additions through wild rumors and bold surmises transformed to positive facts in the repeating: Carle left because he wasn't allowed to play ball; Carle was proved a professional and had to go; Carle was fired because he left town without permission, because he cut chapel too often, because he didn't do any work, because he had a row with a teacher, because he was a scholarship man and smoked, because he had been drinking, because he played poker. For two whole days Owen was kept busy denying these rumors. Then the tongues gradually ceased to wag; and Carle faded in[Pg 156]gloriously away into the limbo of the suddenly departed, whose names when mentioned in the Seatonian always bear the significant "ex" before the numeral of the class which once claimed them.

With the returning boys, to Poole's great relief, came the baseball coach, Mr. Lyford. The ground on the upper campus was already hard enough for practice; the regular diamond was drying. Cutting though the winds and raw and chill the atmosphere, Rob yet found it an immense relief to escape from the confining walls of the little cage into the open, where there was room to throw, and honest, abundant daylight. He had never taken kindly to the practice in the cage. When he tried to bat there, he had always been awkwardly conscious of those close lines of netted wall pressing upon him, of the low ceiling, of the treacherous shadows, of the impossibility of driving the ball anywhere, of the whole sham of the situation compared with the open field, where the sunlight pours down through fifty miles of atmosphere, and the wide horizon challenges the batsman to his hardest drive. Perhaps this[Pg 157] feeling was responsible for his lack of success as a cage batsman; perhaps he hated the cage because he couldn't hit there. At any rate, the facts were connected, and he welcomed his release with the heartiness of the landlubber when, after his first voyage, he exchanges the narrow, malodorous, unsteady forecastle for solid, familiar earth.

Not so poor Patterson. He felt as a timid pupil would if snatched suddenly from a gentle tutor's care and thrust into a lively school, where independence must be fought for and honors won unaided. His courage failed him; he dreaded to go forth into public view and face the test, with eager batters trying for real base hits, and every error of judgment or delivery counting in the score. The cage was familiar ground to Patterson. Here he had acquired whatever skill he possessed. With Owen behind the plate to explain just what to throw and how to throw it, with no one else at hand to molest or make afraid, he could handle the ball as well as another. His wrist had the master snap that yields sharp curves; his shoulder the sweeping swing that makes speed.[Pg 158] But outside—alas! outside was a strange land in which he feared to trust himself.

"Foolishness!" laughed Owen, when Patterson frankly confided to him these misgivings. "You'll do better outside. There's all the inspiration of the game to spur you on, and the fun of working your man,—putting your wits against his, you know, and making him do things he doesn't want to do."

"But I don't feel as if I had any wits," said Patterson, "or shouldn't have any if I got into a close, hard game."

Owen stopped short in his walk and fixed his eyes disapprovingly on his companion's face. "Look here, Pat," he said sternly, "you've got to cut that kind of talk and that kind of thinking too. We're going out to play ball, not to help fight a battle or swim for our lives or anything like that, but just play ball. There's absolutely nothing to worry about; we aren't the captain or the coach. We'll do as well as we can, and if our best is good enough, we'll make the nine. If we don't make it, it'll be because there are others better, and we shan't have any responsibility.[Pg 159] So there's nothing to worry about in either case. But if you're all the time scared that you'll do something wrong, you'll never do anything right. That's as sure as the multiplication table."

Patterson did not answer.

"Isn't that good sense?" demanded Owen.

Patterson drew a long breath. "It's good sense all right, but I don't know whether I can do it."

Owen snorted. "You can if you've a mind to. Just settle it that you'll do your best and be satisfied with whatever turns up. Why can't you let Poole and Lyford do the worrying?"

"I suppose I can," said Patterson, humbly.

"I should hope you could! I tell you, man, you've got the goods! You have speed and good control and all the curves you need. If you give yourself half a chance they'll recognize it. If they don't, what do you care? T............