Dobbel, the succeeding artist, was a right-hander, and was said to have nothing very much except a good out-curve and a slow ball with a considerable break. He started out by fooling Clif on a curve and then tried the same thing again and heard the umpire call it a ball. He looked pained and pitched a straight one. At least, it looked straight until Clif swung at it. Clif missed it by inches, it seemed. The next one had to be good, and Clif kept his eyes glued fast on the pitcher and then on the oncoming sphere. Then he swung and hit and raced for first. Second baseman made a wild stab for the flying ball but missed it. Clif stopped at first. The ball came back from right fielder and was relayed home by the pitcher, but Raiford and Leland were safe and the score was tied! And then, before any one quite knew what was happening, Sim was being run down between second and third! Clif, half-way to second, scuttled back, but he might as well have kept on, for Jackson finally dashed for third and was tagged. Then came the last of the eighth, with Wyndham and Wolcott both shouting wildly and very, very hoarsely, with blue and brown pennants swirling and with Fortune still impartial. And in the last of the eighth the Wyndham infield, which had gone along well enough so far, cracked wide open! Captain Leland made the first miscue when he took an easy bounder and snapped it across the diamond well over Van’s head. The runner went on to second without having to slide. A minute later Pat Tyson fumbled and there were two on. Out in center field Clif watched miserably and chewed grass stalks as fast as he could pluck them. Then came a chance for a double, Leland to Coles to Van Dyke, and this time it was Wink who spilled the beans. He made the out at second but threw so far to the left of first that Van Dyke had to go off his bag for the ball. There were runners now on first and third with only one down. A well-timed steal put the second runner on the middle sack. Then the batter found something of Moore’s that he liked the looks of and there was a mighty _crack_. On bases the brown-legged runners poised, ready for their sprints, while the ball arched far into center field. Clif turned and ran out to the left a few yards, judged the ball again and stepped back. It would be an easy catch, he knew, and yet the proceedings so far in that inning had given him a troubled mind, and now, as the ball came dropping slowly toward him, he became obsessed with a sudden foreboding of failure. He tried to thrust it away from him in the brief moment that remained, but it clung. Then his hands went up and the ball slapped into his glove and a great relief flooded him as he stepped forward for the throw and swung his hand back. And then the thing happened. For an instant he had held the ball securely, it had seemed, yet when he threw his arm backward it was no longer in his hand!