On Tuesday the second team came into official existence, and Mr. Wadleigh took charge as coach. Mr. Wadleigh lived in Greenville, some twenty miles distant, and made the daily pilgrimage to Freeburg in a dilapidated Ford car whose mudguards were so loose that they flapped up and down like wings and gave the battered vehicle the appearance of flying. As Mr. Wadleigh seldom drove under thirty-five miles an hour――his record between the two villages was alleged to be thirty-two minutes――the illusion was enhanced. Many years before he had played baseball on the Wyndham team. No one could discover that he had distinguished himself, however. He was in business of some sort in Greenville――real estate, rumor had it, and for several years past had donated his services to his old school, doubtless at some sacrifice. He was a tall, awkward-looking man of perhaps thirty-three or -four years with a very prominent nose set in a long face. He was rather bald, a fact especially noticeable because he was never seen wearing a hat. Some held that the hair had been blown from the front and top of his head by the wind during his wild, careening flights over the road. He constantly wore an amiable smile which exposed a number of long teeth below a ragged mustache of a faded brown. That smile, however, was not to be taken――no pun is intended――at its face value. It persisted even when “Tusks” was not pleased with things. The nickname implied no disrespect, for, while Mr. Wadleigh was not beautiful to look upon, nor possessed graces of manner, he was, in school parlance, “a wow of a coach.” Tusks took over twenty-four candidates from Coach Connover, conducted them to the second-team diamond, looked them over in thoughtful, if smiling, silence and set them to work. Three days later, still smiling amiably, he dismissed seven of the twenty-four. Through some, to them, inexplicable miracle, Clif and Tom survived the cut. The next day, Saturday, the second shortened practice and watched the first play six innings of its game with the local High School nine. The day was a miserable one from a baseball viewpoint, with cloudy skies and a brisk north wind, a day far too chill to permit of good playing had either of the contesting teams been capable of it, which they apparently were not. The five pitchers, of which three wore the dark blue of Wyndham, were hit hard at all times, and hits coupled with numerous errors and many misplays which didn’t appear in the error column fattened the score of each side. The bulk of the audience survived the last of the seventh inning, by which time the home team had a five-run lead, but after that it disintegrated rapidly. When, in the first half of the ninth, High School staged a rally only a corporal’s guard of devoted adherents remained in the stand to witness it.