The first hadn’t been getting along very well of late. It had lost to Greenville, won from Cupples and then, last Saturday, had been again defeated, at Clear Lake, by Peebles School. Peebles was not considered strong, yet Wyndham had made but six scattered hits during the contest and had failed to score a run. And Peebles had tallied thrice in the early innings, off Moore, and had fairly walloped Jeff Ogden in the eighth and added four more runs. The Wyndham infield had cracked wide open in that fatal eighth. Coles had accumulated two errors and Tyson and Leland one each. But it was in batting that Wyndham was showing up weakest, and no amount of switching about of the players on the batting order seemed to remedy the weakness. Perhaps Coach Connover took Tom over to the first as a mere gesture of threat, thinking that Tom’s presence on the bench might induce Wink Coles and Pat Tyson to greater efforts, for Tom had been performing in very good style on the second and it had occurred to others beside Steve that he might very well be fitted into the first team’s infield. Tom’s batting was no longer a joke, for he had recently been hitting hard and clean, and, having found himself, might be expected to improve. Then, too, he had the habit of getting to first even when he didn’t hit safely. In practice games he was a thorn in the side of Sam Erlingby, working that twirler for pass after pass even in the days when he was notoriously weak at the bat. Once on first, Tom had speed and a certain daring that usually carried him around. At fielding he had become easily the second’s star sackman, covering a surprising amount of ground, trying for anything and everything and, in the words of the disgruntled and deposed Evans, “getting away with murder.”