“I don’t see why you don’t learn to run it,” agreed Jimmy. “I guess Tom could teach you all right. If he can’t I’ll do it. And any time you want someone to run The Ark for you, Tom, you let me know. I dare say I could get off for a day or so and do it.” “Really? I’ll remember that,” said Tom gratefully. “It might be that something would happen some time. They’re going to start the game. The mill team has the field. Is that your friend there, Jimmy? The big, tall fellow with red hair.” “Yes, that’s Doyle. You watch him, fellows. He’s a wonder. Used to pitch for Waterbury, Doyle did. Of course, he wasn’t a first-string man, but he was pretty good. I saw him pitch five innings once against New Haven and there wasn’t a hit made off him. If he hadn’t passed four men there wouldn’t have been a score!” “Well, if he passes four men to-day it will help a lot,” said Tom with a laugh. “Why didn’t he stick to baseball, Jimmy?” “Oh, he got married and had to earn money. So he went into the mill. He hasn’t played ball for a couple of years, I guess, but I don’t suppose he’s forgotten how.” He hadn’t, and there wasn’t much to that game after four innings. Doyle may have lost some of his cunning through lack of practice, but he had sufficient skill left to keep high school guessing. In the second inning, and again in the fourth, high school got men on bases, and in the fourth tallied two runs, a lucky hit by Captain Madden sending in a couple of runners. But that was all the scoring high school was able to do. On the other hand, the mill team knocked Billy Younger out of the box in the third, piling up five tallies. Billy had an off day for once and was extremely unsteady. Chester Madden pulled him out and went to the mound himself. Chester got a sound drubbing and when the ninth inning was at last over the mill team had won by twelve runs to two. Spider Wells and Jimmy Lippit walked back with Tom and Willard――Jimmy Brennan had left them to hob nob with the redoubtable Doyle――and explained the defeat satisfactorily. Spider, flourishing his scorebook, proved, to his own satisfaction at least, that the game had been thrown away by poor generalship. Jimmy scoffed. “Poor generalship nothing! Why, we couldn’t hit that red-headed professional, you chump! Nobody could! We all told Chester he had no business letting them pitch a fellow like that against us! What do you expect? Why, every fellow on their team was twenty years old or more. And at that they only got eleven hits off us!”