He was captain of the Amesville High School Baseball Team. When, two days after the final contest with Petersburg, a contest which had resulted in a victory for Amesville and given the Brown-and-Blue the season’s championship, the players had met to choose a leader for the next year, the honour had gone to Sam. Probably had Tom Pollock, whose heady pitching had done more than anything else to win the Petersburg series, been in his final year at high school, the captaincy would have gone to him by acclamation. But Tom was still a junior and it was the custom to elect a senior, and, with Tom out of it, the choice fell naturally on Sam. The school at large was well satisfied. Sam Craig was well liked. It would be stretching a point to say that he was popular, for he was quiet, unassuming, and kept pretty much to himself, and in consequence made friends slowly. Certainly he was not socially popular as was Sidney Morris, nor was he hailed as a hero as was Tom Pollock. But he was liked and respected, and, if he wasn’t called a hero, few failed to realise that his steady, always cool-headed and sometimes brilliant work behind the bat had had more than a little to do with the successful outcome of the season just finished. Sam’s election had been made unanimous, Sam had faltered a much embarrassed speech of acceptance, and the team had disbanded for the summer. To-day, a bright, warm morning in the latter part of June and just over a week after the election, Sam was seriously debating a momentous question, which was whether to deplete his slender hoard of spending-money for one of the brand-new mitts lying so temptingly beyond the glass, or to save his money and make his old one, a thing of many honourable scars, do him until next spring. If, he told himself, he had a lot of money, there were many things in that window he would buy: a new ball--his own had been several times restitched--a new mask and--yes, by jingo, if he could afford it!--one of those dandy black-tipped bats bearing the facsimile signature of a noted Big Leaguer. More than once his hand came out of his pocket and more than once he half turned away, but each time his fingers went back to the coins again, and, at last, he entered the wide, hospitably open door of the big hardware and sporting-goods store. If he had not done so this story would have been far different, for more than the purchase of a catcher’s mitt resulted from his visit that morning to Cummings and Wright’s.