to accompany us as scout and pilot. The arrangement was ideal. Joe knew the best channel--so I took it for granted,--which would leave me nothing to do but trail his wake and manage my new and untried boat. Holt's hundred and eighty pounds in the stern would give that ballast just where I needed it. The lack of serious responsibilities would give us a chance for a good old yarn while, watching my chances, I could pick favourable riffles and pay back my friend in his own coin the debt of twenty years standing. It was a great disappointment to find no one of my old baseball team-mates still in Livingston. Jack Mjelde, Captain and second-baseman, had been killed in an electrical accident. That was a typically capricious trick of Fate. As I recall things now, Jack--a family man with a real job, and a legitimate resident of Livingston--was about the most worth preserving of the lot of us. Ed Ray had dropped in and out of town on brake-beams every now and then, and so had two or three others. Paddy Ryan, pitcher and the gentlest mannered of us all, was believed to be still a bar-keeper--somewhat surreptitiously of course. Riley, the never more than semi-Keeley-cured catcher, had last been heard of over Missoula way, and looking rather fit now that there was a more or less closed season on his favourite quarry--mauve mice. And so it went. A score or more of old-timers who had seen me play turned up at the hotel, but only one of these brought a real thrill. That was a husky chap of about thirty, who said he had been admitted to the park once for retrieving a home-run I had swatted over the fence in a game against Anaconda. "Gosh, how you could line 'em out, boy," volunteered some one, and grunts of assent ran back and forth through the crowd. That was all very nice, of course; but I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I could have been quite sure that none of them had been present the time we played Red Lodge on Miner's Union Day. This was the morning after the Fireman's Ball of the night before. I believe I could _see_ the ball all right. Indeed, that was just the trouble. I saw too many balls and couldn't swing my bat against the right one. I struck out three times running. The fourth time up I connected for a mighty wallop, but only to get put out through starting for third base instead of first!