To victors in the national game this was humiliating. Defeat in an ice cream parlor after triumph on the diamond, was not to be accepted. So they adjourned to the store where a fresh lot of cocoanut cakes had just come in. These cakes were not dry and fly blown like their predecessors. They were fresh, full and well rounded, soft and juicy and nicely browned on top. Wilbur Cobb said he could eat a dozen. But Cyrus, familiar with the deceptive richness of cocoanut cakes, said no boy could eat a dozen, but that he, Cyrus, could eat more than Wilbur. This aroused the sporting instinct of the party and it was arranged, on the spot, that these two champions should compete. The boy who ate the most should pay nothing toward the cost of the cakes. The cakes were two cents a piece. Cyrus won. He ate nine and claimed, with justice, that were it not for the space already occupied by the ice cream and sponge cake he could have eaten still more. Half an hour later these same boys, in passing through Deacon Bisbee's orchard, found the taste of green apples cool and refreshing, for the moment, after the somewhat milky fullness caused by the ice cream and cocoanut cakes. And they partook with reckless freedom. What exclamations of surprise or warning may have passed between those hereditary foes, the ice cream and green apples, when the apples entered those overworked stomachs is not recorded. But the apples conquered as easily as the Barbarians when they entered Rome. For green apples, on occasion, resemble Truth: they are mighty and will prevail. And Cyrus, after starting homeward, began to feel, in that region between his chest and legs, as if he had swallowed a football. The distention was painful. Moreover, as he hurried on, the football seemed growing bigger and harder. Also, it showed signs of life. From his interior came rumblings; the rumblings that precede a storm. All through this central zone, this sphere of distention, pains were starting up, sharp, swift, far reaching. It appeared to him that through his equator lightning played. At first these playful spasms darted here and there in a frolicsome way--like airy nothings. Though somewhat threatening and reverberant they did not alarm him. They seemed well intentioned pains, like harmless gleams of lightning on a summer night. But these spasms became less friendly. They grew sharper and more threatening. Soon, like flashes in a real storm, they were shooting here and there as if rending him asunder; no longer playful, but the kind of lightning that rips the bark from trees, tears bricks from chimneys, and spires from churches. When near his own home this storm within grew fiercer yet, and wilder in its fury. So sharp the agony that he clasped the afflicted territory with both his hands, and leaned for support against a fence. Never before, in his brief career had he realized that the human body could be rent and plowed and torn to shreds without killing the owner.