Lynton’s perversity had secured for her the compliment of being looked on by Amesville as second only to Petersburg as a worthy foeman. Sometimes Lynton won by virtue of her enemy’s errors, caused by over-eagerness. Sometimes she won by sheer luck, as when, two years before, with the score 7 to 6 in Amesville’s favour in the ninth inning, the Amesville pitcher had let down long enough to allow two tail-enders to get to third and second bases, and then, with two down and two strikes on the batsman, had pitched a wild ball that had sent the batter staggering away from the plate and had seen in amazement the ball hit the shouldered bat, bound away to just behind first base, and land fair a yard beyond anyone’s reach while the runners crossed the home plate with enough tallies to take the game! That contest had become famous in Amesville legends, and nowadays it was the usual thing for someone to shout at a crucial moment in a game: “Don’t hit his bat, Tom!” Amesville had remained sore over that game for a whole year and had only regained her composure when, the following spring, she had tied the first Lynton contest and then routed her enemy in the second struggle by the generous score of 17 to 6! This year Amesville appeared a trifle less confident of winning the two battles, although she perhaps secretly expected to do so. At all events, she took no chances in that first game. Tom Pollock started in the box and remained until the seventh inning, at which time Amesville had a satisfactory lead of four runs. Toby Williams relieved him, and Toby had an off-day if ever pitcher had! For two innings he escaped real punishment, although one of several passes resulted in the eighth in a tally for Lynton. But in the first half of the ninth, with the score then 8 to 5 in the home team’s favour, Toby simply laid down in the traces. Afterwards some of the blame was laid at the door of coach and captain, for it was said that Jack Speyer, who was put in Sam Craig’s place behind the bat in the eighth, showed poor judgment. In any case, after getting through the next to the last session at the expense of but one run, Toby went to the bad completely. Twice, when the batter had three balls and no strikes against him, Speyer and Toby met in consultation between plate and mound and Lynton howled and hooted. In that disastrous ninth Toby gave two passes, hit a batsman and was punished for four hits with a total of six bases! Before Carl Moran could even peel his sweater off preparatory to warming up the mischief was done. When Carl did go in the score was tied and there were runners on second and third, with two men out. The only wonder was that Lynton had managed to score so few runs! Carl did his best, which was not a very good best, but he was facing a desperate situation and was plainly nervous. The next batter hit safely past Hale and two more runs were scored. Then Carl gave a pass, just to show that Toby was not