Babe and Dave exchanged amused glances. “Ginger,” said Babe, “we’d hate to have anything happen to Cecil, but it’s my private hunch that――” Babe coughed deprecatingly――“that if――er――Cecil was _non est_, so to speak, your chance of filling his shoes would be excellent. Am I right, Dave?” Dave grinned as he reached for the ball that Babe was juggling. “Them’s my sentiments, Mr. Linder. Come on and let me warm up the old wing.” With none challenging him, Ginger climbed into the stand and became an interested observer of what followed. Ever and anon his glance strayed from Babe or Dave to the person of Cecil. That Cecil was not the thin youth’s correct name bothered Ginger not at all. He felt that it should have been his name even if it wasn’t, and he disapproved of it thoroughly, just as he disapproved of the bat boy’s lack of interest in his professional duties and his laggard movements when he retrieved a ball. “He’s a dumb-bell,” was Ginger’s verdict. “He ain’t got no license around here, that kid!” As a matter of fact, Cecil was to all appearances quite as old as Ginger, and fully as tall, even if, as happened, he was built on a more niggardly style, and therefor the use of the term “kid” by Ginger was unconscious swank. Afternoon practice ended at last and the field emptied, the players walking back across the football field and past the tennis courts to the big gymnasium whose long windows were crimson in the light of the sinking sun. To the gymnasium also meandered Cicero Brutus Robinson, pushing his wheelbarrow, and Coach Cousins and Manager Naylor, the latter pair in earnest converse. Thither, also, strolled the few students who had by ones and twos joined Ginger Burke in the stand during the progress of the afternoon’s proceedings. Of all those at the field two alone turned townwards at the last. These were Cecil――whose real name, by the way, happened to be William James Conners――and Ginger Burke. They did not go together. Indeed, a full half block separated them on their journey to Warrensburg, and to an observer it might have appeared that that distance was being intentionally maintained by the latter of the two, who was Ginger. Observers, however, were few, for the half mile between school campus and town was at that hour practically deserted, and the few, their thoughts doubtless fixed on the evening meal, paid small heed to the two youths, nor guessed that the first was cast in the rôle of Vanquished and the last in the rôle of Victor in an impending drama. At the border of town Cecil turned to the left. So did Ginger. The next afternoon when Babe swung around the corner of the stand, pulling on his mitten, and turned toward the bucket of practice balls a voice arrested him. “Here y’are!”