"But after ye've been married as long as we have ye'll not be wantin' to see many ball games. Many's the time I've begged Willie to quit it and get a little house out in the country, with a bit of green grass and maybe a flower bed and a little garden and a porch, and maybe a chicken yard, and let me end my days in peace, out of the sound of crowds and yellin' maniacs. Eighteen year I've ridden with him on cars smellin' of arnica, and with the train dust an' cinders in me eyes an' hair, and I long for peace. Only one season I've missed--'twas when little Mar-rtin was born"---- She snuffled a little and dropped her work to wipe her eyes hastily. It was fifteen years since their only baby had come and gone in a short year, to leave them closer to each other, but each with a heart pain that never ceased. A bell boy interrupted her lecture to bring in a card, and Mrs. Clancy, glancing at it, passed it over to Miss Tabor. "'Tis for you, Betty girl," she said. "And, Mother of Mary, she'll see us this way"---- Betty Tabor sat staring at the card, at first puzzled, then in a panic of mingled emotions. "Tell her to come up," she said. "I'll see her here. Mother Clancy, don't you dare hide." The girl hastily arranged her hair and straightened the room, and a few minutes later, when the boy ushered the visitor into the apartments, she was self-possessed and cool. She arose as the door opened, and started forward to meet her guest, but stopped staring as the color faded from her face and then slowly heightened. "You are Miss Tabor?" inquired the visitor, her voice trembling from excitement and nervousness. "Yes. You are Miss Helen Baldwin; you desired to see me?" The sight of the girl she had seen talking with Kohinoor McCarthy in the hotel parlor, shortly after he joined the club, had shaken her composure. "Oh, Miss Tabor," Helen Baldwin cried, sinking into a chair and giving way to her emotions. "I had to come--I had nowhere else to go--and they told me over the telephone only you and Mrs. Clancy were here and all the men of the team away." "If it is baseball business," replied Miss Tabor, "perhaps you'd better see Mrs. Clancy. I'll call her"---- "No! no! no!" expostulated the girl, drying her eyes. "It is you I must see. Have you heard anything from Mr. McCarthy?" "I have no especial reason to hear from Mr. McCarthy," said Miss Tabor, freezing slowly. "I suppose he is with the team." "He isn't! He isn't!" pleaded the girl. "He has disappeared---- Haven't you seen the papers?" "Mr. McCarthy disappeared! Where? When?" Betty Tabor had forgotten her jealousy in her startled alarm. "He isn't with the team?" "I read it in the papers," sobbed Helen Baldwin. "He was at my house last evening. He left there--and he has disappeared. I hoped you might know." "At your house?" Betty Tabor's alarm struggled with her jealousy. "And he's gone? Let me see the paper."