The disturbance had ceased to be a fight and turned into a riot. The mob was made up of men in the raw, lacking in self-restraint, whose passions were roused to a white heat with very little cause. A woman’s cry of pain, the roar of fury from her escort, and the trouble was started. As they surged against the frail, ornate booth from which tickets were dispensed, they were like a lot of madmen. Not half a dozen out of the crowd knew what the disturbance was about. Blows were rained on the heads and shoulders and backs of friends in their eagerness to get at the man in the very heart of that seething throng, and already two vigorous personal encounters had been started in different corners of the lobby on that account. As he was flung forward against the side of the ticket booth, Lefty felt sudden anger surge up within him. He forgot that Bert Elgin was his enemy, and remembered only that he was battling against odds. And when, a moment later, by some odd trick of chance, he saw the fellow’s face, bruised, battered, blood trickling from a cut on his cheek, and caught a fleeting glance of desperate appeal from Elgin’s terror-stricken eyes, he threw caution to the winds and jumped into the fray. The very size of the mob was in Locke’s favor, but it is doubtful whether he could have done much to help Elgin except for the unexpected giving way of the ticket booth. Slowly it began to sway under the tremendous pressure against one side. A door at the back was burst suddenly open, and the ticket agent dashed forth, clutching the cash drawer in both hands, only to trip and fall headlong, scattering money in every direction, and causing a new diversion. The crashing over of the booth was another, and for an instant Elgin was freed from the clutching hands which had held him prisoner. Lefty darted forward, gripped the man by the shoulders, and dragged him into the angle made by the wrecked booth and one wall of the lobby. Petrified by fear, the fellow sank helplessly to the floor, and Locke had barely time to leap in front of him before the yelling crowd surged forward again. In the second that he stood there waiting, the cub pitcher was conscious of a curious feeling which had come to him once or twice before at moments of great tension on the diamond. It was as if his brain had been wiped with a cold, wet sponge, clarifying his vision, and soothing his raw nerves to an almost uncanny degree. He felt that there could be but one end to the encounter, and yet he was not afraid. He eyed the semicircle of angry faces calmly, coolly, appraisingly, mentally picking out the exact spot on the protruding jaw of the foremost man with which he meant to make connections an instant later. When the fellow went down before his beautiful swinging blow, Lefty felt a thrill of successful accomplishment.