With one man down, Lefty took the next two batters in hand, and buried the whooping, aggressive Boobs in short order. The first man he fanned, and the next he forced into putting up a little pop foul back of first base, which ended the game. Coming down from the park, half an hour later, Locke was surrounded and pursued by at least twenty youngsters, who openly discussed him for his own ears to hear, all agreeing that as a pitcher Christy Mathewson had nothing on this great southpaw. Ordinarily this would have provided no small amount of amusement for Lefty; now, however, he scarcely seemed to hear or see any of them as he strode along, his expression one of troubled thought. Was it possible that he was beginning to realize that his name was not Robert Stranger, and that, for all his protestations that he had never played baseball before coming to Deering, he had a past upon the diamond? At any rate, he moved like a shadow among those admiring people of Deering――among them, but not of them. Sunday followed――Sunday on Kennedy’s farm. Old Jack made a suggestion about church, but Locke shook his head, saying he did not care to attend. And all day long he wandered restlessly about the farm, or sat idly on the veranda, declining to read, apparently striving to think――to think. “The poor boy’s worried, Jack,” said Mrs. Kitty Malone. “It upsets me complete to see him this way.” “Kit, I never thought the sight of any man would upset you again,” returned her brother. “I thought you’d had enough of them.” “So I have. But this is different――this case. He’s only a boy. I feel like a mother toward him.” “Yes, you do!” laughed Kennedy. “Oh, yes, you do――not. Why, you’re not so much older, Kit――not more than ten year, and he really is almost a boy.” “But ten year,” she said sadly. “If ’twere t’other way ’twould be different. Do you know what’s on his mind, Jack?” “I’m not sure,” he replied; “but mebbe I could make a guess. He had a girl once, if I remember right.” “Once!” she exclaimed. “I’m jealous this minute. But, then, I don’t see how he could help having twenty of them. What’s become of her?” Kennedy shook his head. “Ask me!” he said. “There’s a whole lot about Lefty Locke that I’m guessin’ at.” “Lefty Locke? He calls himself Stranger.” “A man can call himself anything he pleases; there’s no law against it.” “It’s a real pitcher he is, Jack?” “Sis, you should have seen him pitch against Bristol’s Bucks! If you want to, you’ll have a chance to see him pitch against them Monday. I’m going to put him in. You should have seen him pitch for the Blue Stockings. They lost the best man on the staff when they lost him, but Al Carson is such a pig-headed chump that he won’t acknowledge it. He’d rather lose the pennant than own up that he’d made a mistake.”