“Oh, you’re a quitter, all right. I reckon old Brennan, of the Hornets, had you sized up about right in the first place.” Carson’s total lack of diplomacy was amazing. Had he tried, with deliberate forethought, to create an unbridgable breach between himself and the left-hander, he could not have chosen a surer course. “The yellow streak always crops up sooner or later in any man who has it,” he went on. “You can pitch, with everything breaking for you, but you lack heart. A little streak of success swelled you up till you began to think yourself a king-pin. You had an idea that you were a better man than Pete Grist, and now――” “Have you finished?” interrupted Lefty, his voice quivering strangely. “I think I’d better go. In about ten seconds more I’ll do something that will put me liable to a fine for assault and battery.” His attitude was that of a man about to attack another when the door opened and Charles Collier entered, followed by a clean-looking, tall young man. Both stopped and stared in astonishment at the tableau. “What――what’s the matter here?” spluttered the owner of the Blue Stockings. “What’s the trouble, Carson?” “Oh, nothing,” answered the manager. “Nothing, only this fellow threatens me with assault when I give him a call-down for his wooden-headed work in that last inning.” “Really, Locke, I’m astonished,” said Collier, beginning to show a touch of anger himself. “You must know Mr. Carson has a right to feel sore.” “But he hasn’t a right to blackguard me. He can do that with other men, perhaps, but he can’t put it over on me.” “I’m simply telling him the cold facts,” the manager hastened to assert. “He thinks himself so high and mighty that no one has a right to say a thing to him. He’s been coddled and spoiled. There’s no surer way to spoil a cub than to feed him taffy. It’s his first season out of the bush, and he’s beginning to reckon himself a second Walter Johnson.” “You’re both excited,” said Collier, in an attempt to be soothing. “Of course, there’s a good reason, the game to-day meaning so much, but it’s better to talk these things over in cold blood. Let’s calm down a little, all of us.” His effort to cast oil on the troubled waters was partly successful, as far as Carson was concerned; for the manager did not wish the magnate to think him a person to lose his temper unreasonably in dealing with any player. “I called him in to talk it over decently,” he said; “but he became nasty right off the reel.” “Any man can talk to me decently,” muttered Lefty, though the resentful light still lingered in his eyes. “That’s right, my boy; that’s the way to feel,” said Collier, rubbing his hands. “It’s too bad we lost the game, but we’ll simply have to fight the harder for the rest of the series. If we break even, we’ll still have it on the Specters. Perhaps Hazelton has been working too hard. I understand Kennedy used him a great deal. Perhaps he needs a rest.”