The great crowd was silent――all save a little bunch led by Peter McLaughlin, who were yelling like lunatics. Elgin, ghastly white, was dumb. It had happened, after all――the thing he feared; this fellow Locke had snatched the opportunity to make him ridiculous before a bush-league crowd. Like poison fire, hatred burned and seethed in Elgin’s heart. He did not hear Bristol raging at him from first. His eyes followed Locke as the latter, rising, pounded the dust out of Kennedy’s Blue Stocking uniform, and turned toward the bench as calmly as if stealing home was a common thing with him. CHAPTER XXXVI STRANGER IS ANNOYED “Gods of our fathers!” said Buster Brown as Locke reached the bench. “You done it, old boy, and you done it slick. I’ll bet that man Elgin goes up so far you can’t see him with the Lick telescope.” As for Elgin, he spent some minutes in an apparent endeavor to steady himself; then, when he pitched again to Collins, Chick smashed out a safe drive. The fusillade of singles and doubles and triples which followed gave the Deers four more runs before Bristol came to realize that Elgin was wholly gone, and sent another man to the mound. “Got his goat! I knew we would!” rejoiced Landlord McLaughlin. “It’s all over but the shouting. Nobody is afeared of the Buccaneers now.” Appalled and silenced by the sudden turn of the game and the amazing and unexpected downfall of their pitching hero, many of the disgusted local spectators crept out of the stand and stole away before the Buccaneers went down to defeat in the last of the ninth, vainly seeking up to the finish to fathom the delivery of Kennedy’s southpaw. When it was all over, Locke lost not a moment in dashing away toward the dressing room――an action which seemed instinctive or born of baseball experience in other days. He was pursued by the shrill cheering of the little bunch of delighted Deering fans. Elgin had vanished. Crushed, bitter, unspeakably humiliated, after his removal from the box he had lost no time in leaving the field. He could not realize that retribution had reached forth its iron hand and touched him again, as it will any and all of us who do wrong and have a conscience that must cause us to suffer. Reaching the dressing room, Lefty had peeled off the old uniform, and was ready for a hasty shower before his teammates arrived. They came in rejoicing, with the possible exception of the jealous pitchers who had failed in the early stages of the game. “Stranger, of the southpaw!” cried Kilgore, as Locke seized a towel and began rubbing himself dry. “You were there when the hour struck. That steal home broke Elgin’s heart. Never saw a man blow up so sudden before. Couldn’t touch him before that; everybody hit him afterward.” Old Jack Kennedy came in. “Let me massage that portside flinger of yours, Stranger,” he urged. “We’ve no regular rubber to look after it, so I’ll have to give it what it needs.”