Lefty submitted to the massaging of his strong, free-swinging left arm and shoulder. “How did you happen to try that steal to the plate?” asked Kennedy, as he worked over the man’s arm. “I don’t know,” was the answer. “Seems to me I’ve done it before, but of course I haven’t, never having played baseball.” “You have played baseball――take it from me,” said Kennedy. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten about it, but you’ve played the game aplenty.” “Anyhow,” said Locke, “something told me to go home when I saw Elgin getting a bit careless in the box. I knew it would tie things up if I scored, and it might put him off his pins. If I failed, we’d still have another chance in the first of the ninth inning. Before I knew it I was streaking to the plate. Of course it was luck.” “Of course there was some luck about it,” agreed old Jack; “but it took nerve and judgment. If you’d failed, everybody would have handed you the laugh.” “That wouldn’t have disturbed me,” said Locke. “A man can’t do much if he’s never going to try anything for fear he’ll be laughed at if he fails. Sometimes a sense of humor helps; other times it hurts.” “That’s philosophy,” said Kennedy. “Now you’re talking like yourself, son.” Indeed, at that moment Locke appeared like the fine, forceful, jovial fellow Kennedy had known him to be, having lost much of his shadowy gloom and all that peculiar style of talk which had bothered old Jack not a little. Locke was fully dressed and ready to leave when a prematurely corpulent young man arrived at the dressing-room door and inquired for Phil Hazelton. “Nobody by that name here,” he was told. “Wait a minute,” called Kennedy, who had heard the words. “Who’s that? The young doctor who follows up the Bucks? I’ve seen him over in Deering.” “My name is Hetner,” said the man at the door. “I’m Doctor Wallace Hetner, and I’d like to have just a word with my old college friend, Hazelton. Perhaps he doesn’t call himself by that name in baseball. Perhaps he calls himself Locke. And I see by the score sheet that he was down to-day as Stranger.” Lefty turned and stepped to the door to face the speaker. “You must mean me,” he said. “I’m the Stranger who pitched for the Deers.” “And you’re Phil Hazelton,” said Doctor Hetner. “I wondered what had become of you, Hazelton. You were on the train with me when the smash came. You were on that very smoking car. I spoke to you a short time before the car jumped the track. Don’t you remember?” Locke shook his head. “It’s a singular thing,” he said, “but people get me mixed up with someone else. They persist in thinking I’m some other person. My name is Robert Stranger, pal. I’m a diamond cutter by trade. My health ain’t just what it should be, and a pill slinger advised me to get outdoors somewhere and work on a farm. That’s how I happen to be here.”