After running his eye over the Kingsbridge batting order, Mike Riley, manager of the Bancroft “Bullies,” rolled the black cigar well into the corner of his mouth, lifted himself ponderously to his feet, and walked across toward the bench of the home team. Kingsbridge had taken the field for practice, the visitors having warmed up already. The Northern League, a genuine “bush” organization, had opened two days earlier in Bancroft and Fryeburg, but this was to be the first game of the season in Kingsbridge, a hustling, crude, though ambitious pulp-mill town. As it was Saturday afternoon, when the mills closed down at three o’clock, there was certain to be a big crowd in attendance, double assurance of which could be seen in the rapidly filling grand stand and bleachers, and the steady stream of humanity pouring in through the gates. As Riley approached, a lean, sallow man, with a hawk-beak nose, rose from the home bench and nodded, holding out a bony hand, which, cold as a dead fish, was almost smothered in the pudgy paw put forth to meet it. “Hello, Hutch!” gurgled the manager of the Bullies, with a show of cordiality, although he quickly dropped the chilling hand. “How’s tricks? See you took a fall outer Fryeburg yistidday.” “Yes, we got away with it,” answered the local manager, in a monotonous, dead-level voice, lacking wholly in enthusiasm. “But the ‘Brownies’ are a cinch; nothing but a bunch of raw kids.” “Uh-huh!” grunted Riley, twisting his thumb into the huge watch chain which spanned the breadth of his bulging waistcoat; “that’s right. Still, you didn’t have much leeway to spare, did ye?” “Put it over by one measly run, that’s all. Deever’s arm went on the blink in the seventh, and the greenhorns came near hammering out a win. Locke managed to hold ’em.” “Who is this Locke? I see he’s down to wing ’em for you to-day. Where’d you find him, huh?” “Don’t ask me who he is. I never heard of him before. He’s some green dub of a port-side flinger old man Cope picked up. You know Cope used to play the game back in the days of the Deluge, and he thinks he knows all about it. As he’s chairman of the Kingsbridge Baseball Association, and one of the heaviest backers of the team, folks round here let him meddle enough to keep him appeased. All the same, long as they’ve hired me to manage, I’m going to manage, after I’ve shown ’em how much Cope don’t know about it.” “That’s the talk, Hutch,” chuckled the Bancroft manager. “You’ve got some team, and you oughter be able to make it interestin’ for the rest of us, if the rubes let you have your swing. It was that old fox, Cope, who got Deever away from me arter I had Pat as good as signed, which makes me feel a bit raw, natural. Outside of Deever, and Locke, and a few others, I s’pose the team’s practically your make-up?”