"Oh, I only said that Bill is to be catcher in the new nine. I was in Jase Elderkin's store, just now, and he allowed that Bill would take anything the boys had a mind to give him. But Charlie King and Ben Burton said that Larry Boyne wouldn't want to serve as catcher, if he did go into the new nine, and that Bill would be the next best man, and Larry would go on one of the bases. Say first base. How's that, think ye?" "I don't like it," said Lewis, "but we'll see what we shall see. I am willing, so far as I am concerned, to leave it all to Larry. He has got a level head, and don't you forget it." "Right you are," responded Cyrus, as, giving the reins to his impatient team, he rattled noisily down the river road. As he passed Judge Howell's handsome house, Lewis looked up and caught the glance of Miss Alice, who was sitting in the window-seat, curled up on a big cushion, and scribbling something that seemed to puzzle her very much. The girl wrote, re-wrote, erased and wrote again. Finally she held her work, somewhat blurred and scratchy as it was, at arm's length, and said in soliloquy, "I really think that is the very best thing that could be done! But I wonder what I put that young Irishman's name at the head of the list for?" With a faint pink tint suffusing her cheek, she drew a line through the name at the top of the page, wrote it at the bottom, and then laughed softly to herself. Just then Lewis Morris rode by, gallantly taking off his cap as he passed the house. If Mr. Lewis could have looked over Alice's shoulder, he would have read this list of names: S. Morrison, L.F. Neddie Ellis, C.F. Charlie King, P. Hart Stirling, 2d B. John Brubaker, R.F. Hiram Porter, 1st B. Ben Burton, S.S. Wm. Van Orman, 3d B. Lawrence Boyne, Catcher. Alice concealed the paper in her pocket, as she saw her father drive up the road from the bridge. Then she took it out again with a pretty little air of determination, saying to herself. "My papa knows that I am so much interested in the new nine scheme, why shouldn't I tell him that this is what I think about the re-organization?" So, when the Judge, that night, drew his motherless child to his knee, she brought to him the list of players which she had made out. "Perhaps you will think it mannish in me, papa," she said, "but I have made out a list of the players in the new Catalpa nine. I have a whim that this is about the way they will be placed." The Judge took the crumpled and blurred paper, and running his eyes over it, said, "That is a good cast, as they say in the theaters, Alice; but don't you think you are a little premature? The new nine is not yet formed, and until they begin to practice they can hardly tell where each player should be placed. I don't pretend to know much about the game; not so much as my little daughter does, for example, but isn't that about the way it strikes you?"