"Oh, mother," sighed poor Albert. "If you only knew how sick and sore I am for the boys, you would let up on Larry. If you had let me go with the Nine, perhaps I might have helped them out of the defeat. At any rate, it might have been less of a clean-out than it is. Dear me! How cold I am! Cover me up and let me be." With a pang of remorse at having added unwittingly to Albert's sufferings, his mother soothed the sick boy and left him to sorrowful meditations. "And I was fool enough to think that the boys would be able to challenge the Calumets." With these repentant meditations, Albert sunk into a feverish and uneasy sleep. He might have dreamed (perhaps he did) that at that very moment, Alice Howell was looking out into the gloom of the moist summer night and lamenting with bitterness the defeat of "our nine." Next day, when _The Leaf_ came out, and fuller particulars of the game were made known in a despatch from Charlie King, there was nothing to mitigate the gloom of the friends of the Catalpas. Singularly enough, some of the Dean County Nine, who had been among the most enthusiastic "boomers" of the Catalpa Nine, now assumed a most discouraging attitude. They were sure, so they said, that the Catalpas would be defeated all along the line. They had won the game at Sandy Key by a scratch. They had found their true level in Bluford. They would be beaten along the river, for it was well known that the nines in the river towns were far ahead of those in the interior of the state. Something of this talk reached the ears of Al Heaton, who was still suffering from fever-and-ague. He took up his bottle of cholagogue and shook it at his terrified little brother (who had retailed the gossip of the drug store, where he had been sent on an errand), and said, "If you hear any such infernal nonsense as that, down town, Dan, you go and tell Tom Selby that I want him to lick the first fellow that says anything against our nine. Do you mind me?" Little Dan promised stoutly that he would give Tom the message. Whether he did or not, it came to pass that Henry Jackson and Thomas Selby had a discussion, that very night, and that Dr. Selby sent his son home with strict injunctions to cover his face with brown paper and vinegar, while the big-fisted Henry went to bed with a bit of raw beef on his eye.