"There is altogether too much nonsense about this base ball business in Catalpa, Mr. Rough,--excuse me, I forget your other name. It does seem to me as if the people had gone crazy, and the weather so hot too! Excuse me, I don't know anything about what is going on in Galena, no more than a child, I may say, and if any grown people want to begin over again and make children of themselves with playing ball, they have my sympathy." So saying, and flirting off an imaginary fleck of dust from her gown with a spotless handkerchief, Miss Howell resumed her deliberate walk across the bridge. Rough and Ready replaced his cap, and looking after her said, "Sarves me right! I might hev knowed that I should get the worst on it in a talk with her. My grief! But she is a teaser. Has forgot all about the time when she was a young gal, it's so long ago. P'raps she never was young." With this, the old man shouldered his bundle and slowly made his way northward. But Alice had received a telegram from Galena, and as Rough and Ready climbed the slope by the Judge's house, a sunny head was popped from one of its upper windows and Alice's cheerful voice cried, "Oh, Roughy,--excuse me for calling you Roughy, but I'm so glad!--Albert Heaton has telegraphed to me that the Catalpas have made ten runs in the first three innings and the Galenas only one! Isn't that perfectly splendid? Does anybody over in town know anything about it?" [Illustration: "GOOD ARTERNOON, MISS HOWELL. FINE HOT DAY."--Page 95.] "Bless your bright eyes! Miss Ally, no; the whole town's asleep. It's a hot day, you know, and there's nobody stirring. All the farmers are busy with their crops, and the streets are as lonesome as a last year's bird's nest. Ten to one, did you say? By the great horn spoon! I must go back and wake up the folks." Suiting the action to the word, the old man tossed Mrs. Boardman's bundle of sheeting over the fence and made his way back to town as fast as his rheumatic legs would carry him. Half way across, he met Lewis Morris who was on his way over to verify the rumor that he had caught concerning the early success of the Catalpas in Galena. "Hooray for our side!" cried Rough and Ready, exultingly. "I have heard it from the gentle Miss Ally. Our boys have made ten runs in the first three innings, and the Galena fellows have made one--one whole one." "Then I'll turn right around and tell the news in town!" said Lewis, with excitement. "I'll have to stir the people up, for the whole town has gone to sleep, except Dr. Selby, and he was sweating at every pore, as I came by the drug store, for thinking of another defeat for the Catalpas."