there by an invisible string! Gloom and disgust possessed the stands! The sun was gone behind the hills in the west when the eleventh session opened and the heat of the afternoon was giving place to the coolness of evening. Coats which had laid across knees for ten long innings were donned again. Here and there a spectator arose, unwillingly, and, with long backward looks, took himself homeward. Cotton was pitching fine ball now and Doncaster had never a look-in during her half of the eleventh. But neither had Harrisville in her portion. If Cotton was going well, so was the rival twirler, and the nearest thing to a hit that either team evolved was a palpable scratch that placed Cross on first, from which sack he failed to move. In the twelfth the Billies caused consternation by working Cotton for a pass and advancing a man to third on a sacrifice and an error by LaCroix, playing second. But two strike-outs followed and averted calamity. Manager Milburn’s line-up was a rather patched affair by now, for he had staked all on that tenth inning crisis. Fawcett started off by flying out to left. O’Neill hit for one. LaCroix fouled out to catcher. O’Neill stole on the second pitch to Linton and was safe. Linton fouled twice behind third base, each time barely escaping being caught out, and then, with two strikes and two balls against him, waited and walked to base. With two on and Cotton at bat anything might happen--or nothing. For a while it looked like nothing, for Cotton, in spite of his eagerness to hit and the wild and weird manner in which he swung his bat around his head, for all the world like a joyous lad twirling a shillalah at Donnybrook Fair and daring an adversary to step up and have his head broken, the Billies’ pitcher managed to sneak them across in unexpected places until the score was two-and-two. Cotton was losing his temper now, and Wayne could hear Steve Milburn barking at him from the bench. A third ball went past. The bleachers stormed and railed at the Doncaster pitcher, Cotton squeezed his bat harder than ever and did a little dance in the box. The Billies’ twirler wound up, shot his arm forward and the ball sped to the plate. Perhaps Cotton mistook the ball for the pitcher’s head. At all events, he tried hard to break his bat on it and came near to doing it. Off whizzed the ball and off sped Cotton. But the long fly, while it started fair, soon broke to the left, and Cotton, pounding the turf between first and second with head down and legs twinkling, was stopped in his mad career and headed back to the plate. The audience groaned its disappointment and sat down again. Then an unlooked-for event occurred. Wayne was apprised of it first when a wild burst of delight broke from his neighbours in the bleachers. At the plate Cotton was walking sadly toward the bench, the umpire, mask off, was shouting something that Wayne couldn’t hear for the noise about him and a new figure strode to the batter’s box.