Wayne found some twenty-odd fellows in attendance the afternoon of his first appearance. All of them wore a uniform of some description or a portion of one. All, that is, save Wayne, who had given no thought to the matter of attire. Still, he was no worse off than Hoffman, whose regalia consisted of a pair of football trousers and stockings in combination with his usual street clothes. Hoffman was a catcher, and when he donned mask and protector he made a laughable appearance. His first name was Augustus, but he had been known as Gus until he had become a clerk in the office of the gas company. Now he was called “Gas” Hoffman. He was a fairly good catcher and a slugging batsman, as catchers so often are. Practice with the Chenangos was work very largely diluted with play. As a captain, Joe Taylor was anything but a martinet. Wayne, recalling his own strict discipline when he had captained his school team the year before, decided that Taylor erred on the side of laxity. Perhaps, however, the Chenango captain knew his business, for there was a very evident disinclination on the part of most of the candidates to take their occupation seriously. They were there for fun and meant to have it. Wayne had wondered that Arthur Pattern had not tried for the team until Arthur had explained that his playing on a semi-professional team in New Hampshire one summer had taken him out of the amateur class and that since the Chenango was a purely amateur club he would have no right there. The fellows at the field that afternoon averaged nineteen years of age. One or two were older, among them “Gas” Hoffman and Captain Taylor. Gas was twenty-three and Taylor twenty-one. To even the average, young Despaigne, who played shortstop very cleverly, was only seventeen, and Collins, a fielder, was scarcely older. Wayne suffered for lack of baseball shoes that day and made up his mind to buy a pair at the first opportunity. There was about twenty minutes of fielding and batting practice and then two teams were chosen and six innings were played. Wayne was put at third base on the second-string nine and made a good impression in spite of his lack of practice. At bat he failed ignominiously to hit safely even once, but, having waited out the pitcher in one inning, he got to first and gave a very pretty exhibition of base-stealing a moment later, reaching the coveted bag simultaneously with the ball but eluding it by a dexterous hook-slide that kept him far out of reach of the baseman’s sweep.