Consider Joe a moment; he is not the humblest figure in this chronicle: a tall, lithe young fellow, unmistakably Irish-American, with a bang of black hair across his forehead, and a humorous light in his dark eyes. His grin is captivating but we are conscious also of shrewdness in his face. (It took sharp sprinting to steal second when Joe had the ball in his hand!) He is trimly dressed in ready-made exaggeration of last year’s style. His red cravat is fastened with a gold pin in the similitude of crossed bats supporting a tiny ball, symbol of our later Olympian nine. You may, if you like, look up Joe Denny’s batting record for the time he pitched in the Pennsylvania State League, and you will thereby gauge the extent of New York’s loss in having bought his “release” only a week before he broke his wizard’s arm. Joe, at ease on the table, viewed Mr. Wayne Craighill critically, but with respect. In his more tranquil moments Joe spoke a fairly reputable English derived from the public schools of his native hills, but his narrative style frequently took colour of the idiom of the diamond, and under stress of emotion he departed widely from the instruction imparted by the State of Pennsylvania on the upper waters of the Susquehanna. “Say, the Colonel’s due on the 4:30.” Wayne straightened himself unconsciously and his glance fell upon the desk on which lay an accumulation of papers awaiting his inspection and signature. “Who said so? I thought he wasn’t due till to-morrow.” “I was up at the house when Walsh telephoned for the machine to go to the station. I guess the Colonel wired Walsh.” “I’d like to know why Walsh couldn’t have done me the honour to tell me,” said Wayne sourly. “I guess Walsh don’t know you’re back. They asked me in the front office a while ago and I told ’em I guessed you were up at the Club; and then I came in here through the Colonel’s room to see if you had stayed put.” Craighill was silent for a moment, then he asked: “How long was I gone this time, Joe?” He addressed young Denny without condescension, in a tone of kindness that minimized the obvious differences between them. “It was Wednesday night you broke loose, and this is Saturday all right.” “I must have bumped some of the high places--my head feels like it. How about the newspapers?” “Nothing doing! Walsh fixed that up all right. You see it was like this: you made a row on the steps of the Allequippa Club when I was trying to steer you home. I’d been waiting on the curb with a machine till about 1 A. M., and some of the gents followed you out of the Club and wanted you to come back and go to bed; and when a couple of cops came along, properly not seeing anything, and not letting on, you must up and jump on one of ’em and pound his head. Then the other cop broke into the fuss, and there was a good deal doing and I got you into the machine and slid for the Country Club and got a chauffeur’s bed in the garage and sat on you till you went to sleep.”