The final game on the gridiron had been played, and the Westfield Varsity had won. Long hair was sacrificed to the barber’s shears, dirty suits and leather pads were laid away, and nose guards and helmets put upon the shelf until another fall. Then began a winter of more or less discontent, according as the lads liked or disliked study. Our heroes were about the average, neither better nor worse. * * * * * There was rather a more balmy feeling to the air than had been noticed in some time. The snow had gone, and the grass that had been brown and sear was beginning to take on a tinge of green. Cap Smith, mending a rip in his big catching mitt looked out of the window, yawned and stretched lazily. “Too much study?” asked Bill. “No, I think I’m getting the spring fever. How about you, Pete?” “Same here. I’m tired of this measly Latin. Say, where is that new mushroom bat I bought the other day?” “I don’t know, unless Whistle-Breeches borrowed it to prop his window up with. Jove! but it’s getting warm!” “I like his nerve if he has,” and Pete made a hasty journey to the room of the lad at the end of the corridor, returning with the stick in question, and followed by the culprit himself. “I didn’t know it was a _new_ bat,” said Whistle-Breeches in extenuation. “Besides there won’t be any baseball for a month.” “There won’t, eh?” retorted Bill. “I’ll bet they’ll have the cage up in the gym this week.” “I heard something about it,” admitted Cap. “Mr. Windam, the coach, said he’d soon be on the lookout for candidates.” “Think we have any show?” asked Pete eagerly. “I guess so. We had a good record from home.” “That doesn’t count so much here,” was the opinion of Whistle-Breeches. “I’d like to make the nine, but I’m afraid I won’t.” “Where do you play?” asked Cap, sizing up his chum with a professional eye. “Right field.” “Then you bat some?” “I did a little better than two eighty-nine last year,” was the modest answer. “Then you ought to get in all right. Now I want to catch, and Bill wants to pitch,” went on Cap, “and—” “And I’d like to fill it at short,” interrupted Pete. “And that’s the trouble,” came from Bill. “It would look too much like a family affair if we were all on the nine.” “Oh, I don’t know,” said Whistle-Breeches. “If they want good players—” “They’ll take us,” declared Cap with a laugh. “Well, even if we can’t make the Varsity, we’ll have some games. I wish the ground would dry up a bit, so we could get out and have some practice.” Bill leaned forward and looked from the window, which gave a view of a path leading to the gymnasium. On a post not far away from the building was a bulletin board, and at that moment Forbes Graydon, captain of the Varsity nine, was tacking something up on it. “Wonder what that is?” asked Bill idly. “Let’s go look,” proposed Pete. “Come on, Whistle-Breeches.”