"Come in!" sang out the dejected one from the chair, without troubling himself to remove his hands from his pockets or lift the cap from his nose. It was Laughlin's big body that filled the doorway. "Hello! Seen anything of Lindsay?" Rob straightened up and brushed off his cap. "No, not since he left the campus. He spoke to me after the game. Come in, won't you?" "I guess not," replied the football man. And then, having verbally declined, he contradicted himself by entering and planting his back against the door. "I wanted to see him about that debate between the Laurel Leaf and the Soule Society. You know we're on a committee to arrange it. Tell him I tried to find him, won't you, when he comes in?" "Yes, I usually see him after dinner." "I went up to see your game for a little while this afternoon," went on Laughlin, settling down into a stout arm-chair opposite Rob. "I couldn't stay long, for I had a job; but I saw some good back-stop work the little while I was there." Rob waited expectant, his eyes on the floor. His pulse was beating a trifle faster, while under the pleasing warmth that stole into his heart the morbid depression had fled. Laughlin was not a baseball authority, but he was a man looked up to and respected and followed not more for his achievement as captain of a winning eleven than for the strength of his personal character. His good opinion was in itself a compliment, all the more desirable as he was known to be a close friend of Poole. "I thought both you and Borland caught well," continued Laughlin; "but while I was there it seemed to me that you were having the best of it. That throw of yours that Reddy was too slow for just took me. Why, the ball looked as if it was shooting along a wire! And how quickly you got it off, too! I don't see how you manage it." "Oh, I don't always do as well as that," protested Owen, beaming with delight, "though I'm usually fairly good at getting a man at second. There's a knack in it, you know, and I've had considerable practice." "Patterson is a kind of dark horse, isn't he? I hadn't heard anything about him until lately." "He's been working with me in the cage all winter," replied Rob, with some complacency. "I knew he was good, but no one else seemed to get on to him. He's improved a lot." "Well, I hope he'll go right on improving. Perhaps it's you two who are going to win the Hillbury game for us!" Alas for the catcher's self-complacency! This grouping of Owen and Patterson and the Hillbury game brought Rob suddenly back from the delightful vision of what might have been to the reality of the present. It wasn't to be Patterson and Owen now, but Patterson and Borland. Owen was relegated to right field, and to catching O'Connell! The sunlight suddenly disappeared from Rob's ingenuous face, and black discouragement replaced it. Laughlin observed him with curiosity.