"Excuse these few tears; the memory of that hallowed occasion makes me cry for joy. He did it again, concussing still more shockingly when he sat down. It was simply an utter impossibility for him to hit that magnetized ball with his doctored bat. But, of course, he didn't know what the matter was; he thought I was fooling him with some sort of a new drop I had discovered. The fact that I was passing him the merry cachinnation peeved him vastly. When he got upon his pins and squared away for the third attempt, his face was the most fearsome I ever have gazed upon. He shook his big bat at me. 'One more,' he raged; 'give me one more, and drop flat on your face the moment you pitch the ball, or I'll drive it straight through the meridian of your anatomy!' "Let me tell you now, mate, that Breck was a gentleman, and that was the first and only time I ever knew him to lose his temper. Under the circumstances, he was excusable. I put all my nerve-shattering steam into the next pitch, and, instead of dropping, the ball hopped over his bat when he smote at it. I had fanned the mighty Breckenridge, and the wondering crowd lifted their voices in hosannas. Yet I know they regarded it in the nature of an accident, and not until I had whiffed him three times more in the same game did either Breck or the spectators arrive at the conviction that I had something on him. "After that," said the narrator, as if in conclusion, "I had him eating out of my hand right up to the final and decisive game of the season." Weegman begged the fanciful romancer to tell what happened in the last game. "Oh, we won," was the assurance; "but we never would have if Breck had been wise the last time he came to bat. It was in the ninth inning, with the score three to two in our favor, two down, and runners on second and third. Knowing it was Breck's turn to hit, I was confident we had the game sewed up. But the confidence oozed out of me all of a sudden when I saw the big fellow paw the clubs over to select a bat other than his own. Clammy perspiration started forth from every pore of my body. With any other swat stick beside his own, I knew he was practically sure to drive any ball I could pitch him over the fence. The agony of apprehension which I endured at that moment gave me my first gray hairs. "Although I did not know it at the time, it chanced that Breck had selected the bat of another player who had had it bored and loaded with an ordinary steel rod. This, you can clearly understand, made it more than doubly certain that he would hit the magnetized ball, which would be attracted instead of repelled. Had I known this, I shouldn't have had the heart to pitch at all.