Turning back, Lefty's eyes followed Jones. The interest and fascination he had felt at first sight of the man returned, taking hold upon him powerfully and intensely. There was something in the solemn face of the mute that spoke of shattered hopes, deep and abiding sorrow, despair, tragedy. He was like one who stood aloof even while he mingled with mankind. Knowing other mutes, many of whom seemed happy and contented, Locke could not believe that the peculiarities of Mysterious Jones were wholly due to resentment against the affliction which fate had placed upon him. Behind it all there must lay a story with perhaps more than one dark page. CHAPTER XI BURNING SPEED As a pitcher, Jones displayed no needless flourishes. His style of delivery was simple but effective. Into the swing of his long arm he put the throwing force of his fine shoulder and sinewy body. Wiley had exaggerated in boasting of the mute's speed; nevertheless that speed was something to marvel at. Norris, the clean-up man of the Grays, who preferred smokers to any other kind, was too slow in striking at the first two pitched to him by Jones. Norris looked astounded and incredulous, and the spectators gasped. "That's his slow one, mates!" cried Wiley. "Pretty soon, when he gets loosened up, he'll let out a link or two and burn a few across. The daisies are growing above the only man he ever hit with the ball." Although Norris was not slow in swinging at the next one, the sphere took a shoot that deceived him, and the mute had disposed of the first hitter with three pitched balls. "And the wiseacres say there are no real heavers left in the bushes!" whooped Cap'n Wiley. Locke was thrilled. Could it be that here was a discovery, a find, a treasure like a diamond in the rough, left around underfoot amid pebbles? The Big League scouts are the grubstakers, the prospectors, the treasure hunters of baseball; ceaselessly and tirelessly they scour the country even to the remote corners and out-of-the-way regions where the game nourishes in the crude, lured on constantly by the hope of making a big find. To them the unearthing of a ball player of real ability and promise is like striking the outcroppings of a Comstock or a Kimberly; and among the cheering surface leads that they discover, a hundred peter out into worthlessness, where one develops into a property of value. More and more the scouts complain that the ground has been raked over again and again and the prizes are growing fewer and farther between; yet every now and then, where least expected, one of them will turn up something rich that has been overlooked by journeying too far afield. The fancy that Mysterious Jones might be one of these unnoticed nuggets set Locke's pulses throbbing.