“Who did it, Dick?” asked Phil, later in the day, when the flag had been taken down, good-bys said, and the dormitories, emptied of those who were fortunate enough to be within easy distance of home, had ceased to resemble an anthill in its busy season.

“I don’t know,” replied Dick. “I can guess, and that’s all.”

“The fellows say Curtis and Sands were at the bottom of it. It seems rather silly business for such big fellows, doesn’t it?”

Dick laughed. Two seasons of rubbing against the varieties of Seaton life had not shaken Poole’s respect for proprieties or affected his natural dignity.

“What a venerable person you are! Sometimes you seem the oldest of us all. How old are you, anyway?”

“I’m fifteen and a half,” replied Poole. “I wish I seemed old to Sands,” he added mournfully. “Perhaps he’d give me a little better show if I did. He always acts as if I were a child.”

“Never mind how he acts,” said Melvin. “Make him take you whether he wants to or not. Study your game, and hang on till the last gun is fired.”

“I can’t very well hang on after he’s kicked me off,” said Phil, with a melancholy smile.

“Has he done that?”

“Not yet; it may be coming, though, when practice begins after vacation. The Coach will be here then.”

The senior leaned back in his desk chair with hands clasped behind his head, and gazed long and vacantly out of the window at the bare limbs and solid gray-brown trunks that lined the distant street. “You’ll make it sometime, I’m sure, Phil, for I think you have it in you; and if you want it hard enough, you’ll put it through. The only question in my mind is whether it will come this year or later. You have to get a start, and the start often depends on luck. I got on the football team the first year through a lucky chance.”

“You had something better than luck to help you,” rejoined Phil. “You had ability and brains.”

“Luck and energy were all I had to start with,” returned Dick, modestly. “The ability came gradually from experience, and I don’t think I used my brains until I took up kicking.”

Both were silent for a time, each intent on his own thoughts. Then the older boy began again.

“Look here, Phil, I’ll tell you something that I’m beginning to get hold of which isn’t to be got from any book, and yet is a fundamental principle of athletics. In every exercise that requires a skilled motion or great speed, you’ll find that there’s a peculiar kind of final snap or twist that gives the motion or the speed; and you’ve got to master this if you want the highest results. Without it a strong man is powerless, and with it a weak man often slips to the front. In punting it’s the final jerk of the knee which I had so much trouble in learning—don’t worry, I’m not going to begin on that again. In golf it’s a snap of the wrist; in shot-putting, of the arm and shoulder; in pole vaulting of the waist and arms,—and so on through the list. In gymnasium feats the same principle works. Just watch Guy Morgan when he does the ‘giant swing’ on the horizontal bar, and you’ll see that he gives a sudden jerk with his shoulders when he’s about three-quarters round, that carries him up to the top of the swing like a hawk rising at the end of a swoop. Now in baseball, I believe, that snap is hidden somewhere in every good throw and in every straight swing of the bat. Discover it and master it, and you won’t need to worry about making the school nine.”

“I suppose that explains how some of these fine hitters seem to strike easily and yet make the ball fly,” remarked Phil.

“Can’t you get a lot of batting practice this vacation, and so start in a little ahead when the others get back? I’ll pitch for you, if you want me to; it will be good exercise.”

Phil smiled: “I’m afraid you wouldn’t be of much use. I ought to have some one who really knows how to pitch.”

“That’s a fact,” rejoined Melvin, “and I can’t pitch at all. Couldn’t we scare up some one?”

“Did you ever hear of a man named Rowley, who used to play professional ball? He works in one of the factories now. I believe he was something of a pitcher before he broke down. Why shouldn’t I be able to get him to pitch for me?”

“Just the man!” cried Dick, briskly. “Let’s hunt him up right off.”

The boys finally succeeded in locating the residence of the Rowley family, and caught their man smoking his after-supper pipe before the door. He was a sallow person, with a goodly length of arms and legs strung to a lanky body by stout muscle-covered joints.

“Are you Mr. Jack Rowley, the ball-player?” asked Phil.

The man removed the pipe from his mouth and looked at the boys with interest. He admitted that he was Jack Rowley, but denied being a ball-player. He had been once, but wasn’t any longer.

“You could still pitch a little, couldn’t you?” asked Dick.

“A couple of innings, perhaps,” answered Rowley, “but I’m not up to a game. I’ve been out of it these three years. What d’ye want of me?”

“I want some practice in batting,” said Phil, “and I thought I might be able to get you to pitch for me half an hour a day for the next week.”

Rowley shook his head. “I’m in the mill all day from seven till six, except for the hour’s nooning, which I want to myself and to eat my dinner in peace and quiet.”

“How about after supper?” questioned Phil.

“It’s dark after supper,” grumbled Rowley, through the pipe-stem.

Phil looked at Dick in discouragement. Suddenly his face lighted up. “Why not before breakfast?” he said; “say from six to half-past? It’s only for a week, and I’ll pay you anything that’s reasonable.”

“Will you buy me a new arm to pitch with?” asked Rowley, with a rueful grin. “Mine is all wrenched to pieces with them cussed drops.”

“Isn’t there enough of it left to give this boy a week’s batting practice?” asked Melvin, anxious to secure the opportunity. “I’ll shack the balls.”

“There mightn’t be many to shack,” said Rowley, with a gleam of fun in his eyes.

He pondered some time, puffing vigorously, and shooting an occasional side glance at the waiting boy. “Well, I’ll try it once,” he said finally, “but mind ye, if me arm hurts, I’ll not do it, no,—not for ten dollars an hour. I was laid up a year with it once, and that’s enough for me.”

The boys had to turn out early next morning to keep their appointment at the practice ground, and they more than half expected to find that they alone kept it. But Rowley was there. He received them as before, with his pipe between his lips, but after a few throws into the net, he put the pipe away. As he warmed up, his thoughts returned to old channels, and with his shoots and drops he interlarded anecdotes of games and bits of shrewd counsel. He was unquestionably wild that first morning, and Phil’s practice was rather in waiting and dodging and facing courageously, than in picking out good balls.

“I’ll steady down in a day or two,” he said, as he pulled on his coat at the end of the half hour. So the boys knew that he had not thrown up the job.

The next day the pitching was better and the batting worse. It was not so easy to watch the ball when it took such sudden unexpected dives! Still Phil occasionally met them fairly, and each square hit gave him courage to wait for another. After a time Jack suggested trying bunts. “It’s a great thing for a left-hander to be able to bunt,” he said. “He has twice the chance to make first on one that a right-hander has.” And Phil tried this, too, with questionable success.

Day followed day and Rowley improved more than Phil, so that the progress of the latter did not show itself. “I’d like to have you for a month,” said the pitcher, as they settled their account at the end of the week. “I could teach you to bunt in a few lessons, and it’s a great thing to be a good bunter.”

Phil laughed. “You’ve said that fifty times. I want to be able to do something besides bunt. All the same, I’d like to have you pitch for me once or twice a week, Rowley. Can you do it?”

“Sure,” said Rowley, “but take my advice and learn to bunt.”

The boys came trooping back for the final stretch of the year. The baseball candidate went to work out-of-doors. As the field was still soft, the out-fielders had for the first time the chief attention of coach and captain; and Phil was sent chasing flies and long hits with the rest. He fared as well as the others perhaps, though his “eye” was not yet to be trusted, and he was nervous with an intense desire to do well. They all came up for batting practice later on, and Phil found the pitcher rather an easy mark after facing Rowley. He cracked out several easy chances in what seemed to him a thorough sort of way, but, to his disappointment, neither Sands nor Coach Lyford appeared to notice them.

That same day Melvin and Varrell walked down from their first out-door practice together.

“How about the safe robbery, Wrenn?” said Melvin, peering laughingly into his companion’s face. “It seems to me I haven’t heard much about that of late. Given it up as a bad job, haven’t you?”

“No, I haven’t,” replied Varrell, composedly. “I’m just waiting.”

“It’s easy enough to wait; I could do that myself. I thought you were going to do something.”

“I have done one thing,” rejoined the imperturbable Wrenn.

“What?”

“I’ve proved that the passage door can be opened by prying with the ice-chipper.”

“How?”

“By opening the door with it myself. You know that room wasn’t meant for a permanent office when it was first enclosed. The whole partition is more or less shaky.”

“I don’t see that that helps you much. You have no evidence against any particular person.”

“The evidence will come in time. That’s what I’m waiting for.”

“Where from, I’d like to know?”

“Perhaps from Eddy. He must know more than he’s told. He certainly lied to Grim and Moore.”

“I don’t believe Bosworth would trust anything to a little fool like him,” said Dick. “Eddy apparently told Bosworth the combination and then, when the news of the robbery came out, was too scared to acknowledge it. Having once lied, he would stick to it, because to such a little morally flabby idiot it would seem the easiest course.”

“And even if he confessed, it wouldn’t help matters,” went on Varrell, following out the argument, “for Bosworth would deny that he had paid any attention to what Eddy said, and there would be the end of it. No, we’ve got to get the information from Bosworth himself.”

“Are you going to tackle him with it outright?” demanded Dick, perplexed.

Varrell snorted in disgust.

“What a question! Of course I’m not. I’m going to wait, as I said before. This Bosworth lives in Cambridge. His mother keeps a boarding-house for students. He’s been thrown with these fellows, some of them probably fast men with plenty of money, who have patronized him and unintentionally filled his head with all sorts of wrong ideas. He’s learned to play poker and like fine clothes and spend money on himself and feel that to have money is to be happy and to be without it is to be wretched. Whatever he had left from the plunder of the safe he probably spent during the vacation. He told Marks of several things he’d done that must have taken money,—and he’ll soon be in need of more. This is an expensive term for those of us who have good allowances, with subscription duns and summer clothes to buy and all sorts of temptations to spend money. It will be harder for him, as he’ll come back without much cash, and will want to guzzle soda-water, and smoke, and perhaps try to worm himself into some society. I know such a fellow like a book. He’s got to have money, and he’ll get it dishonestly if he can’t honestly. His success with the safe will encourage him to something else.”

“To what?” asked Dick.

“How do I know? That’s what I’m waiting to see.”