WHEN that villain, O'Malley, goes to bat to-morrow, pitch the ball ten feet over his head. No matter where it goes I'll call a 'strike.'”

It was Dennis Mulcahey who spoke; the man most feared by Gwendolin O'Toole. He was to be the next day's umpire, and as he considered how securely his rival was in his grasp, he laughed the laugh of a fiend.

Dennis Mulcahey, too, loved the fair Gwendolin, but the dear girl scorned his addresses. His heart was bitter; he would be revenged on his rival.

“You've got it in for the mug!” replied Terry Devine, to whom Dennis Mulcahey had spoken. Devine was the pitcher of the opposition, and like many of his class, a low, murdering scoundrel. “But, say! Denny, if you wants to do the sucker, why don't youse give him a poke in d' face? See!”

“Such suggestions are veriest guff,” retorted Dennis Mulcahey. “Do as I bid you, caitiff, an' presume not to give d' hunch to such as I! A wild pitch is what I want whenever Marty O'Malley steps to the plate. I'll do the rest.”

“I'll t'row d' pigskin over d' grand stand,” said Terry Devine as he and his fellow-plotter walked away.

As the conspirators drifted into the darkness a dim form arose from behind a shrub. It was Marty O'Malley.

“Ah! I'll fool you yet!” he hissed between his clinched teeth, and turning in the opposite direction he was soon swallowed by the darkness.