It was a window to gladden any boy’s heart. Behind the big plate-glass pane were baseball bats of all sorts and prices, masks and protectors, gloves and mitts, balls peeking temptingly forth from their tin-foil wrappers, golf clubs and bags, running shoes and apparel, and many, many other things to send a chap’s hand diving into his pocket.

Sam Craig’s hand was already there, jingling the few coins he had with him, while his gaze wandered raptly over the enticing array. Always, though, it returned to the display of catcher’s mitts.

He was seventeen, a sturdy, brown-haired youth with a well-tanned face from which dark grey eyes looked untroubledly forth. As he stood there in front of Cummings and Wright’s window his feet were planted apart, his attitude seeming to say: “Here I am and here I stay!” And the resolute expression of his face backed up the assertion of his body, so that, had you for any reason wished to move Sam from in front of that window, it would never have occurred to you to try force. If persuasion failed you’d have let him stay there!

You wouldn’t have called Sam handsome, although, judged separately, his features were all good. His nose was straight and short, his eyes thoughtful, his mouth fairly wide and firm, and his chin purposeful. What you might have mistaken for a dimple in the cleft of the chin was in reality only a tiny scar, the result of collision with the point of a newly sharpened pencil caused by a fall on an icy sidewalk many years before. When accounting for that scar Sam was wont to indulge in one of his infrequent jokes. There was, he would tell you, a queer coincidence about it; it had happened in Faber-ary. If, through ignorance of the brand of pencils affected in Amesville, you missed the point of the joke, Sam didn’t explain it. He had evolved that pun all himself, and, not being addicted to airy persiflage, thought rather well of it. Consequently, if you didn’t catch it, Sam thought poorly of your sense of humour and wasted no effort on you. He appreciated jokes when he heard them, but seldom perpetrated one himself. And his appreciation was seldom demonstrative. When others laughed Sam confined himself to a slight lifting of one corner of his mouth and a quizzical expression in his calm grey eyes. When others doubled themselves over and frankly shouted their amusement, Sam merely chuckled.

He was captain of the Amesville High School Baseball Team. When, two days after the final contest with Petersburg, a contest which had resulted in a victory for Amesville and given the Brown-and-Blue the season’s championship, the players had met to choose a leader for the next year, the honour had gone to Sam. Probably had Tom Pollock, whose heady pitching had done more than anything else to win the Petersburg series, been in his final year at high school, the captaincy would have gone to him by acclamation. But Tom was still a junior and it was the custom to elect a senior, and, with Tom out of it, the choice fell naturally on Sam. The school at large was well satisfied. Sam Craig was well liked. It would be stretching a point to say that he was popular, for he was quiet, unassuming, and kept pretty much to himself, and in consequence made friends slowly. Certainly he was not socially popular as was Sidney Morris, nor was he hailed as a hero as was Tom Pollock. But he was liked and respected, and, if he wasn’t called a hero, few failed to realise that his steady, always cool-headed and sometimes brilliant work behind the bat had had more than a little to do with the successful outcome of the season just finished. Sam’s election had been made unanimous, Sam had faltered a much embarrassed speech of acceptance, and the team had disbanded for the summer.

To-day, a bright, warm morning in the latter part of June and just over a week after the election, Sam was seriously debating a momentous question, which was whether to deplete his slender hoard of spending-money for one of the brand-new mitts lying so temptingly beyond the glass, or to save his money and make his old one, a thing of many honourable scars, do him until next spring. If, he told himself, he had a lot of money, there were many things in that window he would buy: a new ball—his own had been several times restitched—a new mask and—yes, by jingo, if he could afford it!—one of those dandy black-tipped bats bearing the facsimile signature of a noted Big Leaguer. More than once his hand came out of his pocket and more than once he half turned away, but each time his fingers went back to the coins again, and, at last, he entered the wide, hospitably open door of the big hardware and sporting-goods store. If he had not done so this story would have been far different, for more than the purchase of a catcher’s mitt resulted from his visit that morning to Cummings and Wright’s.

The front of the store, to the left as you entered, was devoted to the sporting goods. The department was only about two years old, but already it had thrice outgrown its limit, until now it occupied fully a third of the store’s space. There were racks of golf clubs, shelves filled with enticing boxes, handsome show-cases over which a red-blooded boy could hang entranced for a long time, polished counters holding things cunningly displayed, and, between window and cases, an oak-topped desk, at which a boy of about Sam’s age was busily writing. He was a capable-looking fellow, with much red-brown hair and a pair of frank and honest blue eyes and a nice smile. And the smile appeared the minute he glanced up from the letter he was writing and glimpsed Sam over the top of the desk.

“Hello!” he said, jumping up. “Haven’t seen you since they made you captain, Sam. How are you?”

“All right,” said Sam, viewing him, with his quizzical smile, across the bat-rack. “Say, Tom, I want to buy a mitt. How much do I have to pay?”

“Oh, we never tell you that till we’ve shown you the goods,” laughed Tom Pollock. “What you want is one of these, Sam. It’s just like your old one, I think, and you can’t beat it at any price. We’ve got them for more money, but——”

“This is all right, thanks.” Sam thrust a hand into the black leather mitt and thumped it experimentally with his right fist. “How much, Tom?”

“Well, you get the team discount, Sam.” Tom tore a piece of paper from a pad and figured on it. Then he pushed it toward Sam, and Sam read the result, hesitated momentarily, and then nodded.

“All right,” he said, “I’ll take it. You needn’t do it up.”

“Going to wear it home?” asked Tom, with a laugh. “By the way, Morris was talking the other day about getting the Blues together again this summer. You’ll play if we do, won’t you?”

“I guess so. I don’t know yet. I’m looking for a job, Tom. Know anyone who wants to hire a strong, willing chap like me?”

Tom smiled and shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t, Sam.”

“I went over to see Harper at the mills yesterday and got a sort of half promise of a job in the packing-room later. I’m not crazy about that, though. Maybe I’m lazy, but they sure do work you hard over there. I worked in the stock-room one summer and nearly passed out! And hot!”

“Must be,” Tom agreed. “Wish I did know of something, Sam, but——” He paused and glanced toward his desk. Then, “By Jove!” he muttered. “I wonder—Look here, Sam, mind going away from home?”

“How far? Where to?”

“Indian Lake.”

“Where’s that?”

“Up toward Mendon. About a hundred and twenty miles north of here.”

“What’s up there? Say, it isn’t peddling books, is it? I tried that one time and nearly starved to death. Sold four sets of Murray’s Compendium of Universal History and cleared just eleven dollars and eighty cents in a month!”

Tom smiled. “No, it’s—— Here’s—here’s the letter I got this morning. You can read it for yourself. I don’t know why they wrote to me unless this chap has bought goods from us. I haven’t looked him up yet.”

Sam took the brief typewritten letter and read it. It was addressed to “Manager Sporting Goods Department, Cummings and Wright, Amesville, Ohio,” and was as follows:

The letter was typed on a sheet of paper bearing at the top the legend: “The Wigwam; a Summer Camp for Boys, Indian Lake, Ohio. Warren Bradley Langham, A.M., Director.”

Sam read it twice, the second time more thoughtfully. Then he looked questioningly at Tom.

“Interest you?” asked the latter. “If I could take it I’d do it in a minute, Sam.”

“Yes, but this man’s looking for someone a heap older than I am, I guess, Tom, although he doesn’t say anything about age. ‘A young man’; that’s all.”

“Well, aren’t you a young man?”

“I’m young,” agreed Sam, “but I’m no man yet. Anyway, I suppose I couldn’t go so far. There’s just my mother and Nell at home——”

“It would be only about nine weeks, though. The pay isn’t big, but——”

“The pay’s all right, Tom, because I’d be getting my board, you see. The only thing would be leaving my folks alone so long. Still——” Sam thoughtfully fondled the catcher’s mitt.

“You could give him all the references he wanted,” urged Tom.

“Who from?” asked the other doubtfully. “What sort of references?”

“Why, from your minister and your school principal, of course.”

“Oh! Well, what about handling boys? I never handled any. And what about helping to instruct in athletics?”

“He doesn’t say that you must be used to handling them; only that you must know something about it. You do, don’t you?”

Sam looked blank. “Do I?” he asked.

“Of course you do! Any fellow does who has sense and has been a kid himself.” Tom laughed. “You’re too modest, Sam. Throw out your chest! Aren’t you captain of the Amesville High School Nine? As for instructing in athletics, why, all that means is that you’ll have to play ball with the kids and arrange running and jumping stunts and—— Say, you can swim, can’t you?”

“Yes.” Sam seemed quite decided about that.

“There you are, then! You take the letter and write to Mr. Whatshisname right off.”

“I’d like to,” mused Sam. “I’d like the job.”

“Take it then! I’ll drop the man a note and tell him I’ve got just the fellow for him; baseball captain, all-around athlete, fine swimmer, highly moral, and a wonder at handling boys! How’s that?”

“Pack of lies,” replied Sam, with a smile. “You let me take this letter and I’ll think it over to-night and talk to mother and Nell about it and see you in the morning. If they think it’s all right maybe I’ll try for it. Just the same, I know mighty well he’ll think I’m too young.”

“In years, maybe,” said Tom, “but in experience, Sam!” Tom shook his head knowingly. “It’s experience that counts, my boy.”

“You’re a chump,” said Sam. “Mind if I take this, though?”

“Not a bit. Let me know in the morning, Sam. Joking aside, I think it would be a first-rate thing. You’d come back in September simply full of health and able to lick your weight in bear-cats. We’ll miss you, though, if we get the ball team together again. Who could we get to catch for us, Sam?”

“Buster Healey.”

“That’s so, he might do. Anything else I can sell you, Sam?”

“No, I guess not. Did I pay you for this?”

“Not yet. You needn’t if you don’t want to. Let me charge it to you.”

“No, thanks,” said Sam hurriedly, diving for his money. “If I get that place I’ll need this mitt, I guess. I’ve been trying to persuade myself all the morning that I really ought to have it.”

“Another reason for accepting the job, Sam,” said Tom cheerfully. “It’ll justify your extravagance.”

“That’s putting ’em over,” said Sam, with a chuckle. “‘Justify your extravagance!’ Gee, Tom, that’s real language, that is!”

“Yes, right in the groove, Sam. Say, I’d like to get out and pitch a few. What are you doing this evening? Let’s get a ball and see how it feels. Will you? Good stuff! Drop around here at five and get me.”