It was awfully nice to have Sidney home again. Tom didn’t realise until now how much he had really missed him. And Mrs. Morris, too; and Mr. Morris to a lesser extent. They were all three sunburned and healthy-looking and very glad to be back once more. Mr. Morris left the carriage at his office and the others went out to Alameda Avenue together, Sidney rattling off a history of the summer with sparkling eyes, appealing to his mother every other minute for confirmation. In a lapse of Sidney’s chatter, Mrs. Morris told Tom how disappointed they had been when he had written that he could not visit them. “Sidney felt so badly,” she said, “that he immediately went out and tried to drown himself!”

Sidney grinned. “The canoe went over,” he explained. “I was only about two or three hundred feet from shore and Mumsie was on the porch and she wouldn’t come out for me!”

“But what did you do?” questioned Tom with wide eyes.

“Oh, I sat on the end of the overturned canoe and worked in with my feet. I’d lost the paddle. The trouble was there was a breeze off shore and it took me nearly half an hour to get back. And Mumsie just sat there and watched me!”

“But weren’t you frightened?” asked Tom, turning bewilderedly to Mrs. Morris.

“Oh, no; I knew he could swim if he had to. And I thought it would teach him a lesson and make him more careful.” She laughed that little soft laugh of hers. “Sid was so angry when he got back that his teeth chattered!”

“I guess your teeth would have chattered if you’d had to sit on the bottom of that canoe for half an hour with the wind blowing on you?” Sidney grumbled. “I call it a mean trick, don’t you, Tom?”

“I think——” Tom hesitated, casting a doubtful glance at Mrs. Morris.

“Well?” she demanded, her eyes dancing.

“I think,” he went on boldly, “it must have been terribly hard for your mother to stay on the porch!”

“It was, Tom,” she confessed. “I’m afraid I’d never have done for a Spartan mother!”

They wanted Tom to stay and have luncheon with them, but he had to refuse and hurry back to the store, promising, however, to return for dinner. That was a very merry affair, that first dinner at home, and Mr. Morris, usually somewhat grave and abstracted, was so jovial and flippant that Tom quite lost his awe of him. Afterward the boys adjourned to Sidney’s room and had a regular “talkfest,” as Sidney called it. Of course Tom had to tell about the game with Lynton and Sidney heard it with dancing eyes and wished at intervals he had been there.

“Think of you pitching against those fellows!” he exclaimed. “Why, they must have had pretty near their regular line-up, didn’t they? Say, I guess Thorny is right.”

“About what?” asked Tom.

“About your giving up that job and playing on the team in the spring. Why, we’ve just got to have you, Tom! Farrar can’t pitch for a cent and he’s too stuck-up to take advice. We need you, Tom, and that’s all there is to it!”

“But how can I play?” Tom demanded. “Cummings and Wright aren’t going to pay me wages for being in the store only about two hours all day long!”

“We’ll have to think of a way out of it,” Sidney responded untroubledly. “There’s lots of time. Besides, something may happen. Maybe a wealthy relative will die before spring and leave you a lot of money.”

Tom smiled. “I haven’t any relatives, wealthy or poor,” he said, “except Uncle Israel. And he doesn’t intend to die, and I wouldn’t want him to.”

“Pshaw!” laughed Sidney, “it’s always a relative that you don’t know about or have forgotten that does that sort of thing. Anyway, that’s the way it is in the stories!”

School began a few days later and Tom went back to lessons again. He was a sophomore this year, and Sidney was a junior. Tom had more and harder work to do than last year, but it went easier, probably because he had learned how to apply himself to study. With the beginning of the school year football came into its own again. Sidney was out for his old place at right-end on the high school eleven and, although now and then he allowed himself to be beguiled into pitching and catching with Tom, his visits to the open lot after dinner were usually made with a football tucked under his arm. He showed Tom how to punt and drop-kick and catch and throw, but Tom’s heart was not in it and all the time he was chasing the elusive pigskin his hands were itching for a baseball. Sidney, however, declared that there was plenty of time for baseball when spring came again and was so full of football that he had time for little else.

At the store Tom had stocked up thoroughly with all the implements and apparel of the game and the sporting goods department did a rushing business in footballs, head-guards, shoes, canvas suits, shirts, and sweaters. The grammar school outfitted its team anew and Tom secured the contract for the togs, while from neighbouring towns mail-orders came in every day. In October he sent in his orders for winter goods: sleds, toboggans, skiis, snowshoes, skates, and hockey supplies. When, shortly after Thanksgiving, Amesville had its first snowstorm, Tom, with Mr. Cummings’s sanction, took possession of one entire window and stayed up half of the night dressing it.

With packing cases and boards from the basement he built up an elevation at one back corner and covered it and the floor of the window as well with sheets of cotton-batting. Over this he sprinkled powdered mica. Four evergreen shrubs in tubs were borrowed and placed at the back. (“Evergreens from Davis the Florist, 163 Main Street,” was the inscription which adorned them.) Then Tom arranged his exhibit. A toboggan with a stunning red cushion was tilted down the incline, skiis and sleds were displayed enticingly, at the back, hockey sticks were crossed and pucks laid at the intersections, and a row of skates made a border along the front. Snow-shoes with brave scarlet tassels were there, too, while more colour was supplied to the frosty scene by gaudy toboggan caps, madly-hued Mackinaw jackets, and high-school and grammar-school pennants. Tom had had the idea of that window in mind a long time and so there was no hesitation when the opportunity came. Even so, however, it was after one o’clock when he went outside to stand in the snowstorm and take a final, admiring view of the result. It was, he decided, well worth the trouble and the loss of slumber, and he put the lights out, locked up, and trudged home, through four inches of feathery snow, well content. That window display caused much interest and comment. Even the papers called attention to it, and as long as the snow lasted rows of small red noses were pressed daily against the panes while the eager eyes of small boys gazed covetously on the contents and youthful hearts doubtless longed for the advent of Christmas.

Meanwhile the High School Football Team was doing brave deeds and winning many laurels. Tom got an afternoon off when the final and most important game of the year was played and had his first real experience of football from the spectator’s viewpoint. He got awfully excited when, at the end of the second period, Petersburg was four points ahead, and far more excited when, just as the game was drawing to its close and defeat for Amesville seemed certain, there came a forward pass, a final desperate attempt on the part of the Brown-and-Blue, and Sidney, taking the ball far over on the side of the field, raced and dodged and tore his way through the Petersburg army and landed the pigskin seven yards from the goal-line! Nothing could stop Amesville then! Three downs took her across, Captain Neely kicked the goal, and victory perched on the waving brown-and-blue banners of Amesville!

Once through with football, Sidney went as enthusiastically into hockey, mourning the period of inactivity that must elapse before Jack Frost took possession of the world and froze the ponds and streams. Sidney fulfilled his promise to show Tom how to use a hockey stick that winter, for the High School Athletic Association built by popular subscription a rink on a piece of vacant ground across the street from the school. Tom’s instruction usually took place at lunch hour, when the surface was so congested that real skating or hockey was out of the question. Tom learned quickly and Sidney declared flatteringly that he could make the team if he had the time for it.

Christmas came and went. It was a very busy season for Tom and the sporting goods department did a wonderful business. A year ago he would have laughed at the idea of there being as many sweaters in the world as Cummings and Wright sold that year in the holidays! Tom had had a factory turn out a brown coat-sweater with a broad blue band around the middle, and those went like hot cakes.

The first of the new year Tom moved from Mrs. Cleary’s to a larger and more comfortable room on Turner Street. In many ways he was sorry to leave, as sorry, perhaps, as the Clearys were to have him. But his new abode was much nearer the store and the school, the house was a better one, and his new room well furnished. Besides, he could get his meals under the same roof, which was an advantage. To be sure, it was going to cost him well over a dollar more to live each week, but now he was receiving his full wages of five dollars, for the pump had at last been fully paid for and he held Cummings and Wright’s bill-of-sale for it. He meant in the spring to take formal possession of it and have it brought to town and stored in the basement of the store, where, perhaps, it might find a purchaser. At Christmas his employers had presented him with a five-dollar gold-piece and Uncle Israel had given him the same amount, although it was in greasy one- and two-dollar bills instead of shining metal. So, on the whole, he felt quite affluent as he took possession of his new room.

It was on the front of the house and looked out into a quiet, shabby-genteel little street in which boarding-houses and small shops were indiscriminately mixed. But there were maple trees along the sidewalk and a good-sized yard at one side of the house, and, in summer, as he knew, for he had passed the house quite often on his way to school, beds of geraniums and coleus. The landlady was a grim-looking but kind-hearted elderly woman who supported a rather worthless husband. Mr. Tully was always, it seemed to Tom, looking for work and never finding it. He was a likable sort of little man, for all his failings, and he and Tom got to be good friends in the course of time. There were many roomers at Mrs. Tully’s and at dinner the long table held always a dozen or more boarders. The food was sufficient, but lacked what Tom called the “filling” qualities of Mrs. Burns’s viands. He often sighed for one of the latter woman’s beef stews with dumplings! At Mrs. Tully’s, if they had beef stew it was called something else and served in dishes so tiny that Tom mentally referred to them as “sample trays.”

The other members of the household were mostly clerks, many of them employed at Miller and Tappen’s. There was one, however, Mr. George, who had a more fascinating occupation. He was a private detective in the employ of the railroad company, although Tom did not discover this fact, which was not generally known, until he had been at Mrs. Tully’s for a month. Then it was Mr. Tully who told him. Mr. Tully liked to come to Tom’s “third-floor-front” in the evenings when Tom was at home and, occupying the easy-chair, which he grumblingly declared was the only comfortable chair in the house, put his feet on the window-ledge and fill the room with the strong, acrid smoke of his big brown meerschaum pipe. Somehow Tom didn’t mind his presence in the least and could study quite as well when Mr. Tully was sitting there in silent meditation as when he was alone. Mr. Tully was very fond of talking, especially of Mr. Tully and the things he had done in his time, but he never interfered with Tom’s studies.

That winter was a mild one in that part of Ohio, although there was one fierce blizzard in late February which marooned Mr. Cummings, Joe Gillig, Miss Miller, and Tom in the store all one night! It was not until five in the morning that the storm abated sufficiently to allow Miss Miller to get home and the men to wade to the restaurant across the street and eat what was their first real meal in fifteen hours! The snow stayed on the ground nearly a week and thereby prolonged the winter sports considerably. It was one evening at that time that Tom had his first breath-taking ride down Sumner’s Hill on Sidney’s toboggan. He didn’t forget it for a long while, for it was as nearly like flying as anything he ever expected to experience. They made three trips up the hill that evening and as many down, while a big white moon sailed overhead and seemed to look down companionably on them. Tom would have had a perfectly dandy time all the evening had not Sidney insisted on filling the toboggan to its capacity with girls on the second trip. Tom tried to escape, but Sidney insisted that he was needed at the back, and so Tom, with what little grace he could find, squatted behind May Warner, who was his particular detestation, and almost dropped off when half-way down the long, steep hill because he refused to hold on to May and there wasn’t much else he could reach!

March came in like a lion, but soon tamed down, and a week of mild, sunny days set the boys thinking of baseball. Even before this the candidates for the high school team had been at work in a desultory sort of way. There was no real baseball cage at their command, but a long room in the basement of the school had been converted to their use by placing wire screens over the high windows, and here a certain amount of pitching and batting practice was gone through with. Owing, however, to the poor light down there, this indoor work could hardly be said to be very beneficial.

The baseball leader this year was Frank Warner, brother of May, a senior-class fellow and not particularly popular. There was nothing much wrong with him, save that he was what the fellows called “chesty.” His father was president of the Traders’ National Bank, the largest institution of the sort in that part of the state, and Frank couldn’t forget the fact, it seemed. His “chestiness” made him scornful of advice and impatient of authority. But he could play ball; there was no doubt about that; and it was to that fact that he owed his election to the captaincy. He played second base and was the best batsman the team had possessed in many years. As a leader he was as yet an unknown quantity, and it was an open secret that the athletic association had hesitated some time before endorsing his election, which hesitancy was due to the well-known fact that he took unkindly to advice and criticism, and the fear that he might not get along well with the coach.

The coach was a former high school boy named Talbot. He was no longer a boy, being a sturdy young man of twenty-six and a promising lawyer in Amesville. But Mr. Bennet A. Talbot’s practice was as yet not large enough to prohibit him from giving much time every spring to the coaching of the baseball team, an unremunerative task which he performed for sheer love of the game and loyalty to the school. When a youngster he had been known as “Bat,” a nickname derived from his initials, and the appellation still held. A better man to take charge of a group of boys couldn’t have been found, for he was still very much of a boy himself in feelings, able to get a boy’s viewpoint, sympathetic, and enthusiastic. But Mr. Talbot insisted on obedience, and the school in general awaited with frank interest the first clash of wills between coach and captain.

Both Thorny and Walter White were gone from the team this spring, but Walter was still in Amesville and took much interest in the team. It was Walter who continually insisted that Tom should come out for the nine and who finally brought the matter to the coach’s attention, with the result that Mr. Talbot called on Tom in the store one afternoon in late March.

“Walter White,” he said, “tells me that you can pitch, Pollock. Now, we need pitchers the worst way this spring. We’re pretty nearly destitute in that line. What’s the matter with your trying for the job, Pollock?”

Tom explained that his work prevented. Mr. Talbot frowned, just as Thorny had done, and was inclined to belittle the excuse. When, however, Tom mildly inquired how he was to earn his board and lodging if he gave up his position in the hardware store, the coach was at a loss.

“If we were a professional team,” he replied with a smile, “we could pay you a salary, but I’m afraid as it is we can’t. But I’m sorry. White says you’ve got the making of a good pitcher, and it seems too bad that we can’t get your help. I suppose there is no way that you could arrange with your employers to get off in the afternoons?”

“I don’t think so, sir. You see, I’m only here, anyway, a few hours a day—except on Saturdays. Besides, Mr. Talbot, I can’t pitch much. I guess Walter was sort of—sort of exaggerating.”

The coach went away dissatisfied, and Tom sighed regretfully for what might have been. An enticing vision of Tom Pollock, attired in the brown-and-blue of Amesville High School, standing commandingly in the pitcher’s box and dealing puzzling curves to a bewildered opponent, came to him, and he sighed again as he folded up a pair of running trunks and laid them away in their flat pasteboard box.

Sidney evolved all sorts of schemes for Tom’s emancipation from labour, including a popular subscription to reimburse him for his wages and a direct appeal by the athletic association, backed up by the school in general, to Cummings and Wright!

“But I can’t pitch much, anyway!” Tom would declare, at last a bit impatient. “You seem to think I’m a wonder, but, shucks, I wouldn’t last two innings against Petersburg! All I’ve got is an out-shoot and a straight ball!”

“Yes, a straight ball that goes about ninety miles an hour and crosses the plate so fast you can’t see it until ten minutes after! And you’re learning the drop, too! Of course, I don’t claim that you’re as good as Thorny Brooks yet, but I do say that if you came out and let Bat Talbot get hold of you you’d be a peach by the middle of the season. And I think it’s a shame you can’t!”

And Tom thought so, too, although he didn’t say it!