Medfield began her celebration of the Fourth about twenty-four hours ahead of time and gradually worked up to a top-notch of noise, eloquence, and patriotism at approximately one o’clock Tuesday afternoon, at which hour the observances in City Park were at their height. Everyone had turned out, in spite of the almost unbearable heat, and every club or association, from the Grand Army Post to the Medfield Women’s Civic Association, had marched in the procession that, headed by a platoon of police and a very stout Grand Marshal seated precariously on one of Callahan’s livery horses, had, in the words of the next day’s Morning Chronicle, “taken just forty-eight minutes to pass a given point.” The Chronicle neglected, however, to mention the fact that the given point to which it referred was the Grand Street crossing where the procession had been held up quite ten minutes by an inconsiderate freight train! Still, it was a fine parade, any way you looked at it. The Fire Department made a glorious showing, the Sons of Veterans marched well in spite of the small boys who got under their feet, the High School Cadets displayed quite a martial appearance, and the various floats, from that of the Women’s Civic Association, which depicted a somewhat wabbly, Grecian-robed America accepting a liberty cap from General Washington, down to the clattering, tinkling wagon hung with tin pans and dippers and plates and dustpans that represented the Medfield Stamping Works, all added to the brilliance of the occasion!

You may be certain that neither Wayne nor June missed that parade. On the contrary, they viewed it four separate and distinct times, dodging through side streets as soon as the tail end had passed and reaching a new point of vantage before the head of it appeared. June was frankly disappointed in that the Grand Marshal managed somehow to remain in the saddle until the very end and then left it of his own free will and, it is suspected, very thankfully. June remained hopeful to the last, but was doomed to disappointment. He had a wearied, sleepy appearance today, had June, explained by the fact that he had stayed up all last night with some of his cronies, doing his best to make the occasion memorable in the annals of Medfield, assisting at the lighting and nourishing of the bonfire on Tannery Hill, observing the firing of the cannon in the park at dawn, and finally returning to “Carhurst” at breakfast time with the look of one completely surfeited with pleasure. Wayne had been rather cross at first, but his anger had subsided at sight of June’s left hand. June, it seemed, had lighted a Roman candle and, unwisely obeying the instructions of an acquaintance, had held it by the business end. He hadn’t held it that way long, but long enough to burn the palm of his hand so badly that he had to wear a bandage for nearly a week.

The two boys listened to the speeches and singing at the park, ate a hurried and fragmentary dinner at a downtown lunch-room, and then hied themselves to the Y. M. C. A. field. The game with Toonalta was to begin at half-past two, but owing to the fact that Joe Taylor and Jim Wheelock and one or two others had spent the noontime swaying about on top of the Association float and that it took them some time to change from Historical Personages to baseball players, it was nearly three when, before an audience that crowded the stand and flowed over on both sides of the field, Pete Chase wound up and sent the first delivery speeding across the plate for a strike.

It was a sizzling hot afternoon, with scarcely a breath of air blowing across the diamond. The glare on the gray-brown dirt of the base path hurt the eyes, and Wayne, clad in almost immaculate, new baseball togs, felt the perspiration trickling down his back and from under the edge of his cap. Between him and the pitcher’s box heat waves danced and shimmered. His throwing hand was moist and he wiped it on a trouser leg. The Chenango infield was talking hearteningly to Chase and each other, Jim Wheelock’s drawl mingling with Vic Despaigne’s sharp staccato. There were two umpires that day and Wayne was wondering how the one on the bases stood the heat in his blue flannel attire, with his coat buttoned tightly from chin to waist. Chase wasted one and then put a second strike across. Medfield’s adherents cheered and the chatter in the field increased again. Then there was a crack and Chase put up a lazy gloved hand, turned and tossed the ball to Jim. One out!

After that, for several innings, Wayne forgot how hot he was. East, the Toonalta left fielder, also fell victim to Chase’s slants, but Burns, second baseman, slammed a hard one at Despaigne and that youth made his first error. Although he recovered his fumble like lightning, the runner, a fast chap on the dirt, was safe by the time the ball was in Jim Wheelock’s hands. A single past White sent the runner to second and placed the rival shortstop on first, but the trouble ended a few minutes later when Pete Chase scored his third strike-out in one inning.

Joe Taylor had rearranged his line-up for today’s battle. Hal Collins, left fielder, led off and was followed by Wheelock, first baseman, Taylor, right fielder, Colton, centre fielder, White, third baseman, Hoffman, catcher, Sloan, second baseman, Despaigne, shortstop, and Chase, pitcher.

The Toonalta pitcher, Ellis by name, was heralded as a wonder, and before the game started the team was undeniably in awe of him. But by the time the first inning was at an end the awe had disappeared. Nor did it return, for only one strike-out did Ellis have to his credit when the contest was over, and that the game went as it did was due rather to the Toonalta fielding than to the twirler’s science. It was a hitting game from first to last, a game in which slip-ups in fielding by either side would have spelled disaster at any moment. As for strike-outs, after the first inning Chase hung up but two more scalps, giving him, however, a creditable total of five for the game.

It was Hal Collins who took the first jab at Ellis’ reputation as a pitcher. Hal failed to hit safely, but his fly to deep centre on the second ball pitched might easily have gone for three bags, and the fielder’s catch, made on the run, brought a salvo of applause from friend and foe alike. Jim Wheelock, with the score two-and-two, sent a sharp single down the first base line. Joe Taylor tried hard to land safely but only succeeded in dropping an easy one into shortstop’s glove and Colton brought the inning to an end by banging a low fly to right fielder. Jim never got beyond first, but as every man up had connected in some fashion with Ellis’ delivery the home team’s respect for his skill fell to zero.

In Toonalta’s second things began to happen at once. The brown-stockinged first baseman hit between Wayne and Jim Wheelock for a base and only a fine stop and throw by Joe Taylor kept him from taking second. The next man hit to Wayne, and Wayne fielded to Despaigne, cutting off the first runner by a yard. There was, though, no chance for a double. With one on, Browne, Toonalta’s right fielder, let Chase work two strikes across before he found anything to his liking. Perhaps Chase held him too lightly. At all events the fourth offering was a perfectly straight, fast ball and the batsman leaned against it hard, so hard that the sphere cleared Chase’s head at a speed roughly estimated at a mile a minute, climbed up out of Wayne’s reach, and kept right on going. And when it finally did come to earth no one saw it, for it landed somewhere beyond the fence at the far end of the field! The handful of Toonalta “rooters” stood up and shouted themselves hoarse and blared through red, white, and blue megaphones and waved anything they could lay their hands on, while a deep and all-pervading silence rested over the Medfield forces. Two runs came across and things looked rather blue for the home team, or perhaps I should say brown, since brown was the Toonalta colour.

The discredited Ellis fouled out to Gas Hoffman and the head of the visitors’ list was thrown out, Despaigne to Wheelock, and the trouble was over for the moment. For Chenango, Billy White led off with a safety to left and went to second a minute later when first baseman let Ellis’ throw go past him. Hoffman hit to Ellis, the pitcher spearing the ball with his gloved hand and holding White at second. Wayne produced the third safety of the game by trickling a slow one down the first base line, sending White to third and putting himself on first. Despaigne hit to second baseman and the latter hurled to the plate, getting Billy White. Wayne took second and Despaigne was safe at first. Chase worried Ellis for a pass and the bases were full. Medfield howled gleefully as Hal Collins stepped to the plate, for a hit would tie up the game. But there were two down and Ellis tightened up, and, with two balls and one strike on him, Collins bit at a bad one and it came down into third baseman’s waiting hands just over the foul line.

But that inning encouraged the Chenangos, for, as Joe Taylor said confidently, if they kept on hitting Ellis as they had been hitting him something was sure to break lose sooner or later. June, presiding at the bats and lording it a bit in his fine uniform, predicted ruin and desolation for the enemy in the fifth inning. “Ain’ nothin’ goin’ to happen till then,” he declared, looking wise and rolling his eyes, “but when it do happen it’s goin’ to happen, yes, sir! You min’ my words, gen’lemen!” June wasn’t far wrong, either, as things turned out, for nothing did happen until the fifth and even if that inning didn’t prove quite as disastrous to the enemy as he had predicted, why, perhaps, that wasn’t his fault.

Four men faced Chase in the third, the first getting a scratch hit, the second sacrificing him to the next bag and the other two proving easy outs. In the home team’s half, Jim Wheelock flied out to centre fielder, Joe Taylor to first baseman—it was a hot liner, but the chap held onto it—and Colton went out third to first. In the fourth, Toonalta started out with a walk, followed with a sacrifice hit, a fly to Collins in left field, another pass and still another one—three for the inning. Then Jordan was warming up over behind third and the infield was begging Chase to take his time and stop fooling, and, with bases filled, half a hundred seemingly insane spectators yelling like wild Indians, Gas Hoffman looking pretty set about the mouth and Pete Chase plainly slipping, hit a long fly to Collins and so ended as nerve-racking a quarter of an hour as the contest provided! When that ball settled into Hal Collins’ hands the shout that went up must certainly have been heard at the corner of Main and Whitney Streets, which is equivalent to saying a mile and a half away! Anyone who has played through that sort of a half-inning knows the vast and blessed relief that comes when the end arrives and the men on bases turn, grumbling, away and the team trots triumphantly in. They pounded each other’s backs and slapped Chase on the shoulder and shook hands with him quite as though he had not himself caused all the anxiety and suspense. June’s face was one big, white-toothed grin!

“That’s their last chance!” proclaimed Captain Taylor. “They’ll never get another one like it. Now, then, fellows, let’s go in and cop this game right now!”

But they didn’t. Billy White hit a weak one to Ellis and was out by a mile. Hoffman popped up a mean little foul to the catcher and Wayne, hitting safely to short left, obeyed instructions and tried to stretch the hit to two bases and was caught a foot off by a fine throw from left fielder.

Again Toonalta secured a hit, her fifth, after one man was gone in the first half of the next inning. It was Gore, shortstop, who performed the feat, and it was Gore who gave as pretty an exhibition of base-stealing as one ever sees. He stole second when the Toonalta catcher struck out and blocked Hoffman’s throw and then stole third a moment later. Gas got the ball to White as quick as he could, but Gore was already sliding his cleats against the bag. Even Medfield cheered that exploit, realising the next instant that, even with two down, everything predicted another tally for the enemy. But once more Fortune favoured the Blues. Or perhaps the credit should go to Pete Chase. At least, Wayne didn’t deserve much of it, for the ball that came at him was breast-high and he didn’t have to move from his tracks to take it. Anyhow, it ended another anxious moment, and the Chenangos again went to bat.

This was the last of the fifth, Toonalta was still two runs to the home team’s none and it was surely time to do something in the way of scoring if anything was to be done. When the other crowd is two runs to the good, and the game is just half over, you begin to count innings! Despaigne started out poorly enough, trickling a bunt to third and being thrown out easily. Chase did no better, being retired by second baseman to first. The home team’s hopes dwindled again and its supporters, human-like, began to grumble and make pessimistic remarks. But Hal Collins was hopefully applauded, nevertheless, when he stepped to the plate, looking, as it seemed, a little more determined than usual in spite of the smile that curled his lips. The smile was the result of June’s earnest plea to “Please, sir, Mister Collins, r’ar up an’ bust it!”

Pitcher Ellis, with two gone, took Collins untroubledly. He tried to sneak the first one across for a strike, to be sure, failing narrowly, but after that he sent in two wide ones, and Hal would have had three balls to his credit had he not, for some reason, swung at the third delivery, missed it widely and made the score one-and-two. Ellis tried a drop then; Collins had fallen for it before; but it went unheeded and put him in the hole. There was nothing to do then but let Collins hit—or pass him—and Ellis wasn’t issuing many passes today. The next delivery was high and over the plate, and Collins fouled it into the stand. The next was lower and might have gone for a ball had not the batsman swung at it, met it fairly on the end of his bat, and sent it travelling down the field just over first baseman’s head and hardly more than a yard inside the foul line. It was good for two bases and Medfield cheered wildly.

“Bring him in, Jim!” cried the Blue team as the Chenango first baseman accepted the bats that June proffered and strode to the plate, and “Here we go!” shouted a strong-voiced spectator. “Here we go! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!” A hundred others took up his chant and beat time to it with feet on planking or with clapping hands. Whether the pandemonium had its effect on Pitcher Ellis or not, certain it is that his first delivery was grooved if ever ball was grooved, and equally certain is it that Jim Wheelock drove it straight past the pitcher and out of the infield and that Hal Collins tore around from second, touched third with flying feet and slid into the plate well ahead of the ball!

“There’s one of ’em!” shrieked Hoffman. “Let’s have another, Cap! Hit it out! Bust it!”

Joe Taylor tried his best to bring Jim in from second, but failed, finally flying out to centre field and ending the rally.

Still one to two was better than two to nothing, and the home team trotted hopefully out to their places for the beginning of the sixth.