hurling and in the very first inning the old swatter came up with the sacks charged and two out. He smiled a smile of pity as he bent his baleful glance upon me. ‘You'd better walk me, Walter,’ says he, ‘and force a run; for if you put the spheroid over I’m going to give it a long ride.’ I returned his smile with one of the most magnanimous contempt. ‘Don't blow up, old boy,’ says I. ‘With the exception of your batting, you’re all in; and I’ve a notion that your batting eye is becoming dim and hazy. Let’s see you hit this.’ Then I passed him a slow, straight one right over the middle of the rubber. He took a mighty swing at it, meaning to slam it over into the next county. Well, mate, may I be keelhauled if that ball didn’t dodge the bat like a scared rabbit! Mind you, I hadn’t put a thing on it, but the repulsion of that deneoutronized steel rod hidden in the bat forced the ball to take the handsomest drop you ever beheld, and the violence with which old Breck smote the vacant ozone caused him to spin round and concuss upon the ground when he sat down. It was a tremendous shock to his nervous system, and it filled me with unbounded jubilance; for I knew I had him at my mercy, literally in the hollow of my hand.

“He rose painfully, chagrined and annoyed, but still confident. ‘Give me another like that, you little wart!’ he ordered savagely, ‘and I’ll knock the peeling off it.’ Beaming, I retorted: ‘You couldn’t knock the peeling off a prune. Here’s what you called for.’ And I threw him another slow, straight one.

“Excuse these few tears; the memory of that hallowed occasion makes me cry for joy. He did it again, concussing still more shockingly when he sat down. It was simply an utter impossibility for him to hit that magnetized ball with his doctored bat. But, of course, he didn’t know what the matter was; he thought I was fooling him with some sort of a new drop I had discovered. The fact that I was passing him the merry cachinnation peeved him vastly. When he got upon his pins and squared away for the third attempt, his face was the most fearsome I ever have gazed upon. He shook his big bat at me. ‘One more,’ he raged; ‘give me one more, and drop flat on your face the moment you pitch the ball, or I’ll drive it straight through the meridian of your anatomy!’

“Let me tell you now, mate, that Breck was a gentleman, and that was the first and only time I ever knew him to lose his temper. Under the circumstances, he was excusable. I put all my nerve-shattering steam into the next pitch, and, instead of dropping, the ball hopped over his bat when he smote at it. I had fanned the mighty Breckenridge, and the wondering crowd lifted their voices in hosannas. Yet I know they regarded it in the nature of an accident, and not until I had whiffed him three times more in the same game did either Breck or the spectators arrive at the conviction that I had something on him.

“After that,” said the narrator, as if in conclusion, “I had him eating out of my hand right up to the final and decisive game of the season.”

Weegman begged the fanciful romancer to tell what happened in the last game.

“Oh, we won,” was the assurance; “but we never would have if Breck had been wise the last time he came to bat. It was in the ninth inning, with the score three to two in our favor, two down, and runners on second and third. Knowing it was Breck’s turn to hit, I was confident we had the game sewed up. But the confidence oozed out of me all of a sudden when I saw the big fellow paw the clubs over to select a bat other than his own. Clammy perspiration started forth from every pore of my body. With any other swat stick beside his own, I knew he was practically sure to drive any ball I could pitch him over the fence. The agony of apprehension which I endured at that moment gave me my first gray hairs.

“Although I did not know it at the time, it chanced that Breck had selected the bat of another player who had had it bored and loaded with an ordinary steel rod. This, you can clearly understand, made it more than doubly certain that he would hit the magnetized ball, which would be attracted instead of repelled. Had I known this, I shouldn’t have had the heart to pitch at all.

“As the noble warrior stood up to the pan, I considered what I could pitch him. Curves could not fool him, and he literally ate speed. Therefore, without hope, I tossed him up a slow one. Now it chanced that the old boy had decided to try a surprise, having become disheartened by his efforts to slug; he had resolved to attempt to bunt, knowing such a move would be unexpected. So he merely stuck out his bat as the sphere came sailing over. The magnet was attracted by the steel rod, and the ball just jumped at the bat, against which it struck–and stuck! I hope never to tell the truth again, mate, if I’m not stating a simple, unadulterated, unvarnished fact. The moment the ball touched the bat it stuck fast to it as if nailed there. Breck was so astonished that he stood in his tracks staring at the ball like a man turned to stone. I was likewise paralyzed for an extemporaneous fraction of time, but my ready wit quickly availed me. Bounding forward, I wrenched the ball from the bat and tagged old Breck with it, appealing to the umpire for judgment. There was only one thing his umps could do. He had seen the batter attempt to bunt, had seen bat and ball meet, and had seen me secure the ball on fair ground and put it on to the hitter. He declared Breckenridge out, and that gave us the game and the championship.”

Bailey Weegman lay back and roared. In doing so, he seemed to perceive Lefty for the first time. As soon as he could get his breath, he said:

“Oh, I say, Locke, let me introduce you. This is Cap’n Wiley, owner and manager of the Wind Jammers.”

CHAPTER V
A MAN OF MYSTERY

The swarthy little fabulist rose hastily to his feet, making a quick survey of the southpaw. “Am I indeed and at last in the presence of the great Lefty Locke?” he cried, his face beaming like the morning sun in a cloudless sky. “Is it possible that after many weary moons I have dropped anchor in the same harbor with the most salubriously efficacious port-side flinger of modern times? Pardon my deep emotion! Slip me your mudhook, Lefty; let me give you the fraternal grip.”

He grabbed Locke’s hand and wrung it vigorously, while the other members of the Wind Jammers pressed nearer, looking the Big League pitcher over with interest.

“In many a frozen igloo,” declared Wiley, “I have dreamed of this day when I should press your lily-white fingers. Oft and anon during my weary sojourn in that far land of snow and ice have I pictured to myself the hour when we should stand face to face and exchange genuflections and greetings. And whenever a smooched and tattered months-old newspaper would drift in from civilization, with what eager and expectant thrills did I tremulously turn to the baseball page that I might perchance read thereon how you had stung the Hornets, bitten the Wolves, clipped the claws of the Panthers, or plucked the feathers from the White Wings!”

“And I have been wondering,” confessed Lefty, “if you could be the original Cap’n Wiley of whom I heard so many strange tales in my boyhood. It was reported that you were dead.”

“Many a time and oft hath that canard been circulated. According to rumor, I have demised a dozen times or more by land and sea; but each time, like the fabled Phœnix, I have risen from my ashes. During the last few fleeting years I have been in