rted Clara in mock alarm. "Oh, dear,
here's another one!"

"Were you addressing me when you said 'dear'?" asked Jim politely.

Clara flashed him an indignant glance, just as Professor Enoch Crabbe, of
the Riverside Academy, stepped up and greeted Joe. He was earnest in his
congratulations, but his manner was so stilted that they looked at each
other with an amused smile, as he stalked pompously away.

"I wonder if he believes now that I can throw a curve," laughed Joe.

"He ought to ask some of the Red Sox who whiffed away at them in the World
Series," said Jim with a grin. "They didn't have any doubt about it."

"Professor Crabbe had very serious doubts," explained Joe. "In fact, he
said it was impossible. Against all the laws of motion and all that sort
of thing. I had to rig up a couple of bamboo rods in a line, and get Dick
Talbot, a friend of mine in the moving-picture business, to take a picture
of the ball as it curved around the rods, before I could prove my point."

"Did it convince him?" queried Jim.

"It stumped him, anyway," replied Joe. "But sometimes I have a sneaking
notion that he thinks yet that Dick and I played some kind of a bunco game
on him by doctoring the film."

"Well, I hope that nobody else stops us," remarked Clara. "It seems to me
that almost everybody in Riverside is on the street this afternoon."

"It wouldn't be such an awful mob at that," replied Jim. "But it's a safe
bet that one man at least won't stop Joe to shake hands with him."

"Who is that?" asked Clara.

"The fellow who yelled 'Fire' in the hall last night," answered Jim with a
grin.

"I hope I didn't hurt him," observed Joe, thoughtfully.

"Perish the thought," replied Jim. "You just caressed him. He was a big
fellow, and he probably sat down just to take a load off his feet."

"I'm glad he wasn't a Riverside man, anyway," remarked Joe, loyal to his
home town. "I never saw him before. Probably he came from some place near
by."

"Oh, then, of course he won't mind it," chaffed Jim.

"Of all the nonsense----" Clara was beginning, when her eye caught sight
of a figure she recognized on the station platform which they had nearly
reached.

She nudged her brother's elbow.

"There's the man you were talking to this morning," she said in a low
voice.

"By George, so it is!" replied Joe, as he followed her glance. "And he's
talking to Altman. Trying to make him a convert."

"A renegade, you mean," growled Jim.