hey changed the rule about that sort of thing?"

He pointed to the field. A diamond had been roughly outlined on it with
bags of sand, and a ball-game was in progress, boys playing, but a long
line of men watching from the side lines.

"I don't know, but it doesn't hurt anything."

"Ruins the turf, that's all." He stopped the car and got out. "Look at
this sign. It says 'ball-playing or any trespassing forbidden on these
grounds.' I'll clear them off."

"I wouldn't, Pink. They may be ugly."

But he only smiled at her reassuringly, and went off. She watched him
go with many misgivings, his sturdy young figure, his careful dress, his
air of the young aristocrat, easy, domineering, unconsciously insolent.
They would resent him, she knew, those men and boys. And after all, why
should they not use the field? There was injustice in that sign.

Yet her liking and real sympathy were with Pink.

"Pink!" she called, "Come back here. Let them alone."

He turned toward her a face slightly flushed with indignation and set
with purpose.

"Sorry. Can't do it, Lily. This sort of thing's got to be stopped."

She felt, rather hopelessly, that he was wrong, but that he was right,
too. The grounds were private property. She sat back and watched.

Pink was angry. She could hear his voice, see his gestures. He was
shooing them off like a lot of chickens, and they were laughing. The
game had stopped, and the side lines were pressing forward. There was a
moment's debate, with raised voices, a sullen muttering from the crowd,
and the line closing into a circle. The last thing she saw before it
closed was a man lunging at Pink, and his counter-feint. Then some one
was down. If it was Pink he was not out, for there was fighting still
going on. The laborers working on the grounds were running.

Lily stood up in the car, pale and sickened. She was only vaguely
conscious of a car that suddenly left the road, and dashed recklessly
across the priceless turf, but she did see, and recognize, Louis Akers
as he leaped from it and flinging men this way and that disappeared into
the storm center. She could hear his voice, too, loud and angry, and see
the quick dispersal of the crowd. Some of the men, foreigners, passed
quite near to her, and eyed her either sullenly or with mocking smiles.
She was quite oblivious of them. She got out and ran with shaking knees
across to where Pink lay on the grass, his profile white and sharply
chiseled, with t