ick said."

"What's your word, Tom!"

"You heard what our captain said," Reade laughed. "I always follow
orders. If Dick Prescott tells me to pile up seven runs against
the Souths I'm going to do it."

"I hope you do," murmured another boy. "Yet it seems against
us---after the way we saw the Souths play to-day."

"Or rather," added Dick quietly, "the way the North Grammars didn't
play. They'd have put up a lot better game if their captain hadn't
lost his nerve and his head."

As the Central Grammar boys left, most of them in one crowd, there
was a rather general feeling that Dick was just a bit too confident.
Or, was he simply "putting it on," in order to bolster up the
courage of his players?

Dick Prescott, at least, was qualified to know what he really
expected. He really was confident of victory in the game that
should decide the league championship.

"If you feel that you can't be beaten, and won't be beaten, but
that you've got to win and are going to win, then that's more
than half the points of a game won in advance," he told his chums.
"Fellows, in baseball or anything else, we won't say die, either
now or at any later time in life. We'll make it our rule to ride
right over anything that gets in our way. That way we can't know
defeat."

"Unless, finally, we ride to our deaths," laughed Tom.

"What of it?" challenged Dick. "That wouldn't be defeat. The
man who rides to death in the search for victory has won. He has
carried the winning spirit with him to the very finish. Or else
the history we've been studying at school is all a mess of lies."

"There's a lot in that idea," nodded Dave thoughtfully.

"There's more in it every time that you think of it," Dick contended.

Thus Dick was starting, in Dick & Co., the never-give-up spirit
which made them almost invincible later as High School boys.

Wednesday and Thursday were days filled with eagerness for the
Central Grammar boys. The members of the baseball squad were
not by any means the only ones on tenterhooks. Every boy in the
upper grades of the school was waiting impatiently to learn who
would be the winners of the championship.

Somewhat to the astonishment of the Central Grammar boys Captain
Dick, on Wednesday afternoon, gave his team only a brief half
hour of diamond practice. Thursday afternoon they didn't play
at all. Instead, the nine and its subs. went off on a tramp
through the woods.

"What we want to-morrow above all," Dick expl