the Gardiner game is
over."

"You won't get too nervous, will you?"

"I may be a bit, before the game," Dick confessed, candidly.

"But after the game starts?"

"Once the game opens, I shall forget that there's any such fellow
as Prescott, sir. I shall be just a part of Gridley, with nothing
individual about me."

"Good! I like to hear you talk that way," laughed Mr. Luce.
"I hope you'll be able to keep up to it when you go to the diamond.
Once the game opens, don't let yourself have a single careless
moment. Any single point we can get away from Gardiner will have
to be done by just watching for it. You saw them play last year?"

"I did," Prescott nodded. "Gridley won, four to three, and until
the last half of the last inning we had only one run. I thought
nothing could save us that day."

"Nothing did," replied the coach, "except the hard and fast can't-lose
tradition of Gridley."

"We're not going to lose this time, either," Dick declared. "I
know that I'm going to strike out a string in every inning. If
I go stale, you have Darrin to fall back on, and he's as baffling
a pitcher as I can hope to be. And Ripley is a wonder."

"He would be," nodded Mr. Luce, sadly, "if he were a better base
runner at the same time."

It seemed as though nothing else could be talked of in Gridley
but the opening game. Just because it was the starter of the
season the local military band, reinforced to thirty-five pieces,
was to be on hand to give swing and life to the affair.

"Are you going, Laura?" Dick asked, when he met Miss Bentley.

"Am I going?" replied Laura, opening her eyes in amazement. "Why,
Dick, do you think anything but pestilence or death could keep
me away? Father is going to take Belle and myself. The seats
are already bought."

Prescott's own parents were to attend. Out of his newspaper money
he had bought them grand stand seats, and some one else had been
engaged to attend in the store while the game was on.

"You'll have a great chance, Dick, old fellow, against a nine
like Gardiner," said Dave Darrin. "And, do you know, I'm glad
it's up to you to pitch? I'm afraid I'd be too rattled to pitch
against a nine like Gardiner in the very first game of the season.
All I have to do is to keep at the side and watch you."

"See here, Dave Darrin," expostulated his chum, "you keep yourself
in the best trim, and make up your mind that you may _have_ to
be called before the game is over. Wh