"

"You see, Purcell. You're getting your share of the credit now,"
laughed Dick. "The band is playing something about a captain,
isn't it?"

In the dressing room Dick had abundant offers of help. Fred Ripley
was the only silent one in the group. He changed his togs for
street clothes as quickly as he could and disappeared. Later,
Dave Darrin and Greg Holmes helped Dick on to a street car, and
saw him safely home. That knee required further treatment by
Dr. Bentley, but there was time, now, and no game depending on
the result.

"Fred, I can't say much for your appetite tonight," remarked his
father at the evening meal.

"Neither can I, sir," Fred answered.

"Are you out of sorts?"

"Never felt any better, sir."

"Being out in the open air all this April afternoon should have
given you an appetite.

"I didn't do anything this afternoon, except sit around in my
ball togs," Fred grumbled.

"I hope you'll have a few good games to pitch this season," his
father went on. "You worked hard enough, and I spent money enough
on the effort to prepare you."

"You can't beat some people's luck---unless you do it with a club,"
grumbled Fred, absently.

"Eh?" asked his father, looking up sharply from his plate. But
the boy did not explain.

Late that night, however, breaking training rules for the tenth
time, Fred was out on the sly to meet Tip Scammon. The pair
of them laid plans that aimed to stop Dick Prescott's career
as High School pitcher.

CHAPTER XIX

SOME MEAN TRICKS LEFT OVER

Mr. Schimmelpodt had offered that fifty dollars in a moment of
undue excitement.

For two or three days afterward he wondered if he couldn't find
some way out of "spending" the money that would yet let him keep
his self-respect.

Finding, at last, that he could not, he wrote out the check and
mailed it. He pinned the check to a half-sheet of paper on which
he wrote, "Rah mit Prescott!"

A few days later Mr. Schimmelpodt turned from Main Street into
the side street on which Dick's parents kept their store and their
home.

"Ach! Und dere is de door vot that boy lives by," thought Mr.
Schimmelpodt, just before he passed Dick's door. "Yen der game
over was, und I saw dot boy go down---ach!"

For Mr. Schimmelpodt had suited the action to the word. Out from
under him his feet shot. But Mr. Schimmelpodt, being short and
flabby of leg, with a bulky body above, came down as slowly as
big bodies are supposed