arefaced threat. They sat looking blankly
at him, while Red Brown laughed disagreeably.

"And you're the kid who went home crying 'cause you were hit on the shin
with a baseball. Fine captain, you'll make."

"Captain and the gloves, or you play without 'em," came the arrogant
ultimatum. "Which do you want?"

He could see by the thoughtful faces around him that his words were not
without effect. Last year, the team had owned a reputation for being
blessed with proper equipment, and to go back to the cheap, undersized
balls, and scantily padded private mitts would be no small privation.
John sighed wearily.

"Guess you can be captain if you want to," he said, finally.

A reluctantly assenting chorus sanctioned his consent. Bill broached the
subject of the baseball park improvements, and Sid shook his head
emphatically. The idea was his rival's and therefore to be fought.

"The park diamonds are lots better," he argued. "Take us all year to fix
the lot up."

"But it'd be our own," Red broke in enthusiastically. "Think of playing
the 'Jeffersons' on the 'Tigers' Home Grounds.' 'Tain't every team could
say that, could it?" Which was the truth, for the vacant lots of the
neighborhood were being rapidly supplanted by flat buildings and room
for boyish playgrounds was becoming more and more scarce.

Sid considered the matter a moment. Certainly it would add to the
team's, and his, prestige.

"Well, maybe," he said, with seeming reluctance that his change of front
might not seem too obvious. "Let's go over and see what the place is
like."

"First across the tracks," shouted Red, as he sprang to his feet. In a
moment, the whole tribe was up and after him, climbing the wire railroad
fence with a vigor which threatened destruction to the meshes. They
scampered across the expanse of cinders and rails, broken here and there
by a struggling bit of plant life, and scrambled out on the untidy
field.

The broken glass and old milk-bottle tops from the dairy had crept
further out from the low, tar-paper building during the winter. Boards
from the boxes and barrels which had formed the fortress for the
cucumber fight were scattered to the four corners of the field, and the
sparse, fresh grass blades sprang up to sunlight and life through the
dead, gray-brown vegetation of the preceding autumn. Neither trace of
baseball diamond nor football gridiron could be found. Yet the "Tigers"
purposed to make the place the talk of the ju