'll stump you to carry yours as far as the railroad
tracks."

Thus by making it a matter of athletic prowess the boys carried their
loads to the destination. But the little heaps on the dusty earth looked
pitifully insignificant. Skinny borrowed a pin and lanced the white
protuberance at the base of his second finger.

"Jiminy," he mourned, as he squeezed the water out. "It's going to be an
awful lot of work, fellows."

They raked the sand level along the path from the plate to first base.
Not by the wildest stretch of imagination could they seem to reach even
a quarter of the distance, and protruding grass blades showed that the
covering was far too scanty.

"Where's your wagon, John?" asked Red Brown suddenly.

"Busted," said John, reproachfully. "Have you forgotten?"

During the summer preceding, a fever of wagon building had seized the
boys. Every spare wheel and tricycle frame in the block had been
requisitioned for the construction of a half-dozen little vehicles which
suddenly appeared to scud down the sidewalks and over the smooth macadam
street. There had been discussions and disputes as to speed, and John's
wagon, a long, well-oiled affair with a coat of red, discarded house
paint on its framework, had come to grief in a collision with Brown's,
one sunny afternoon. Even Silvey, the optimist, who had furnished the
motive power, had looked at the wreckage in well-founded despair.

"Where's yours?" Red turned abruptly to the Harrison boys.

"In the basement."

Skinny Mosher's, too, was still in existence. All the rest of the
morning and afternoon, the two wagons ran merrily toward the Southern
Avenue sand hill, or creaked slowly and laboriously back to the "Tigers'
Home Grounds," with such good effect that but a scant ten feet of path
remained to be filled in when John's paper route called him.

Silvey and he sauntered over that evening after supper to make the final
inspection of the work.

"Just like the park diamonds, isn't it?" he asked, as Silvey stretched a
pair of weary arms.

"And Sid said he was glad he thought of it. And we worked like
everything while he stood around!"

John scarcely heard him as he stood, eyes a-dream, looking over the
even, carefully raked turf. "The grand stand comes next, Bill. Do you
think we ought to tear down the shack for lumber?"

Bill demurred. That shaky building occupied too great a place of
importance in the boys' lives to justify such a sacrifice. Surely