"

"I'll show him he can't impose on me."

"They're going to boost this individual from the alfalfa regions, it
seems. He's surely become the real warm baby around here. I heard
Barker confidentially admitting to your captain----"

"Not _my_ captain," objected Roy.

"I heard Barker confidentially admitting to Eliot," pursued Rackliff
serenely, "that he was greatly surprised in the showing Grant had made
and was not at all sure but the fellow would eventually become a better
pitcher than Springer."

"Say, that would make Springer feel good, the blooming chump!" cried
Roy, rising to his feet. "He's coaching Grant, so the cowboy can act
as second pitcher and help him out; but, if he realized he might be
training a fellow to push him out of his place as the star twirler of
the team, I guess he'd quit in a hurry."

"Very likely he might," nodded Herbert. "No chap with real sense is
going to be dunce enough to teach some one to rise above him."

"That will make trouble between them yet, see if it doesn't,"
prophesied Hooker in sudden satisfaction. "They're mighty thick now,
but there'll be an end to that if Phil Springer ever realizes what may
happen."

"Somebody might carelessly drop a hint to him," smiled Rackliff.

Suddenly Roy's small, keen eyes were fixed inquiringly on his companion.

"I don't see why you take so much interest," he wondered. "You must
have a reason."

Herbert shrugged his shoulders. "Perhaps so," he admitted. "Are you
ready? Let's get a move on before the bunch comes over."

They left the gymnasium, and walked down the street together. Hooker
had conceived a sudden, singular interest in Rackliff.

"I always wondered how you happened to come to school here at Oakdale,"
he confessed.

"Have a cigarette," invited Herbert, extending an open, gold-mounted
morocco case.

"Don't like 'em, thank you," declined Roy.

The other boy lighted a fresh one from the stub of the last.

"So you've been speculating as to the cause of my choosing this serene,
rural seat of knowledge, have you? Well, I'll own up that it wasn't my
choice. I'm not very eager about burying myself alive, and if ever
there was a cemetery, it's the town of Oakdale. My pater was the
guilty party."

"Oh, your father sent you here?"

"Correct. I would have chosen Wyndham, but Newbert's old man sent him
down there, and my governor thought we should be kept apart in future."

"Newbert? Who's Newbert?"

"You'l