he bat?

The captain said a few words to the next batter before the man went up
to the plate, and Frank felt sure the fellow had been advised to take
his time.

Having made up his mind to this, Frank sent a swift straight one
directly over, and, as he had expected, the batter let it pass, which
caused the umpire to call a strike.

Still keeping the runner hugging first, Frank seemed to start another
ball in exactly the same manner. It was not a straight one, but it was a
very slow drop, as the batter discovered after he had commenced to
swing. Finding he could not recover, the fellow went after the ball with
a scooping movement, and then did not come within several inches of it,
greatly to the delight of the Yale crowd.

"Oh, Merry has every blooming one of them on a string!" cried Rattleton.
"He thon't do a wing to 'em--I mean he won't do a thing to 'em."

The Yale men were singing songs of victory already, and the Harvard
crowd was doing its best to keep up the courage of its team by rooting
hard.

It was a most exciting game.

"The hottest game I ever saw played by freshmen," commented Collingwood.

"It is a corker," confessed Pierson. "We weren't looking for anything of
the sort a short time ago."

"I should say not. Up to the time Merriwell went in it looked as if
Harvard had a walkover."

"Gordon feels bad enough about it, that is plain. He is trying to
appear cheerful on the bench, but--"

"He can't stand it any longer; he's leaving."

That was right. Gordon had left the players' bench and was walking away.
He tried to look pleased at the way things were going, but the attempt
was a failure.

"Merriwell is the luckiest fellow alive," he thought. "If I had stayed
in another inning the game might have changed. He is pitching good ball,
but I'm hanged if I can understand why they do not hit him. It looks
easy."

Neither could the Harvard lads thoroughly understand it, although there
were some who realized that Merriwell was using his head, as well as
speed and curves. And he did not use speed all the time. He had a fine
change of pace, sandwiching in his slow balls at irregular intervals,
but delivering them with what seemed to be exactly the same motion that
he used on the speedy ones.

The fourth batter up struck out, and again Harvard was retired without a
score, which caused the Yale crowd to cheer so that some of the lads got
almost black in the face.

"Well! well! well!" laughed Rattleton