times, in spite of
his blue eyes, red hair and mottled face. "An Allandale fellow told me
they expected to wipe up the earth with both Belleville and Scranton
this term."

"Huh! better spell able first," grunted Eli. "I hope there's no more
delay than is necessary about notifying the candidates who've been
selected to appear on the athletic field after school every day, and
keep hustling till supper time. We've just _got_ to make the sand fly,
if we expect to catch up with those older teams."

"Well," Hugh assured him, "you'll know all about it by tomorrow night,
because the last knot will have been untied by then, and everybody
notified to come out to the meeting. Then beginning on next Monday
afternoon, hard practice for the lucky ones, to be continued every
decent day during the week, with a game against a picked nine on
Saturday."

"Will Mr. Leonard coach the team as he promised, Hugh?" asked K. K.

Mr. Leonard was the assistant of the head of the Scranton schools, a
pretty fine sort of a young man, who had gained quite some fame as an
athlete while at Princeton, and was well fitted for the task of
athletic instructor, which post he filled in addition to other duties.

"He told me he would take the greatest pleasure in trying to build up a
winning team for Scranton," Hugh informed them.

"Good for Mr. Leonard, he's a dandy!" exclaimed Eli; and that seemed to
be the consensus of opinion; though Nick was seen to allow his upper
lip to curl a bit at mention of the athletic instructor's name.

There was a reason back of that, as the other boys well knew, for they
remembered the time when Nick had been handled pretty briskly by Mr.
Leonard, and made to apologize for some rude remark he had thrown out
heedlessly in his rough way. It could hardly be expected that Nick
would ever have a very good opinion of the young man who had humbled
his swollen pride in the presence of the same fellows whom he had so
long ridden rough-shod over.

"Well, the afternoon is getting on, and supper-time will be around
before long; so, for one, I'm going to head for home," observed K. K.

There was a general exodus, and the famous fence was soon abandoned by
the entire group of boys. They started off by twos and threes, with
the general drift of conversation circling around the one great
subject--the meeting to be called for Saturday night in the school, at
which the report of the committee would be made, together with an
ann