e're going to win," affirmed Dan Dalzell. "On second thought,
I'll sell my footwarmers at half the cost price."

"That's the way to talk," laughed Belle. "Now, remember,
boys---though Dick doesn't need to have his backbone stiffened---if
you boys haven't pride enough in Gridley to carry you through
anything, the Gridley High School girls are heart and soul in the
game. If you lose the game to-morrow don't any of you ever show up
again at a class dance!"

The girls went away laughing, yet they meant what they said.
Gridley girls were baseball fans and football rooters of the most
intense sort.

Dave wanted to be abed by half past eight that evening, as Coach
Luce had requested; but about a quarter past eight, just as he
was about to retire, his mother discovered that she needed coffee
for the next morning's breakfast, so she sent him to the grocer's
on the errand. Dick, while eating supper, thought of an item
that he wanted to print in the next day's "Blade." Accordingly,
he hurried to the newspaper office as soon as the meal was over.
It was ten minutes past eight when Dick handed in his copy to
the night editor.

"Time enough," muttered the boy, as he reached the street. "A
brisk jog homeward is just the thing before pulling off clothes
and dropping in between the sheets."

As Dick jogged along he remembered having noticed, on the way
to the office, Tip Scammon in a new suit of clothes.

"Tip's stock is coming up in the world," thought young Prescott.
"But I wonder whether Tip earned that suit or stole it, or whether
he has just succeeded in threatening more money out of Ripley.
How foolish Fred is to stand for blackmail! I wonder if I ought
to speak to him about it, or give his father a hint. I hate to
be meddlesome. And, by ginger! Now I think of it, Tip looked
rather curiously at me. He---oh!---_murder_!"

The last exclamation was wrung from Dick Prescott by a most amazing
happening.

He was passing a building in the course of erection. It stood
flush with the sidewalk, and the contractor had laid down a board
walk over the sidewalk, and had covered it with a roofed staging.

Just as Dick passed under this, still on a lope, a long pole was
thrust quickly out from the blackness inside the building. Between
Dick's moving legs went the pole.

Bump! Down came Dick, on both hands and one knee. Then he rolled
over sideways.

Away back in the building the young pitcher heard fast-moving
feet