cadets, who had insisted that they should be
their guests at supper.

To reach the dining hall they had to cross the baseball field, abandoned
now in the early fall, but the scene of fierce diamond battles earlier
in the season. To Bert and Tom and Dick it brought back the memory of
the great game they had played there two years before--a game that had
gone into extra innings, and had been won by a wonderful bit of playing
on the part of Tom who was holding down third.

"Remember that game, Tom?" asked Bert.

"O, no," mocked Dick. "He doesn't remember. A man who has made a triple
play unassisted never thinks of it again."

"He's blushing," exclaimed Drake. "Look at him, fellows. What a
shrinking violet."

Tom made a pass at him.

"A mere bit of luck," he countered. "You fellows give me a pain."

But there had been no luck about it. The game had been bitterly fought,
and at the end of the ninth the score was a tie. The Blues had got a man
round in the tenth, and the cadets went in to do or die. Before long the
crowds were on their feet and screaming like maniacs. There was a man on
third, another on second, nobody out, and the heaviest slugger in the
nine was at the bat. Amid exhortations to "kill it," he caught the ball
squarely on the end of his bat and sent it whistling toward third about
two feet over Tom's head. He made a tremendous leap, reaching up his
gloved hand, and the ball stuck there. The batter was out, but the man
on third, thinking it was a sure hit, was racing like mad to the plate.
As Tom came down he landed squarely on the bag, thus putting out the
runner, who had by this time realized his mistake and was trying
desperately to get back. In the meantime, the man on second, who had
taken a big lead, was close to third. As he turned to go back to second,
Tom chased him and touched him out just before he reached the bag. The
game was won, three men were out, and the bewildered spectators were
rubbing their eyes and trying to make out just what had happened. They
had seen a "triple play unassisted," the thing that every player dreams
of making, and one of the rarest feats ever pulled off on the baseball
diamond.

"We've certainly got the edge on Uncle Sam's boys in both baseball and
football," commented Dick, in discussing the incident, "but it's only an
edge. They always make us extend ourselves to win."

They had a royal time at the mess hall and afterward at the barracks,
where both the vanqui