venile population and they
turned to their captain for advice.

"Oh, fix 'er up someway," said that gentleman vaguely. John glared at
him in futile anger.

"Get the rubbish out of the way, first," he broke out.

Sid shrugged his shoulders. "John'll tell you what to do. I'm captain,
but so long as the park's fixed up, I don't care who does it."

"Get your rake, Bill, and you, too, Skinny. I'll go after ours. Rest of
you kids pick up the tin cans and wood and things while we're gone. Come
on, fellows. Beat you over the tracks."

John dropped his rake over the fence on his return, and glanced at his
watch as a precaution. It was nearly five! Blame the paper business
anyway! Never did he start some important project but what time flew so
swiftly that he had to leave just when things were getting interesting.
He called an explanatory "paper time!" to his team mates, turned his
implement over to Red, and left for the little delicatessen store.

All the next Monday afternoon the boys labored while their captain stood
around with his hands in his pockets and watched condescendingly. John
picked up Bill on his return from the paper route, and went over to the
lot to inspect the carefully combed playing area. The broken glass,
rain-soaked paper caps, sticks, boards, and dead grass had been
carefully assembled in conical heaps near the railroad fence, and he
beamed his approval.

"It's going to be peachy, Silvey," he broke out.

"Yes, and Sid'll say he did it," his chum commented bitterly.

"What do we care? We'll put the home plate here," he indicated a spot
some fifty feet north of the dairy buildings. "Then the sun won't get in
our eyes. I'll borrow dad's big tapeline to measure off the other bases,
and the grand stand can go here. It'll be big enough to hold 'most fifty
people!"

Silvey listened in amazement. He could run a football team as
quarter-back to perfection, or break through the opposing line time and
again, as he had done last autumn, but this fertile foresight was
something beyond his comprehension.

"You talk as if you see it," he said finally.

"Why, I do." John dismissed the matter as worthy of no further comment.
"But before we do any of these things, we've got to cut the grass and
see where the bumps in the ground are."

For two afternoons the whirr of lawnmowers was heard over the "Tigers'
Home Grounds." When the many hollows and hummocks in the uneven turf
came to light, the youthful construc