he field saw Ward and Homans running for the plate. All eyes
were on the gray, flitting shadow of a sprinter. One voice only, and
that was Murray's, boomed out in the silence. When Reddy turned second
base Starke reached the ball and threw for third. It was a beautiful
race between ball and runner for the bag. As Reddy stretched into the
air in a long slide the ball struck and shot off the ground with a
glancing bound. They reached the base at the same time. But Griffith,
trying to block the runner, went spinning down, and the ball rolled
toward the bleachers. Reddy was up and racing plateward so quickly
that it seemed he had not been momentarily checked. The few Wayne
rooters went wild.

"Three runs!" yelled the delirious coaches. Weir was so overcome that
he did not know it was his turn at bat. When called in he hurried to
the plate and drove a line fly to centre that Keene caught only after
a hard run.

Ken Ward rose from the bench to go out on the diamond. The voices of
his comrades sounded far away, as voices in a dream.

"Three to the good now, Ward! It's yours!" said Captain Homans.

"Only nine more batters! Peg, keep your feet leaded!" called Reddy Ray.

"It's the seventh, and Place hasn't made a safe hit! Oh, Ken!"
came from Raymond.

So all the boys vented their hope and trust in their pitcher.

There was a mist before Ken's eyes that he could not rub away. The field
blurred at times. For five innings after the first he had fought some
unaccountable thing. He had kept his speed, his control, his memory of
batters, and he had pitched magnificently. But something had hovered
over him, and had grown more tangible as the game progressed. There was
a shadow always before his sight.

In the last of the seventh, with Keene at bat, Ken faced the plate with
a strange unsteadiness and a shrinking for which he hated himself. What
was wrong with him? Had he been taken suddenly ill? Anger came to his
rescue, and he flung himself into his pitching with fierce ardor. He
quivered with a savage hope when Keene swung ineffectually at the high
in-shoot. He pitched another and another, and struck out the batter.
But now it meant little to see him slam down his bat in a rage. For
Ken had a foreboding that he could not do it again. When Prince came
up Ken found he was having difficulty in keeping the ball where he
wanted it. Prince batted a hot grounder to Blake, who fumbled. MacNeff
had three balls and one strike called u