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 his style of delivery. It looked like another high one that might turn into a drop, but it proved to be a fancy inshoot, and Grady, doing his prettiest to connect, made a clean miss.

"Y'u're out!" barked the umpire.

Then the crowd did cheer, for, in amazing contrast to the manner in which he had opened up, Tom Locke had whiffed Grady without wasting one.

Henry Cope poked the silent Hutchinson in the ribs. "What'd I tell ye? What'd I tell ye?" he spluttered delightedly. "Now I guess you'll see I ain't such a bonehead in pickin' pitchers. I played this game myself once."

"Wait," said the manager without a flutter, or the slightest variation of intonation. "Strikin' out one man that's looking to walk don't make a pitcher. He's got to show me more'n that."

"He'll show ye, all right," asserted Cope. "I knew what he c'd do."

Gus Mace followed Grady at the pan. The right fielder of the Bullies, he was regarded as their heaviest hitter, and his batting the year before had caused the Kingsbridgers to groan with grief. He was boiling over with confidence as he faced Locke, but, getting a signal from Riley, he let the first one pass, in order that Trollop, grown