Page:The purple pennant (IA purplepennant00barb).pdf/62

Rh the field would have been far from empty, for there were nearly as many team candidates as spectators to-day. More than forty ambitious youths had responded to the call and it required all the ingenuity of Dick Lovering and Captain Warner Jones to give each one a chance. The problem was finally solved by sending a bunch of tyros into extreme left field, under charge of Manager Wayland, where they fielded slow grounders and pop-flies and tested their throwing arms.

It was while chasing a ball that had got by him that Way noticed a fluttering sheet of paper near the cinder track. It had been creased and folded, but now lay flat open, challenging curiosity. Way picked it up and glanced at it as he returned to his place. It held all sorts of scrawls and scribbles, but the words "William Butler Shaw," and the letters "W. B. S.," variously arranged and entwined, were frequently repeated. Occupying the upper part of the sheet were six or seven lines of what, since the last words rhymed with each other, Way concluded to be poetry. Since many of the words had been scored out and superseded by others, and since the writing was none too legible in any case, Way had to postpone the reading of the complete poem. He stuffed it in his pocket, with a chuckle, and went back to amusing his awkward squad.