bare palm which had taken most of the impact. The ball, bouncing off, rolled to one side, and a laugh went round the field as he chased after it and threw it in. When he returned to his place Paul's face was crimson, but his lips were set in a stubborn line and he scarcely noticed the pain in his hand.

"I will get the hang of it!" he muttered under his breath. "I'll learn to do it right if-if it takes all season!"

He stuck to his position as long as any of the others, and on the way home, with some embarrassment, he spoke to Frank of his determination. The latter was delighted and offered to help him in any way he could. As a result, from that time forth the two rarely, went anywhere without a baseball. Whenever there were a few minutes to spare they used them for throwing and catching. On the field, before and after the regular work, Frank knocked out flies or grounders, and in many other ways did his best to give his friend as much as possible of the practice he needed.

A baseball player is n't easily made to order. The normal boy seems almost to absorb his knowledge of the game through the pores of his skin, gaining proficiency by constant, never-ending practice that usually begins as soon as he is big enough to throw a ball. But much can be done by dogged persistence, and Paul Trexler had that quality to a marked degree. As the days passed, dust began to gather on his camera and on the cover of his book of bird photographs. In this new and strenuous occupation he found little time for the things which had formerly absorbed him. He regretted the many long tramps he had planned, but somehow he failed to miss them as much as he expected. Each noticeable improvement in his game filled him with a deep, abiding satisfaction, surpassing even the delight which he used to feel on securing a fine photograph. The climax came that afternoon when he was allowed to play on the scrub in place of one of the fielders who had not shown up. Not only did he fail to make any mirth-provoking blunders, but he even put through one play that brought forth a surprised, approving comment from Ranny Phelps himself.

"I don't know what you 've been doing to him, Frank," the latter said to Sanson, who passed on the remark afterward. "I 've never seen anybody improve the way he has. That catch was n't anything wonderful, of course, but when he threw to third he used his head, which is more than a lot of fellows right here on the field ever think of doing."

The latter part of the speech, especially, was

typical of the handsome Ranleigh. He ran the ball-team as he did a good many other things, reaching decisions more often through impulse and prejudice than from a mature judgment. There could be no question of his knowledge of the game or his ability as a pitcher. The latter was really extraordinary for a fellow of his age and experience, and this, perhaps, was what made him so intolerant of less gifted players. At all events, he had a little trick of sarcasm which did not endear him to those on whom it was exercised. Most fellows take the ordinary sort of "calling down," especially if it has been earned, with a fair amount of grace, but it rarely does any good to rub it in, as Ranny so often did.

"You'd think he was a little tin god on wheels the way he struts up and down, digging into the fellows in that uppish, sneering way," Court Parker heatedly remarked one afternoon late in the season. "You might think he never made any errors himself."

"I don't suppose he really means anything by it," returned Dale Tompkins, rather deprecatingly. For some time that day he had been watching Phelps and wondering rather wistfully whether Ranny was ever going to entirely forget that impulsive flare-up of his so many months ago. For a long time, to be sure, there had been few signs of active animosity from the blond chap. It would be well nigh impossible for any boy to long maintain that excessive coldness toward a fellow with whom he was so often and so intimately thrown. Especially since the beginning of baseball practice there had been a good deal of intercourse between them, but always Dale was conscious of a deep reserve looming up between them like some invisible, insurmountable barrier. And there were times when he would have given the world to break that barrier down.

Parker sniffed. "Then why does he do it? It only gets the fellows raw without doing a scrap of good. You 're a great one to stand up for him, Tommy! He 's treated you mean as dirt. Did n't he promise to let you pitch in some of the games?"

"Why, n-o; it was n't exactly a promise."

"It was the same thing. He made you think he was going to put you in, and all spring you 've worked your arm nearly off, pitching to the bunch. Then when a regular game came along he stepped into the box himself and hogged the whole thing nine innings. It 's been the same ever since, except last week when you went in for one miserable inning after we'd won the game. I call that a-a-an insult. It looked as if he thought you were n't any good."

Dale shrugged his shoulders. "Maybe he

Troop One, but he had long ago given up hoping. Ranny made it only too clear that he meant to keep that honor for himself, just as he had monopolized the pitching in all the other games. Dale could n't quite make up his mind whether

bit if he blew up. He did last year, and we mighty near lost the series. He can't stand being joshed, and Troop One is just the bunch to do it."

Dale laughed a little and set down his companion's disparaging remarks to temper rather than to any real belief in what he was saying. He had never seen Ranny pitch before this season, but he could not imagine him losing his superb control and "blowing up." He would have given anvthing for a chance to pitch against

this was from a deliberate desire to shut him out, or because the team captain really lacked faith in his ability and was afraid to trust him Feeling as he did toward the other -liking, admiring him still, almost in spite of himself— Tompkins rather hoped it was the latter case. In either event, however, he was obliged to content himself with the cold comfort that with Ranleigh Phelps pitching his best, Troop Five was practically certain to win.

The inter-troop baseball series had been arranged so that the two strongest teams were matched together on the concluding day. Both had won every game they had played so far, and the result this Saturday afternoon would decide the championship.

Naturally there was a big crowd of spectators. Practically every boy in town was present, ready to root for his favorite team, and the grand stand was well filled with older enthusiasts.

When Troop Five won the toss and spread out on the field, Dale Tompkins, with a faint sigh, dropped down on the bench he had ornamented for most of the season. Watching Ranny Phelps walking out to the mound, a wave of envy, pure and simple, swept over him. He wanted to pitch-desperately. At that moment he would have welcomed almost any contingency-even the unthinkable "blowing up" that Court had predicted-that would give him. his chance. He had done practically nothing all the season, and it seemed unfair that the last game should come without giving him a single opportunity of showing his mettle.

"What 's the use of trying at all if you never get a show?" he thought disconsolately.

But the mood did not last long. Dale was too keen a baseball fan not to become swiftly absorbed in the game which meant so much to himself and his brother scouts. There could be no question of Ranny's fine form. For the first five innings not a hit was scored against him. To be sure, several players made first on various errors, but none got beyond third, and in the meantime Troop Five had scored two runs.

"He's certainly some pitcher!" Tompkins remarked rather wistfully to Paul Trexler, who had taken a seat beside him. "Looks as if we had the game cinched."

"I hope so. If only he don't-er-blow up-" "Blow up!" interrupted Tompkins, sharply. "Does he act like it? You 've been listening to Court Parker's rubbish, Paul. I never saw any fellow pitch a steadier game."

But though he had been swift to deny the possibility, Trexler's remark lingered in Dale's mind, and almost unconsciously he began to watch for signs which might confirm it. The fellows that composed the rival team were rather older than the average scout and of a certain rough-andready type which made their joshing apt to carry more sting than that sort of thing usually did. So far, however, there had been little in the pitcher's manner or behavior for them to take hold of, and the stream of commonplace chatter and joking seemed to affect Ranny as little as water does a duck. He took it carelessly, with now and then a telling retort, and throughout the sixth and seventh innings his work continued to show much of the smooth perfection it had displayed from the first.

It was in the beginning of the eighth that

Tompkins's face began to grow a little troubled. Ranny had several rather noticeable mannerisms, which were especially apt to appear on the floodtide of success. Whether deliberately or not, he had hitherto suppressed them, but now he seemed momentarily to relax his vigilance.

He had struck out the first batter, and as the second stepped up to face him the pitcher paused, swept the grand stand with a leisurely glance, and then tossed back his head in an odd, rather affected gesture before starting to wind up. The gesture had probably originated on the gridiron, where hair is worn rather long and is apt to trail into one's eyes; here it looked rather foolish, and instantly the man who was coaching at first base, a fellow named Conners, seized upon it.

"See him shake his mane, fellows!" he yelled in a shrill falsetto. "Don't let him scare you, Blakie; he 's tame!"

"He'll be the goat, all right, before we get done with him," chimed in another.

Ranny hesitated an instant in his swing, bit his lips, and then put the ball over. It was wide, and, as he caught the return, there was an angry flush on his handsome face.

"He blushes sweetly!" shrilled Conners, dancing about off first. "He'd make a peach of a girl!"

Ranny wound up hastily and pitched again. It was a straight, speedy ball, but in his annoyance he must have forgotten that this was just the sort Blake liked. The latter met it squarely with a clean crack that brought Dale's heart into his mouth and jerked him to his feet to watch with tight lips and despairing eyes the soaring flight of the white sphere over the diamond and on-onseemingly to the very limits of the outfield!

THE CALL TO ARMS!

over

A FEW hours after Congress had assembled in extra session on April 2 and had effected an organization, President Wilson went before the lawmakers and asked them to draw the sword against the German Government on the ground that Germany had drawn her sword not only against the United States, but against the whole world. "American ships," said the President, "have been sunk, American lives taken in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and whelmed in the waters in the same way. The challenge is to all mankind." This challenge the President accepted, and advised the Congress not only to declare the conduct of the German Government to be nothing less than war and to take immediate steps to put the country in a more thorough state of defense, but to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war. To do this in the most efficient manner, the United States, said the President, would have to cooperate with the governments now at war with Germany and lend them large sums of money; the American navy would have to be equipped fully in all respects and, particularly, supplied with the best means of dealing with the enemy's submarines; the American army would have immediately to be increased by at least 500,000 men; and ample funds would have to be granted by Congress to carry on the war.

The President's message was a trumpet-call to arms, memorably worded, and promptly acclaimed throughout this country and among the nations of the Entente as a wonderful state-paper-a historic utterance, nobly voicing the true patriotism of the American people in this world

crisis, and worthy to rank with the immortal messages of Presidents Washington and Lincoln. Every reader of ST. NICHOLAS who is old enough to understand it should read it entire, for we have space here only to quote a few of its ringing paragraphs and single sentences:

There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making:-We will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are not common wrongs -they cut to the very roots of human life.

We are now about to accept gage of battle with this natural foe to liberty, and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the Nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included; for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the trusted foundations of political liberty.

We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind.

There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts-for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who