of bread and great plump pies, sweet cider and old wine, delighted the merry party.
“Friends, neighbors, dear ones,” said Colonel Zane, “my heart is almost too full for speech. This occasion, commemorating the day of our freedom on the border, is the beginning of the reward for stern labor, hardship, silenced hearths of long, relentless years. I did not think I’d live to see it. The seed we have sown has taken root; in years to come, perhaps, a great people will grow up on these farms we call our homes. And as we hope those coming afterward will remember us, we should stop a moment to think of the heroes who have gone before. Many there are whose names will never be written on the roll of fame, whose graves will be unmarked in history. But we who worked, fought, bled beside them, who saw them die for those they left behind, will render them all justice, honor and love. To them we give the victory. They were true; then let us, who begin to enjoy the freedom, happiness and prosperity they won with their lives, likewise be true in memory of them, in deed to ourselves, and in grace to God.”
By no means the least of the pleasant features of this pleasant day was the fact that three couples blushingly presented themselves before the colonel, and confided to him their sudden conclusions in regard to the felicitousness of the moment. The happy colonel raced around until he discovered Jim Douns, the minister, and there amid the merry throng he gave the brides away, being the first to kiss them.
It was late in the afternoon when the villagers dispersed to their homes and left the colonel to his own circle. With his strong, dark face beaming, he mounted the old porch step.
“Where are my Zane babies?” he asked. “Ah! here you are! Did anybody ever see anything to beat that? Four wonderful babies! Mother, here’s your Daniel—if you’d only named him Eb! Silas, come for Silas junior, bad boy that he is. Isaac, take your Indian princess; ah! little Myeerah with the dusky face. Woe be to him who looks into those eyes when you come to age. Jack, here’s little Jonathan, the last of the bordermen; he, too, has beautiful eyes, big like his mother’s. Ah! well, I don’t believe I have left a wish, unless—”
“Unless?” suggested Betty with her sweet smile.
“It might be—” he said and looked at her.
Betty’s warm cheek was close to his as she whispered: “Dear Eb!” The rest only the colonel heard.
“Well! By all that’s glorious!” he exclaimed, and attempted to seize her; but with burning face Betty fled.
* * * *
“Jack, dear, how the leaves are falling!” exclaimed Helen. “See them floating and whirling. It reminds me of the day I lay a prisoner in the forest glade praying, waiting for you.”
The borderman was silent.
They passed down the sandy lane under the colored maple trees, to a new cottage on the hillside.
“I am perfectly happy today,” continued Helen. “Everybody seems to be content, except you. For the first time in weeks I see that shade on your face, that look in your eyes. Jack, you do not regret the new life?”
“My love, no, a thousand times no,” he answered, smiling down into her eyes. They were changing, shadowing with thought; bright as in other days, and with an added beauty. The wilful spirit had been softened by love.
“Ah, I know, you miss the old friend.”
The yellow thicket on the slope opened to let out a tall, dark man who came down with lithe and springy stride.
“Jack, it’s Wetzel!” said Helen softly.
No words were spoken as the comrades gripped hands.
“Let me see the boy?” asked Wetzel, turning to Helen.
Little Jonathan blinked up at the grave borderman with great round eyes, and pulled with friendly, chubby fingers at the fringed buckskin coat.
“When you’re a man the forest trails will be corn fields,” muttered Wetzel.
The bordermen strolled together up the brown hillside, and wandered along the river bluff. The air was cool; in the west the ruddy light darkened behind bold hills; a blue mist streaming in the valley shaded into gray as twilight fell.
THE SHORTSTOP (1909) [Part 1]
DEDICATION
To My Brother, Reddy Grey,
To Arthur Irwin, My Coach and Teacher,
To Roy Thomas and Ray Kellogg, Fellow-Players and Friends,
And to All the Girls and All the Boys
Who Love the…
GRAND OLD AMERICAN GAME
CHAPTER I
PERSUADING MOTHER
Chase Calloway hurried out of the factory door and bent his steps homeward. He wore a thoughtful, anxious look, as of one who expected trouble. Yet there was a briskness in his stride that showed the excitement under which he labored was not altogether unpleasant.
In truth, he had done a strange and momentous thing; he had asked the foreman for higher wages, and being peremptorily refused, had thrown up his place and was now on his way home to tell his mother.
He crossed the railroad tracks to make a short cut, and threaded his way through a maze of smoke-blackened buildings, to come into narrow street lined with frame houses. He entered a yard that could not boast of a fence, and approached a house as unprepossessing as its neighbors.
Chase hesitated on the steps, then opened the door. There was no one in the small, bare, clean kitchen. With a swing which had something of an air of finality about it, he threw his dinner-pail into a corner.
“There!” he said grimly, as if he had done with it. “Mother, where are you?”
Mrs. Alloway came in, a slight little woman, pale, with marks of care on her patient face. She greeted him with a smile, which faded quickly in surprise and dismay.
“You’re home early, Chase,” she said anxiously.
“Mother, I told you I was going to ask for more money. Well, I did. The foreman laughed at me and refused. So I threw up my job.”
“My boy! My boy!” faltered Mrs. Alloway.
Chase was the only breadwinner in their household of three. His brother, a bright, studious boy of fifteen, was a cripple. Mrs. Alloway helped all she could with her needle, but earned little enough. The winter had been a hard one, and had left them with debts that must be paid. It was no wonder she gazed up at him in distressed silence.
“I’ve been sick of this job for a long time,” went on Chase. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. There’s no chance for me in the factory. I’m not quick enough to catch the hang of mechanics. Here I am over seventeen and big and strong, and I’m making six dollars a week. Think of it! Why, if I had a chance— See here, mother, haven’t I studied nights ever since I left school to go to work? I’m no dummy. I can make something of myself. I want to get into business—business for myself, where I can buy and sell.”
“My son, it takes money to go into business. Where on earth can you get any?”
“I’ll make it,” replied Chase, eagerly. A flush reddened his cheek. He would have been handsome then, but for his one defect, a crooked eye. “I’ll make it. I need money quick—and I’ve hit on the way to make it. I—”
“How?”
The short query drew him up sharply, chilling his enthusiasm. He paced the kitchen, and then, with a visible effort, turned to his mother.
“I am going to be a baseball player.”
The murder was out now and he felt relief. His mother sat down with a little gasp. He waited quietly for her refusal, her reproach, her arguments, ready to answer them one by one.
“I won’t let you be a ball player.”
“Mother,