Hurry! You can't reason with them now. Run for it. You can't wait to dress."

One look down the field was sufficient for Chase. The Jacktown players were marching toward the barn. The blacksmith led the way, and over his shoulder hung a long fence-rail. Behind them the crowd came yelling.

" Run for it! " cried Hutchinson, greatly excited. "I'll fetch your clothes." Chase had removed all his uniform except stockings and shoes, and he had put on his shirt. Grabbing up his hat, trousers, and coat, he bounded out of the door and broke down the field like a scared deer.

When the crowd saw him they let out a roar that lent wings to his feet. It frightened him so that he dropped his trousers, and did not dare stop to recover them. Over his shoulder he saw the Jacktown players, with the huge pitcher in the lead, start after him.

The race was close only for a few moments. Chase possessed a fleetness of foot that now served him in good stead, and undoubtedly had never appeared to such advantage.

With his hair flying in the wind, with his shirt-tails standing straight out behind him, he sped down the field, drawing so rapidly away that his pursuers seemed not to be running at all.

Chapter IV.

VICISSITUDE.

NOT until he had leaped fences and crossed half a dozen fields did Chase venture to look back. When he did so, he saw with immense relief that he had distanced his pursuers. Several were straggling along in front of the others, but all stopped running presently, to send after him a last threatening shout.

It made Chase as angry as a wet hornet. With all the power of his lungs he yelled back at them: " Hayseeds! Hayseeds ! "

Then at sight of his bare knees he took to laughing till he nearly cried. What would his brother Will have thought of that run? What would his mother have thought? This last sobered him instantly. Whenever he remembered her, the spirit of adventure fled, leaving him with only the uncertainty of his situation.

"It won't do to think of mother," he soliloquized, " for then I'll lose my nerve. Now what'll I do if those dunder-headed hayseeds steal my pants? I'll be in a bad fix."

He climbed a knoll which stood about a mile from the ball-grounds, and from which he could see the surrounding country. The sun slowly sank in the west. Chase watched and watched and strained his eyes, but he could not see any one coming. The sun went down, leaving a red glow behind the hills; twilight, like a gray shadow seemed to steal toward him from the fields.

He had noted a haystack at the foot of the knoll, and after one more hopeless glance over the darkening meadows, he went down to it. He had visited farms in the country often enough to know that haystacks left to the cattle usually had caves in them; and he found this one with a deep cavern, dry, sheltered, and sweetly odorous of musty hay.

" If things keep up the way they've started for me I 'm likely to find worse beds than this," he muttered. He discovered he was very tired, and that the soft hay was conducive to a gradual relaxing of his muscles. But his mind whirled round and round. Would Hutchinson come? What had happened to the other Brownsville players? A savage bunch of Indians, that Jacktown-nine! How easy it had been to fool them with a simple, slow outcurve!

"It's his crooked eye! He looks one way an' pitches another!" That jaunty umpire with his dainty shoes and velvet knickerbockers, - wherever on earth did he come from?

So Chase played the game over in his mind, once more ran his desperate race, to come back to his predicament and the fear that he might not recover his trousers. At length sleep put an end to his worry.

In the night he awoke, and seeing a bright star, which only accentuated the darkness, and smelling the fragrant hay, and hearing a strange sound, he did not realize where he was, and a chill terror crept over him. This soon passed. Still the low sound bothered him. Stretching forth his hand, he encountered a furry coat and heaving warm body. A cow had sought the shelter of the haystack and lay beside him chewing her cud. " Hello, bossy! " said Chase.