"And aren't you going to send some word home about that warning he gave you?" asked Tom, as Joe finished. "That Holdney scoundrel may be working his scheme now."

"Oh, yes, sure. I'm going to write to dad as soon as we get back to our room. Sure I'm going to warn him. I'm mighty sorry for Mr. Benjamin.

He's a smart man, but he went wrong, and now he's down and out, as he says. But he did me a good service."

"It doesn't even things up!" spoke Teeter. "He surely would have been a gone one but for you."

"Oh, some one else might have thought of that way of getting him down if I hadn't," replied Joe modestly. "I remember a story I read in one of the books I had when I was a kid. A fellow was on a high chimney, and a rope he had used to haul himself up slipped down. A big crowd gathered and no one knew how to help him. His wife came to bring his dinner and she got onto a scheme right away.

"'Hey, John!' she called 'unravel your sock. Begin at the toe!' You see he had on knitted socks. Well, he unravelled one, got a nice long piece of yarn and lowered it to the ground. He tied on his knife, or something for a weight. Then they fastened a cord to the yarn, and a rope to the cord, he pulled the rope up and got down off the chimney."

"Your process, only reversed," commented Tom. "I say fellows," he added, "let's run and get warmed up. I'm shivering."

"It was warm enough back there at the fire," said Teeter, as he looked to where the blaze was now dying out for lack of material on which to feed.

"Beastly mean of Hiram and Luke," commented Peaches. "They're getting scared I guess. I hope we get 'em out of the nine before the season's over."

Joe and Tom entertained their friends with crackers and hot lemonade, and none of the professors or monitors annoyed them with attentions.

They must have known of it, when Peaches went to get the hot water in the dormitory kitchen, but it is something to have a hero in a school, and Joe was certainly the hero of the night.

The two lads, who had been thoroughly soaked, stripped and took a good rub down, and this, with the hot lemonade, set them into a warm glow.

Then they sat about and talked and talked until nearly midnight.

Joe wrote a long letter to his father explaining all the circ.u.mstances and warned him to be on the lookout. One of the janitors who had to arise early to attend to his duties promised to see that the missive got off on the first morning mail.

"There, now, I guess we'll go to bed," announced Joe.

There was much subdued excitement in chapel the next morning, and Dr.

Fillmore made a reference to the events of the night before.

"I am very proud of the way you young gentlemen behaved at the fire," he said. "It was an exciting occasion, and yet you held yourselves well within bounds. We have reason to be very proud of one of our number who distinguished himself, and----"

"Three cheers for Joe Matson!" yelled Peaches, and they were given heartily--something that had never before happened in chapel. Dr.

Fillmore looked surprised, and Professor Rodd was evidently pained, but Dr. Rudden was observed to join in the ovation, over which Joe blushed painfully.

Joe caught a cold from his wetting and exposure. It was nothing serious, but the school physician thought he had better stay in bed for a couple of days, and, much against his will the young pitcher did so.

"How is baseball practice going on?" he asked Tom after the first day.

"I wish I could get out and watch it."

"Oh, it's going pretty good. We scrubs have a hard job holding the school nine down when you're not there to pitch. There's a game with Woodside Hall to-morrow, and I guess we'll win."

Excelsior Hall did win that contest, but not by as big a score as they should have done. It was the old story of Hiram and Luke not managing things right, and having weak pitchers. Still it was a victory, and served to elate the bully and his crony.

It was on the third day of Joe's imprisonment in his room, and his cold was much better. He had heard that Mr. Benjamin had recovered and left the hotel; no one knew for what place.

He sent Joe a note of thanks, however, and it came in with some mail from home. Joe opened the home letters first. There was one from his father, enclosed in one from his mother and Clara.

"Dear Joe," wrote Mr. Matson. "I got your warning, but it was too late. Why didn't you telegraph me? The night before your letter got here some valuable papers and models were stolen from my new shop. I have no doubt but that Holdney did it--he or some of his tools. It will cripple me badly, but I may be able to pull through. I appreciate what Benjamin did for us, and it was mighty smart of you to save him that way. But why didn't you telegraph me about the danger to my models?"

"That's it!" exclaimed Joe bitterly to himself. "What a chump I was. Why didn't I telegraph dad, and then it would have been in time. Why didn't I?"

CHAPTER XXII

BITTER DEFEAT

Joe's first act, after receiving the bad news from home, was to sit down and write his father a letter full of vain regrets, of self-accusation, upbraiding himself for having been so stupid as not to have thought of telegraphing. He hastened to post this, going out himself though barely over his cold.

"I'm not going to take any more chances," he remarked to Tom. "Maybe that other letter wasn't mailed by the janitor, or it would have gotten to dad in time."

"Hardly," remarked his chum. "Your father says the things were taken the night before your letter arrived, so you would have had to write the day before to have done any good. Only a telegram would have been of any use."

"I guess so," admitted Joe sorrowfully. "I'm a chump!"

"Oh, don't worry any more," advised his friend. "Let's get at some baseball practice. The school has two games this week."

"Who with?" asked Joe.

"Woodside Hall and the Lakeview Preps. We ought to win 'em both. They need you back on the scrub. The first nine has had it too easy."

"And I'll be glad to get back," replied the young pitcher earnestly. "It seems as if I hadn't had a ball in my hands for a month."

Joe mailed his letter and then, as the day was just right to go out on the diamond, he and Tom hastened there, finding plenty of lads awaiting them. A five-inning game between the scrub and school teams was soon arranged.

"Now boys, go in and clean 'em up!" exclaimed Luke, as his men went to bat, allowing the scrub the advantage of being last up. This was done to make the first team strive exceptionally hard to pile up runs early in the practice.

"Don't any of you fan out," warned Hiram. "I'm watching you."

"And so am I," added Dr. Rudden, the coach, as he strolled up. "You first team lads want to look to your laurels. You have plenty of games to play before the finals to decide the possession of the Blue Banner, but remember that every league game counts. Your percentage is rather low for the start of the season."

He was putting it mildly. The percentage of Excelsior Hall was exceedingly low.

"Beat the scrub!" advised the coach-teacher.

"They can't do it with Joe in the box!" declared Tom; and Luke and Hiram sneered audibly. Their feeling against our two heroes had not improved since the event of the initiation.

The scrub nine was not noted for its heavy hitting, but in this practice game they outdid themselves, and when they came up for their first attempt they pulled down the lead of four runs which the school nine had, to one. There was an ominous look on the faces of Luke and Hiram as the first team went to bat for the second time.

"Make 'em look like a plugged nickel," advised Tom to his pitching chum.

"The worse you make 'em take a beating the more it will show against Hiram and Luke. We want to get 'em out of the game."

"All right," a.s.sented Joe, and then he "tightened up," in his pitching, with the result that a goose egg went up in the second frame of the first team.

Even Dr. Rudden looked grave over this. If the school nine could not put up a better game against their own scrub, all of whose tricks and mannerisms they knew, what could they do against the two regular nines with whom they were to cross bats during the week? When the scrubs got another run, Joe knocking a three bagger, and coming home on Tommy Barton's sacrifice, there was even a graver look on the face of the coach. As for Luke and Hiram, they held a consultation.

"We'll have to make a shift somewhere," declared Hiram.