Chapter IV: Part 4

It was a matter of principle with Grace, as with all good players, never to question an umpire’s decision, and he had been taught the good old rule to “Never kick in a winning game.” But the decisions were so outrageous that it soon came too close to being a losing game for him to allow them to continue. So, finally, after a decision of the brother’s had given Slade the second one of the two sets, Grace went to the referee and asked that some one be appointed to act in Mr. Slade’s place, as he did not seem to understand or to pay proper attention to the game.

“Mr. Slade’s decisions have been simply ridiculous,” said Grace, “and they have all been against myself. This may be due to ignorance or carelessness, but in any case I object to him as an umpire most emphatically.”

“Well, you can object to him all you please,” retorted the elder brother. “If you don’t like the way this tournament is conducted you can withdraw. You needn’t think you can come down here and attempt to run everything to suit yourself, even if you are a crack player. Do you mean to forfeit the game or not?”

“It seems to me, gentlemen,” stammered Mr. Percy Clay, excitedly, “that if Mr. Grace desires another umpire--”

“Oh, you keep out of this, will you!” retorted the omnipotent Slade, and Mr. Clay retreated hurriedly.

Grace walked back into the court, and nodded to the referee that he was ready to go on.

He was too angry to speak, but he mentally determined to beat his opponent so badly, umpire or no umpire, that his friends would avoid tennis as a topic of conversation for months to come.

This incendiary spirit made him hammer the innocent rubber balls to such purpose that the elder Slade was almost afraid of his life, and failed to return more than a dozen of the opponent’s strokes in the next two sets.

His brother’s decisions were now even more ridiculous than before, but Grace pretended not to notice them.

The game now stood two straight sets in Grace’s favor, and one set 6-5 in Slade’s--or in favor of both the Slades, for they had both helped to win it.

Grace had four games love, in the final set, when in running back after a returned ball he tripped and fell over an obstacle, spraining his right ankle very badly. The obstacle proved to be the leg of one of the Hilltown youths who was lying in the grass with his feet stuck out so far that they touched the line.

Grace got up and tried to rest his weight on his leg, and then sat down again very promptly.

He shut his teeth and looked around him.

Nobody moved except Mr. Clay, who asked anxiously if Grace were hurt. Grace said that he was; that he had sprained his ankle.

The young gentleman over whom he had fallen had by this time curled his legs up under him, but made no proffer of assistance or apology.

“Oh, that’s an old trick!” Grace heard the younger Slade say, in a tone which was meant to reach him. “Some men always sprain their ankles when they are not sure of winning. I guess he’ll be able to walk before the year’s out.”

Grace would have got up then and there and thrashed the younger Slade, ankle or no ankle, if he had not been pounced upon by the two Malvern boys, who pushed their way through the crowd with a pail of lemonade and a half dozen towels that they had picked up in the club-house. They slipped off his shoe and stocking, and dipping a towel in the iced lemonade, bound it about his ankle and repeated the operation several times, much to Grace’s relief.

“This lemonade was prepared for drinking purposes, I fancy,” said one of them, “but we couldn’t find anything else. I never heard of its being good for sprains, but it will have to do. How do you feel now?”

“All right, thank you,” said Grace. “I’ve only these two games to play now, and it’s my serve. I needn’t run around much in that. Just give me a lift, will you? Thanks.”

But as soon as Grace touched his foot to the ground, the boys saw that he was anything but all right. His face grew very white, and his lips lost their color. Whenever he moved he drew in his breath in short, quick gasps, and his teeth were clinched with pain.

He lost his serve, and the next game as well, and before five minutes had passed he was two games to the bad in the last set.

The Malvern boys came to him and told him to rest; that he was not only going to lose the game, but that he might be doing serious injury as well to his ankle, which was already swelling perceptibly. But Grace only unlaced his shoe the further and set his teeth. One of the Malvernites took upon himself to ask the referee if he did not intend giving Mr. Grace a quarter of an hour’s “time” at least.

The referee said that the rules did not say anything about sprained ankles.

“Why, I know of tennis matches,” returned the Malvernite champion excitedly, “that have been laid over for hours because of a sprained ankle. It will be no glory to Mr. Slade to win from a man who has to hop about on one foot, and no credit either.”

“Mr. Grace is a crack player, and I’m not,” said Slade; “but I asked no favors of him on that account, and I don’t expect him to ask any of me.”

“I haven’t asked any of you!” roared Grace, now wholly exasperated with anger and pain, “and you’ll wait some time before I do. Go on with the game.”

The ankle grew worse, but Grace’s playing improved, notwithstanding. He felt that he would rather beat “that Slade man” than the champion himself; and he won each of his serves, not one of the balls being returned.

They were now “five all,” and the expressed excitement was uproarious in its bitterness and intensity.

Slade had the serve, and it was with a look of perfect self-satisfaction that he pounded the first ball across the net. Grace returned it, and the others that followed brought the score up to ’vantage in Slade’s favor, so that he only needed one more point to win.

The people stood up in breathless silence. Grace limped into position and waited, Slade bit his under lip nervously, and served the ball easily, and his opponent sent it back to him like an arrow; it struck within a foot of the serving line on the inside, making the score “deuce.”

“Outside! Game and set in favor of Mr. Slade,” chanted the younger Slade with an exultant cry.

“What!” shouted Grace and the two Malvernites in chorus.

But the crowd drowned their appeal in exclamations of self-congratulation and triumph.

“Did you see that ball?” demanded Grace of the referee.

“I did,” said that young man.

“And do you mean to tell me it was out?”

“It was--I do,” stammered the youth. “You heard what Mr. Slade said.”

“I don’t care what Mr. Slade said. I appeal to you against the most absurd decision ever heard or given on a tennis-field.”

“And I support Mr. Slade,” replied the referee.

“Oh, very well!” said Grace, with sudden quietness. “Come,” he whispered to his two lieutenants, “let’s get out of this. They’ll take our watches next!” And the three slowly made their way to the club-house.

They helped Grace into his other clothes and packed up his tennis-flannels for him. He was very quiet and seemed more concerned about his ankle than over the loss of the State championship.

Grace and his two supporters were so long in getting to the station, no one having offered Grace a carriage, that he missed his train.

He was very much annoyed, for he was anxious to shake the dust of Hilltown from his feet, and he was more than anxious about his ankle.

“Mr. Grace,” said Merton, “Prior and I were wondering if you would think we were presuming on our short acquaintance if we asked you to come home with us to Malvern. You can’t get back to college to-night from here, and Malvern is only ten miles off. My father is a doctor and could tell you what you ought to do about your ankle, and we would be very much pleased if you would stay with us.”

“Yes, indeed, we would, Mr. Grace,” echoed the younger lad.

“Why, it’s very kind of you; you’re very good indeed!” stammered Grace; “but I am afraid your family are hardly prepared to receive patients at all hours, and to have the house turned into a hospital.”

Merton protested with dignity that he had asked Grace as a guest, not as a patient; and they finally compromised upon Grace’s consenting to go on to Malvern, but insisting on going to the hotel.

Grace had not been at the Malvern Hotel, which was the only one in the place, and more of an inn than a hotel, for over ten minutes before Dr. Merton arrived in an open carriage and carried him off, whether he would or no, to his own house, where, after the ankle was dressed, Grace was promptly put to bed.

In the morning, much to his surprise, he found that the swelling had almost entirely disappeared, and he was allowed in consequence to come down to the breakfast-table with the family, where he sat with his foot propped up on a chair. He was considered a very distinguished invalid and found it hard not to pose as a celebrity in the cross-fire of admiring glances from the younger Merton boys and the deferential questions of their equally young sisters.

After breakfast, he was assisted out on to the lawn and placed in a comfortable wicker chair under a tree, where he could read his book or watch the boys play tennis, as he pleased. The tennis was so well worth watching that after regarding it critically for half an hour he suddenly pounded the arm of his chair and called excitedly for the boys to come to him. They ran up in some alarm.

“No, there’s nothing wrong,” he said. “I have a great idea. I see a way for you to get even with those lads at Hilltown and to revenge me by proxy. All you need is a week’s training with better players than yourselves for this tri-club tournament and you’ll be as good or better than they are now.”

Then the champion explained how the Malvern team, having no worthy opponents to practise against at home, were not able to improve in their playing; that water would not rise above its own level; and that all they required was competitors who were much better than themselves.

“I can teach you something about team-play that you don’t seem to understand,” said Grace. “I will write to-day to that college chap, Thatcher, to come down with a good partner and they will give you some fine practice.”

The Malvern boys were delighted. They wanted the lessons to begin at once, and as soon as the letter was despatched to Thatcher, Grace had his arm-chair moved up near the net and began his lectures on tennis, two boys from the Malvern club acting as the team’s opponents.

Grace began by showing the boys the advantage of working as a team and not as individuals, how to cover both alleys at once, and how to guard both the front and back; he told them where to stand so as not to interfere with each other’s play, when to “smash” a ball and when to lift it high in the air, where to place it and when to let it alone. Sometimes one play would be repeated over and over again, and though Grace was a sharp master his team were only too willing to do as he commanded whether they saw the advantage of it or not. When the shadows began to grow long, and the dinner gong sounded, Grace told them they could stop, and said they had already made marked improvement, so they went in radiant with satisfaction and exercise, and delightfully tired.

Practice began promptly the next morning, and continued steadily on to luncheon. At two o’clock Thatcher and another player arrived from the college, which was only a few miles distant from Malvern, and Grace gave them an account of his defeat at Hilltown and of the Slade’s treatment of the Malvernites.

“You saw, Thatcher,” said Grace, “how they abused and insulted those boys. Well, these same boys have treated me as if I were one of their own family. Dr. and Mrs. Merton have done everything that people could do. It has been really lovely, and I think I can show my appreciation of it by bringing back those cups from that hole in the ground called Hilltown. And I ask you to help me.”

The college men entered heartily into Grace’s humor, and promised to come down every afternoon and give the boys all the practice they wanted.

Every one belonging to the club had heard what was going on, by this time, and the doctor’s big front lawn was crowded with people all the afternoon in consequence.

The improvement in the Malvern boys’ playing was so great that every one came up to be introduced, and to congratulate Grace on the work he had done. He held quite a levee in his arm-chair.

Mrs. Merton asked the college men to supper, and had some of the Malvern men and maidens to meet them.

The visitors presumably enjoyed their first day very much, for when they returned the next morning they were accompanied by four more collegians, who showed the keenest interest in the practice games.

These four men belonged to that set that is found in almost every college, whose members always seem to have plenty of time to encourage and aid every institution of Alma Mater, from the debating societies to the tug-of-war team.

These particular four were always on the field when the teams practised; they bought more tickets than any one else for the Glee Club concerts; and no matter how far the foot-ball team might have to wander to play a match, they could always count on the appearance of the faithful four, clad in greatcoats down to their heels, and with enough lung power to drown the cheers of a hundred opponents.

Barnes, Blair, Black, and Buck were their proper names, but they were collectively known as the Four B’s, the Old Guard, or the Big Four; and Thatcher had so worked on their feelings that they were now quite ready to champion the Malvern team against their disagreeable opponents.

They made a deep impression on the good townsfolk of Malvern. Different people carried them off to supper, but they all met later at Dr. Merton’s and sat out on his wide veranda in the moonlight, singing college songs to a banjo accompaniment which delighted the select few inside the grounds and equally charmed a vast number of the uninvited who hung over the front fence.

The practice games continued day after day, and once or twice the Malvern team succeeded in defeating their instructors, which delighted no one more than the instructors themselves.

Grace was very much pleased. He declared he would rather have his boys defeat the Slades than win the national tournament himself, and at the time he said so, he really believed that he would.

He went around on crutches now, and it was very odd to see him vaulting about the court in his excitement, scolding and approving, and shouting, “Leave that ball alone,” “Come up, now,” “Go back, play it easy,” “Smash it,” “Played, indeed, sir,” “Well placed.”

The tri-club tournament opened on Wednesday, and on Tuesday the Four B’s, who had been daily visitors to Malvern, failed to appear, but sent instead two big pasteboard boxes, each holding a blazer, cap, and silk scarf, in blue-and-white stripes, the Malvern club colors, which they offered as their share toward securing the Malvern champions’ victory.

On the last practice day, Grace balanced himself on his crutches and gave the boys the hardest serving they had ever tried to stand up against. All day long he pounded the balls just an inch above the net, and when they were able to return three out of six he threw down his racket and declared himself satisfied. “We may not take the singles,” he said, “but it looks as if the doubles were coming our way.”

Grace and his boys, much to the disgust of the townspeople, all of whom, from the burgess down to the hostler in the Malvern Hotel, were greatly excited over the coming struggle, requested that no one should accompany them to Hilltown. They said if they took a crowd down there and were beaten it would only make their defeat more conspicuous, and that the presence of so many interested friends might also make the boys nervous. If they won, they could celebrate the victory more decorously at home. But Grace could not keep the people from going as far as the depot to see them off, and they were so heartily cheered as they steamed away that the passengers and even the conductor were much impressed.

The reappearance of Grace on crutches, and of the Malvern boys in their new clothes caused a decided sensation. They avoided any conversation with the Hilltown people, and allowed Grace to act for them in arranging the preliminaries.

Pineville had sent two teams. Hilltown was satisfied with the “State champions,” as they now fondly called the Slades, and these, with Malvern’s one team, balanced the games evenly.

The doubles opened with Merton and Prior against the second Pineville team, and the State champions against its first. Grace told his boys not to exert themselves, and to play only just well enough to win. They did as he said, and the second Pineville team were defeated in consequence by so few points that they felt quite pleased with themselves. The Slades had but little trouble with the other Pineville team.

Then the finals came on, and the people of Hilltown crowded up to see the demolition of the Malvernites, against whom they were now more than bitter, owing to Grace’s evident interest in their success.

The Hilltown element were so anxious to show their great regard for the champions that they had contributed an extra amount of money toward the purchase of prize cups over and above the fixed sum subscribed by each of the three clubs.

“Get those cups ready for us,” said the elder Slade, as the four players took their places. Prior looked as if he was going to answer this taunt, but Grace shook his head at him.

Thatcher, whose late service to the Malvern team was unknown, acted at their request as one of the umpires. Two Hilltown men served as the referee and other umpire. The game opened up in a way that caused a cold chill to run down the backs of the Hilltown contingent. The despised Malvernites were transformed, and Hilltown could not believe its eyes.

“Are these the same boys who were here ten days ago?” asked an excited old gentleman.

“They say they are,” replied Mr. Percy Clay, gloomily, “but they don’t look it.”

The Slades felt a paralyzing numbness coming over them as ball after ball came singing back into their court, placed in odd corners just out of reach of their racquets.

They held a hurried consultation, and rolled up their sleeves a little higher and tossed away their caps.

Grace had a far-away and peaceful look in his eyes that made the crowd feel nervous. The first set went six to four in favor of Malvern. Then the crowd surrounded the champions and poured good advice and reproaches upon them, which did not serve to help either their play or their temper.

The result of the second set convinced the umpire and referee that it was time to take a hand in the game themselves, and the decisions at once became so unfair that Grace hobbled over to that end of the court to see after things. But his presence had no effect on the perceptions of the Hilltown umpire. So he hobbled back to Thatcher and asked him what they had better do about it. Thatcher said he was powerless, and Grace regretted bitterly that he had not brought a crowd with him to see fair play, for the boys were getting rattled at being robbed of so many of their hard-won points. To make matters worse, the crowd took Thatcher in hand, and disputed every decision he gave against Hilltown. Thatcher’s blood rose at this, and forgetting that the usual procedure would not be recognized by a Hilltown crowd, he turned on the spectators and told them that he would have the next man who interfered or questioned his decisions expelled from the grounds.

His warning was received with ripples of laughter and ironical cheers.

“Who’s going to put us out?” asked the Hilltown youths, derisively. But Thatcher had spoken in a rather loud voice, and his words and the answer to them had reached the ears of four straight-limbed young men who were at that moment making their way across the grounds. They broke into a run when they heard Thatcher’s angry voice, and, shoving their way through the big crowd with an abruptness learned only in practice against a rush line on a foot-ball field, stood forth on the court in all the glory of orange and black blazers.

“The Four B’s!” exclaimed Grace, with a gasp of relief.

“What seems to be the matter, Thatcher?” asked Black, quietly. “Whom do you want put out?”

“Who are you?” demanded Mr. Clay, running up in much excitement. “Get off this court. You’ll be put out yourselves if you attempt to interfere.”

Several of the Hilltown young men ran to Mr. Clay’s assistance, while one of the Slades leaped over the net and seized Mr. Clay by the shoulder.

“Don’t be a fool, Clay!” he whispered. “I know those men. Two of them play on the foot-ball team, and if they felt like it they could turn the whole town out of the grounds. Leave them alone.”

Mr. Clay left them alone.

“Go on, Thatcher,” said Black, with a nod, “if any of these gentlemen object to any decision, we will discuss it with them. That’s what we’re here for.” Two of the Big Four seated themselves at the feet of the Hilltown umpire, and looked wistfully up at him whenever he made a close decision. It was remarkable how his eyesight was improved by their presence.

The Malvern boys beamed with confidence again. The second set went to them, 6-4. Grace was so delighted that he excitedly stamped his bad foot on the turf, and then howled with pain.

The last set was “for blood,”--as one of the four collegians said.

The Slades overcame their first surprise, and settled down to fight for every point. The Malvernites gave them all the fight they wanted. One by one the games fell now on one side, now on the other side of the net. And when it came five games all, the disgust and disappointment of the crowd showed itself in shouts and cheers for their champions and hoots for their young opponents.

But all the cheering and hooting could not change the result.

“Set and game! Malvern wins!” shouted Thatcher, and then, forgetting his late judicial impartiality, threw his arms around Merton’s neck and yelled.

The silence of the Hilltown people was so impressive that the wild yell of the college contingent sounded like a whole battery of skyrockets instead of only four, and Grace sat down on the court and pounded the ground with his crutches.

“That’s enough for me,” he cried; “I don’t care for the singles. I know when I’ve had enough! I’d have two sprained ankles to do it over again!”

Then the Slades announced that the singles would begin immediately after luncheon.

The Malvern contingent went to the hotel to find something to eat, and Blair slipped away to telegraph to Malvern.

Five minutes later the operator at that place jumped as if he had received a shock from his own battery, and ran out into the street shouting, “Malvern’s won the doubles, three straight sets!”

Judge Prior’s coachman, who was waiting at the station for an express package, turned his horse and galloped back up Malvern’s only street, shouting out:

“We’ve won. Master John and Mr. Merton’s won the tennis match.”

And then the people set to work to prepare a demonstration.

The Hilltown people thought they had never seen young men so disagreeable as were the Big Four after luncheon. They seated themselves like sentinels at the four corners of the court, and whenever any one ventured to jeer at Malvern’s representative they would burst into such an enthusiasm of cheering as to drown the jeers and deafen the spectators.

There was no one in the singles but Slade and Merton, the Pineville representative having decided to drop out. Merton was nervous, and Slade was determined to win. Both played as they had never played before, but Slade’s service, which was his strong point, was nothing after the one to which Grace had accustomed Merton. And in spite of Slade’s most strenuous efforts the games kept coming slowly and slightly in Merton’s favor.

They were two sets all and were beginning the final set, when Barnes arose and disappeared in the crowd. But those of the quartette who were left made noise enough to keep Merton playing his best. It became a more and more bitter fight as the end drew near. Grace was so excited that not even his sprained ankle could keep him quiet, and Thatcher had great difficulty in restraining a desire to shout. At last Merton got “’vantage,” with only one point to win, but he missed the next ball and back went the score to “deuce” again. Three times this happened, and three times the college men half rose from the ground expecting to cheer, and then sank back again. “If he does that again,” said Grace, “I’ll have nervous prostration!” But he didn’t do it again. He smashed the next ball back into Slade’s court far out of his way, and then pulled down his sleeves as unconcernedly as if he had been playing a practice game.

The next moment Prior and the others had lifted him up on their shoulders, and were tramping around the field with him shouting, “What’s the matter with Malvern?” and “We _are_ the people!” and many other such highly ridiculous and picturesque cries of victory.

And then there came a shout from the entrance to the grounds, and up the carriageway rode Barnes mounted on top of an old-fashioned, yellow-bodied stage-coach that he had found in some Hilltown livery-stable and decorated from top to bottom with the Malvern colors. He had four horses in hand, and he was waving his whip and shouting as if a pack of wolves or Indians were in close pursuit.

The boys clambered up on top of the coach and began blowing the horns and affixing the new brooms that Barnes had thoughtfully furnished for them. They were in such a hurry to start that they forgot the prizes; and if Grace had not reminded the boys, they would have gone home content without the tokens of victory.

The faces of Mr. Percy Clay and the other contributors to the silver cups when they saw the prizes handed up to that “Malvern gang,” as they now called them, were most pitiful.

“Fancy our giving two hundred dollars extra for those cups, and then having them go to Malvern!” groaned Mr. Clay.

The boys took the prizes without remark, and had the courtesy not to open the boxes in which the cups reposed on blue velvet until they were out of sight of the men who had lost them with such bad grace.

But when once they were on the road, with the wind whistling around their hats and the trees meeting over their heads and the sun smiling its congratulations as it sank for the night, they examined the cups, and Grace said he had never seen any handsomer.

It really seemed as if the ten miles was covered in as many minutes, and though dogs ran out and barked at them, and the people in the fields stared at them as if they thought they were crazy, and although Barnes insisted on driving over every stone he could find and almost upsetting them, they kept up their spirits and shouted and sang the whole way.

The engineer of the train that had taken them up saw the coach on his return trip bounding through the shady high road where it ran parallel with his track, and told the operator at Malvern that “those boys were coming back on top of a circus band-wagon.”

And the people of Malvern were ready to receive them, though they were still ignorant of the second victory. The young people lined the high road for a distance beyond the town, and the boys saw them from afar, seated on the fence-rails and in carts and wagons. The other members of the club saw the stage, also, for one of the boys had been up in a tree on the lookout for the last half-hour. And they waved the club colors and all the flags they had been able to get at such short notice; but it was not until three of the Big Four stood up on top of the coach at the risk of breaking their necks, and held up the cups and waved them around their heads until they flashed like mirrors, that the club really cheered. And when they saw that there were THREE cups they set up such a hurrah that the cows in the next field tore madly off in a stampede. That night everybody in town came to Dr. Merton’s with the village band and thronged the big lawn; and Merton made a speech in which he spoke very highly of Prior, and of the Big Four who had helped to save the day, and of Thatcher, but most of all of Grace.

Then Grace had to speak leaning on his crutches; and the band played and the college boys sang and everybody handled the prizes and admired them even to the champions’ satisfaction.

The next day Grace bade his new friends good by and went back to college, where his absence was attributed to his sprained ankle. He thought of the people of Malvern very often, of the twilight evenings spent on Dr. Merton’s lawn listening to the college boys’ singing, and talking to the girls of the Malvern Tennis Club, and of the glorious victory of his pupils and the friendliness and kindness of his hosts.

He knew he would never forget them, but he hardly thought they would long remember him.

But, two weeks later, the expressman brought a big box with a smaller black one inside of it; and within, resting on its blue velvet bed, was a facsimile of the prize-cup of the tri-club tournament. And it was marked, “To Charles Coleridge Grace. From the people of Malvern.”

And when Grace exhibits the many prizes he has won, they say that it is this cup which he did _not_ win that he handles most tenderly and shows with the greatest pride.

THE JUMP AT COREY’S SLIP.

The jump from Corey’s slip was never made but by two of the Brick Dust Gang, and though, as it turned out, they were not sorry they had taken it, they served as a warning to all the others of the gang against trying to emulate their daring.

Corey’s slip, as everybody knows, is part of Corey’s brick-yard, on the East side, near the Twenty-sixth street wharf, and the Brick Dust Gang are so called because they have a hidden meeting-place among the high piles of bricks which none of the other boys, nor the police, nor even the employees of the brick-yard have been able to find. It is known to exist, though, and the gang meet there to smoke and play the accordion and gamble for cigarette pictures, and to pursue such other sinful and demoralizing practices of East side youth as they elect.

The Brick Dust Gang must not be confounded with the Rag Gang of “The Bay,” near Thirty-third street, for, while the Rag Gang are thieves and toughs, the Brick Dust Gang are too young to be very wicked, and their “folks” are too respectable to let them go very far astray. The gang got along very well during the winter months, and the hole in the bricks was filled every afternoon after the public schools had closed, with from a dozen to twenty of them.

Buck Mooney was the leader, and no one disputed his claim, for he was a born leader in some respects, just as was his father, who could throw the votes of the Luke J. Mooney Star Social Club wherever they would do himself and the party the most good. But his son Buck was quick-tempered and stronger than he knew, and he had a way of knocking the younger and less pugilistic members of his crowd around which was injudicious; for by this he hurt his own popularity as well as their heads.

He was no bully though, and there was no one who could lead him in any show of physical prowess recognized and practised by the gang. So all through the winter he was easily the leader, and no one stood against him. His fall came in the spring. The coming of the spring meant more to the Brick Dust Gang than to almost any other crowd along the river front, for their knowledge of the brick-yard and its wharf enabled them to bathe in the river quite hidden from the police at any hour of the day, and this means a great deal to those who have felt the stifling heat of the tenements along the East River.

They bathed and swam and dived from the first of May until the autumn came and gave the water such a sharpness that they left it numbed and with chattering teeth, and they began at five in the morning and kept it up late into the night. They lived in the water, and were rather more at home in it than they were on the streets. The workmen in the brick-yard never interfered with them, because the boys helped them in piling the bricks and in unloading the scows and loading the carts; and the police could never catch them, for the reason that the boys always kept a part of the gang posted as sentinels in the yard.

Mooney and Tommy Grant were easily the best swimmers in the crowd. Tommy was four years younger than the leader, and small and consumptive-looking; but he was absurdly strong for his size, and his body was as hard and muscular as a jockey’s. The trouble began between the two at the swimming-match at Harlem for all comers, where they both entered for the one-mile race with a turn. The Harlem boys were not in it from the first, and the two down-town boys led all the others by a hundred yards. “The little fellow,” as Tommy was called by the crowds on the shore, was the popular favorite; and the crowd was delighted when he came plunging in ahead, swimming so much under water that only one bare shoulder and revolving arm told where he was.

Buck Mooney, the leader of the gang, was a bad second and a bad loser as well. He swore a great deal when his backers pulled him out of the water, and gave every reason for Tommy’s success, except that Tommy could swim faster than he could.

When Tommy appeared around the streets the next day with the big gold medal on his coat, and with the words “Champion of the East River” blazoned on it, Mooney felt worse than ever, and grew so ugly over it that some of the gang soon turned against him, and his hold over them disappeared. Little Tommy took his place without any formal election, and Mooney sulked and said unpleasant things about him behind his back.

They never came to blows, but they both grew to hate each other cordially,--principally through the stories their friends told of each to the other, as friends, true friends, are found to do, in all classes of society. So the breach grew very great and the gang was divided and lost its influence. One faction would refuse to act as sentinel for the other, and each claimed the meeting-place. On the whole, it was very unpleasant, and most unsatisfactory to those who loved peace.

It was evident that something must be done; either the gang must separate into two crowds or reunite again under one leader. It was a foolish, dare-devil young Irish boy that suggested how this last and much-desired result could be accomplished. There was a big derrick at the end of the wharf to lift the buckets of coal from the scows, when the place was used for a coal-yard.

Some of the more daring boys had jumped from the middle bar of this derrick, in emulation of Steve Brodie, whose jump from the Brooklyn Bridge and subsequent elevation to the proprietorship of a saloon had stirred up every boy in the East side. It was a dangerous thing to do, because there was an outer row of posts beyond the slip, and whoever jumped had to jump out far enough to strike the water beyond them. For, if he should not jump far enough--

What the Irish boy proposed was that some one should try to dive--not jump--from the very top of the derrick. The derrick was fifty feet above the water, and the outer line of posts was eight feet from the slip and fifteen feet from the line of the derrick. It looked like just what it was--an impossibility--for any one but the coolest and most practised diver.

“If a lad should do it,” objected one of the gang, “and ’ud hit them piles, there’d be no getting at him quick e’cept from the top of the derrick. He’d sink afore any one could get around the piles to him from the slip.”

“There’d be no need to hurry,” said another, grimly. “He’d keep till the police boat picked him up.”

“Well, the morgue’s handy,” commented another, flippantly, with a nod of his head toward Bellevue Hospital, back of them.

As ill luck would have it, Mooney came up just then, and they told him what they were discussing.

“I’ll bet Tommy Grant wouldn’t be afeard to try it,” said one of the youngest.

That was enough for Mr. Mooney. He said with a sneer that Tommy _would_ be afraid, and of course Tommy was told of this at once, and Tommy, after a careful survey of the jump, said it was suicide. And then Mooney called him a coward, and said he’d do it, and he’d show him who was fit to lead the gang.

The elder boys told him not to be a fool, Tommy among the number; but he said they were cry-babies, and told them to keep quiet about it and to meet at the wharf at seven that evening.

The tide was low then, and the piles showed high above the water. At high tide they were covered, and besides there were very few people about at that hour.

At seven o’clock twenty of them gathered at the end of the wharf. They were badly scared and wished they were well out of it, but there was no stopping Mooney. The more they begged him not to do it, the more he laughed at them. He climbed the ladder to the top of the derrick alone, and stripped off every thread but his swimming tights and the scapular around his neck. The big posts rose out of the water in front of the slip--black, slimy-looking, and as pitiless as rocks.

Van Bibber and some of his friends in their steam yacht lying at anchor off the New York Yacht Club’s wharf saw the boy mounting the ladder and shouted to the other boys to stop him. The other boys would have liked to do what the gentlemen suggested, but it was too late. But Tommy ran half-way up the ladder, begging his rival to come down. Mooney swore at him to go back, and Tommy hung there half-way up and fearful to do more lest he should rattle the ex-leader of the gang.

The gentlemen on the yacht told two of the crew to jump into the rowboat and pick the young fool up, and the sailors ran to cast off the skiff.

Then they saw Mooney outlined against the dark background of the tenements, as motionless as a marble statue on a high pedestal.

He raised his arms slowly over his head until the finger tips met and interlaced, then he bent his knees and his body swung forward. There was a brief, breathless silence as he dived out and down, and then a yell from the yacht and a gasping cry from the boys, as they saw him throw out his hands wildly to save himself, and saw that he had misjudged the distance and would strike the posts. Some of the youngest boys turned sick and sank whimpering to their knees, and six of the older ones dived like one man into the water to pull him out. He had struck the posts with his arm, had turned, striking them again, and then sank without a cry into the river.

The sailors in the rowboat had just started toward the spot and the club men were cursing them for their slowness. The six boys in the water were shut off from Mooney by the posts, and slipped back after they had tried vainly to climb over them.

“He’s killed. He’ll be drowned. Ah, he’s sunk for good,” the boys wailed and cried in chorus.

Young Tommy from his post half-way up the ladder, saw that before the boat could reach his rival, or the boys could get around the piles to him, he would be drowned, and so he ran up the rest of the ladder, poised for just a second, and then took the second and last jump that was ever taken from Corey’s slip. He cleared the posts by an inch or two, turned in the water before he had gone half-way into it, and dived to where he saw the white body settling towards the bottom.

The sailors in the rowboat reached him in time to pull him out and carry him to the yacht with the bruised and unconscious body of his rival in his arms. Then the gentlemen sent Mooney over to the hospital, and wanted to make up a purse for Tommy, but he said it was “all right” and “hadn’t done nothin’ anyhow.” It took several weeks for Mooney’s leg and arm to knit, and he limped for months afterward.

The gentlemen on the yacht wanted to compromise by giving Tommy a medal, but he said he’d had enough trouble over the last medal, and asked why they did not give it to Mooney, for he had taken the jump in cold blood; “an’ I,” said Tommy, “just did it because I was in a hurry to get down.”

So Van Bibber and the other yachtsmen gave Mooney a very fine medal, which told that he was the “Champion Diver of the East River.” And now there are two leaders to the gang, though each protests that the other is the only one.

THE VAN BIBBER BASEBALL CLUB.

Young Van Bibber decided that he ought to take some people to the circus. He had long outgrown the age when the circus only pleased, but some of the men had said it was the thing to do just as it was the thing to go incognito to see Carmencita dance; and so he purchased a big box in the very centre of the lowest tier and wrote to Mrs. Dick Wassails that it was at her service and that she could fill it with whom she pleased. He added that he would expect them to take supper with him later.

He owed Mrs. Dick, as everybody called her, a great deal for many social favors, and he thought to make things even in this way; but Mrs. Dick was engaged for that evening, and said she was so sorry and begged to be excused. So young Van Bibber sent off a note to the Gramercys, with whom he wished to become more intimate, and whom he wished to put under an obligation. But they were just going abroad and were in the midst of preparations and they also begged to be excused.

It was getting very near the night now, and Van Bibber ran over in his mind the names of all of those people to whom he owed something or who might some day do something for him. He tried the Van Warps, because they owned a yacht, but they were going to a wedding; and he tried the Van Blunts, on account of their house at Lenox, and found that their great uncle had just died and that they were going to the funeral. Then he asked the men in the club, but the one who gave such good dinners thought it would be too much of a bore; and another, whose sister Van Bibber wanted to know better, said he was afraid he would catch cold, and others, all of whom had been civil to him in one way or another, began to make excuses. So young Van Bibber stood on the steps of the club and kicked viciously at the mat. He decided that his friends were a very poor lot. “One would think I was trying to borrow money from them,” soliloquized Van Bibber.

“Where to?” asked the driver of the hansom.

“To the circus,” said Van Bibber. It was a long ride, and he had time to make up his mind that he had been foolish in starting out; but as he was already more than half-way there he kept on. He had determined to see that circus himself in solitary state from that box, notwithstanding his irresponsive friends.

But at the entrance to the circus three small boys, in every way representatives of the coming “tough,” waylaid him for ten cents to get into the side show--only ten cents, that was all they wanted. They did not aspire to such a pinnacle of happiness as the circus itself. But Young Van Bibber saw a way to use his box and to show his smart friends how somebody, at least, appreciated his invitations.

“Go get three more boys like you,” he said; “dirty boys that haven’t seen the circus, and I’ll take you in.”

The three youths looked at him uncertainly for a moment.

“Ah, he’s kiddin’ us,” said one of them, doubtfully.

But there was such an innocent and embarrassed expression on young Van Bibber’s face that they concluded he must mean it.

“Besides,” said one of them, “don’t you’se see he’s a priest? He wouldn’t tell no lies.”

Van Bibber for the first time became conscious of his white lawn tie and his long cape-cloak.

“Priests don’t go to circuses,” suggested one of the trio.

“Are you going to get those other boys or not?” asked Van Bibber, impatiently. It really seemed as if nobody was willing to go with him. But there was over a dozen boys about him by this time, and he picked out three of the smallest and raggedest. Then he shoved them all into the circus before him like so many chickens and saw, without caring, that the men by the door were laughing at him.

The boys raced about at first and yelled to each other to come see this animal, and to watch that one shaking the bars. Van Bibber wandered around after them. They seemed to be having a very good time, and he felt a queer sensation of satisfaction in some one else’s pleasure which was oddly pleasing. Then they flocked back to him again and informed him it was time to “get into the show part,” and so he led them, to the grave disgust of the attendants, to the principal box in the place.

“My eyes! but I wish de boys could see me now,” said one of them, pride and happiness beaming from every feature of his face. “I guess this is old man Barnum’s box, for sure.”

Van Bibber sat in the back of the box. He didn’t mind how the people around them smiled. He felt himself very far above them, and in a position to do as many eccentric things as he pleased. And he found himself enjoying the show and the friendly interest his guests took in him, and in their fear lest he couldn’t see everything, or that he might miss what the clowns said.

He stopped the man who sold peanuts and candies, and distributed them lavishly. It was cheaper by far than a Delmonico supper, and he enjoyed seeing the half-famished way in which the young rascals fell upon the supplies and stowed them away. They were really very noisy and wildly excited, but he didn’t care. He never remembered having given anybody so much extreme pleasure before in his life.

When it was all over and the big spectacular show that had held them breathless had ended, he fought his way out to the waiting hansom, very well pleased with the night’s experience. But before he got away his guests crowded around him at the door, and one of them, who, as they had privately informed him, was no less distinguished an individual than the captain of Open Lots Baseball Club, of which they were all members, thanked him very civilly and asked him his name. He gave the captain his card with grave politeness and shook hands with all of them with equal solemnity, and then drove down town and had a solitary supper. On the whole, he concluded that though he had made nothing by it, he had not wasted the box, and he went to bed satisfied.

And two days later he received in a very dirty envelope the following epistle:

DEAR SIR--At a meeting of the Open Lots Baseball Club it was voted,
on account of your kindness, to change the name to the Courtland Van
Bibber Baseball Club, which it is now, as a mark of our apreshun of
your kindness. Truly yours,

TERENCE FAHEY MCGLOIN,
_Capt. C. Van. B. B. B. C._

“So,” said Van Bibber, as he put the letter carefully away, “It pays to go out into the highways, after all.”

THE STORY OF A JOCKEY.

Young Charley Chadwick had been brought up on his father’s farm in New Jersey. The farm had been his father’s before his father died, and was still called Chadwick’s Meadows in his memory. It was a very small farm, and for the most part covered with clover and long, rich grass, that were good for pasturing, and nothing else. Charley was too young, and Mrs. Chadwick was too much of a housekeeper and not enough of a farmer’s wife, to make the most out of the farm, and so she let the meadows to the manager of the Cloverdale Stock Farm. This farm is only half a mile back from the Monmouth Park race track at Long Branch.

The manager put a number of young colts in it to pasture, and took what grass they did not eat to the farm. Charley used to ride these colts back to the big stables at night, and soon grew to ride very well, and to know a great deal about horses and horse breeding and horse racing. Sometimes they gave him a mount at the stables, and he was permitted to ride one of the race horses around the private track, while the owner took the time from the judges’ stand.

There was nothing in his life that he enjoyed like this. He had had very few pleasures, and the excitement and delight of tearing through the air on the back of a great animal, was something he thought must amount to more than anything else in the world. His mother did not approve of his spending his time at the stables, but she found it very hard to refuse him, and he seemed to have a happy faculty of picking up only what was good, and letting what was evil pass by him and leave him unhurt. The good that he picked up was his love for animals, his thoughtfulness for them, and the forbearance and gentleness it taught him to use, with even the higher class of animals who walk on two legs.