“Suppose you try to see what you can do with him,” grinned Tad Horner.  “You ought to be able to do something.”

“Aw—­really you will hawve to excuse me!” exclaimed Willis in alarm.  “I hawdly think I could match his low cunning, don’t yer understand.”

“Oh, yes, I understand,” nodded Horner, significantly.  “It takes a man to go up against Merriwell.”

“I hope you don’t mean to insinuate—­”

“Oh, no!” interrupted Tad.  “I have said it.”

“Eh?  I hawdly think I understand, don’t yer know.”

“Think it over,” advised the little soph as he turned away.

It is probable that Bruce Browning was more thoroughly disgusted than any of his friends.

“Confound it!” he thought.  “If I’d stuck to that fellow and done him up anyway he wouldn’t have been able to carry out this trick.  If he is given any kind of a show he is bound to take advantage of it.”

Bruce felt like fighting.

“I’m going in there and lick him,” he declared.  “I will settle this matter with Merriwell right away.”

But some of his friends were more cautious.

“It won’t do,” declared Puss Parker.

“Won’t do?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“It might be done under cover of a rush, but a single fight between a soph and a fresh under such public conditions would be sure to get them both in trouble.”

“I don’t care a continental!  I’ve stood him just as long as I can!  If I can give him a good square licking I’ll stand expulsion, should it come to that!”

They saw that Browning was too heated to pause for sober thought, and so they gathered close around him and forced him to listen to reason.

It took no small amount of argument to induce the king to give over the idea of going onto the ball field and attacking Merriwell, but he was finally shown the folly of such a course.  However, he vowed over and over that the settlement with Merriwell should come very soon.

CHAPTER XV.

On the ball field.

The sophomores went in to watch the freshmen practice and incidentally to have sport with them.

Two nines had been selected, one being the regular freshman team and the other picked up to give them practice.

As Merriwell had been given a place on the team as reserve pitcher, his services were not needed at first, and so he went in to twirl for the scrub nine.

Walter Gordon went into the box for the regular team, and he expected to fool the irregulars with ease.  He was a well-built lad, with a bang, and it was plain to see at a glance that he was stuck on himself.  He had a trick of posing in the box, and he delivered the ball with a flourish.

The scrub team did not have many batters, and so it came about that the first three men up were disposed of in one-two-three order, not one of them making a safe hit or reaching first.