“Yes?-----” followed Greg.

“And tell the druggist to mix into each pill a pound of good old Yankee ginger,” wound up Prescott.  “Take four, an hour apart before the game to-morrow.”

“Then I’d never play left field,” grinned Greg.

“Yes, you would.  You’d forget your nervousness.  Try it, Greg.”

The three were walking up Main Street, when they encountered Laura Bentley and Belle Meade.

“What are you going to do to-morrow?” asked Laura, looking at the trio, keenly.  “Are you going to win for the glory and honor of good old Gridley?”

“Dick is,” smiled Greg.  “Dan and I are going to sit at the side and use foot-warmers.”

“You two aren’t losing heart, are you?” asked Belle, looking at Dick Prescott’s companions with some scorn.

“N-n-not if you girls are all going to take things as seriously as that,” protested Greg.

“Every Gridley High School girl expects the nine to win to-morrow,” spoke Laura almost sternly.

“Then we’re going to win,” affirmed Dan Dalzell.  “On second thought, I’ll sell my footwarmers at half the cost price.”

“That’s the way to talk,” laughed Belle.  “Now, remember, boys—–­though Dick doesn’t need to have his backbone stiffened—–­if you boys haven’t pride enough in Gridley to carry you through anything, the Gridley High School girls are heart and soul in the game.  If you lose the game to-morrow don’t any of you ever show up again at a class dance!”

The girls went away laughing, yet they meant what they said.  Gridley girls were baseball fans and football rooters of the most intense sort.

Dave wanted to be abed by half past eight that evening, as Coach Luce had requested; but about a quarter past eight, just as he was about to retire, his mother discovered that she needed coffee for the next morning’s breakfast, so she sent him to the grocer’s on the errand.  Dick, while eating supper, thought of an item that he wanted to print in the next day’s “Blade.”  Accordingly, he hurried to the newspaper office as soon as the meal was over.  It was ten minutes past eight when Dick handed in his copy to the night editor.

“Time enough,” muttered the boy, as he reached the street.  “A brisk jog homeward is just the thing before pulling off clothes and dropping in between the sheets.”

As Dick jogged along he remembered having noticed, on the way to the office, Tip Scammon in a new suit of clothes.

“Tip’s stock is coming up in the world,” thought young Prescott.  “But I wonder whether Tip earned that suit or stole it, or whether he has just succeeded in threatening more money out of Ripley.  How foolish Fred is to stand for blackmail!  I wonder if I ought to speak to him about it, or give his father a hint.  I hate to be meddlesome.  And, by ginger!  Now I think of it, Tip looked rather curiously at me.  He—–­oh!—–­murder!”

The last exclamation was wrung from Dick Prescott by a most amazing happening.