Don shook his head—­slowly.

“Why not?” Andy demanded.  “If you worked with him and let him do things his own way wouldn’t he get over his grouch?”

“I don’t know.  Would he?”

“Sure he would.  Suppose some day when we were all hanging around you asked him to show you how to do something.”

“Gee!” cried Don.  “That would get him, wouldn’t it?”

Andy grinned.  “I guess we’ll tame that roughneck, what?”

Don always rested his arm after a game.  He had not planned to go to the baseball field until Tuesday.  But his business with Tim was too important to wait.  Monday afternoon he put away his tools and his bird-houses, and went off to the village green.

“Hello!” called Ted Carter.  “What are you doing around here on a Monday?”

“I want to see Tim,” Don answered.  He took the catcher off to one side.  “We’re making some changes,” he said.  “Alex will work with Ritter on semaphore signaling.”

Tim’s eyes grew suspicious.  “Who’ll work with me on Morse?”

“I will,” said Don.

Tim’s eyes snapped.  “So that’s the game, is it?” he asked darkly.  “What’s the first order I get; practice tomorrow?”

“That’s up to you,” said Don.  “When do you want to practice?”

Tim was taken aback.  He had expected to be told, not asked; ordered, not consulted.  He mumbled that tomorrow would do, and went back to practice.  He could not get his thoughts back on the work.  Once, when the ball was traveling around the bases, his attention wandered, and when somebody threw the sphere home, it almost struck him in the head.

“Let’s call it a day,” cried Ted Carter, “before Tim gets killed.”

Tim smiled absently.  He looked around for Don.  The patrol leader was gone.  He walked away slowly, turning one question over and over in his puzzled mind.  What new trick was this, anyway?

Next morning he went around to Don’s house.  He was still sure that something had been hidden, and that at the proper moment the surprise would be sprung.  He was watchful and cautious.

The practice ran its course serenely.  Barbara came out, and after watching awhile, wrote a four-word message and asked Tim to send it.  Don received it without a mistake.

“Isn’t that splendid?” she cried.  “The Wolf patrol will surely win points in the signaling, won’t it?”

“We’ll give them a fight,” said Don.

Tim said nothing.  But the fire to be something more than the Wolf patrol failure began to burn again.  When the last message had flashed back and forth, he handed Don his flag.

“We’ll get down to real work after this,” said the patrol leader.

Ah!  So here was the trick.  Tim waited.

“Sending messages back and forth,” Don went on, “is all right while we’re brushing up the code.  We know the code now.  It’s time to begin to specialize for the contest.  One of us will have to do nothing but send, and the other nothing but receive.”