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Elliott takes his third healthy and runs through the field down to the clubhouse.

We got beat in the eleventh; and when we went in to dress he has his street clothes on. Soon as he seen John comin’ he says: "I got to see McGraw!" And he beat it.

John was goin’ to the fights that night; but before he leaves the hotel he had waivers on Elliott from everybody and had sold him to Atlanta.

"And," says John, "I don’t care if they pay for him or not. " My roomy blows in about nine and got the letter from John out of his box. He was goin’ to tear
it up. but I told him they was news in it. He opens it and reads where he’s sold. I was still sore at him; so I says:

"Thought you was goin’ to get on the New York club?"

"No," he says. "I got turned down cold. McGraw says he wouldn’t have me in his club. He says he’d had Charlie Faust—and that was enough for him. "

He had a kind o’ crazy look in his eyes; so when he starts up to the room I follows him.

"What are you goin’ to do now?" I says.

"I’m goin’ to sell this ticket to Atlanta," he says, "and go back to Muskegon, where I belong. "

"I’ll help you pack," I says.

"No," says the bug. "I come into this league with this suit o’ clothes and a collar. They can have the rest of it. " Then he sits dawn on the bed and begins to cry like a baby. "No series dough for me," he blubbers, "and no weddin’ bells!My girl’ll die when she hears about it!"

Of course that made me feel kind o’ rotten, and I says:

"Brace up, boy!The best thing you can do is go to Atlanta and try hard. You’ll be up here again next year. "

"You can’t tell me where to go!" he says, and he wasn’t cryin’ no more. "I’ll go where I please—and I’m li’ble to take you with me. "

I didn’t want no argument, so I kep’ still. Pretty soon he goes up to the lookin’-glass and stares at himself for five minutes. Then, all of a sudden, he hauls off and takes a wallop at his reflection in the glass. Naturally he smashed the glass all to pieces and he cut his hand somethin’ awful.

Without lookin’ at it he come over to me and says: "Well, good-by, sport!"—and holds out his other hand to shake. When I starts to shake with him he smears his bloody hand all over my map. Then he laughed like a wild man and run out o’ the room and out o’ the hotel.

VIII

Well, boys, my sleep was broke up for the rest o’ the season. It might of been because I was used to sleepin’ in all kinds o’ racket and excitement, and couldn’t stand for the quiet after he’d went—or it might of been because I kep’ thinkin’ about him and feelin’ sorry for him.

I of’en wondered if he’d settle down and be somethin’ if he could get married; and finally I got to b’lievin’ he would. So when we was dividin’ the city series dough I was thinkin’ of him and the girl. Our share o’ the money—the losers’, as usual—was twelve thousand seven hundred sixty bucks or somethin’ like that. They was twenty-one of us and that meant six hundred seven bucks apiece. We was just goin’ to cut it up that way when I says:

"Why not give a divvy to poor old Elliott?"

About fifteen of ’em at once told me that I was crazy. You see, when he got canned he owed everybody in the club. I guess he’d stuck me for the most—about seventy bucks—but I didn’t care nothin’ about that. I knowed he hadn’t never reported to Atlanta, and I thought he was prob’ly busted and a bunch o’ money might make things all right for him and the other songbird.