The chirography was strong and manly, and extremely easy to read, although not at all of the "copper-plate" variety.
Hutchinson, running through the letter swiftly in search of the proof he desired, gave little heed to the quaintly humorous description of the pulp-mill town, "baseball batty"; and he skimmed through the somewhat graphic, self-chaffing account of the first game pitched by the writer, in which, as he laughingly confessed, he began with "a combination attack of stage fright and buck fever." These paragraphs, however, he perused without missing a word:
As I say, we have a good team, and I think it should be
a winning one if our manager is on the square and wants it
to win. For some reason I do not trust the man.
At our first meeting I was seized by a powerful instinctive feeling of dislike and distrust. He is cold as a fish and bloodless as a stone, with a voice as flat and monotonous as the Desert of Sahara, and his frosty, unfeeling eye is not the eye of an honest man.
He does not belong in Kingsbridge, but has been hired, like the players on the team, and I should say that he is a person who stands ready to sell himself at any time for a price.
If it should happen that, near the close of the season, Kingsbridge stands between Bancroft and championship honors, Bancroft will cop the pennant easily enough by dickering on the "q. t." with Mr. Robert Hutchinson—or I'm away off my trolley.
It was characteristic of the man reading the letter
that he did not show his rage by flushing. His
