"Hello, Momsey!" he cried buoyantly as he crossed the room and kissed his mother. "Hello, Sis!" as he turned to greet in a similar fashion his sister Clara. "How are you, Dad?" and he smiled affectionately at his father, who was sitting by the fire pretending to read his paper, but in reality swelling with pride in this stalwart son who was the apple of his eye.

"Oh, Joe!" exclaimed his mother, happy tears welling up in her eyes as she looked upon him fondly. "I'm so proud of you that I don't know what to do or say."

"Why, what have I been doing now?" asked Joe in pretended ignorance of what she meant.

"Isn't the dear boy innocent?" laughed Clara, a pretty, winsome girl, as she slipped her arm about her brother. "Of course, he doesn't know what we mean. He hasn't set the whole town talking. He didn't save a baby from a madman. He never knew that there was anything unusual going on in town this afternoon at all," she mocked.

"Oh," said Joe, "you mean the matter of the Bilkins baby."

"Yes," mimicked Clara, "we mean the matter of the Bilkins baby."

They all laughed and Joe confessed. They plied him with all sorts of questions and though he sought to minimize what he had done, they succeeded in getting a very fair idea of the almost tragic scene that had been enacted.

"You're awfully stingy with your information," said Clara, tossing her head. "Half a dozen of the neighbors have been in and told us all about what your high mightiness did. To hear them talk, I've got a brother with the brain of a Socrates and the arm of a Hercules. I'll almost be afraid to speak to you after this without knocking my head against the floor first."

"Oh, cut it out, Sis," laughed Joe, a little sheepishly. "You're making an awful lot out of a very little. I just had the luck to be Johnny-on-the-spot, and I knew how to throw a snowball so that it would do the most good."

"It was a splendid bit of work, Joe," said Mr. Matson quietly, and Joe felt his heart warm; for praise from this grave, thoughtful father of his was very dear to him.

"I hope the man wasn't very badly hurt," said Mrs. Matson, her feeling of pity for the "under dog" asserting itself, now that her maternal pride had been satisfied.

"I don't think he is," remarked Joe. "Doctor Allison examined him and said that there were no bones broken. He'll come around all right, although his head is liable to ache for some time."

"Does anybody know who he is?" inquired Mr. Matson.

"He seems to be a stranger in town," answered Joe. "I heard some one say that he had been staying at the Park Hotel. I never saw him in my life before."

"What on earth did he want to take the Bilkins baby for?" asked Clara. "Did he have any grudge against the Bilkinses?"

"No, Bilkins told me that he was an entire stranger to him and his wife. He looked at him when they brought him back to town unconscious, and she had caught a glimpse of him when he snatched the baby from the cradle. Neither knew him at all. It must have been just some crazy whim that came into his twisted brain."

"Poor little lamb," murmured Mrs. Matson, softly. "It must have been frightened to death."

"Not a bit of it," maintained Joe. "It didn't make a whimper all the time he was holding it. But the minute I grabbed it, it began to yell like mad. Seemed to think that I was butting in on its fun. There's gratitude for you," he ended with a chuckle.

"I suppose you held the poor little thing upside down or something like that," said Clara, indignantly. "You men are so clumsy when it comes to handling a baby."

While they had been talking, Mrs. Matson had brought in the supper, and at sight of it Joe forgot the laughing retort he was about to hurl at his sister.

"Yum-yum!" he sniffed, as he seated himself at the steaming, savory repast. "I give you fair warning, Momsey, that I'm going to make a wreck of this table."

"Go as far as you like," beamed his mother. "The best in the house isn't any too good for my boy tonight."

Joe "waded in" to make good his threat, and for a time the conversation was rather fragmentary, as he devoted himself to the delights afforded by a good meal and a healthy appetite.

"Now bring on your crazy men," he laughed, as he sat back after dessert. "If I could knock out one of them before supper I'm good for half a dozen now."

Mr. Matson smiled as he lighted his pipe, and Mrs. Matson brought out her mending, while Clara busied herself in clearing the table.

"How about my being a minister now, Momsey?" asked Joe with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. "Do you suppose a minister would have been as useful at the lumber yard this afternoon as a professional ball player?"

His mother bit off a thread before replying. It had always been a sore point with her that Joe had abandoned the plan of studying for the ministry. She had become somewhat reconciled to the idea by the success that Joe had won and the fact, as shown in his own life, that he could be a ball player and at the same time an upright, moral man. And she had to confess that the large salary that Joe earned by his skill had helped his father out on critical occasions and kept the little household together.

"Well," she admitted, half reluctantly, "I suppose you did do more good this afternoon because you were so good at throwing the ball. And yet you might be a minister and still be a good enough ball player to have done what you did today."

"I hardly think so," laughed Joe. "But that's right, Momsey, stick to your guns. But what's this?" he asked, as he saw a telegram on the mantel piece.

"Oh, yes, I meant to tell you," Mrs. Matson hastened to say. "That came for you this afternoon just before dark. I was so flustered by all that had happened it went clear out of my head. Open it and let's see what it is. I hope there's no bad news in it."

Joe tore open the flimsy yellow envelope and his eye ran rapidly over its contents.

"Why, it's from Reggie!" he cried, "and it's dated from Goldsboro, North Carolina."

"From Reggie!" cried Clara with a glint of mischief in her eye. "Are you sure that it isn't from Mabel?"

Joe withered her with a look.

"No, it isn't from Mabel," he answered, vexed at himself because of the red flush he could feel creeping up his face. "It's from Reggie."

"All right," laughed Clara. "But what are you getting so red about, Joe? What does Reggie have to say?"

"It seems rather queer," said Joe, slowly. "This is the way it reads: 'Am coming on. See if you can find Talham Tabbs. Have him held.' Now what do you make of that?"

"Who is Talham Tabbs?" asked Clara, coming closer and looking over his shoulder.

"That's the funny part of it," replied her brother. "Talham Tabbs is the name of the man I knocked stiff on the lumber pile this afternoon."

An exclamation of surprise came from each member of the family group. Even Mr. Matson was stirred out of his usual reserve by the singular coincidence.

"How do you know that?" asked his father.

"Sam Berry said that that was the name the man registered under at the hotel," was the answer.

"But what possible connection can there be between Reggie Varley and this crazy man?" mused Clara.

"That's what I'd like to know," replied her brother. "That's the aggravating thing about a telegram. It tells just enough to get you worked up and then you stew in your own juice while you're waiting to find out the rest."

"It looks as though this Tabbs had committed some crime," suggested Mr. Matson. "Else why should Reggie ask to have him held?"

"That doesn't prove very much," laughed Joe. "Reggie sometimes takes queer notions. There was a time once when he had half a mind to have me held."

The family all laughed as they recalled the episode alluded to, but at the time it had proved no laughing matter.

It had occurred at the time that Joe had been on his way to the training camp at Montville in the year that our hero had joined the Central League. He had been sitting next to the valise owned by a dudish young man dressed in the height of fashion and possessed of what he fondly thought was a pronounced English accent. The young man had left the valise while he went to send a telegram and when he returned he found the valise opened and some valuable jewelry missing.

In a very offensive way he had practically accused Joe of stealing the property, and it was only the self-control of the latter that prevented a serious row between the two. The matter had been patched up, and some time later the jewelry had been recovered through a little bit of smart detective work on Joe's part.

Montville, the training grounds of the team, was located not far from where Reggie Varley, the foppish young man in question, lived. One day Joe had been fortunate enough to stop a runaway horse and save its driver, a beautiful girl, from danger and probable death. She turned out to be Mabel Varley, Reggie's sister. Joe decided very promptly that however he felt toward the brother, he ought to feel very differently toward the sister, a resolution that was helped very much by a pair of charming brown eyes, a wonderful complexion and sundry other advantages no less pleasing. Miss Mabel, on her part, knew a handsome, athletic young man when she saw one, and the romantic circumstances of their meeting helped to increase the impression he had made on her. Since then, they had met frequently and-Oh, well, it is sufficient to say that Joe, healthy as he looked, was threatened with palpitation of the heart whenever he heard Mabel's name, and it had become one of Clara's favorite amusements to start the color rioting over her brother's neck and face whenever the demon of mischief gave her the opportunity.

Reggie himself had turned out to be not such a bad fellow, despite his little foolish peculiarities. He had apologized handsomely to Joe and the two were now warm friends.

"Have him held," chuckled Joe, as he reread the telegram. "Well, that's an easy job. The jail authorities have him now and I won't have to hold him."

* * *

Chapter 4 THE TELEGRAM

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