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the picture was wiped out. It’s a common method. No, Lewis. This is a clock as real as grandpa over there. Only it’s enchanted. But what it is enchanted to do I don’t for the life of me know.”
    “Well,
I
know something, Weird Beard,” said Mrs.Zimmermann, dangling her watch like a pendulum before Jonathan’s eyes, “I know that if we don’t catch just a little, teeny bit of shut-eye, we’re all going to be wearing our crabby caps in the morning. Lewis, off to bed. Jonathan, same with you. I’ll rinse the cookie plates and put away the milk.”
    Later, up in his room, Lewis stood in the middle of the floor staring at a patch of flowered wallpaper near the fireplace. He walked quickly over to the wall and put his ear to it. Yes, the ticking was here too. He walked across the room and listened to another wall. More of the same.
    Lewis walked back to the center of the room and then, abruptly, he began to pace. He paced in quick strides with his hands behind his back, the way he had seen his father do when he was upset. He paced and tried to think logically. But logic wasn’t much help where the clock in the walls was concerned, so at last Lewis gave it up. He jumped into bed and went to sleep.

CHAPTER THREE
    On the first Monday after Labor Day, Lewis started going to school in New Zebedee and, before long, he had forgotten all about the mysterious clock in the walls. He had troubles enough of his own.
    They weren’t new troubles. They were the troubles that a fat boy who can’t play baseball carries around with him from place to place. Lewis had always been overweight. He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been. All his life—all ten years of it—he had been listening to children who chanted:
    Fatty, fatty, two by four
    Can’t get through the kitchen door.
    Sometimes he wanted to beat up the kids who made fun of him, but he couldn’t box and he wasn’t very strong. That was another problem. But the worst problem of all was the baseball problem. Lewis still spun all the way around when he swung at a ball, and he threw his bat. At first he tried to excuse himself by saying, “Watch out, I’m gonna throw the bat!” But the other kids said, “Look, you throw the bat and we’re gonna beat you up. You hang onto it when you swing or you can’t play.”
    That is what they said when they let him play, which was not very often. Most of the time when he lined up to be chosen he was the last one left, and the captain of the side that was supposed to take him usually said, “Why do we hafta take
him?
He can’t field, he can’t hit, he can’t pitch. He can’t even run. Come on, we’ll play one man short.”
    What they said about Lewis was true. Sometimes a new boy or a kind boy would get to be captain, and he would choose Lewis for his team. But when Lewis came to bat, he usually struck out. If he hit the ball, it popped up and the pitcher caught it. Or he might ground out to first base. When his team was out in the field, the boys made Lewis play right field, because not many balls got hit out that way. But when one did, Lewis always dropped it, unless it hit him on the head. He would stagger back and forth as he tried to keep track of the ball that hung there, high over his head, but he always gotdizzy and covered his face with his glove and screamed “No! No!” as the ball came down. After a while even the kind boys turned him down.
    One afternoon, when the usual routine had been gone through, and Lewis had run off the field sobbing because they would not let him play, he found himself standing at home plate on a baseball diamond that wasn’t being used that day. At his feet was a bat, a thick old club with a split handle that had been wrapped up with black friction tape. There was a softball nearby, or what was left of one: a black, sticky, egg-shaped lump covered with string. Lewis picked up the ball and bat. He threw the ball into the air and swung at it. He missed. He picked the ball up and