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I was thrilled. So the test had begun!

“How did you come out?” I asked.

Rupert Dixon smirked. A smirking man, wrapped in a bath towel, with a wisp of wet hair over one eye, is a repellent sight.

“Oh, pretty well. I won by six and five. In spite of having poisonous luck.”

I felt a gleam of hope at these last words.

“Oh, you had bad luck?”

“The worst. I over-shot the green at the third with the best brassey-shot I’ve ever made in my life–and that’s saying a lot–and lost my ball in the rough beyond it.”

“And I suppose you let yourself go, eh?”

“Let myself go?”

“I take it that you made some sort of demonstration?”

“Oh, no. Losing your temper doesn’t get you anywhere at golf. It only spoils your next shot.”

I went away heavy-hearted. Dixon had plainly come through the ordeal as well as any man could have done. I expected to hear every day that the vacant treasurership had been filled, and that Mitchell had not even been called upon to play his test round. I suppose, however, that Alexander Paterson felt that it would be unfair to the other competitor not to give him his chance, for the next I heard of the matter was when Mitchell Holmes rang me up on the Friday and asked me if I would accompany him round the links next day in the match he was playing with Alexander, and give him my moral support.

“I shall need it,” he said. “I don’t mind telling you I’m pretty nervous. I wish I had had longer to get the stranglehold on that ‘Are You Your Own Master?’ stuff. I can see, of course, that it is the real tabasco from start to finish, and absolutely as mother makes it, but the trouble is I’ve only had a few days to soak it into my system. It’s like trying to patch up a motor car with string. You never know when the thing will break down. Heaven knows what will happen if I sink a ball at the water-hole. And something seems to tell me I am going to do it.”

There was a silence for a moment.

“Do you believe in dreams?” asked Mitchell.

“Believe in what?”

“Dreams.”

“What about them?”

“I said, ‘Do you believe in dreams?’ Because last night I dreamed that I was playing in the final of the Open Championship, and I got into the rough, and there was a cow there, and the cow looked at me in a sad sort of way and said, ‘Why don’t you use the two-V grip instead of the interlocking?’ At the time it seemed an odd sort of thing to happen, but I’ve been thinking it over and I wonder if there isn’t something in it. These things must be sent to us for a purpose.”

“You can’t change your grip on the day of an important match.”

“I suppose not. The fact is, I’m a bit jumpy, or I wouldn’t have mentioned it. Oh, well! See you tomorrow at two.”

* * * * *

The day was bright and sunny, but a tricky cross-wind was blowing when I reached the club-house. Alexander Paterson was there, practising swings on the first tee; and almost immediately Mitchell Holmes arrived, accompanied by Millicent.

“Perhaps,” said Alexander, “we had better be getting under way. Shall I take the honour?”

“Certainly,” said Mitchell.

Alexander teed up his ball.

Alexander Paterson has always been a careful rather than a dashing player. It is his custom, a sort of ritual, to take two measured practice-swings before addressing the ball, even on the putting-green. When he does address the ball he shuffles his feet for a moment or two, then pauses, and scans the horizon in a suspicious sort of way, as if he had been expecting it to play some sort of a trick on him when he was not looking. A careful inspection seems to convince him of the horizon’s bona fides, and he turns his attention to the ball again. He shuffles his feet once more, then raises his club. He waggles the club smartly over the ball three times, then lays it behind the globule. At this point he suddenly peers at the horizon again, in the apparent hope of catching it off its guard. This done, he raises his club very slowly, brings it back very slowly till it almost touches the ball, raises it again, brings it down again, raises it once more, and brings it down for the third time. He then stands motionless, wrapped in thought, like some Indian fakir contemplating the infinite. Then he raises his club again and replaces it behind the ball. Finally he quivers all over, swings very slowly back, and drives the ball for about a hundred and fifty yards in a dead straight line.