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“Clothing the palpable and familiar
With golden exhalations of the dawn,”

for in the pellucid air everything seemed weirdly beautiful, even Arthur Juke’s heather-mixture knickerbockers, of which hitherto I had never approved. The sun gleamed on their seat, as he bent to make his shots, in a cheerful and almost a poetic way. The birds were singing gaily in the hedgerows, and such was my uplifted state that I, too, burst into song, until Arthur petulantly desired me to refrain, on the plea that, though he yielded to no man in his enjoyment of farmyard imitations in their proper place, I put him off his stroke. And so we passed through Bayside in silence and started to cover that long stretch of road which ends in the railway bridge and the gentle descent into Woodfield.

Arthur was not doing badly. He was at least keeping them straight. And in the circumstances straightness was to be preferred to distance. Soon after leaving Little Hadley he had become ambitious and had used his brassey with disastrous results, slicing his fifty-third into the rough on the right of the road. It had taken him ten with the niblick to get back on to the car tracks, and this had taught him prudence.

He was now using his putter for every shot, and, except when he got trapped in the cross-lines at the top of the hill just before reaching Bayside, he had been in no serious difficulties. He was playing a nice easy game, getting the full face of the putter on to each shot.

At the top of the slope that drops down into Woodfield High Street he paused.

“I think I might try my brassey again here,” he said. “I have a nice lie.”

“Is it wise?” I said.

He looked down the hill.

“What I was thinking,” he said, “was that with it I might wing that man Bingham. I see he is standing right out in the middle of the fairway.”

I followed his gaze. It was perfectly true. Ralph Bingham was leaning on his bicycle in the roadway, smoking a cigarette. Even at this distance one could detect the man’s disgustingly complacent expression. Rupert Bailey was sitting with his back against the door of the Woodfield Garage, looking rather used up. He was a man who liked to keep himself clean and tidy, and it was plain that the cross-country trip had done him no good. He seemed to be scraping mud off his face. I learned later that he had had the misfortune to fall into a ditch just beyond Bayside.

“No,” said Arthur. “On second thoughts, the safe game is the one to play. I’ll stick to the putter.”

We dropped down the hill, and presently came up with the opposition. I had not been mistaken in thinking that Ralph Bingham looked complacent. The man was smirking.

“Playing three hundred and ninety-six,” he said, as we drew near. “How are you?”

I consulted my score-card.

“We have played a snappy seven hundred and eleven.” I said.

Ralph exulted openly. Rupert Bailey made no comment. He was too busy with the alluvial deposits on his person.

“Perhaps you would like to give up the match?” said Ralph to Arthur.

“Tchah!” said Arthur.

“Might just as well.”

“Pah!” said Arthur.

“You can’t win now.”

“Pshaw!” said Arthur.

I am aware that Arthur’s dialogue might have been brighter, but he had been through a trying time.

Rupert Bailey sidled up to me.

“I’m going home,” he said.

“Nonsense!” I replied. “You are in an official capacity. You must stick to your post. Besides, what could be nicer than a pleasant morning ramble?”

“Pleasant morning ramble my number nine foot!” he replied, peevishly. “I want to get back to civilization and set an excavating party with pickaxes to work on me.”

“You take too gloomy a view of the matter. You are a little dusty. Nothing more.”

“And it’s not only the being buried alive that I mind. I cannot stick Ralph Bingham much longer.”

“You have found him trying?”