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could n't make to save his life. Well, here goes. If I miss it, somebody 'll have to lend me a dredge!" He drove neatly across the swamp; the ball rolled easily to the green. One after the other, Corbett, Bowker, Horton topped among the frogs.

"Twenty-seven for five holes," said Mr. Cuyler, tremulously, "and I beat all three of you! Are there any more Everglades, or do you play the rest of the way on dry land? Say, I'm shivering! This place is n't malarial, is it?"

"We go right back across it," said Corbett; "but this time it 's shorter. Don't take any chances. Use a high tee, and slam it."

a guest here" Choking incontinently, he slashed at the ball, and saw it disappear over a near-by ridge. "Is it safe?" he asked anxiously.

"Could n't be better."

"You really should n't disturb a man who 's driving, you know."

"We 're very sorry, Mr. Cuyler." "I'm going badly enough as it is without being disturbed."

"You 're doing excellently."

"I'm glad you think so-"

"All you need is a four to be even fives for this round."

"Yes, but the way to have a man get fours is n't to touch up his nerves until

Mr. Cuyler annihilated him with a sin- they 're all on edge." In evident irritagle glance.

"If there's anything that puts me off my game quicker than anything else," he lectured, "it's to have a man advise me. I wish you had n't said that. From my friends I want friendship only; when I need advice, I go to a professional." While the trio stood motionless, agonized, he drove a dead, high ball, which missed the water by an eyelash, and permitted him to make his four even with a poor second shot. "You pretty nearly made me spoil that hole," he said severely. "I beg of you, don't do it again."

Bowker and Corbett were shaking hands when the capitalist, in the act of driving, turned quickly upon them.

"Confound it!" he said wrathfully. "What are you two trying to do? Do you want to throw me off my game? Can't anybody in this whole crowd stand. still when I'm going to shoot?"

"I'm sorry," said Corbett, hastily. "You ought to be!" He returned to the ball. "Confound it!" he repeated. "Something's wrong every hole. First it's a caddy, and then it is n't. You 've got me shaking like a convict. Look at me!"

Indeed, his hands were strikingly unsteady.

"There's no hurry," soothed Horton. "Take your time, Mr. Cuyler."

"Oh, another counselor!" He breathed hard, and swung his club. "If I were n't

tion he topped two brassy shots; the second was a yard from the green.

"Play it safe!" said Corbett, unthink

ing.

Mr. Cuyler, gritting his teeth, struck blindly with his mashy, and the ball ran unerringly to the cup and dropped. He looked at the cup, looked at Corbett, opened his mouth, closed it again, and said nothing.

"Fives!" said Horton, jubilantly. "You need two fours for an eighty!"

The capitalist went through the motions of addressing, but his legs shook, and in the waggle he could n't bring the face of his driver within six inches of the ball. "How-how far is it?" he faltered. "Four hundred and twenty-five-a good four."

His face was ashen, and his mouth was working grotesquely as he swung. He heeled the ball; it wandered casually down a gentle slope, and found a cozy seat in a boot-mark.

"All over," he said. "I'm all through. Did the best I could; too much for me. I don't believe I can even lift the club." "Try!" begged Horton. "You can make it up-"

"No, it's too late! I wasted two strokes in the first nine; they'd have helped me here! It's too late now." He swung half-heartedly.

"Only one more!" urged Bowker at his elbow. "Just an ordinary iron. Get a

five here and a three on the home hole, and you'll still have your eighty."

"No, I never have any luck." He could hardly hold the club the caddy gave him; he stared at it stupidly; when he finally used it, the stroke was feeble, unorthodox, clumsy, and yet effective. It left him so close to the hole that he went down in two putts, one of a foot, the other of two inches; and he remained crouching until Corbett took him tenderly by the arm and escorted him to the last tee.

"Lots of nerve, Mr. Cuyler," he encouraged. "It 's only a hundred and sixty yards. Just hit it cleanly; that's all you need. Don't bother about the brook or anything else. Just one more hole, please! You 've done magnificently. I know you 're tired, but you'll want to remember this. Take a few practice swings."

Bowker, who had been talking violently to Horton, joined them, and stepped on Corbett's toe.

"They 've changed the hole, Mr. Cuyler," he said. "It 's only about a hundred yards. Take a wooden club, and merely tap it. You can't fall down now."

"Never mind about the practice swings; let him drive!" warned Horton. "Hurry up! Speed! Make him shoot, or he 'll faint!"

Mr. Cuyler regarded his driver dispassionately.

"You know," he said almost inaudibly, "I'm an old man-little bit of vertigo. If I'd had my gloves with me and my regular putter-"

There was a click of wood against rubber; three men shaded their eyes. Horton emitted a yell of triumph, and without delaying to play his own ball, dashed for the green. Corbett and Bowker had the capitalist between them; they guided him carefully over the tiny foot-bridge, set him firmly in position, gave him a club-any club!

"Two putts, Mr. Cuyler!"

"Don't try to sink it; get near the hole." "Play it right for here-where my hand is now. Easy!"

"Not too hard, whatever you do! It's a fast green!"

"Don't hurry! Lots of time!" "Get his club in line, Corbett!" "It 's in line now."

"For Heaven's sake! that's a deepfaced mashy he 's got!"

"That 's fair enough; let it alone!" "Don't let him hit it too hard!" "No; just easy, Mr. Cuyler! Take two for it!"

"Now putt!"

Mr. Cuyler putted with a potent shove. The ball, traveling swiftly, struck the back of the tin, hopped nimbly upward, and was abruptly swallowed by the metallic haven of victory.

"Seventy-nine!" gasped Horton, falling recumbent upon the turf. That made it unanimous.

It was eight o'clock before the guest of honor had recovered sufficiently to be helped into the private dining-room; and it was ten o'clock before he was able to return thanks for the initial toast.

"Boys," he said, "it was a fine day. I'm glad it was, because it 's my last. I guess the doctors were right. My heart won't stand it. I'm sorry, because if I had time to practise, I might be pretty good. It is n't usual to drag business into pleasure, but I'm going to this time. Bob Corbett here has been trying to get me interested in the club property. It looks good to me as an investment, I mean. I understand you 've been in danger of losing your club. That won't happen. It's a lovely club; it 's the best and the hardest course I ever played over. I made my best score on it, and I had a couple of bad holes, too. Some of your holes are too short, but you 've got to play 'em with deadly accuracy. That 's how I made my score to-day-I was deadly accurate. Well, it's too lovely a club to let go by. default. So I'm going to take it over, and lease it to you for a term of years. All I ask from you, to please an old man's vanity, is your affidavits about my card. You'll do that, won't you?"

"Certainly we will," said Bowker, clearing his throat. "Is it-is it absolutely definite that you 're through with golf?" "Absolutely."

"He gave all his clubs to the caddy," commission, change the flags back, change said Corbett to Bowker. all the cups, and that sort of thing."

"And never," said Mr. Cuyler, impressively "never in my life did I ever give anything away until I was mighty sure I was all through with it."

Bowker made for the door.

"I'll be with you in a couple of minutes. I'm going to telephone the papers." "Not about this purchase!" snapped Mr. Cuyler.

"No, sir; about your record." The capitalist actually blushed. "Well, in that case you might hintonly hint, of course-that-ah-I had n't played Warwick before, and that-ahunfortunately, I was suffering somewhat from rheumatism."

"I'll have a paragraph on it," said Bowker, vanishing.

They took the financier to the station for the last train. After it had gone, the three sat on a baggage-truck and laughed themselves into hysteria.

"Obtaining money under false pretenses," said Horton, when he had recovered a fraction of his poise. "And there 'll be murder if he ever finds it out."

"He can't. For two reasons; the other one is—sentimental.”

"That 's so," said Bowker, sobering. "You know, I really think he cried a little -from pure joy."

"No harm to anybody; it's a good investment, really."

"When 'll the course be ready, Bob?" "Day after to-morrow," said Corbett. "All we 've got to do is to cover up our tracks, put those temporary tees out of

"If he ever comes out again—” "Tell him we 've rebuilt the links. That 's simple."

"Has any one the least idea how long that course was?"

"I don't know how long it was," said Horton, "but I played it in sixty-one the day before yesterday, and fifty-nine yesterday. A stranger would n't suspect the card; those hills and water hazards are too deceptive. The only thing I was afraid of was that he 'd spot the cups. Good Lord! they were as big as bushel-baskets! An extra half-inch in diameter! Why, they were n't cups; they were craters!"

"What got me," chuckled Bowker, "was the way you could take a perfectly free, natural swing at that ball, and not get more than a hundred and forty yards with it!"

"Why not?" said Horton, surprisedly. "I had every one of those darned clubs built specially for this afternoon; there was n't one of them that weighed more than eight ounces!"

PERHAPS it was best for Mr. Cuyler's peace of mind that after buying the Warwick property and leasing it to the club he never saw it again. Undoubtedly it was best for him that he never played around the regular course. Because if he had done that, he would certainly have been in a frame of mind to appreciate the verse painted in small letters above the players' entrance to the club-house. As has been said before, it is n't humorous.

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term of office. The country shuddered even yet over what might have happened had death removed Jefferson while Burr was Vice-President.

Personality counted for more in American politics than it can to-day, after the leveling effects of free schools and free criticism have been at work for a century pulling down heroes and exalting the rank and file of the voters. Every member of that earlier group of leaders-Washington, with his unfailing rectitude; Adams, learned and hotly partizan; Jefferson, with his many interests; Franklin, of broad charity and homely epigram; John Marshall, "master in the common sense of Constitutional law"; Randolph of Roanoke, body and fine intellect alike wrecked by drugs and self-esteem; and all the rest of them-stand out individual and distinct against a blurred background of "the people." But of all the political characters of that day, or, indeed, from that day to this, there is no one quite so mysterious, so elusive, so apparently useless as Burr, weaving the dark pattern of his ambition into the country's history.

And because no man can live exclusively to himself either for good or evil, with every mention of Burr's name the figure of Hamilton rises, an avenging ghost. Even before that precocious young native of the West Indies walked into our military history at Princeton, a lad only nineteen, lost in thought, a cocked hat pulled down over his eyes while his hand rested upon a cannon that he patted absentmindedly as if it were a favorite horse, he had done valiant work for American liberty with his pen. From the time he touched our shores to the July morning more than thirty years later when Burr's bullet laid him low he was a force to be reckoned with. And his was one of those natures, keenly alive on many sides, whose astonishing maturity of intellect did not snuff out the zest of life. He became "my boy" to Washington very early in his service; worked willingly at headquarters day in and day out, with a sober application equal to Washington's own, yet contrived to snatch from such never-ending drudg

ery youth's dear and fleeting joys. He brought gaiety even to Washington's messtable, courted black-eyed Elizabeth Schuyler under the muzzles of British guns, and in the years of their married life together managed with all his prodigious labors to bend social graces as well as the solid qualities of his mind to enriching their days and nights. Besides being a great statesman, he was "an enjoying gentleman," to use the quaint old phrase. Talleyrand, corrupt and appreciative, looked upon him with amazement. "Il avait diviné l'Europe," he said, which, from a European of that day, about an American, was near the highest praise. Hamilton's management of the treasury, without breath of scandal or self-seeking, filled the Frenchman with even greater astonishment. "I have beheld one of the wonders of the world," he exclaimed—“a man who has made a nation rich laboring all night to provide his family with bread."

To Americans such clean devotion to country was a matter of course, commendable, but no more than duty. But all acknowledged Hamilton's remarkable ability. Some even of his own party feared him. Adams's dread of him amounted to obsession. Many who absolved Washington from leanings toward monarchy charged Hamilton with deliberate intent to change the form of government. Jefferson, who opposed him politically and clashed with him personally, fully appreciated his power. When an old man at Monticello, looking back over the past, he used to say that the Republicans had done so and so; but if he spoke of the Federalists, he was apt to say that Hamilton took this or that ground. Taxed with this, he admitted, smiling, that it was quite true. He had fallen into the habit, he supposed, because he regarded Hamilton as the "master-spirit of his party."

Burr also was a master-spirit, a name to conjure with-in black magic. About the same age as Hamilton, he was, like him, slender of frame, delicate of feature, and refined in all small matters of taste. In his blood were warring elements: German aristocracy on his father's side; on

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