There was not the slightest suggestion of pivoting. Colonel Taylor merely pulled his body away from the ball and then lunged savagely forward. The ball flew as straight as an arrow toward the rough on the left a hundred yards away, caromed off a tree, and came to rest in the middle of the fairway. The player beamed with satisfaction.

Alonzo Wetherby's face was set in grim lines as he stepped forward to test his fate. Teeing his ball carefully, he leaned an instant on his club to gaze searchingly up the hundred and fifty yards of grassy slope which was the only part of the 365-yard hole visible. Peary hungrily eying the north pole or Moses surveying the Promised Land were not half so earnest in their glances as was Alonzo in his survey of this bit of sward he had trodden hundreds of times before. This also is a part of the ritual of golf.

Colonel Taylor took the honor and carefully teed his ball. Then he dusted his gloves together and grasped his driver. After which he assumed a freeand-easy open stance and addressed the inoffensive little sphere with a patronizing air as though he were saying, “You have n't a chance in the world with me, and I know it." Following this, he glared savagely at the ball for several seconds, during which the spectators held their breath, and Milroy sympathetically grasped Marie's arm though to share her tension.

as

It is this sweet and solemn silence, during which the driver stares fixedly at his ball, which somehow lifts golf far above the level of the ordinary game almost to the height of a religion. Exactly why ninety-five per cent. of the players perform this rite, preparatory to hooking or slicing, is a profound and awful mystery. It certainly has no effect upon their game; but it helps to establish their position as golfers even though the stroke goes wrong.

Presently the statue on the teeingground showed signs of life. The colonel's arm came back, followed by his body.

The cardinal points having been found in their accustomed places, Alonzo proceeded to that complicated series of preliminary motions with the club which constitute what is known as the "waggle." Why a man should go through a set of motions which are not intended to affect the ball in the slightest degree is one of the many unsolved mysteries of the game. The most probable guess is

that hundreds of years ago two famous Scottish players, attempting to play too soon after a wedding celebration, found some difficulty in hitting their ball. The groping movements that they made to and fro above the ball constituted the first "waggle" on record. Admirers of their game took up the innovation, until now he is a bold man who does not "waggle."

Alonzo Wetherby waggled. It was indeed the best part of his game. There was something deadly in his waggle, something threatening in the way he eyed the ball as he waved the club to and

fro. A cat playing with a mouse had a good deal in common with Alonzo as he glared menacingly at the harmless ball and swung the club-head backward and forward as though prepared each instant to pounce upon his victim. Spectators, ignorant of his game, were awed as they watched the process. There was

more than a hint of tigerish ferocity in the way he seemed to crouch as though about to spring.

The waggle ended, Alonzo rested his club behind the ball, while he glanced searchingly up the hill as though estimating the exact spot he expected his shot to reach; after which, with a slow, deliberate swing, he drove the ball a hundred and twenty-five yards straight up the fairway.

Marie squeezed her companion's arm. "He never moved his head," she exclaimed.

Milroy nodded.

"Here's hoping!" he cried fervently. The result of the first hole justified his hopes and, in a measure, rendered him proud of his pupil; for while Colonel Taylor progressed from bad to worse, his ball hiding twice under the scattered fragments of an old stone fence, Alonzo marched steadily down the fairway with an air of confidence that boded ill for his antagonist. His third shot left him a few yards from the green, where a clever chip shot and three rather natty putts gave him a seven and the hole.

Marie's face was flushed with happiness as she followed her father toward the second tee; for he was keeping his head still, actually keeping it still for the first time in years. People were beginning to take notice of it. Colonel

Taylor's face had assumed a meditative expression. When, on the second hole, Alonzo drove almost to the directionpost in the exact middle of the fairway, the colonel was so taken aback that, teeing rather hastily, he dribbled a ball into the grass about thirty yards away. His pleasant smile as he asked his caddie for a niblick deceived no one. The smile was too obviously feigned. It may, indeed, be laid down as an axiom that a man who smiles when compelled to call for a niblick within thirty yards of the tee is hiding a wounded heart.

The second hole proved a mere canter

for Alonzo in eight, his opponent requiring a round dozen, while on the third Colonel Taylor's drive landed in a sunken tennis-court, where three strokes were wasted. The result of this misfortune was to give Alonzo the 267-yard third in six, and once more Marie squeezed her escort's arm.

"Is n't he just wonderful!" she cried. "Even sevens! Holy mackerel!" murmured Milroy.

The 147-yard fourth leads down a steep hill to a misbegotten little brook a foot wide, a few yards beyond which rises a green bastion a club's-length in height, which is the putting-green. Looking downward from the teeingground, there are few prettier sights to be seen on any course, the narrow fairway, lined with trees and rocks on each side, seeming like an entrance way to the battlements of some medieval castle, the drawbridge of which is formed by the plank bridge that crosses the minia

ture stream.

It is in this manner that the newcomer regards the hole. After he has lost a few balls in the unspeakable muddy grass on each side of the fairway or has struck a large tree at the left the branches of which hide one third of the putting-green from sight, his sense of beauty becomes dulled. He begins to wonder if nature did not overtrap the place. In desperation he tries a "sod-burner," only to land in the ditch. No wonder the fourth hole at Wildwood has an evil fame.

But of all this Alonzo was quite unmindful. Lighting a cigar, he took his position on the teeing-ground with an air of calm confidence. Ted Ray, one of the great English champions, smokes while playing, and his driving and approaching are famous. Alonzo, who had secretly patterned his game after Ray's, cocked the cigar between his lips at the proper Ray angle and proceeded to play a high mashie to the green as he felt sure his idol would have played it.

You know the kind-the soaring shot, with a great deal of back spin, that almost screams its flight aloft and then drops solidly, almost without a roll, to earth. That was exactly the way Alonzo played it, and had it not been for the big tree on the left-But the tree

was there, and the sharp sound of a golf-ball against solid wood followed. It is a sound like none other under the sun, and the golfer knows and dreads it. Alonzo, to whom it was as familiar as the ticking of his watch, gave a tired shrug of his shoulders as he watched the ball splash into the mud twenty feet to the left of the fairway. Then he drew calmly upon his cigar.

"He moved his head then," said young Milroy, with annoyance. "He's too satisfied with himself. As soon as he gets that way, he 'll forget the pit out of which he has been digged, and then-"

He shook his head with gloomy foreboding and watched Colonel Taylor take his stance, top ineffectually, and send his ball scurrying down the hill to a cool nook in the brooklet below. Ground rules allowed a throwback at the cost of one stroke; there was hope if Alonzo could make a good recovery.

Alonzo did make an excellent shot out of the rough, allowing for the fact that he was standing ankle deep in a swampy patch of grass and that he had to clear a low fence of jagged stones that cut him off from the fairway. But the ball, rolling on the fairway, fell into a cup-like depression in the turf left by a criminal golfer whose name is Legion, and strenuous work with a mashie was necessary to pry it loose. Considering that the green was now twenty yards away, the conclusion is obvious. ball upon which so much depended shot across the green at sickening speed, sliced to the right, and came to rest in one of those muddy pools where caddies naturally gravitate in search for lost balls.

The

"He has lost the hole," Marie whispered excitedly. "Poor dear!" For Colonel Taylor was on the green in three, while Alonzo, smoking furiously and covered with mud, did not reach that haven of refuge until eight strokes had been scored against him.

"Let us look the other way," exclaimed Marie, compassionately, leading young Milroy up the hillside toward the fifth teeing-ground. "I hate to see a fat man gloat."

The fifth hole at Wildwood is one of the hardest 390-yarders in the world. It is not the fact that it is a dog's leg

that gives it evil eminence, but rather the extraordinary gully that cuts across it a hundred yards from the tee. This gully slopes gradually down until twenty feet or more below teeing level, narrowing in from the left until at the bottom the fairway is no wider than a city street, and then climbing a rock-strewn hill on the far side, where the luckless golfer emerges on level ground with the same feeling of relief that Dante had when he stepped out of the Inferno. On each side of the narrow fairway at the bottom of the gully stretch patches of swampy desolation where the hoarse cry of the golfer in despair rises to the unregarding heavens as though the marsh had suddenly produced a species of giant bullfrog.

A man whose tee shot will carry two hundred yards in air will have no trouble with the gully, and may then devote himself to the rest of the unpleasantness that awaits him; but the average player faces no such pleasant prospect. For him there yawns the depths of what some call the Slough of Despond, but which the initiated know as the Valley of Humiliation.

Despite all this, Colonel Taylor stepped upon the tee with the air of a conqueror. Not a thought crossed his mind of the dozens of balls he had sent to their last resting-place in the valley below. He had forgotten them entirely. They were now as though they never had been. It is this strange lapse of memory that makes golf unutterably pathetic to the humane spectator.

Forgetful of scores of futile rounds, the poor victim treasures in his soul the recollection of a single spasm of good play, which he proudly refers to as his "game." For less evidence of mental aberration non-golfers are confined in sanatoriums.

Colonel Taylor took his stance and surveyed the turf beyond the gully with a knowing air. Considering that he had never carried the gully in his life, his look of calm confidence would have given an alienist food for thought. There was even the faintest suggestion of a smile on his face as he glared at the insignificant ball in front of him when he turned to give that luckless object the benefit of his attention. Then,

drawing back, he hurled his body and club forward. Like an arrow from the proverbial bow, the ball leaped skyward, coming to rest eighty yards down the fairway.

Alonzo did not smile. The Scots, who developed the game of golf, are a dour race who do not smile easily, so it has come about that unseemly merriment does not form part of the game. Above all, no real golfer would allow himself to betray elation at the mishap of an opponent. He may feel a curious spring of joy bubbling up in his heart when his rival slices into a ditch or tops into a bunker, but the etiquette of the game forbids him to show it.

Even when

his adversary shows signs of making a permanent home in the bunker or performs a complicated evolution that embeds his ball in a hopeless network of rocks, the true golfer must not evince emotion. The most

overhead to a safe position on the opposite bank; then he began a complicated series of manoeuvers that brought him to dry land again at the cost of four strokes, after which Colonel Taylor's nine gave that worthy an easy victory.

"The poor dear!" sighed the girl, softly. "He did n't move his head that time, did he?"

"He did n't," the young man ad

mitted. "But if he loses another hole or two" He shook his head with apprehension as the gallery made its way to the sixth hole.

There are fewer pleasanter little holes than the 133-yard sixth, the green rising from a gentle slope against a background of trees. None of the earthenwork crimes called bunkers defend the green from attack, an abysmal descent into long grass at the rear being enough to cause the average golfer to treat the hole with respect. It was here that Alonzo played his best golf of the day. An excellent drive, a mashie to the green, an approach putt, another that came within six inches of the hole, gave him a five to Colonel Taylor's seven, and the lead by two holes.

hardened of them cannot help a betraying gleam that creeps into their eyes despite themselves. This proves that they are human.

Smoking quietly, Alonzo teed his ball; then, after an unusually fine waggle, he drove an excellent ball straight down the fairway. Flying low, the tiny sphere seemed to eat up the ground as it sped along. It was the merest fraction to the left of the center of the course, which at this particular hole spells disaster. For the narrowing of the fairway at the bottom of the gully is caused by the contraction of the left side of the course, the rough cutting in on the fairway in a wide sweep. There was an excited wave of the caddie's hand, and the ball found a haven of refuge in the marsh below.

Here Alonzo waited patiently in the mud while his opponent's ball screamed

And then trouble came thick and fast. It may have been that too great prosperity had unduly elated him or that the strain of keeping his head still had worn upon the muscles of his neck. Who shall say? There are mysteries in the play of the ordinary golfer that neither philosophers nor angels should attempt to fathom. One thing is certain: Alonzo was trying desperately to keep his head still. Despite this he began to hit trees, not to hit them in an occasional or desultory manner, but to whang the ball into them with the regularity of a machine, while his suffering daughter clasped her escort's arm

and shuddered. On the seventh hole he became actually entombed in a circle of trees, from which his ball could be seen to rebound at intervals as his mashie came into play. Reaching the edge of the green in twelve and finding the colonel there in seven, Alonzo picked up. It is difficult to make up five strokes on the putting-green.

The eighth hole, 208 yards in length, is trapped on all sides, its most hateful feature being the manner in which the ground slopes toward a bit of woodland to the right of the course. Standing on the teeing-ground, the player sees none of the difficulties of the hole, as the ground runs fairly level for fifty or more yards before it begins its gradual slope to the green, thirty feet below. Even the little brook at the foot of the hill is mercifully hidden from sight, and the trees that sentinel the green seem far away and entirely harmless. This is a grievous error, for no bit of rough in the world annually sees more suffering or listens to more eloquent language than this.

It was, indeed, Alonzo's favorite resort. He was popularly supposed to have taken more strokes between the protruding roots of the huge old trees, where balls cupped themselves with diabolic precision, and to have wasted more energy in endeavoring to chip over the stone wall to the fairway without hitting a tree-trunk, than any living man, this not forgetting the famous match-player who once used eight perfectly good strokes in the same miserable manner before picking up his ball.

Despite this, Alonzo teed up in a nonchalant manner. Seeing this, the young people regarded each other with gloomy foreboding. The Scots, who invented golf,-oh, I understand exactly the historical difficulties in proving that they ever invented a game where a player loses a ball,-anyway, the Scots say that a man is "fey," or doomed, when they divine that he is marching to a certain, unescapable fate. For Alonzo had begun to move his head. Even in the waggle it was tossing to and fro like a bit of cork in an angry sea. As he sliced down the hill among the trees, Milroy gently drew the agitated girl away in the direction of the road,

where his car was waiting. Even as they hurried from the scene they could hear the sharp crash of a golf-ball against wood, could hear it again and again, could even, after the fifth stroke, see Alonzo in the distance cup his hands as he lit a cigar. Then a turn of the road hid the scene from sight.

It was over an hour later when young Milroy drew up in the roadway behind the teeing-ground of the fourteenth hole. Hoyt, the treasurer of the Wildwood Club, came forward to meet them. He had been backing the Wetherby game, and his solemn face was eloquent of the state of affairs.

"The colonel is dormie five," he said mournfully. "He needs only one halved hole to win."

"Father is moving his head again?" asked Marie.

"A stranger," explained Hoyt, "asked if he had shaking palsy. It is just that bad."

Marie looked concerned. Then a sudden little smile irradiated her face. "Poor dear, I hope he won't be too disappointed," she murmured.

The 395-yard fourteenth is a comparatively easy hole, except for the fact that trees narrow the fairway a hundred and fifty yards from the tee and that a few yards beyond a group of rocks lie in the middle of the fairway to catch topped balls. Alonzo had often made it in seven. Now, as he took his stance, there was a light of savage determination in his eyes. Golfers often have it. To themselves it seems akin to the light that flamed in the eyes of the heroes of the Alamo; this shows what golf does to its victim's mental processes.

To describe the play on the fourteenth hole is impossible. Both players zigzagged across the fairway until a diagram of their course would have resembled a fever chart taken when the patient was having his ups and downs most rapidly. A student of the classics nicknamed Alonzo "Ulysses," who, he affirmed, had also won fame as a wanderer. And so the fight went on, slice following hook, and hook slice, with a niblick shot between each as the ball burrowed into the long grass of the rough. And then, with the colonel