emotions subside and are blended into one glorious sensation of grandeur and majesty, as of a giant among pigmies.
By the time that Archibald, putting with the care of one brushing flies off a sleeping Venus, had holed out and won the thirteenth, he was in the full grip of this feeling. And as he walked to the fifteenth tee, after winning the fourteenth, he felt that this was Life, that till now he had been a mere mollusc.
Just at that moment he happened to look at his watch, and the sight was like a douche of cold water. The hands stood at five minutes to one.
Let us pause and ponder on this point for a while. Let us not dismiss it as if it were some mere trivial, everyday difficulty. You, dear reader, play an accurate, scientific game and beat your opponent with ease every time you go to the links, and so do I; but Archibald was not like us. This was the first occasion on which he had ever felt that he was playing well enough to give him a chance of defeating a really good man. True, he had beaten McCay, Sigsbee, and Butler in the earlier rounds; but they were ignoble rivals compared with Gossett. To defeat Gossett, however, meant the championship. On the other hand, he was passionately devoted to Margaret Milsom, whom he was due to meet at the end of the board- walk at one sharp. It was now five minutes to one, and the end of the board-walk still a mile away.
The mental struggle was brief but keen. A sharp pang, and his mind was made up. Cost what it might, he must stay on the links. If Margaret broke off the engagement-well, it might be that Time would heal the wound, and that after many years he would find some other girl for whom he might come to care in a wrecked, broken sort of way. But a chance like this could never come again. What is Love compared with holing out before your opponent?
The excitement now became so intense that a small boy, following with the crowd, swallowed his chewing- gum; for a slight improvement had become noticeable in Gossett's play, and a slight improvement in the play of almost anyone meant that it became vastly superior to Archibald's. At the next hole the improvement was not marked enough to have its full effect, and Archibald contrived to halve. This made him two up and three to play. What the average golfer would consider a commanding lead. But Archibald was no average golfer. A commanding lead for him would have been two up and one to play.
To give the public of his best, your golfer should have his mind cool and intent upon the game. Inasmuch as Gossett was worrying about the telegrams, while Archibald, strive as he might to dismiss it, was haunted by a vision of Margaret standing alone and deserted on the board-walk, play became, as it were, ragged. Fine putting enabled Gossett to do the sixteenth hole in twelve, and when, winning the seventeenth in nine, he brought his score level with Archibald's the match seemed over. But just then-
'Mr. Gossett!' said a familiar voice.
Once more was the much-enduring telegraph boy among those present.
'T'ree dis time!' he observed.
Gossett sprang, but again the watchful Sigsbee was too swift.
'Be brave, Gossett-be brave,' he said. 'This is a crisis in the game. Keep your nerve. Play just as if nothing existed outside the links. To look at these telegrams now would be fatal.'
Eye-witnesses of that great encounter will tell the story of the last hole to their dying day. It was one of those Titanic struggles which Time cannot efface from the memory. Archibald was fortunate in getting a good start. He only missed twice before he struck his ball on the tee. Gossett had four strokes ere he achieved the feat. Nor did Archibald's luck desert him in the journey to the green. He was out of the bunker in eleven. Gossett emerged only after sixteen. Finally, when Archibald's twenty-first stroke sent the ball trickling into the hole, Gossett had played his thirtieth.
The ball had hardly rested on the bottom of the hole before Gossett had begun to tear the telegrams from their envelopes. As he read, his eyes bulged in their sockets.
'Not bad news, I hope,' said a sympathetic bystander.
Sigsbee took the sheaf of telegrams.
The first ran: 'Good luck. Hope you win. McCay.' The second also ran: 'Good luck. Hope you win. McCay.' So, singularly enough, did the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh.
'Great Scott!' said Sigsbee. 'He seems to have been pretty anxious not to run any risk of missing you, Gossett.'
As he spoke, Archibald, close beside him, was looking at his watch. The hands stood at a quarter to two.
Margaret and her mother were seated in the parlour when Archibald arrived. Mrs. Milsom, who had elicited the fact that Archibald had not kept his appointment, had been saying 'I told you so' for some time, and this had not improved Margaret's temper. When, therefore, Archibald, damp and dishevelled, was shown in, the chill in the air nearly gave him frost-bite. Mrs. Milsom did her celebrated imitation of the Gorgon, while Margaret, lightly humming an air, picked up a weekly paper and became absorbed in it.
'Margaret, let me explain,' panted Archibald. Mrs. Milsom was understood to remark that she dared say. Matgaret's attention was riveted by a fashion plate.
'Driving in a taximeter to the ferry this morning,' resumed Archibald, 'I had an accident.'
This was the net result of some rather feverish brainwork on the way from the links to the cottage.
The periodical flapped to the floor.
'Oh, Archie, are you hurt?'
'A few scratches, nothing more; but it made me miss my train.'
'What train did you catch?' asked Mrs. Milsom sepulchrally.
'The one o'clock. I came straight on here from the station.'
'Why,' said Margaret, 'Stuyvesant was coming home on the one o'clock train. Did you see him?'
Archibald's jaw dropped slightly.
'Er-no,' he said.
