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"Why should I give you a stroke? Here's my suggestion-"

"All right! All right! Count it up yourself! 5, 7, 4, 9, 6, 6, 8-"

"Hey, Jim! I had a par five-" "Waiter! Waiter! I did n't order souD!"

"That 's ground under repair. It says so on the card-"

"Oh, I could n't hit a balloon."

"Well, if I'd been playing my game"Honest, I have n't touched a club since June-"

"Oh, I was awful! How about you?" "Waiter!"

Mr. Mott smiled happily, and buttonholed the chairman of the handicap committee.

"Made up yet?"

"Yes. How 'd you come out this

"If you start us one up on each nine morning?" and-"

"Confound it! I did n't make the rules! It costs you two strokes!"

"Telephone! Telephone for Mr. Smithson! Mrs. Smithson calling-"

"Well, my handicap 's too low. He's been under ninety twice this year, and still I've got to give him three strokes-" "Waiter! Hurry along that club sandwich, will you?"

"If you 'd just keep that left shoulder down, Bill, and remember to follow through-"

"I'll bet you I break 110-"

"Oh, if I could putt, I 'd be all right." "Chick Evans did a seventy-three-" "Here, give me that check! Oh, come now, that's not right-"

A.L.

"Then I went all to pieces-"

Who do I draw? This one?'"

"Rotten!" said Mr. Mott, promptly. "Tore up my card; I was fierce. Know anybody that 's looking for a match?"

"Yes, there's a man out by the caddyhouse. Don't know who he is, but he 's alone."

"Thanks." Mr. Mott edged his way to the outer door, bellowed over his shoulder to one who had bellowed a question at him the answer, "Pretty fair-for me," and emerged to the gravel walk. At this hour the first tee was deserted, but before the professional's tiny house Mr. Mott saw a lanky stranger in an attitude of longing; Mr. Mott drew near and grinned. The stranger grinned in return. "Waiting for somebody?" asked Mr. Mott.

"No," said the stranger. "Just taking my chances; I'm a new member."

"Indeed! My name's Mott." "Chapman's mine."

They shook hands.

"I'm alone, too. Suppose

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we try it?"

"I'd be glad to. Your name up?"

"Not yet."

"I'll put it up," volunteered Mr. Mott. In the top space on the ruled sheet tacked to the score-board he scrawled his own patronymic, and added his stroke allowance. "What's your handicap?"

"They have n't given me one yet."

"Well," said Mr. Mott, uncertainly, "then you can't very well compete -"

"Oh, I'm not going to. I'm not strong for tournaments, anyway. I'll just attest your round."

"All right." Mr. Mott dusted his hands, and stepped over to the caddy-master. "A couple of boys ready? Who do I draw? This one? My bag there? Now, son, your job is to watch the ball. You remember that, will you? Let's have the driver." He strode within the fatal inclosure, and swung the club experimentally at a trespassing cigarette stub. The stub leaped forward a yard, accurately on the line. "What do you play around in?"

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“Stand still, will you? Stop rattling those clubs!””

"Oh, I'm erratic," said Chapman, watching intently. "Suppose you go ahead-take the honor." "Well, if you say so." He teed an almost new ball, and took his stance; waggled, hesitated, stooped, glanced at his caddy, and glared at him. "Another ball," he said shortly. "Red-line Silver King out of the pocket." The caddy, overwhelmed with guilt, furnished it. It was of the same brand, the same marking, the same weight, and showed the same degree of wear and tear as the original choice; but Mr. Mott, for reasons comprehended only by golfers, regarded it with far greater satisfaction. It was the ball with which he had made the last hole in a par five on the morning round. It was, so to speak, already broken in, trained, biddable. Mr. Mott teed it, and after swinging once or twice in exaggeratedly correct form, lunged downward savagely.

"Good ball!" approved Chapman. "Too high," said Mr. Mott, with meretricious disgust. It was the longest drive he had made from the first tee in six months.

The stranger hit a prodigious slice out of bounds. On his second attempt the slice was less pronounced; he was in the rough. The two players set out fraternally on their journey.

"Been playing much lately?" inquired Mr. Mott.

"Not a great deal.”

"You 've got a fine follow through, though."

"It did n't seem to help that last shot," deprecated Chapman. He selected a spoon, and was hole-high to the left of the

green.

"Beautiful! Just a trifle off," commented Mr. Mott. With the sole of his club he patted down a worm-cast; with his heel he deleted a tuft of grass from the complications of his lie. He made his effort, and after it he held himself rooted to the spot until he had verified, by three swings at vacancy, his unexpressed opinion that, given another opportunity, he would have split the flag. "I can't keep my head down," he lamented. "Oh, well-" He turned suddenly to his caddy, and sent a bolt of lightning at him. "Watch this one!" he ordered. And the caddy obediently watched it hobble sixty feet, and disappear in the leaves of a dry trench.

As Mr. Mott, looking aggrievedly at a pair which had come up behind him and were yelling "Fore!" at the top of their lungs, stood on the first green and noted his score, he was impelled to quote history.

"I had a six here this morning," he sighed. "It's a tricky green, is n't it?"

"Very," agreed his partner. "You keep the honor all the way, will you? You 're in the tournament, and I 'm not."

"Just as you say. On this one you want to aim pretty well to the left of the mound." Mr. Mott drove thirty yards. to the right of it. "Doggone it!" he exclaimed, with his hands on his hips, "that club's no earthly good; I can't hit the broad side of a barn with it! It is n't balanced, or something. Further to the left, Mr. Chapman." Here Chapman sent forth a towering drive which at least was out of trouble. "That's safe! You 're lucky."

"I'm not kicking," said Chapman. "But I'm afraid you 're in the pit."

"I see," said Mr. Mott, getting into his stride, "that that fourteen-year-old boy at Merion finally got beaten. Well, I'm glad he did. He's too young to have all that success; it might have spoiled him. Besides, the national 's no place for a boy like that."

"He made a seventy-four," said Chapman, "and a seventy-six and a seventyseven-"

"Oh, that's not so very remarkable. You take these caddies; they watch good players, and get hold of a good swing, and they 're not bothered with nerves

"Pardon me, but I think you 're back there about ten yards, Mr. Mott."

"So I am! Much obliged! Fore!" Within a quarter of a mile there was no one who might conceivably have been. endangered by Mr. Mott's recovery from the sand-pits, but his warning cry was both mechanical and peremptory. He eyed the flag, three hundred yards in advance, and with his eye still on it he played the mashy-niblick in the stroke. which made Edward Ray internationally famous. It made Mr. Mott apoplectic. Thenceforward he progressed by slow and circuitous stages to the terraced green, and upon his arrival he was too perturbed to sympathize with Chapman, whose iron shot had found a trap, and whose approach was beyond the hole. To be sure,

the sinking of a long putt did much to salve the irritation in Mr. Mott's bosom, and although Chapman also holed a twenty-footer, Mr. Mott secretly felt, and generously withheld the statement, that Chapman had been excessively fortunate in the roll of the green.

The third hole was short; that is, it was short for scratch-players. Mr. Mott had seen Carrigan, the club professional, play it with a mashy; he had seen Anderton, the club champion, over-play it with a mid-iron. Therefore Mr. Mott, who, if he could have reached the pin with a full brassy once out of three trials, would have owed sacrifices to the gods and blessings to a beam wind, chose a mid-iron.

"I'm not generally as bad as this," he explained when the ball had found cover in a growth of underbrush. "I'm not getting my wrists into it, that's all. I don't know what 's the matter with me to-day. It makes a difference of ten strokes a round."

"Easily," said Chapman. He, too, was off the line, but he was near enough to use a putter while Mr. Mott was still flailing at the underbrush, and he was down in four to Mr. Mott's six.

"Now for a long one," complained Mr. Mott, climbing the eminence to the fourth tee. "Well, I suppose I'll have to take that driver of Carrigan's again. If I had any sense I'd drive with an iron. Well, never mind. I believe in playing the right club. Watch it, boy!" He hit a screaming liner down the alley for more than two hundred precious yards, and posed diligently and motionlessly, as in the photographs of Vardon, until the ball had not only come to rest, but had also lain quiescent for several seconds. He regarded the club-head in gentle perplexity. He tested the spring of the shaft. He breathed deeply, and made way for Chapman; but even after Chapman had failed by a full rod to equal that tremendous drive, he relentlessly fought down the smile which struggled for its outlet. Indeed, he was rather astonishingly severe and unemotional for a man who had just accomplished a praiseworthy feat.

"You 've just joined the club, Mr. Chapman?"

"Only a week ago, Mr. Mott."

"Pretty nice course, don't you think? It's very hard. It's harder by three strokes than any other course in the metropolitan district, and the fairway's a bit ragged, and the greens are pretty nearly hopeless; but you wait five years! I tell you, a man 's got to keep out of the rough on this course or he 's dished. I like a stiff course; it 's the only kind to have. Where did you play formerly?"

"Over in Boston-Kenilworth."

"Oh! Do you know George Horton?" "Massachusetts' amateur champion? I should say I do! Do you know George Horton?"

"Well, not exactly," said Mr. Mott, with some haste; "I 've heard about him. If he ever learned to putt, he 'd be a wizard, would n't he? Fore!"

"You 're in the pit!" shrilled Mr. Mott's caddy.

"Well, don't tell me about it now!" roared Mr. Mott. "Excuse me, I thought you'd played. Well, of all the " He saw Chapman's stinging brassy, which had threatened to sail into a grove of pines to westward, suddenly veer to the east, and drop lazily abaft the green.

"Pretty lucky," said Chapman.

"Lucky! I wish I had half your luck! I'd be playing Chick Evans in the finals. See my ball anywhere, caddy?"

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"On! Where?"

"Over by the sprinkler."

Mr. Mott coughed daintily, and looked at Chapman under his lashes. Chapman was n't on; Chapman was n't on by a good ten yards, but Mr. Mott was on in three, and the hole was a par five.

"I've got a chance for a birdie," he whispered to himself, "a chance for a four. It's five hundred and ten yards, and I 've got a chance for a four. Good shot!" Chapman had clipped up neatly.

Mr. Mott took his putter, and made an awkward jab at the ball. It fled at a disconcerting angle. Mr. Mott flushed, and jabbed again. He lifted himself erect, and poured out into the world the offscourings of his innermost soul. He reviled himself, the Silver King golf-ball, the Vaile putter, the greenskeeper, the turf, the contour of the land, the Scotch who had invented the game, and the promoters who had organized the club. As an afterthought, he hurled the putter into a convenient hazard, and, seizing the first weapon which came to hand,-a niblick,-struck so fair and true that the ball went down for a six, one over par.

"Too bad!" said Chapman. "I missed an easy one, myself."

"I had a chance for a four," declared Mr. Mott, loudly. "Of all the rotten. putting I ever saw in my life that was the worst. On the green in three, and three putts! These greens are rotten! Where 's my driver? Hurry up, there!"

While his mood was of grim resolution, and he concentrated rigidly upon the act, he drove off in excellent form and with highly creditable results.

"There!" he ejaculated. "Now I'm getting back on my game. That old warclub certainly does poke 'em out when I

hit 'em right. But three putts, and only one over par at that! If our greens were as good as they 've got at Sleepy Hollow-"

He observed that his companion had again sliced, and by virtue of his own superiority of direction he was vastly exhilarated. The second shots, too, filled him with passionate glory, for he was safely over the brook, while Chapman had sliced into tall grass. Mr. Mott sidled toward his partner, and made diplomatic overtures of assistance.

"If you don't mind my telling you," he said, "you stand too far in front of the ball. You can't help slicing when you do that. You pull the face of the club right. across the ball. You 're getting good distance, but you slice all the time. Stand farther ahead, and you 'll be all right." "I certainly am slicing 'em," acknowledged the lanky man.

green and panted violently. "Four-and I'm on in five," said Mr. Mott, utterly innocent. "Where'd you go?"

"Just off-over by the water-pipe." "That is n't bad. One of you boys take the flag. Good work!"

"Sink it now," urged Chapman.

Mr. Mott tried to sink it, and missed by an inch.

"Throw that back here!" he ordered.

The second endeavor was flawless. Legally, Mr. Mott had taken two putts; morally, he had taken one. It was this consciousness of innate ability, this realization that if he had aimed a hair's-breadth farther to the left he would have sunk the first attempt that cheered and inspired him. And Chapman missed a two-footer!

"If you don't mind my telling you," said Mr. Mott, with admirable restraint, "you can putt a whole lot better if you turn the face of your putter over toward

"Well, if you don't mind my telling the hole. It puts a drag on it. It makes

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"More like this," said Mr. Mott, illustrating. "Go back slower, and let go with your right hand at the top of the swing. And follow through more. Now, you take that last shot of mine; I hit three inches behind the ball, and the follow through saved it. It went as straight as a die. Say, are those people going to stay on that green all night? Fore!"

"Oh, they have n't holed out yet." "Yes, they have; they 're counting their scores. Some people don't realize there's such a thing as etiquette in this game. Fore!"

He topped into the brook. "Fore!" said Mr. Mott, waving his niblick.

He hammered the ball into a bank of yielding clay.

"Fore!" rasped Mr. Mott, setting his teeth.

He essayed a pitching stroke, a lofting stroke, an extricating stroke, and two shoveling strokes, and the last of these brought him to solid earth.

"Fore!" shouted Mr. Mott, wild-eyed. He ran an approach to the edge of the

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"Listen! Three in the brook,-" Mr. Mott's mouth opened slowly, and his jaw fell,-"three in the brook," he repeated in horror, "and"

"And nine out, sir. You yelled 'Fore!' and counted five-"

"Give me the mid-iron," said Mr. Mott, abruptly. "Get down there and mark this shot!" He wheeled to gaze at the scene of his recent dredging operations. "Three in the brook, four, five, six, Hey! Stop swinging those clubs! Well, I said it was seven! Three in the brook-"

seven

"Your honor, Mr. Mott."

"Thank you." He teed for the short sixth across a threatening ravine. "Caddy, wake up there!" He turned to his partner with a gesture of Christian resignation. "Don't you wish," he asked, "that just once in a while you 'd find a caddy that showed some interest in the game?"

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