aistcoat, Banneker mounted and urged the pony
after the ball which the other sent spinning out across the field. He
made a fairly creditable cut away to the left, following down and
playing back moderately. While his mallet work was, naturally,
uncertain, he played with a full, easy swing and in good form. But it
was his horsemanship which specially commended itself to the critical
eye of the connoisseur.

"Ridden range, haven't you?" inquired the poloist when the other came
in.

"Quite a bit of it, in my time."

"Now, I'll tell you," said Densmore, employing his favorite formula.
"There'll be practice later. It's an off day and we probably won't have
two full teams. Let me rig you out, and you try it."

Banneker shook his head. "I'm here on business. I'm a reporter with a
story to get."

"All right; it's up to a reporter to stick until he gets his news,"
agreed the other. "You dismiss your taxi, and stay out here and dine,
and I'll run you back to town myself. And at nine o'clock I'll answer
your question and answer it straight."

Banneker, gazing longingly at the bright turf of the field, accepted.

Polo is to The Retreat what golf is to the average country club. The
news that Archie Densmore had a new player down for a try-out brought to
the side-lines a number of the old-time followers of the game, including
Poultney Masters, the autocrat of Wall Street and even more of The
Retreat, whose stables he, in large measure, supported. In the third
period, the stranger went in at Number Three on the pink team. He played
rather poorly, but there was that in his style which encouraged the
enthusiasts.

"He's material," grunted old Masters, blinking his pendulous eyelids, as
Banneker, accepting the challenge of Jim Maitland, captain of the
opposing team and roughest of players, for a ride-off, carried his own
horse through by sheer adroitness and daring, and left the other rolling
on the turf. "Anybody know who he is?"

"Heard Archie call him Banker, I think," answered one of the great man's
hangers-on.

Later, Banneker having changed, sat in an angled window of the
clubhouse, waiting for his host, who had returned from the stables. A
group of members entering the room, and concealed from him by an L,
approached the fireplace talking briskly.

"Dick says the feller's a reporter," declared one of them, a middle-aged
man named Kirke. "Says he saw him tryin' to interview somebody on the
Street, one day."

"Well,