a thoroughly well man
for a month, now."

"You know, I think my liver----"

I held up my hand.

"Not before my caddie, please," I said severely; "he is quite a child."

Thomson said no more for the moment, but hit his ball hard and straight
along the ground.

"It's perfectly absurd," he said with a shrug; "I shan't be able to give
you a game at all. Well, if you don't mind playing a sick man----"

"Not if you don't mind being one," I replied, and drove a ball which
also went along the ground, but not so far as my opponent's. "There! I'm
about the only man in England who can do that when he's quite well."

The ball was sitting up nicely for my second shot, and I managed to put
it on the green. Thomson's, fifty yards farther on, was reclining in the
worst part of a bunker which he had forgotten about.

"Well, really," he said, "there's an example of luck for you. _Your_
ball----"

"I didn't do it on purpose," I pleaded. "Don't be angry with me."

He made two attempts to get out, and then picked his ball up. We walked
in silence to the second tee.

"This time," I said, "I shall hit the sphere properly," and with a
terrific swing I stroked it gently into a gorse bush. I looked at the
thing in disgust and then felt my pulse. Apparently I was still quite
well. Thomson, forgetting about his liver, drove a beauty. We met on the
green.

"Five," I said.

"Only five?" asked Thomson suspiciously.

"Six," I said, holing a very long putt.

Thomson's health had a relapse. He took four short putts and was down in
seven.

"It's really rather absurd," he said, in a conversational way, as we
went to the next tee, "that putting should be so ridiculously important.
Take that hole, for instance. I get on the green in a perfect three; you
fluff your drive completely and get on in--what was it?"

"Five," I said again.

"Er--five. And yet you win the hole. It _is_ rather absurd, isn't it?"

"I've often thought so," I admitted readily. "That is to say, when I've
taken four putts. I'm two up."

On the third tee Thomson's health became positively alarming. He missed
the ball altogether.

"It's ridiculous to try to play," he said, with a forced laugh. "I can't
see the ball at all."

"It's still there," I assured him.

He struck at it again and it hurried off into a ditch.

"Look here," he said, "wouldn't you rather play the pro.? This is not
much of a match for you."

I considered. Of course, a game with the pro. w