no one should blame the bowler _he_ had assisted to train.

"What's the use of bowling maidens? Why don't he bowl the boys, and
have done with it?" said Duffield.

Dick looked at Heathcote; Heathcote looked at Dick; Duffield hummed a
ditty. How could he do such a thing at such a time, and in such a
place? Oh, had he been only in the Mountjoy waggonette on a lonely
road, what a business meeting they could have held! As it was, there
was only time to crush the debtor's hat down over his eyes, and dig him
on each side in the ribs, when a general stir betokened some important
movement on the field of battle.

"By George! they're going to change bowlers," said Hooker. "Quite time,
too."

"No, they're not," replied Dick, "they're going to change ends. Awful
low trick to put Cresswell with the light in his eyes."

"Pledge has had it in his all the last hour," said Heathcote.

"Shut up, you kids, and don't make such a row. You can talk when we're
in at supper," said a Fifth-form fellow.

The allusion was a depressing one. More than once it had crossed our
heroes' minds that supper was coming on; but the chances of their
"cheeking in" (as they called it) to that part of the day's
entertainment were, to say the least, narrow.

At any rate, the allusion made them sad, and they relapsed into silence
as the bowlers changed ends, and Pledge prepared to attack from his new
base.

There was a sudden uncomfortable silence all round the meadow.
Grandcourt felt that if they could weather the storm a few overs longer
they might yet avert the disgrace of a single innings defeat. Templeton
felt, with decided qualms, that unless the change told quickly, it had
better not have been made at all. The eleven stepped in a bit, and
watched the ball with anxious faces. Ponty, alone, with one hand in his
pocket, yawned, and looked somewhere else. "What's the odds to Ponty?"
thought the seventy, marvelling how any one could look so unconcerned at
such a crisis.

Pledge bowled one of his finest, awkwardest, most disconcerting slows.
The cautious batsman was proof against its syren-like allurements, and
stepped back to block what any one else would have stepped forward to
slog. The ball broke up sharp against his bat, and Grandcourt began to
breathe again as they saw its progress arrested.

But at that particular moment it appeared to enter dear old Ponty's head
to take his hand out of his pocket and stroll forward a pace or t