thought. "Wait--just wait."

"Miss Derrick is well, I hope?" I added aloud.

That drew him. He started. His aspect became doubly forbidding.

"Miss Derrick is perfectly well, sir, I thank you."

"And you? No bad effect, I hope, from your dip yesterday?"

"Mr. Garnet, I came here for golf, not conversation," he said.

We made it so. I drove off from the first tee. It was a splendid
drive. I should not say so if there were anyone else to say so for me.
Modesty would forbid. But, as there is no one, I must repeat the
statement. It was one of the best drives of my experience. The ball
flashed through the air, took the bunker with a dozen feet to spare,
and rolled onto the green. I had felt all along that I should be in
form. Unless my opponent was equally above himself, he was a lost man.

The excellence of my drive had not been without its effect on the
professor. I could see that he was not confident. He addressed his
ball more strangely and at greater length than anyone I had ever seen.
He waggled his club over it as if he were going to perform a conjuring
trick. Then he struck and topped it.

The ball rolled two yards.

He looked at it in silence. Then he looked at me--also in silence.

I was gazing seaward.

When I looked round, he was getting to work with a brassy.

This time he hit the bunker and rolled back. He repeated this maneuver
twice.

"Hard luck!" I murmured sympathetically on the third occasion, thereby
going as near to being slain with an iron as it has ever been my lot
to go. Your true golfer is easily roused in times of misfortune, and
there was a red gleam in the eye the professor turned to me.

"I shall pick my ball up," he growled.

We walked on in silence to the second tee.

He did the second hole in four, which was good. I won it in three,
which--unfortunately for him--was better.

I won the third hole.

I won the fourth hole.

I won the fifth hole.

I glanced at my opponent out of the corner of my eyes. The man was
suffering. Beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead.

His play had become wilder and wilder at each hole in arithmetical
progression. If he had been a plow, he could hardly have turned up
more soil. The imagination recoiled from the thought of what he would
be doing in another half hour if he deteriorated at his present speed.

A feeling of calm and content stole over me. I was not sorry for him.
All the viciousness of my nature was uppermost in me. Once,