decreases. But more than all else, you are not the
same man physically or mentally on any two days. A slight increase in
weight, the wearing of an extra garment, the congestion of a muscle or
the stiffening of a chord may be sufficient to throw you off your stroke
and seriously impair your game."

"Nonsense; I don't believe it," he declared. "When I once find out how
to make a certain shot I will keep right on improving until I have it
perfect."

"If that were possible golf would lose its charm," I said. "A man will
go on making a certain shot with almost perfect accuracy for months, and
all at once lose the knack of it, and not be able to recover it for
months, and perhaps never. In order to hit a golf ball accurately there
are scores of muscles which must act in perfect accord, and the several
parts of the body must maintain certain positions during the various
parts of the stroke. If the shoulder drops the quarter of an inch, if
the heel rises too soon by the minutest fraction of a second, if either
hand grasping the club turns in any degree the stroke is ruined. You
will hit the ball, but it will not go the distance or the direction
required."

"Must be a mighty hard game, from all that you say," he laughed, grimly.
"Guess I'd better go back and not try it, but I notice that there was
nothing the matter with the position of my muscles, cords, hands and the
rest of my anatomy the other day when I whacked that ball out of sight.
And I can do it again, Smith, and don't you forget it."

I preferred to await the arbitrament of events so far as that boast was
concerned.

We had arrived at the eighteenth tee, and he looked over the field with
much satisfaction. The railroad embankment is about one hundred and
fifty yards from the tee, and few try to carry it. The old post road
runs parallel to the line of this hole, and forms the western boundary
of the Woodvale links. There is no bunker save the railroad bank for the
entire distance, and it is an ideal hole for the golf "slugger."

"Where is the green?" asked Harding, standing on the elevated tee. I
pointed in the line of the old church belfry, and after a long look he
declared that he could see the white flag floating from the standard.

"Nobody ever drove it, you say?" he observed, throwing his shoulders
back.

"Of course not," I laughed, and added, "and never will."

"Don't be too sure about that," he said, piling a mound of sand. "It's
nothing more than a