ng. He missed. Then he saw who the figures were: it was Captain
Puffin who had just missed his putt, it was Major Flint who now
expressed elated sympathy.

"Bad luck, old boy," he said. "Well, a jolly good match and we halve it.
Why, there's the Padre. Been for a walk? Join us in a round this
afternoon, Padre! Blow your sermon!"

CHAPTER VI

The same delightful prospect at the end of the High Street, over the
marsh, which had witnessed not so long ago the final encounter in the
Wars of the Roses and the subsequent armistice, was, of course, found to
be peculiarly attractive that morning to those who knew (and who did
not?) that the combatants had left by the 11.20 steam-tram to fight
among the sand-dunes, and that the intrepid Padre had rushed after them
in a taxi. The Padre's taxi had returned empty, and the driver seemed to
know nothing whatever about anything, so the only thing for everybody to
do was to put off lunch and wait for the arrival of the next tram, which
occurred at 1.37. In consequence, all the doors in Tilling flew open
like those of cuckoo clocks at ten minutes before that hour, and this
pleasant promenade was full of those who so keenly admired autumn tints.

From here the progress of the tram across the plain was in full view;
so, too, was the shed-like station across the river, which was the
terminus of the line, and expectation, when the two-waggoned little
train approached the end of its journey, was so tense that it was
almost disagreeable. A couple of hours had elapsed since, like the
fishers who sailed away into the West and were seen no more till the
corpses lay out on the shining sand, the three had left for the
sand-dunes, and a couple of hours, so reasoned the Cosmic Consciousness
of Tilling, gave ample time for a duel to be fought, if the Padre was
not in time to stop it, and for him to stop it if he was. No surgical
assistance, as far as was known, had been summoned, but the reason for
that might easily be that a surgeon's skill was no longer, alas! of any
avail for one, if not both, of the combatants. But if such was the case,
it was nice to hope that the Padre had been in time to supply spiritual
aid to anyone whom first-aid and probes were powerless to succour.

The variety of _denouements_ which the approaching tram, that had now
cut off steam, was capable of providing was positively bewildering. They
whirled through Miss Mapp's head like the autumn leaves which she
admir