s and flowers
before the door. The ends of the street were closed in by posts, and
outside the posts sentries were placed.

It was a week of bright, sunlit, rainless days, and of starry nights. It
was a week of reviews and State functions. But it was also a week during
which the best polo to be seen in India drew the visitors each afternoon
to the club-ground. There was no more constant attendant than Violet
Oliver. She understood the game and followed it with a nice appreciation
of the player's skill. The first round of the competition had been played
off on the third day, but a native team organised by the ruler of a
Mohammedan State in Central India had drawn a by and did not appear in
the contest until the fourth day. Mrs. Oliver took her seat in the front
row of the stand, as the opposing teams cantered into the field upon
their ponies. A programme was handed to her, but she did not open it. For
already one of the umpires had tossed the ball into the middle of the
ground. The game had begun.

The native team was matched against a regiment of Dragoons, and from the
beginning it was plain that the four English players were the stronger
team. But on the other side there was one who in point of skill
outstripped them all. He was stationed on the outside of the field
farthest away from Violet Oliver. He was a young man, almost a boy, she
judged; he was beautifully mounted, and he sat his pony as though he and
it were one. He was quick to turn, quick to pass the ball; and he never
played a dangerous game. A desire that the native team should win woke in
her and grew strong just because of that slim youth's extraordinary
skill. Time after time he relieved his side, and once, as it seemed to
her, he picked the ball out of the very goalposts. The bugle, she
remembered afterwards, had just sounded. He drove the ball out from the
press, leaned over until it seemed he must fall to resist an opponent who
tried to ride him off, and then somehow he shook himself free from the
tangle of polo-sticks and ponies.

"Oh, well done! well done!" cried Violet Oliver, clenching her hands in
her enthusiasm. A roar of applause went up. He came racing down the very
centre of the ground, the long ends of his white turban streaming out
behind him like a pennant. The seven other players followed upon his
heels outpaced and outplayed. He rode swinging his polo-stick for the
stroke, and then with clean hard blows sent the ball skimming through