course, I can't pretend to explain the thing. It was psychic,
that's all; supernatural, if you please. Must have been. For there I
was, a confirmed duffer, playing that course exactly as Alexander
McQuade would have played it had he been in my shoes. And he was, for
the time being. At least, I claim that I was being controlled, or
whatever you want to call it, by the recently departed spirit of Sandy
the Great."

I expect I was gawpin' at him with a full open-face expression. Say, I
thought I'd heard these golf nuts ravin' before, but I'd never been up
against anything quite like this. Honest, it gave me a creepy feelin'
along the spine. And yet, come to look him over close, he's just a
wide-beamed old party with bags under his eyes and heavy common-place
features.

"You grasp the idea now, don't you?" he asks.

"I think so," says I. "Ghost stuff, eh?"

"I'm merely suggesting that as the only explanation which occurs to me,"
says he. "I would like to have it put before Ellins and get his opinion.
That is, if you think you can make it clear."

"I'll make a stab at it, Mr. Dowd," says I.

And of course I did, though Old Hickory aint such an easy listener. He
comes in with snorts and grunts all through the tale, and when I
finishes he simply shrugs his shoulders.

"There's a warning for you, young man," says he. "Keep away from the
fool game. Anyway, if you ever do play, don't let it get to be a disease
with you. Look at Dowd. Five years ago he was a sane, normal person; the
best iron ore expert in the country. He could sniff a handful of red
earth and tell you how much it would run to a ton within a dime's worth.
Knew the game from A to Izzard--deep mining, open pit, low grade
washing, transportation, smelting. He lived with it. Never happier than
when he was in his mining rig following a chief engineer through new
cross-cuts on the twenty-sixth level trying to locate a fault in the
deposit or testing some modern method of hoisting. Those were things he
understood. Then he retired. Said he'd made money enough. And now look
at him. Getting cracked over a sport that must have been invented by
some Scotchman who had a grudge against the whole human race. As though
any game could be a substitute for business. Bah!"

"Then you don't think, Mr. Ellins," says I, "that we ought to have the
boy page Sir Oliver Lodge?"

"Eh?" says he.

"I mean," says I, "that you don't take any stock in that mantle of Sandy
the Great