it would have been well for me to follow even this craft more, and my
sports and pastimes less: Dickon Melville had then escaped a broken head,
and I, perchance, a broken heart. But youth is given over to vanities
that war against the soul, and, among others, to that wicked game of the
Golf, now justly cried down by our laws, {2} as the mother of cursing and
idleness, mischief and wastery, of which game, as I verily believe, the
devil himself is the father.

It chanced, on an October day of the year of grace Fourteen hundred and
twenty-eight, that I was playing myself at this accursed sport with one
Richard Melville, a student of like age with myself. We were evenly
matched, though Dickon was tall and weighty, being great of growth for
his age, whereas I was of but scant inches, slim, and, as men said, of a
girlish countenance. Yet I was well skilled in the game of the Golf, and
have driven a Holland ball the length of an arrow-flight, there or
thereby. But wherefore should my sinful soul be now in mind of these old
vanities, repented of, I trust, long ago?

As we twain, Dickon and I, were known for fell champions at this unholy
sport, many of the other scholars followed us, laying wagers on our
heads. They were but a wild set of lads, for, as then, there was not, as
now there is, a house appointed for scholars to dwell in together under
authority. We wore coloured clothes, and our hair long; gold chains, and
whingers {3} in our belts, all of which things are now most righteously
forbidden. But I carried no whinger on the links, as considering that it
hampered a man in his play. So the game went on, now Dickon leading "by
a hole," as they say, and now myself, and great wagers were laid on us.

Now, at the hole that is set high above the Eden, whence you see far over
the country, and the river-mouth, and the shipping, it chanced that my
ball lay between Dickon's and the hole, so that he could in no manner win
past it.

"You laid me that stimy of set purpose," cried Dickon, throwing down his
club in a rage; "and this is the third time you have done it in this
game."

"It is clean against common luck," quoth one of his party, "and the game
and the money laid on it should be ours."

"By the blessed bones of the Apostle," I said, "no luck is more common.
To-day to me, to-morrow to thee! Lay it of purpose, I could not if I
would."

"You lie!" he shouted in a rage, and gripped to his whinger.

It was ever my