When they first asked me to play I thought they were mad. Storwell-on-Sea is a village on the south coast--I beg pardon; I believe it is called by the inhabitants a town. It is a pretty place, and not unknown--in the locality. It has a season and all that kind of thing, and it was during the season I was there. And one day a deputation of the inhabitants called on me at my lodgings to ask if I would lead the local cricket club to, say, victory. As I have said, my first impression was that they were mad; either that, or else that they were "playing it off" on the unprotected stranger. I hinted so much to the deputation. The deputation smiled. The chief spokesman was the local barber; his name was Sapsworth. He explained that Mr. Wingrave had sent them there. Wingrave was the vicar; we were "up" together, and he must have known quite well whereabouts my cricketing form came in. I decided to crush the deputation before the thing went farther. "To show you the sort of man you propose should captain you, I need only mention that it is more than fifteen years since I had a bat in my hand." But the admission did not crush them: quite the other way. It opened the floodgates of their eloquence. "That's nothing," Mr. Sapsworth cried. "There's Hedges here; we've had to put him in; he don't even know the rules of the game, and he's just turned sixty-one." I glanced at Mr. Hedges, thus frankly referred to. He was a smiling, red-faced, bald-headed old gentleman, who, if not considerable in height, was great in girth. He would certainly have turned the scale at sixteen stone. I felt that, to cricketers who intended to play Mr. Hedges, any objections which I might urge would appear quite trivial. "When is the match to be?" I asked. "To-morrow," was the startling reply. I was speechless. That I, after fifteen years' total abstention, should be asked to captain a team the members of which were entire strangers to me, and of whose individual styles of play I had not the faintest notion, in a match against an unknown foe, at four-and-twenty hours' notice, was a little hard to credit. It was altogether too preposterous. I told them so. But they could not be brought to see it. The end of it was that I agreed to play. No man knows to what a depth of folly he can sink until he tries. CHAPTER II. MR. BENYON BOWLS. The match was to be played on Mr. Stubbs's field. Mr. Stubbs was a local butcher. Mr. Sapsworth had kindly promised to come and escort me to the scene of action. He arrived at half-past nine, just as I was opening my morning's letters. On the way he gave me a chart of the country. It appeared that in batting we were not strong, in fielding we were weak, and that our bowling was more than shaky. "But we shall pull through," Mr. Sapsworth added; "especially now," and he glanced at me.