“I didn’t,” said the Captain. “!” “I just got in to see how deep it was and cool my feet—I hate warm feet.” He lost that hole but he felt a better golfer now, his anger he thought was warming him up so that he would presently begin to make strokes by instinct, and do remarkable things unawares. After all there is something in the phrase “getting one’s blood up.” If only the Professor wouldn’t dally so with his ball and let one’s blood get down again. Tap!—the Professor’s ball went soaring. Now for it. The Captain addressed himself to his task, altered his plans rather hastily, smote and topped the ball. The least one could expect was a sympathetic silence. But the Professor thought fit to improve the occasion. “You’ll never drive,” said the Professor; “you’ll never drive with that _irritable_ jerk in the middle of the stroke. You might just as well smack the ball without raising your club. If you think—” The Captain lost his self-control altogether. “Look here,” he said, “if _you_ think that _I_ care a single rap about how I hit the ball, if you think that I really want to win and do well at this beastly, silly, elderly, childish game—.” He paused on the verge of ungentlemanly language. “If a thing’s worth doing at all,” said the Professor after a pause for reflection, “it’s worth doing well.” “Then it isn’t worth doing at all. As this hole gives you the game—if you don’t mind—” The Captain’s hot moods were so rapid that already he was acutely ashamed of himself. “O _certainly_, if you wish it,” said the Professor. With a gesture the Professor indicated the altered situation to the respectful caddies and the two gentlemen turned their faces towards the hotel. For a time they walked side by side in silence, the caddies following with hushed expressions. “Splendid weather for the French manœuvres,” said the Captain presently in an off-hand tone, “that is to say if they are getting this weather.” “At present there are a series of high pressure systems over the whole of Europe north of the Alps,” said the Professor. “It is as near set fair as Europe can be.” “Fine weather for tramps and wanderers,” said the Captain after a further interval. “There’s a drawback to everything,” said the Professor. “But it’s very lovely weather.” § 9 They got back to the hotel about half-past eleven and the Captain went and had an unpleasant time with one of the tyres of his motor bicycle which had got down in the night. In replacing the tyre he pinched the top of one of his fingers rather badly. Then he got the ordnance map of the district and sat at a green table in the open air in front of the hotel windows and speculated on the probable flight of Bealby. He had been last seen going south by east. That way lay the sea, and all boy fugitives go naturally for the sea. He tried to throw himself into the fugitive’s mind and work out just exactly the course Bealby _must_ take to the sea.