I almost laughed. It was certain the man would have ample time to get off the green before the professor arrived there. Quarles waited for a moment, but the man ahead took no notice, possibly had not heard him. The professor took a fall swing with his brassey, and, for a wonder, the ball went as straight and true as any golfer could desire. "Ah! I am getting into form, Wigan," he exclaimed. "What is that fool doing yonder? Fore!" This time the man looked round and waved to us to come on, which we did slowly, for Quarles's form was speedily out again. The man on the green was a curiosity. Thirty-five or thereabouts, I judged him to be; a thin man, but wiry, with a stiff figure and an immobile face, which looked as if he had never been guilty of showing an emotion. His eyes were beady, and fixed you; his mouth gave the impression of being so seldom used for speech that it had become partially atrophied. His costume, perhaps meant to be sporting, missed the mark--looked as if he had borrowed the various articles from different friends; and he was practicing putting with a thin-faced mashie, very rusty in the head, and dilapidated in the shaft. He stood aside and watched Quarles miss two short puts. "Difficult," he remarked. "I'm practicing it." Quarles looked at the speaker, then at the mashie. "With that?" "Why not?" asked the man. "Why?" asked Quarles. "If I can do it with this I can do it with anything," was the answer. "That's true," said the professor, making for the next tee. There was no arguing with a man of this type. The tee was on the top of the creek bank. "I was right," said Quarles. "Look, Wigan, they did make for this haven last night." It was almost low water. The bank on the golf course side was steep, varying in height, but comparatively low near the tee, and an irregular line of piles stuck up out of the mud below, the tops of half a dozen of them rising higher than the bank. On the other side of the creek the shore sloped up gradually from a wide stretch of mud. In the narrow waterway was a yacht, about eighteen tons, I judged. That she was the same we had seen laboring in the gale last night I could not say, but certainly she was much weather-marked and looked forlorn. She had not had a coat of paint recently, the brasswork on her was green with neglect, and her ropes and sails looked old and badly cared for. Yet her lines were dainty, and, straining at her hawser, she reminded me of a disappointed woman fretting to free herself from an undesirable position. A yacht is always so sentient a thing, and seems so full of conscious life. Quarles appeared to understand my momentary preoccupation. "Don't take any notice of her," he said. "We're out for golf. I always manage a good drive from this tee."