The match had been full of entrancing and agonising vicissitudes. Adams’s had batted first, piling up a respectable total of a hundred and eighty-two, which gave no cause for complaint. Then Tovey’s had gone in and had been ignominiously dismissed by Cruikshank and Mellor for eighty-one, and the sages were inclined to think that the match was as good as over. They had followed on, but, instead of being dismissed for eighty-one again, they had amassed the huge total of three hundred and twenty-nine. Cruikshank, the demon of the first innings, had been hit completely off his length, and David had been put on as first change, not having bowled at all in the first innings. But the glorious personal result of that afternoon’s work gave him no encouragement now, for his mind was filled to the exclusion of all else with the fact that in his previous appearance with the bat, and not the ball, Tomlin had beaten him twice and bowled him once. But yesterday, when he was bowling, Tovey’s could do nothing with him; he bowled their captain, Anstruther, in his first over (after being hit twice to the boundary by him) and had proved himself altogether too much for the rest of the side. The wicket was fast and true, and there was no reason for their not being able to play him, except the excellent one that he bowled extremely well. He was left-handed, with very high action, and had (as an accessory) cultivated a terrifying prance up to the wickets, with a crooked run and a change of feet in the middle of it, like a stumbling horse. After this he delivered a slow high ball, while every now and then (but not too often) he laced one in as hard as ever he could with precisely the same delivery. In the end he had taken seven wickets for ninety runs, while the rest of the three hundred and twenty-nine had been scored off the other bowlers of the side who had captured two wickets (one being run out) between them. There came a roar from the ring of spectators round the field, and shouts of derisive laughter from a group of Adams’s boys standing near, and David, forgetting everything else for the moment, added a piercing cat-call whistle to the general hubbub. Tomlin had changed his field with the obvious intention of getting Maddox caught in the slips, sending mid-on there, making the fourth of them. Then he proceeded to bowl a little wide of the off-stump. Maddox had let three balls go by, but the fourth he pulled round to exactly where mid-on had been, and scored four for it. Oh, a great stroke, and no one could tell, perhaps not even Maddox, how it was done.