It was only when she started to concentrate on the line of her putt that this soft music began to bother her. Then, listening, she became aware that it proceeded from Rodney Spelvin. He was standing immediately behind her, humming an old French love-song. It was the sort of old French love-song to which she could have listened for hours in some scented garden under the young May moon, but on the green of the fourth at Mossy Heath it got right in amongst her nerve-centres. “Rodney, _please_!” “Eh?” Jane found herself wishing that Rodney Spelvin would not say “Eh?” whenever she spoke to him. “Do you mind not humming?” said Jane. “I want to putt.” “Putt on, child, putt on,” said Rodney Spelvin, indulgently. “I don’t know what you mean, but, if it makes you happy to putt, putt to your heart’s content.” Jane bent over her ball again. She had got the line now. She brought back her putter with infinite care. “My God!” exclaimed Rodney Spelvin, going off like a bomb. Jane’s ball, sharply jabbed, shot past the hole and rolled on about three yards. She spun round in anguish. Rodney Spelvin was pointing at the horizon. “_What_ a bit of colour!” he cried. “Did you ever see such a bit of colour?” “Oh, Rodney!” moaned Jane. “Eh?” Jane gulped and walked to her ball. Her fourth putt trickled into the hole. “Did you win?” said Rodney Spelvin, amiably. Jane walked to the fifth tee in silence. * * * * * The fifth and sixth holes at Mossy Heath are long, but they offer little trouble to those who are able to keep straight. It is as if the architect of the course had relaxed over these two in order to ensure that his malignant mind should be at its freshest and keenest when he came to design the pestilential seventh. This seventh, as you may remember, is the hole at which Sandy McHoots, then Open Champion, took an eleven on an important occasion. It is a short hole, and a full mashie will take you nicely on to the green, provided you can carry the river that frolics just beyond the tee and seems to plead with you to throw it a ball to play with. Once on the green, however, the problem is to stay there. The green itself is about the size of a drawing-room carpet, and in the summer, when the ground is hard, a ball that has not the maximum of back-spin is apt to touch lightly and bound off into the river beyond; for this is an island green, where the stream bends like a serpent. I refresh your memory with these facts in order that you may appreciate to the full what Jane Packard was up against. The woman with whom Jane was partnered had the honour, and drove a nice high ball which fell into one of the bunkers to the left. She was a silent, patient-looking woman, and she seemed to regard this as perfectly satisfactory. She withdrew from the tee and made way for Jane. “Nice work!” said William Bates, a moment later. For Jane’s ball, soaring in a perfect arc, was dropping, it seemed on the very pin.