From there we went to Guernsey, where the caddies were certainly anything but stupid. They were little girls, bare-legged and bare-headed, but wonderfully keen and wonderfully pious, for they would make the sign of the cross over the line of the opponent's putt to prevent the ball going into the hole. And really it is extraordinary how difficult it is to putt straight along a line that has been thus crossed. Guernsey has a course which is finer in some of its natural qualities than that of Jersey, yet it does not seem to have grown a single great golfer, whereas the Jersey soil seems to bring them up like weeds. It is rather curious. But the great days of the Jersey professors had not yet dawned. Harry Vardon was still working in a garden not far from the Gorey links, with dreams, perhaps, of future glory, but no present achievement. Massy was picking the ball up with his marvellous nicety from the loose rubble of the stuff just off the Biarritz greens, but had not yet gone in the train of Sir Everard Hambro, my own most kindly host at Biarritz, to North Berwick. The Scottish golfers had received the first shock to their national pride, in seeing the open championship of their own game won by an Englishman. It had not yet entered into their astonished heads that it was to be won by invaders from outside the British Islands. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 6: I have been since assured, by Eric (now Sir Eric) Hambro, that we won on the last green.--H.G.H.] CHAPTER XXIV ABOUT HAROLD HILTON, FREDDY TAIT AND OTHERS What between trying to be sculptor and succeeding in getting married, I did not pay all the attention that I should have done to golf in the early nineties. Hilton was runner-up in the amateur championship, first to Johnny Laidlay and then to Johnny Ball, in 1891 and 1892 respectively: so we may regard him as thoroughly well arrived. In 1893 Mr. Peter Anderson, at Prestwick, beat Johnny Laidlay in the final for the amateur championship and so broke up our triumvirate. I was not there, and know nothing of the merits of that champion, who soon, on account of an unfortunate chest weakness, migrated to Australia. But the amateur championship of 1892 deserves a special word, because it was played for the first time at Sandwich. It was a sign of the times, sign of a generous policy on part of the Scottish clubs, sign of an extension of the golfing spirit, that this South-country green was welcomed into the sacred number of those on which championships should be played.