In that same year, though I was not golfing very assiduously, I was at North Berwick when the open championship was played at Muirfield, and had a narrow escape of winning that open championship. It was the first year that the competition was extended to an affair of seventy-two holes, stretching over two days. Previously, two rounds, or thirty-six holes, had decided it, and at the end of the first two rounds I astonished myself and most other people by finding myself heading all the field. I forget by how many I had the advantage, but I think it was by two or three strokes. Then, on the morning of the second day, hitting off from that first tee at Muirfield, which then was not far out from the wall, I pulled my very first shot over the garden wall, and took I forget how many to the hole. But I remember intimately that this evil start had a baleful influence against which I struggled in vain; I went from bad to worse, and what my eventual score was for the seventy-two holes I do not know. [Illustration: J.E. Laidlay. Horace G. Hutchinson. John Ball, junr. P.C. Anderson.] [Illustration: H.H. Hilton.] Really it was rather hard luck: if only they had deferred that extension of the test, from thirty-six to seventy-two holes, for one year more I might have written myself open champion, but it was not to be; and as it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good, so that extra day gave Hilton just the opportunity he wanted. I can see him now as he came up to the last hole--I had gone out to meet him hearing that he had been doing very well--walking along at top speed, chatting volubly with his friends, very pleased with himself, as he well might be, brimful of confidence and with the smoke trailing up from his cigarette, even while he was playing the ball, so that it seemed impossible that he could see through it to hit the ball correctly. But he did hit it mighty correctly, for all that, and won the championship. I believe he did several conjuring tricks during the course of the round, such as holding mashie pitches from the edge of the green. But however he did it, he won, and therewith, from that time forward, established himself as very distinctly the best amateur score-player that we have ever seen. Of that there can be no question.