referee when the game is over. Sport? The average subscriber to Lord's is just as much of a sportsman as the Spaniard who watches a bull-fight, and just a trifle more of a sportsman than the bar-loafer who backs a horse he has never clapped eyes on. You may call it Cricket if you like: I call it assisting at a Gladiatorial Show. True cricket is left to the village greens." "Steady, old man!" protested the Boy. "I repeat it. For the spirit of the game you might have gone, a few years ago, to the Public Schools; but even they are infected now with the gladiatorial ideal. As it is you must go to the village green; for the spirit, you understand--not the letter--" "I believe you!" chuckled young Dawkins. "Last season I put in an off day with the villagers at home. We played the nearest market town, and I put myself on to bowl slows. Second wicket down, in came the fattest man I ever saw. He was a nurseryman and seedsman in private life, and he fairly hid the wicket-keep. In the first over a ball of mine got up a bit and took him in the ab-do-men. 'How's that?' I asked. 'Well,' said the umpire, 'I wasn't azackly looking, so I leave it to you. If it hit en in the paunch, it's 'not out' and the fella must have suffered. But if it took en in the rear, I reckon it didn't hurt much, and it's 'leg-before.'' I suppose that is what you would call the 'spirit' of cricket. But, I say, if you have such a down on Lord's and what you call the gladiatorial business, why on earth do you go?" "Isn't that the very question I've been asking myself?" replied Verinder testily. "Perhaps we have an explanation here," I suggested; for during Verinder's harangue I had settled myself in the window-seat, and was turning over the pages of Prince Ranjitsinhji's book. "'It is a grand thing for people who have to work most of their time to have an interest in something or other outside their particular groove. Cricket is a first-rate interest. The game has developed to such a pitch that it is worth taking interest in. Go to Lord's and analyse the crowd. There are all sorts and conditions of men there round the ropes--bricklayers, bank-clerks, soldiers, postmen, and stockbrokers. And in the pavilion are Q.C.'s, artists, archdeacons, and leader-writers. . . .'" "Oh, come!" Grayson puts in. "Isn't that rather hard on the stockbroker?" "It is what the book says.