The ball was well up, slow, and off the wicket on the on-side. Perhaps if it had been allowed to pitch, it might have broken in and become quite dangerous. Mike went out at it, and hit it a couple of feet from the ground. The ball dropped with a thud and a spurting of dust in the road that ran along one side of the cricket field. It was returned on the installment system by helpers from other games, and the bowler began his maneuvers again. A half volley this time. Mike slammed it back, and mid on, whose heart was obviously not in the thing, failed to stop it. "Get to them, Jenkins," said Mr. Downing irritably, as the ball came back from the boundary. "Get to them." "Sir, please, sir--" "Don't talk in the field, Jenkins." Having had a full pitch hit for six and a half volley for four, there was a strong probability that Mr. Downing would pitch his next ball short. The expected happened. The third ball was a slow long hop, and hit the road at about the same spot where the first had landed. A howl of untuneful applause rose from the watchers in the pavilion, and Mike, with the feeling that this sort of bowling was too good to be true, waited in position for number four. There are moments when a sort of panic seizes a bowler. This happened now with Mr. Downing. He suddenly abandoned science and ran amok. His run lost its stateliness and increased its vigor. He charged up to the wicket as a wounded buffalo sometimes charges a gun. His whole idea now was to bowl fast. When a slow bowler starts to bowl fast, it is usually as well to be batting, if you can manage it. By the time the over was finished, Mike's score had been increased by sixteen, and the total of his side, in addition, by three wides. And a shrill small voice, from the neighborhood of the pavilion, uttered with painful distinctness the words, "Take him off!" That was how the most sensational day's cricket began that Sedleigh had known. A description of the details of the morning's play would be monotonous. It is enough to say that they ran on much the same lines as the third and fourth overs of the match. Mr. Downing bowled one more over, off which Mike helped himself to sixteen runs, and then retired moodily to cover point, where, in Adair's fifth over, he missed Barnes--the first occasion since the game began on which that mild batsman had attempted to score more than a single. Scared by this escape, Outwood's captain shrank back into his shell, sat on the splice like a limpet, and, offering no more chances, was not out at lunchtime with a score of eleven. Mike had then made a hundred and three. * * * * * As Mike was taking off his pads in the pavilion, Adair came up. "Why did you say you didn't play cricket?" he asked abruptly. When one has been bowling the whole morning, and bowling well, without the slightest success, one is inclined to be abrupt. Mike finished unfastening an obstinate strap. Then he looked up.