Needless to say, such enthusiasm demanded complete absorption in the game and tolerated no liberties. If anyone had told the Doctor of the fall of Port Arthur at the moment of his playing an approach, that man assuredly would have deserved any fate that overtook him. When the stove in the vestry set fire to the chancel roof and did five hundred pounds worth of damage to Moretown Church, no one had the courage to tell the Vicar until he had holed out on the eighteenth, green. "Words won't put the roof on again," the sexton wisely said, "and a precious lot of words you'll get from 'ee while 'ee's playin' with his ball." So the doleful news was reserved for the Club House. "I really fear I ought not to play a second round," the Vicar exclaimed when he heard it; "most vexing, I must say." These being the circumstances of the weekly duel _à outrance_, it certainly was astonishing to discover the Vicar and the Doctor talking of any other subject but golf on a day of July some three weeks after Count Odin's arrival at Melbourne Hall. Strange to say, however, they discussed neither the merits of the cut nor the doubtful wisdom of running up approach; but playing their strokes with some indifference as to the attending consequences, they spoke of my lord of Melbourne and of the turn affairs at the Hall were taking. To be entirely candid, the Vicar left the main part of the talk to the Doctor; for the secret which he carried he had as yet no courage to tell to anyone. "Most extraordinary--not the same man, sir, by twenty years. If he were a woman, I would call it neurasthenia and back my opinion for a Haskell. What do you think of a sane human being letting a lot of dirty gypsies have the free run of the Hall; in and out like rabbits in a warren--drinking his best wines and riding his horses, and lots more besides that the servants hint at but won't talk about? Why, they tell me that he's up half the night with the scum sometimes, as wild as the rest of them when they fiddle and caper in the Long Gallery. What's common sense to make of it? What do you make of it, leaving common sense out of the matter?" The Vicar looked somewhat askance at the dubious compliment; nor did it encourage him to tell of the strange sights he had seen in Melbourne Park some twelve hours before this epoch-making encounter. "I hear the men are Roumanians," he said, taking a brussie from his bag and making an atrocious shot with it. "Of course the Earl--this is miserable--the Earl was in Roumania as a young man. Perhaps he is returning some courtesy these wild fellows showed to him. You play the odd, I think."