“Upon my word, you fellows,” he said, “I nearly forgot to tell you of the most extraordinary occurrence that I have ever heard of, and one in which a strange point of golfing law is involved. The case must be sent to St. Andrews.” Everybody was alert at this announcement. It is an excellent thing to know that a poser of sorts is going to be put to that autocratic assembly in Fifeshire. “Splendid!” ejaculated the Colonel, “we must hear this story of yours, Septimus; but I hope you are not going to pitch us that yarn you once told me about your wife’s brother having once played a low push shot across a river, and a salmon leaping at the ball as it skimmed across and being carried with it on to the bank! We have heard that, you know.” “As I told you at the time,” responded the Parson, “I only repeated what my wife’s brother told me, and I certainly did not say that I had seen the fish dragged on to the bank in that manner. But this story was told me by my son Richard, when he was down from Oxford last time, and he declares the incident happened on the course at Radley. One of the men was engaged in a match, and going to the tenth he played a beautiful run up from forty yards off the putting green, that actually made the ball hit the pin and then it rolled into the hole; but it had no sooner got into the hole than out it flew again, and after it came a large frog! It was clear that the ball had rolled on the back of the frog in the hole, and that this frog, startled, no doubt, jumped up and out of the hole, ejecting the ball at the same time. The ball came to rest on the green, and my son’s friend thereupon claimed that he had holed out.” For a few seconds there was a stony silence, and then the Colonel burst out with a loud guffaw. “My dear old boy,” he exclaimed, “I am sure that you will find that story, or one very like it, in the Old Testament somewhere if you look sufficiently. It is as old as the hills! You really should not tell us these things. You know what the American did when he was told that story? He put a recommendation in the suggestion book that the club should urge upon the St. Andrews authorities that they should make an addition to the rules to something like this effect: