“Yes, sir, it was the one on which----” “All right, all right,” said Mr. Partridge. “Call me at 8.30.” And, taking ten grains of aspirin, he soon after sank into a dreamless sleep. At breakfast next morning Mr. Partridge made a brave effort to appear his usual calm, flippant self, but the sharp eye of Willie Cranmer, with whom he was playing a single that morning, was not deceived. As they walked together to the club house he remarked, “You had a bad night, Jim, tell me about it.” Mr. Partridge did so. When he had finished, Cranmer said, “I did not tell you at the time, but that face at the window in the afternoon had not a very reassuring expression, and I saw it again just before we went to bed, but I thought it better to say nothing to you.” “Do you know, Willie, that, now I’m feeling almost all right again, the thing that impresses me is that until I had that experience last night I had never even vaguely conceived what it must be like to be driven to such vulgar lengths as embezzlement by such elementary impulses as love and poverty? Yet that sort of thing has been going on around me ever since I had eyes to see and read, ears to hear, and a mind to understand, though in my vanity I have considered myself rather a knowing fellow where humanity and its motives are concerned. I know now that I knew nothing about anything, above a certain pitch of intensity. I feel humiliated. What is it? How do these things happen?” “Well,” said Cranmer, “as we agreed last night, some of the cleverest minds in the world have been trying to answer those questions for thousands of years. Your experience last night is as inexplicable as it always would have been and, in my opinion, will ever be.” They had reached the first tee. Just below them baby waves frolicked in, chased by a small and scented breeze. Four alert, beady eyes, the property of a pair of black-headed gulls on the beach, regarded them sardonically. Mr. Partridge tried a practice swing, and then his hand went to his throat. He stroked it for a moment as he gazed out to sea. Willie Cranmer noticed the little gesture, but merely said, “Now let’s be serious!” And he teed up. A little later, being an Injudicious Hooker, he disappeared into a bunker on the left, simultaneously Mr. Partridge, a master of cuts, retired into its counterpart on the right. Two little spurts of sand leapt into the air. And then--two more! AN ECHO AN ECHO It was about a quarter past four on September 4th of last year that I knew, as I walked along a ride through Long Bottom Wood, that I was once again to be projected into a Fourth Dimension. I must explain, as well as I can, what I mean.