No incident of any moment occurred during the first 16 holes. The Colonel collected much fine sand in various portions of his attire; Mr. Baxter played sound but listless golf. When they reached the seventeenth tee the wind, which had been wandering vaguely and gustily round the compass, suddenly settled down to blow half a gale from due east, and the seventeenth became a tiger indeed. Mr. Baxter, after a couple of nice blows dead into the wind, lay some twenty yards short of the wood, which was beginning to shout wildly in the gale. The Colonel was in the rough on the right, an alliterative position he usually occupied. He played his fourth--one of the few properly struck golf shots of his existence--dead on the pin. The secretary took his number three iron, and knew from the moment the ball left the club that he didn’t want it back. It was ruled on the flag. As the Colonel came up, a look of swelling pride on his rubicund visage, he remarked, “Did you see mine, Baxter? Never say again I can’t play a spoon shot! You hit yours, too, didn’t you?” “Yes,” answered the secretary, smiling. “I’m inside you by a yard or two, I fancy.” “I don’t,” said the Colonel. “You’ll be playing the odd, stroke gone, all right.” They walked together along the avenue of lurching Scotch firs and larches, and climbed the bank of the plateau. “My God!” cried the Colonel. “We’re neither of us on! Where the Hades are they?” An exasperating search followed, which ended when the Colonel found his Dunlop No. 1 dozing behind a tree, and Mr. Baxter detected his No. 2 in a rabbit hole. The Colonel made robust use of an expletive much favoured by the gallant men he had once had the honour of commanding. Mr. Baxter quietly picked up his errant globe and walked off to the last tee. “Damn it, Baxter!” cried the Colonel, “that hole meant to fight me, I felt it all the time.” The secretary had played many holes with the Colonel on many different courses, but had never noticed any of them displaying any Locarno spirit towards or desire to fraternise with him, but all the same he had voiced his own thoughts. It _had_ been a ludicrous incident, but its humour did not appeal to him particularly. Both those shots should have been by the pin. Just what the Pro. had said. It was very curious. “I’m going to hate that hole,” he thought. “There’s a damned funny mark on my ball,” grumbled the Colonel. “I suppose it hit a tree, though I could swear it didn’t. Looks more like a burn. Why, there’s the same thing on yours!” Mr. Baxter examined them. They were funny symmetrical little marks, and they were remarkably like burns. “The wind must have caught them and blown them into the trees,” he said, unconvincingly. “It’s rather a gloomy spot in there, and it’s hard to follow the flight exactly.” After tea the secretary went round to see Dakers. “Well,” he said, “I’ve tried the new hole.” “I saw you out, sir,” said the Pro., smiling. “Did you get your four?”