It was delicious there, and Harry was so lucky as to squeeze into a seat. Quite a breeze, undreamt of in the City, blew across the ground, blowing the flannels of the players against their bodies and fetching little puffs of dust from the pitch. The wicket was crumbling, the long scores of the morning were at an end. It was only the tail of the Middlesex team that Harry was in time to see batting, but they were good enough for him. All his life he had nourished a hopeless passion for the game, and every care was forgotten until the last man was out. "Why--Harry?" He had been looking at the pitch, and he spun round like an arrested criminal. Yet the strong hand on his shoulder was also delicate and full of kindness, and he was gazing into the best face he had ever seen. His ideal woman he was still to find, but his ideal man he had loved and worshipped from his twelfth year; and here he stood, supple and athletic as ever, only slimmer and graver; and their hands were locked. "Mr. Innes!" "I had no idea you were in England, Harry." "I have been back three weeks." "Why didn't you write?" He knew everything. Harry saw it in the kind, strong face, and heard it in a voice rich with sympathy and reproach. "I was too ashamed," he murmured--and he hung his head. "You might have trusted me, old fellow," said Mr. Innes. "Come and sit on top of the pavilion and tell me all about yourself." At any other time it would have been a sufficient joy to Harry Ringrose to set foot in that classic temple of the sacred game; now he had eyes for nothing and nobody but the man who led him up the steps, through the cricketing throng, up the stairs. And when they sat together on top, and the ground was cleared, and play resumed, not another ball did Harry watch with intelligent eyes. He was sitting with the man to whom he had been too proud to write, but whose disciple he had been at heart for many a year. He was talking to the object of his early hero-worship, and he found him his hero still. Mr. Innes listened attentively, gravely, but said very little himself. He appreciated the difficulty of starting in life without money or influence, and was too true a friend to make light of it. He thought that business would be best if only an opening could be found. Schoolmastering led to nothing unless one had money or a degree. Still they must think and talk it over, and Harry must come down to Guildford and see the new chapel and the swimming-bath. Could he come for a day or two before the end of the term? Was he sure he could leave his mother? Harry was quite sure, but would write when he got home.