bewildered condition. The first sight that met his eyes was the bat of old Fuller Pilch reared against the wall!
“Mind you don’t leave your dirty old cricketing bat on my clean table-cloth again,” observed Mrs. Davie, with a look of menace, “or I’ll light the fire wi’ it.”
The old groundsman attacked his breakfast with the voracity of a pelican, and when his wife had left the room to wash up he proceeded to inspect Fuller Pilch’s present. It looked a very gimcrack piece of timber, and was pegged and bound with twine all over. Then he remembered the old gentleman’s words, “You must play with it to-morrow.”
Seizing the handle with a sudden impulse he whirled the bat over his shoulder, and as he did so a wonderful inspiration seemed to come over him. It was as if he had just swallowed a large “B. and S.” The blood seemed to sparkle in his veins, his muscles grew as tough as steel, and he felt twenty years younger.
“Great Scott!” said he to himself. “I must have a knock!”
Clapping his hat upon his head, he trotted off to the cricket ground with Fuller Pilch’s bat still in his hand.
Practice was going on when he arrived, so slipping on his flannels he took a turn at the nets, and then he discovered at once what a marvellous implement he possessed. Fuller Pilch’s bat was as invincible a weapon as the sword of St. George. Every ball he struck flew off the blade like lightning, every stroke was hard and true and all along the carpet. A couple of promising youngsters were bowling at him. He lay back, and cut half a dozen fast length balls through the slips off his middle stump, and then forced a similar number of the same sort to the right and left of cover point. And when, in his mind’s eye, all the fielders had been moved to the off side he commenced hooking round to leg at every conceivable angle.
“THE PACE WAS TERRIBLE” (p. 316).
“Where in the name of fortune did you learn that stroke?” cried a voice at the back of the net, when he had just hit two lightning yorkers on the off stick round to forward long leg.
Davie looked round, and there stood the captain of the county, with Swears and two or three of the committee.
“Oh, it’s one of my favourites,” he replied, gliding an awkward shooter off his pads.
“By jabers, Davie, you shall go in first,” exclaimed the captain.
“Well, I’ll bet odds on my century,” answered Davie, feeling as if he were intoxicated.
An hour later, while he was sitting in the players’ waiting-room still hugging Fuller Pilch’s bat, one of the ground staff came to him with the intelligence:
“We’ve won the toss, Davie, and you are going in first.”
“Well,” answered Davie, complacently, “it’ll show Tim Twister and his lot that we can do without ’em.”
The old groundsman felt a very curious sensation as he walked to the wickets. His feelings were like those of Rip Van Winkle when he returns to his native village. It was ten years since he had appeared before such a vast throng in a county match, and not one of the cricketers who had played with him then were playing to-day. It was as though he were the last of his race. All the faces around were new ones, but the ghosts of his old colleagues seemed now and then to take their places in his imagination.
But these fancies vanished when he came to face the bowling with the magic bat in his hands, and his soul was all aglow with excitement. He stood up eagerly for the
