religious grounds. However, our vicar gets himself caught at the first opportunity, and so being removed from my veteran's immediate environment to their common satisfaction, the due ritual of the great game is resumed.
My ancient cricketer abounds in reminiscence of the glorious days that have gone for ever. He can still recall the last echoes of the "throwing" controversy that agitated Nyren, when over-arm bowling began, and though he never himself played in a beaver hat, he can, he says, recollect seeing matches so played. In those days every one wore tall hats, the policeman, the milkman, workmen of all sorts. Some people I fancy must have bathed in them and gone to bed wearing them. He recalls the Titans of that and the previous age, and particularly delights in the legend of Noah Mann, who held it a light thing to walk twenty miles from Northchapel to Hambledon to practise every Tuesday afternoon, and wander back after dark. He himself as a stripling would run a matter of four miles after a day's work in the garden where he was employed, to attend an hour's practice over the Downs before the twilight made the balls invisible. And afterwards came Teutonic revelry or wanderings under the summer starlight as the mood might take him. For there was a vein of silent poetry in the youth of this man.
He hates your modern billiard-table pitch, and a batting of dexterous snickery. He likes "character" in a game, gigantic hitting forward, bowler-planned leg catches, a cunning obliquity in a wicket that would send the balls mysteriously askew. But dra-
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