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McMurdo," proceeded Harold Pickering, still in that genial and ingratiating manner, "that I shall watch your future career with considerable interest. It is a sad pity that this year's Walker Cup matches are over, for our team might have been greatly strengthened. Well, I venture to assert that next season the selection of at least one member will give the authorities little trouble."
    Sidney McMurdo uttered another grunt, and I saw what seemed Like a look of discouragement come into Harold Pickering's face. But after gulping a couple of times he continued brightly.
    "Tell me, Sidney," he said, "have you ever thought of writing a golf book? You know the sort of thing, old man. Something light and chatty, describing your methods and giving advice to the novice. If so, I should be delighted to publish it, and we should not quarrel about the terms. If I were you, I'd go straight home and start on it now."
    Sidney McMurdo spoke for the first time. His voice was deep and rumbling. "I have something to do before I go home."
    "Oh, yes ?"
    "I am going to pound the stuffing out of a snake."
    "Ah, then in that case you will doubtless want to be alone, to concentrate. I will leave you."
    "No, you won't. Let us step behind those bushes for a moment, Mr. Pickering," said Sidney McMurdo.
    I have always been good at putting two and two together, and listening to these exchanges I now sensed how matters stood. In a word, I saw all, and my heart bled for Harold Pickering. Unnecessarily, as it turned out, for even as my heart started to bleed, Harold Pickering acted.
    I have said that we were crossing the bridge over the water at the eleventh, and no doubt you have been picturing that bridge as it is today - a stout steel structure. At the time of which I am speaking it was a mere plank with a rickety wooden rail along it, a rail ill adapted to withstand the impact of a heavy body.
    Sidney McMurdo's was about as heavy a body as there was in the neighbourhood, and when Harold Pickering, with a resource and ingenuity which it would be difficult to overpraise, suddenly butted him in the stomach with his head and sent him reeling against it, it gave way without a moment's hesitation. There was a splintering crash, followed by a splash and a scurry of feet, and the next thing I saw was Harold Pickering disappearing over the horizon while Sidney McMurdo, up to his waist in water, petulantly detached an eel from his hair. It was a striking proof of the old saying that a publisher is never so dangerous as when apparently beaten. You may drive a publisher into a corner, but you do so at your own peril.
    Presently, Sidney McMurdo waded ashore and started to slosh sullenly up the hillside towards the clubhouse. From the irritable manner in which he was striking himself between the shoulder blades I received the impression that he had got some sort of a water beetle down his back.
     
    As I think I mentioned earlier, I did not see Harold Pickering again for some years, and it was only then that I was enabled to fill in the gaps in what has always seemed to me a singularly poignant human drama.
    At first, he told me, he was actuated by the desire, which one can understand and sympathize with, to put as great a distance as possible between Sidney McMurdo and himself in the shortest possible time. With this end in view, he hastened to his car, which he had left standing outside the clubhouse, and placing a firm foot on the accelerator drove about seventy miles in the general direction of Scotland. Only when he paused for a sandwich at a wayside tavern after completing this preliminary burst did he discover that all the money he had on his person was five shillings and a little bronze.
    Now, a less agitated man would, of course, have seen that the policy to pursue was to take a room at a hotel, explain to the management that his luggage would be following shortly, and write to his bank to telegraph him such funds as he might require. But this obvious solution