wrote a note and despatched the aforesaid small boy with it to the rooms of the Rev. Erasmus Cube-Root.

A minute or two before, Winthrop had found time to exchange half a dozen words with "the Head" whilst in the long field, and now he turned and raised his cap to him, while an expression of thankfulness overspread his features.

The two Loamshire men at the wickets were Grey and Hawker, both names well known on all the cricketfields of England, and one of them known and a little feared by our cousins at the Antipodes. This man, Hawker, had been heard to say that he was coming to Fernhall to get up his average and have an afternoon's exercise. It looked very much as if he would justify his boast.

Grey, the other bat, was quite as exasperating in his way as Hawker, only it was quite another way. He it was who had broken poor Poynter's heart. You did not catch him playing tricks. You did not catch him hitting sixes, or even threes; but neither did you catch him giving the field a chance, launching out at a yorker, or interfering with a "bumpy" one. Oh, no! It didn't matter what you bowled him, it was always the same story. “Up went his shutter," as Poynter feelingly remarked, "and you had to pick up the leather and begin again." Sometimes he placed a ball so as to get one run for it, sometimes he turned round and sped a parting ball to leg, and sometimes he snicked one for two. He was a slow scorer, but he seemed to possess the freehold of the ground he stood upon. No one could give him notice to quit.

Such were the men at the wicket, and such the state of the game, when a tall slight figure came racing on

to the ground in very new colours, and with fingers which, on closer inspection, would have betrayed a more intimate acquaintance with the ink-pot than with the cricket-ball. As soon as he came on to the ground he dropped naturally into his place, and any one could have seen at a glance that, whatever his other merits might or might not be, Snap Hales was a real keen cricketer. When a ball came his way there was no waiting for it to reach him on his part. He had watched it, as a hawk does a young partridge, from the moment it left the bowler's hands, and was halfway to meet it already. Like a flash he had it with either hand-both were alike to him—and in the same second it was sent back straight and true, a nice long hop, arriving in the wicket-keeper's hands at just about the level of the bails.

But Winthrop had other work for Snap to do, and at the end of the over sent him to replace Rolles at short-slip.

"By George, Towzer, they are going to put on Snap Hales," said one youngster to another, on the rugs under the garden hedge.

"About time, too," replied his companion; "if he can't bowl better than those two fellows he ought to be kicked."

"Round the wicket, sir?" asked the umpire as Snap took the ball in hand.

"No, Charteris, over," was the short reply, as Hales turned to measure his run behind the sticks.

"What! a new bowler?" asked Hawker of the wicket-keeper as he took a fresh guard; "who is he?"

"An importation from the twenty-two; got his colours last week," answered Wyndham, and a smile spread over Hawker's face, as he saw in fancy a timid

beginner pitching him half-volleys to be lifted over the garden hedge, or leg-balls with which to break the slates on the pavilion.

But Hawker had to reserve his energy for a while, being much too good a cricketer to hit wildly at anything. With a quiet easy action the new bowler sent down an ordinary good-length ball, too straight to take liberties with, and that was all. Hawker played it back to him confidently, but still carefully, and another, and another, of almost identical pitch and pace, followed the first. "Not so much to be made off this fellow after all," thought Hawker, "but he will get loose like the rest by-and-by, no doubt." Still it was not as good fun as he had expected. The fourth ball of Snap's first over was delivered with exactly the same action as its predecessors, but the pace was about double that of the others, and Hawker was only just in time to stop it. It was so very nearly too much for the great man that for a moment it shook his confidence in his own infallibility. That momentary want of confidence ruined him. The last ball of the over was not nearly up to the standard of the other four; it was short-pitched and off the wicket, but it had a lot of "kick" in it, and Hawker had not come far enough out for it. There was an ominous click as the ball just touched the shoulder of his bat, and next moment, as long-slip remarked, he found it revolving in his hands, "like a stray planet".

Don't talk to me of the lungs of the British tar, or of the Irish stump orator. They are nothing, nothing at all, to the lungs we had in those days. It was Snap's first wicket for the school, and Snap was the school's favourite, as the scapegrace of a family usually is, and

caps flew up and fellows shouted until even Hawker didn't much regret his discomfiture if it gave the boys such pleasure.

In the next over from his end Hales had to deal with Grey, and he found his match. He tried him with slow ones, he tried him with fast ones, he tried to seduce him with lobs. It was not a bit of good, up went the shutter, and a maiden over left Snap convinced that the less he had to do with Grey the better for him, and left Grey convinced that Fernhall had got a bowler at last who bowled with his head. Was it wilfully, I wonder, that Snap gave Grey on their next meeting a ball which that steady player hit for one? It may not have been, and yet there was a grin all over the boy's dark face as he saw Grey trot up to his end. That run cost Loamshire two batsmen in four balls-one bowled leg before wicket, and the other clean-bowled with an ordinary good-length ball rather faster than its fellows.

Those old fields rang with Hales' name that afternoon, and at 6:30, thanks chiefly to his superb bowling, the county had still two to score to win, and two wickets to fall. One of the men still in was Grey. At the end of the over the stumps would be drawn, and the game drawn against the school, even if (as he might do) Snap should bowl a maiden. That, however, could hardly be; even Grey would hit out at such a crisis. At the very first ball the whole school trembled with excitement. The Loamshire man played well back, and stopped a very ugly one, fast and well pitched, but it would not be altogether denied, and curled in until it lay quiet and inoffensive, absolutely touching the stumps.