cret lessons back of the stable they came at length to
furtive lessons over the course at hours when it was least played. John
Knox McTavish figured at these times as consulting expert.

"It's th' shor-r-t game that tells th' stor-r-r-y," said John; and
Sharon, making his whole game a short game, was presently telling the
story understandably, to the vast pride of the middle man who provided
endless balls for his lessons.

It was a day of thrills for them both when Rapp, Senior, publicly
challenged and accepting with dreams of an easy conquest, bent down
before the craft of Sharon Whipple. Sharon, with his competent iron in a
short half-arm swing--he could not, he said, trust the utensil beyond
the tail of his eye--sent the ball eighteen times not far but straight,
and with other iron shots coaxed it to the green, where he sank it with
quite respectable putting. Rapp, Senior, sliced his long drives
brilliantly into shaded grassy dells and scented forest glades, where he
trampled scores of pretty wild flowers as he chopped his way out again.
Rapp, Senior, made the course excitingly in one hundred and
thirty-eight; Sharon Whipple, playing along safe and sane lines, came
through with one hundred and thirty-five, and was a proud man, and
looked it, and was still so much prouder than he looked that he
shuddered lest it get out on him. Later he vanquished, by the same
tactics, other men who used the wooden driver with perfect form in
practice swings.

Contests in which he engaged, however, were likely to be marred by
regrettable asperities rising from Sharon's inability to grasp the nicer
subtleties of golf. It seemed silly to him not to lift his ball out of
some slight depression into which it had rolled quite by accident; not
to amend an unhappy lie in a sand trap; and he never came to believe
that a wild swing leaving the ball untouched should be counted as a
stroke. People who pettishly insisted upon these extremes of the game he
sneeringly called golf lawyers. When he said that he made a hole in
nine, he meant nine or thereabouts--approximately nine; nice people, he
thought, should let it go at that. So he became feared on the course,
not only for his actual prowess but for his matchless optimism in
casting up his score. He was a pleased man, and considered golf a good
game; and he never forgot that Wilbur Cowan had made him the golfer he
was. More than ever was he believing that Harvey D. Whipple had chosen
wrongly f