His contentment increased when he got the next man leg-before-wicket
with the total unaltered. At this rate Ripton would be out before
lunch for under a hundred.

But the rot stopped with the fall of that wicket. Dashing tactics were
laid aside. The pitch had begun to play tricks, and the pair now in
settled down to watch the ball. They plodded on, scoring slowly and
jerkily till the hands of the clock stood at half-past one. Then
Ellerby, who had gone on again instead of Grant, beat the less steady
of the pair with a ball that pitched on the middle stump and shot into
the base of the off. A hundred and twenty had gone up on the board at
the beginning of the over.

That period which is always so dangerous, when the wicket is bad, the
ten minutes before lunch, proved fatal to two more of the enemy. The
last man had just gone to the wickets, with the score at a hundred and
thirty-one, when a quarter to two arrived, and with it the luncheon
interval.

So far it was anybody's game.

CHAPTER XXVIII

MIKE WINS HOME

The Ripton last-wicket man was de Freece, the slow bowler. He was
apparently a young gentleman wholly free from the curse of
nervousness. He wore a cheerful smile as he took guard before
receiving the first ball after lunch, and Wrykyn had plenty of
opportunity of seeing that that was his normal expression when at the
wickets. There is often a certain looseness about the attack after
lunch, and the bowler of googlies took advantage of it now. He seemed
to be a batsman with only one hit; but he had also a very accurate
eye, and his one hit, a semicircular stroke, which suggested the golf
links rather than the cricket field, came off with distressing
frequency. He mowed Burgess's first ball to the square-leg boundary,
missed his second, and snicked the third for three over long-slip's
head. The other batsman played out the over, and de Freece proceeded
to treat Ellerby's bowling with equal familiarity. The scoring-board
showed an increase of twenty as the result of three overs. Every
run was invaluable now, and the Ripton contingent made the pavilion
re-echo as a fluky shot over mid-on's head sent up the hundred and
fifty.

There are few things more exasperating to the fielding side than a
last-wicket stand. It resembles in its effect the dragging-out of a
book or play after the _denouement_ has been reached. At the fall
of the ninth wicket the fieldsmen nearly always look on their outing
as finis