ck! Were you out, do you
think?" A batsman who has been given l.-b.-w. is always asked this
question on his return to the pavilion, and he answers it in nine
cases out of ten in the negative. Morris was the tenth case. He
thought it was all right, he said.

"Thought the thing was going to break, but it didn't."

"Hear that, Berry? He doesn't always break. You must look out for
that," said Burgess helpfully. Morris sat down and began to take off
his pads.

"That chap'll have Berry, if he doesn't look out," he said.

But Berridge survived the ordeal. He turned his first ball to leg for
a single.

This brought Marsh to the batting end; and the second tragedy
occurred.

It was evident from the way he shaped that Marsh was short of
practice. His visit to the Infirmary had taken the edge off his
batting. He scratched awkwardly at three balls without hitting them.
The last of the over had him in two minds. He started to play forward,
changed his stroke suddenly and tried to step back, and the next
moment the bails had shot up like the _debris_ of a small
explosion, and the wicket-keeper was clapping his gloved hands gently
and slowly in the introspective, dreamy way wicket-keepers have on
these occasions.

A silence that could be felt brooded over the pavilion.

The voice of the scorer, addressing from his little wooden hut the
melancholy youth who was working the telegraph-board, broke it.

"One for two. Last man duck."

Ellerby echoed the remark. He got up, and took off his blazer.

"This is all right," he said, "isn't it! I wonder if the man at the
other end is a sort of young Rhodes too!"

Fortunately he was not. The star of the Ripton attack was evidently de
Freece. The bowler at the other end looked fairly plain. He sent them
down medium-pace, and on a good wicket would probably have been
simple. But to-day there was danger in the most guileless-looking
deliveries.

Berridge relieved the tension a little by playing safely through the
over, and scoring a couple of twos off it. And when Ellerby not only
survived the destructive de Freece's second over, but actually lifted
a loose ball on to the roof of the scoring-hut, the cloud began
perceptibly to lift. A no-ball in the same over sent up the first ten.
Ten for two was not good; but it was considerably better than one for
two.

With the score at thirty, Ellerby was missed in the slips off de
Freece. He had been playing with slowly increasing confidence