ield with his cricket bag.

"Hullo, where are you off to?" asked Wyatt. "Coming to watch the
nets?"

Mike had no particular programme for the afternoon. Junior cricket had
not begun, and it was a little difficult to know how to fill in the
time.

"I tell you what," said Wyatt, "nip into the house and shove on some
things, and I'll try and get Burgess to let you have a knock later
on."

This suited Mike admirably. A quarter of an hour later he was sitting
at the back of the first eleven net, watching the practice.

Burgess, the captain of the Wrykyn team, made no pretence of being a
bat. He was the school fast bowler and concentrated his energies on
that department of the game. He sometimes took ten minutes at the
wicket after everybody else had had an innings, but it was to bowl
that he came to the nets.

He was bowling now to one of the old colours whose name Mike did not
know. Wyatt and one of the professionals were the other two bowlers.
Two nets away Firby-Smith, who had changed his pince-nez for a pair of
huge spectacles, was performing rather ineffectively against some very
bad bowling. Mike fixed his attention on the first eleven man.

He was evidently a good bat. There was style and power in his batting.
He had a way of gliding Burgess's fastest to leg which Mike admired
greatly. He was succeeded at the end of a quarter of an hour by
another eleven man, and then Bob appeared.

It was soon made evident that this was not Bob's day. Nobody is at his
best on the first day of term; but Bob was worse than he had any right
to be. He scratched forward at nearly everything, and when Burgess,
who had been resting, took up the ball again, he had each stump
uprooted in a regular series in seven balls. Once he skied one of
Wyatt's slows over the net behind the wicket; and Mike, jumping up,
caught him neatly.

"Thanks," said Bob austerely, as Mike returned the ball to him. He
seemed depressed.

Towards the end of the afternoon, Wyatt went up to Burgess.

"Burgess," he said, "see that kid sitting behind the net?"

"With the naked eye," said Burgess. "Why?"

"He's just come to Wain's. He's Bob Jackson's brother, and I've a sort
of idea that he's a bit of a bat. I told him I'd ask you if he could
have a knock. Why not send him in at the end net? There's nobody there
now."

Burgess's amiability off the field equalled his ruthlessness when
bowling.

"All right," he said. "Only if you think that I'm going to sw