ing but the rules of the game. These he held in the back of his
mind, with the ball in front of it.

All St. Moritz came to watch the great match between itself and Davos.
It was a still, cold day; there was no blue in the sky; the mountains
were a hard black and white and the valley very colorless and clear.
There was a hush of coming snow in the air, and the sky was covered by a
toneless, impending cloud.

The game, after a brief interval, became a duel between two men: Winn,
with his headlong, thirsty method of attack, and the champion player of
Davos, Mavorovitch, who was known as the most finished skater of the
season.

Mavorovitch never apparently lifted his skates, but seemed to send them
forward by a kind of secret pressure. He was a very cool player, as
quick as mercury and as light as thistledown. Winn set himself against
him with the dogged fury of a bull against a toreador.

"That man's not brave; he's careless," a St. Moritz potentate remarked
to Miss Marley. Miss Marley gave a short laugh and glanced at Winn.

"That's my idea of courage," she said, "carelessness toward things that
don't count. Major Staines isn't careless with the ball."

"A game's a game," the foreign prince protested, "not a prolonged
invitation to concussion."

"All, that's where your foreign blood comes in, Your Highness," argued
Miss Marley. "A game isn't a game to an Englishman; it's his way of
tackling life. As a man plays so he reaps."

"Very well, then," remarked her companion, gravely. "Mark my words,
Madame, your friend over there will reap disaster."

Winn tackled the ball in a series of sudden formidable rushes; he hurled
himself upon the slight form of Mavorovitch, only to find he had before
him a portion of the empty air. Mavorovitch was invariably a few inches
beyond his reach, and generally in possession of the ball.

Twice Winn wrested it forcibly from him and got half way up the ice,
tearing along with his skates crashing their iron way toward the goal,
and twice Mavorovitch noiselessly, except for a faint scraping, slid up
behind him and coaxed the ball out of his very grip. St. Moritz lost
two goals to nothing in the first half, and Winn felt as if he were
biting on air.

He stood a little apart from the other players, with his back turned to
the crowd. He wished it wasn't necessary always to have an audience; a
lot of people who sat and did nothing irritated him. Mavorovitch
irritated him, too. He did not