though the rain had ceased about eleven o'clock the wind had blown hard
all through the night, bringing with it from the Arctic a driving sleet
and the first touch of bitter, icy, winter cold.

The ladies of the hotel, who the previous day had paraded the front in
light summer frocks, sat shivering round the fire in furs; and the men
walked up and down in little groups discussing the weather and the war.
The golfers stood apart debating, after their wont, the possibility of
trying a round in spite of the weather. The elderly clergyman was
prepared to risk it if he could find a partner, and, with the aid of an
umbrella held upside down, was demonstrating to an attentive circle the
possibility of going round the most open course in England in the teeth
of the fiercest gale that ever blew, provided that a brassy was used
instead of a driver.

"I don't see how you could drive a ball with either to-day," said one
of the doubtful ones. "You'd be driving right against the wind for the
first four holes, and when you have the wind behind you at the bend in
the cliff by the fifth, the force of the gale would probably carry your
ball half a mile out to sea. These links here are supposed to be the
most exposed in England."

"My dear sir, you surely do not call this a gale," retorted the
clergyman. "I have played some of my best games in a stronger wind than
this. And as for this being the most exposed course in England--well,
let me ask you one question: have you ever played over the Worthing
course with a strong northeast gale--a gale, mind you, not a
wind--sweeping over the Downs?"

"Can't say I have," grunted the previous speaker, a tall cadaverous man,
wrapped from head to foot in a great grey ulster, and wearing woollen
gloves. "In fact, I've never been on the Worthing course."

"I thought not." The clergyman's face showed a golfer's satisfaction at
having tripped a fellow player. "The Worthing course is the most
difficult course in England, all up hill and down dale, and full of
pitfalls for those who don't know its peculiarities. I had a very
remarkable experience there, last year, with the crack local player--his
handicap was plus two. We played a round in a gale with the wind
whistling over the high downs at the rate of seventy or eighty miles an
hour. My partner didn't want to play at first because of the weather,
but I persuaded him to go round, and I beat him by two up and four to
play solely by relying on the bras