rs he ever saw. "Lumpy" got
his queer name either because he was, in Nyren's words, "a short man,
round-shouldered and stout" or, according to another tradition, because
at one of the dinners of the Hambledon Club he ate an apple-pie whole.
Surely he must have been "Lumpy" before, besides after, that
achievement. Yet another story has it that he was given his name because
of some trick in his bowling. Certainly his methods were not what we
should call exactly orthodox to-day. It was the privilege of visiting
elevens in his day to choose the pitch on which the match should be
played, and that was "Lumpy's" opportunity. Nyren explains his plan:--

"He would invariably choose the ground where his balls would
_shoot_, instead of selecting a rising spot to bowl against, which
would materially have increased the difficulty to the hitter, seeing
that so many more would be caught out by the mounting of the ball.
As, however, nothing delighted the old man like bowling the wicket
down with a shooting ball, he would sacrifice the other chances to
the glory of that achievement. Many a time have I seen our General
twig this prejudice in the old man when matched against us, and
chuckle at it. But I believe it was almost the only mistake he ever
made, professional or even moral, for he was a most simple and
amiable creature."

There is an unkind legend which speaks of "Lumpy" as a bit of a smuggler
in his young days, but Nyren, at all events, never believed it, for he
ends by declaring handsomely that "he had no trick about him, but was
as plain as a pike-staff in all his dealings." "Lumpy," whether he
smuggled or not, certainly has his niche in cricket history. It was to
him that the wicket owes its third stump. In a match played in 1775 on
the Portsmouth Artillery Ground, between five of the Hambledon Club and
five of All England, "Lumpy" three times sent the ball between the last
Hambledon man's stumps without bowling him, and after the match, which
Hambledon won in consequence, the number of the stumps was increased
from two to three.

Send lies deep among the fields, counting itself fortunate, perhaps,
that it is not on the Ripley road, a mile away. Ripley itself, perhaps,
owes its fortune, even if it owes more besides, to the road which it has
named. The story belongs to all the villages of a great highway. The
coaches brought their heyday, the railway spoiled it, the bicycle
re-mad