ion came from his own brain, out of his own memory--a vision of
green turf and of boys in white on it, a small regiment set orderly
against a background of English elms, and moving orderly, intent on
the game of games_.

O thou, that dear and happy Isle,
The garden of the world erstwhile. . . .
Unhappy! shall we nevermore
That sweet militia restore?

_Snatches of an old parody floated in his brain with the vision--a
parody of Walt Whitman--_

Far off a grey-brown thrush warbling in hedge or in marsh; Down there
in the blossoming bushes, my brother, what is that you are
saying? . . .

The perfect feel of a "fourer "! . . .

The jubilant cry from the flowering thorn to the flowerless willow,
"smite, smite, smite."

(Flowerless willow no more but every run a late-shed perfect bloom.)

The fierce chant of my demon brother issuing forth against the demon
bowler, "hit him, hit him, hit him."

The thousand melodious cracks, delicious cracks, the responsive
echoes of my comrades and the hundred thence-resulting runs,
passionately yearned for, never, never again to be forgotten.

Overhead meanwhile the splendid silent sun, blending all, fusing all,
bathing all in floods of soft ecstatic perspiration.

_Otway lifted his stare from the rough table_.

They have skinned the turf off Trinity cricket-ground . . .
Such turf, too! I wonder who bought it, and what he paid for it.
. . . They have turned the field into a big Base Hospital--all tin
sheds, like a great kraal of scientific Kaffirs. Which reminds
me . . .

Foe read medicine. Caius, you must know, is a great college for
training doctors, and in the way of scholarships and prizes he
annexed most of the mugs on the board. All the same I want you to
understand that he wasn't a pot-hunter. I don't quite know how to
explain. . . . His father had died while he was at Rugby, leaving him
a competence; but he certainly was not over-burdened with money.
Of that I am sure. . . . Can't say why. He never talked of his
private affairs, even with me, though we were friends, "Jack" and
"Roddy" to each other still, and inhabited lodgings together in Jesus
Lane. He owed money to no one. Unsociable habit, I used to call it;
destructive of confidence between man and man.

But he was no pot-hunter. I think--I am sure--that so long as he
kept upsides with money he rather despised it. He had a handsome
face--rather curiously like the pictures you see