"Gone away? Thank God! Thank _you_, dear!" cried out the doctor.

Not knowing any adequate cause for so much emotion, she answered him--

"Now, love, don't you ever say women are not practical again. That was
a practical question, you see. But didn't it strike the house? What a
queer smell. Ozone: isn't that what you were telling me about? How
funny, that lightning should have a smell!"

"I believe there's no doubt of it," observed Dr. Hicok.

Mr. Apollo Lyon had really gone, though just how or when, nobody could
say.

"My dear," said Dr. Hicok, "I do so like that bonnet of yours! I don't
wonder it puzzled him. It would puzzle the Devil himself. I firmly
believe I shall call it your Devil-puzzler."

But he never told her what the puzzle had been.

THE DEVIL'S ROUND[20]

A TALE OF FLEMISH GOLF

BY CHARLES DEULIN

[20] From _Longman's Magazine_, vol. xiv. [Copyright 1889 by
Longmans, Green & Co., London & New York. By permission of
the Publishers.]

[The following story, translated by Miss Isabel Bruce from
_Le Grand Choleur_ of M. Charles Deulin (_Contes du Roi
Gambrinus_), gives a great deal of information about French
and Flemish golf. As any reader will see, this ancient game
represents a stage of evolution between golf and hockey. The
object is to strike a ball, in as few strokes as possible,
to a given point; but, after every three strokes, the
opponent is allowed to _decholer_, or make one stroke back,
or into a hazard. Here the element of hockey comes in. Get
rid of this element, let each man hit his own ball, and, in
place of striking to a point--say, the cemetery gate--let
men "putt" into holes, and the Flemish game becomes golf. It
is of great antiquity. Ducange, in his Lexicon of Low Latin,
gives _Choulla_, French _choule_ = "Globulus ligneus qui
clava propellitur"--a wooden ball struck with a club. The
head of the club was of iron (cf. _crossare_). This is borne
out by a miniature in a missal of 1504, which represents
peasants playing _choule_ with clubs very like niblicks.
Ducange quotes various MS. references of 1353, 1357, and
other dates older by a century than our earliest Scotch
references to golf. At present the game is played in Belgium
with a strangely-shaped lofting-iron and a ball of
beechwood. M. Zola (_Germinal_, p. 310) represents his
min