“Curse me!” grumbled Penny.  “It’s not in the best taste for the learned divine to play like any godless layman.  Has he nothing better to do?  Are there no souls to save?”

“No, but there’s a match to save,” suggested Doe.

There was perhaps some justification for Penny’s indignation, when this indecent ecclesiastic scored two fours in succession, and by his beaming face and intermittent giggle showed that he was feeling a very carnal satisfaction in sending ten members of his congregation, one after another, in search of the ball.  Ultimately he was caught low down in the slips, having compiled an excellent thirty; and he walked off, hardly concealing a smile.

As he ran up the steps of the pavilion, Upton came down, drawing on his gloves and ready to prove that Erasmus could exhibit very creditable pedagogues, as well as Bramhall.  This slender, grey-haired master with the ruddy countenance was much favoured by the ladies.  He looked a young and blooming veteran.  The boys of Erasmus gave him a cheer (for he was a good man) and prayed that he might not survive the first ball.  He did, however, and held his end up in dogged fashion, leaving Radley to develop the score, and only occasionally taking a modest four for himself.

It was about this time that Radley got under a ball and sent a chance whizzing towards me.  It flew high, and I shot up my left hand for it.  The ball hit me right in the centre of the palm with such force that it stung most painfully, and I had not the least hesitation in dropping it.  There were groans of disappointment from the males, execrations from Penny, and murmurs of sympathy and love from the female portion of the crowd.  But my sensations were again the opposite to the crowd’s.  The pain in my hand was exactly the same as when Radley caned me years before on the left hand:  and I was reminded of the scene.  “Put up your left hand,” he had said sarcastically.  “You’ll need the other for writing your lines.”  Now I had accidentally put up my left.  It was surely because I should need the other for bowling him out.  Such strange alleys do my thoughts run along when I am woolgathering in the field.

It must be admitted that Honion was by this time a failure.  Radley was doing what he liked with the bowling.  By six-thirty the score stood at 180, and the Masters only required 70 to save them from the innings defeat.  There was an hour before them, and they had five wickets in hand.  But the light was not so good.  We might do it yet.

Thirty minutes of that last hour passed, and in them forty runs were scored at a cost of three wickets.  So there was half an hour left to play, two wickets in hand, and thirty runs to get.

The ninth man failed at a quarter past seven, leaving the score at 225.  It rested, then, with Radley and the last man to make 25 in fifteen minutes and a bad light.

The schoolboy crowd was suffering; and, when Radley smote Honion for a six, the suffering became agony.  Some drastic step must be taken.