Bulger now found himself in the presence of Mr. Morris, whose courtesy soon put him on a footing of friendliness and confidence.  He purchased, by his Mentor’s advice, a driver, a cleek, a putter, a brassey, an iron, a niblick, and a mashy.  Armed with these implements, which were “carried by an orphan boy,” and, under the guidance of the Head of the Faculty himself, Bulger set forth on his first round.  His first two strokes were dealt on the yielding air; his third carried no inconsiderable parcel of real property to some distance; but his fourth hit the ball, and drove it across the road.  “As gude as a better,” quoth the orphan boy, and bade Bulger propel the tiny sphere in the direction of a neighbouring rivulet.  Into this affluent of the main, Bulger finally hit the ball; but an adroit lad of nine stamped it into the mud, while pretending to look for it, and Bulger had to put down another.  When he got within putting range, he hit his ball careering back and forward over the hole, and, “Eh, man,” quoth the orphan boy, “if ye could only drive as you put!”

In some fifteen strokes he accomplished his task of holing out; and now, weary and desponding (for he had fancied Golf to be an easy game), he would have desisted for the day.  But the Head of the Faculty pressed on him the necessity of “The daily round, the common task.”  So his ball was tee’d, and he lammed it into the Scholar’s Bunker, at a distance of nearly thirty yards.  A niblick was now placed in his grasp, and he was exhorted to “Take plenty sand.”  Presently a kind of simoom was observed to rage in the Scholars’ Bunker, out of which emerged the head of the niblick, the ball, and, finally, Bulger himself.  His next hit, however, was a fine one, over the wall, where, as the ball was lost, Bulger deposited a new one.  This he, somehow, drove within a few feet of the hole, when he at once conceived an intense enthusiasm for the pastime.  “It was a fine drive,” said the Head of the Faculty.  “Mr. Blackwell never hit a finer.”  Thus inflamed with ardour, Bulger persevered.  He learned to waggle his club in a knowing way.  He listened intently when he was bidden to “keep his eye on the ba’”, and to be “slow up.”  True, he now missed the globe and all that it inhabit, but soon he hit a prodigious swipe, well over cover-point’s head,—­or rather, in the direction where cover-point would have been.  “Ye’re awfu’ bad in the whuns,” said the orphan boy; and, indeed, BULGER’S next strokes were played in distressing circumstances.  The spikes of the gorse ran into his person—­he could only see a small part of the ball, and, in a few minutes, he had made a useful clearing of about a quarter of an acre.