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.