to see one more capable of skippering their side!"




The Rest Cure


I had not seen Raffles for a month or more, and I was sadly in need
of his advice. My life was being made a burden to me by a wretch
who had obtained a bill of sale over the furniture in Mount Street,
and it was only by living elsewhere that I could keep the vulpine
villain from my door. This cost ready money, and my balance at the
bank was sorely in need of another lift from Raffles. Yet, had he
been in my shoes, he could not have vanished more effectually than
he had done, both from the face of the town and from the ken of all.
who knew him.

It was late in August; he never played first-class cricket after
July, when, a scholastic understudy took his place in the Middlesex
eleven. And in vain did I scour my Field and my Sportsman for the
country-house matches with which he wilfully preferred to wind up
the season; the matches were there, but never the magic name of A.
J. Raffles. Nothing was known of him at the Albany; he had left no
instructions about his letters, either there or at the club. I
began to fear that some evil had overtaken him. I scanned the
features of captured criminals in the illustrated Sunday papers;
on each occasion I breathed again; nor was anything worthy of Raffles
going on. I will not deny that I was less anxious on his account
than on my own. But it was a double relief to me when he gave a