But the match was not over yet, although yellow-headed Frank Winthrop began to think that it might almost as well be. He was beginning to despair. It was a one-day match: the school had only made 156, while the county had only two wickets down for 93; of course there was no chance of a second innings; the two best bats in Loamshire seemed set for a century apiece; Poynter had lost his temper and seemed trying rather to hurt his men than to bowl them, and everyone else had been tried and had failed. What on earth was an unfortunate captain to do? Just then a figure in a long cassock and college cap, a fine portly figure with a kindly face, turned round, and, using the back of a trembling small boy for a desk, wrote a note and despatched the aforesaid small boy with it to the rooms of the Rev. Erasmus Cube-Root. A minute or two before, Winthrop had found time to exchange half-a-dozen words with 'the Head' whilst in the long field, and now he turned and raised his cap to him, while an expression of thankfulness overspread his features. The two Loamshire men at the wickets were Grey and Hawker, both names well known on all the cricket-fields of England, and one of them known and a little feared by our cousins at the Antipodes. This man, Hawker, had been heard to say that he was coming to Fernhall to get up his average and have an afternoon's exercise. It looked very much as if he would justify his boast. He was an aggravating bat to bowl to, for more reasons than one. One of his tricks, indeed, seemed to have been invented for the express purpose of chaffing the bowler.
As he stood at the wicket his bat was almost concealed from sight behind his pads, his wicket appeared to be undefended, and all three stumps plainly visible to his opponent. Alas! as the ball came skimming down the pitch the square-built little athlete straightened himself, the bat came out from its ambush, and you had the pleasure of knowing that another six spoiled the look of your analysis. If he was in very high spirits, and you in very poor form, he would indulge in the most bewildering liberties, spinning round on his heels in a way known to few but himself, so as to hit a leg ball into the 'drives.' Altogether he was, as the boys knew, a perfect Tartar to deal with if he once got 'set.'
Grey, the other bat, was quite as exasperating in his way as Hawker, only it was quite another way. He it was who had broken poor Poynter's heart. You did not catch him playing tricks. You did not catch him hitting sixes, or even threes; but neither did you catch him giving the field a chance, launching out at a yorker, or interfering with a 'bumpy' one. Oh, no! It didn't matter what you bowled him, it was always the same story. 'Up went his shutter,' as Poynter feelingly remarked, 'and you had to pick up that blessed leather and begin again.' Sometimes he placed a ball so as to get one run for it, sometimes he turned round and sped a parting ball to leg, and sometimes he snicked one for two. He was a slow scorer, but he seemed to possess the freehold of the ground he stood upon. No one could give him notice to quit. Such were the men at the wicket, and such the state of the game, when a tall, slight figure came racing on to the ground in very new colours, and with fingers which, on close inspection, would have betrayed a more intimate acquaintance with the ink-pot than with the cricket-ball. Although it would have been nearer to have passed right under the head-master's nose, the new-comer went a long way round, eyeing that dignitary with nervous suspicion, and raising his cap with great deference when the eye of authority rested upon him. As soon as he came on to the ground he dropped naturally into his place, and anyone could have seen at a glance that, whatever his other merits might or might not be, Snap Hales was a real keen cricketer. When a ball came his way there was no waiting for it to reach him on his part. He had watched it, as a hawk does a young partridge, from the moment it left the bowler's hands, and was halfway to meet it already. Like a flash he had it with either hand—both were alike to him—and in the same second it was sent back straight and true, a nice long hop, arriving in the wicket-keeper's hands at just about the level of the bails.
But Winthrop had other work for Snap to do, and at the end of the over sent him to replace Rolles at short-slip.
'By George, Towzer, they are going to put on Snap Hales,' said one youngster to another on the rugs under the garden hedge.
'About time, too,' replied his companion; 'if he can't bowl better than those two fellows he ought to be kicked.'
'Well, I dare say both you and he will be, if he doesn't come off to-day. I expect it was your brother who got him off his lines to-day, and he won't be a pleasant companion for either of you if the school gets beaten with half-a-dozen wickets to spare.'
Towzer, the boy addressed, was brother to the captain of the eleven, and his fag. Snap Hales, when at home, lived near the Winthrops, so that in the school, generally, they were looked upon as being of one clan, of which, of course, Frank Winthrop was the chief. Willy Winthrop was Towzer's proper name, or at least the name he was christened by; but anyone looking at the fair-haired jolly-looking little fellow would have doubted whether his godfathers were wiser than his schoolfellows. No one would ever have dreamed of him as a future scholar of Balliol, nor, on the other hand, as a sour-visaged failure. He was a bright, impertinent Scotch terrier of a boy, and his discerning contemporaries called him Towzer.
But we must leave Towzer for the present and stick to Snap. Everyone was watching him now, and none more closely or more kindly than the man whom Snap considered chief of his born enemies, 'the Head.' 'Yes, he is a fine lad,' muttered that great man, 'I wish I knew how to manage him. He has stuff in him for anything.' And indeed he might have, though he was hardly good-looking. Tall and spare, with a lean, game look about the head, the first impression he made upon you was that he was a perfect athlete, one of Nature's chosen children. Every movement was so easy and so quick that you knew instinctively that he was strong, though he hardly looked it; but his face puzzled you. It was a dark, sad-looking face, certainly not handsome, with firm jaw and somewhat rugged outlines, and yet there was a light sometimes in the big dark eyes which gave all the rest the lie, and made you feel that his masters might be right, after all, when they said, 'There is no misdoing at Fernhall of which "that Hales" is not the leader.'
At any rate he appeared to be out of mischief just now.