"Well, look what I've done myself! I'm somewhere down at the bottom of that dashed ravine, and it'll take me a dozen strokes to get out. Do you call that just and holy? Here, give me that book for a moment!"
He snatched the little volume out of my hands. For an instant he looked at it with a curious expression of loathing, then he placed it gently on the ground and jumped on it a few times. Then he hit it with his driver. Finally, as if feeling that the time for half measures had passed, he took a little run and kicked it strongly into the long grass.
He turned to Alexander, who had been an impassive spectator of the scene.
"I'm through!" he said. "I concede the match. Good-bye. You'll find me in the bay!"
"Going swimming?"
"No. Drowning myself."
A gentle smile broke out over my old friend's usually grave face. He patted Mitchell's shoulder affectionately.
"Don't do that, my boy," he said. "I was hoping you would stick around the office awhile as treasurer of the company."
Mitchell tottered. He grasped my arm for support. Everything was very still. Nothing broke the stillness but the humming of the bees, the murmur of the distant wavelets, and the sound of Mitchell's caddie going on with his apple.
"What!" cried Mitchell.