And what feats one can perform on a motor-car! And does. Just finished our putts on the home green at St Andrews, and the sun going down, and up comes one of our impulsive party and says it is ordered that we go to Gullane to-night by car! Goodness! But it has to be, and in half an hour we are bowling along those Fifeshire roads, and we are ferried across from Burntisland in the gloom and run into Edinburgh. Good supper, some talk in a tone of suppressed excitement as if great adventures are afoot - as they are - and history is being made, and then we hoot-hoot away into the blackness of the night. And it is black farther on. And the blacker it is the faster that dare-devil man at the wheel makes her go. Running along roads the width of the car and stone walls on either side, while branches of trees are almost scraping the tops of our heads, and one might swear the speed-gauge has its finger on the fifty. "Mrs. Forman's!" you say to the man beside you, to show you are not thinking of the awful risks as we dash by Musselburgh. Farther on a cap is lost in the black and windy night, but nobody complains. It is enough that all survived that terrible twist round the corner at Gosford. Aberlady! That is a fine thing to hear. "Will you stop here to-night, or come on to Gullane?" It is the end. You have indeed come through a great ordeal, and it is a great thing to be standing there in the night with your bag of clubs under your arm, and to be able to answer a greeting as it ought to be, and to let your thoughts slip away soon to the golf of the morning that is coming.

XI

But it is clear to me that the golfer who wishes to go golfing, and at the same time to live the richest and most adventurous life of the traveller, needs to take himself abroad and roam from course to course in Eastern and Central America. He will encounter many incidents that will interest and enliven him, as did the four eminent British professionals who some time since made a golfing expedition from here in the winter-time in search of Mexican treasure -dollars that were offered in open competition at San Pedro. They told me a great tale of their adventures on their return, and, as I have reason to believe, a strictly accurate one. Andrew Kirkaldy, Alexander Herd, Jack White, and Rowland Jones were the treasure-hunters, and dashing fellows they seemed as they boarded a special express at New York. Having started thence at five minutes to eleven one Wednesday morning, the train reached St. Louis at 1.30 on Thursday, having been much delayed by a wreck on the Wabash in which fourteen persons were killed and injured. This news added greatly to the discomfort of the four British golfers. They lunched at the Planters' Hotel, went round the city, saw a performance at the theatre, and boarded the train again at half-past eight in the evening. Thereafter Messrs. Kirkaldy, Herd, White, and Jones were brought to realise some of the possibilities of travelling in through trains along the American Continent. They were in the last car of the train, and after the journey had been resumed about half an hour, there was a negative kind of happening in the form of a gradual slowing down and then a final stop of the train - or rather, as it proved, of the carriage. After waiting a little while in patience the party put their heads out of the window, and then they came to realise the horrible truth. Their carriage had become uncoupled, and the train had gone on and left them! Here was a state of things! There was no other train to get them through in time. Hundreds of pounds were to be picked up at San Pedro, and they would not be there to pick them up as they had intended. The prizes would have been a gift for them, and either "Andra" or Rowland Jones would have become an open champion of sorts at last. When these thoughts had chased each other through the minds of the great British quartette for half an hour, someone got up aloft, and, like the widow Twankey - or Sister Anne was it? - in the pantomime, said that he thought he saw something coming. Immediately afterwards he confessed he was mistaken, but he had scarcely admitted the mistake when the original statement was renewed with vigour. There was something, and eventually it was made out as a railway train. The four great British golfers were saved for Mexico, and they would yet win championships and dollars - at least they might do, as they might now prefer to put it. It seemed that after the train had parted company with its last carriage, in about a quarter of an hour somebody in the moving section happened to notice the circumstance, and remarked that it was rather curious that a carriage should be left down the line in that manner, and that there should be no fuss made. The matter being reported to the officials on the train they decided to put back and see if they could find the carriage containing, among others, the party of four great British golfers. As we have already seen, they did so. Then the whole train moved on again towards Mexico, and "Andra" went to sleep in his berth dreaming, perhaps, of the old course at home and of his doing the home hole in 2.

The four British golfers found things rather dull for the next two days, for nothing in particular happened while they were running through fifteen hundred miles of woods and prairie. On Saturday morning they got out of the train at San Antonio, Texas, in time for breakfast, and the same evening they reached Laredo, the Mexican border, where their luggage was examined. Spanish being the prevailing language, this process proved rather troublesome, especially as the officials had varying and peculiar views as to the goods on which duty should be paid. Some of the party had to pay it on their golf clubs, and others escaped. The train had hardly got going again when it was pulled up on account of an obstruction in front, and it was three hours before a further advance was made, the impediment being a freight - train which had run off the track. By this time Kirkaldy was sighing for a ride on the North British, and White was hoping that he might be allowed the privilege of making his last journey on earth on the beautiful South-Western. But there was more adventure to come.