TheCompleteMemoirsOfGeorgeSherston

much that he didn't know about the living-memoried
local history which lay between Bulley and Rother-
den. The doings of the county cricket team were also
discussed; Dodd had watched them at Dumbridge
last week and had spoken to Blythe, who was, in
his opinion, the best slow left-hand bowler in England.
The road went up and down hill by orchards and
hop-gardens and parks crowded with ancient oaks.
Nearly all the way we were looking, on our left-hand
side, across the hop-kiln-dotted Weald. And along
the Weald went the railway line from London to the
coast, and this gave me a soberly romantic sense of
distances and the outside world of unfamiliar and
momentous happenings. I knew very little about
London, and I had never been across the Channel, but
as I watched a train hurrying between the level or-
chards with its consequential streamer of smoke, I
meditated on the coast-line of France and all the
unvisualized singularity of that foreign land. And
then Rotherden Church hove in sight with its square
battlemented tower, and we turned into the stable-
yard of the "Rose and Crown", where Bert Bishop,
the landlord, was waiting to welcome us—a stouter
man than he used to be, but still as likely as not to
hit up a hundred.

Butley batted first. I was in eighth. Mr. Pcnnett's
letter was in my pocket. Sitting on a gate in a remote
corner of the ground I opened the envelope with a
sinking heart. Mr. Pennett wrote as follows:

"My dear George, I have learned from your
College Tutor, much to my regret, that you have gone
down from Cambridge, at any rate for this term. I

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