Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/470

 'pokes it to the off' or 'puts it to leg,' and the great encounter has commenced.

Wonderful and chiefly comprehensible must it be to the uninitiated or the foreigner to mark the rapt attention with which the performance is viewed by the thousands of all classes and ages who are now gathered around. Ten thousand people watch every flight of ball or stroke of bat with eager interest, with prompt, instructed criticism. Wonderful order, indeed a curious silence, for the most part, prevails. It is too serious a matter for light converse. The interchange of opinion is conveyed with bated breath; a narrow escape, to be sure, is noted with a sigh of relief; a hit with cheers and clapping of hands. When the fatal ball scatters the stumps, or drops into the hands of the watchful adversary, one unanimous burst of applause breaks from the vast assemblage. His Lordship the Bishop of Melbourne, who sits in one of the front seats watching the scene with an air compounded of interest and toleration, doubtless wishes that he could secure a congregation on great occasions so large, so deeply observant, so closely critical, so sincerely aroused. Doubtless his Lordship, conceding, with the kindly wisdom that distinguishes him, that the people must have their recreations, would admit that from no other spectacle could so many persons of all ranks and ages, and both sexes, derive so large an amount of innocent gratification.

The 'cricket is so good' that several days elapse before the perhaps somewhat too-protracted match is over. Heavy scoring on both sides in the first innings. An exciting finish on the fifth day wrests the chaplet temporarily from New South Wales. Victoria wins with three wickets to go down. But those who are willow-wise aver that if—ah me! those ifs—Spofforth and Massie had been there, the latter with the advantage of the matchless wicket, another tale might have been told—

The bells have chimed on that fateful midnight when died the old year; the radiant stranger is a crowned king. In the forenoon we turn our steps westwards, and enter another of the parks with which this city has been generously endowed. A