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160 "Excuse me, Lance; we've no objection to your playing Joyce, but why do you say you aren't?"

"I don't think you're well. I tell you that Frank Joyce is at this moment lying in Brixham hospital"

"He just now collared me."

I confess that when Mason said that I was a trifle staggered. I had distinctly seen that he had slipped and fallen. No one had been within a dozen yards of him at the time. Those Brixham men told him so—not too civilly.

"Do you fellows mean to say," he roared, "that Frank Joyce didn't just now pick me up and throw me?"

I struck in.

"I mean to say so. You slipped and fell. My dear fellow, no one was near you at the time."

He sprang round at me.

"Well, that beats anything!"

"At the same time," I added, "it's all nonsense to talk about Joyce being in Brixham hospital, because, since half-time at any rate, he's been playing three-quarter."

"Of course he has," cried Ingall. "Didn't I see him?"

"And didn't he collar me?" asked Giffard.

The Brixham men were silent We looked at them, and they at us.

"You fellows are dreaming," said Lance. "It strikes me that you don't know Joyce when you see him."

"That's good," I cried, "considering that he and I were five years at school together."

"Suppose you point him out then?"