It was a nasty look. It made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended to bury later on, when he had time.

I wonder what Tommy Morris would have had to say to all this number 6-iron, number 12-iron, number 28-iron stuff. He probably wouldn't have said anything, just made one of those strange Scottish noises at the back of his throat like someone gargling.

Unseen in the background, Fate was quietly slipping lead into the boxing-glove.

It was one of those days you sometimes get latish in the autumn when the sun beams, the birds toot, and there is a bracing tang in the air that sends the blood beetling briskly through the veins.

Never put anything on paper, my boy, and never trust a man with a small black moustache.

Some time ago," he said, "--how long it seems! -- I remember saying to a young friend of mine of the name of Spiller, 'Comrade Spiller, never confuse the unusual with the impossible.' It is my guiding rule in life.

She looked like something that might have occured to Ibsen in one of his less frivolous moments.