“The club house is yonder,” said Carter, pointing down the hill.  With a bow and my uncontrollable grin, I parted from them and armed with a card which Carter had given me, hastened toward the headquarters of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews.

The sedate gentlemen who were lounging about, waiting for the prearranged times when they are privileged to drive from the first tee, must have identified me as the typical American from the manner in which I hastened from one room to another.  I explored the locker rooms, the cafes, reception hall, library, billiard room, the verandas, and every nook and corner of the structure.

There is one sacred retreat called the “Room of Silence.”  Here are displayed the famous relics and historical curios of the game, including clubs used by King James, also strange irons once wielded by champions whose bones have been mouldering for generations.  In this awesome place one must enter with sealed lips, and sit and silently ponder over his golf and other crimes.  It is sacrilege to utter a word, and not in good form to breathe too rapidly.

An elderly gentleman who looked as if he might be a mine of information was seated in a comfortable chair.  He was the sole occupant of the room.  I had not asked a question since I had entered the building, and here was my chance.

“Do you happen to know an American gentleman named Harding—­Robert L. Harding?” I asked, deferentially.

He did not move an eyelash.  I pondered that it was just my luck that the first gentleman I had addressed was deaf and dumb.  As I crossed the threshold, I caught an indignant mumble:  “Talkative chap, that; he must be an American.”

I fled the club house and started down the course.  There are three links, but I was certain that Harding would be playing on the “regular” one, and since it is rather narrow I had no difficulty in following it.  For the first time I was possessed of no ambition to play.  Several indignant golfers shouted “Fore!” but I pursued my way, keeping a sharp lookout to right and left.

When about a mile from the first tee, I saw Harding.  His head and shoulders showed above the dreaded trap of “Strath’s Bunker,” and not far from him was a white-bearded old gentleman with twinkling blue eyes who was smiling at Harding’s desperate efforts to loft his ball out of the sand.

[Illustration:  “This takes the cake!”]

“Thot weel not do-o, mon!” I heard him say as I neared the scene of this tragedy.  “Take yeer niblick, mon, an’ coom richt doon on it!”

Out of a cascade of flying sand I saw his ball lob over the bunker, and with various comments Mr. Harding scrambled out of this pit, brushed the sand off his clothes, and then turned and saw me.

“Of all the damned places to get in trouble, Smith, this takes the cake!” he exclaimed, mopping the perspiration from his face.  “Do you know,” he added, looking about for his ball, “that it took me five strokes to get out of that cursed sand pit!”