incongruous drollery, with which seriousness
was altogether out of place. If there was a five
minutes' lull for beer, when the "over" was
shouted, Peggy was sure to devote that
interval to dancing a double-shuffle in the
refreshment tent, where the plates were now
being dealt round ready for some future
edible game. When he took his place as
slip or long-stop, he ran to his post while
others walked; or delighted the boys by
assuming an air of the intensest eagerness and
watchfulness, putting a hand on either knee and
bending forward, as if he had sworn that no
ball should escape his vigilance; or when a ball
did come, by blocking it with his wooden leg,
throwing himself on it, or falling over it: an
inevitable result, indeed, with nearly all the
one-legged faction, as the slightest abruptness
or jerk in movement had the result of throwing
them off the perpendicular. I do not think that
Peggy stopped a single ball unless it hit him;
he generally fell over it and lost it until some
comrade stumped up, swore at him, and picked
the ball out from between his feet or under his
arm.

The one-armed men had a much less invalid
and veteran air about them. There was a
shapely lad in a pink Jersey, who, from having
his hand off only at the wrist, merely looked
at a distance like a stripling with his hand hidden
by a long coat-cuff. But then, again, there was a
thickset, sturdy fellow, in a blue cap, of the
"one-leg" party, who, though he had lost one foot,
seemed to run and walk almost as well as ordinary
people. Then, again, on the "one-leg" side, there
was an ostentatious amount of infirmity in the
shape of one or two pale men with crutches, yet
everybody appeared merry and good natured,
and determined to enjoy the game to his heart's
content; while every time a player made a run,
before the dull beat of the bat had died away,
there was a shout that made the Peckham welkin
ring again, and all the crutches and wooden legs
beat tattoos of pure joy and triumph. And when
the musical and Terpsichorean barber rattled
the wickets or made the balls fly, did not the
very plates in the refreshment tent dance with
pleasure!

Yet, really, Peggy's conduct was most
reprehensible. In spite of his "greyhound-in-the-
leash" attitude, he was worse than useless; he
kicked at the passing ball, he talked to it, he
tumbled down to stop it, but for all the
success he attained, he might as well have been
away; why, Wilkins, with the long crutches and
swinging legs, was three times as useful, though
he was slow. I suppose, what with the beer,
the heat of the day, the excess of zeal, and the
fatigue, Peggy began at last to be pretty well
aware that he was not doing much good, for he
took to lying a good deal on his back, and to
addressing the boys, who buzzed round him like
flies, on the necessity of keeping a steady "look-
out" at cricket. I do not know what Peggy
had been, but he looked like a waterman.

Now, a lad who lost his leg when a baby, as
a bystander told me, took up the bat and went
in with calm self-reliance, and the game went
forward with the usual concomitants. Now come
the tips, the misses, the by-balls, the leg hits,
the swinging blows that intend so much and
do nothing, the echoing swashing cuts, the lost
balls, the stumpings-out, the blocks, the slow
treacherous balls, and the spinning, bruising
roundhanders; not that our friends of the one
leg and one arm swaddled themselves up in any
timid paddings or bandages; they put on no
india-rubber tubed gloves, no shelter-knuckles,
they don no fluted leggings. What is a blow on
the knuckles to a man who has lost a leg or an
arm, who has felt the surgeon's saw and the
keen double-edged knife? Yet all this time
there was rather a ghastly reminder of suffering
about the whole affair, to my mind. I could fancy
the game played by out-patients in some
outlying field of Guy's Hospital. I could believe
it a party of convalescents in some field outside
Sebastopol. Well, I suppose the fact is, that
men don't think much of misfortunes when
they are once irretrievable, and that these men
felt a pleasure in doing an eccentric thing, in
showing how bravely and easily they could
overcome an infirmity that to some men appears
terrible. After all, one thinks, after seeing
such a game, one-legged and one-armed men are
not so miserable as people imagine. Nature is
kind to us in her compensations.

And all this time my eye was perpetually
wandering to that blue bulbing dome and the
two little pinnacles, that, though from here no
larger than a chimney-piece ornament, is, I
have reason to believe, Saint Paul's, some five
miles distant as the crow flies. How delicate
and clean cut its opaque sapphire—how
pleasantly it crowns the horizon! That view of
Saint Paul's from the Peckham meadows I can
strongly recommend to landscape painters as
one of the best, because one of the nearest,
suburban views of Saint Paul's. I know it, a little
blue mushroom button from Banstead Downs,
just cropping up above the grey rim of the
horizon, where the dark brown cloud ever
lingers to mark out London; I know it, a great
palace of air from all the winding reaches of
the Thames, but I think I never saw it before
so beautiful, so unreal, so visionary, so sublime.
It seemed more the presiding genius of the busy,
turbulent, uneasy city. I felt quite a love for
the old blue monster; the sight of him moved
me as the sight of a great army moves me, or
as the sight of a fleet beating out to sea, with
their white wings set all one way.

And now looking again to the game—the
excitement has become tremendous. A man with
crutches is in; he props himself artfully up,
while he strikes the ball feebly and with
lack-lustre stroke. A one-armed man with a wavering
sleeve, bowls with his left hand, and makes
a complicated business of it: the ball moving in
a most eccentric orbit. At the opposite wicket
Peggy is enthroned: His attitude is a study for
Raphael—intense watchfulness, restless ambition,
fond love of glory slightly dashed with
inebriation, slightly marred by intoxication,