A terrible stick, but very hard to get out—very slow between wickets, so that one of the old jokers said to him, "Surely you are well named Walker, for you are not much of a runner"—a moderate jest, but showing the sort of man he was. Then he was "bloodless," they said. However he was hit about the shins or fingers, he never showed a mark. Only David Harris, that terrible bowler, made the ball jump up and grind Tom Walker's fingers against the handle of the bat; but all Tom Walker did then was to rub his finger in the dust to stanch the reluctant flow of blood. It is all very grim and Homeric. David Harris, rather maliciously, said he liked to "rind Tom," as if he were a tree stem withered and gnarled. And it is a marvellous fact that a man of this character, whom you would call conservative to the core of his hard-grained timber, should actually have invented something new. But he did. He first tried the "throwing-bowling," the round-arm, which was credited to Willes—probably an independent invention, and so meriting equal honour—many years after. Well may Nyren speak of the Walkers, Tom and Harry, as those "anointed clod-stumpers." Harry was a hitter, his "half-hour was as good as Tom's afternoon."
And meanwhile what has become of David Harris? David Harris, it is said, once bowled him 170 balls for one run. And what manner of balls were these? Let us consider a moment a description of David Harris's bowling culled from Nyren. Parts of it lend themselves to the gaiety of nations, and the
