180 Notes mid Sketches. 



so certainly to its mark as to destroy the pleasing 

 hope of luck, or chance, doing a turn for the individual 

 competitor over and beyond what he could expect as 

 the result of his best skill. The prize to be shot for 

 would be some useful article, ranging from an eight- 

 day clock to a shoulder of beef, or a wooden plough. 

 The marksman cast his own bullets of molten lead in 

 a cambs, which might or might not have been made 

 to suit the bore of his piece ; in like manner he 

 measured out the charge of powder from his horn, by 

 rule of thumb ; and, as exact results in shooting were 

 hardly to be looked for in the circumstances, neither 

 was perfect comfort to the shooter always secured. 

 When he had paid his sixpence, and spread his bonnet 

 on the top of the yard dyke before him to get a true 

 and stable " reest, " the eager competitor would lay 

 himself along, and with all earnestness take a 

 deliberate, and, if it might be, correct aim. Such 

 trifles as windage and adjustment of elevation to 

 distance troubled him not. He simply kept his eye 

 as hopefully on the centre of the target as he could. 

 Probably the possibility of an unusually ugly " putt " 

 from his piece helped to excite his nervous feeling a 

 little, but shoot he would at all risks, and gain the wad 

 if he could. The target was only a hundred yards off, 

 and its dimensions by no means scanty most likely it 

 was an old barn door with a few alternated rings of black 

 and white paint put on about the centre ; and it seemed 

 very possible to lodge the ball somewhere amongst 

 these rings. Crack goes the shot at last, but with a 

 rent and unsatisfactory sound, and an unpleasant 

 upward jerk of the muzzle of the marksman's gun ! 

 No ! The bull's-eye is untouched ; not even the barn 

 door itself has been hit, as is definitely certified when 

 the two or three lads who act as volunteer markers 

 have run in from their posts full fifty yards off on 

 either side a distance that must be maintained in 

 consideration of the wildly erratic course taken by 



