A FORMIDABLE WEAPON 185 



was at first invisible, until with some difficulty Lord Wemyss 

 made him out stretched and motionless on the ground. Fearful 

 that the gun had burst, his lordship hastened to the spot, and 

 on his arrival found the smith with the gun a few yards from 

 him, but still insensible. In a few moments consciousness began 

 to return, and the first words the smith uttered were, " Well 

 dune, old gall," which his lordship, deeming to be a sort of 

 delirious conversation, cut across with a serious request to know 

 how he could expect to be alive after firing off such a dangerously 

 crammed implement of universal destruction. The smith, still 

 eyeing his gun with intense approbation, reached out his arm 

 and patted the stock, " Wall," he said, " my lord, nae dout she's 

 dangerous to the fowl, but she's used me wall this time, it tacks 

 twenty minutes gude afore I comes to myself, when I lets her 

 off' on most occasions, but I always gets my goose." The only 

 difference between the guests at Berkeley Castle and our 

 Roxburgh blacksmith is, that the latter got his goose, while the 

 former never touched a feather. 



The geese, if properly taken as they come towards the 

 shooter, and almost directly over the gun, when killed, fall 

 behind the gunners in the mud ; and generally one or two of the 

 guests are seen with bloody noses, and holding their right arms 

 in hideous positions, as if their shoulders were out, it being 

 settled by the leader, that old single-barrelled overgrown muskets, 

 with bell-mouths, five feet eight in the barrel, and hammers that 

 carry a flag-stone for a flint, with pans the size of soup-tureens, 

 and stocks so short that a man's nose rests on his thumb when he 

 takes aim and pulls the trigger, are the only things that men shall 

 kill geese with. One or two wounded men are always seen in this 

 dilapidated state lying in the mud, their hats flown off and gone to 

 sea, and the engine which they had let off sticking upright on its 

 muzzle, the heaviest part about it, and threatening to fall on them. 



" Measter So-and-so," asks a sly old keeper under his breath, 

 " what be the matter with you ? " 



" Oh ! " replies the guest, with a suppressed groan, " my 

 shoulder's out." 



