io 4 " MY KINGDOM FOR A HORSE ! " 



one up, I, at any rate, found that I was nothing better 

 but rather grew worse. Selous was a good shot with a 

 saloon pistol, but I don't think he ever made much out 

 with those rifles. Stuart Wortley, on the other hand, 

 was one of the best, next to Humphry. 



One evil feature of the rifles was that if by any chance 

 you had loaded again and the shooting ended before you 

 could have a final shot, it was no easy matter to draw the 

 charge. Once it happened that Stuart Wortley and I 

 were walking back home from the butts, each with his 

 rifle loaded, and as there was no one near we decided to 

 fire them off. 



I loosed mine into the trunk of a big elm-tree about 

 fifteen yards off, and the bullet blazed an immense mark 

 where it penetrated. 



Stuart Wortley discharged his weapon into the base of 

 a big sign-post at the roadside. The bullet went clean 

 through, ploughed up the earth several feet on the other 

 side, ricochetted and went audibly into the roofs of some 

 houses at least 200 yards away. We pressed on home- 

 ward with some energy after that. 



However, I shot sufficiently well that year for my 

 third class, but I don't think I got the second, which used 

 to be at 400, 500, 550 and 600 yards. 



At another period of that year we tool: part in a big 

 review in Lord Leigh's Park : 



I went to a review at Warwick last Monday and was nearly 

 deafened. We formed square, the two outside ranks kneeling, 

 the rest standing up. Now I was in the front rank and of course 

 kneeling the rank behind were kneeling and so there was a rifle 

 by each of my ears the others were standing, so there were 

 several rifles over my head, and you can have no idea what it was 

 when they fired, first one after another and then all together. 



Apparently I had but an imperfect idea at that time of 

 formation in square, but the really notable event of the 

 day was that two spectators, sitting on some rails two or 

 three hundred yards away, were shot by a ramrod, one of 



