A MORAL 93 



my knife, and, dang me, if he weren't half 

 full of jackstones!" Let me now do what I 

 did not do then, and confess that the cart- 

 ridge was mine. The ''jackstones" were 

 the coarse sand I had packed my shot with. 

 But it was a long time before I got to see 

 the real cream of the joke. The "cart- 

 ridges " to which the sporting writer referred 

 were wire cartridges for wildfowling! — not, 

 of course, the ordinary '' shells," to use the 

 Yankee term. The only result of my load- 

 ing could be to reduce the shot charge, and 

 perhaps scratch the barrel of the gun. "A 

 little knowledge is a dangerous thing." . . . 

 I had intended to multiply examples of this 

 sort of thing, but as I cannot possibly beat 

 the above I think I will leave it "to point a 

 moral and adorn a tale.'' 



