CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



ing mark to the more advanced class; or morning 

 magpie, a-chatter at skreigh of day close to the cot- 

 tage door among the chickens; or a flock of pigeons 

 wheeling overhead on the stubble field, or sitting so 

 thick together, that every stock is blue with tempting 

 plumage. 



But the pistol is discharged for a fowling-piece — 

 brown and rusty, with a slight crack probably in the 

 muzzle, and a lock out of all proportion to the bar- 

 rel. Then the young shooter aspires at halfpennies 

 thrown up into the air — and generally hit, for there 

 is never wanting an apparent dent in copper metal; 

 and thence he mounts to the glancing and skimming 

 swallow, a household bird, and therefore to be held 

 sacred, but shot at on the excuse of its being next 

 to impossible to hit him — an opinion strengthened 

 into belief by several summers' practice. But the 

 small brown and white marten wheeling through be- 

 low the bridge, or along the many-holed red sand- 

 bank, is admitted by all boys to be fair game — 

 and still more, the long-winged legless black devilet, 

 that, if it falls to the ground, cannot rise again, and 

 therefore screams wheeling round the corners and 

 battlements of towers and castles, or far out even of 

 cannon shot, gambols in companies of hundreds, and 

 regiments of a thousand, aloft in the evening ether, 

 within the orbit of the eagle's flight. It seems to boy- 

 [13] 



