2 6 
HER MOUNTAIN HOME. 
rails not far from the reptile, aimed and fired, 
sending it mangled and dying into the cellar ! 
Realizing, from the child’s narrow escape, the 
danger of leaving his family wholly unprotected, 
Mr. Dartt taught the brave girl how to load and 
manage a gun, without danger to herself. 
Although years of life with very different sur- 
roundings had intervened, she felt sure her stead- 
iness of nerve and firmness of purpose had not 
diminished. A gun was now procured, and she 
became mistress of the situation ! 
To be sure, her husband always laughed at her 
for aiming with her left eye; but when was a 
woman ever defeated in gaining an end her heart 
was fixed upon, because she couldn’t reach it by 
doing exactly as everybody else did ! He was free 
to confess her shot was as effective as his, aimed 
with the approved orb of vision. 
A low shelf, in a convenient room of the little 
house in which they lived, served as a work-table, 
and beside it, between the demands of household 
duties, she spent many hours of patient, absorbing 
labor. 
No matter how beautiful the form or coloring 
of an animal, between the time her fingers first 
stroked it in admiring interest, and the time when 
they gave it its finishing touch, a mounted speci- 
men, lay hours of careful, often intensely disagree- 
able work. 
