“I wonder whether I could hit anything nowadays,” he said, taking careful aim at a tulip in the garden.  “Any cartridges, Skinner?”

“I don’t know, I am sure,” Garratt Skinner replied, testily.  The newspapers had only this moment been brought into the room, and he did not wish to be disturbed.  Sylvia had never noticed that double-barreled gun before; and she wondered whether it had been brought into the room that morning.  She watched Captain Barstow bustle into the hall and back again.  Finally he pounced upon an oblong card-box which lay on the top of a low book-case.  He removed the lid and pulled out a cartridge.

“Hullo!” said he.  “No. 6.  The very thing!  I am going to take a pot at the starlings, Skinner.  There are too many of them about for your fruit-trees.”

“Very well,” said Garratt Skinner, lazily lifting his eyes from his newspaper and looking out across the lawn.  “Only take care you don’t wing my new gardener.”

“No fear of that,” said Barstow, and filling his pockets with cartridges he took the gun in his hand and skipped out into the garden.  In a moment a shot was heard, and Walter Hine rose from his chair and walked to the window.  A second shot followed.

“Old Barstow can’t shoot for nuts,” said Hine, with a chuckle, and in his turn he stepped out into the garden.  Sylvia made no attempt to hinder him, but she took his place at the window ready to intervene.  A flight of starlings passed straight and swift over Barstow’s head.  He fired both barrels and not one of the birds fell.  Hine spoke to him, and the gun at once changed hands.  At the next flight Hine fired and one of the birds dropped.  Barstow’s voice was raised in jovial applause.

“That was a good egg, Wallie.  A very good egg.  Let me try now!” and so alternately they shot as the birds darted overhead across the lawn.  Sylvia waited for the moment when Barstow’s aim would suddenly develop a deadly precision, but that moment did not come.  If there was any betting upon this match, Hine would not be the loser.  She went quietly back to a writing-desk and wrote her letters.  She had no wish to rouse in her father’s mind a suspicion that she had guessed his design and was setting herself to thwart it.  She must work secretly, more secretly than he did himself.  Meanwhile the firing continued in the garden; and unobserved by Sylvia, Garratt Skinner began to take in it a stealthy interest.  His chair was so placed that, without stirring, he could look into the garden and at the same time keep an eye on Sylvia; if she moved an elbow or raised her head, Garratt Skinner was at once reading his paper with every appearance of concentration.  On the other hand, her back was turned toward him, so that she saw neither his keen gaze into the garden nor the good-tempered smile of amusement with which he turned his eyes upon his daughter.