“Oh, don’t try!” begged Phil.  “It’s our great-great-grandfather, and Aunt Patricia thinks a lot of that picture.”

“’Course I wouldn’t do it,” answered Stuart, taking another aim, “but I could, just as easy as nothing.”  Still dallying with temptation, he pointed again at the frowning eye and drew the rubber slowly back.  All of a sudden, zip!  The buckshot seemed to leap from the rubber of its own accord, and Stuart fell back, frightened by what he had done.  A round black hole the size of the buckshot gaped in the middle of the old-ancestor’s eye-ball, as clean cut as if it had been made with a punch.  It gave it the queerest, wickedest stare you can imagine.  It was the first thing one would notice on looking about the room.  Stuart was white about the mouth.

“Oh, dear,” sighed Phil, half crying, “if Aunt Patricia was only like the wise monkeys of Japan, then she wouldn’t notice.”

“But she will,” said Stuart; “she always sees everything.”

Phil had given me an idea.  As soon as I heard Miss Patricia’s silk skirts coming slowly through the hall with their soft swish, swish, I ran and sat in the doorway with my hands over my eyes, in token that there was something that she ought not to look at.  It should have amused her, for she knew the story of the ebony paper-weight, but instead it seemed to arouse her suspicion that something was wrong.  She looked at the boys’ miserable faces and then all around the room, very slowly.  It was so still that you could have heard a pin drop.  At last she looked up at the picture.  Then she fairly stiffened with horror.  She couldn’t find a word for a moment, and Stuart cried out, “Oh, Aunt Patricia, I’m so sorry.  It was an accident.  I didn’t mean to do it, truly I didn’t!”

[Illustration:  “SHE FAIRLY STIFFENED WITH HORROR.”]

There’s no use harrowing up your feelings, Ring-tail, repeating all that was said.  Miss Patricia simply couldn’t believe that the shot could have struck dead centre unless the eye had been deliberately aimed at, and she thought something was wrong with a boy who would even take aim at his great-great-grandfather’s eyeball.

Stuart was sent from the room in disgrace to report to his father, and the last I saw of Miss Patricia that day, she was looking up at the portrait, and saying, with a mournful shake of her gray curls:  “How can they do such things?  I must confess that I don’t understand boys!”

CHAPTER IV.

THE TALE THE MIRROR-MONKEY HEARD ON THURSDAY.

The day that Phil was able to go back to school was an unlucky one for me.  It was so dolefully quiet everywhere.  After he had gone, I slipped down-stairs on the banister, but the blinds were drawn in the parlour and dining-room, and it was so still that the only sound to be heard was the slow ticking of the great clock in the hall.  When it gave a loud br-r-r and began to strike, I was so startled by the sudden noise that I nearly lost my balance and turned a somersault over the railing.