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CHAPTER VI

NECESSARY PRACTICE

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About the rest of all that winter I remember very little, being only a young boy then, and missing my father most out of doors, as when it came to the bird-catching, or the tracking of hares in the snow, or the training of a sheep-dog.  Oftentimes I looked at his gun, an ancient piece found in the sea, a little below Glenthorne, and of which he was mighty proud, although it was only a match-lock; and I thought of the times I had held the fuse, while he got his aim at a rabbit, and once even at a red deer rubbing among the hazels.  But nothing came of my looking at it, so far as I remember, save foolish tears of my own perhaps, till John Fry took it down one day from the hooks where father’s hand had laid it; and it hurt me to see how John handled it, as if he had no memory.

“Bad job for he as her had not got thiccy the naight as her coom acrass them Doones.  Rackon Varmer Jan ’ood a-zhown them the wai to kingdom come, ‘stead of gooin’ herzel zo aisy.  And a maight have been gooin’ to market now, ’stead of laying banked up over yanner.  Maister Jan, thee can zee the grave if thee look alang this here goon-barryel.  Buy now, whutt be blubberin’ at?  Wish I had never told thee.”

“John Fry, I am not blubbering; you make a great mistake, John.  You are thinking of little Annie.  I cough sometimes in the winter-weather, and father gives me lickerish—­I mean—­I mean—­he used to.  Now let me have the gun, John.”

“Thee have the goon, Jan!  Thee isn’t fit to putt un to thy zhoulder.  What a weight her be, for sure!”

“Me not hold it, John!  That shows how much you know about it.  Get out of the way, John; you are opposite the mouth of it, and likely it is loaded.”

John Fry jumped in a livelier manner than when he was doing day-work; and I rested the mouth on a cross rack-piece, and felt a warm sort of surety that I could hit the door over opposite, or, at least, the cobwall alongside of it, and do no harm in the orchard.  But John would not give me link or fuse, and, on the whole, I was glad of it, though carrying on as boys do, because I had heard my father say that the Spanish gun kicked like a horse, and because the load in it came from his hand, and I did not like to undo it.  But I never found it kick very hard, and firmly set to the shoulder, unless it was badly loaded.  In truth, the thickness of the metal was enough almost to astonish one; and what our people said about it may have been true enough, although most of them are such liars—­at least, I mean, they make mistakes, as all mankind must do.  Perchance it was no mistake at all to say that this ancient gun had belonged to a noble Spaniard, the captain of a fine large ship in the “Invincible Armada,” which we of England managed to conquer, with God and the weather helping us, a hundred years ago or more—­I can’t say to a month or so.