The popping of a pistol at odd hours in the backyard of the Institute was a phenomenon more than sufficiently remarkable to be talked about in Rockland.  The viscous intelligence of a country-village is not easily stirred by the winds which ripple the fluent thought of great cities, but it holds every straw and entangles every insect that lights upon it.  It soon became rumored in the town that the young master was a wonderful shot with the pistol.  Some said he could hit a fo’pence-ha’penny at three rod; some, that he had shot a swallow, flying, with a single ball; some, that he snuffed a candle five times out of six at ten paces, and that he could hit any button in a man’s coat he wanted to.  In other words, as in all such cases, all the common feats were ascribed to him, as the current jokes of the day are laid at the door of any noted wit, however innocent he may be of them.

In the natural course of things, Mr. Richard Venner, who had by this time made some acquaintances, as we have seen, among that class of the population least likely to allow a live cinder of gossip to go out for want of air, had heard incidentally that the master up there at the Institute was all the time practising with a pistol, that they say he can snuff a candle at ten rods, (that was Mrs. Blanche Creamer’s version,) and that he could hit anybody he wanted to right in the eye, as far as he could see the white of it.

Dick did not like the sound of all this any too well.  Without believing more than half of it, there was enough to make the Yankee schoolmaster too unsafe to be trifled with.  However, shooting at a mark was pleasant work enough; he had no particular objection to it himself.  Only he did not care so much for those little popgun affairs that a man carries in his pocket, and with which you could n’t shoot a fellow,—­a robber, say,—­without getting the muzzle under his nose.  Pistols for boys; long-range rifles for men.  There was such a gun lying in a closet with the fowling-pieces.  He would go out into the fields and see what he could do as a marksman.

The nature of the mark which Dick chose for experimenting upon was singular.  He had found some panes of glass which had been removed from an old sash, and he placed these successively before his target, arranging them at different angles.  He found that a bullet would go through the glass without glancing or having its force materially abated.  It was an interesting fact in physics, and might prove of some practical significance hereafter.  Nobody knows what may turn up to render these out-of-the-way facts useful.  All this was done in a quiet way in one of the bare spots high up the side of The Mountain.  He was very thoughtful in taking the precaution to get so far away; rifle-bullets are apt to glance and come whizzing about people’s ears, if they are fired in the neighborhood of houses.  Dick satisfied himself that he could be tolerably sure of hitting a pane of glass at a distance of thirty rods, more or less, and that, if there happened to be anything behind it, the glass would not materially alter the force or direction of the bullet.