Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/120

110 stepfather's fire-arms. They were kept in one corner of the kitchen. Once, when I'd been sweeping up, I'd moved them, and I was whipped for it. My mother couldn't touch them either. They were like something sacred.

"My stepfather never kept anything loaded, except just his revolver. It was a rule with him. He could absolutely rely on the certainty that those guns of his were unloaded, when they were standing in their corner in the kitchen. The Sunday morning I got my inspiration I saw my stepfather pull the trigger of his Springfield with the muzzle pointed right at his chest.

What if it had been loaded!' I thought. It stuck in my mind. 'What if it had been loaded!'

"Well, miss, I loaded that Springfield—'twas his favorite then—I loaded it late one Saturday night. He usually cleaned his guns Sunday mornings. I crawled out of my warm cot, and lit a candle, and loaded the thing! I couldn't sleep after it, I was so frightened.

"He went fishing Sunday morning instead of cleaning his guns, and I had to hang around all day, with that murder of mine hidden away inside that slender steel shaft over in the corner there. When he got home, he flung me a big catch of bass and sent me out to the shed with a lantern to clean them. It was a dark, drizzly evening, raining, I remember. When I came into the kitchen with my job done, my stepfather had got all his rags, and pieces of chamois, and oil, and polish, and things, spread out on the eating-table, and the kerosene lamp to see by. My heart was