Page:The lady or the tiger and other stories, Stockton (Scribner's 1897 ed).djvu/71

Rh the target, and it was very seldom that one chanced to stick into it. For, if she did make a hit, we all knew it was chance and that there was no probability of her doing it again. Once she put an arrow right into the centre of the gold,—one of the finest shots ever made on the ground,—but she didn't hit the target again for two weeks. She was almost as bad a shot as Pepton, and that is saying a good deal.

One evening I was sitting with Pepton on the little front porch of the old ladies' house, where we were taking our after-dinner smoke while Miss Martha and Miss Maria were washing, with their own white hands, the china and glass in which they took so much pride. I often used to come over and spend an hour with Pepton. He liked to have some one to whom he could talk on the subjects which filled his soul, and I liked to hear him talk.

"I tell you," said he, as he leaned back in his chair, with his feet carefully disposed on the railing so that they would not injure Miss Maria's Madeira vine, "I tell you, sir, that there are two things I crave with all my power of craving; two goals I fain would reach; two diadems I would wear upon my brow. One of these is to kill an eagle—or some large bird—with a shaft from my good bow. I would then have it stuffed and mounted, with the very arrow that killed it still sticking in its breast. This trophy of my skill I would have fastened against the wall of my room, or my hall, and I would feel proud to think that my grandchildren could point to that bird—which I would carefully bequeath to my descendants—and