(St. Ives's) hands clear for judging-distance
which, by-the-way, is a most necessary but
horribly difficult study. We had a pleasant walk
to Teffont Magna Downs, through the village,
where the grey stone cottages with mullioned
windows were cockaded with roses, and past
some new-formed mountains of fresh-mown
hay. The road, now in sun, now in shadow
— it wanted an hour of sunset— was a sight
to rejoice the eye, for, even the sunshine-
paved spaces had wafts of moving shadows upon
them; as for the shadow-portions, they had
always half a dozen threads of sunshine drawn
across the dark, like the gold strings of some fairy
loom. And what the more made me think "the
good people " were about, was, that every now
and then, just as a blackbird perched in some
elder bush (quite a cauliflower with its great
white flowers) began to sing, there would blow
up a sudden drifting cloud of dust, that ran
before us in the way that the Irish say dust-
clouds do when they envelop a troop of fairies,
those mournfully happy beings that (unlike your
dismal ghost) love daylight and summer, and all
happy hours and places. Now and then, we
stopped, St. Ives and I, in the country lane, to
watch the distance gradually turning the fir
woods behind us, a heavenly blue; to hear the
meditative cows breathing over the grass they
pulled up in mouthfuls; to see the haymakers
scatter themselves at skirmishing distance over
the tawny meadows, which have since acquired
the dry rusty look of an old labourer's beard; or
to lean over a five-barred gate and take a tranquil
pleasure in watching the green multitude
of wheat stalks suddenly sway and murmur as
if some question were being put to the five-acre
parliament, and the agricultural interest were
troubled in their sleep.

But by this time we have worked out St.
Ives's topographical map, and are on the white
dusty road, across which lies the bridle-path that
will lead us to the right over Teffont Downs to
the butt. St. Ives has the eye of an Indian
scout for dark lines of feet in grass, and he soon
makes it out. I really do believe he knows
every one of those ten thousand molehills
individually.

A close prickly thorn-bush, a now dry basin
cut in the chalk to water the sheep, and we are
at the thousand yard post. Strong pegs in the
grass, and numbers cut through the turf till the
earth shows. I see the target looks from here
smaller than a pocket-handkerchief, the black
bull's-eye no bigger than a pill-box. I tremble
to think of having my life dependent on the
success of such a shot; yet the ground even here is
strewn with the empty whity-brown tubes of
discharged cartridges.

"I made very pretty practice here last week,
when we opened our butt," says St. Ives to
me. . . . .

Nine hundred— eight hundred— seven
hundred— six hundred— five hundred— four hundred
— three hundred feet.

"Every two minutes the target gets larger.
It grows— it grows. Now it is a foot bigger,
now it is bigger still. I think I could nail it
now. But, who is this with swift feet, emerging
as from the ground?"

"Why, Lacy, our old keeper, to be sure,"
says St. Ives,"come to put on the patches.
Give him the paste-pot. Have you got the
flags, Lacy?" Here St. Ives makes a speaking
trumpet of his hands, and roars out the
question.

"Yes, sur," roars back the kippur. " Were
you cart, sur, in that thur starm?" (Lacy is
playing Boreas to his master's Aquilo.)

St. Ives, disdaining to reply to questions
about the weather at such an unreasonable
distance, does not answer till he gets close to the
keeper. Now, I see the rifle-pit— a sort of chalky
grave, four feet deep, from which Master Kippur
had emerged. It is sheltered from the flying lead
by a bulwark of chalk and turf, walled up with
hurdles, and some three feet thick. On the turf
behind Master Kippur, lie the three flags — red,
blue, and white— which express outside, centre,
and bull's-eye.

But now we go up and look at the butt itself,
which is a huge horse-shoe rampart of earth
and sods, that will stop any but the wildest
bullets, and hoard them up for St. Ives's melting-
pot again. We want to shoot nothing but
invaders. The target, a stout canvas strained
on two poles, is hung between two strong
saplings, and blows tight with the wind— which,
by-the-by, is a little too strong for rifle-shooting,
but will not deflect the bullets much at the
shorter ranges.

The canvas is a square, St. Ives says, with
true volunteer unction, that represents the
height and width of a column of men three deep.
Lacy all this time is tightening the target and
patching with white paper circles the rough-
edged perforations torn by the bullets of his
master's last night's practice. The keeper now
takes to his burrow, as we shoulder our rifles
and pace back to the two-hundred-yard post.

St. Ives opens his large leather pouch
(remarkable for holding thirty rounds), and takes
out a government cartridge. He twists off one
end, pours into the rifle-barrel the small dose of
large flaky-grained powder, slips in the greased
bullet, levers off the sloughing paper, drives
home the pointed lead with a strong gentle pressure
of the cup-like end of his steel ramrod, puts
the little copper hat of a cap on the nipple, and
full-cocks. I, on the other hand, load on a
different recipe. I pour in the powder from a
horn, through a small measuring tin filter, to
ensure the exact quantity of a charge. Then, I
take out my thimble-shaped conical bullet, place
the bottom of it on a greased circle of thin linen,
and drive it into the gun.

We are both loaded. Yonder, beyond the
rude hills and furze-bushes, right against the
dark redoubt of clay and turf, is the target,
looking about as big as an archery target; the
black wafer in the centre, about as large as the
crown of a large hat. While St. Ives makes
ready I throw myself on the parched grizzly
turf (slightly thisty, by-the-by), and look up to