with Ugly were
always in Latin.

Of his rare sagacity and unbounded affection there are proofs to be
furnished further on in this narrative.

Harry Higginson and Walter had guns, and they alone of our number were
allowed to use them. That exclusion never caused me any regrets, nor do
I think it troubled Alfred Higginson, but it was a constant pain to
Drake. He loved a gun, and his most golden dream of manhood's happiness
was the possession of a good fowling-piece. The prohibition of our
parents, however, was so stringent in this particular that poor Drake
never sighted along the bright barrels nor even touched the well-oiled
stocks but once while we were at the cape.

There they stood, always ready, in a corner of our attic--where Drake,
Alf, and I could not touch them, but ready at any time for the pleasure
of Walter and Harry.

Walter was an accomplished shot, and Harry was not a bad one. Harry had
not had the training of Walter, whom my father had taught--not
commencing with stationary objects, but with targets thrown in the air,
and small, slow-winged birds as they flitted near the ground. My father
had at first made him practise for a long time without caps, powder, or
shot, merely in quickly bringing the stock close to the shoulder, and
getting the eye directly behind the breech. When proficiency in that
had become a mechanical habit, the gun was loaded, and then commenced
the practice of shooting at moving objects. As the art of bringing the
gun properly to the cheek had been so thoroughly mastered as to require
no effort nor attention, Walter could, when an object was thrown up,
direct all his care to bringing the muzzle of the piece--the sight--
directly on that object. My father's reason for teaching him first to
shoot at flying marks was to prevent the habit of dwelling long on an
aim--that habit of following or _poking_ at the bird which ruins good
shooting, and prevents the possibility of becoming a good snap shot.
And so, afterwards, Drake and I were taught; and boys who are learning
to shoot will find, that by remembering and practising the method I have
described, instead of commencing by taking long, deliberate aims at
stationary objects, they will get ahead surprisingly fast, far
outstripping those who learn by the latter way.

In our rambles about the cape, Ugly soon displayed his talent for
rabbit-hunting. He would smell where Bunny had been wandering and
follow the track until he star