h between the trees choked with
long-grass and wild rye reaching to my middle. Here I saw one day a
large disc of old brass, bossed in the middle, which may have been
either a shield or part of an ancient cymbal, with concentric rings
graven round it, from centre to circumference. The next day I brought
some nails, a hammer, a saw, and a box of paints from the _Speranza_;
and I painted the rings in different colours, cut down a slim
lime-trunk, nailed the thin disc along its top, and planted it well,
before the steps: for I said I would make a bull's-eye, and do rifle and
revolver practice before it, from the avenue. And this the next evening
I was doing at four hundred feet, startling the island, it seemed, with
that unusual noise, when up she came peering with enquiring face: at
which I was very angry, because my arm, long unused, was firing wide:
but I was too proud to say anything, and let her look, and soon she
understood, laughing every time I made a considerable miss, till at last
I turned upon her saying: 'If you think it so easy, you may try.'

She had been wanting to try, for she came eagerly to the offer, and
after I had opened and showed her the mechanism, the cartridges, and how
to shoot, I put into her hands one of the _Speranza_ Colt's. She took
her bottom-lip between her teeth, shut her left eye, vaulted out the
revolver like an old shot to the level of her intense right eye, and
sent a ball through the geometrical centre of the boss.

However, it was a fluke-shot, for I had the satisfaction of seeing her
miss every one of the other five, except the last, which hit the black.
That, however, was three weeks since, and now my hitting record is forty
per cent., and hers ninety-six--most extraordinary: so that it is clear
that this creature is the _protegee_ of someone, and favouritism is in
the world.

* * * * *

Her book of books is the Old Testament. Sometimes, at noon or afternoon,
I may look abroad from the roof or galleries, and see a remote figure
sitting on the sward under the shade of plane or black cypress: and I
always know that the book she cons there is the Bible--like an old
Rabbi. She has a passion for stories: and there finds a store.

Three nights since when it was pretty late, and the moon very splendid,
I saw her passing homewards close to the lake, and shouted down to her,
meaning to say 'Good-night'; but she thought that I had called her, and
came: and