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 say, `My grand'ther shot that bird, and
with that very arrow.' Would it not stir your pulses if you could do a
thing like that?"

"I should have to stir them up a good deal before I could do it," I
replied. "It would be a hard thing to shoot an eagle with an arrow.
If you want a stuffed bird to bequeath, you'd better use a rifle."

"A rifle!" exclaimed Pepton. "There would be no glory in that. There
are lots of birds shot with rifles--eagles, hawks, wild geese,
tomtits--"

"Oh, no!" I interrupted, "not tomtits."

"Well, perhaps they are too little for a rifle," said he. "But what I
mean to say is that I wouldn't care at all for an eagle I had shot with
a rifle. You couldn't show the ball that killed him. If it were put
in properly, it would be inside, where it couldn't be seen. No, sir.
It is ever so much more honorable, and far more difficult, too, to hit
an eagle than to hit a target."

"That is very true," I answered, "especially in these days, when there
are so few eagles and so many targets. But what is your other diadem?"

"That," said Pepton, "is to see Miss Rosa wear the badge."

"Indeed!" said I. And from that moment I began to understand Pepton's
hopes in regard to the grandmother of those children who should point
to the eagle.

"Yes, sir," he continued, "I should be truly happy to see her win the
badge. And she ought to win it. No one shoots more correctly, and
with a better understanding of all the rules, than she does. There
must truly be something the matter with her aiming. I've half a mind
to coach her a little."

I turned aside to see who was coming down the road. I would not have
had him know I smiled.

The most objectionable person in our club was O. J. Hollingsworth. He
was a good enough fellow in himself, but it was as an archer that we
objected to him.

There was, so far as I know, scarcely a rule of archery that he did not
habitually violate. Our president and nearly all of us remonstrated
with him, and Pepton even went to see him on the subject, but it was
all to no purpose. With a