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" he added, producing a small, brown tin box of percussion caps from his trousers pocket. Mrs. Gammit felt abashed at her ignorance, but gratified, at the same time, by the reproach of metropolitanism. This implication of town-bred incompetency was most flattering to the seven frame houses and one corner store of Burd Settlement, whence she hailed. "I reckon you'd better show me how to load the thing, Mr. Barron," she agreed quite humbly. And her keen grey eyes took in every detail, as the woodsman rammed home the powder hard, wadded down the charge of buckshot lightly, and pointed out where she must put the percussion cap when she should be ready to call upon the weapon for its services. "Then," said he in conclusion, as he lifted the gun to his shoulder and squinted along the barrel, "of course you know all the rest. Jest shet one eye, an' git the bead on him fair, an' let him have it--a leetle back of the fore-shoulder, fer choice! An' _that_ b'ar ain't agoin' to worry about no more pork, nor garden sass. An' recollect, Mrs. Gammit, at this time of year, when he's fat on blueberries, he'll make right prime pork himself, ef he ain't _too_ old and rank." As Mrs. Gammit strode homeward through the hot, silent woods with the gun--still carrying it as if it were a broom--she had no misgivings as to her fitness to confront and master the most redoubtable of all the forest kindreds. She believed in herself--and not only her native Burd Settlement, but the backwoods generally held that she had cause to. A busy woman always, she had somehow never found time to indulge in the luxury of a husband; but the honorary title of "Mrs." had early been conferred upon her, in recognition of her abundant and confident personality and her all-round capacity for taking care of herself. To have called her "Miss" would have been an insult to the fitness of things. When, at the age of sixty, she inherited from an only, and strictly bachelor, brother a little farm in the heart of the wilderness, some forty miles in from the Settlement, no one doubted her ability to fill the role of backwoodsman and pioneer. It was vaguely felt that if the backwoods and Mrs. Gammit should fail to agree on any important point, so much the worse for the backwoods. And indeed, for nearly two years and a half everything had gone swimmingly. The solitude had never troubled Mrs. Gammit, to whom her own company was always congenial--and, as she felt, the onl
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