the sights until every weapon carries perfectly.
(_Courtesy of Winchester Repeating Arms Co._)]

Hamilton put the barrel up and looked and looked, but for a minute or
two he could not get the direction, then he caught the line. But the
reflection in the barrel was confusing, and it seemed to him that he saw
several lines.

"It's awfully hard just to get that straight," the boy said, "and it's
dazzling, too."

"That man you saw there," answered his guide, as they moved away, "can
tell almost to the width of a thread of a spider's web if a barrel is
straight. Here, too, is another barrel test going on. You see this man
is pushing a soft lead slug which fits the barrel snugly through the
barrel by means of a brass rod. It takes a certain amount of pressure to
push the lead slug through the barrel. Such slight variations in
diameter of the bore as one-tenth of a thousandth can be readily
detected, for if the barrel is smaller at any point than where it
entered, the slug will stick, and if it is the least bit larger at any
point, the slug will slide through too easily. Men accustomed to this
class of work can readily detect an increase or decrease in diameter of
one ten-thousandth part of an inch."

"You certainly have it down fine, Mr. Nebett," Hamilton commented.

"We try to," responded his guide. "Then when the barrel experts have
had their turn, the gun is assembled and goes to the action men."

"Who are they?" asked the boy.

"They test the trigger pull, the cartridge ejection, the fall of the
hammer, the filling of the magazine, and all such points. They have two
sets of dummies, such as were used for testing the parts. One must fit,
the other not, and so any fault in the mechanism is detected. The same
with ejection,--we must be sure that a cartridge will not stick. Then
after that--"

"Still more tests!"

"Didn't I tell you that we had to be sure that a gun could be made not
only to shoot but to shoot straight? Our crack shots get the guns next."

"What do they do?" asked the boy, "fire at targets?"

"Yes. But first a man, incased in an armored barricade, shoots a few
extra heavy cartridges in each rifle, in order to make sure that no
weakness has been caused by the various processes through which all the
parts have passed. Then he turns it over to the crack shots. They fire
half a dozen shots at a target, then look at the target through a
telescope. Those men know that they can hit the bull's eye every