time,
so that if the shots are wide of the mark, either there is a defect in
the gun or the sights are not true. In nine cases out of ten it is the
fault of the sights, and they file them true."

"Then really every gun has been fired before being sold?"

"We turn out about sixteen hundred guns a day, and each one has been
fired several times."

"Shotguns, too?"

"The same standard of accuracy is needed in those. It is just as
important that a shotgun should throw a certain percentage of its shot
within a certain radius as it is that a rifle bullet should go straight.
Down in this little room," he continued, "a man stands all day shooting
down this gallery, forty yards range, and each target is brought back
and measured. In a circle with a fifteen-inch radius a boy counts the
numbers of holes made in the paper by the tiny shot. There should be
300. If there are 290 the gun is passed, but if less it is rejected.
Sometimes you get very queer shot patterns without knowing why."

"Do all shotguns throw as evenly as that?"

"All good ones should. It is astonishing to see how regularly the
'scatter' of a barrel will work out. Every barrel, of course, is stamped
with the number of shots it has put into the fifteen-inch circle."

"And you make cartridges, too, don't you?" Hamilton asked.

"That's one of the largest branches of our business," his guide replied,
"but there's not very much in that to show you, except of course the
making of the metal caps, and this is simply the punching of circular
pieces of copper or brass, turning up the edges, or 'cupping' them, as
it is called, drawing them to length, inserting the primer pocket and
heading--the filling is done in a building perpetually closed to
visitors. We think too much of our visitors," he added with a smile, "to
risk blowing them up. I don't suppose really, that there would be any
danger,--we have not had an accident for years,--but it's a business in
which accident is only prevented by extreme care, and we believe in
being thorough."

Chatting pleasantly, Mr. Nebett showed Hamilton through the various
general offices, the payroll department, and the draughting and
designing room, and finally returned to the business manager's office,
where they found the schedule awaiting him, filled out in almost every
detail. A few spaces had been left blank until the boy's return, some
trifling explanation being readily answered by him.

[Illustration: "A BULL'S-EYE EVER