and I only a single shot, but
so far as the result is concerned, if he states that his bullets flew
wider of the mark, such a claim is the result of pure envy, perhaps
malice. Why, I recall one instance of a muskrat whose skin Eddie was
particularly desirous of sending to those museum folks in London--all
properly mounted, with their names (Eddie's and the muskrat's) on a neat
silver plate, so that it could stand there and do honor to us for a long
time--until the moths had eaten up everything but the plate, perhaps,
and Eddie struck the water within two or three feet of it (the muskrat,
of course) as much as a dozen times, while such shots as I let go didn't
hit anything but the woods or the sky and are, I suppose, still buried
somewhere in the quiet bosom of nature. I am glad to unload that
sentence. It was getting top-heavy, with a muskrat and moths and a
silver plate in it. I could shoot some holes in it with a little
practice, but inasmuch as we didn't get the muskrat, I will let it stand
as a stuffed specimen.

I am also glad about the muskrat. Had he perished, our pledge would have
compelled us to eat him, and although one of Eddie's text-books told a
good deal about their food value and seven different ways of cooking
them, I was averse to experimenting even with one way. I have never
really cared for muskrats since as a lad I caught twenty of them one
night in a trammel net. Up to that hour the odor of musk had never been
especially offensive to me, but twenty muskrats in a net can compound a
good deal of perfumery. We had to bury the net, and even then I never
cared much about it afterwards. The sight of it stirred my imagination,
and I was glad when it was ripped away from us by a swift current one
dark night, it being unlawful to set a trammel net in that river, and
therefore sinful, by daylight.

It was on Sand Lake that Eddie gave the first positive demonstration of
his skill as a marksman. Here, he actually made a killing. True, it was
not a wing shot, but it was a performance worthy of record. A chill wet
wind blew in upon us as we left the river, and a mist such as we had
experienced on Irving Lake, with occasional drifts of rain, shut us in.
At first it was hard to be certain that we were really on a lake, for
the sheet of water was long and narrow, and it might be only a widening
of the river. But presently we came to an island, and this we accepted
as identification. It was the customary island, lar