the stable-yard, the revolver got into the
conversation, and Brindley said: "I should like to see you hit
something. You'll scarcely believe me, but I've never seen a revolver
fired--not with shot in it, I mean."

Alderman Keats smiled bluffly.

"I've been told it's difficult enough to hit even a door with a
revolver," said Brindley.

"You see that keyhole," said the alderman, startlingly, pointing to a
worn rusty keyhole in the middle of the vast double-doors of the
carriage-house.

Brindley admitted that he did see it.

The next moment there was an explosion, and the alderman glanced at the
smoking revolver, blew on it suspiciously, and put it back into his
celebrated hip-pocket.

Brindley, whom the explosion had intimidated, examined the double-doors,
and found no mark.

"Where did you hit?" he inquired.

"Through the keyhole," said the alderman, after a pause. He opened the
doors, and showed half a load of straw in the dusk behind them.

"The bullet's imbedded in there," said he.

"Well," said Brindley, "that's not so bad, that isn't."

"There aren't five men in the Five Towns who could do that," the
alderman said.

And as he said it he looked, with his legs spread apart, and his
short-tailed coat, and his general bluff sturdiness, almost as old
English as he could have desired to look. Except that his face had paled
somewhat. Mr Brindley thought that that transient pallor had been caused
by legitimate pride in high-class revolver-shooting. But he was wrong.
It had been caused by simple fear. The facts of the matter were that
Alderman Keats had never before dared to fire the revolver, and that the
infernal noise and the jar on his hand (which had held the weapon too
loosely) had given him what is known in the Five Towns as a fearful
start. He had offered to shoot on the spur of the moment, without due
reflection, and he had fired as a woman might have fired. It was a piece
of the most heavenly good fortune that he had put the bullet through the
keyhole. Indeed, at first he was inclined to believe that marksmanship
must be less difficult than it was reported to be, for his aim had been
entirely casual. In saying to Brindley, "You see that keyhole," he had
merely been boasting in a jocular style. However, when Brindley left,
Brindley carried with him the alderman's reputation as a perfect Wild
West shot.

The alderman had it in mind to practise revolver-shooting seriously,
until the Keats coachman ma