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rather than a pull to it, and they will soon come to give that pressure at the very moment when the first finger gets on the mark aimed at. Now try it half a dozen times with the pistol unloaded, and after pressing the trigger keep your hand and arm in as nearly the same position, so as to see if it is pointing truly at the mark. Very good! Now try with the left hand. There, you see, that hand is not so accustomed to its work, and though you might have hit the target, I doubt if either of the shots would have struck the inner circle. Now we will try with the pistol loaded." Six shots were fired alternately with the right and left hand. Those of the former were all within a few inches of the bull's-eye, while none of the others went wide of the outside. "Very good, indeed," the gunsmith said. "I don't hesitate to say that in a very short time you will become a fair shot, and at the end of three months, if you practise regularly, a first-class one. Your hand is very steady, your eye true, and you have plenty of nerve. Now, sir, I should advise you to keep that unloaded pistol in the drawer of your table, and whenever you have nothing else to do, spend five minutes in taking quick aims at marks on the wall, using your hands alternately. Now, Captain Lister, will you try a few shots?" Taking a steady aim, Captain Lister put his bullets almost every time into the bull's-eye, but, to Frank's surprise, when he came to try quick firing in the way he had himself done, the captain's shooting was much less accurate than his own. "It is a question of eye," the gunsmith said next day, when Frank was alone with him. "You see Captain Lister's shooting was fair when he took a steady aim, but directly he came to fire as he would in action, and that without the disturbing influences of excitement and of the motion of his horse, he was nowhere. He did not even once hit the target in firing with his left hand. He would certainly have missed his man and would have got cut down a moment later, and even with his right hand his shooting was very wild." Captain Lister himself was evidently disconcerted at finding how useless his target practice would be to him in the field, and, two or three times in the next week, went with Frank to practise. He improved with his right hand, but did not seem to obtain any accuracy in firing with his left, while Frank, at the end of a month, came to shoot as well with one hand as with the other. F
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