uld ever want to
do any shooting, indeed from fifty to two hundred I consider the useful
distance to practise at. If you get to shoot so well that you can with
certainty hit a man between those ranges, you may feel pretty
comfortable in your mind that you can beat off any attack that might be
made on a house you are defending.

"When you have learnt to do this at the full-size figure you can put it
in a bush so that only the head and shoulders are visible, as would be
those of a native standing up to fire. All this white target-work is
very well for shooting for prizes, but if troops were trained to fire at
dummy figures at from fifty to two hundred yards distance, and allowed
plenty of ammunition for practice and kept steadily at it, you would see
that a single company would be more than a match for a whole regiment
trained as our soldiers are."

With steady practice every morning, Wilfrid and the two young men made
very rapid progress, and at the end of three months it was very seldom
that a bullet was thrown away. Sometimes Mr. Renshaw joined them in
their practice, but he more often fired a few shots some time during the
day with Marion, who became quite an enthusiast in the exercise. Mrs.
Renshaw declined to practise, and said that she was content to remain a
non-combatant, and would undertake the work of binding up wounds and
loading muskets. On Saturday afternoons, when the men left off work
somewhat earlier than usual, there was always shooting for small prizes.
Twelve shots were fired by each at a figure placed in the bushes a
hundred yards away, with only the head and shoulders visible. After each
had fired, the shot-holes were counted and then filled up with mud, so
that the next marks made were easily distinguishable.

Mr. Renshaw was uniformly last. The Grimstones and Marion generally ran
each other very close, each putting eight or nine of their bullets into
the figure. Wilfrid was always handicapped two shots, but as he
generally put the whole of his ten bullets into the mark, he was in the
majority of cases the victor. The shooting party was sometimes swelled
by the presence of Mr. Atherton and the two Allens, who had arrived a
fortnight after the Renshaws, and had taken up the section of land next
below them. Mr. Atherton was incomparably the best shot of the party.
Wilfrid, indeed, seldom missed, but he took careful and steady aim at
the object, while Mr. Atherton fired apparently without waiting to