might.

"I hope that collar won't break," says the young lady as she goes back
to dress for dinner. The sun's gleam is dead, and the black cloud-bank
that hides it now is the rain that is coming soon. See!--it has begun
already.

* * * * *

Old Mrs. Solmes at the Ranger's Lodge, a mile distant, said to her old
husband:--"Thou'rt a bad ma-an, Stephen, to leave thy goon about
lwoaded, and the vary yoong boy handy to any mischief. Can'st thou not
bide till there coom time for the lwoadin' of it?"

Said old Stephen sharply, "Gwun, wench? There be no _gwun_. 'Tis a
roifle! And as fower the little Seth, yander staaple where it hangs is
well up beyond the reach of un. Let a' be, Granny!"

The old woman, in whom grandmotherhood had overweighted all other
qualities, by reason of little Seth's numerous first cousins, made no
reply, but looked uneasily at the rifle on the wall. Little Seth--her
appropriated grandchild, both his parents being dead--was too small at
present to do any great harm to anyone but himself; but the time might
come. He was credited with having swallowed an inch-brad, without
visible inconvenience; and there was a threatening appearance in his eye
as of one who would very soon climb up everywhere, fall off everything,
appropriate the forbidden, break the frangible, and, in short, behave
as--according to his grandmother--his father had done before him.

His old grandfather, who had a combative though not unamiable
disposition, took down the rifle as an act of self-assertion, and walked
out into the twilight with it on his shoulder. It was simply a
contradictious action, as there was no warranty for it in vert and
venison. But he had to garnish his action with an appearance of
plausibility, and nothing suggested itself. The only course open to him
was to get away out of sight, with implication of a purpose vaguely
involving fire-arms. A short turn in the oak-wood--as far, perhaps, as
Drews Thurrock--would fortify his position, without committing him to
details: he could make secrecy about them a point of discipline. He
walked away over the grassland, a fine, upright old figure; in whose
broad shoulders, seen from behind, an insight short of clairvoyance
might have detected what is called _temper_--meaning a want of it. He
vanished into the oak-wood, where the Druid's Stone attests the place of
sacrifice, human or otherwise.

Some few minutes later the echoes of a rifle-s