table labor. The captain now commenced
his chip firing, which in a few minutes was succeeded by his hat.

"See, Moseley, see; I have hit the band," cried the captain, delighted to
find he had at last wounded his old antagonist. "I don't think you can
beat that yourself."

"I am not sure I can," said John, slipping a handful of gravel in the
muzzle of his piece slily, "but I can do, as you did--try."

"Do," cried the captain, pleased to get his companion down to his own
level of amusements. "Are you ready?"

"Yes; throw."

Jarvis threw, and John fired: the hat fairly bounced.

"Have I hit it?" asked John, while reloading the barrel he had discharged.

"Hit it!" said the captain, looking ruefully at his hat. "It looks like a
cullender; but, Moseley, your gun don't scatter well: a dozen shot have
gone through in the same place."

"It does look rather like a cullender," said John, as he overlooked his
companion's beaver, "and, by the _size_ of some of the holes, one that has
been a good deal used."

The reports of the fowling-pieces announced to the party in the arbor the
return of the sportsmen, it being an invariable practice with John Moseley
to discharge his gun before he came in; and Jarvis had imitated him, from
a wish to be what he called in rule.

"Mr. Denbigh," said John, as he put down his gun, "Captain Jarvis has got
the better of his hat at last."

Denbigh smiled without speaking; and the captain, unwilling to have
anything to say to a gentleman to whom be had been obliged to apologize,
went into the arbor to show the mangled condition of his head-piece to the
colonel, on whose sympathies he felt a kind of claim, being of the same
corps. John complained of thirst, and went to a little run of water but a
short distance from them, in order to satisfy it. The interruption of
Jarvis was particularly unseasonable. Jane was relating, in a manner
peculiar to herself, in which was mingled that undefinable exchange of
looks lovers are so fond of, some incident of her early life to the
colonel that greatly interested him. Knowing the captain's foibles, he
pointed, therefore, with his finger, as he said--

"There is one of your old enemies, a hawk."

Jarvis threw down his hat, and ran with boyish eagerness to drive away the
intruder. In his haste, he caught up the gun of John Moseley, and loading
it rapidly/threw in a ball from his usual stock; but whether the hawk saw
and knew him, or whether it saw somethi