y the rains and partly by the pick, for
the house, offices and microscopic yard decorated with hollyhocks and
larkspurs. Across the highway stands a capacious barn, with open space
for wagons, and between it and the brook beyond stretches a narrow
meadow, whence a vivid imagination has extracted the name of the
caravanserai. The open space flanking the house and road is the
rifle-course, so to speak. When occupied of a mellow October afternoon
by a party of the autochthones, in their pea-jackets of blue or
hickory homespun, it presents a gay and cheery spectacle. Festooning
fence and tree around them, the Virginia creeper, or _Ampelopsis_,
shames vermilion against the mass of pines that glooms skyward beyond.
Other tints of vegetable decay fringe the brook where it winds from
side to side of the long strip of grass, green from the autumnal rain.
Little reck the assembled marksmen of Nature's stage-decorations. One
group will be mentally weighing the turkeys, another discussing the
distance--too long or too short for the peculiar powers of this or the
other individual or his weapon. Around the rude target kneel two or
three, scoring on it each man his "centre," above or below, to the
right or left, of the true centre, to counteract the ascertained
obliquity of his eye or his gun. Here a six-foot Stoic, the Nestor
of the glen, is very formally going through the ceremony of loading.
Another is slowly, and with the precision of an astronomer, adjusting
the tin slides which protect his barrel from the glitter of the sun.
The chatter of a bevy of country maidens ripples from over the way.
The horses whinny under their square-skirted saddles, or stand "hard
by their chariots champing golden corn," like the horses of Nestor,
Agamemnon, Homer and Gladstone before Dr. Schliemann's Troy; the
yearlings in the meadow alternately gaze and graze; the guinea-fowl
now and then honors the shout over a good shot with its harsh but
well-meant rattle; the rifle speaks at measured intervals; the
prizes thin off to the remainder gobbler; and so, with the quiet
characteristic of rifle-matches, the evening draws toward the dew. The
smoke-whitened guns are carefully swabbed with tow and prepared for
their rest as tenderly as infants. Dobbin is rescued from the (fence)
stake to hie hill-ward with his master, cantering exultant or jogging
grumly according to the result of the "event;" and the metropolis of
Petticoat Gap--for such, in the vernacular