“What’th the matter with it?” he asked. “Theemth to me the bulletth are big enough to kill anything.”
Fitzgerald shrieked with laughter.
“Bullets!” he cried hysterically. “He don’t know the difference between shells and bullets!”
Merriwell and Baxter smiled broadly. In spite of his anger, the Texan could not repress a grin. Even Lysander Cobmore chuckled dryly.
The stranger glanced from one laughing face to another, and then drew himself up with a comical expression of dignity.
“I can’t thay I thee the point,” he remarked stiffly. “Thomthing theems to thrike you gentlemen ath very funny.”
Fitz looked at his face and went off into another peal of laughter.
“Do you really mean to say you thought the shells you put into your gun consisted of a single bullet?” Dick asked quietly.
“Why, I thuppothed tho,” the small man answered shortly. “I don’t know that I thought much about it.”
He rested one hand over the barrel of his gun as if it were a walking stick.