"Keep still, you little fool!" I whispered.
He looked back piteously over his shoulder into my face.
"It's a man," he whined.
"I know that," said I.
"But he's got a gun."
"He's only got one cartridge," I replied with triumph. "You watch him."
And we watched—Dandy breathlessly, I, with that calm confidence born of a superior knowledge. It was Dandy who expected him to raise his gun at the slightest provocation and blow the very heavens to pieces, when, collar or no collar, he would have been off into the fields, dancing here, there and everywhere without the faintest conception of what he was doing. But I knew better than that. The old gentleman moved slowly and stealthily, as one who is following the subtle and intricate workings of a trail. Just to see him made me think of the days at school with a Latin grammar outside the desk and the story of Sioux Indians within. To manipulate the reading of the one with an apparently engrossing study of the other, is no mean feat. First, your face assumes that consternation which comes with the sudden remembrance that you have forgotten something—up goes the flap of the desk—but what does it matter? It was all so very long ago. I don't suppose I could do it now for five minutes without immediate discovery. It was of a Sioux Indian, anyhow, that the old general reminded me. He had that way of walking. There was just that watchful poise of the head. You might have thought, to see him, that he was close upon the tracks of a giant grizzly instead of some poor little rabbit, which must sit up motionless for at least a minute before he would consent to shoot.
It was the sight of this old man, sparing and ever sparing his last cartridge, that made me feel the poverty of Ireland more than any roofless cottage or empty mill. I compared it for the instant with the men at Monte Carlo, blazing away their cartridges at the frightened pigeons, jerking the empty cases with easy callousness on to the ground. I had no doubt this old fellow would take home his empty case and keep it on a shelf in some lumber cupboard, looking at it reminiscently from time to time, rejoicing in the remembrance of the many days of sport it had brought him. You may be sure this was not the first time he had come out with that cartridge which the money for those tomatoes had acquired for him. I can imagine there is plenty of sport in such a case without firing a single shot.
He certainly found enough to keep him alert that afternoon. Times out of number he raised the gun swiftly to his shoulder. There were three breathless moments when he steadied himself as he took aim; but either it was that the rabbit did not sit still long enough, or he knew that he had lost that cunning of his younger days; whatever it was, the world was quite still; the heavens were not blown to pieces. He never fired once.
For an hour I think I must have sat under that hawthorn bush with the everlasting expectation of a sudden thunder of sound. It never came. And then, as I rose to my feet to return home, he appeared once more in sight. This time he saw me. There was no escaping him then. Dandy rushed back to meet him; sniffed suspiciously at the barrel of his gun; asked him in as many words all about it. On this occasion, I imagine he said not a single word about me.