“Now let’s throw the tomahawk,” said Charlie.

In this game none of them could approach Uncle Isaac, who flung it with a force and precision that would soon have made a breach in Charlie’s barn door; but as the rest could not fling it with any accuracy, they soon tired of it.

“I’ll put up a mark for you, Uncle Isaac,” said Joe Bradish.

He had a soft hat, bran new; put it on for the first time that day.

“What will you give me for a shot at my hat, at six hundred yards?”

“Three shillings.”

“Done.”

Bradish rolled his hat carefully up, and thrust it into a mortise in the post of a rail fence.

“I thought I was to have the whole bigness of the hat to fire at; that’s a small mark for such a long distance.”

“That’s just like him,” said Charlie; “always doing some mean, underhand trick.”