“Very well, I thank you, Uncle Isaac. O, how glad I am to see you! It is a great while since you were here.”
John, who knew Charlie was too modest to do it himself, showed him the lookout in the top of the tree, the house, and all that was in it, and also told him how Charlie beat them firing at a mark, though they had guns, and he a bow and arrows; and showed him the bullet-holes and arrow-marks in the target.
“What should you say if I could beat that?”
The boys entreated him to fire.
“This bow is rather small for me, and the arrow will go slower than I have been accustomed to have them, which makes it difficult judging how much it will fall. It’s many a long year since I drew an arrow to the head; but I’ve seen the time it would have been as much as any of your lives were worth to have run across the roughest ground you ever saw, within thirty yards of my arrow; that is, if I was prepared to harm you. Have any of you hit the dot?”
“No,” replied Fred; “but Charlie came within an inch of it.”
“Well, I am going to hit it. Where did you stand, Charlie?”
“Here, Uncle Isaac; I put my toe right against that stone.”
“I will put mine right against that stone; I want you all to see that it’s fair, and I stand just in his tracks.”
The boys all allowed it was fair. After firing up in the air once or twice, to get the hang of the bow, he planted an arrow, as he had said, directly in the dot.