“Take charge of things!” repeated Chap. “That sounds large and lofty. I suppose you feel like the lord of the manor. But I tell you what it is, my noble potentate, you mustn’t expect to look down too much on the neighboring barons.”
“It depends a good deal on the barons whether I do that or not,” said Phil.
“Now, look here,” said Chap, changing his tone; “if you won’t blow up the wreck, will you go after muskrats to-night? It’s a good moon, and I’ll bring my gun, and you can take Old Bruden.”
After having refused his friend so much, Phil could not decline so reasonable a proposition as this, and he consented to hunt muskrats that night.
It is true his uncle had not wished him to go on an expedition, but this would be on the river-bank, in front of the house.
Chap thereupon departed, and Phil was very glad to think of having a little sport that evening. Muskrats were frequently found on the river-bank, and their skins were sometimes a source of a little private income to the boys, who could get twenty-five cents apiece for them in Boontown.
In the course of the afternoon Phil went up-stairs to the gun-room to get Old Bruden, in order to clean it, in readiness for the evening’s expedition. The gun-room was a small one on an upper floor, the walls of which were full of pegs and hooks for fowling-pieces, game-bags, and all the other accoutrements of the sportsman; but the room had never been furnished, as had been originally intended. With the exception of Old Bruden, his own little gun, and a few flasks and pouches, there had never been anything on the walls but pegs and hooks.
Old Mr. Berkeley had intended to be a sportsman, but before he could carry out his purpose had become too infirm to care about it.
Phil stepped up to the two pegs on which Old Bruden had always hung when not in use, but, to his utter amazement, the gun was not there.
He could not understand this at all. It had been one of his uncle’s most inflexible rules that neither of the guns were ever to be left about the house, but were always, when brought in, to be taken to this room and hung in their places.