"Done!" answered Bruce, as he pulled the trigger. It was a long and not very easy shot, but the pigeon came whirling down through the tranches with a broken pinion.
"You are unlucky in your selection, Captain Forrester," the successful shot remarked, coolly. "You might have won a heavy stake by laying the same odds all day."
"It serves you right," interposed Guy, "for speaking to a man on his shot. Don't you remember quarreling with me the other day for doing so, Charley?"
Charley's face of perplexity and disgust was irresistible. We all laughed. "What a guignon I have," he said. "Mr. Raymond, I believe you were in the robbery."
"Not I," was the answer. "I was as much surprised as any one. I think," he went on, lowering his tone, "Guy is right; he changed his aim, as you spoke, involuntarily, or he must have missed."
Then we turned homeward through the twilight.
I do not know if the reminiscence of his lost "pony" was rankling in Forrester's mind, or if he was only affected by the presence of Sir Henry Fallowfield—an immoral Upas, under whose shadow the most flourishing of good resolutions were apt to wither and die; but certainly, after dinner, he broke through the cautious reserve which he had always in public maintained toward Miss Raymond since Bruce's arrival. He not only talked to her incessantly, but tempted her to sing with him, during which performance they seemed rapidly lapsing into the old confidential style.
Bruce sat apart, the shades on his rugged face gradually deepening from sullenness into ferocity. He looked quite wolfish at last, for it was a habit he had to show his white teeth more when he was savage than when he smiled. But the music went on its way rejoicing,
"Unconscious of their doom,
The little victims played."