“Why?” said Lawrence; “I like this one.”
“It is a good choice, sir, but it requires different cartridges to your friend’s, and as you are going right away, would it not be better to have to depend on one size only? I have both, but I offer the suggestion.”
“Yes, that’s quite right,” said the old lawyer sharply; “quite right. I should have both the same; and, do you know, I think perhaps I might as well have one, in case either of you should lose yours.”
Mr Preston felt ready to smile, but the speaker was looking full at him, as if in expectation thereof, and he remained perfectly serious.
The pistols having been purchased, with a good supply of ammunition, guns were brought out, and the professor invested in a couple of good useful double-barrelled fowling-pieces for himself and Lawrence; Mr Burne watching intently the whole transaction, and ending by asking the dealer to show him one.
“You see,” he explained, “I should look odd to the people if I were not carrying the same weapons as you two, and besides I have often thought that I should like to go shooting. I don’t see why I shouldn’t; do you, Lawrence?”
“No, sir, certainly not,” was the reply: and Mr Burne went on examining the gun before him, pulling the lever, throwing open the breech, and peeping through the barrels as if they formed a double telescope.
“Oh! that’s the way, is it?” he said. “But suppose, when the thing goes off, the shots should come out at this end instead of the other?”
“But you don’t fire it off when it’s open like that, Mr Burne,” cried Lawrence.
“My dear boy, of course not. Do you suppose I don’t understand? You put in the cartridges like this. No, they won’t go in that way. You put them in like that, and then you pull the trigger.”