“Mark the plume, lords,” he said, and lo! the feather leapt from that cap.
Now there was silence. No one spoke, but Dick drew out three more arrows.
“Tell me, captain,” he said, “is your ground marked out in scores; and what is the farthest that any one of you has sent a flighting shot?”
“Ay,” answered the officer, “and twenty score and one yard is the farthest, nor has that been done for many a day.”
Dick steadied himself, and seemed to fill his lungs with air. Then, stretching his long arms to the full, he drew the great bow till the horns looked as though they came quite close together, and loosed. High and far flew that shaft; men’s eyes could scarcely follow it, and all must wait long before a man came running to say where it had fallen.
“Twenty score and two yards!” he cried.
“Not much to win by,” grunted Dick, “though enough. I have done twenty and one score once, but that was somewhat downhill.”
Then, while the silence still reigned, he set the second arrow on the string, and waited, as though he knew not what to do. Presently, about fifty paces from him, a wood dove flew from out a tree and, as such birds do at the first breath of spring, for the day was mild and sunny, hovered a moment in the air ere it dipped toward a great fir where doubtless it had built for years. Never, poor fowl, was it destined to build again, for as it turned its beak downward Dick’s shaft pierced it through and through and bore it onward to the earth.
Still in the midst of a great silence, Dick took up his quiver and emptied it on the ground, then gave it to the captain of the archers, saying:
“And you will, step sixty, nay, seventy paces, and set this mouth upward in the grass where a man may see it well.”