"Well! well!" replied Frank, "my rifle shoots true enough for me--true enough to kill generally--and who the deuce can be at the bother of your pragmatical preparations! I am sure it might be said of you, as it was of James the First, of most pacific and pedantic memory, that you are 'Captain of arts and Clerk of arms'--at least you are a very pedant in gunnery."
"No! no!" said A---; "you're wrong there altogether, Master Forester; there is nothing on earth that makes so great a difference in sportsmanship as the observation of small things. I don't call him a sportsman who can walk stoutly, and kill well, unless he can give causes for effects--unless he knows the haunts and habits both of his game and his dogs--unless he can give a why for every wherefore!"
"Then devil a bit will you ever call me one,"--answered Frank--"For I can't be at the trouble of thinking about it."
"Stuff--humbug--folly"--interrupted Archer--"you know a great deal better than that--and so do we, too!--you're only cranky! a little cranky, Frank, and given to defending any folly you commit without either rhyme or reason--as when you tried to persuade me that it is the safest thing in nature to pour gunpowder out of a canister into a pound flask, with a lighted cigar between your teeth; to demonstrate which you had scarcely screwed the top of the horn on, before the lighted ashes fell all over it--had they done so a moment sooner, we should all have been blown out of the room."
By this time, the Commodore had donned Harry's winter jacket, and Frank, grumbling and paradoxizing all the while, had loaded his rifle, and buttoned up his pea-jacket, when in stalked Tom, swathed up to his chin in a stout dreadnought coat.
"What are ye lazin' here about!" he shouted, "you're niver ready no how. Jem's been agone these two hours, and we'll jest be too late, and miss gittin' a shot--if so be there be a buck--which I'll be sworn there arn't!"
"Ha! ha!" the Commodore burst out; "ha! ha! ha! I should like to know which side the laziness has been on this morning, Mister Draw."
"On little wax skin's there," answered the old man, as quick as lightning; "the little snoopin' critter carn't find his gloves now; though the nags is at the door, and we all ready. We'll drink, boys, while he's lookin' arter 'em--and then when he's found them, and's jest a gittin' on his horse, he'll find he's left his powder-horn or knife, or somethin' else, behind him; and then we'll drink agin, while he snoops back to fetch it."
"You be hanged, you old rascal," replied Forester, a little bothered by the huge shouts of laughter which followed this most strictly accurate account of his accustomed method of proceeding; an account which, by the way, was fully justified not twenty minutes afterward, by his galloping back, neck or nothing, to get his pocket handkerchief, which he had left "in course," as Tom said, in his dressing-gown beside the fire.
"Come, bustle--bustle!" Harry added, as he put on his hunting cap and pulled a huge pair of fen boots on, reaching to the midthigh, which Timothy had garnished with a pair of bright English spurs. In another minute they were all on horseback, trotting away at a brisk pace toward the little glen, wherein, according to Jem's last report, the stag was harbored. It was in vain that during their quick ride the old man was entreated to inform them where they were to take post, or what they were to do, as he would give them no reply, nor any information whatever.