"Pretty well for two hours. Look!" said Gipsy, displaying a well-filled game-bag.
"Did you kill those birds?" inquired Celeste, lifting her eyes in fear, not unmixed with horror, to the sparkling face of the young huntress.
"To be sure! There! don't look so horror-struck. I declare if the little coward doesn't look as if she thought me a demon," said Gipsy, laughing at Celeste's sorrowful face. "Look! do you see that bird away up there, like a speck in the sky? Well, now watch me bring it down;" and Gipsy, fixing her eagle eye on the distant speck, took deliberate aim.
"Oh, don't—don't!" cried Celeste, in an agony of terror; but ere the words were well uttered, they were lost in the sharp crack of her little rifle.
Wounded and bleeding, the bird began rapidly to fall, and, with a wild shriek, Celeste threw up her arms, and fell to the ground.
"Good gracious! if I haven't scared the life out of Celeste!" exclaimed Gipsy, in dismay, as Archie raised her, pale and trembling, in his arms.
"What a timid little creature!" thought Louis, as he watched her, clinging convulsively to Archie.
"Oh, the bird! the poor bird!" said Celeste, bursting into tears.
Gipsy laughed outright, and pointing to a tree near at hand, said:
"There, Louis, the bird has lodged in that tree; go and get it for her."