“I’ll tell you when we get home.”
“Pooh!”
“Wait and see.”
Nothing more was said till they reached home, when half scornfully they inquired in what the secret lay?
“The secret is in this,” said Bevis, holding out his left arm. “That’s the secret.”
“How? I don’t see.”
“He puts his left arm out nearly as far as he can reach,” said Bevis, “and holds the gun almost by the muzzle. That’s how he does it. Here, see—like this.”
He took up his grandfather’s gun which was a muzzle-loader and had not been shot off these thirty years, and put it to his shoulder, stretching out his left arm and grasping the barrels high up beyond the stock. His long arm reached within a few inches of the muzzle.
“There!” he said.
“Well, it was like that,” said Mark. “He certainly did hold the gun like that.”