This mystic process having been complied with, Sam commenced:
“One evenin’ I slipped home from the brickyard, an’ thar warn’t anybody at home ’cept the child’en. Pop was gone to market, an’ tuk mam wid him. I seed the big gun sittin’ in the corner, but pop had tole me that ef I ever tortched it he’d knock thunder outen me. So I dassent handle it. Jest then a big hawk lighted on the barn, an’ I jest grabbed the gun, meanin’ to shoot that bird, thrashin’ or no thrashin’. I crept behind the corn-house, an’ run the muzzle through the logs, an’ I tuck aim at the hawk that was watchin’ fer a chicken. I tried to draw back the hammer to a full cock, when the hammer slipped, and it went off. At first I thought that something had busted, then that Mose, the brindled bull, had butt me, or that Toby, the old blind mule, had kicked me, an’ I commenced a hollerin’, an’ jus’ then, by gum! pop an’ mam druv up, an’ mam thought as how I was killed, an’—” Here Sam stopped to take breath.
“Well, Sam, what did your father do? Did he scream, too?”
“Scream!” answered Sam; “pop ain’t that kind. No, he picked up the big gun with one hand, an’ tuk hole on me with the other, an’ dragged me home, me a-kickin’ an’ a-tryin’ to break away all the time, an’ then he got that cowhide that hangs over the chimbly, an’ almost tanned the hide offen me. But you jus’ see where that big gun kicked me,” and Sam opened his shirt and showed me his narrow pigeon-chest that was bruised black and blue.
“Now I mus’ be goin’, mister. You mine me, don’t you tortch that air big gun; as sure as yer do she’ll knock yer cold.”
Sam’s tale frightened me, and I pulled the trigger, with my heart in my mouth, the first time; but Uncle Peter had done his work well, and if it kicked I never felt it.
I remember through this long vista of years the ecstatic pleasure of creeping up to a huge flock early one morning, and the thumping of my heart that beat like a trip-hammer against the bottom of the skiff—for I was lying close, and using the creeping paddles. At last, at last! and as the flock cleared the water I let drive, and was rather astonished to find myself safe and afloat.
So in the Old Dominion the fox-hunter followed his hounds, and took timber as it came. The partridge-hunter discharged his right and left shots in the stubble. One fine morning in April, 1861, they awoke from their easy-going, rollicking existence, and dropping the shotgun and sporting rifle, grasped instead the sabre, the lanyard, the sword, or the musket.
