Retrieving his prize, Walter started down the mountain with the buck on his back. Reaching home, his wife embraced him, and all his children gathered round him, while his dog frisked about him in delight. Then he told the whole story.
The next day, he walked to the village and showed the gunsmith the rifle barrel, which he had cleaned and scoured inside, until, when unscrewed from the stock, it shone like a mirror. At first, the craftsman laughed at him, but on looking down into the muzzle, as a sunbeam struck the touch hole and lighted it up along the whole length, the gunsmith opened his eyes wide in surprise. Besides a sight of it, he put his little finger in and at once discovered the secret. His eyes gleamed and his face lighted to a smile of joy. He begged the hunter to let him try the weapon. Walter gladly allowed him, for the gunmaker was an expert. At a hundred yards, he knocked a hole in a plough handle. On a second shot, he cut the stem of a lone leaf remaining on a maple tree. At his success, the gunsmith [[141]]fairly yelled with delight. Thenceforth the hunter was called Mr. Walter Reiffler.
The gunsmith, with the happy hunter’s permission, set up, as a sign over his shop, the picture of a disc or circle, with eight dots showing the grooves in the gun. From this time forth, he could not make rifles enough to supply the chamois hunters. Each man wanted the new weapon. There was rejoicing, even among the dumb animals, for the dwarfs told them what had happened and why it was that none of their number suffered pain any more, or died in agony from the hunters’ missing fire.
So a new joy came into the life of Walter the hunter. After this, he could always get enough meat to supply his family’s need. From the skins and fur, the horns, and the heads, stuffed and mounted, with bright eyes made of glass, and sold in the village shops and hotels, and to visitors, he had plenty of pocket money. For his wife, he bought a tortoise shell comb, besides a linen and lace cap, and silver chains for her bodice. To each of his daughters, he gave enough spending money for them to save up sufficient to buy all the pretty things they needed, and also to lay in a store of linen, for their dowry. His sons, trained early to the use of the rifle, won prizes at the shooting matches, which now grew to be so popular as to become in time a national [[142]]institution. This enabled the Swiss people to fear none of the despotic rulers of Europe, who hated republics. When one proud visiting emperor asked one of Walter’s sons, who was a dead shot, what the Swiss, in little Switzerland, would do, if an army corps from Germany were to invade their land, he answered:
“We should, each one of us, shoot twice, your Majesty,” answered the brave boy.
All the other hunters were happy, too, for chamois meat was plentiful in every chalet. Nevertheless, so many of the herds were, in time, so depleted and the total number in the mountains so lessened, that laws were passed forbidding any hunter, young or old, and no matter how famous, from shooting more than one hundred, during his life time. Yet, even then, there was plenty of meat for all, and very much more than in the old days.
All the world rejoiced, also, for now, armed with the rifle, the wild beasts, even lions, tigers and grizzly bears that had so long destroyed millions of human beings, were no longer able to drive men away. Even women hunters dared to go into the jungle and face the terrible creatures.
In time, the rifle was made lighter to carry, prettier to look at, and easier to charge. Men discovered that the old way of loading was at the wrong end, and used the breech, instead of [[143]]the muzzle, to put in the cartridges. So the heavy mallet and ramrod were left behind and forgotten, and wars became shorter and less dreadful. [[144]]