handed him one belonging to the Major, which he had been scrutinizing.
"This, I perceive," said Walter, when he had read it carefully, "is a
licence or certificate to kill game. It doesn't apply to me."

"Why not?"

"Because I haven't killed any game."

"But you have your gun in your hand at this moment."

"That is so. This is my gun. But where, I ask you, is my dead game?
The truth is, my dear fellow," he went on, dropping his voice to a
more confidential level, "though it's pretty humiliating to have to
admit it and all that, especially before the beaters--the truth is
that I haven't hit a blamed thing to-day. Rotten, isn't it?"

Walter isn't much of a shot and there weren't many birds anyway, and
he hadn't been very lucky in his stands--and when one came to think
it over one couldn't just exactly _remember_ anything at all having
fallen to his gun.

"I call all these fellows to witness," said Walter most impressively,
"that I have killed no game. If it pleases me to discharge my gun, at
short intervals, for the sake of the bang--"

"You require a gun licence," said the Officer.

"That is not the point. I may or may not have a gun licence, but our
present controversy relates to a certificate to kill game. Do not let
us confuse the issue."