After a little while, when John had fired away at a rat the charge I
held so sacred, it came to me as a natural thing to practise shooting
with that great gun, instead of John Fry's blunderbuss, which looked
like a bell with a stalk to it. Perhaps for a boy there is nothing
better than a good windmill to shoot at, as I have seen them in flat
countries; but we have no windmills upon the great moorland, yet here
and there a few barn-doors, where shelter is, and a way up the hollows.
And up those hollows you can shoot, with the help of the sides to lead
your aim, and there is a fair chance of hitting the door, if you lay
your cheek to the barrel, and try not to be afraid of it.

[Illustration: 045.jpg Won skill in target practice]

Gradually I won such skill, that I sent nearly all the lead gutter from
the north porch of our little church through our best barn-door, a thing
which has often repented me since, especially as churchwarden, and made
me pardon many bad boys; but father was not buried on that side of the
church.

But all this time, while I was roving over the hills or about the farm,
and even listening to John Fry, my mother, being so much older and
feeling trouble longer, went about inside the house, or among the maids
and fowls, not caring to talk to the best of them, except when she broke
out sometimes about the good master they had lost, all and every one
of us. But the fowls would take no notice of it, except to cluck for
barley; and the maidens, though they had liked him well, were thinking
of their sweethearts as the spring came on. Mother thought it wrong of
them, selfish and ungrateful; and yet sometimes she was proud that none
had such call as herself to grieve for him. Only Annie seemed to go
softly in and out, and cry, with nobody along of her, chiefly in the