CHAPTER XXI
WILD-FOWLING ADVENTURES

My sporting brother and the armoury--I attend him on his shooting
expeditions--Adventure with golden plover--A morning after wild duck--
Our punishment--I learn to shoot--My first gun--My first wild duck--My
ducking tactics--My gun's infirmities--Duck-shooting with a
blunderbuss--Ammunition runs out--An adventure with rosy-bill duck--
Coarse gunpowder and home-made shot--The war danger comes our way--We
prepare to defend the house--The danger over and my brother leaves
home


CHAPTER XXII
BOYHOOD'S END

The book--The Saladero, or killing-grounds, and their smell--Walls
built of bullocks' skulls--A pestilential city--River water and Aljibe
water--Days of lassitude--Novel scenes--Home again--Typhus--My first
day out--Birthday reflections--What I asked of life--A boy's mind--A
brother's resolution--End of our thousand and one nights--A reading
spell--My boyhood ends in disaster


CHAPTER XXIII
A DARKENED LIFE

A severe illness--Case pronounced hopeless--How it affected me--
Religious doubts and a mind distressed--Lawless thoughts--Conversation