"Mark Heathcote," said the accused, and ever with an unwavering tone,
"look further at those weapons, which, if a guilty man, I have weakly
placed within thy power. Thou wilt find more there to wonder at, than a
few straggling hairs, that the spinner would cast from her as too coarse
for service."

"It is long since I found pleasure in handling the weapons of strife; may
it be longer to the time when they shall be needed in this abode of peace.
These are instruments of death, resembling those used in my youth, by
cavaliers that rode in the levies of the first Charles, and of his
pusillanimous father. There were worldly pride and great vanity, with much
and damning ungodliness, in the wars that I have seen, my children; and
yet the carnal man found pleasure in the stirrings of those graceless
days! Come hither, younker; thou hast often sought to know the manner in
which the horsemen are wont to lead into the combat, when the
broad-mouthed artillery and pattering leaden hail have cleared a passage
for the struggle of horse to horse, and man to man. Much of the
justification of these combats must depend on the inward spirit, and on
the temper of him that striketh at the life of fellow-sinner; but
righteous Joshua, it is known, contended with the heathen throughout a
supernatural day: and therefore always humbly confiding that our cause is
just, I will open to thy young mind the uses of a weapon that hath never
before been seen in these forests."

"I have hefted many a heavier piece than this," said young Mark, frowning,
equally with the exertion and with the instigations of his aspiring
spirit, as he held out the ponderous weapon in a single hand; "we have
guns that might tame a wolf with greater certainty than any barrel of a
bore less than my own height. Tell, me grand'ther; at what distance do the