Old Mrs. Solmes at the Ranger's Lodge, a mile distant, said to her old husband:--"Thou'rt a bad ma-an, Stephen, to leave thy goon about lwoaded, and the vary yoong boy handy to any mischief. Can'st thou not bide till there coom time for the lwoadin' of it?"
Said old Stephen sharply, "Gwun, wench? There be no _gwun_. 'Tis a roifle! And as fower the little Seth, yander staaple where it hangs is well up beyond the reach of un. Let a' be, Granny!"
The old woman, in whom grandmotherhood had overweighted all other qualities, by reason of little Seth's numerous first cousins, made no reply, but looked uneasily at the rifle on the wall. Little Seth--her appropriated grandchild, both his parents being dead--was too small at present to do any great harm to anyone but himself; but the time might come. He was credited with having swallowed an inch-brad, without visible inconvenience; and there was a threatening appearance in his eye as of one who would very soon climb up everywhere, fall off everything, appropriate the forbidden, break the frangible, and, in short, behave as--according to his grandmother--his father had done before him.
His old grandfather, who had a combative though not unamiable disposition, took down the rifle as an act of self-assertion, and walked out into the twilight with it on his shoulder. It was simply a contradictious action, as there was no warranty for it in vert and venison. But he had to garnish his action with an appearance of plausibility, and nothing suggested itself. The only course open to him was to get away out of sight, with implication of a purpose vaguely involving fire-arms. A short turn in the oak-wood--as far, perhaps, as Drews Thurrock--would fortify his position, without committing him to details: he could make secrecy about them a point of discipline. He walked away over the grassland, a fine, upright old figure; in whose broad shoulders, seen from behind, an insight short of clairvoyance might have detected what is called _temper_--meaning a want of it. He vanished into the oak-wood, where the Druid's Stone attests the place of sacrifice, human or otherwise.
Some few minutes later the echoes of a rifle-shot, unmistakable alike for that of shot-gun or revolver, circled the belt of hills that looks on Ancester Towers, and died at Grantley Thorpe. Old Stephen, when he reappeared at the Lodge half an hour later, could explain his share in this with only a mixed satisfaction. For though his need of his rifle--whether real or not--had justified its readiness for use, he had failed as a marksman; the stray dog he fired at, after vanishing in a copse for a few minutes, having scoured away in a long detour; as he judged, making for the Castle.