He pulled the trigger with a
jerk that threw the muzzle up half an inch every time he fired, else I
don't believe he would have hit the board at all. But he held his breath
before-hand, till he was red in the face, because he had heard that, in
firing at a mark, pistol-shooters did not even breathe, to avoid the
influence of the motion of the chest upon the aim.
"Ah!" I said, "pretty well. But you should see Mr. Henry Armstrong
shoot."
Whereupon Mr. Percy Cathcart deliberately damned Mr. Henry Armstrong,
expressly and by name. I pretended not to have heard him, and,
continuing to regard the said condemned as still alive and comfortable,
went on:
"Just ask him, the next time you find him at home, to let you see him
drive a nail with three pistol-bullets."
He threw the pistol from him, exploded himself, like a shell, in twenty
different fragments of oaths, and left me the kitchen garden and the
pistol, which latter I took a little practice with myself, for the sake
of emptying two of the chambers still charged. Whether Henry Armstrong
even knew how to fire a pistol, I did not know; but I dare say he was
a first-rate shot, if I only had known it. I sent the pistol up to Mr.
Percy's room by the hand of Mr. Beeves; but I never heard him practising
any more.
The next night the curate was to read us another story. The time
arrived, and with it all our company, except Harry.
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