"
"No! no!" said A---; "you're wrong there altogether, Master Forester;
there is nothing on earth that makes so great a difference in
sportsmanship as the observation of small things. I don't call him a
sportsman who can walk stoutly, and kill well, unless he can give causes
for effects--unless he knows the haunts and habits both of his game and
his dogs--unless he can give a why for every wherefore!"
"Then devil a bit will you ever call me one,"--answered Frank--"For I
can't be at the trouble of thinking about it."
"Stuff--humbug--folly"--interrupted Archer--"you know a great deal
better than that--and so do we, too!--you're only cranky! a little
cranky, Frank, and given to defending any folly you commit without
either rhyme or reason--as when you tried to persuade me that it is the
safest thing in nature to pour gunpowder out of a canister into a pound
flask, with a lighted cigar between your teeth; to demonstrate which you
had scarcely screwed the top of the horn on, before the lighted ashes
fell all over it--had they done so a moment sooner, we should all have
been blown out of the room."
By this time, the Commodore had donned Harry's winter jacket, and Frank,
grumbling and paradoxizing all the while, had loaded his rifle, and
buttoned up his pea-jacket, when in stalked Tom, swathed up to his chin
in a stout dreadnought coat.
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