Chapter 1

So we settled it all when the storm was done
As comf'y as comf'y could be;
And I was to wait in the barn, my dears,
Because I was only three;
And Teddy would run to the rainbow's foot,
Because he was five and a man;
And that's how it all began, my dears,
And that's how it all began. -- Big Barn Stories.

'WHAT do you think she'd do if she caught us? We oughtn't to have it,
you know,' said Maisie.

'Beat me, and lock you up in your bedroom,' Dick answered, without
hesitation. 'Have you got the cartridges?'

"Yes; they're in my pocket, but they are joggling horribly. Do pin-fire
cartridges go off of their own accord?'

'Don't know. Take the revolver, if you are afraid, and let me carry
them.'

"I'm not afraid.' Maisie strode forward swiftly, a hand in her pocket
and her chin in the air. Dick followed with a small pin-fire revolver.

The children had discovered that their lives would be unendurable
without pistol-practice. After much forethought and self-denial, Dick
had saved seven shillings and sixpence, the price of a badly constructed
Belgian revolver. Maisie could only contribute half a crown to the
syndicate for the purchase of a hundred cartridges. 'You can save better
than I can, Dick,' she explained; 'I like nice things to eat, and it
doesn't matter to you. Besides, boys ought to do these things.'

Dick grumbled a little at the arrangement, but went out and made the
purchase, which the children were then on their way to test. Revolvers
did not lie in the scheme of their daily life as decreed for them by the
guardian who was incorrectly supposed to stand in the place of a mother
to these two orphans. Dick had been under her care for six years, during
which time she had made her profit of the allowances supposed to be
expended on his clothes, and, partly through thoughtlessness, partly
through a natural desire to pain,--she was a widow of some years anxious
to marry again,--had made his days burdensome on his young shoulders.

Where he had looked for love, she gave him first aversion and then hate.

Where he growing older had sought a little sympathy, she gave him
ridicule. The many hours that she could spare from the ordering of her
small house she devoted to what she called the home-training of Dick
Heldar. Her religion, manufactured in the main by her own intelligence
and a keen study of the Scriptures, was an aid to her in this matter. At
such times as she herself was not personally displeased with Dick, she
left him to understand that he had a heavy account to settle with his
Creator; wherefore Dick learned to loathe his God as intensely as he
loathed Mrs. Jennett; and this is not a wholesome frame of mind for the
young. Since she