"If I can tell B from a bull's foot, it's all right." Then turning to me he said, "The old lady inside has a meal of victuals ready for us.

Come in and we'll let into it." There was nothing said at the meal which explained the things that were so blind to me; but there was a good deal of talk about rifles.

The farmer was named Preston, a middle-aged man who shaved all his beard except what grew under his chin, which hung down in a long black fringe over his breast like a window-lambrequin.

His wife's father, who was an old Welshman named Evans, had worked in the lead mines over toward Dubuque, until Preston had married his daughter and taken up his farm in the oak openings.

They had been shooting at a mark that afternoon, with Sharp's rifles carried by Dunlap and Thatcher, and the old-fashioned squirrel rifles owned on the farm.