Her mistress took the rifle and turned it over and over; certainly, it resembled no gun she had ever handled before.

Its simplicity daunted her and irritated her.
"It seems to have two barrels," she remarked, "although one is closed as if not to be used.

Is it double-barrelled ?" "There are two barrels, or, more accurately speaking, a barrel for discharge of the projectile and a chamber for the explosive substance, which is the secret." "Then you load by the muzzle, like the old-fashioned guns ?" "Oh, no; there is no load, no cartridge, as you understand it; only the missiles, and they are inserted by the quantity in the breach." "And there is no trigger or hammer!" exclaimed Cesarine, not yet at the end of her wonder.
"Obsolete contrivances, always catching in the clothes or in the brambles, and causing the death or maiming of many an excellent man.

We have changed all that by doing away with appendages altogether.

This disc, when pressed, allows so much of the explosive matter to enter the barrel and it expels the missile by repeated expansions." "How very, very curious!" exclaimed Madame Clemenceau, returning the piece to Antonino with the vexed air of one reluctantly giving up a puzzle to the solution of which a prize was attached.