Take it in your hand and plant yourself there before the door.

Bring out a chair, if you like, and sit down on it.

Pull down the hammers of both barrels and hold your thumb on them and your index finger on the trigger.

The left barrel is filled with ten buckshot and you can be quite sure that whoever approaches you from the lower end of this passage will inevitably get five in his body,--and five of them is enough for anybody.

The second barrel, the right one I mean, is loaded with a bullet which we generally keep in reserve for a wild beast, at the last moment, at six paces; at that distance any child could kill a giant.