Miss Noble and Miss Crabb watched this eager skirmish line through their glasses, keeping up, meantime, a running discussion of the incidents as they occurred, with true feminine lapses, now and then, into criticism of whatever chanced to offend their notions of how a shoot should be conducted. "I hope Mr. Reynolds will get outrageously beaten," exclaimed Miss Noble, "I really do." "Why?" asked the editor. "Because I do," was the response so perfectly intelligible and satisfactory to all women. "Oh," said Miss Crabb, "you have a grudge, have you?" "He promised me he would teach me how to shoot," Cordelia laughingly responded, "and, like all men, he has not kept his word." "There! did you see that?" cried Miss Crabb still intently surveying the distant shooters. "No, what was it?" "Mr. Reynolds killed a bird that Mr. Beresford had missed and then turned and killed one that the English gentleman--what's his name?--had failed on! It was lovely--I like that!" "Mr. Moreton appears not to be having good luck," said Cordelia, "but I fancy he's quite as good a shot as any of them. My father says that any one will have unlucky days, no matter how good a shot he may be." "Mr. Reynolds hasn't missed yet, so far as I have observed," said Miss Crabb. "There went down two more birds before his gun. I think he has the best dog of any of them: it seems to know just what he wants." "How is my brother succeeding?" inquired Miss Beresford from her seat on a wagon-cushion which she had laid on the ground and covered with a gay shawl. "Very finely, indeed," was Miss Crabb's ready response. "The honors seem to lie between him and Mr. Reynolds. They easily lead the rest." "My brother never has been beaten, I believe," Miss Beresford went on. "He is said to be the best shot in the state." "Begging your pardon," Miss Crabb responded, "it really looks as if Mr. Reynolds would beat; he hasn't missed a shot yet, and I don't think he's going to." Miss Beresford smiled rather incredulously, as if her faith in her brother's superiority could not so easily be shaken. "But they are all getting so far away that I can not be sure any longer," continued the observant editor in an apologizing tone. Mrs. Ransom was seated some distance apart from the rest, busying herself with pinning a wreath of bay leaves from material gathered off some small trees by the spring. The firing, scattered far and wide, came to the ears of these listeners, softened down to a mere desultory booming, with now and then the quick repetition that told of a double shot. Even Miss Crabb ceased her efforts to follow the course of the merry sportsmen. She fell to work at her note-book as if venting a bitter spite upon it and for a time her tongue rested from its almost incessant labors. Cordelia went to where Mrs. Ransom was busy with the bay leaves and sat down on the dry ground beside her. "A victor's crown," she said gayly. "So you are going to reward the winner?"