“Good shot,” commented Cousin Jim. “Landed them nicely.” Something happened inside Freeman; something analogous to hot sun on a misty meadow, or a wind on a fog-bound sea. He had killed two ducks: and he thought he knew just how he had killed them. You threw your aim at the body, and then swung your muzzle up and pulled trigger just as the head disappeared from view. He discovered in himself an intense eagerness for the next lot to come in, so he could try again. The blood was singing through his body. No longer did he feel cold or disgruntled. Also he wanted to be chatty; which shows that those two ducks had stirred Freeman up considerably. Minnie would not have known her darling brother had she been able at that moment to see his inner self accurately depicted in outward semblance. The latter manifestation would have been that of a blithe and skiptious person who would have worn his hat on one side of his head. More ducks came in from time to time, and Freeman had a chance to test his theories. It is only in romantic fiction that the hero wins the football match or licks the champion or cops off the million in Wall Street without knowing a thing about football, boxing, or finance. The idea was perfect; but ducks seemed to have no notion of regularity or standardization. They never acted the same way twice running. Still, out of a good many shots he did scratch down a few. One of the great compensations in life is the fact that the glow from a successful shot lasts a poor marksman longer than it does a good one. And a casual remark of Cousin Jim’s supplied the one missing ingredient. After the fifth duck had fallen to Freeman’s lavish burnt offering of black powder he said: “Pity you haven’t your own gun. There’s nothing that throws a man off worse than shooting a strange gun, is there?” He seemed to speak as one expert to another. Freeman’s imagination, turned agile by the necessity of making this extraordinary slaughter quite theoretically perfect, seized upon the thought. Of course: couldn’t expect him to do himself justice with a strange gun! In fact, considering that he was shooting a strange gun, he was doing rather remarkably well! It is to be doubted if there were many other duck shots, shooting a strange gun, who could equal this! This aforementioned imagination merely neglected as unimportant the fact that any gun whatever would be strange to Freeman. The flight slackened. There were long intervals when there were no birds in the sky. Cousin Jim remarked that it was too dinged warm for the best shooting. Two hours before Freeman would probably have meditated killing Cousin Jim for making that remark. “Yes,” he said now, wisely, “and it looked last night as though that north wind would bring a cold snap.” “Well, we’ll smoke and keep our weather eye open; and there’ll be the afternoon flight, anyway,” was Cousin Jim’s decision. “It’s sort of pretty out here on the marsh, anyway.”