"Well, they need some one to do it for them, and they didn't want to go to the expense of a guide. Let the parson alone for a day or two, and if he does anything out of the way just you take him by one ear and Martin take him by the other and bring him to me. I'll attend to him. What's the next trouble?" "That's out of my camp, too," said Matlack, "but I'm bound to report it. The bicycle fellow that you hired a gun to don't know the fust thing about usin' it, and the next thing you'll hear will be that he's shot his pardner, who's worth six of him." Mr. Sadler sat up very straight in his chair and stared at the guide. "Phil Matlack," he shouted, "what do you take me for? I hired that gun to that young man. Don't you suppose I know what I'm about?" "That's all right," said Matlack, "but the trouble is he don't know what he's about." "Get away man," said Peter, with a contemptuous sniff, "he'll never hurt anybody. What do you take me for? When he came to me and wanted a gun, I handed him two or three, so that he might choose one that suited him, and by the way he handled them I could see that most likely he'd never handled one before, and so I set him up all right. He's got a good gun, and all the cartridges he'll be likely to want; and the cartridges are all like this. They're a new kind I heard of last winter, and I got a case from Boston last week. I don't see how I ever managed to run my camps without them. Do you see that shot?" said he, opening one end of a cartridge. "Well, take one in your hand and pinch it." Phil did so, and it crumbled to dust in his hand. "When that load's fired," said Peter, "all the shot will crumble into dust. It wouldn't do to give raw hands blank-cartridges, because they'd find that out; but with this kind they might sit all day and fire at a baby asleep in its cradle and never disturb it, provided the baby was deaf. And he can't use his pardner's cartridges, for I gave that fellow a twelve-bore gun and his is a ten-bore." Phil grinned. "Well, then," said he, "I suppose I might as well make my mind easy, but if that bicycle man hunts much he'll get the conviction borne in on him that he's a dreadful bad shot." "Then he'll give up shooting, which is what is wanted," said Sadler. "What's your third bother?" "That young woman has made up her mind to go out in the boat by herself the very fust time she feels like it," said Matlack; "she didn't say so with her mouth, but she said it with the back of her head and her shoulders, and I want to know if that rule of yours is going to hold good this summer. Women is gettin' to do so many things they didn't use to that I didn't know but what you'd consider they'd got far enough to take themselves out on the lake, and if you do think so, I don't want to get myself in hot water with those people and then find you don't back me up."