About the time sportsmen were through wondering at the convenience of the match-lock, they began to realize its inconvenience. They found that they burned up a great deal of fuse, and were hard to keep lighted. Both statements were true, so inventors racked their brains again for something better. They all knew you could bring sparks with flint and steel, and that seemed an idea worth working on. A Nuremberg inventor, in 1515, hit on the wheel-lock. In this a notched steel wheel was wound up with a key like a clock. Flint or pyrite was held against the jagged edge of the wheel by the pressure of the serpentine. You pulled the trigger, then “whirr,” the wheel revolved, a stream of sparks flew off into the flash-pan, and the gun was discharged. [Illustration: WHEEL-LOCK RIFLE] This gun worked beautifully, but it was expensive. Wealthy sportsmen could afford them, and so for the first time firearms began to be used for hunting. Some of these sixteenth and seventeenth century nabobs had such guns of beautiful workmanship, so wrought and carved and inlaid, that they must have cost a small fortune. You will find them in many large museums to this day. But now the robbers had their turn. There are two stories of the invention of the flint-lock. Both deal with robbers, both have good authority, and both may be true, for inventions sometimes are made independently in different places. One story runs that the flint-lock which was often styled “Lock à la Miquelet,” from the Spanish word, “Miquelitos”--marauders--told its origin in its name. The other is, that the flint-lock was invented in Holland by gangs of thieves, whose principal business was to steal poultry. In either case the explanation is easy. The match-lock showed its fire at night and wouldn’t do for thieves, the wheel-lock was too expensive, so again necessity became the mother of a far-reaching invention. Everybody knows what the flint-lock was like. You simply fastened a flake of flint in the cock and snapped it against a steel plate. This struck off sparks which fell into the flash-pan and fired the charge. It was so practical that it became the form of gun for all uses; thus gunmaking began to be a big industry. Invented early in the seventeenth century, it was used by the hunters and soldiers of the next two hundred years. Old people remember when flint-locks were plentiful everywhere. In fact, they are still being manufactured and are sold in some parts of Africa and the Orient. One factory in Birmingham, England, is said to produce about twelve hundred weekly, and Belgium shares in their manufacture. Some of the Arabs use them to this day in the form of strange-looking guns with long, slender muzzles and very light, curved stocks.