She had been wanting to try, for she came eagerly to the offer, and after I had opened and showed her the mechanism, the cartridges, and how to shoot, I put into her hands one of the _Speranza_ Colt's. She took her bottom-lip between her teeth, shut her left eye, vaulted out the revolver like an old shot to the level of her intense right eye, and sent a ball through the geometrical centre of the boss. However, it was a fluke-shot, for I had the satisfaction of seeing her miss every one of the other five, except the last, which hit the black. That, however, was three weeks since, and now my hitting record is forty per cent., and hers ninety-six--most extraordinary: so that it is clear that this creature is the _protégée_ of someone, and favouritism is in the world. * * * * * Her book of books is the Old Testament. Sometimes, at noon or afternoon, I may look abroad from the roof or galleries, and see a remote figure sitting on the sward under the shade of plane or black cypress: and I always know that the book she cons there is the Bible--like an old Rabbi. She has a passion for stories: and there finds a store. Three nights since when it was pretty late, and the moon very splendid, I saw her passing homewards close to the lake, and shouted down to her, meaning to say 'Good-night'; but she thought that I had called her, and came: and sitting out on the top step we talked for hours, she without the yashmak. We fell to talking about the Bible. And says she: 'What did Cain to Abel?' 'He knocked him over,' I replied, liking sometimes to use such idioms, with the double object of teaching and perplexing her. 'Over what?' says she. 'Over his heels,' said I. 'I do not complehend!' 'He killed him, then.' 'That I know. But how did Abel feel when he was killed? What is it to be _killed_?' 'Well,' said I, 'you have seen bones all around you, and the bones of your mother, and you can feel the bones in your fingers. Your fingers will become mere bone after you are dead, as die you must. Those bones which you see around you, are, of course, the bones of the men of whom we often speak: and the same thing happened to them which happens to a fish or a butterfly when you catch them, and they lie all still.' 'And the men and the butterfly feel the same after they are dead?' 'Precisely the same. They lie in a deep drowse, and dream a nonsense-dream.' 'That is not dleadful. I thought that it was much more dleadful. I should not mind dying.' 'Ah!... so much the better: for it is possible that you may have to die a great deal sooner than you think.' 'I should not mind. Why were men so vely aflaid to die?' 'Because they were all such shocking cowards.' 'Oh, not all! not all!' (This girl, I know not with what motive, has now definitely set herself up against me as the defender of the dead race. With every chance she is at it.) 'Nearly all,' said I: 'tell me one who was not afraid--'