After we had passed our half-yearly examination we began our duty as trained soldiers in earnest, and besides company drill we were taken to the shooting-range once a week, one day being also devoted to service in the field. Our shooting, I confess, was very poor, but this was chiefly due to the bad sighting of our carbines, none of which were true. They were theoretically sighted up to a thousand yards, but could not be relied on above three hundred. The range was in the middle of the forest, in an opening among stately trees, and the target stood at the foot of a small hill. While firing was going on two of us were sent to patrol the approaches on each side of the targets, as quite a number of poor people used, at the risk of their lives, to lurk behind the targets in order to pick up the bullets. The patrols had strict orders to prevent any one from approaching within two hundred yards of the butts, and we had to keep a very sharp look-out, for these bullet-collectors were up to many dodges to evade us. All of a sudden, for instance, a couple of them showed themselves on the road leading to the open space between the troopers and the target, and although we shouted hard to warn them off, they pretended to be deaf and not to hear us. We had, of course, therefore, to gallop towards them, and as we came up to them they pretended to be wood-gatherers on their way home. Meanwhile, half a dozen others had crawled under the bushes a couple of hundred yards behind the targets, and we had thus to start off once more at full gallop to clear the place of the new intruders, as the shooting had to be interrupted the moment they came in view. It was for that reason that the best riders, mounted on the fastest chargers, were usually selected for this patrol work, and I usually managed to be sent out. I thoroughly enjoyed the work, as it gave me the chance of a good gallop over rough ground, and more than once we had quite exciting chases across country after the most obdurate of the law-breakers. I say "we," as after a short time it became necessary to post two troopers on each side of the targets, this decision having been come to on account of an accident which happened while the infantry were practising. An old woman had managed to creep, unseen by the sentry, right across the line of fire, and just then a volley was fired and she received two bullets in her body.