You only make a little round hole in it, about the size of a
fly's eye; but, by the piper that played before Moses, I'll knock it
all to smithereens."
"Yes," sais I, "Mr Monaghan; fire and welcome."
Well, up he comes to the toe-line, and puts himself into attitude,
scientific like. First he throws his left leg out, and then braces
back the right one well behind him, and then he shuts his left eye to,
and makes an awful wry face, as if he was determined to keep every bit
of light out of it, and then he brought his gun up to the shoulder
with a duce of a flourish, and took a long, steady aim. All at once he
lowered the piece.
"I think I'll do it better knalin', your Honour," said he, "the way I
did when I fired at Lord Blarney's land-agent, from behind the hedge,
for lettin' a farm to a Belfast heretic. Oh! didn't I riddle him, your
Honour." He paused a moment, his tongue had run away with him. "His
coat, I main," said he. "I cut the skirts off as nait as a tailor
could. It scared him entirely, so, when he see the feathers flyin'
that way, he took to flight, and I never sot eyes on him no more. I
shouldn't wonder if he is runnin' yet."
So he put down one knee on the ground, and adjusting himself said, "I
won't leave so much as a hair of that target, to tell where it stood."
He took a fresh aim, and fired, and away he went, heels over head, the
matter of three or four times, and the gun flew away behind him, ever
so far.
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