Tales of the Long Bow
isn't a gun, though it does look rather like one. I see now what it is."
"And what in the world is it?" asked his friend.
"It's a telescope," staid Crane. "One of those very big telescopes they usually have in observatories."
"Couldn't be partly a gun and partly a telescope?" pleaded Pierce, reluctant to abandon his first fancy. "I've often seen the phrase 'shooting stars,' but perhaps I've got the grammar and sense of it wrong. The young man lodging with the farmer may be following one of the local sports—the local substitute for duck-shooting!"
"What in the world are you talking about?" growled the other.
"Their lodger may be shooting the stars," explained Pierce.
"Hope their lodger isn't shooting the moon," said the flippant Crane.
As they spoke there came towards them, through the green and twinkling twilight of the orchard, a young woman with copper-coloured hair and a square and rather striking face, whom Pierce saluted respectfully as the daughter of the house. He was very punctilious upon the point that these new peasant farmers must be
203
