The compassionate Reuben was quick to feel the humiliation with which this brawling announcement of the General’s presence must cover the General’s son. It had been apparent to him before that Horace would have to considerably revise the boyish estimate of his father’s position and importance which, he brought back with him from Europe. But it was cruel to have the work of disillusion begun in this rude, blunt form. He tried to soften the effect of the blow.

“It isn’t as bad as all that,” he said, tacitly ignoring what they had just heard. “No doubt some rough people do come to these gatherings; but, on the other hand, if a man is fond of shooting, why, don’t you see, this furnishes him with the best kind of test of his skill. Really, there is no reason why he shouldn’t come—and—besides—”

Reuben was not clever at saying things he did not wholly mean, and his good-natured attempt to gloss over the facts came to an abrupt halt from sheer lack of ideas.

“I suppose I shall have to learn to be a Thessalian all over again,” said Horace. “If you don’t mind, well go in. It’s just as well to see the thing.”

Suiting the action to the word, he moved toward the gate. Reuben hesitated for a moment, and then, with an “All right—for a few minutes”—followed him into the yard. The two young men stood upon the outskirts of the crowd for a time, and then, as opportunity favored, edged their way through until they were a part of the inner half-ring around a table, upon which were rifles, cartridges, cleaning rags, a bottle and some tumblers. At their feet, under and about the table, lay several piles of turkeys. The largest of these heaps, containing some dozen birds, was, as they were furtively informed by a small boy, the property of the “General.”

This gentleman, who stood well to the front of the table, might be pardoned for not turning around to note the presence of new-comers, since he himself had some money wagered on his work. He had on the instant fired his third shot, and stood with the smoking gun lowered, and his eyes fixed on the target in concentrated expectancy. The turkey made a movement and somebody called out “hit!” But the General’s keen vision told him better. “No, it was a line shot,” he said, “a foot too high.” He kept his gaze still fixed on the remote object, mechanically taking the fresh gun which was handed to him, but not immediately raising it to his shoulder.

General Sylvanus—familiarly called “Vane”—Boyce was now close upon sixty, of middle height and a thick and portly figure, and with perfectly white, close-cropped hair and mustache. His face had in its day boasted both regular, well-cut features and a clear complexion. But the skin was now of one uniform florid tint, even to the back of his neck, and the outlines of the profile were blurred and fattened. His gray eyes, as they swept the field of snow, had still their old, sharp, commanding glance, but they looked out from red and puffy lids.

Just as he lifted his gun, an interested bystander professed to discover Horace for the first time, and called out exuberantly: “Why, hello, Hod! I say, ‘Vane, here’s your boy Hod!”

“Oh, here, fair play!” shouted some of the General’s backers; “you mustn’t try that on—spoiling his aim in that way.” Their solicitude was uncalled for.

“Damn my boy Hod, and you too!” remarked the General calmly, raising his rifle with an uninterrupted movement, levelling it with deliberation, firing, and killing his bird.

Amid the hum of conversation which arose at this, the General turned, laid his gun down, and stepped across the space to where Horace and Reuben stood.

“Well, my lad,” he said heartily, shaking his son’s hand, “I’m glad to see you back. I’d have been at the dép?t to meet you, only I had this match on with Blodgett, and the money was up. I hope you didn’t mind my damning you just now—I daresay I haven’t enough influence to have it do you much harm—and it was Grigg’s scheme to rattle my nerve just as I was going to shoot. How are you, anyway? How de do, Tracy? What’ll you both drink? This is rye whiskey here, but they’ll bring out anything else you want.”

“I’ll take a mouthful of this,” said Horace; “hold on, not so much.” He poured back some of the generous portion which had been given him, and touched glasses with his father.

“You’re sure you won’t have anything, Tracy?” said the General. “No? You don’t know what’s good for you. Standing around in the cold here, a man needs something.”

“But I’m not going to stand around in the cold,” answered Reuben with a half-smile. “I must be going on in a moment or two.”

“Don’t go yet,” said the General, cheerily, as he put down his glass and took up the gun. “Wait and see me shoot my score. I’ve got the range now.”

“You’ve got to kill every bird but one, now, General,” said one of his friends, in admonition.

“All right; don’t be afraid,” replied the champion, in a confident tone.

But it turned out not to be all right. The seventh shot was a miss, and so was the tenth, upon which, as the final and conclusive one, great interest hung. Some of those who had lost money by reason of their faith in the General seemed to take it to heart, but the General himself displayed no sign of gloom. He took another drink, and then emptied his pockets of all the bank-bills they contained, and distributed them among his creditors with perfect amiability. There was not enough money to go around, evidently, for he called out in a pleasant voice to his son:

“Come here a minute, Hod. Have you got thirty dollars loose in your pocket? I’m that much short.” He pushed about the heap of limp turkeys on the snow under the table with one foot, in amused contemplation, and added: “These skinny wretches have cost us about nine dollars apiece. You might at least have fed ’em a trifle better, Dave.”

Horace produced the sum mentioned and handed it over to his father with a somewhat subdued, not to say rueful, air. He did not quite like the way in which the little word “us” had been used.

While the General was light-heartedly engaged in apportioning out his son’s money, and settling his bill, a new man came up, and, taking a rifle in his hands, inquired the price of a shot. He was told that it was ten cents, and to this information was added with cold emphasis the remark that before he fooled with the guns he must put down his money.

“Oh, I’ve got the coin fast enough,” said the newcomer, ringing four dimes on the table.

“Wait a moment,” said Horace to his father and Reuben, who were about to quit the yard. “Let’s watch Ben Lawton shoot. I might as well see the last of my half-dollar. He’s had one drink out of it already.”

Lawton lifted the gun as if he were accustomed to firearms, and after he had made sure of his footing on the hard-trodden snow, took a long, careful aim, and fired. It was with evident sorrow that he saw the snow fly a few feet to one side of the turkey. He decided to have only two shots more, and one drink, and the drink first—a drink of such full and notable dimensions that Dave Rantell was half-tempted to intervene between the cup and the lip. The two shots which followed were very good shots indeed—one of them even seemed to have cut some feathers into the air—but they killed no turkey.

Poor Ben looked for a long time after his last bullet, as if in some vague hope that it might have paused on the way, and would resume its fatal course in due season. Then he laid the rifle down with a deep sigh, and walked slowly out, with his hands plunged dejectedly into his trousers pockets, and his shoulders more rounded than ever. The habitual expression of helpless melancholy which his meagre, characterless visage wore was deepened now to despair.

“Well, Ben,” said Horace to him, as he shuffled past them, “you were right. You might just as well have hung around the dép?t, and let some one else carry my things. You’ve got no more to show for it now than if you had.”

The young man spoke in the tone of easy, paternal banter which prosperous people find it natural to adopt toward their avowedly weak and foolish brethren, and it did not occur to Lawton to resent it. He stopped, and lifted his head just high enough to look in a gloomy way at Horace and his companions for a moment; then he dropped it again and turned to resume his course without answering. On second thought he halted, and without again looking up, groaned out:

“There ain’t another such a darned worthless fool as I be in the whole darned county. I don’t know what I’ll say to her. I’m a good mind not to go home at all. Here I was, figurin’ on havin’ a real Thanksgiving dinner for her, to try and make her feel glad she’d come back amongst us again; and if I’d saved my money and fired all five shots, I’d a got a bird, sure—and that’s what makes me so blamed mad. It’s always my darned luck!”

While he spoke a boy came up to them, dragging a hand-sled upon which General Boyce’s costly collection of poultry was piled. Horace stopped the lad, and took from the top of the heap two of the best of the fowls.

“Here, Ben,” he said, “take these home with you. We’ve got more than we know what to do with. We should only give them away to people who didn’t need them.”

Lawton had been moved almost to tears by the force of his self-depreciatory emotions. His face brightened now on the instant, as he grasped the legs of the turkeys and felt their weight. He looked satisfiedly down at their ruffling circumference of blue-black feathers, and at their pimply pink heads dragging sidewise on the snow.

“You’re a regular brick, Hod,” he said, with more animation than it was his wont to display. “They’ll be tickled to death down to the house. I’m obliged to you, and so she’ll be—”

He stopped short, weighed the birds again in his hand with a saddened air, and held them out toward Horace. All the joy had gone out of his countenance and tone.

“No; I’m much obliged to you, Hod, but I can’t take ’em,” he said, with pathetic reluctance.

“Nonsense!” replied the young man, curtly. “Don’t make a fool of yourself twice in the same afternoon. Of course you’ll take them. Only go straight home with them, instead of selling them for drinks.”

Horace turned upon his heel as he spoke and rejoined his father and Reuben, who had walked on slowly ahead. The General had been telling his companion some funny story, and his eyes were still twinkling with merriment as his son came up, and he repeated to him the gist of his humorous narrative.

Horace did not seem to appreciate the joke, and kept a serious face even at the most comical part of the anecdote. This haunting recurrence of the Lawton business, as he termed it in his thoughts, annoyed him; and still more was he disturbed and vexed by what he had seen of his father. During his previous visit to Thessaly upon his return from Europe, some months before, the General had been leading a temperate and almost monastic life under the combined restraints of rheumatism and hay-fever, and this present revelation of his tastes and habits came therefore in the nature of a surprise to Horace. The latter was unable to find any elements of pleasure in this surprise, and scowled at the snow accordingly, instead of joining in his father’s laughter. Besides, the story was not altogether of the kind which sits with most dignity on paternal lips.

The General noted his son’s solemnity and deferred to it. “I’m glad you gave that poor devil the turkeys,” he said. “I suppose they’re as poor as they make ’em. Only—what do you think, Tracy; as long as I’d shot all the birds, I might have been consulted, eh, about giving them away?”

The query was put in a jocular enough tone, but it grated upon the young man’s mood. “I don’t think the turkey business is one that either of us particularly shines in,” he replied, with a snap in his tone. “You say that your turkeys cost you nine dollars apiece. Apparently I am by way of paying fifteen dollars each for my two.”

“‘By way of’—that’s an English expression, isn’t it?” put in Reuben, hastily, to avert the threatened domestic dispute. “I’ve seen it in novels, but I never heard it used before.”

The talk was fortunately turned at this from poultry to philology; and the General, though he took no part in the conversation, evinced no desire to return to the less pleasant subject. Thus the three walked on to the corner where their ways separated. As they stood here for the parting moment, Reuben said in an aside to Horace:

“That was a kindly act of yours—to give Lawton the turkeys. I can’t tell you how much it pleased me. Those little things show the character of a man. If you like to come down to my office Friday, and are still of the same mind about a partnership, we will talk it over.”