Charlie gave
his companion a brief history of the Tavern and indicated certain
venerable and venerated objects of interest,--such as the ancient
log watering-trough (hewn in 1832); the rain-barrels, ash-hoppers
and fodder cribs (dating back to Civil War days), the huge kettle
suspended from a thick iron bar the ends of which were supported by
rusty standards, where apple-butter was made at one season of the
year, lye at another, and where lard was rendered at butchering-time.
He took him into the wagon-shed and showed him the rickety
high-wheeled, top-heavy carriage used by the first of the Dowds
back in the forties, now ready to fall to pieces at the slightest
ungentle shake; the once gaudy sleigh with its great curved "runners";
and over in a dark corner two long barrelled rifles with rusty locks
and rotten stocks, that once upon a time cracked the doom of deer
and wolf and fox, of catamount and squirrel and coon, of wild turkeys
and geese and ducks--to say nothing of an occasional horsethief.
"They say old man Dowd could shoot the eye out of a squirrel three
hundreds yards away with one of these rifles," announced Charlie;
"and it was no trick at all for him to nip a wild turkey's head
off at five hundred yards. I'll bet you didn't run up against any
such shooting as that over in France."
Blythe shook his head. "No such rifle shooting, I grant you.
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