"
Dick shambled through the days unkempt in body and savage in soul, as the
smaller boys of the school learned to know, for when the spirit moved him he
would hit them, cunningly and with science. The same spirit made him more than
once try to tease Maisie, but the girl refused to be made unhappy. "We are both
miserable as it is," said she. "What is the use of trying to make things worse?
Let's find things to do, and forget things."
The pistol was the outcome of that search. It could only be used on the
muddiest foreshore of the beach, far away from the bathing-machines and
pierheads, below the grassy slopes of Fort Keeling. The tide ran out nearly two
miles on that coast, and the many-coloured mud-banks, touched by the sun, sent
up a lamentable smell of dead weed. It was late in the afternoon when Dick and
Maisie arrived on their ground, Amomma trotting patiently behind them.
"Mf!" said Maisie, sniffing the air. "I wonder what makes the sea so smelly? I
don'tlike it!"
"You never like anything that isn't made just for you," said Dick bluntly.
"Give me the cartridges, and I'll try first shot. How far does one of these
little revolvers carry?"
"Oh, half a mile," said Maisie, promptly. "At least it makes an awful noise.
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