I'm ashamed of you--I'm horrified at you--you've got bird-murder in your face; I hate the sight of you!" The quarter-master--a large grave fat man, slow alike in his bodily and his mental movements--listened to this extraordinary remonstrance with a fixed stare of amazement, and an open mouth from which the unspat tobacco-juice tricked in little brown streams.

When the impetuous young gentleman paused (not for want of words, merely for want of breath), the quarter-master turned about, and addressed himself to the audience gathered round.

"Gentlemen," he said, with a Roman brevity, "this young fellow is mad." The captain's voice checked the general outbreak of laughter.

"That will do, quarter-master.

Let it be understood that nobody is to shoot the bird--and let me suggest to _you,_ sir, that you might have expressed your sentiments quite as effectually in less violent language." Addressed in those terms, the impetuous young man burst into another fit of excitement.