On a dark November morning, when a blustering wind drove the rain against the windows, Thomas Foster sat stripping the lock of a favorite g*n in the room he called his study, at Hazlehurst, in Shropshire. The shelves on the handsome paneled walls contained a few works on agriculture, horse-breeding, and British natural history, but two racks were filled with guns and fishing-rods and the table at which Foster was seated had a vise clamped to its edge. He had once had a commodious g*n-room, but had given it up, under pressure from his wife, as Hazlehurst was small and she had numerous guests, but the study was his private retreat. A hacksaw, a few files, a wire brush, and a bottle of Rangoon oil were spread out in front of him, the latter standing, for the sake of cleanliness, on the cover
