Raffles, he found it beyond his power to dispense with it, despite his
brave word. So, unheedful of his brother's advice, he not merely put his
innocent feet into the stream of forbidden pleasures, but waded in
whole-heartedly up to the chin.

Raffles, as promised, turned up on the next occasion provided with a
ferret and a gun, and all difficulties were smoothed over with the
farmer. Thus Jack Bourne took his post as the noble British sportsman
just behind the Lodestone Moat, whilst Raffles, with his ferret, worked
the bank, which was honey-combed with rabbit-holes. As the rabbits
scurried out before the ferret, Jack blazed away noisily, and
occasionally he had the pleasure of seeing a rabbit turning a somersault
as it made its last bound. Certainly, Jack was not a dead shot, but when
he contemplated the slain lying stark on the flanks of the bank, he felt
the throaty joy of the slaughtering British schoolboy. He counted out to
his worthy henchman four sixpences for the four slain with all the pride
of the elephant-hunter paying his beaters yards of brass wire and calico.
Raffles was properly grateful, of course.

Then, as their acquaintance progressed, there were little competitions
between Jack and Raffles at artificial pigeon-shooting, Raffles having
fixed up the apparatus, and Jack, from the twenty-five yards' mark,
occasionally winged his clay pigeon. It was very good sport in Jack's
opinion. Further, that little "'ouse" which Raffles knew of also soon
made the acquaintance of Jack, and he and Raffles on rainy afternoons
snatched the fearful joys of hasty "hundreds up" or "fifties up," just as
time allowed, Jack did not find the cue quite so sticky nor the charms of
stale tobacco quite so unlovely as he had expected. The landlord, who
marked for the two worthies, told our young gentleman that he had "a
pretty 'and for the long jenny," and Jack felt he could not do less than