CURED AT LAST.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 319, 10 December 1910, Page 2

CURED AT LAST.

MAN WHO DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS LOADED. "I sec by the papers "that an acquaintance of mine has shot his sister-in-law with one of those wellknown unloaded pistols," remarked a man who was lolling in a big armchair in the club smoking-room, looking up suddenly and nodding and addressing his neighbour. "That reminds me," he went on, "of my old friend Tom Brown. O, Tom as a boy was such a spoiled, adventurous fellow, with a most distorted sense of humour ! 1 His father was an army officer who had been killed in India, and his mother put up no restraint on the pastimes of' her only son. His room at home was a regular arsenalweapons of every sort scattered about — everything from a knuckleduster to the latest thing in firearms.

"Tom's idea of fun and a brotherly welcome was to partly open his door when anyone knocked and to run a sword through the crack to see how near he could come to his friend's hide without puncturing it. "I bear a scar to this day on my forearm where he ran the steel into mc once by accident. He was such a wag —and so impetuous. Of course, he apologised for the accident, just as sincerely as he would have don 1 : I suppose, had he involuntarily lulled me. "To vary the monotony of his sword play he would introduce sometimes another of his specialities, which was to aim and fire pistols which he declared were unloaded at fellows who visited him. It really was a miracle that worse things didn't happen thau the petty mishaps which constantly were occurring at his home,

"Even after he became a man some of his vivacious, boyish ways of handling firearms clung to lvm, an 1 I always said he would never be cured of his careless habits until he killed some one."

"And 1 suppose you're go ng to tell me that he did kill a man at iast, and that that cured him, eh ?" "Yes, he did, and, naturally, it cured him. The man Tom finally killed was himself."—Chicago "InterOcean,"