It was a square box made of mahogany, bound at each corner with brass,
and bearing in the centre of the top a lozenge-shaped silver tablet
engraved with a Carter coat of arms, the letters "G. F. C." being
beneath.
The colonel raised the lid and uncovered the weapons that had defended
the honor of the Carter family for two generations. They were the old
fashioned single-barrel kind, with butts like those of the pirates in
a play, and they lay in a bed of faded red velvet surrounded by ramrods,
bullet-moulds, a green pill-box labeled "G. D. Gun Caps," some scraps
of wash leather, together with a copper powder-flask and a spoonful
of bullets. The nipples were protected by little patches cut from an
old kid glove.
The colonel showed with great pride a dent on one side of the barrel
where a ball had glanced, saving some ancestor's life; then he rang
the bell for Chad, and consigned the case to that hilarious darky very
much as the knight of a castle would place his trusty blade in the
hands of his chief armorer.
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