This Bill Bennett was a good deal of a marksman, and one day while attending a county fair, where he had imbibed a considerable measure of bottled-up unsteadiness, he came reeling along to a group of men who were engaged in shooting at a target. The range was long, and the price paid by each contestant for a chance to display his skill, or lack of it, was a dollar a shot, but the prize was a fat ox, which was destined to go to the first who made a bull’s-eye. As yet none had succeeded in making the lucky shot.

Bill staggered into position, and threw down a ten-dollar bill for ten shots. The attendants steadied him sufficiently to confine his wild target practice to that part of the sky and horizon where the target was located.

Bill had wasted nine shots without coming within speaking distance of the target, which to his drunken sight appeared to be double. Rolling like a ship in a storm, Bill brought the gun to his shoulder for the last round, declaring, “By gum, I’m agoing to hit one of them targets this time.”

And he did. As they went sailing by, he let blaze at them, and behold, it was a bull’s-eye! Bill had won the ox on a one-to-a-million chance.