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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Home in the Silver West, by Gordon Stables
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Our Home in the Silver West
+       A Story of Struggle and Adventure
+
+Author: Gordon Stables
+
+Release Date: March 9, 2009 [EBook #28291]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR HOME IN THE SILVER WEST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank, Juliet Sutherland and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: The Figure Springs into the Air--See page 129.]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE BOYS OWN BOOKSHELF]
+
+OUR HOME IN THE SILVER WEST
+
+A Story of Struggle and Adventure
+
+BY
+
+GORDON STABLES, C.M., M.D., R.N.
+
+AUTHOR OF 'THE CRUISE OF THE SNOWBIRD,' 'WILD ADVENTURES ROUND THE POLE,'
+ETC., ETC.
+
+THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY
+
+56, Paternoster Row; 65, St. Paul's Churchyard and 164 Piccadilly
+
+
+
+
+Richard Clay and Sons, Limited,
+London and Bungay.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+CHAPTER                                           PAGE
+     I.  The Highland Feud.                         11
+    II.  Our Boyhood's Life.                        23
+   III.  A Terrible Ride.                           30
+    IV.  The Ring and the Book.                     44
+     V.  A New Home in the West.                    54
+    VI.  The Promised Land at Last.                 64
+   VII.  On Shore at Rio.                           77
+  VIII.  Moncrieff Relates His Experiences.         86
+    IX.  Shopping and Shooting.                     96
+     X.  A Journey That Seems Like a Dream.        106
+    XI.  The Tragedy at the Fonda.                 115
+   XII.  Attack by Pampa Indians.                  125
+  XIII.  The Flight and the Chase.                 134
+   XIV.  Life on an Argentine Estancia.            146
+    XV.  We Build our House and Lay Out Gardens.   155
+   XVI.  Summer in the Silver West.                165
+  XVII.  The Earthquake.                           175
+ XVIII.  Our Hunting Expedition.                   185
+   XIX.  In the Wilderness.                        197
+    XX.  The Mountain Crusoe.                      209
+   XXI.  Wild Adventures on Prairie and Pampas.    221
+  XXII.  Adventure With a Tiger.                   231
+ XXIII.  A Ride for Life.                          244
+  XXIV.  The Attack on the Estancia.               255
+   XXV.  The Last Assault.                         266
+    XXV  Farewell to the Silver West.              279
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+                                                    PAGE
+The Figure Springs into the Air             Frontispiece
+Orla thrusts his Muzzle into my Hand                  10
+Ray lay Stark and Stiff                               18
+'Look! He is Over!'                                   33
+He pointed his Gun at me                              41
+'I'll teach ye!'                                      74
+Fairly Noosed                                         99
+'Ye can Claw the Pat'                                138
+Comical in the Extreme                               195
+Tries to steady himself to catch the Lasso           203
+Interview with the Orang-outang                      214
+On the same Limb of the Tree                         236
+The Indians advanced with a Wild Shout               268
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Orla thrusts his Muzzle into my Hand]
+
+
+
+
+OUR HOME IN THE SILVER WEST
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE HIGHLAND FEUD.
+
+
+Why should I, Murdoch M'Crimman of Coila, be condemned for a period of
+indefinite length to the drudgery of the desk's dull wood? That is the
+question I have just been asking myself. Am I emulous of the honour and
+glory that, they say, float halo-like round the brow of the author? Have I
+the desire to awake and find myself famous? The fame, alas! that authors
+chase is but too often an _ignis fatuus_. No; honour like theirs I crave
+not, such toil is not incumbent on me. Genius in a garret! To some the
+words may sound romantic enough, but--ah me!--the position seems a sad
+one. Genius munching bread and cheese in a lonely attic, with nothing
+betwixt the said genius and the sky and the cats but rafters and tiles! I
+shudder to think of it. If my will were omnipotent, Genius should never
+shiver beneath the tiles, never languish in an attic. Genius should be
+clothed in purple and fine linen, Genius should---- 'Yes, aunt, come in;
+I'm not very busy yet.'
+
+My aunt sails into my beautiful room in the eastern tower of Castle
+Coila.
+
+'I was afraid,' she says, almost solemnly, 'I might be disturbing your
+meditations. Do I find you really at work?'
+
+'I've hardly arrived at that point yet, dear aunt. Indeed, if the truth
+will not displease you, I greatly fear serious concentration is not very
+much in my line. But as you desire me to write our strange story, and as
+mother also thinks the duty devolves on me, behold me seated at my table
+in this charming turret chamber, which owes its all of comfort to your
+most excellent taste, auntie mine.'
+
+As I speak I look around me. The evening sunshine is streaming into my
+room, which occupies the whole of one story of the tower. Glance where I
+please, nothing is here that fails to delight the eye. The carpet beneath
+my feet is soft as moss, the tall mullioned windows are bedraped with the
+richest curtains. Pictures and mirrors hang here and there, and seem part
+and parcel of the place. So does that dark lofty oak bookcase, the great
+harp in the west corner, the violin that leans against it, the
+_jardinière_, the works of art, the arms from every land--the shields, the
+claymores, the spears and helmets, everything is in keeping. This is my
+garret. If I want to meditate, I have but to draw aside a curtain in
+yonder nook, and lo! a little baize-covered door slides aside and admits
+me to one of the tower-turrets, a tiny room in which fairies might live,
+with a window on each side giving glimpses of landscape--and landscape
+unsurpassed for beauty in all broad Scotland.
+
+But it was by the main doorway of my chamber that auntie entered, drawing
+aside the curtains and pausing a moment till she should receive my
+cheering invitation. And this door leads on to the roof, and this roof
+itself is a sight to see. Loftily domed over with glass, it is at once a
+conservatory, a vinery, and tropical aviary. Room here for trees even, for
+miniature palms, while birds of the rarest plumage flit silently from
+bough to bough among the oranges, or lisp out the sweet lilts that have
+descended to them from sires that sang in foreign lands. Yonder a
+fountain plays and casts its spray over the most lovely feathery ferns.
+The roof is very spacious, and the conservatory occupies the greater part
+of it, leaving room outside, however, for a delightful promenade. After
+sunset coloured lamps are often lit here, and the place then looks even
+more lovely than before. All this, I need hardly say, was my aunt's
+doing.
+
+I wave my hand, and the lady sinks half languidly into a fauteuil.
+
+'And so,' I say, laughingly, 'you have come to visit Genius in his
+garret.'
+
+My aunt smiles too, but I can see it is only out of politeness.
+
+I throw down my pen; I leave my chair and seat myself on the bearskin
+beside the ample fireplace and begin toying with Orla, my deerhound.
+
+'Aunt, play and sing a little; it will inspire me.'
+
+She needs no second bidding. She bends over the great harp and lightly
+touches a few chords.
+
+'What shall I play or sing?'
+
+'Play and sing as you feel, aunt.'
+
+'I feel thus,' my aunt says, and her fingers fly over the strings,
+bringing forth music so inspiriting and wild that as I listen, entranced,
+some words of Ossian come rushing into my memory:
+
+'The moon rose in the East. Fingal returned in the gleam of his arms. The
+joy of his youth was great, their souls settled as a sea from a storm.
+Ullin raised the song of gladness. The hills of Inistore rejoiced. The
+flame of the oak arose, and the tales of heroes were told.'
+
+Aunt is not young, but she looks very noble now--looks the very
+incarnation of the music that fills the room. In it I can hear the
+battle-cry of heroes, the wild slogan of clan after clan rushing to the
+fight, the clang of claymore on shield, the shout of victory, the wail for
+the dead. There are tears in my eyes as the music ceases, and my aunt
+turns once more towards me.
+
+'Aunt, your music has made me ashamed of myself. Before you came I
+recoiled from the task you had set before me; I longed to be out and away,
+marching over the moors gun in hand and dogs ahead. Now I--I--yes, aunt,
+this music inspires me.'
+
+Aunt rises as I speak, and together we leave the turret chamber, and,
+passing through the great conservatory, we reach the promenade. We lean on
+the battlement, long since dismantled, and gaze beneath us. Close to the
+castle walls below is a well-kept lawn trending downwards with slight
+incline to meet the loch which laps over its borders. This loch, or lake,
+stretches for miles and miles on every side, bounded here and there by
+bare, black, beetling cliffs, and in other places
+
+               'O'erhung by wild woods thickening green,
+
+a very cloudland of foliage. The easternmost horizon of this lake is a
+chain of rugged mountains, one glance at which would tell you the season
+was autumn, for they are crimsoned over with blooming heather. The season
+is autumn, and the time is sunset; the shadow of the great tower falls
+darkling far over the loch, and already crimson streaks of cloud are
+ranged along the hill-tops. So silent and still is it that we can hear the
+bleating of sheep a good mile off, and the throb of the oars of a boat far
+away on the water, although the boat itself is but a little dark speck.
+There is another dark speck, high, high above the crimson clouds. It comes
+nearer and nearer; it gets bigger and bigger; and presently a huge eagle
+floats over the castle, making homeward to his eyrie in the cliffs of Ben
+Coila.
+
+The air gets cooler as the shadows fall; I draw the shawl closer round my
+aunt's shoulders. She lifts a hand as if to deprecate the attention.
+
+'Listen, Murdoch,' she says. 'Listen, Murdoch M'Crimman.'
+
+She seldom calls me by my name complete.
+
+'I may leave you now, may I not?'
+
+'I know what you mean, aunt,' I reply. 'Yes; to the best of my ability I
+will write our strange story.'
+
+'Who else would but you, Murdoch M'Crimman, chief of the house of Crimman,
+chief of the clan?'
+
+I bow my head in silent sorrow.
+
+'Yes, aunt; I know. Poor father is gone, and I _am_ chief.'
+
+She touches my hand lightly--it is her way of taking farewell. Next moment
+I am alone. Orla thrusts his great muzzle into my hand; I pat his head,
+then go back with him to my turret chamber, and once more take up my pen.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+A blood feud! Has the reader ever heard of such a thing? Happily it is
+unknown in our day. A blood feud--a quarrel 'twixt kith and kin, a feud
+oftentimes bequeathed from bleeding sire to son, handed down from
+generation to generation, getting more bitter in each; a feud that not
+even death itself seems enough to obliterate; an enmity never to be
+forgotten while hills raise high their heads to meet the clouds.
+
+Such a feud is surely cruel. It is more, it is sinful--it is madness. Yet
+just such a feud had existed for far more than a hundred years between our
+family of M'Crimman and the Raes of Strathtoul.
+
+There is but little pleasure in referring back to such a family quarrel,
+but to do so is necessary. Vast indeed is the fire that a small spark may
+sometimes kindle. Two small dead branches rubbing together as the wind
+blows may fire a forest, and cause a conflagration that shall sweep from
+end to end of a continent.
+
+It was a hundred years ago, and forty years to that; the head of the house
+of Stuart--Prince Charles Edward, whom his enemies called the
+Pretender--had not yet set foot on Scottish shore, though there were
+rumours almost daily that he had indeed come at last. The Raes were
+cousins of the M'Crimmans; the Raes were head of the clan M'Rae, and their
+country lay to the south of our estates. It was an ill-fated day for both
+clans when one morning a stalwart Highlander, flying from glen to glen
+with the fiery cross waving aloft, brought a missive to the chief of
+Coila. The Raes had been summoned to meet their prince; the M'Crimman had
+been _solicited_. In two hours' time the straths were all astir with
+preparations for the march. No boy or man who could carry arms, 'twixt the
+ages of sixteen and sixty, but buckled his claymore to his side and made
+ready to leave. Listen to the wild shout of the men, the shrill notes of
+bagpipes, the wailing of weeping women and children! Oh, it was a stirring
+time; my Scotch blood leaps in all my veins as I think of it even now.
+Right on our side; might on our side! We meant to do or die!
+
+        'Rise! rise! lowland and highland men!
+           Bald sire to beardless son, each come and early.
+        Rise! rise! mainland and island men,
+           Belt on your claymores and fight for Prince Charlie.
+                Down from the mountain steep--
+                Up from the valley deep--
+        Out from the clachan, the bothy and shieling;
+                Bugle and battle-drum,
+                Bid chief and vassal come,
+        Loudly our bagpipes the pibroch are pealing.'
+
+M'Crimman of Coila that evening met the Raes hastening towards the lake.
+
+'Ah, kinsman,' cried M'Crimman, 'this is indeed a glorious day! I have
+been summoned by letter from the royal hands of our bold young prince
+himself.'
+
+'And I, chief of the Raes, have been summoned by cross. A letter was none
+too good for Coila. Strathtoul must be content to follow the pibroch and
+drum.'
+
+'It was an oversight. My brother must neither fret nor fume. If our prince
+but asked me, I'd fight in the ranks for him, and carry musket or pike or
+pistol.'
+
+[Illustration: Ray lay Stark and Stiff]
+
+'It's good being you, with your letter and all that. Kinsman though you
+be, I'd have you know, and I'd have our prince understand, that the Raes
+and Crimmans are one and the same family, and equal where they stand or
+fall.'
+
+'Of that,' said the proud Coila, drawing himself up and lowering his
+brows, 'our prince is the best judge.'
+
+'These are pretty airs to give yourself, M'Crimman! One would think your
+claymore drank blood every morning!'
+
+'Brother,' said M'Crimman, 'do not let us quarrel. I have orders to see
+your people on the march. They are to come with us. I must do my duty.'
+
+'Never!' shouted Rae. 'Never shall my clan obey your commands!'
+
+'You refuse to fight for Charlie?'
+
+'Under your banner--yes!'
+
+'Then draw, dog! Were you ten times more closely related to me, you should
+eat your words or drown them in your blood!'
+
+Half an hour afterwards the M'Crimmans were on the march southwards, their
+bold young chief at their head, banners streaming and pibroch ringing!
+but, alas! their kinsman Rae lay stark and stiff on the bare hillside.
+
+There and then was established the feud that lasted so long and so
+bitterly. Surrounded by her vassals and retainers, loud in their wailing
+for their departed chief, the widowed wife had thrown herself on the body
+of her husband in a paroxysm of wild, uncontrollable grief.
+
+But nought could restore life and animation to that lowly form. The dead
+chief lay on his back, with face up-turned to the sky's blue, which his
+eyes seemed to pierce. His bonnet had fallen off, his long yellow hair
+floated on the grass, his hand yet grasped the great claymore, but his
+tartans were dyed with blood.
+
+Then a brother of the Rae approached and led the weeping woman gently
+away. Almost immediately the warriors gathered and knelt around the
+corpse and swore the terrible feud--swore eternal enmity to the house of
+Coila--'to fight the clan wherever found, to wrestle, to rackle and rive
+with them, and never to make peace
+
+                   'While there's leaf on the forest
+                      Or foam on the river.'
+
+We all know the story of Prince Charlie's expedition, and how, after
+victories innumerable, all was lost to his cause through disunions in his
+own camps; how his sun went down on the red field of Culloden Moor; how
+true and steadfast, even after defeat, the peasant Highlanders were to
+their chief; and how the glens and straths were devastated by fire and
+sword; and how the streams ran red with the innocent blood of old men and
+children, spilled by the brutal soldiery of the ruthless duke.
+
+The M'Crimmans lost their estates. The Raes had never fought for Charlie.
+Their glen was spared, but the hopes of M'Rae--the young chief--were
+blighted, for after years of exile the M'Crimman was pardoned, and fires
+were once more lit in the halls of Castle Coila.
+
+Long years went by, many of the Raes went abroad to fight in foreign lands
+wherever good swords were needed and lusty arms to wield them withal; but
+those who remained in or near Strathtoul still kept up the feud with as
+great fierceness as though it had been sworn but yesterday.
+
+Towards the beginning of the present century, however, a strange thing
+happened. A young officer of French dragoons came to reside for a time in
+Glen Coila. His name was Le Roi. Though of Scotch extraction, he had never
+been before to our country. Now hospitality is part and parcel of the
+religion of Scotland; it is not surprising, therefore, that this young son
+of the sword should have been received with open arms at Coila, nor that,
+dashing, handsome, and brave himself, he should have fallen in love with
+the winsome daughter of the then chief of the M'Crimmans. When he sought
+to make her his bride explanations were necessary. It was no uncommon
+thing in those days for good Scotch families to permit themselves to be
+allied with France; but there must be rank on both sides. Had a
+thunderbolt burst in Castle Coila then it could have caused no greater
+commotion than did the fact when it came to light that Le Roi was a direct
+descendant of the chief of the Raes. Alas! for the young lovers now. Le
+Roi in silence and sorrow ate his last meal at Castle Coila. Hospitality
+had never been shown more liberally than it was that night, but ere the
+break of day Le Roi had gone--never to return to the glen _in propriâ
+personâ_. Whether or not an aged harper who visited the castle a month
+thereafter was Le Roi in disguise may never be known; but this, at least,
+is fact--that same night the chief's daughter was spirited away and seen
+no more in Coila.
+
+There was talk, however, of a marriage having been solemnized by
+torchlight, in the little Catholic chapel at the foot of the glen, but of
+this we will hear more anon, for thereby hangs a tale.
+
+In course of time Coila presented the sad spectacle of a house without a
+head. Who should now be heir? The Scottish will of former chiefs notified
+that in event of such an occurrence the estates should pass 'to the
+nearest heirs whatever.'
+
+But was there no heir of direct descent? For a time it seemed there would
+be or really was. To wit, a son of Le Roi, the officer who had wedded into
+the house of M'Crimman.
+
+Now our family was brother-family to the M'Crimmans. M'Crimmans we were
+ourselves, and Celtic to the last drop of blood in our veins.
+
+Our claim to the estate was but feebly disputed by the French Rae's son.
+His father and mother had years ago crossed the bourne from which no
+traveller ever returns, and he himself was not young. The little church or
+chapel in which the marriage had been celebrated was a ruin--it had been
+burned to the ground, whether as part price of the terrible feud or not,
+no one could say; the priest was dead, or gone none knew whither; and old
+Mawsie, a beldame, lived in the cottage that had once been the Catholic
+manse.
+
+Those were wild and strange times altogether in this part of the Scottish
+Highlands, and law was oftentimes the property of might rather than
+right.
+
+At the time, then, our story really opens, my father had lived in the
+castle and ruled in the glens for many a long year. I was the first-born,
+next came Donald, then Dugald, and last of all our one sister Flora.
+
+What a happy life was ours in Glen Coila, till the cloud arose on our
+horizon, which, gathering force amain, burst in storm at last over our
+devoted heads!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+OUR BOYHOOD'S LIFE.
+
+
+On our boyhood's life--that, I mean, of my brothers and myself--I must
+dwell no longer than the interest of our strange story demands, for our
+chapters must soon be filled with the relation of events and adventures
+far more stirring than anything that happened at home in our day.
+
+And yet no truer words were ever spoken than these--'the boy is father of
+the man.' The glorious battle of Waterloo--Wellington himself told us--was
+won in the cricket field at home. And in like manner our greatest pioneers
+of civilisation, our most successful emigrants, men who have often
+literally to lash the rifle to the plough stilts, as they cultivate and
+reclaim the land of the savage, have been made and manufactured, so to
+speak, in the green valleys of old England, and on the hills and moors of
+bonnie Scotland.
+
+Probably the new M'Crimman of Coila, as my father was called on the lake
+side and in the glens, had mingled more, far more, in life than any chief
+who had ever reigned before him. He would not have been averse to drawing
+the sword in his country's cause, had it been necessary, but my brothers
+and I were born in peaceful times, shortly after the close of the war with
+Russia. No, my father could have drawn the claymore, but he could also use
+the ploughshare--and did.
+
+There were at first grumblers in the clans, who lamented the advent of
+anything that they were pleased to call new-fangled. Men there were who
+wished to live as their forefathers had done in the 'good old
+times'--cultivate only the tops of the 'rigs,' pasture the sheep and
+cattle on the upland moors, and live on milk and meal, and the fish from
+the lake, with an occasional hare, rabbit, or bird when Heaven thought fit
+to send it.
+
+They were not prepared for my father's sweeping innovations. They stared
+in astonishment to see the bare hillsides planted with sheltering spruce
+and pine trees; to see moss and morass turned inside out, drained and made
+to yield crops of waving grain, where all was moving bog before; to see
+comfortable cottages spring up here and there, with real stone walls and
+smiling gardens front and rear, in place of the turf and tree shielings of
+bygone days; and to see a new school-house, where English--real
+English--was spoken and taught, pour forth a hundred happy children almost
+every weekday all the year round.
+
+This was 'tempting Providence, and no good could come of it;' so spoke the
+grumblers, and they wondered indeed that the old warlike chiefs of
+M'Crimman did not turn in their graves. But even the grumblers got fewer
+and further between, and at last long peace and plenty reigned contentedly
+hand in hand from end to end of Glen Coila, and all around the loch that
+was at once the beauty and pride of our estate.
+
+Improvements were not confined to the crofters' holdings; they extended to
+the castle farm and to the castle itself. Nothing that was old about the
+latter was swept away, but much that was new sprang up, and rooms long
+untenanted were now restored.
+
+A very ancient and beautiful castle was that of Coila, with its one huge
+massive tower, and its dark frowning embattled walls. It could be seen
+from far and near, for even the loch itself was high above the level of
+the sea. I speak of it, be it observed, in the past tense, solely because
+I am writing of the past--of happy days for ever fled. The castle is still
+as beautiful--nay, even more so, for my aunt's good taste has completed
+the improvements my father began.
+
+I do not think any one could have come in contact with father, as I
+remember him during our early days at Coila, without loving and respecting
+him. He was our hero--my brothers' and mine--so tall, so noble-looking, so
+handsome, whether ranging over the heather in autumn with his gun on his
+shoulder, or labouring with a hoe or rake in hand in garden or meadow.
+
+Does it surprise any one to know that even a Highland chieftain, descended
+from a long line of warriors, could handle a hoe as deftly as a claymore?
+I grant he may have been the first who ever did so from choice, but was he
+demeaned thereby? Assuredly not; and work in the fields never went half so
+cheerfully on as when father and we boys were in the midst of the
+servants. Our tutor was a young clergyman, and he, too, used to throw off
+his black coat and join us.
+
+At such times it would have done the heart of a cynic good to have been
+there; song and joke and hearty laugh followed in such quick succession
+that it seemed more like working for fun than anything else.
+
+And our triumph of triumphs was invariably consummated at the end of
+harvest, for then a supper was given to the tenants and servants. This
+supper took place in the great hall of the castle--the hall that in
+ancient days had witnessed many a warlike meeting and Bacchanalian feast.
+
+Before a single invitation was made out for this event of the season every
+sheaf and stook had to be stored and the stubble raked, every rick in the
+home barn-yards had to be thatched and tidied; 'whorls' of turnips had to
+be got up and put in pits for the cattle, and even a considerable portion
+of the ploughing done.
+
+'Boys,' my father would say then, pointing with pride to his lordly stacks
+of grain and hay, 'Boys,
+
+                          '"Peace hath her victories,
+                  No less renowned than war."
+
+And now,' he would add, 'go and help your tutor to write out the
+invitations.'
+
+So kindly-hearted was father that he would even have extended the right
+hand of peace and fellowship to the Raes of Strathtoul. The head of this
+house, however, was too proud; yet his pride was of a different kind from
+father's. It was of the stand-aloof kind. It was even rumoured that Le
+Roi, or Rae, had said at a dinner-party that my good, dear father brought
+disgrace on the warlike name of M'Crimman because he mingled with his
+servants in the field, and took a very personal interest in the welfare of
+his crofter tenantry.
+
+But my father had different views of life from this semi-French Rae of
+Strathtoul. He appreciated the benefits and upheld the dignity, and even
+sanctity, of honest labour. Had he lived in the days of Ancient Greece, he
+might have built a shrine to Labour, and elevated it to the rank of
+goddess. Only my father was no heathen, but a plain, God-fearing man, who
+loved, or tried to love, his neighbour as himself.
+
+If our father was a hero to us boys, not less so was he to our darling
+mother, and to little Sister Flora as well. So it may be truthfully said
+that we were a happy family. The time sped by, the years flew on without,
+apparently, ever a bit of change from one Christmas Day to another. Mr.
+Townley, our tutor, seemed to have little ambition to 'better himself,' as
+it is termed. When challenged one morning at breakfast with his want of
+desire to push,
+
+'Oh,' said Townley, 'I'm only a young man yet, and really I do not wish to
+be any happier than I am. It will be a grief to me when the boys grow
+older and go out into the world and need me no more.'
+
+Mr. Townley was a strict and careful teacher, but by no means a hard
+taskmaster. Indoors during school hours he was the pedagogue all over. He
+carried etiquette even to the extent of wearing cap and gown, but these
+were thrown off with scholastic duties; he was then--out of doors--as
+jolly as a schoolboy going to play at his first cricket-match.
+
+In the field father was our teacher. He taught us, and the 'grieve,' or
+bailiff, taught us everything one needs to know about a farm. Not in
+headwork alone. No; for, young as we were at this time, my brothers and I
+could wield axe, scythe, hoe, and rake.
+
+We were Highland boys all over, in mind and body, blood and bone.
+I--Murdoch--was fifteen when the cloud gathered that finally changed our
+fortunes. Donald and Dugald were respectively fourteen and thirteen, and
+Sister Flora was eleven.
+
+Big for our years we all were, and I do not think there was anything on
+dry land, or on the water either, that we feared. Mr. Townley used very
+often to accompany us to the hills, to the river and lake, but not
+invariably. We dearly loved our tutor. What a wonderful piece of
+muscularity and good-nature he was, to be sure, as I remember him! Of both
+his muscularity and good-nature I am afraid we often took advantage. Flora
+invariably did, for out on the hills she would turn to him with the utmost
+_sang-froid_, saying, 'Townley, I'm tired; take me on your back.' And for
+miles Townley would trudge along with her, feeling her weight no more than
+if she had been a moth that had got on his shoulders by accident. There
+was no tiring Townley.
+
+To look at our tutor's fair young face, one would never have given him the
+credit of possessing a deal of romance, or believed it possible that he
+could have harboured any feeling akin to love. But he did. Now this is a
+story of stirring adventure and of struggle, and not a love tale; so the
+truth may be as well told in this place as further on--Townley loved my
+aunt. It should be remembered that at this time she was young, but little
+over twenty, and in every way she was worthy to be the heroine of a
+story.
+
+Townley, however, was no fool. Although he was admitted to the
+companionship of every member of our family, and treated in every respect
+as an equal, he could not forget that there was a great gulf fixed between
+the humble tutor and the youngest sister of the chief of the M'Crimmans.
+If he loved, he kept the secret bound up in his own breast, content to
+live and be near the object of his adoration. Perhaps this hopeless
+passion of Townley's had much to do with the formation of his history.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Those dear old days of boyhood! Even as they were passing away we used to
+wish they would last for ever. Surely that is proof positive that we were
+very happy, for is it not common for boys to wish they were men? We never
+did.
+
+For we had everything we could desire to make our little lives a pleasure
+long drawn out. Boys who were born in towns--and we knew many of these,
+and invited them occasionally to visit us at our Highland home--we used to
+pity from the bottom of our hearts. How little they knew about country
+sports and country life!
+
+One part of our education alone was left to our darling mother--namely,
+Bible history. Oh, how delightful it used to be to listen to her voice as,
+seated by our bedside in the summer evenings, she told us tales from the
+Book of Books! Then she would pray with us, for us, and for father; and
+sweet and soft was the slumber that soon visited our pillows.
+
+Looking back now to those dear old days, I cannot help thinking that the
+practice of religion as carried on in our house was more Puritanical in
+its character than any I have seen elsewhere. The Sabbath was a day of
+such solemn rest that one lived as it were in a dream. No food was cooked;
+even the tables in breakfast-room and dining-hall were laid on Saturday;
+no horse left the stables, the servants dressed in their sombrest and
+best, moved about on tiptoe, and talked in whispers. We children were
+taught to consider it sinful even to think our own thoughts on this holy
+day. If we boys ever forgot ourselves so far as to speak of things
+secular, there was Flora to lift a warning finger and with terrible
+earnestness remind us that this was God's day.
+
+From early morn to dewy eve all throughout the Sabbath we felt as if our
+footsteps were on the boundaries of another world--that kind, loving
+angels were near watching all our doings.
+
+I am drawing a true picture of Sunday life in many a Scottish family, but
+I would not have my readers mistake me. Let me say, then, that ours was
+not a religion of fear so much as of love. To grieve or vex the great Good
+Being who made us and gave us so much to be thankful for would have been a
+crime which would have brought its own punishment by the sorrow and
+repentance created in our hearts.
+
+Just one other thing I must mention, because it has a bearing on events to
+be related in the next chapter. We were taught then never to forget that a
+day of reckoning was before us all, that after death should come the
+judgment. But mother's prayers and our religion brought us only the most
+unalloyed happiness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+A TERRIBLE RIDE.
+
+
+I have but to gaze from the window of the tower in which I am writing to
+see a whole fieldful of the daftest-looking long-tailed, long-maned ponies
+imaginable. These are the celebrated Castle Coila ponies, as full of
+mischief, fun, and fire as any British boy could wish, most difficult to
+catch, more difficult still to saddle, and requiring all the skill of a
+trained equestrian to manage after mounting. As these ponies are to-day,
+so they were when I was a boy. The very boys whom I mentioned in the last
+chapter would have gone anywhere and done anything rather than attempt to
+ride a Coila pony. Not that they ever refused, they were too courageous
+for that. But when Gilmore led a pony round, I know it needed all the
+pluck they could muster to put foot in stirrup. Flora's advice to them was
+not bad.
+
+'There is plenty of room on the moors, boys,' she would say, laughing; and
+Flora always brought out the word 'boys' with an air of patronage and
+self-superiority that was quite refreshing. 'Plenty of room on the moors,
+so you keep the ponies hard at the gallop, till they are quite tired.
+Mind, don't let them trot. If you do, they will lie down and tumble.'
+
+Poor Archie Bateman! I shall never forget his first wild scamper over the
+moorland. He would persist in riding in his best London clothes, spotless
+broad white collar, shining silk hat, gloves, and all. Before mounting he
+even bent down to flick a little tiny bit of dust off his boots.
+
+The ponies were fresh that morning. In fact, the word 'fresh' hardly
+describes the feeling of buoyancy they gave proof of. For a time it was as
+difficult to mount one as it would be for a fly to alight on a top at full
+spin. We took them to the paddock, where the grass and moss were soft.
+Donald, Dugald, and I held Flora's fiery steed _vi et armis_ till she got
+into the saddle.
+
+'Mind to keep them at it, boys,' were her last words, as she flew out and
+away through the open gateway. Then we prepared to follow. Donald, Dugald,
+and I were used to tumbles, and for five minutes or more we amused
+ourselves by getting up only to get off again. But we were not hurt.
+Finally we mounted Archie. His brother was not going out that morning, and
+I do believe to this day that Archie hoped to curry favour with Flora by a
+little display of horsemanship, for he had been talking a deal to her the
+evening before of the delights of riding in London.
+
+At all events, if he had meant to create a sensation he succeeded
+admirably, though at the expense of a portion of his dignity.
+
+No sooner was he mounted than off he rode. Stay, though, I should rather
+say that no sooner did we mount him than off he was carried. That is a way
+of putting it which is more in accordance with facts, for we--Donald,
+Dugald, and I--mounted him, and the pony did the rest, he, Archie, being
+legally speaking _nolens volens_. When my brothers and I emerged at last,
+we could just distinguish Flora waiting on the horizon of a braeland, her
+figure well thrown out against the sky, her pony curveting round and
+round, which was Flora's pet pony's way of keeping still. Away at a
+tangent from the proper line of march, Archie on his steed was being
+rapidly whirled. As soon as we came within sight of our sister, we
+observed her making signs in Archie's direction and concluded to follow.
+Having duly signalled her wishes, Flora disappeared over the brow of the
+hill. Her intention was, we afterwards found out, to take a cross-cut and
+intercept, if possible, the mad career of Archie's Coila steed.
+
+'Hurry up, Donald,' I shouted to my nearest brother; 'that pony is mad. It
+is making straight for the cliffs of Craigiemore.'
+
+On we went at furious speed. It was in reality, or appeared to be, a race
+for life; but should we win? The terrible cliffs for which Archie's pony
+was heading away were perpendicular bluffs that rose from a dark slimy
+morass near the lake. Fifty feet high they were at the lowest, and pointed
+unmistakably to some terrible convulsion of Nature in ages long gone by.
+They looked like hills that had been sawn in half--one half taken, the
+other left.
+
+Our ponies were gaining on Archie's. The boy had given his its head, but
+it was evident he was now aware of his danger and was trying to rein in.
+Trying, but trying in vain. The pony was in command of the situation.
+
+On--on--on they rush. I can feel my heart beating wildly against my ribs
+as we all come nigher and nigher to the cliffs. Donald's pony and Dugald's
+both overtake me. Their saddles are empty. My brothers have both been
+unhorsed. I think not of that, all my attention is bent on the rider
+ahead. If he could but turn his pony's head even now, he would be saved.
+But no, it is impossible. They are on the cliff. There! they are over it,
+and a wild scream of terror seems to rend the skies and turn my blood to
+water.
+
+[Illustration: 'Look! He is Over!']
+
+But lo! I, too, am now in danger. My pony has the bit fast between his
+teeth. He means to play at an awful game--follow my leader! I feel dizzy;
+I have forgotten that I might fling myself off even at the risk of broken
+bones. I am close to the cliff--I--hurrah! I am saved! Saved at the very
+moment when it seemed nothing could save me, for dear Flora has dashed in
+front of me--has cut across my bows, as sailors would say, striking my
+pony with all the strength of her arm as she is borne along. Saved, yes,
+but both on the ground. I extricate myself and get up. Our ponies are all
+panting; they appear now to realize the fearfulness of the danger, and
+stand together cowed and quiet. Poor Flora is very pale, and blood is
+trickling from a wound in her temple, while her habit is torn and soiled.
+We have little time to notice this; we must ride round and look for the
+body of poor Archie.
+
+It was a ride of a good mile to reach the cliff foot, but it took us but a
+very short time to get round, albeit the road was rough and dangerous. We
+had taken our bearings aright, but for a time we could see no signs of
+those we had come to seek. But presently with her riding-whip Flora
+pointed to a deep black hole in the slimy bog.
+
+'They are there!' she cried; then burst into a flood of tears.
+
+We did the best we could to comfort our little sister, and were all
+returning slowly, leading our steeds along the cliff foot, when I stumbled
+against something lying behind a tussock of grass.
+
+The something moved and spoke when I bent down. It was poor Archie, who
+had escaped from the morass as if by a miracle.
+
+A little stream was near; it trickled in a half-cataract down the cliffs.
+Donald and Dugald hurried away to this and brought back Highland
+bonnetfuls of water. Then we washed Archie's face and made him drink. How
+we rejoiced to see him smile again! I believe the London accent of his
+voice was at that moment the sweetest music to Flora she had ever heard in
+her life.
+
+'What a pwepostewous tumble I've had! How vewy, _vewy_ stoopid of me to be
+wun away with!'
+
+Poor Flora laughed one moment at her cousin and cried the next, so full
+was her heart. But presently she proved herself quite a little woman.
+
+'I'll ride on to the castle,' she said, 'and get dry things ready. You'd
+better go to bed, Archie, when you come home; you are not like a Highland
+boy, you know. Oh, I'm so glad you're alive! But--ha, ha, ha! excuse
+me--but you do look _so_ funny!' and away she rode.
+
+We mounted Archie on Dugald's nag and rode straight away to the lake. Here
+we tied our ponies to the birch-trees, and, undressing, plunged in for a
+swim. When we came out we arranged matters thus: Dugald gave Archie his
+shirt, Donald gave him a pair of stockings, and I gave him a cap and my
+jacket, which was long enough to reach his knees. We tied the wet things,
+after washing the slime off, all in a bundle, and away the procession went
+to Coila. Everybody turned out to witness our home-coming. Well, we did
+look rather motley, but--Archie was saved.
+
+My own adventures, however, had not ended yet. Neither my brothers nor
+Flora cared to go out again that day, so in the afternoon I shouldered my
+fishing rod and went off to enjoy a quiet hour's sport.
+
+What took my footsteps towards the stream that made its exit from the
+loch, and went meandering down the glen, I never could tell. It was no
+favourite stream of mine, for though it contained plenty of trout, it
+passed through many woods and dark, gloomy defiles, with here and there a
+waterfall, and was on the whole so overhung with branches that there was
+difficulty in making a cast. I was far more successful than I expected to
+be, however, and the day wore so quickly away that on looking up I was
+surprised to find that the sun had set, and I must be quite seven miles
+from home. What did that matter? there would be a moon! I had Highland
+legs and a Highland heart, and knew all the cross-cuts in the country
+side. I would try for that big trout that had just leapt up to catch a
+moth. It took me half an hour to hook it. But I did, and after some pretty
+play I had the satisfaction of landing a lovely three-pounder. I now
+reeled up, put my rod in its canvas case, and prepared to make the best of
+my way to the castle.
+
+It was nearly an hour since the sun had gone down like a huge crimson
+ball in the west, and now slowly over the hills a veritable facsimile of
+it was rising, and soon the stars came out as gloaming gave place to
+night, and moonlight flooded all the woods and glen.
+
+The scene around me was lovely, but lonesome in the extreme, for there was
+not a house anywhere near, nor a sound to break the stillness except now
+and then the eerisome cry of the brown owl that flitted silently past
+overhead. Had I been very timid I could have imagined that figures were
+creeping here and there in the flickering shadows of the trees, or that
+ghosts and bogles had come out to keep me company. My nearest way home
+would be to cross a bit of heathery moor and pass by the neglected
+graveyard and ruined Catholic chapel; and, worse than all, the ancient
+manse where lived old Mawsie.
+
+I never believed that Mawsie was a witch, though others did. She was said
+to creep about on moonlight nights like a dry aisk,[1] so people said,
+'mooling' among heaps of rubbish and the mounds over the graves as she
+gathered herbs to concoct strange mixtures withal. Certainly Mawsie was no
+beauty; she walked 'two-fold,' leaning on a crutch; she was gray-bearded,
+wrinkled beyond conception; her head was swathed winter and summer in
+wraps of flannel, and altogether she looked uncanny. Nevertheless, the
+peasant people never hesitated to visit her to beg for herb-tea and oil to
+rub their joints. But they always chose the daylight in which to make
+their calls.
+
+'Perhaps,' I thought, 'I'd better go round.' Then something whispered to
+me, 'What! you a M'Crimman, and confessing to fear!'
+
+That decided me, and I went boldly on. For the life of me, however, I
+could not keep from mentally repeating those weird and awful lines in
+Burns' 'Tam o' Shanter,' descriptive of the hero's journey homewards on
+that unhallowed and awful night when he forgathered with the witches:
+
+              'By this time he was 'cross the ford
+              Whare in the snaw the chapman smo'red;[2]
+              And past the birks[3] and meikle stane
+              Whare drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane;
+              And through the furze and by the cairn
+              Where hunters found the murdered bairn,
+              And near the thorn, aboon the well,
+              Where Mungo's mither hanged hersel',
+              When glimmering through the groaning trees,
+              Kirk Alloway seemed in a bleeze.'
+
+I almost shuddered as I said to myself, 'What if there be lights
+glimmering from the frameless windows of the ruined chapel? or what if old
+Mawsie's windows be "in a bleeze"?'
+
+Tall, ghostly-looking elder-trees grew round the old manse, which people
+had told me always kept moving, even when no breath of wind was blowing.
+
+If I had shuddered before, my heart stood still now with a nameless dread,
+for sure enough, from both the 'butt' and the 'ben' of the so-called
+witch's cottage lights were glancing.
+
+What could it mean? She was too old to have company, almost an invalid,
+with age alone and its attendant infirmities--so, at least, people said.
+But it had also been rumoured lately that Mawsie was up to doings which
+were far from canny, that lights had been seen flitting about the old
+churchyard and ruin, and that something was sure to happen. Nobody in the
+parish could have been found hardy enough to cross the glen-foot where
+Mawsie lived long after dark. Well, had I thought of all this before, it
+is possible that I might have given her house a wide berth. It was now too
+late. I felt like one in a dream, impelled forward towards the cottage. I
+seemed to be walking on the air as I advanced.
+
+To get to the windows, however, I must cross the graveyard yard and the
+ruin. This last was partly covered with tall rank ivy, and, hearing sounds
+inside, and seeing the glimmer of lanterns, I hid in the old porch, quite
+shaded by the greenery.
+
+From my concealment I could notice that men were at work in a vault or pit
+on the floor of the old chapel, from which earth and rubbish were being
+dislodged, while another figure--not that of a workman--was bending over
+and addressing them in English. It was evident, therefore, those people
+below were not Highlanders, for in the face of the man who spoke I was
+able at a glance to distinguish the hard-set lineaments of the villain
+Duncan M'Rae. This man had been everything in his time--soldier,
+school-teacher, poacher, thief. He was abhorred by his own clan, and
+feared by every one. Even the school children, if they met him on the
+road, would run back to avoid him.
+
+Duncan had only recently come back to the glen after an absence of years,
+and every one said his presence boded no good. I shuddered as I gazed,
+almost spellbound, on his evil countenance, rendered doubly ugly in the
+uncertain light of the lantern. Suppose he should find me! I crept closer
+into my corner now, and tried to draw the ivy round me. I dared not run,
+for fear of being seen, for the moonlight was very bright indeed, and
+M'Rae held a gun in his hand.
+
+After a time, which appeared to be interminable, I heard Duncan invite the
+men into supper, and slowly they clambered up out of the pit, and the
+three prepared to leave together.
+
+All might have been well now, for they passed me without even a glance in
+my direction; but presently I heard one of the men stumble.
+
+'Hullo!' he said; 'is this basket of fish yours, Mr. Mac?'
+
+'No,' was the answer, with an imprecation that made me quake. 'We are
+watched!'
+
+In another moment I was dragged from my place of concealment, and the
+light was held up to my face.
+
+'A M'Crimman of Coila, by all that is furious! And so, youngster, you've
+come to watch? You know the family feud, don't you? Well, prepare to meet
+your doom. You'll never leave here alive.'
+
+He pointed his gun at me as he spoke.
+
+'Hold!' cried one of the men. 'We came from town to do a bit of honest
+work, but we will not witness murder.'
+
+'I only wanted to frighten him,' said M'Rae, lowering his gun. 'Look you,
+sir,' he continued, addressing me once more, 'I don't want revenge, even
+on a M'Crimman of Coila. I'm a poacher; perhaps I'm a distiller in a quiet
+way. No matter, you know what an oath is. You'll swear ere you leave here,
+not to breathe a word of what you've seen. You hear?'
+
+'I promise I won't,' I faltered.
+
+He handled his fowling-piece threateningly once again. Verily, he had just
+then a terribly evil look.
+
+'I swear,' I said, with trembling lips.
+
+His gun was again lowered. He seemed to breathe more freely--less
+fiercely.
+
+'Go, now,' he said, pointing across the moor. 'If a poor man like myself
+wants to hide either his game or his private still, what odds is it to a
+M'Crimman of Coila?'
+
+How I got home I never knew. I remember that evening being in our front
+drawing-room with what seemed a sea of anxious faces round me, some of
+which were bathed in tears. Then all was a long blank, interspersed with
+fearful dreams.
+
+It was weeks before I recovered consciousness. I was then lying in bed. In
+at the open window was wafted the odour of flowers, for it was a summer's
+evening, and outside were the green whispering trees. Townley sat beside
+the bed, book in hand, and almost started when I spoke.
+
+[Illustration: He pointed his Gun at me]
+
+'Mr. Townley!'
+
+'Yes, dear boy.'
+
+'Have I been long ill?'
+
+'For weeks--four, I think. How glad I am you are better! But you must keep
+very, _very_ quiet. I shall go and bring your mother now, and Flora.'
+
+I put out my thin hand and detained him.
+
+'Tell me, Mr. Townley,' I said, 'have I spoken much in my sleep, for I
+have been dreaming such foolish dreams?'
+
+Townley looked at me long and earnestly. He seemed to look me through and
+through. Then he replied slowly, almost solemnly,
+
+'Yes, dear boy, you have spoken _much_.'
+
+I closed my eyes languidly. For now I knew that Townley was aware of more
+than ever I should have dared to reveal.
+
+-----
+
+  [1] Triton.
+
+  [2] Smothered.
+
+  [3] Birch-trees.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE RING AND THE BOOK.
+
+
+My return to health was a slow though not a painful one. My mind, however,
+was clear, and even before I could partake of food I enjoyed hearing
+sister play to me on her harp. Sometimes aunt, too, would play. My mother
+seldom left the room by day, and one of my chief delights was her stories
+from Bible life and tales of Bible lands.
+
+At last I was permitted to get up and recline in fauteuil or on sofa.
+
+'Mother,' I said one day, 'I feel getting stronger, but somehow I do not
+regain spirits. Is there some sorrow in your heart, mother, or do I only
+imagine it?'
+
+She smiled, but there were tears in her eyes.
+
+'I'm sure we are all very, _very_ happy, Murdoch, to have you getting well
+again.'
+
+'And, mother,' I persisted, 'father does not seem easy in mind either. He
+comes in and talks to me, but often I think his mind is wandering to other
+subjects.'
+
+'Foolish child! nothing could make your father unhappy. He does his duty
+by us all, and his faith is fixed.'
+
+One day they came and told me that the doctor had ordered me away to the
+seaside. Mother and Flora were to come, and one servant; the rest of our
+family were to follow.
+
+It was far away south to Rothesay we went, and here, my cheeks fanned by
+the delicious sea-breezes, I soon began to grow well and strong again. But
+the sorrow in my mother's face was more marked than ever, though I had
+ceased to refer to it.
+
+The rooms we had hired were very pleasant, but looked very small in
+comparison with the great halls I had been used to.
+
+Well, on a beautiful afternoon father and my brothers arrived, and we all
+had tea out on the shady lawn, up to the very edge of which the waves were
+lapping and lisping.
+
+I was reclining in a hammock chair, listening to the sea's soft, soothing
+murmur, when father brought his camp-stool and sat near me.
+
+'Murdoch, boy,' he said, taking my hand gently, almost tenderly, in his,
+'are you strong enough to bear bad news?'
+
+My heart throbbed uneasily, but I replied, bravely enough, 'Yes, dear
+father; yes.'
+
+'Then,' he said, speaking very slowly, as if to mark the effect of every
+word, 'we are--never--to return--to Castle Coila!'
+
+I was calm now, for, strange to say, the news appeared to be no news at
+all.
+
+'Well, father,' I answered, cheerfully, 'I can bear that--I could bear
+anything but separation.'
+
+I went over and kissed my mother and sister.
+
+'So this is the cloud that was in your faces, eh? Well, the worst is over.
+I have nothing to do now but get well. Father, I feel quite a man.'
+
+'So do we both feel men,' said Donald and Dugald; 'and we are all going to
+work. Won't that be jolly?'
+
+In a few brief words father then explained our position. There had arrived
+one day, some weeks after the worst and most dangerous part of my illness
+was over, an advocate from Aberdeen, in a hired carriage. He had, he
+said, a friend with him, who seemed, so he worded it, 'like one risen
+from the dead.'
+
+His friend was helped down, and into father's private room off the hall.
+
+His friend was the old beldame Mawsie, and a short but wonderful story she
+had to tell, and did tell, the Aberdeen advocate sitting quietly by the
+while with a bland smile on his face. She remembered, she said with many a
+sigh and groan, and many a doleful shake of head and hand, the marriage of
+Le Roi the dragoon with the Miss M'Crimman of Coila, although but a girl
+at the time; and she remembered, among many other things, that the
+priest's books were hidden for safety in a vault, where he also kept all
+the money he possessed. No one knew of the existence of this vault except
+her, and so on and so forth. So voluble did the old lady become that the
+advocate had to apply the _clôture_ at last.
+
+'It is strange--if true,' my father had muttered. 'Why,' he added, 'had
+the old lady not spoken of this before?'
+
+'Ah, yes, to be sure,' said the Aberdonian. 'Well, that also is strange,
+but easily explained. The shock received on the night of the fire at the
+chapel had deprived the poor soul of memory. For years and years this
+deprivation continued, but one day, not long ago, the son of the present
+claimant, and probably rightful heir, to Coila walked into her room at the
+old manse, gun in hand. He had been down shooting at Strathtoul, and
+naturally came across to view the ruin so intimately connected with his
+father's fate and fortune. No sooner had he appeared than the good old
+dame rushed towards him, calling him by his grandfather's name. Her memory
+had returned as suddenly as it had gone. She had even told him of the
+vault. 'Perhaps,' continued he, with a meaning smile,
+
+           '"'Tis the sunset of life gives her mystical lore,
+           And coming events cast their shadow before."'
+
+A fortnight after this visit a meeting of those concerned took place at
+the beldame's house. She herself pointed to the place where she thought
+the vault lay, and with all due legal formality digging was commenced, and
+the place was found not far off. At first glance the vault seemed empty.
+In one corner, however, was found, covered lightly over with withered
+ferns, many bottles of wine and--a box. The two men of law, Le Roi's
+solicitor and M'Crimman's, had a little laugh all to themselves over the
+wine. Legal men will laugh at anything.
+
+'The priest must have kept a good cellar on the sly,' one said.
+
+'That is evident,' replied the other.
+
+The box was opened with some little difficulty. In it was a book--an old
+Latin Bible. But something else was in it too. Townley was the first to
+note it. Only a silver ring such as sailors wear--a ring with a little
+heart-shaped ruby stone in it. Book and ring were now sealed up in the
+box, and next day despatched to Edinburgh with all due formality. The best
+legal authorities the Scotch metropolis could boast of were consulted on
+both sides, but fate for once was against the M'Crimmans of Coila. The
+book told its tale. Half-carelessly written on fly-leaves, but each duly
+dated and signed by Stewart, the priest, were notes concerning many
+marriages, Le Roi's among the rest.
+
+Even M'Crimman himself confessed that he was satisfied--as was every one
+else save Townley.
+
+'The book has told one tale--or rather its binding has,' said Townley;
+'but the ring may yet tell another.'
+
+All this my father related to me that evening as we sat together on the
+lawn by the beach of Rothesay.
+
+When he had finished I sat silently gazing seawards, but spoke not. My
+brothers told me afterwards that I looked as if turned to stone. And,
+indeed, indeed, my heart felt so. When father first told me we should go
+back no more to Coila I felt almost happy that the bad news was no worse;
+but now that explanations had followed, my perplexity was extreme.
+
+One thing was sure and certain--there was a conspiracy, and the events of
+that terrible night at the ruin had to do with it. The evil man Duncan
+M'Rae was in it. Townley suspected it from words I must have let fall in
+my delirium; but, worst of all, my mouth was sealed. Oh, why, why did I
+not rather die than be thus bound!
+
+It must be remembered that I was very young, and knew not then that an
+oath so forced upon me could not be binding.
+
+Come weal, come woe, however, I determined to keep my word.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The scene of our story changes now to Edinburgh itself. Here we had all
+gone to live in a house owned by aunt, not far from the Calton Hill. We
+were comparatively poor now, for father, with the honour and Christian
+feeling that ever characterized him, had even paid up back rent to the new
+owner of Coila Castle and Glen.
+
+That parting from Coila had been a sad one. I was not there--luckily for
+me, perhaps; but Townley has told me of it often and often.
+
+'Yes, Murdoch M'Crimman,' he said, 'I have been present at the funeral of
+many a Highland chief, but none of these impressed me half so much as the
+scene in Glen Coila, when the carriage containing your dear father and
+mother and Flora left the old castle and wound slowly down the glen. Men,
+women, and little ones joined in procession, and marched behind it, and so
+followed on and on till they reached the glen-foot, with the bagpipes
+playing "Farewell to Lochaber." This affected your father as much, I
+think, as anything else. As for your mother, she sat silently weeping, and
+Flora dared hardly trust herself to look up at all. Then the parting! The
+chief, your father, stood up and addressed his people--for "his people" he
+still would call them. There was not a tremor in his voice, nor was
+there, on the other hand, even a spice of bravado. He spoke to them
+calmly, logically. In the old days, he said, might had been right, and
+many a gallant corps of heroes had his forefathers led from the glen, but
+times had changed. They were governed by good laws, and good laws meant
+fair play, for they protected all alike, gentle and simple, poor as well
+as rich. He bade them love and honour the new chief of Coila, to whom, as
+his proven right, he not only heartily transferred his lands and castle,
+but even, as far as possible, the allegiance of his people. They must be
+of good cheer, he said; he would never forget the happy time he had spent
+in Coila, and if they should meet no more on this earth, there was a
+Happier Land beyond death and the grave. He ended his brief oration with
+that little word which means so much, "Good-bye." But scarcely would they
+let him go. Old, bare-headed, white-haired men crowded round the carriage
+to bless their chief and press his hand; tearful women held children up
+that he might but touch their hair, while some had thrown themselves on
+the heather in paroxysms of a grief which was uncontrollable. Then the
+pipes played once more as the carriage drove on, while the voices of the
+young men joined in chorus--
+
+   "Youth of the daring heart, bright be thy doom
+       As the bodings that light up thy bold spirit now.
+   But the fate of M'Crimman is closing in gloom,
+       And the breath of the grey wraith hath passed o'er his brow."
+
+'When,' added Townley, 'a bend of the road and the drooping birch-trees
+shut out the mournful sight, I am sure we all felt relieved. Your father,
+smiling, extended his hand to your mother, and she fondled it and wept no
+more.'
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+For a time our life, to all outward seeming, was now a very quiet one.
+Although Donald and Dugald were sent to that splendid seminary which has
+given so many great men and heroes to the world, the 'High School of
+Edinburgh,' Townley still lived on with us as my tutor and Flora's.
+
+What my father seemed to suffer most from was the want of something at
+which to employ his time, and what Townley called his 'talent for
+activity.' 'Doing nothing' was not father's form after leading so
+energetic a life for so many years at Coila. Like the city of Boston in
+America, Edinburgh prides itself on the selectness of its society. To
+this, albeit we had come down in the world, pecuniarily speaking, our
+family had free _entrée_. This would have satisfied some men; it did not
+satisfy father. He missed the bracing mountain air, he missed the freedom
+of the hills and the glorious exercise to which he had been accustomed.
+
+He missed it, but he mourned it not. His was the most unselfish nature one
+could imagine. Whatever he may have felt in the privacy of his own
+apartment, however much he may have sorrowed in silence, among us he was
+ever cheerful and even gay. Perhaps, on the whole, it may seem to some
+that I write or speak in terms too eulogistic. But it should not be
+forgotten that the M'Crimman was my father, and that he is--gone. _De
+mortuis nil nisi bonum._
+
+The ex-chief of Coila was a gentleman. And what a deal there is in that
+one wee word! No one can ape the gentleman. True gentlemanliness must
+come from the heart; the heart is the well from which it must
+spring--constantly, always, in every position of life, and wherever the
+owner may be. No amount of exterior polish can make a true gentleman.
+The actor can play the part on the stage, but here he is but acting, after
+all. Off the stage he may or may not be the gentleman, for then he must
+not be judged by his dress, by his demeanour in company, his calmness, or
+his ducal bow, but by his actions, his words, or his spoken thoughts.
+
+                 'Chesterfields and modes and rules
+                   For polished age and stilted youth.
+                 And high breeding's choicest school
+                   Need to learn this deeper truth:
+                 That to act, whate'er betide,
+                   Nobly on the Christian plan,
+                 This is still the surest guide
+                   How to be a gentleman.'
+
+About a year after our arrival in Edinburgh, Townley was seated one day
+midway up the beautiful mountain called Arthur's Seat. It was early
+summer; the sky was blue and almost cloudless; far beneath, the city of
+palaces and monuments seemed to sleep in the sunshine; away to the east
+lay the sea, blue even as the sky itself, except where here and there a
+cloud shadow passed slowly over its surface. Studded, too, was the sea
+with many a white sail, and steamers with trailing wreaths of smoke.
+
+The noise of city life, faint and far, fell on the ear with a hum hardly
+louder than the murmur of the insects and bees that sported among the wild
+flowers.
+
+Townley would not have been sitting here had he been all by himself, for
+this Herculean young parson never yet set eye on a hill he meant to climb
+without going straight to the top of it.
+
+'There is no tiring Townley.' I have often heard father make that remark;
+and, indeed, it gave in a few words a complete clue to Townley's
+character.
+
+But to-day my aunt Cecilia was with him, and it was on her account he was
+resting. They had been sitting for some time in silence.
+
+'It is almost too lovely a day for talking,' she said, at last.
+
+'True; it is a day for thinking and dreaming.'
+
+'I do not imagine, sir, that either thinking or dreaming is very much in
+your way.'
+
+He turned to her almost sharply.
+
+'Oh, indeed,' he said, 'you hardly gauge my character aright, Miss
+M'Crimman.'
+
+'Do I not?'
+
+'No, if you only knew how much I think at times; if you only knew how much
+I have even dared to dream--'
+
+There was a strange meaning in his looks if not in his words. Did she
+interpret either aright, I wonder? I know not. Of one thing I am sure, and
+that is, my friend and tutor was far too noble to seem to take advantage
+of my aunt's altered circumstances in life to press his suit. He might be
+her equal some day, at present he was--her brother's guest and domestic.
+
+'Tell me,' she said, interrupting him, 'some of your thoughts; dreams at
+best are silly.'
+
+He heaved the faintest sigh, and for a few moments appeared bent only on
+forming an isosceles triangle of pebbles with his cane.
+
+Then he put his fingers in his pocket.
+
+'I wish to show you,' he said, 'a ring.'
+
+'A ring, Mr. Townley! What a curious ring! Silver, set with a ruby heart.
+Why, this is the ring--the mysterious ring that belonged to the priest,
+and was found in his box in the vault.'
+
+'No, that is not _the_ ring. _The_ ring is in a safe and under seal. That
+is but a facsimile. But, Miss M'Crimman, the ring in question did not, I
+have reason to believe, belong to the priest Stewart, nor was it ever worn
+by him.'
+
+'How strangely you talk and look, Mr. Townley!'
+
+'Whatever I say to you now, Miss M'Crimman, I wish you to consider
+sacred.'
+
+The lady laughed, but not lightly.
+
+'Do you think,' she said, 'I can keep a secret?'
+
+'I do, Miss M'Crimman, and I want a friend and occasional adviser.'
+
+'Go on, Mr. Townley. You may depend on me.'
+
+'All we know, or at least all he will tell us of Murdoch's--your
+nephew's--illness, is that he was frightened at the ruin that night. He
+did not lead us to infer--for this boy is honest--that the terror partook
+of the supernatural, but he seemed pleased we did so infer.'
+
+'Yes, Mr. Townley.'
+
+'I watched by his bedside at night, when the fever was at its hottest. I
+alone listened to his ravings. Such ravings have always, so doctors tell
+us, a foundation in fact. He mentioned this ring over and over again. He
+mentioned a vault; he mentioned a name, and starting sometimes from uneasy
+slumber, prayed the owner of that name to spare him--to shoot him not.'
+
+'And from this you deduce----'
+
+'From this,' said Townley, 'I deduce that poor Murdoch had seen that ring
+on the left hand of a villain who had threatened to shoot him, for some
+potent reason or another, that Murdoch had seen that vault open, and that
+he has been bound down by sacred oath not to reveal what he did see.'
+
+'But oh, Mr. Townley, such oath could not, cannot be binding on the boy.
+We must----'
+
+'No, we must _not_, Miss M'Crimman. We must not put pressure on Murdoch at
+present. We must not treat lightly his honest scruples. _You_ must leave
+_me_ to work the matter out in my own way. Only, whenever I need your
+assistance or friendship to aid me, I may ask for it, may I not?'
+
+'Indeed you may, Mr. Townley.'
+
+Her hand lay for one brief moment in his; then they got up silently and
+resumed their walk.
+
+Both were thinking now.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+A NEW HOME IN THE WEST.
+
+
+To-night, before I entered my tower-room study and sat down to continue
+our strange story, I was leaning over the battlements and gazing
+admiringly at the beautiful sunset effects among the hills and on the
+lake, when my aunt came gliding to my side. She always comes in this
+spirit-like way.
+
+'May I say one word,' she said, 'without interrupting the train of your
+thoughts?'
+
+'Yes, dear aunt,' I replied; 'speak as you please--say what you will.'
+
+'I have been reading your manuscript, Murdoch, and I think it is high time
+you should mention that the M'Raes of Strathtoul were in no degree
+connected with or voluntarily mixed up in the villainy that banished your
+poor father from Castle Coila.'
+
+'It shall be as you wish,' I said, and then Aunt Cecilia disappeared as
+silently as she had come.
+
+Aunt is right. Nor can I forget that--despite the long-lasting and
+unfortunate blood-feud--the Strathtouls were and are our kinsmen. It is
+due to them to add that they ever acted honourably, truthfully; that there
+was but one villain, and whatever of villainy was transacted was his. Need
+I say his name was Duncan M'Rae? A M'Rae of Strathtoul? No; I am glad and
+proud to say he was not. I even doubt if he had any right or title to the
+name at all. It may have been but an _alias_. An _alias_ is often of the
+greatest use to such a man as this Duncan; so is an _alibi_ at times!
+
+I have already mentioned the school in the glen which my father the chief
+had built. M'Rae was one of its first teachers. He was undoubtedly clever,
+and, though he had not come to Coila without a little cloud on his
+character, his plausibility and his capability prevailed upon my father to
+give him a chance. There used at that time to be services held in the
+school on Sunday evenings, to which the most humbly dressed peasant could
+come. Humble though they were, they invariably brought their mite for the
+collection. It was dishonesty--even sacrilegious dishonesty--in Duncan to
+appropriate such moneys to his use, and to falsify the books. It is
+needless to say he was dismissed, and ever after he bore little good-will
+to the M'Crimmans of Coila.
+
+He had now to live on his wits. His wits led him to dishonesty of a
+different sort--he became a noted poacher. His quarrels with the
+glen-keepers often led to ugly fights and to bloodshed, but never to
+Duncan's reform. He lived and lodged with old Mawsie. It suited him to do
+so for several reasons, one of which was that she had, as I have already
+said, an ill-name, and the keepers were superstitious; besides, her house
+was but half a mile from a high road, along which a carrier passed once a
+week on his way to a distant town, and Duncan nearly always had a
+mysterious parcel for him.
+
+The poacher wanted a safe or store for his ill-gotten game. What better
+place than the floor of the ruined church? While digging there, to his
+surprise he had discovered a secret vault or cell; the roof and sides had
+fallen in, but masons could repair them. Such a place would be invaluable
+in his craft if it could be kept secret, and he determined it should be.
+After this, strange lights were said to be seen sometimes by belated
+travellers flitting among the old graves; twice also a ghost had been met
+on the hill adjoining--some _thing_ at least that disappeared immediately
+with eldritch scream.
+
+It was shortly after this that Duncan had imported two men to do what they
+called 'a bit of honest work.' Duncan had lodged and fed them at Mawsie's;
+they worked at night, and when they had done the 'honest work,' he took
+them to Invergowen and shipped them back to Aberdeen.
+
+But the poacher's discovery of the priest's Bible turned his thoughts to a
+plan of enriching himself far more effectually and speedily than he ever
+could expect to do by dealing in game without a licence.
+
+At the same time Duncan had found the poor priest's modest store of wine.
+A less scientific villain would have made short work with this, but the
+poacher knew better at present than to 'put an enemy in his mouth to steal
+away his brains;' besides, the vault would look more natural, when
+afterwards 'discovered,' with a collection of old bottles of wine in it.
+
+To forge an entry on one of the fly-leaves of the book was no difficult
+task, nor was it difficult to deal with Mawsie so as to secure the end he
+had in view in the most natural way. Once again his villain-wit showed its
+ascendency. A person of little acumen would have sought to work upon the
+old lady's greed--would have tried to bribe her to say this or that, or to
+swear to anything. But well Duncan knew how treacherous is the aged
+memory, and yet how easily acted on. He began by talking much about the Le
+Roi marriage which had taken place when she was a girl. He put words in
+the old lady's mouth without seeming to do so; he manufactured an
+artificial memory for her, and neatly fitted it.
+
+'Surely, mother,' he would say, 'you remember the marriage that took place
+in the chapel at midnight--the rich soldier, you know, Le Roi, and the
+bonnie M'Crimman lady? You're not so _very_ old as to forget that.'
+
+'Heigho! it's a long time ago, _ma yhillie og_, a long time ago, and I was
+young.'
+
+'True, but old people remember things that happened when they were young
+better than more recent events.'
+
+They talked in Gaelic, so I am not giving their exact words.
+
+'Ay, ay, lad--ay, ay! And, now that you mention it, I do remember it
+well--the lassie M'Crimman and the bonnie, bonnie gentleman.'
+
+'Gave you a guinea--don't you remember?'
+
+'Ay, ay, the dear man!'
+
+'Is this it?' continued Duncan, holding up a golden coin.
+
+Her eyes gloated over the money, her birdlike claw clutched it; she
+'crooned' over it, sang to it, rolled it in a morsel of flannel, and put
+it away in her bosom.
+
+A course of this kind of tuition had a wonderful effect on Mawsie. After
+the marriage came the vault, and she soon remembered all that. But
+probably the guinea had more effect than anything else in fixing her mind
+on the supposed events of the past.
+
+You see, Duncan was a psychologist, and a good one, too. Pity he did not
+turn his talents to better use.
+
+The poacher's next move was to hurry up to London, and obtain an interview
+with the chief of Strathtoul's son. He seldom visited Scotland, being an
+officer of the Guards--a soldier, as his grandfather had been.
+
+Is it any wonder that Duncan M'Rae's plausible story found a ready
+listener in young Le Roi, or that he was only too happy to pay the poacher
+a large but reasonable sum for proofs which should place his father in
+possession of fortune and a fine estate?
+
+The rest was easy. A large coloured sketch was shown to old Mawsie as a
+portrait of the Le Roi who had been married in the old chapel in her
+girlhood. It was that of his grandson, who shortly after visited the manse
+and the ruin.
+
+Duncan was successful beyond his utmost expectations. Only 'the wicked
+flee when no man pursueth' them, and this villain could not feel easy
+while he remained at home. Two things preyed on his mind--first, the
+meeting with myself at the ruin; secondly, the loss of his ring. Probably
+had the two men not interfered that night he would have made short work of
+me. As for the ring, he blamed his own carelessness for losing it. It was
+a dead man's ring; would it bring him ill-luck?
+
+So he fled--or departed--put it as you please; but, singular to say, old
+Mawsie was found dead in her house the day _after_ he had been seen to
+take his departure from the glen. It was said she had met her death by
+premeditated violence; but who could have slain the poor old crone, and
+for what reason? It was more charitable and more reasonable to believe
+that she had fallen and died where she was found. So the matter had been
+allowed to rest. What could it matter to Mawsie?
+
+Townley alone had different and less charitable views about the matter.
+Meanwhile Townley's bird had flown. But everything comes to him who can
+wait, and--there was no tiring Townley.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+A year or two flew by quickly enough. I know what that year or two did for
+me--_it made me a man!_
+
+Not so much in stature, perhaps--I was young, barely seventeen--but a man
+in mind, in desire, in ambition, and in brave resolve. Do not imagine that
+I had been very happy since leaving Coila; my mind was racked by a
+thousand conflicting thoughts that often kept me awake at night when all
+others were sunk in slumber. Something told me that the doings of that
+night at the ruin had undone our fortunes, and I was bound by solemn
+promise never to divulge what I had seen or what I knew. A hundred times
+over I tried to force myself to the belief that the poacher was only a
+poacher, and not a villain of deeper dye, but all in vain.
+
+Time, however, is the _edax rerum_--the devourer of all things, even of
+grief and sorrow. Well, I saw my father and mother and Flora happy in
+their new home, content with their new surroundings, and I began to take
+heart. But to work I must go. What should I do? What should I be? The
+questions were answered in a way I had little dreamt of.
+
+One evening, about eight o'clock, while passing along a street in the new
+town, I noticed well-dressed mechanics and others filing into a hall,
+where, it was announced, a lecture was to be delivered--
+
+                       'A NEW HOME IN THE WEST.'
+
+Such was the heading of the printed bills. Curiosity led me to enter with
+others.
+
+I listened entranced. The lecture was a revelation to me. The 'New Home in
+the West' was the Argentine Republic, and the speaker was brimful of his
+subject, and brimful to overflowing with the rugged eloquence that goes
+straight to the heart.
+
+There was wealth untold in the silver republic for those who were healthy,
+young, and willing to work--riches enough to be had for the digging to buy
+all Scotland up--riches of grain, of fruit, of spices, of skins and wool
+and meat--wealth all over the surface of the new home--wealth _in_ the
+earth and bursting through it--wealth and riches everywhere.
+
+And beauty everywhere too--beauty of scenery, beauty of woods and wild
+flowers; of forest stream and sunlit skies. Why stay in Scotland when
+wealth like this was to be had for the gathering? England was a glorious
+country, but its very over-population rendered it a poor one, and poorer
+it was growing every day.
+
+                 'Hark! old Ocean's tongue of thunder,
+                   Hoarsely calling, bids you speed
+                 To the shores he held asunder
+                   Only for these times of need.
+                 Now, upon his friendly surges
+                   Ever, ever roaring "Come,"
+                 All the sons of hope he urges
+                   To a new, a richer home.
+
+                 There, instead of festering alleys,
+                   Noisome dirt and gnawing dearth,
+                 Sunny hills and smiling valleys
+                   Wait to yield the wealth of earth.
+                 All she seeks is human labour,
+                   Healthy in the open air;
+                 All she gives is--every neighbour
+                   Wealthy, hale, and happy There!'
+
+Language like this was to me simply intoxicating. I talked all next day
+about what I had heard, and when evening came I once more visited the
+lecture-hall, this time in company with my brothers.
+
+'Oh,' said Donald, as we were returning home, 'that is the sort of work we
+want.'
+
+'Yes,' cried Dugald the younger; 'and that is the land to go to.'
+
+'You are so young--sixteen and fifteen--I fear I cannot take you with me,'
+I put in.
+
+Donald stopped short in the street and looked straight in my face.
+
+'So _you_ mean to go, then? And you think you can go without Dugald and
+me? Young, are we? But won't we grow out of that? We are not town-bred
+brats. Feel my arm; look at brother's lusty legs! And haven't we both got
+hearts--the M'Crimman heart? Ho, ho, Murdoch! big as you are, you don't go
+without Dugald and me!'
+
+'That he sha'n't!' said Dugald, determinedly.
+
+'Come on up to the top of the craig,' I said; 'I want a walk. It is only
+half-past nine.'
+
+But it was well-nigh eleven before we three brothers had finished
+castle-building.
+
+Remember, it was not castles in the air, either, we were piling up. We had
+health, strength, and determination, with a good share of honest ambition;
+and with these we believed we could gather wealth. The very thoughts of
+doing so filled me with a joy that was inexpressible. Not that I valued
+money for itself, but because wealth, if I could but gain it, would enable
+me to in some measure restore the fortunes of our fallen house.
+
+We first consulted father. It was not difficult to secure his acquiescence
+to our scheme, and he even told mother that it was unnatural to expect
+birds to remain always in the parent nest.
+
+I have no space to detail all the outs and ins of our arguments; suffice
+it to say they were successful, and preparations for our emigration were
+soon commenced. One stipulation of dear mother's we were obliged to give
+in to--namely, that Aunt Cecilia should go with us. Aunt was very wise,
+though very romantic withal--a strange mixture of poetry and common-sense.
+My father and mother, however, had very great faith in her. Moreover, she
+had already travelled all by herself half-way over the world. She had
+therefore the benefit of former experiences. But in every way we were fain
+to admit that aunt was eminently calculated to be our friend and mentor.
+She was and is clever. She could talk philosophy to us, even while darning
+our stockings or seeing after our linen; she could talk half a dozen
+languages, but she could talk common-sense to the cook as well; she was
+fitted to mix in the very best society, but she could also mix a salad.
+She played entrancingly on the harp, sang well, recited Ossian's poems by
+the league, had a beautiful face, and the heart of a lion, which well
+became the sister of a chief.
+
+It is only fair to add that it was aunt who found the sinews of war--our
+war with fortune. She, however, made a sacrifice to our pride in promising
+to consider any and all moneys spent upon us as simply loans, to be repaid
+with interest when we grew rich, if not--and this was only an honest
+stipulation--worked off beforehand.
+
+But poor dear aunt, her love of travel and adventure was quite wonderful,
+and she had a most childlike faith in the existence and reality of the El
+Dorado we were going in search of.
+
+The parting with father, mother, and Flora was a terrible trial. I can
+hardly think of it yet without a feeling akin to melancholy. But we got
+away at last amid prayers and blessings and tears. A hundred times over
+Flora had begged us to write every week, and to make haste and get ready a
+place for her and mother and father and all in our new home in the West,
+for she would count the days until the summons came to follow.
+
+Fain would honest, brawny Townley have gone with us. What an acquisition
+he would have proved! only, he told me somewhat significantly, he had work
+to do, and if he was successful he might follow on. I know, though, that
+parting with Aunt Cecilia almost broke his big brave heart.
+
+There was so much to do when we arrived in London, from which port we were
+to sail, so much to buy, so much to be seen, and so many people to visit,
+that I and my brothers had little time to revert even to the grief of
+parting from all we held dear at home.
+
+We did not forget to pay a visit to our forty-second cousins in their
+beautiful and aristocratic mansion at the West End. Archie Bateman was our
+favourite. My brothers and I were quite agreed as to that. The other
+cousin--who was also the elder--was far too much swamped in _bon ton_ to
+please Highland lads such as we were.
+
+But over and over again Archie made us tell him all we knew or had heard
+of the land we were going to. The first night Archie had said,
+
+'Oh, I wish I were going too!'
+
+The second evening his remark was,
+
+'Why _can't_ I go?'
+
+But on the third and last day of our stay Archie took me boldly by the
+hand--
+
+'Don't tell anybody,' he said, 'but I'm going to follow you very soon.
+Depend upon that. I'm only a younger son. Younger sons are nobodies in
+England. The eldest sons get all the pudding, and we have only the dish to
+scrape. They talk about making me a barrister. I don't mean to be made a
+barrister; I'd as soon be a bumbailiff. No, I'm going to follow you,
+cousin, so I sha'n't say good-bye--just _au revoir_.'
+
+And when we drove away from the door, I really could not help admiring the
+handsome bold-looking English lad who stood in the porch waving his
+handkerchief and shouting,
+
+'_Au revoir--au revoir._'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE PROMISED LAND AT LAST.
+
+
+'There is nothing more annoyin' than a hitch at the hin'eren'. What think
+you, young sir?'
+
+'I beg pardon,' I replied, 'but I'm afraid I did not quite understand
+you.'
+
+I had been standing all alone watching our preparations for dropping down
+stream with the tide. What a wearisome time it had been, too!
+
+The Canton was advertised to sail the day before, but did not. We were
+assured, however, she would positively start at midnight, and we had gone
+to bed expecting to awake at sea. I had fallen asleep brimful of all kinds
+of romantic thoughts. But lo! I had been awakened early on the dark
+morning of this almost wintry day with the shouting of men, the rattling
+of chains, and puff-puff-puffing of that dreadful donkey-engine.
+
+'Oh yes, we'll be off, sure enough, about eight bells.'
+
+This is what the steward told us after breakfast, but all the forenoon had
+slipped away, and here we still were. The few people on shore who had
+stayed on, maugre wind and sleet, to see the very, _very_ last of friends
+on board, looked very worn and miserable.
+
+But surely we were going at last, for everything was shipped and
+everything was comparatively still--far too still, indeed, as it turned
+out!
+
+'I said I couldn't stand a hitch at the hin'eren', young sir--any trouble
+at the tail o' the chapter.'
+
+I looked up--I _had_ to look up, for the speaker was a head and shoulders
+bigger than I--a broad-shouldered, brawny, brown-bearded Scotchman. A
+Highlander evidently by his brogue, but one who had travelled south, and
+therefore only put a Scotch word in here and there when talking--just, he
+told me afterwards, to make better sense of the English language.
+
+'Do I understand you to mean that something has happened to delay the
+voyage?'
+
+'I dinna care whether you understand me or not,' he replied, with almost
+fierce independence, 'but we're broken down.'
+
+It was only too true, and the news soon went all over the ship--spread
+like wild-fire, in fact. Something had gone wrong in the engine-room, and
+it would take a whole week to make good repairs.
+
+I went below to report matters to aunt and my brothers, and make
+preparations for disembarking again.
+
+When we reached the deck we found the big Scot walking up and down with
+rapid, sturdy strides; but he stopped in front of me, smiling. He had an
+immense plaid thrown Highland-fashion across his chest and left shoulder,
+and clutched a huge piece of timber in his hand, which by courtesy might
+have been called a cane.
+
+'You'll doubtless go on shore for a spell?' he said. 'A vera judicious
+arrangement. I'll go myself, and take my mither with me. And are these
+your two brotheries, and your sister? How d'ye do, miss?'
+
+He lifted his huge tam-o'-shanter as he made these remarks--or, in other
+words, he seized it by the top and raised it into the form of a huge
+pyramid.
+
+'My aunt,' I said, smiling.
+
+'A thousand pa_rr_dons, ma'am!' he pleaded, once more making a pyramid of
+his 'bonnet,' while the colour mounted to his brow. 'A thousand
+pa_rr_dons!'
+
+Like most of his countrymen, he spoke broader when taken off his guard or
+when excited. At such times the _r_'s were thundered or rolled out.
+
+Aunt Cecilia smiled most graciously, and I feel sure she did not object to
+be mistaken for our sister.
+
+'It seems,' he added, 'we are to be fellow-passengers. My name is
+Moncrieff, and if ever I can be of the slightest service to you, pray
+command me.'
+
+'You mentioned your mother,' said aunt, by way of saying something. 'Is
+the old--I mean, is she going with you?'
+
+'What else, what else? And you wouldn't be wrong in calling her "old"
+either. My mither's no' a spring chicken, but--she's a marvel. Ay,
+mither's a marvel.'
+
+'I presume, sir, you've been out before?'
+
+'I've lived for many years in the Silver West. I've made a bit of money,
+but I couldn't live a year longer without my mither, so I just came
+straight home to take her out. I think when you know my mither you'll
+agree with me--she's a marvel.'
+
+On pausing here for a minute to review a few of the events of my past
+life, I cannot agree with those pessimists who tell us we are the victims
+of chance; that our fates and our fortunes have nothing more certain to
+guide them to a good or a bad end than yonder thistle-down which is the
+sport of the summer breeze.
+
+When I went on board the good ship Canton, had any one told me that in a
+few days more I would be standing by the banks of Loch Coila, I would have
+laughed in his face.
+
+Yet so it was. Aunt and Donald stayed in London, while I and Dugald formed
+the strange resolve of running down and having one farewell glance at
+Coila. I seemed impelled to do so, but how or by what I never could say.
+
+No; we did not go near Edinburgh. Good-byes had been said, why should we
+rehearse again all the agony of parting?
+
+Nor did we show ourselves to many of the villagers, and those who did see
+us hardly knew us in our English dress.
+
+Just one look at the lake, one glance at the old castle, and we should be
+gone, never more to set foot in Coila.
+
+And here we were close by the water, almost under shadow of our own old
+home. It was a forenoon in the end of February, but already the
+larch-trees were becoming tinged with tender green, a balmy air went
+whispering through the drooping silver birches, the sky was blue, flecked
+only here and there with fleecy clouds that cast shadow-patches on the
+lake. Up yonder a lark was singing, in adjoining spruce thickets we could
+hear the croodle of the ringdove, and in the swaying branches of the elms
+the solemn-looking rooks were already building their nests. Dugald and I
+were lying on the moss.
+
+'Spring always comes early to dear Coila,' I was saying; 'and I'm so glad
+the ship broke down, just to give me a chance of saying "Good-bye" to the
+loch. You, Dugald, did say "Good-bye" to it, you know, but I never had a
+chance.
+
+Ahem! We were startled by the sound of a little cough right behind us--a
+sort of made cough, such as people do when they want to attract
+attention.
+
+Standing near us was a gentleman of soldierly bearing, but certainly not
+haughty in appearance, for he was smiling. He held a book in his hand, and
+on his arm leant a beautiful young girl, evidently his daughter, for both
+had blue eyes and fair hair.
+
+Dugald and I had started to our feet, and for the life of me I could not
+help feeling awkward.
+
+'I fear,' I stammered, 'we are trespassing. But--but my brother and I ran
+down from London to say good-bye to Coila. We will go at once.'
+
+'Stay one moment,' said the gentleman. 'Do not run away without
+explaining. You have been here before?'
+
+'We are the young M'Crimmans of Coila, sir.'
+
+I spoke sadly--I trust not fiercely.
+
+'Pardon me, but something seemed to tell me you were. We are pleased to
+meet you. Irene, my daughter. It is no fault of ours--at least, of
+mine--that your family and the M'Raes were not friendly long ago.'
+
+'But my father _would_ have made friends with the chief of Strathtoul,' I
+said.
+
+'Yes, and mine had old Highland prejudices. But look, yonder comes a
+thunder-shower. You _must_ stay till it is over.'
+
+'I feel, sir,' I said, 'that I am doing wrong, and that I have done wrong.
+My father, even, does not know we are here. _He_ has prejudices now,
+too,'
+
+'Well,' said the officer, laughing, 'my father is in France. Let us both
+be naughty boys. You must come and dine with me and my daughter, anyhow.
+Bother old-fashioned blood-feuds! We must not forget that we are living in
+the nineteenth century.'
+
+I hesitated a moment, then I glanced at the girl, and next minute we were
+all walking together towards the castle.
+
+We did stop to dinner, nor did we think twice about leaving that night.
+The more I saw of these, our hereditary enemies, the more I liked them.
+Irene was very like Flora in appearance and manner, but she had a greater
+knowledge of the world and all its ways. She was very beautiful. Yes, I
+have said so already, but somehow I cannot help saying it again. She
+looked older than she really was, and taller than most girls of fourteen.
+
+'Well,' I said in course of the evening, 'it _is_ strange my being here.'
+
+'It is only the fortune of war our both being here,' said M'Rae.
+
+'I wonder,' I added, 'how it will all end!'
+
+'If it would only end as I should wish, it would end very pleasantly
+indeed. But it will not. You will write filially and tell your good father
+of your visit. He will write cordially, but somewhat haughtily, to thank
+us. That will be all. Oh, Highland blood is very red, and Highland pride
+is very high. Well, at all events, Murdoch M'Crimman--if you will let me
+call you by your name without the "Mr."--we shall never forget your visit,
+shall we, darling?'
+
+I looked towards Miss M'Rae. Her answer was a simple 'No'; but I was much
+surprised to notice that her eyes were full of tears, which she tried in
+vain to conceal.
+
+I saw tears in her eyes next morning as we parted. Her father said
+'Good-bye' so kindly that my whole heart went out to him on the spot.
+
+'I'm not sorry I came,' I said; 'and, sir,' I added, 'as far as you and I
+are concerned, the feud is at an end?'
+
+'Yes, yes; and better so. And,' he continued, 'my daughter bids me say
+that she is happy to have seen you, that she is going to think about you
+very often, and is so sorrowful you poor lads should have to go away to a
+foreign land to seek your fortune while we remain at Coila. That is the
+drift of it, but I fear I have not said it prettily enough to please
+Irene. Good-bye.'
+
+We had found fine weather at Coila, and we brought it back with us to
+London. There was no hitch this time in starting. The Canton got away
+early in the morning, even before breakfast. The last person to come on
+board was the Scot, Moncrieff. He came thundering across the plank gangway
+with strides like a camel, bearing something or somebody rolled in a
+tartan plaid.
+
+Dugald and I soon noticed two little legs dangling from one end of the
+bundle and a little old face peeping out of the other. It was his mother
+undoubtedly.
+
+He put her gently down when he gained the deck, and led her away amidships
+somewhere, and there the two disappeared. Presently Moncrieff came back
+alone and shook hands with us in the most friendly way.
+
+'I've just disposed of my mither,' he said, as if she had been a piece of
+goods and he had sold her. 'I've just disposed of the poor dear creature,
+and maybe she won't appear again till we're across the bay.'
+
+'You did not take the lady below?'
+
+'There's no' much of the lady about my mither, though I'm doing all I can
+to make her one. No; I didn't take her below. Fact is, we have state
+apartments, as you might say, for I've rented the second lieutenant's and
+purser's cabins. There they are, cheek-by-jowl, as cosy as wrens'-nests,
+just abaft the cook's galley amidships yonder.'
+
+'Well,' I said, 'I hope your mother will be happy and enjoy the voyage.'
+
+'Hurrah!' shouted the Scot; 'we're off at last! Now for a fair wind and a
+clear sea to the shores of the Silver West. I'll run and tell my mither
+we're off.'
+
+That evening the sun sank on the western waves with a crimson glory that
+spoke of fine weather to follow. We were steaming down channel with just
+enough sail set to give us some degree of steadiness.
+
+Though my brothers and I had never been to sea before, we had been used to
+roughing it in storms around the coast and on Loch Coila, and probably
+this may account for our immunity from that terror of the ocean,
+_mal-de-mer_. As for aunt, she was an excellent sailor. The saloon, when
+we went below to dinner, was most gay, beautifully lighted, and very
+home-like. The officers present were the captain, the surgeon, and one
+lieutenant. The captain was president, while the doctor occupied the chair
+of _vice_. Both looked thorough sailors, and both appeared as happy as
+kings. There seemed also to exist a perfect understanding between the
+pair, and their remarks and anecdotes kept the passengers in excellent
+good humour during dinner.
+
+The doctor had been the first to enter, and he came sailing in with aunt,
+whom he seated on his right hand. Now aunt was the only young lady among
+the passengers, and she certainly had dressed most becomingly. I could not
+help admiring her--so did the doctor, but so also did the captain.
+
+When he entered he gave his surgeon a comical kind of a look and shook his
+head.
+
+'Walked to windward of me, I see!' he said. 'Miss M'Crimman,' he added,
+'we don't, as a rule, keep particular seats at table in this ship.'
+
+'Don't believe a word he says, Miss M'Crimman!' cried the doctor. 'Look,
+he's laughing! He never is serious when he smiles like that. Steward, what
+is the number of this chair?'
+
+'Fifteen, sir.'
+
+'Fifteen, Miss M'Crimman, and you won't forget it; and this table-napkin
+ring, observe, is Gordon tartan, green and black and orange.'
+
+'Miss M'Crimman,' the captain put in, as if the doctor had not said a
+word, 'to-morrow evening, for example, you will have the honour to sit on
+my right.'
+
+'Honour, indeed!' laughed the doctor.
+
+'The honour to sit on my right. You will find I can tell much better
+stories than old Conserve-of-roses there; and I feel certain you will not
+sit anywhere else all the voyage!'
+
+'Ah, stay one moments!' cried a merry-looking little Spaniard, who had
+just entered and seated himself quietly at the table; 'the young lady weel
+not always sit dere, or dere, for sometime she weel have de honour to sit
+at my right hand, for example, eh, capitan?'
+
+There was a hearty laugh at these words, and after this, every one seemed
+on the most friendly terms with every one else, and willing to serve every
+one else first and himself last. This is one good result that accrues from
+travelling, and I have hardly ever yet known a citizen of the world who
+could be called selfish.
+
+There were three other ladies at table to-night, each of whom sat by her
+husband's side. Though they were all in what Dr. Spinks afterwards termed
+the sere and yellow leaf, both he and the good captain really vied with
+each other in paying kindly attention to their wants.
+
+So pleasantly did this our first dinner on board pass over that by the
+time we had risen from our seats we felt, one and all, as if we had known
+each other for a very long time indeed.
+
+Next came our evening concert. One of the married ladies played
+exceedingly well, and the little Spanish gentleman sang like a minor Sims
+Reeves.
+
+'Your sister sings, I feel sure,' he said to me.
+
+'My aunt plays the harp and sings,' I answered.
+
+'And the harp--you have him?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Oh, bring him--bring him! I do love de harp!'
+
+While my aunt played and sang, it would have been difficult to say which
+of her audience listened with the most delighted attention. The doctor's
+face was a study; the captain looked tenderly serious; Captain Bombazo,
+the black-moustachioed Spaniard, was animation personified; his dark eyes
+sparkled like diamonds, his very eyelids appeared to snap with pleasure.
+Even the stewards and stewardess lingered in the passage to listen with
+respectful attention, so that it is no wonder we boys were proud of our
+clever aunt.
+
+When she ceased at last there was that deep silence which is far more
+eloquent than applause. The first to break it was Moncrieff.
+
+'Well,' he said, with a deep sigh, 'I never heard the like o' that
+afore!'
+
+The friendly relations thus established in the saloon lasted all the
+voyage long--so did the captain's, the doctor's, and little Spanish
+officer's attentions to my aunt. She had made a triple conquest; three
+hearts, to speak figuratively, lay at her feet.
+
+Our voyage was by no means a very eventful one, and but little different
+from thousands of others that take place every month.
+
+Some degree of merriment was caused among the men, when, on the fourth
+day, big Moncrieff led his mother out to walk the quarter-deck leaning on
+his arm. She was indeed a marvel. It would have been impossible even to
+guess at her age; for though her face was as yellow as a withered lemon,
+and as wrinkled as a Malaga rasin, she walked erect and firm, and was
+altogether as straight as a rush. She was dressed with an eye to comfort,
+for, warm though the weather was getting, her cloak was trimmed with fur.
+On her head she wore a neat old-fashioned cap, and in her hand carried a
+huge green umbrella, which evening and morning she never laid down except
+at meals.
+
+[Illustration: 'I'll teach ye!']
+
+This umbrella was a weapon of offence as well as defence. We had proof of
+that on the very first day, for as he passed along the deck the second
+steward had the bad manners to titter. Next moment the umbrella had
+descended with crushing force on his head, and he lay sprawling in the lee
+scuppers.
+
+'I'll teach ye,' she said, 'to laugh at an auld wife, you gang-the-gate
+swinger.'
+
+'Mither! mither!' pleaded Moncrieff, 'will you never be able to behave
+like a lady?'
+
+The steward crawled forward crestfallen, and the men did not let him
+forget his adventure in a hurry.
+
+'Mither's a ma_rr_vel,' Moncrieff whispered to me more than once that
+evening, for at table no 'laird's lady' could have behaved so well, albeit
+her droll remarks and repartee kept us all laughing. After dinner it was
+just the same--there were no bounds to her good-nature, her excellent
+spirits and comicality. Even when asked to sing she was by no means taken
+aback, but treated us to a ballad of five-and-twenty verses, with a chorus
+to each; but as it told a story of love and war, of battle and siege, of
+villainy for a time in the ascendant, and virtue triumphant at the end, it
+really was not a bit wearisome; and when Moncrieff told us that she could
+sing a hundred more as good, we all agreed that his mother was indeed a
+marvel.
+
+I have said the voyage was uneventful, but this is talking as one who has
+been across the wide ocean many times and oft. No long voyage can be
+uneventful; but nothing very dreadful happened to mar our passage to Rio
+de Janeiro. We were not caught in a tornado; we were not chased by a
+pirate; we saw no suspicious sail; no ghostly voice hailed us from aloft
+at the midnight hour; no shadowy form beckoned us from a fog. We did not
+even spring a leak, nor did the mainyard come tumbling down. But we _did_
+have foul weather off Finisterre; a man _did_ fall overboard, and was duly
+picked up again; a shark _did_ follow the ship for a week, but got no
+corpse to devour, only the contents of the cook's pail, sundry bullets
+from sundry revolvers, and, finally, a red-hot brick rolled in a bit of
+blanket. Well, of course, a man fell from aloft and knocked his shoulder
+out--a man always does--and Mother Carey's chickens flew around our stern,
+boding bad weather, which never came, and shoals of porpoises danced
+around us at sunset, and we saw huge whales pursuing their solitary path
+through the bosom of the great deep, and we breakfasted off flying fish,
+and caught Cape pigeons, and wondered at the majestic flight of the
+albatross; and we often saw lightning without hearing thunder, and heard
+thunder without seeing lightning; and in due course we heard the thrilling
+shout from aloft of 'Land ho!' and heard the officer of the watch sing
+out, 'Where away?'
+
+And lo and behold! three or four hours afterwards we were all on deck
+marvelling at the rugged grandeur of the shores of Rio, and the wondrous
+steeple-shaped mountain that stands sentry for ever and ever and ever at
+the entrance to the marvellous haven.
+
+When this was in sight, Moncrieff rushed off into the cabin and bore his
+mother out.
+
+He held the old lady aloft, on one arm, shouting, as he pointed
+landwards--
+
+'Look, mither, look! the Promised Land! Our new home in the Silver West!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+ON SHORE AT RIO.
+
+
+It was well on in the afternoon when land was sighted, but so accurately
+had the ship been navigated for all the long, pleasant weeks of our voyage
+that both the captain and his first officer might easily have been excused
+for showing a little pride in their seamanship. Your British sailor,
+however, is always a modest man, and there was not the slightest approach
+to bombast. The ship was now slowed, for we could not cross the bar that
+night.
+
+At the dinner-table we were all as merry as schoolboys on the eve of a
+holiday. Old Jenny, as Moncrieff's mother had come to be called, was in
+excellent spirits, and her droll remarks not only made us laugh, but
+rendered it very difficult indeed for the stewards to wait with anything
+approaching to _sang-froid_. Moncrieff was quietly happy. He seemed
+pleased his mother was so great a favourite. Aunt, in her tropical toilet,
+looked angelic. The adjective was applied by our mutual friend Captain
+Roderigo de Bombazo, and my brothers and I agreed that he had spoken the
+truth for once in a way. Did he not always speak the truth? it may be
+asked. I am not prepared to accuse the worthy Spaniard of deliberate
+falsehood, but if everything he told us was true, then he must indeed have
+come through more wild and terrible adventures, and done more travelling
+and more fighting, than any lion-hunter that ever lived and breathed.
+
+He was highly amusing nevertheless, and as no one, with the exception of
+Jenny, ever gave any evidence of doubting what he said and related
+concerning his strange career, he was encouraged to carry on; and even the
+exploits of Baron Munchausen could not have been compared to some of his.
+I think it used to hurt his feelings somewhat that old Jenny listened so
+stolidly to his relations, for he used to cater for her opinion at times.
+
+'Ah!' Jenny would say, 'you're a wonderful mannie wi' your way o't! And
+what a lot you've come through! I wonder you have a hair in your heed!'
+
+'But the señora believes vot I say?'
+
+'Believe ye? If a' stories be true, yours are no lees, and I'm not goin'
+ahint your back to tell ye, sir.'
+
+Once, on deck, he was drawing the long-bow, as the Yankees call it, at a
+prodigious rate. He was telling how, once upon a time, he had caught a
+young alligator; how he had tamed it and fed it till it grew a monster
+twenty feet long; how he used to saddle it and bridle it, and ride through
+the streets of Tulcora on its back--men, women, and children screaming and
+flying in all directions; how, armed only with his good sabre, he rode it
+into a lake which was infested with these dread saurians; how he was
+attacked in force by the awful reptiles, and how he had killed and wounded
+so many that they lay dead in dozens next day along the banks.
+
+'Humph!' grunted old Jenny when he had finished.
+
+The little captain put the questions,
+
+'Ah! de aged señora not believe! De aged señora not have seen much of de
+world?'
+
+Jenny had grasped her umbrella.
+
+'Look here, my mannie,' she said, 'I'll gie ye a caution; dinna you refer
+to my age again, or I'll "aged-snorer" you. If ye get the weight o' my
+gingham on your shou'ders, ye'll think a coo has kick't ye--so mind.'
+
+And the Spanish captain had slunk away very unlike a lion-hunter, but he
+never called Jenny old again.
+
+To-night, however, even before we had gone below, Jenny had given proofs
+that she was in an extra good temper, for being a little way behind
+Bombazo--as if impelled by some sudden and joyous impulse--she lifted that
+everlasting umbrella and hit him a friendly thwack that could be heard
+from bowsprit to binnacle.
+
+'Tell as mony lees the nicht as ye like, my mannie,' she cried, 'and I'll
+never contradict ye, for I've seen the promised land!'
+
+'And so, captain, you must stay at Rio a whole week?' said my aunt at
+dessert.
+
+'Yes, Miss M'Crimman,' replied the captain. 'Are you pleased?'
+
+'I'm delighted. And I propose that we get up a grand picnic in "the
+promised land," as good old Jenny calls it.'
+
+And so it was arranged. Bombazo and Dr. Spinks, having been at Rio de
+Janeiro before, were entrusted with the organization of the 'pig-neeg,' as
+Bombazo called it, and held their first consultation on ways and means
+that very evening. Neither I nor my brothers were admitted to this
+meeting, though aunt was. Nevertheless, we felt confident the picnic would
+be a grand success, for, to a late hour, men were hurrying fore and aft,
+and the stewards were up to their eyes packing baskets and making
+preparations, while from the cook's gally gleams of rosy light shot out
+every time the door was opened, to say nothing of odours so appetising
+that they would have awakened Van Winkle himself.
+
+Before we turned in, we went on deck to have a look at the night. It was
+certainly full of promise. We were not far from the shore--near enough to
+see a long line of white which we knew was breakers, and to hear their
+deep sullen boom as they spent their fury on the rocks. The sky was
+studded with brilliant stars--far more bright, we thought them, than any
+we ever see in our own cold climate. Looking aloft, the tall masts seemed
+to mix and mingle with the stars at every roll of the ship. The moon, too,
+was as bright as silver in the east, its beams making strange quivering
+lines and crescents in each approaching wave. And somewhere--yonder among
+those wondrous cone-shaped hills, now bathed in this purple moonlight--lay
+the promised land, the romantic town of Rio, which to-morrow we should
+visit.
+
+We went below, and, as if by one accord, my brothers and I knelt down
+together to thank the Great Power on high who had guided us safely over
+the wide illimitable ocean, and to implore His blessing on those at home,
+and His guidance on all our future wanderings.
+
+Early next morning we were awakened by a great noise on deck, and the dash
+and turmoil of breaking water. The rudder-chains, too, were constantly
+rattling as the men at the wheel obeyed the shouts of the officer of the
+watch.
+
+'Starboard a little!'
+
+'Starboard it is, sir!'
+
+'Easy as you go! Steady!'
+
+'Steady it is, sir!'
+
+'Port a little! Steady!'
+
+Then came a crash that almost flung us out of our beds. Before we gained
+the deck of our cabin there was another, and still another. Had we run on
+shore? We dreaded to ask each other.
+
+But just then the steward, with kindly thought, drew back our curtain and
+reassured us.
+
+'We're only bumping over the bar, young gentlemen--we'll be in smooth
+water in a jiffey.'
+
+We were soon all dressed and on deck. We were passing the giant hill
+called Sugar Loaf, and the mountains seemed to grow taller and taller, and
+to frown over us as we got nearer.
+
+Once through the entrance, the splendid bay itself lay spread out before
+us in all its silver beauty. Full twenty miles across it is, and
+everywhere surrounded by the grandest hills imaginable. Not even in our
+dreams could we have conceived of such a noble harbour, for here not only
+could all the fleets in the world lie snug, but even cruise and manoeuvre.
+Away to the west lay the picturesque town itself, its houses and public
+buildings shining clear in the morning sun, those nearest nestling in a
+beauty of tropical foliage I have never seen surpassed.
+
+My brothers and I felt burning to land at once, but regulations must be
+carried out, and before we had cleared the customs, and got a clean bill
+of health, the day was far spent. Our picnic must be deferred till
+to-morrow.
+
+However, we could land.
+
+As they took their seats in the boat and she was rowed shoreward, I
+noticed that Donald and Dugald seemed both speechless with delight and
+admiration; as for me, I felt as if suddenly transported to a new world.
+And such a world--beauty and loveliness everywhere around us! How should I
+ever be able to describe it, I kept wondering--how give dear old mother
+and Flora any notion, even the most remote, of the delight instilled into
+our souls by all we saw and felt in this strange, strange land! Without
+doubt, the beauty of our surroundings constitutes one great factor in our
+happiness, wherever we are.
+
+When we landed--indeed, before we landed--while the boat was still
+skimming over the purple waters, the green mountains appearing to mingle
+and change places every moment as we were borne along, I felt conquered,
+if I may so express it, by the enchantment of my situation. I gave in my
+allegiance to the spirit of the scene, I abandoned all thoughts of being
+able to describe anything, I abandoned myself to enjoyment. _Laisser
+faire_, I said to my soul, is to live. Every creature, every being here
+seems happy. To partake of the _dolce far niente_ appears the whole aim
+and object of their lives.
+
+And so I stepped on shore, regretting somewhat that Flora was not here,
+feeling how utterly impossible it would be to write that 'good letter'
+home descriptive of this wondrous medley of tropical life and loveliness,
+but somewhat reckless withal, and filled with a determination to give full
+rein to my sense of pleasure. I could not help wondering, however, if
+everything I saw was real. Was I in a dream, from which I should presently
+be rudely awakened by the rattle and clatter of the men hauling up ashes,
+and find myself in bed on board the Canton? Never mind, I would enjoy it
+were it even a dream.
+
+What a motley crowd of people of every colour! How jolly those negroes
+look! How gaily the black ladies are dressed! How the black men laugh!
+What piles of fruit and green stuff! What a rich, delicious, warm aroma
+hovers everywhere!
+
+An interpreter? You needn't ask _me_. I'm not in charge. Ask my aunt here;
+but she herself can talk many languages. Or ask that tall brawny Scot, who
+is hustling the darkies about as if South America all belonged to him.
+
+'A carriage, Moncrieff? Oh, this is delightful! Auntie, dear, let me help
+you on board. Hop in, Dugald. Jump, Donald. No, no, Moncrieff, I mean to
+have the privilege of sitting beside the driver. Off we go. Hurrah! Do you
+like it, Donald? But aren't the streets rough! I won't talk any more; I
+want to watch things.'
+
+I wonder, though, if Paradise itself was a bit more lovely than the
+gardens we catch glimpses of as we drive along?
+
+How cool they look, though the sun is shining in a blue and cloudless sky!
+What dark shadows those gently waving palm-trees throw! Look at those
+cottage verandahs! Look, oh, look at the wealth of gorgeous flowers--the
+climbing, creeping, wreathing flowers! What colours! What fantastic
+shapes! What a merry mood Nature must have been in when she framed them
+so! And the perfume from those fairy gardens hangs heavy on the air; the
+delicious balmy breeze that blows through the green, green palm-leaves is
+not sufficient to waft away the odour of that orange blossom. Behold those
+beautiful children in groups, on terraces and lawns, at windows, or in
+verandahs--so gaily are they dressed that they themselves might be
+mistaken for bouquets of lovely flowers!
+
+I wonder what the names of all those strange blossom-bearing shrubs are.
+But, bah! who would bother about names of flowers on a day like this? The
+butterflies do not, and the bees do not. Are those really butterflies,
+though--really and truly? Are they not gorgeously painted fans, waved and
+wafted by fairies, themselves unseen?
+
+The people we meet chatter gaily as we pass, but they do not appear to
+possess a deal of curiosity; they are too contented for anything. All life
+here must be one delicious round of enjoyment. And nobody surely ever dies
+here; I do not see how they could.
+
+'Is this a cave we are coming to, Moncrieff? What is that long row of
+columns and that high, green, vaulted roof, through which hardly a ray of
+sunshine can struggle? Palm-trees! Oh, Moncrieff, what glorious palms! And
+there is life upon life there, for the gorgeous trees, not apparently
+satisfied with their own magnificence of shape and foliage, must array
+themselves in wreaths of dazzling orchids and festoons of trailing
+flowers. The fairies _must_ have hung those flowers there? Do not deny it,
+Moncrieff!'
+
+And here, in the Botanical Gardens, imagination must itself be dumb--such
+a wild wealth of all that is charming in the vegetable and animal
+creation.
+
+'Donald, go your own road. Dugald, go yours; let us wander alone. We may
+meet again some day. It hardly matters whether we do or not. I'm in a
+dream, and I don't think I want to awaken for many a long year.'
+
+I go wandering away from my brothers, away from every one.
+
+A fountain is sending its spray aloft till the green drooping branches of
+the bananas and those feathery tree-ferns are everywhere spangled with
+diamonds. I will rest here. I wish I could catch a few of those wondrous
+butterflies, or even one of those fairylike humming-birds--mere sparks of
+light and colour that flit and buzz from flower to flower. I wish I
+could--that I--I mean--I--wish--'
+
+'Hullo! Murdoch. Where are you? Why, here he is at last, sound asleep
+under an orange-tree!'
+
+It is my wild Highland brothers. They have both been shaking me by the
+shoulders. I sit up and rub my eyes.
+
+'Do you know we've been looking for you for over an hour?'
+
+'Ah, Dugald!' I reply, 'what is an hour, one wee hour, in a place like
+this?'
+
+We must now go to visit the market-place, and then we are going to the
+hotel to dine and sleep.
+
+The market is a wondrously mixed one, and as wondrously foreign and
+strange as it is possible to conceive. The gay dresses of the women--some
+of whom are as black as an ebony ball; their gaudy head-gear; their
+glittering but tinselled ornaments; their round laughing faces, in which
+shine rows of teeth as white perhaps as alabaster; the jaunty men folks;
+the world of birds and beasts, all on the best of terms with themselves,
+especially the former, arrayed in all the colours of the rainbow; the
+world of fruit, tempting in shape, in beauty, and in odour; the world of
+fish, some of them beautiful enough to have dwelt in the coral caves of
+fairyland beneath the glittering sea--some ugly, even hideous enough to be
+the creatures of a demon's dream, and some, again, so odd-looking or so
+grotesque as to make one smile or laugh outright;--the whole made up a
+picture that even now I have but to close my eyes to see again!
+
+When night falls the streets get for a time more crowded; side-paths
+hardly exist--at all events, the inhabitants show their independence by
+crowding along the centre of the streets. Not much light to guide them,
+though, except where from open doors or windows the rays from lamps shoot
+out into the darkness.
+
+Away to the hotel. A dinner in a delightfully cool, large room, a punkah
+waving overhead, brilliant lights, joy on all our faces, a dessert fit to
+set before a king. Now we shall know how those strange fruits taste, whose
+perfume hung around the market to-day. To bed at last in a room scented
+with orange-blossoms, and around the windows of which the sweet
+stephanotis clusters in beauty--to bed, to sleep, and dream of all we have
+done and seen.
+
+We awaken--at least, I do--in the morning with a glad sensation of
+anticipated pleasure. What is it? Oh yes, the picnic!
+
+But it is no ordinary picnic. It lasts for three long days and nights,
+during which we drive by day through scenes of enchantment apparently, and
+sleep by night under canvas, wooed to slumber by the wind whispering in
+the waving trees.
+
+'Moncrieff,' I say on the second day, 'I should like to live here for ever
+and ever and ever.'
+
+'Man!' replies Moncrieff, 'I'm glad ye enjoy it, and so does my mither
+here. But dinna forget, lads, that hard work is all before us when we
+reach Buenos Ayres.'
+
+'But I will, and I _shall_ forget, Moncrieff,' I cry. 'This country is
+full of forgetfulness. Away with all thoughts of work; let us revel in the
+sunshine like the bees, and the birds, and the butterflies.'
+
+'Revel away, then,' says Moncrieff; and dear aunt smiles languidly.
+
+On the last day of 'the show,' as Dugald called it, and while our mule
+team is yet five good miles from town, clouds dark and threatening bank
+rapidly up in the west. The driver lashes the beasts and encourages them
+with shout and cry to do their speedy utmost; but the storm breaks over us
+in all its fury, the thunder seems to rend the very mountains, the rain
+pours down in white sheets, the lightning runs along the ground and looks
+as if it would set the world on fire; the wind goes tearing through the
+trees, bending the palms like reeds, rending the broad banana-leaves to
+ribbons; branches crack and fall down, and the whole air is filled with
+whirling fronds and foliage.
+
+Moncrieff hastily envelopes his mother in that Highland plaid till nought
+is visible of the old lady save the nose and one twinkling eye. We laugh
+in spite of the storm. Louder and louder roars the thunder, faster and
+faster fly the mules, and at last we are tearing along the deserted
+streets, and hastily draw up our steaming steeds at the hotel door. And
+that is almost all I remember of Rio; and to-morrow we are off to sea once
+more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+MONCRIEFF RELATES HIS EXPERIENCES.
+
+
+Our life at sea had been like one long happy dream. That, at all events,
+is how it had felt to me. 'A dream I could have wished to last for aye.' I
+was enamoured of the ocean, and more than once I caught myself yearning to
+be a sailor. There are people who are born with strange longings, strange
+desires, which only a life on the ever-changing, ever-restless waves
+appears to suit and soothe. To such natures the sea seems like a mother--a
+wild, hard, harsh mother at times, perhaps, but a mother who, if she
+smiles but an hour, makes them forget her stormy anger of days or weeks.
+
+But the dream was past and gone. And here we had settled down for a spell
+at Buenos Ayres. We had parted with the kindly captain and surgeon of the
+Canton, with many a heartily expressed hope of meeting again another day,
+with prayers on their side for our success in the new land, with kindliest
+wishes on ours for a pleasant voyage and every joy for them.
+
+Dear me! What a very long time it felt to look back to, since we had
+bidden them 'good-bye' at home! How very old I was beginning to feel! I
+asked my brothers if their feelings were the same, and found them
+identical. Time had been apparently playing tricks on us.
+
+And yet we did not look any older in each other's eyes, only just a little
+more serious. Yes, that was it--_serious_. Even Dugald, who was usually
+the most light-hearted and merry of the three of us, looked as if he fully
+appreciated the magnitude of what we had undertaken.
+
+Here we were, three--well, young men say, though some would have called us
+boys--landed on a foreign shore, without an iota of experience, without
+much knowledge of the country apart from that we had gleaned from books or
+gathered from the conversations of Bombazo and Moncrieff. And yet we had
+landed with the intention, nay, even the determination, to make our way in
+the new land--not only to seek our fortunes, but to find them.
+
+Oh, we were not afraid! We had the glorious inheritance of courage,
+perseverance, and self-reliance. Here is how Donald, my brother, argued
+one night:
+
+'Look, here, Murdo,' he said. 'This _is_ a land of milk and honey, isn't
+it? Well, we're going to be the busy bees to gather it. It _is_ a silver
+land, isn't it? Well, we're the boys to tap it. Fortunes _are_ made here,
+and _have_ been made. What is done once can be done five hundred times.
+Whatever men dare they can do. _Quod erat demonstrandum._'
+
+'_Et nil desperandum_,' added Dugald.
+
+'I'm not joking, I can tell you, Dugald, I'm serious now, and I mean to
+remain so, and stick to work--aren't you, Murdo?'
+
+'I am, Donald.'
+
+Then we three brothers, standing there, one might say, on the confines of
+an unknown country, with all the world before us, shook hands, and our
+looks, as we gazed into each other's eyes, said--if they said
+anything--'We'll do the right thing one by the other, come weal, come
+woe.'
+
+Aunt entered soon after.
+
+'What are you boys so serious about?' she said, laughing merrily, as she
+seated herself on the couch. 'You look like three conspirators.'
+
+'So we are, aunt. We're conspiring together to make our fortunes.'
+
+'What! building castles in the air?'
+
+'Oh, no, no, _no_,' cried Donald, 'not in the air, but on the earth. And
+our idols are not going to have feet of clay, I assure you, auntie, but of
+solid silver.'
+
+'Well, we shall hope for the best. I have just parted with Mr. Moncrieff,
+whom I met down town. We have had a long walk together and quite a nice
+chat. He has made me his confidant--think of that!'
+
+'What! you, auntie?'
+
+'Yes, me. Who else? And that sober, honest, decent, Scot is going to take
+a wife. It was so good of him to tell _me_. We are all going to the
+wedding next week, and I'm sure I wish the dear man every happiness and
+joy.'
+
+'So do we, aunt.'
+
+'And oh, by the way, he is coming to dine here to-night, and I feel sure
+he wants to give you good advice, and that means me too, of course.'
+
+'Of course, auntie, you're one of us.'
+
+Moncrieff arrived in good time, and brought his mother with him.
+
+'Ye didn't include my mither in the invitation, Miss M'Crimman,' said the
+Scot; 'but I knew you meant her to come. I've been so long without the
+poor old creature, that I hardly care to move about without her now.'
+
+'Poor old creature, indeed!' Mrs. Moncrieff was heard to mumble. 'Where,'
+she said to a nattily dressed waiter, 'will you put my umbrella?'
+
+'I'll take the greatest care of it, madam,' the man replied.
+
+'Do, then,' said the little old dame, 'and I may gi'e ye a penny, though I
+dinna mak' ony promises, mind.'
+
+A nicer little dinner was never served, nor could a snugger room for such
+a _tête-à-tête_ meal be easily imagined. It was on the ground floor, the
+great casement windows opening on to a verandah in a shady garden, where
+grass was kept green and smooth as velvet, where rare ferns grew in
+luxurious freedom with dwarf palms and drooping bananas, and where
+stephanotis and the charming lilac bougainvillea were still in bloom.
+
+When the dessert was finished, and old Jenny was quite tired talking, it
+seemed so natural that she should curl up in an easy-chair and go off to
+sleep.
+
+'I hope my umbrella's safe, laddie,' were her last words as her son
+wrapped her in his plaid.
+
+'As safe as the Union Bank,' he replied.
+
+So we left her there, for the waiter had taken coffee into the verandah.
+
+Aunt, somewhat to our astonishment, ordered cigars, and explained to
+Moncrieff that she did not object to smoking, but _did_ like to see men
+happy.
+
+Moncrieff smiled.
+
+'You're a marvel as well as my mither,' he said.
+
+He smoked on in silence for fully five minutes, but he often took the
+cigar from his mouth and looked at it thoughtfully; then he would allow
+his eyes to follow the curling smoke, watching it with a smile on his face
+as it faded into invisibility, as they say ghosts do.
+
+'Mr. Moncrieff,' said aunt, archly, 'I know what you are thinking about.'
+
+Moncrieff waved his hand through a wreath of smoke as if to clear his
+sight.
+
+'If you were a man,' he answered, 'I'd offer to bet you couldn't guess my
+thoughts. I was not thinking about my Dulcinea, nor even about my mither;
+I was thinking about you and your britheries--I mean your nephews.'
+
+'You are very kind, Mr. Moncrieff.'
+
+'I'm a man of the wo_rrr_ld, though I wasn't aye a man of the wo_rrr_ld. I
+had to pay deep and dear for my experience, Miss M'Crimman.'
+
+'I can easily believe that; but you have benefited by it.'
+
+'Doubtless, doubtless; only it was concerning yourselves I was about to
+make an observation or two.'
+
+'Oh, thanks, do. You are so kind.'
+
+'Never a bit. This is a weary wo_rrr_ld at best. Where would any of us
+land if the one didn't help the other? Well then, there you sit, and woman
+of the wo_rrr_ld though you be, you're in a strange corner of it. You're
+in a foreign land now if ever you were. You have few friends. Bah! what
+are all your letters of introduction worth? What do they bring you in? A
+few invitations to dinner, or to spend a week up country by a wealthy
+_estanciero_, advice from this friend and the next friend, and from a
+dozen friends maybe, but all different. You are already getting puzzled.
+You don't know what to do for the best. You're stopping here to look about
+you, as the saying is. You might well ask me what right have I to advise
+you. The right of brotherhood, I may answer. By birth and station you may
+be far above me, but--you are friends--you are from dear auld Scotland.
+Boys, you are my brothers!'
+
+'And I your sister!' Aunt extended her hand as she spoke, and the worthy
+fellow 'coralled' it, so to speak, in his big brown fist, and tears sprang
+to his eyes.
+
+He pulled himself up sharp, however, and surrounded himself with smoke, as
+the cuttle-fish does with black water, and probably for the same
+reason--to escape observation.
+
+'Now,' he said, 'this is no time for sentiment; it is no land for
+sentiment, but for hard work. Well, what are you going to do? Simply to
+say you're going to make your fortune is all fiddlesticks and folly. How
+are you going to begin?'
+
+'We were thinking--' I began, but paused.
+
+'_I_ was thinking--' said my aunt; then she paused also.
+
+Moncrieff laughed, but not unmannerly.
+
+'I was thinking,' he said. '_You_ were thinking; _he_, _she_, or _it_ was
+thinking. Well, my good people, you may stop all your life in Buenos Ayres
+and conjugate the verb "to think"; but if you'll take my advice you will
+put a shoulder to the wheel of life, and try to conjugate the verb "to
+do".'
+
+'We all want to _do_ and act,' said Donald, energetically.
+
+'Right. Well, you see, you have one thing already in your favour. You have
+a wee bit o' siller in your pouch. It is a nest egg, though; it is not to
+be spent--it is there to bring more beside it. Now, will I tell you how I
+got on in the world? I'm not rich, but I am in a fair way to be
+independent. I am very fond of work, for work's sake, and I'm thirty years
+of age. Been in this country now for over fourteen years. Had I had a nest
+egg when I started, I'd have been half a millionaire by now. But, wae's
+me! I left the old country with nothing belonging to me but my crook and
+my plaid.'
+
+'You were a shepherd before you came out, then?' said aunt.
+
+'Yes; and that was the beauty of it. You've maybe heard o' Foudland, in
+Aberdeenshire? Well, I came fra far ayant the braes o' Foudland. That's,
+maybe, the way my mither's sae auldfarrent. There, ye see, I'm talkin'
+Scotch, for the very thought of Foudland brings back my Scotch tongue. Ay,
+dear lady, dear lady, my father was an honest crofter there. He owned a
+bit farm and everything, and things went pretty well with us till death
+tirled at the door-sneck and took poor father away to the mools. I was
+only a callan o' some thirteen summers then, and when we had to leave the
+wee croft and sell the cows we were fain to live in a lonely shieling on
+the bare brae side, just a butt and a ben with a wee kailyard, and barely
+enough land to grow potatoes and keep a little Shetland cowie. But, young
+though I was, I could herd sheep--under a shepherd at first, but finally
+all by myself. I'm not saying that wasn't a happy time. Oh, it was, lady!
+it was! And many a night since then have I lain awake thinking about it,
+till every scene of my boyhood's days rose up before me. I could see the
+hills, green with the tints of spring, or crimson with the glorious
+heather of autumn; see the braes yellow-tasselled with the golden broom
+and fragrant with the blooming whins; see the glens and dells, the silver,
+drooping birch-trees, the grand old waving pines, the wimpling burns, the
+roaring linns and lochs asleep in the evening sunset. And see my mither's
+shieling, too; and many a night have I lain awake to pray I might have her
+near me once again.'
+
+'And a kind God has answered that prayer!'
+
+'Ay, Miss M'Crimman, and I'll have the sad satisfaction of one day closing
+her een. Never mind, we do our duty here, and we'll all meet again in the
+great "Up-bye." But, dear boys, to continue my story--if story I dare call
+it. Not far from the hills where I used to follow Laird Glennie's sheep,
+and down beside a bonnie wood and stream, was a house, of not much
+pretension, but tenanted every year by a gentleman who used to paint the
+hills and glens and country all round. They say he got great praise for
+his pictures, and big prices as well. I used often to arrange my sheep and
+dogs for him into what he would call picturesque groups and attitudes.
+Then he painted them and me and dogs and all. He used to delight to listen
+to my boyish story of adventure, and in return would tell me tales of
+far-off lands he had been in, and about the Silver Land in particular.
+Such stories actually fired my blood. He had sown the seeds of ambition in
+my soul, and I began to long for a chance of getting away out into the
+wide, wide world, and seeing all its wonders, and, maybe, becoming a great
+man myself. But how could a penniless laddie work his way abroad?
+Impossible.
+
+'Well, one autumn a terrible storm swept over the country. It began with a
+perfect hurricane of wind, then it settled down to rain, till it became a
+perfect "spate." I had never seen such rain, nor such tearing floods as
+came down from the hills.
+
+'Our shieling was a good mile lower down the stream than the artist's
+summer hut. It was set well up the brae, and was safe. But on looking out
+next day a sight met my eyes that quite appalled me. All the lowlands and
+haughs were covered with a sea of water, down the centre of which a mighty
+river was chafing and roaring, carrying on its bosom trees up-torn from
+their roots, pieces of green bank, "stooks" of corn and "coles" of hay,
+and, saddest of all, the swollen bodies of sheep and oxen. My first
+thought was for the artist. I ran along the bank till opposite his house.
+Yes, there it was flooded to the roof, to which poor Mr. Power was
+clinging in desperation, expecting, doubtless, that every moment would be
+his last, for great trees were surging round the house and dashing against
+the tiles.
+
+'Hardly knowing what I did, I waved my plaid and shouted. He saw me, and
+waved his arm in response. Then I remembered that far down stream a man
+kept a boat, and I rushed away, my feet hardly seeming to touch the
+ground, till I reached--not the dwelling, that was covered, but the bank
+opposite; and here, to my delight, I found old M'Kenzie seated in his
+coble. He laughed at me when I proposed going to the rescue of Mr. Power.
+
+'"Impossible!" he said. "Look at the force of the stream."
+
+'"But we have not to cross. We can paddle up the edge," I insisted.
+
+'He ventured at last, much to my joy. It was hard, dangerous work, and
+often we found it safest to land and haul up the boat along the side.
+
+'We were opposite the artist's hut at length, hardly even the chimney of
+which was now visible. But Power was safe as yet.
+
+'At the very moment our boat reached him the chimney disappeared, and with
+it the artist. The turmoil was terrible, for the whole house had
+collapsed. For a time I saw nothing, then only a head and arm raised above
+the foaming torrent, far down stream. I dashed in, in spite of M'Kenzie's
+remonstrances, and in a minute more I had caught the drowning man. I must
+have been struck on the head by the advancing boat. That mattered
+little--the sturdy old ferryman saved us both; and for a few days the
+artist had the best room in mither's shieling.
+
+'And this, dear lady, turned out to be--as I dare say you have guessed--my
+fairy godfather. He went back to Buenos Ayres, taking me as servant. He is
+here now. I saw him but yesterday, and we are still the fastest friends.
+
+'But, boys, do not let me deceive you. Mr. Power was not rich; all he
+could do for me was to pay my passage out, and let me trust to Providence
+for the rest.
+
+'I worked at anything I could get to do for a time, principally holding
+horses in the street, for you know everybody rides here. But I felt sure
+enough that one day, or some day, a settler would come who could value the
+services of an honest, earnest Scottish boy.
+
+'And come the settler did. He took me away, far away to the west, to a
+wild country, but one that was far too flat and level to please me, who
+had been bred and born among the grand old hills of Scotland.
+
+'Never mind, I worked hard, and this settler--a Welshman he
+was--appreciated my value, and paid me fairly well. The best of it was
+that I could save every penny of my earnings.
+
+'Yes, boys, I roughed it more than ever you'll have to do, though remember
+you'll have to rough it too for a time. You don't mind that, you say.
+Bravely spoken, boys. Success in the Silver Land rarely fails to fall to
+him who deserves it.
+
+'Well, in course of time I knew far more about sheep and cattle-raising
+than my master, so he took me as a partner, and since then I have done
+well. We changed our quarters, my partner and I. We have now an excellent
+steading of houses, and a grand place for the beasts.'
+
+'And to what qualities do you chiefly attribute your success?' said my
+aunt.
+
+'Chiefly,' replied Moncrieff, 'to good common-sense, to honest work and
+perseverance. I'm going back home in a week or two, as soon as I get
+married and my mither gets the "swimming" out of her head. She says she
+still feels the earth moving up and down with her; and I don't wonder, an
+auld body like her doesn't stand much codging about.
+
+'Well, you see, boys, that I, like yourselves, had one advantage to begin
+with. You have a bit o' siller--I got a fairy godfather. But if I had a
+year to spare I'd go back to Scotland and lecture. I'd tell them all my
+own ups and downs, and I'd end by saying that lads or young men, with
+plenty of go in them and willingness to work, will get on up country here
+if they can once manage to get landed. Ay, even if they have hardly one
+penny to rattle against another.
+
+'Now, boys, do you care to go home with me? Mind it is a wild border-land
+I live on. There are wild beasts in the hill jungles yet, and there are
+wilder men--the Indians. Yes, I've fought them before, and hope to live to
+fight them once again.'
+
+'I don't think _we'll_ fear the Indians _very_ much,' said my bold brother
+Donald.
+
+'And,' I added, 'we are so glad you have helped us to solve the problem
+that we stood face to face with--namely, how to begin to do something.'
+
+'Well, if that is all, I'll give you plenty to do. I've taken out with me
+waggon-loads of wire fencing as well as a wife. Next week, too, I expect a
+ship from Glasgow to bring me seven sturdy Scotch servant men that I
+picked myself. Every one of them has legs like pillar post-offices, hands
+as broad as spades, and a heart like a lion's. And, more than all this, we
+are trying to form a little colony out yonder, then we'll be able to hold
+our own against all the reeving Indians that ever strode a horse. Ah!
+boys, this Silver Land has a mighty future before it! We have just to
+settle down a bit and work with a will and a steady purpose, then we'll
+fear competition neither with Australia nor the United States of America
+either.
+
+'But you'll come. That's right. And now I have you face to face with fate
+and fortune.
+
+                   "Now's the day and now's the hour,
+                   See the front of battle lower."
+
+Yes, boys, the battle of life, and I would not give a fig for any lad who
+feared to face it.
+
+'Coming, mither, coming. That's the auld lady waking up, and she'll want a
+cup o' tea.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+SHOPPING AND SHOOTING.
+
+
+We all went to Moncrieff's wedding, and it passed off much the same way as
+do weddings in other parts of the world. The new Mrs. Moncrieff was a very
+modest and charming young person indeed, and a native of our sister
+island--Ireland. I dare say Moncrieff loved his wife very much, though
+there was no extra amount of romance about his character, else he would
+hardly have spoken about his wife and a truck-load of wire fencing in the
+self-same sentence. But I dare say this honest Scot believed that wire
+fencing was quite as much a matter of necessity in the Silver West as a
+wife was.
+
+As for my brothers and me, and even aunt, we were impatient now--'burning'
+bold Donald called it--to get away to this same Silver West and begin the
+very new life that was before us.
+
+But ships do not always arrive from England exactly to a day; the vessel
+in which Moncrieff's men, dogs, goods, and chattels were coming was
+delayed by contrary winds, and was a whole fortnight behind her time.
+
+Meanwhile we restrained ourselves as well as we could, and aunt went
+shopping. She had set her heart upon guanaco robes or ponchos for each of
+us; and though they cost a deal of money, and were, according to
+Moncrieff, a quite unnecessary expense, she bought them all the same.
+
+'They will last for ever, you know,' was aunt's excuse for the
+extravagance.
+
+'Yes,' he said, 'but we won't. Besides,' he added, 'these ponchos may
+bring the Gaucho malo (the bad Gaucho) round us.'
+
+'All the better,' persisted aunt. 'I've heard such a deal about this
+Gaucho malo that I should very much like to see a live specimen.'
+
+Moncrieff laughed.
+
+'I much prefer _dead_ specimens,' he said, with that canny twinkle in his
+eye. 'That's the way I like to see them served up. It is far the safest
+plan.'
+
+We were very fond of aunt's company, for she really was more of a sister
+to us than our auntie; but for all that we preferred going shopping with
+Moncrieff. The sort of stores he was laying in gave such earnest of future
+sport and wild adventure.
+
+Strange places he took us to sometimes--the shop of a half-caste Indian,
+for instance, a fellow from the far south of Patagonia. Here Moncrieff
+bought quite a quantity of ordinary ponchos, belts, and linen trousers of
+great width with hats enough of the sombrero type to thatch a rick. This
+mild and gentle savage also sold Moncrieff some dozen of excellent lassoes
+and bolas as well. From the way our friend examined the former, and tried
+the thong-strength of the latter, it was evident he was an expert in the
+use of both. Bolas may be briefly described as three long leather thongs
+tied together at one end, and having a ball at the free end of each. On
+the pampas, these balls are as often as not simply stones tied up in bits
+of skin; but the bolas now bought by Moncrieff were composed of shining
+metal, to prevent their being lost on the pampas. These bolas are waved
+round the heads of the horsemen hunters when chasing ostriches, or even
+pumas. As soon as the circular motion has given them impetus they are
+dexterously permitted to leave the hand at a tangent, and if well thrown
+go circling round the legs, or probably neck of the animal, and bring it
+to the ground by tripping it up, or strangling it.
+
+The lasso hardly needs any description.
+
+'Can you throw that thing well?' said Dugald, his eyes sparkling with
+delight.
+
+'I think I can,' replied Moncrieff. 'Come to the door and see me lasso a
+dog or something.'
+
+Out we all went.
+
+'Oh!' cried Dugald, exultingly, 'here comes little Captain Bombazo,
+walking on the other side of the street with my aunt. Can you lasso him
+without hurting auntie?'
+
+'I believe I can,' said Moncrieff. 'Stand by, and let's have a good try.
+Whatever a man dares he can do. Hoop là!'
+
+The cord left the Scotchman's hand like a flash of lightning, and next
+moment Bombazo, who at the time was smiling and talking most volubly, was
+fairly noosed.
+
+The boys in the street got up a cheer. Bombazo jumped and struggled, but
+Moncrieff stood his ground.
+
+'He must come,' he said, and sure enough, greatly to the delight of the
+town urchins, Moncrieff rounded in the slack of the rope and landed the
+captain most beautifully.
+
+'Ah! you beeg Scot,' said Bombazo, laughing good-humouredly. 'I would not
+care so mooch, if it were not for de lady.'
+
+'Oh, she won't miss you, Bombazo.'
+
+'On the contraire, she veel be inconsolabeel.'
+
+'Ha, ha, ha!' laughed Moncrieff. 'What a tall opinion of yourself you
+have, my little friend!'
+
+Bombazo drew himself up, but it hardly added an inch to his height, and
+nothing to his importance.
+
+Saddles of the pampas pattern the semi-savage had also plenty of, and
+bridles too, and Moncrieff gave a handsome order.
+
+A more respectable and highly civilized saddler's store was next visited,
+and real English gear was bought, including two charming ladies' saddles
+of the newest pattern, and a variety of rugs of various kinds.
+
+Off we went next to a wholesale grocer's place. Out came Moncrieff's
+great note-book, and he soon gave evidence that he possessed a wondrous
+memory, and was a thorough man of business. He kept the shopman hard at it
+for half an hour, by which time one of the pyramids of Egypt, on a small
+scale, was built upon the counter.
+
+[Illustration: Fairly Noosed]
+
+'Now for the draper's, and then the chemist's,' said our friend. From the
+former--a Scot, like himself--he bought a pile of goods of the better
+sort, but from their appearance all warranted to wear a hundred years.
+
+His visit to the druggist was of brief duration.
+
+'Is my medicine chest filled?'
+
+'Yes, sir, all according to your orders.'
+
+'Thanks; send it, and send the bill.'
+
+'Never mind about the bill, Mr. Moncrieff. You'll be down here again.'
+
+'Send the bill, all the same. And I say, Mr. Squills--'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Don't forget to deduct the discount.'
+
+But Moncrieff's shopping was not quite all over yet, and the last place he
+went to was a gunsmith's shop.
+
+And here I and my brothers learned a little about Silver West shooting,
+and witnessed an exhibition that made us marvel.
+
+Moncrieff, after most careful examination, bought half a dozen good
+rifles, and a dozen fowling pieces. It took him quite a long time to
+select these and the ammunition.
+
+'You have good judgment, sir,' said the proprietor.
+
+'I require it all,' said Moncrieff. 'But now I'd look at some revolvers.'
+
+He was shown some specimens.
+
+'Toys--take them away.'
+
+He was shown others.
+
+'Toys again. Have you nothing better?'
+
+'There is nothing better made.'
+
+'Very well. Your bill please. Thanks.'
+
+'If you'll wait one minute,' the shopkeeper said, 'I should feel obliged.
+My man has gone across the way to a neighbour gunsmith.'
+
+'Couldn't I go across the way myself?'
+
+'No,' and the man smiled. 'I don't want to lose your custom.'
+
+'Your candour is charming. I'll wait.'
+
+In a few minutes the man returned with a big basket.
+
+'Ah! these are beauties,' cried Moncrieff. 'Now, can I try one or two?'
+
+'Certainly.'
+
+The man led the way to the back garden of the premises. Against a wall a
+target was placed, and Moncrieff loaded and took up his position. I
+noticed that he kept his elbow pretty near his side. Then he slowly raised
+the weapon.
+
+Crack--crack--crack! six times in all.
+
+'Bravo!' cried the shopkeeper. 'Why, almost every shot has hit the spot.'
+
+Moncrieff threw the revolver towards the man as if it had been a
+cricket-ball.
+
+'Take off the trigger,' he said.
+
+'Off the trigger, sir?'
+
+'Yes,' said Moncrieff, quietly; 'I seldom use the trigger.'
+
+The man obeyed. Then he handed back the weapon, which he had loaded.
+
+Moncrieff looked one moment at the target, then the action of his arm was
+for all the world like that of throwing stones or cracking a whip.
+
+He seemed to bring the revolver down from his ear each time.
+
+Bang--bang--bang! and not a bullet missed the bull's-eye.
+
+'How is it done?' cried Dugald, excitedly.
+
+'I lift the hammer a little way with my thumb and let it go again as I get
+my aim--that is all. It is a rapid way of firing, but I don't advise you
+laddies to try it, or you may blow off your heads. Besides, the aim,
+except in practised hands like mine, is not so accurate. To hit well it is
+better to raise the weapon. First fix your eye on your man's
+breast-button--if he has one--then elevate till you have your sight
+straight, and there you are, and there your Indian is, or your "Gaucho
+malo."'
+
+Moncrieff pointed grimly towards the ground with his pistol as he spoke,
+and Dugald gave a little shudder, as if in reality a dead man lay there.
+
+'It is very simple, you see.'
+
+'Oh, Mr. Moncrieff,' said Dugald, 'I never thought you were so terrible a
+man!'
+
+Moncrieff laughed heartily, finished his purchases, ordering better
+cartridges, as these, he said, had been badly loaded, and made the weapon
+kick, and then we left the shop.
+
+'Now then, boys, I'm ready, and in two days' time hurrah for the Silver
+West! Between you and me, I'm sick of civilization.'
+
+And in two days' time, sure enough, we had all started.
+
+The train we were in was more like an American than an English one. We
+were in a very comfortable saloon, in which we could move about with
+freedom.
+
+Moncrieff, as soon as we had rattled through the streets and found
+ourselves out in the green, cool country, was brimful of joy and spirits.
+Aunt said he reminded her of a boy going off on a holiday. His wife, too,
+looked 'blithe' and cheerful, and nothing could keep his mother's tongue
+from wagging.
+
+Bombazo made the old lady a capital second, while several other settlers
+who were going out with us--all Scotch, by the way--did nothing but smile
+and wonder at all they saw. We soon passed away for a time beyond the
+region of trees into a rich green rolling country, which gave evidence of
+vast wealth, and sport too. Of this latter fact Dugald took good notice.
+
+'Oh, look!' he would cry, pointing to some wild wee lake. 'Murdoch!
+Donald! wouldn't you like to be at the lochside yonder, gun in hand?'
+
+And, sure enough, all kinds of feathered game were very plentiful.
+
+But after a journey of five hours we left the train, and now embarked on a
+passenger steamer, and so commenced our journey up the Paraná. Does not
+the very name sound musical? But I may be wrong, according to some, in
+calling the Paraná beautiful, for the banks are not high; there are no
+wild and rugged mountains, nor even great forests; nevertheless, its very
+width, its silent moving power, and its majesticness give it a beauty in
+my eye that few rivers I know of possess. We gazed on it as the sunset lit
+up its wondrous waters till an island we were passing appeared to rise
+into the sky and float along in the crimson haze. We gazed on it again ere
+we retired for the night. The stars were now all out, and the river's dark
+bosom was studded here and there with ripples and buttons of light; but
+still it was silent, as if it hid some dark mysterious secret which it
+must tell only to the distant ocean.
+
+We slept very soundly this night, for the monotonous throb-throb of the
+engine's great pulse and the churning rush of the screw not only wooed us
+to slumber, but seemed to mingle even with our dreams.
+
+All night long, then, we were on the river, and nearly all next day as
+well. But the voyage appeared to my brothers and me to be all too short.
+We neared Rosario about sunset, and at last cast anchor. But we did not
+land. We were too snug where we were, and the hotel would have had far
+fewer charms.
+
+To-night we had a little impromptu concert, for several of Moncrieff's
+friends came on board, and, strange to say, they were nearly all Scotch.
+So Scotch was spoken, Scotch songs were sung, and on deck, to the wild
+notes of the great bagpipes, Scotch reels and strathspeys were danced.
+After that,
+
+              'The nicht drave on wi' songs and clatter,'
+
+till it was well into the wee short hours of the morning.
+
+At Rosario we stopped for a day--more, I think, because Moncrieff wished
+to give aunt and his young wife a chance of seeing the place than for any
+business reason. Neither my brothers nor I were very much impressed by it,
+though it is a large and flourishing town, built somewhat on Philadelphia
+principles, in blocks, and, like Philadelphia, gridironed all over with
+tramway lines. It is a good thing one is able to get off the marble
+pavements into the cars without having far to go, for the streets are at
+times mere sloughs of despond. It is the same in all new countries.
+
+Rosario lies in the midst of a flat but fertile country, on the banks of
+the Paraná. The hotel where we lodged was quite Oriental in its
+appearance, being built round a beautiful square, paved with marble, and
+adorned with the most lovely tropical shrubs, flowers, and climbing
+plants.
+
+There seems to be a flea in Rosario, however--just one flea; but he is a
+most ubiquitous and a most insatiably blood-thirsty little person. The
+worst of it is that, night or day, you are never perfectly sure where he
+may be. It is no use killing him either--that is simply labour thrown
+away, for he appears to come to life again, and resumes his evil courses
+as merrily as before.
+
+Fifty times a day did I kill that flea, and Dugald said he had slain him
+twice as often; but even as Dugald spoke I could have vowed the lively
+_pulex_ was thoroughly enjoying a draught of my Highland blood inside my
+right sock.
+
+Although none of our party shed tears as we mounted into the train, still
+the kindly hand-shakings and the hearty good-byes were affecting enough;
+and just as the train went puffing and groaning away from the station they
+culminated in one wild Highland hurrah! repeated three times thrice, and
+augmented by the dissonance of a half-ragged crew of urchins, who must
+needs wave their arms aloft and shout, without the faintest notion what it
+was all about.
+
+We were now _en route_ for Cordoba, westward ho! by Frayle Muerto and
+Villa Neuva.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+A JOURNEY THAT SEEMS LIKE A DREAM.
+
+
+It was towards sunset on the day we had left Rosario, and we had made what
+our guard called a grand run, though to us it was a somewhat tedious one.
+Moncrieff had tucked his mother up in the plaid, and she had gone off to
+sleep on the seat 'as gentle as "ewe lammie,"' according to her son. My
+aunt and the young bride were quietly talking together, and I myself was
+in that delightful condition called "twixt sleeping and waking,' when
+suddenly Dugald, who had been watching everything from the window, cried,
+'Oh, Donald, look here. What a lovely changing cloud!'
+
+Had Moncrieff not been busy just then--very earnestly busy
+indeed--discussing the merits of some sample packets of seeds with one of
+his new men, he might have come at once and explained the mystery.
+
+It was indeed a lovely cloud, and it lay low on the north-western horizon.
+But we had never before seen so strange a cloud, for not only did it
+increase in length and breadth more rapidly than do most clouds, but it
+caught the sun's parting rays in quite a marvellous manner. When first we
+looked at it the colour throughout was a bluish purple; suddenly it
+changed to a red with resplendent border of fiery orange. Next it
+collapsed, getting broader and rounder, and becoming a dark blue, almost
+approaching to black, while the border beneath was orange-red. But the
+glowing magnificence of the colour it is impossible to describe in words;
+and the best artist would have failed to reproduce it even were he ten
+times a Turner.
+
+At this moment, and just as the cloud was becoming elongated again,
+Moncrieff came to our side. His usually bright face fell at once as soon
+as he glanced at it.
+
+'Locusts!' He almost gasped the word out.
+
+'Locusts!' was re-echoed from every corner of the carriage; and
+immediately all eyes were strained in the direction of our 'lofty golden
+cloud.'
+
+As we approached nearer to it, and it came nearer to us, even the light
+from the setting sun was obscured, and in a short time we were in the
+cloud, and apparently part of it. It had become almost too dark to see
+anything inside our carriage, owing to that dense and awful fog of insect
+life. We quickly closed the windows, for the loathsome insects were now
+pattering against the glass, and many had already obtained admittance,
+much to the horror of young Mrs. Moncrieff, though aunt took matters easy
+enough, having seen such sights before.
+
+The train now slowly came to a standstill. Something--no one appeared to
+know what--had happened on ahead of us, and here we must wait till the
+line was clear. Even Moncrieff's mother had awakened, and was looking out
+with the rest of us.
+
+'Dearie me! Dearie me!' she exclaimed. 'A shower o' golochs! The very
+licht o' day darkened wi' the fu'some craiters. Ca' you this a land o'
+milk and honey? Egyptian darkness and showers o' golochs!'
+
+We descended and walked some little distance into the country, and the
+sight presented to our astonished gaze I, for one, will not forget to my
+dying day. The locusts were still around us, but were bearing away
+southward, having already devastated the fields in this vicinity. But they
+fell in hundreds and thousands around us; they struck against our hands,
+our faces, and hats; they got into our sleeves, and even into our pockets;
+and we could not take a step without squashing them under foot.
+
+Only an hour before we had been passing through a country whose green
+fertility was something to behold once and dream about for ever. Evidence
+of wealth and contentment had been visible on all sides. Beautiful,
+home-looking, comfortable _estancias_ and out-buildings, fat, sleek cattle
+and horses, and flocks of beautiful sheep, with feathered fowls of every
+description. But here, though there were not wanting good farmsteadings,
+all was desolation and threatened famine; hardly a green blade or leaf was
+left, and the woebegone looks of some of the people we met wandering
+aimlessly about, dazed and almost distracted, were pitiful to behold. I
+was not sorry when a shriek from the engine warned us that it was time to
+retrace our slippery footsteps.
+
+'Is this a common occurrence?' I could not help asking our friend
+Moncrieff.
+
+He took me kindly by the arm as he replied,
+
+'It's a depressing sight to a youngster, I must allow; but we should not
+let our thoughts dwell on it. Sometimes the locusts are a terrible plague,
+but they manage to get over even that. Come in, and we'll light up the
+saloon.'
+
+For hours after this the pattering continued at the closed windows,
+showing that the shower of golochs had not yet ceased to fall. But with
+lights inside, the carriage looked comfortable and cheerful enough, and
+when presently Moncrieff got out Bombazo's guitar and handed it to him,
+and that gentleman began to sing, we soon got happy again, and forgot even
+the locusts--at least, all but Moncrieff's mother did. She had gone to
+sleep in a corner, but sometimes we heard her muttering to herself, in her
+dreams, about the 'land o' promise,' 'showers of golochs,' and 'Egyptian
+darkness.'
+
+The last thing I remember as I curled up on the floor of the saloon, with
+a saddle for a pillow and a rug round me--for the night had grown bitterly
+cold--was Bombazo's merry face as he strummed on his sweet guitar and sang
+of tresses dark, and love-lit eyes, and sunny Spain. This was a delightful
+way of going to sleep; the awakening was not quite so pleasant, however,
+for I opened my eyes only to see a dozen of the ugly 'golochs' on my rug,
+and others asquat on the saddle, washing their faces as flies do. I got up
+and went away to wash mine.
+
+The sun was already high in the heavens, and on opening a window and
+looking out, I found we were passing through a woodland country, and that
+far away in the west were rugged hills. Surely, then, we were nearing the
+end of our journey.
+
+I asked our mentor Moncrieff, and right cheerily he replied,
+
+'Yes, my lad, and we'll soon be in Cordoba now.'
+
+This visit of ours to Cordoba was in reality a little pleasure trip, got
+up for the special delectation of our aunt and young Mrs. Moncrieff. It
+formed part and parcel of the Scotchman's honeymoon, which, it must be
+allowed, was a very chequered one.
+
+If the reader has a map handy he will find the name Villa Maria thereon, a
+place lying between Rosario and Cordoba. This was our station, and there
+we had left all heavy baggage, including Moncrieff's people. On our return
+we should once more resume travelling together westward still by Mercedes.
+And thence to our destination would be by far and away the most eventful
+portion of the journey.
+
+'Look out,' continued Moncrieff, 'and behold the rugged summits of the
+grand old hills.'
+
+'And these are the Sierras?'
+
+'These are the Sierras; and doesn't the very sight of mountains once again
+fill your heart with joy? Don't you want to sing and jump--'
+
+'And call aloud for joy,' said his mother, who had come up to have a peep
+over our shoulders. 'Dearie me,' she added, 'they're no half so bonny and
+green as the braes o' Foudland.'
+
+'Ah! mither, wait till you get to our beautiful home in Mendoza. Ye'll be
+charmed wi' a' you see.'
+
+'I wish,' I said, 'I was half as enthusiastic as you are, Moncrieff.'
+
+'You haven't been many days in the Silver Land. Wait, lad, wait! When once
+you've fairly settled and can feel at home, man, you'll think the time as
+short as pleasure itself. Days and weeks flee by like winking, and every
+day and every week brings its own round o' duty to perform. And all the
+time you'll be makin' money as easy as makin' slates.'
+
+'Money isn't everything,' I said.
+
+'No, lad, money isn't everything; but money is a deal in this wo_rrr_ld,
+and we mustn't forget that money puts the power in our hands to do others
+good, and that I think is the greatest pleasure of a'. And you know,
+Murdoch, that if God does put talents in our hands He expects us to make
+use of them.'
+
+'True enough, Moncrieff,' I said.
+
+'See, see! that is Cordoba down in the hollow yonder, among the hills.
+Look, mither! see how the domes and steeples sparkle in the mornin's
+sunshine. Yonder dome is the cathedral, and further off you see the
+observatory, and maybe, mither, you'll have a peep through a telescope
+that will bring the moon so near to you that you'll be able to see the
+good folks thereon ploughin' fields and milkin' kye.'
+
+We stayed at Cordoba for four days. I felt something of the old pleasant
+languor of Rio stealing over me again as I lounged about the handsome
+streets, gazed on the ancient churches and convent, and its world-renowned
+University, or climbed its _barranca_, or wandered by the Rio Balmeiro,
+and through the lovely and romantic suburbs. In good sooth, Cordoba is a
+dreamy old place, and I felt better for being in it. The weather was all
+in our favour also, being dry, and neither hot nor cold, although it was
+now winter in these regions. I was sorry to leave Cordoba, and so I feel
+sure was aunt, and even old Jenny.
+
+Then came the journey back to Villa Maria, and thence away westward to
+Villa Mercedes. The railway to the latter place had not long been opened.
+
+It seems all like a beautiful halo--that railway ride to the _Ultima
+Thule_ of the iron horse--and, like a dream, it is but indistinctly
+remembered. Let me briefly catch the salient points of this pleasant
+journey.
+
+Villa Maria we reach in the evening. The sun is setting in a golden haze;
+too golden, for it bodes rain, and presently down it comes in a steady
+pour, changing the dust of the roads into the stickiest of mud, and
+presently into rivers. Moncrieff is here, there, and everywhere, seeing
+after his manifold goods and chattels; but just as the short twilight is
+deepening into night, he returns 'dressed and dry,' as he calls it, to the
+snug little room of the inn, where a capital dinner is spread for us, and
+we are all hungry. Even old Jenny, forgetting her troubles and travels,
+makes merry music with knife and fork, and Bombazo is all smiles and
+chatter. It rains still; what of that? It will drown the mosquitoes and
+other flying 'jerlies.' It is even pleasant to listen to the rattle of the
+rain-drops during the few lulls there were in the conversation. The sound
+makes the room inside seem ever so much more cosy. Besides, there is a
+fire in the grate, and, to add to our enjoyment, Bombazo has his guitar.
+
+Even the landlord takes the liberty of lingering in the room, standing
+modestly beside the door, to listen. It is long, he tells us, since he has
+had so cheerful a party at his house.
+
+Aileen, as Moncrieff calls his pretty bride, is not long in discovering
+that the innkeeper hails from her own sweet Isle of Sorrow, and many
+friendly questions are asked on both sides.
+
+Bed at last. A bright morning, the sun coming up red and rosy through an
+ocean of clouds more gorgeous than ever yet was seen in tame old England.
+
+We are all astir very early. We are all merry and hungry. Farewells are
+said, and by and by off we rattle. The train moves very slowly at first,
+but presently warms to her work and settles down to it. We catch a glimpse
+of a town some distance off, and nearer still the silver gleam of a river
+reflecting the morning sun. By and by we are on the river bridge, and
+over it, and so on and away through an open pampa. Such, at least, I call
+it. Green swelling land all around, with now and then a lake or loch
+swarming with web-footed fowl, the sight of which makes Dugald's eyes
+water.
+
+We pass station after station, stopping at all. More woods, more pampa;
+thriving fields and fertile lands; _estancias_, flocks of sheep, herds of
+happy cattle. A busy, bustling railway station, with as much noise around
+it as we find at Clapham Junction; another river--the Rio Cuarto, if my
+memory does not play me false; pampas again, with hills in the distance.
+Wine and water-melons at a station; more wine and more water-melons at
+another.
+
+After this I think I fall asleep, and I wonder now if the wine and the
+water-melons had anything to do with that. I awake at last and rub my
+eyes. Bombazo is also dozing; so is old Jenny. Old Jenny is a marvel to
+sleep. Dugald is as bright as a humming bird; he says I have lost a
+sight.
+
+'What was the sight?'
+
+'Oh, droves upon droves of real wild horses, wilder far than our ponies at
+Coila.'
+
+I close my eyes again. Dear old Coila! I wish Dugald had not mentioned the
+word. It takes me back again in one moment across the vast and mighty
+ocean we have crossed to our home, to father, mother, and Flora.
+
+Before long we are safe at Villa Mercedes. Not much to see here, and the
+wind blows cold from west and south.
+
+We are not going to lodge in the town, however. We are independent of
+inns, if there are any, and independent of everything. We are going under
+canvas.
+
+Already our pioneers have the camp ready in a piece of ground sheltered by
+a row of lordly poplars; and to-morrow morning we start by road for the
+far interior.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another glorious morning! There is a freshness in the air which almost
+amounts to positive cold, and reminds one of a November day in Scotland.
+Bombazo calls it bitterly cold, and my aunt has distributed guanaco
+ponchos to us, and has adorned herself with her own. Yes, adorned is the
+right word to apply to auntie's own travelling toilet; but we brothers
+think we look funny in ours, and laugh at each other in turn. Moncrieff
+sticks to the Highland plaid, but the sight of a guanaco poncho to old
+Jenny does, I verily believe, make her the happiest old lady in all the
+Silver Land. She is mounted in the great canvas-covered waggon, which is
+quite a caravan in every respect. It has even windows in the sides and
+real doorways, and is furnished inside with real sofas and Indian-made
+chairs, to say nothing of hammocks and tables and a stove. This caravan is
+drawn by four beautiful horses, and will be our sitting-room and
+dining-room by day, and the ladies' boudoir and bedroom for some time to
+come.
+
+Away we rattle westwards, dozens of soldiers, half-bred Chilians, Gauchos,
+and a crowd of dark-eyed but dirty children, giving us a ringing cheer as
+we start.
+
+What a cavalcade it is, to be sure! Waggons, drays, carts, mules, and
+horses. All our imported Scotchmen are riding, and glorious fellows they
+look. Each has a rifle slung across his shoulder, belts and sheath knives,
+and broad sombrero hat. The giant Moncrieff himself is riding, and looks
+to me the bravest of the brave. I and each of my brothers have undertaken
+to drive a cart or waggon, and we feel men from hat to boots, and as proud
+all over as a cock with silver spurs.
+
+We soon leave behind us those tall, mysterious-looking poplar trees. So
+tall are they that, although when we turned out not a breath of wind was
+blowing on the surface of the ground, away aloft their summits were waving
+gently to and fro, with a whispering sound, as if they were talking to
+unseen spirits in the sky.
+
+We leave even the _estancias_ behind. We are out now on the lonesome
+rolling plain. Here and there are woods; away, far away, behind us are the
+jagged summits of the everlasting hills. By and by the diligence, a
+strange-looking rattle-trap of a coach--a ghost of a coach, I might call
+it--goes rattling and swaying past us. Its occupants raise a feeble cheer,
+to which we respond with a three times three; for we seem to like to hear
+our voices.
+
+After this we feel more alone than ever. On and on and on we jog. The road
+is broad and fairly good; our waggons have broad wheels; this retards our
+speed, but adds to our comfort and that of the mules and horses.
+
+Before very long we reach a broad river, and in we plunge, the horsemen
+leading the van, with the water up to their saddle-girths. I give the
+reins of my team to my attendant Gaucho, and, running forward, jump on
+board the caravan to keep the ladies company while we fight the ford. But
+the ladies are in no way afraid; they are enjoying themselves in the front
+of the carriage, which is open. Old Jenny is in an easy-chair and buried
+to the nose in her guanaco robe. She is muttering something to herself,
+and as I bend down to listen I can catch the words: 'Dearie me! Dearie me!
+When'll ever we reach the Land o' Promise? Egyptian darkness! Showers of
+golochs! Chariots and horsemen! Dearie me! Dearie me!'
+
+But we are over at last, and our whole cavalcade looks sweeter and fresher
+for the bath.
+
+Presently we reach a corral, where two men beckon to Moncrieff. They are
+wild and uncouth enough in all conscience; their baggy breeches and
+ponchos are in sad need of repair, and a visit to a barber would add to
+the respectability of their appearance. They look excited, wave their
+arms, and point southwards. But they talk in a strange jargon, and there
+are but two words intelligible to me. These, however, are enough to set my
+heart throbbing with a strange feeling of uneasiness I never felt before.
+
+'_Los Indios! Los Indios!_'
+
+Moncrieff points significantly to his armed men and smiles. The Gauchos
+wave their arms in the air, rapidly opening and shutting their hands in a
+way that to me is very mysterious. And so they disappear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE TRAGEDY AT THE FONDA.
+
+
+I could not help wondering, as I glanced at aunt whether she had heard and
+understood the meaning of those wild Gauchos' warning. If she did she made
+no sign. But aunt is a M'Crimman, and the sister of a bold Highland chief.
+She would not _show_ fear even if she _felt_ it. Yes, the brave may feel
+fear, but the coward alone is influenced by it.
+
+Old Jenny had gone to sleep, so I said good-bye to aunt, nodded to Aileen,
+and went back to my waggon once more.
+
+We made good progress that day, though we did not hurry. We stopped to
+feed our cattle, and to rest and feed ourselves. The jolting had been
+terrible on some parts of the road. But now the sun was getting very low
+indeed, and as we soon came to a piece of high, hard ground, with a view
+of the country round us for miles, we determined to bivouac for the
+night.
+
+The horses and mules were hobbled and turned off to graze under the charge
+of sentry Gauchos. No fear of their wandering off far. They were watered
+not an hour ago, and would be fresh by daybreak.
+
+Now, Moncrieff had been too long in the wilds to neglect precautions while
+camping out. I had taken an early opportunity to-day to interview our
+leader concerning the report that Indians were abroad.
+
+'Ah!' he answered, 'you heard and understood what that half-breed said,
+then?'
+
+'Just a word or two. He appeared to give us a warning of some kind. Is it
+of any account?'
+
+'Well, there's always some water where the stirkie drowns; there's always
+some fire where you see smoke; and it is better to be sure than sorry.'
+
+I could elicit no more information from my canny countryman than that. I
+said nothing to any one, not even my brothers. Why should I cause them the
+slightest alarm, and speak a word that might tend to make them sleep less
+soundly?
+
+However, as soon as the halt was made, I was glad to see that Moncrieff
+took every precaution against a surprise. The caravan was made the centre
+of a square, the waggons being 'laggered' around it. The fire was lit and
+the dinner cooked close beside a sheltering _barranca_, and as soon as
+this meal was discussed the fire was extinguished.
+
+                     'Then came still evening on,'
+
+and we all gathered together for prayer. Even the Gauchos were summoned,
+though I fear paid but little attention, while Moncrieff, standing
+bare-headed in the midst of us, read a chapter from the Book by the pale
+yellow light of the western sky. Then, still standing--
+
+'Brothers, let us pray,' he said.
+
+Erect there, with the twilight shadows falling around him, with open eyes
+and face turned skywards, with the sunset's after-glow falling on his hard
+but comely features, his plaid depending from his broad shoulders, I could
+not help admiring the man. His prayer--and it was but brief--had all the
+trusting simplicity of a little child's, yet it was in every way the
+prayer of a man communing with his God; in every tone thereof was breathed
+belief, reliance, gratitude, and faith in the Father.
+
+As he finished, Dugald pressed my arm and pointed eastwards, smiling. A
+star had shone out from behind a little cloud, and somehow it seemed to
+me as if it were an angel's eye, and that it would watch over us all the
+live-long night. Our evening service concluded with that loveliest of
+hymns, commencing--
+
+                   'O God of Bethel, by whose hand
+                     Thy children still are fed;
+                   Who through this weary wilderness
+                     Hath all our fathers led.'
+
+He gave it out in the old Scotch way, two lines at a time, and to the tune
+'Martyrdom.'
+
+It was surely appropriate to our position and our surroundings, especially
+that beautiful verse--
+
+                 'Oh, spread Thy covering wings around,
+                   Till all our wanderings cease,
+                 And at our Father's loved abode
+                   Our souls arrive in peace.'
+
+We now prepared for rest. The sentries were set, and in a short time all
+was peace and silence within our camp. More than once during the night the
+collies--dogs brought out by Moncrieff's men--gave an uneasy bark or two,
+their slumbers being probably disturbed by the cry of some night bird, or
+the passing of a prowling fox.
+
+So, wrapped in our guanaco robes--the benefit of which we felt now--my
+brothers and I slept sweetly and deeply till the sun once more rose in the
+east.
+
+Soon all was bustle and stir again.
+
+Thus were our days spent on the road, thus our evenings, and eke our
+nights. And at the end of some days we were still safe and sound, and
+happy. No one sick in the camp; no horse or mule even lame; while we were
+all hardening to travel already.
+
+So far, hardly anything had happened to break the even tenour of our
+journey. Our progress, however, with so much goods and chattels, and over
+such roads, was necessarily slow; yet we never envied the lumbering
+diligence that now and then went rattling past us.
+
+We saw many herds of wild horses. Some of these, led by beautiful
+stallions, came quite close to us. They appeared to pity our horses
+and mules, condemned to the shafts and harness, and compelled to work
+their weary lives away day after day. Our beasts were slaves. They were
+free--free as the breezes that blew over the pampas and played with
+their long manes, as they went thundering over the plains. We had seen
+several ostriches, and my brothers and I had enjoyed a wild ride or
+two after them. Once we encountered a puma, and once we saw an
+armadillo. We had never clapped eyes on a living specimen before, but
+there could be no mistaking the gentleman in armour. Not that he gave us
+much time for study, however. Probably the creature had been asleep as
+we rounded the corner of a gravel bank, but in one moment he became
+alive to his danger. Next moment we saw nothing but a rising cloud of
+dust and sand; lo! the armadillo was gone to the Antipodes, or somewhere
+in that direction--buried alive. Probably the speed with which an
+armadillo--there are several different species in the Silver
+West--disappears at the scent of any one belonging to the _genus homo_,
+is caused by the decided objection he has to be served up as a side-dish.
+He is excellent eating--tender as a chicken, juicy as a sucking-pig, but
+the honour of being roasted whole and garnished is one he does not crave.
+
+Riding on ahead one day--I had soon got tired of the monotony of driving,
+and preferred the saddle--at a bend of the road I came suddenly upon two
+horsemen, who had dismounted and were lying on a patch of sward by the
+roadside. Their horses stood near. Both sprang up as I appeared, and quick
+as lightning their hands sought the handles of the ugly knives that
+depended in sheaths from their girdles. At this moment there was a look in
+the swarthy face of each that I can only describe as diabolical. Hatred,
+ferocity, and cunning were combined in that glance; but it vanished in a
+moment, and the air assumed by them now was one of cringing humility.
+
+'The Gaucho malo,' I said to myself as soon as I saw them. Their horses
+were there the nobler animals. Bitted, bridled, and saddled, the latter
+were in the manner usual to the country, the saddle looking like a huge
+hillock of skins and rags; but rifles were slung alongside, to say nothing
+of bolas and lasso. The dress of the men was a kind of nondescript garb.
+Shawls round the loins, tucked up between their legs and fastened with a
+girdle, did duty as breeches; their feet were encased in _potro_ boots,
+made of the hock-skin of horses, while over their half-naked shoulders
+hung ponchos of skin, not without a certain amount of wild grace.
+
+Something else as well as his rifle was lashed to the saddle of one of
+these desert gipsies, and being new to the country, I could not help
+wondering at this--namely, a guitar in a case of skin.
+
+With smiles that I knew were false one now beckoned me to alight, while
+the other unslung the instrument and began to tune it. The caravan must
+have been fully two miles behind me, so that to some extent I was at the
+mercy of these Gauchos, had they meant mischief. This was not their plan
+of campaign, however.
+
+Having neighed in recognition of the other horses, my good nag stood as
+still as a statue; while, with my eyes upon the men and my hand within
+easy distance of my revolver, I listened to their music. One sang while
+the other played, and I must confess that the song had a certain
+fascination about it, and only the thought that I was far from safe
+prevented me from thoroughly enjoying it. I knew, as if by instinct,
+however, that the very fingers that were eliciting those sweet sad tones
+were itching to clutch my throat, and that the voice that thrilled my
+senses could in a moment be changed into a tiger yell, with which men like
+these spring upon their human prey.
+
+On the whole I felt relieved when the rumble of the waggon wheels fell
+once more on my ears. I rode back to meet my people, and presently a halt
+was made for the midday feed.
+
+If aunt desired to feast her eyes on the Gaucho malo she had now a chance.
+They played to her, sang to her, and went through a kind of wild dance for
+her especial delectation.
+
+'What romantic and beautiful blackguards they are!' was the remark she
+made to Moncrieff.
+
+Moncrieff smiled, somewhat grimly, I thought.
+
+'It's no' for nought the cland[4] whistles,' he said in his broadest,
+canniest accents.
+
+These Gauchos were hunting, they told Moncrieff. Had they seen any Indians
+about? No, no, not an Indian. The Indians were far, far south.
+
+Aunt gave them some garments, food, and money; and, with many bows and
+salaams, they mounted their steeds and went off like the wind.
+
+I noticed that throughout the remainder of the day Moncrieff was unusually
+silent, and appeared to wish to be alone. Towards evening he beckoned to
+me.
+
+'We'll ride on ahead,' he said, 'and look for a good bit of
+camping-ground.'
+
+Then away we both went at a canter, but in silence.
+
+We rode on and on, the ground rising gently but steadily, until we stopped
+at last on a high plateau, and gazed around us at the scene. A more bleak
+and desolate country it would be impossible to imagine. One vast and
+semi-desert plain, the eye relieved only by patches of algarrobo bushes,
+or little lakes of water. Far ahead of us the cone of a solitary mountain
+rose on the horizon, and towards this the sun was slowly declining. Away
+miles in our rear were the waggons and horses struggling up the hill. But
+silence as deep as death was everywhere. Moncrieff stretched his arm
+southwards.
+
+'What do you see yonder, Murdo?' he said.
+
+'I see,' I replied, after carefully scanning the rolling plain, 'two
+ostriches hurrying over the pampas.'
+
+'Those are not ostriches, boy. They are those same villain Gauchos, and
+they are after no good. I tell you this, that you may be prepared for
+anything that may happen to-night. But look,' he added, turning his
+horse's head; 'down here is a corral, and we are sure to find water.'
+
+We soon reached it. Somewhat to our surprise we found no horses anywhere
+about, and no sign of life around the little inn or _fonda_ except one
+wretched-looking dog.
+
+As we drew up at the door and listened the stillness felt oppressive.
+Moncrieff shouted. No human voice responded; but the dog, seated on his
+haunches, gave vent to a melancholy howl.
+
+'Look,' I said, 'the dog's paws are red with blood. He is wounded.'
+
+'It isn't _his_ blood, boy.'
+
+The words thrilled me. I felt a sudden fear at my heart, born perhaps of
+the death-like stillness. Ah! it was indeed a death-like stillness, and
+the stillness of death itself as well.
+
+Moncrieff dismounted. I followed his example, and together we entered the
+_fonda_.
+
+We had not advanced a yard when we came on an awesome sight--the dead body
+of a Gaucho! It lay on its back with the arms spread out, the face hacked
+to pieces, and gashes in the neck. The interior of the hut was a chaos of
+wild confusion, the little furniture there was smashed, and evidently
+everything of value had been carried away. Half buried in the _débris_ was
+the body of a woman, and near it that of a child. Both were slashed and
+disfigured, while pools of blood lay everywhere about. Young though I was,
+I had seen death before in several shapes, but never anything so ghastly
+and awful as this.
+
+A cold shudder ran through my frame and seemed to pierce to the very
+marrow of my bones. I felt for a few moments as if in some dreadful
+nightmare, and I do not hesitate to confess that, M'Crimman and all as I
+am, had those Gauchos suddenly appeared now in the doorway, I could not
+have made the slightest resistance to their attack. I should have taken my
+death by almost rushing on the point of their terrible knives. But
+Moncrieff's calm earnest voice restored me in a moment. At its tones I
+felt raised up out of my coward self, and prepared to face anything.
+
+'Murdoch,' he said, 'this is a time for calm thought and action.'
+
+'Yes,' I answered; 'bid me do anything, and I will do it. But come out of
+this awful place. I--I feel a little faint.'
+
+Together we left the blood-stained _fonda_, Moncrieff shutting the door
+behind him.
+
+'No other eye must look in there,' he said. 'Now, Murdoch, listen.'
+
+He paused, and I waited; his steadfast eyes bent on my face.
+
+'You are better now? You are calm, and no longer afraid?'
+
+'I am no longer afraid.'
+
+'Well, I can trust _you_, and no one else. Led by those evil fiends whom
+we saw to-day, the Indians will be on us to-night in force. I will prepare
+to give them a warm reception--'
+
+'And I will assist,' I hastened to say.
+
+'No, Murdoch, you will not be here to help us at the commencement. I said
+the Indians would attack in _force_, because they know our numbers. Those
+_malo_ men have been spying on us when we little thought it. They know our
+strength to a gun, and they will come in a cloud that nothing can
+withstand, or that nothing could withstand in the open. But we will
+entrench and defend ourselves till your return.'
+
+'My return!'
+
+'Twelve miles from here,' he went on, 'is a fort. It contains two officers
+and over a score soldiers. In two hours it will be dusk, in an hour after
+that the moon rises. 'Twixt twilight and moonrise you must ride to that
+fort and bring assistance. Depend upon it, we can defend ourselves till
+you come with your men, and you must attack the savages in the rear. You
+understand?'
+
+'Perfectly. But had I not better ride away at once?'
+
+'No, the Indians would waylay you. You never would reach the frontier
+fort. Even if you did escape from the chase, the knowledge that the troops
+were coming would prevent them from attacking to-night.'
+
+'And you want them to attack to-night?'
+
+'I wish them to attack to-night. We may never be able to give a good
+account of them again, but all depends on your success.'
+
+In a short time the first waggons came up. They would have stopped, but
+Moncrieff beckoned them onwards. When the last waggon had gone we mounted
+our horses and slowly followed. At a stream not far distant we watered,
+and once more continued our journey.
+
+The road now rose rapidly, till in half an hour we were on high ground,
+and here the halt was made. I could breathe more easily now we had left
+that blood-stained hollow, though well I knew the sight I had witnessed
+would not leave my thoughts for years to come.
+
+Everything was done as quietly and orderly as if no cloud were hovering
+over us, so soon to burst. The big fire was lit as usual, supper cooked,
+prayers said, and the fire also lit in the ladies' caravan, for the nights
+were cold and raw now.
+
+The night began to fall. Moncrieff and I had kept our secret to ourselves
+hitherto, but we could no longer conceal from any one that there was
+danger in the air. Yet the news seemed to astonish no one, not even aunt.
+
+'Dear brother,' she said to our leader, 'I read it in your face all the
+afternoon.'
+
+It was almost dusk now, and work was commenced in earnest. Spades were got
+out, and every man worked like a slave to entrench the whole position. The
+strength that I was to leave behind me was seven-and-twenty men all told,
+but this included ten Gauchos. Nevertheless, behind trenches, with plenty
+of guns, revolvers, and ammunition, they were powerful enough to defend
+the position against hundreds of badly-armed Indians. Not far off was a
+patch of wood which stretched downwards into a rocky ravine. Luckily it
+lay on the north side of the road, and hither, as soon as it was dark
+enough, every horse and mule was led and secured to the trees. Nor even in
+this extremity of danger were their wants forgotten, for grass mixed with
+grains was placed in front of each.
+
+My horse was now led round. Each hoof was encased in a new and strong
+_potro_ boot, secured by thongs around the legs.
+
+'You must neither be heard nor seen,' said Moncrieff, as he pointed to
+these. 'Now, good-night, boy; God be wi' ye, and with us all!'
+
+'Amen!' I responded, earnestly.
+
+Then away I rode in silence, through the starlight; but as I looked back
+to the camp my heart gave an uneasy throb. Should I ever see them alive
+again?
+
+-----
+
+  [4] Cland, a kind of hawk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+ATTACK BY PAMPA INDIANS.
+
+
+So lonesome a ride in the darkness of night, through a country wild and
+bleak, with danger lurking perhaps on either side of me, might easily have
+daunted a bolder heart than mine.
+
+Something of the unspeakable feeling of dread I had experienced in the
+_fonda_ while surrounded by those awful corpses came back to me now. I
+tried to banish it, but failed. My nervousness became extreme, and
+appeared to increase rather than diminish as I left the camp farther and
+farther behind me. It was almost a superstitious fear that had gotten
+possession of my soul. It was fear of the unseen; and even at this
+distance of time I can only say I would willingly face death in open day a
+hundred times over rather than endure for an hour the terrors I suffered
+that night. Every bush I saw I took for a figure lurking by the roadside,
+while solitary trees I had to pass assumed the form and shape and even
+movement of an enemy on horseback riding silently down to meet me. Again
+and again I clutched my revolver, and even now I cannot tell what power
+prevented me from firing at my phantom foes. Over and over again I reined
+up to listen, and at such times the wind whispering through the tall grass
+sounded to me like human voices, while the cry of birds that now and then
+rose startlingly close to me, made my heart beat with a violence that in
+itself was painful.
+
+Sometimes I closed my eyes, and gave the horse his head, trying to carry
+my thoughts back to the lights of the camp, or forward to the fort which I
+hoped soon to reach.
+
+I had ridden thus probably five good miles, when I ventured to look behind
+me, and so great had been the strain on my nerves that the sight I now
+witnessed almost paralyzed me.
+
+It was the reflection as of a great fire on the brow of the hill where my
+people were beleaguered.
+
+'The camp is already attacked, and in flames,' I muttered. Whither should
+I ride now--backwards or forwards?
+
+While I yet hesitated the flames appeared to wax fiercer and fiercer, till
+presently--oh, joy!--a big round moon gradually shook itself clear of a
+cloud and began slowly to climb the eastern sky.
+
+All fear fled now. I muttered a prayer of thankfulness, dashed the spurs
+into my good horse's sides, and went on at the gallop.
+
+The time seemed short after this, and almost before I knew I came right
+upon the fort, and was challenged by the sentry.
+
+'_Amigo!_' I yelled. '_Amigo! Angleese!_'
+
+I dare say I was understood, for soon after lights appeared on the
+ramparts, and I was hailed again, this time in English, or for what passed
+as English. I rode up under the ramparts, and quickly told my tale.
+
+In ten minutes more I was received within the fort. A tumble-down place I
+found it, but I was overjoyed to be in it, nevertheless. In the principal
+room most of the men were playing games, and smoking and talking, while
+the commandant himself lounged about with a cigarette in his mouth.
+
+He considered for a minute or two--an age it appeared to me--ere he
+answered. Yes; he would come, and take with him fifteen soldiers, leaving
+the rest to guard the fort. I could have embraced him, so joyful did I
+feel on hearing these words.
+
+How long would he be? One hour, no more. For arms had to be cleaned, and
+ammunition to be got ready; and the men must feed.
+
+A whole hour! No wonder I sighed and looked anxious. Why, every minute was
+precious to my poor beleaguered friends. It would be long past midnight
+ere I reached the camp again, for these men would not be mounted. Yet I
+saw the good little commander was doing his best, not only to expedite
+matters, but to treat me with kindness and hospitality. He brought forth
+food and wine, and forced me to eat and drink. I did so to please him; but
+when he proposed a game to pass the time, I began to think the man was
+crazed. He was not. No; but possessed a soldierly virtue which I could not
+boast of--namely, patience.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The work of entrenchment was soon completed after my departure; then there
+was nothing more to be done except to appoint the men to their quarters,
+place sentinels on the highest of the waggons, and wait.
+
+Ah, but this waiting is a weary thing under circumstances like the
+present--waiting and watching, not knowing from what quarter the attack
+will come, what form it will take, or when it will commence.
+
+Except in the chief caravan itself, where Moncrieff and Donald sat for a
+time to keep up the hearts of the ladies, no lights were lit.
+
+There was no singing to-night, hardly a smile on any face, and no one
+spoke much above a whisper. Poor old Jenny had gone to sleep, as usual.
+
+'Wake me,' had been her last words. 'Wake me, laddie, when the Philistines
+are upon us.'
+
+'The old lady's a marvel!' Moncrieff had whispered to aunt.
+
+Moncrieff was doing all he could to keep conversation alive, though,
+strange to say, Bombazo seldom spoke. Surely he could not be afraid.
+Moncrieff had his suspicions. Brave as my aunt was, the waiting made her
+nervous.
+
+'Hark!' she would say every now and then; or, 'Listen! What was that?'
+
+'Only the cry of a burrowing owl,' Moncrieff might have to answer; or,
+'Only the yap of a prowling fox.' Oh, the waiting, the weary waiting!
+
+The moon rose at last, and presently it was almost as light as day.
+
+'Will they come soon, think you?' whispered poor Aileen.
+
+'No, darling; not for hours yet. Believe me there is no danger. We are
+well prepared.'
+
+'Oh, Alec, Alec!' she answered, bursting into tears; 'it is you I fear
+for, not myself. Let me go with you when they come. I would not then be
+afraid; but waiting here--oh, it is the waiting that takes all the heart
+out of me.'
+
+'Egyptian darkness!' murmured the old lady in her sleep. Then in louder,
+wilder key, 'Smite them!' she exclaimed. 'Smite this host of the
+Philistines from Gideon to Gaza.'
+
+'Dear old mither, she's dreaming,' said Moncrieff. 'But, oh, we'll laugh
+at all this by to-morrow night, Aileen, my darling.'
+
+One hour, two hours went slowly, painfully past. The moon mounted higher
+and higher, and shone clearer and clearer, but not yet on all the plains
+were there signs of a mounted Indian.
+
+Yet even at that moment, little though our people knew it, swarthy forms
+were creeping stealthily through the pampas grass, with spears and guns at
+trail, pausing often to glance towards the camp they meant so soon to
+surprise and capture.
+
+The moon gets yet brighter. Moncrieff is watching. Shading his eyes from
+the light, he is gazing across the marsh and listening to every sound. Not
+a quarter of a mile away is a little marshy lake. From behind it for
+several minutes he has heard mournful cries. They proceed from the
+burrowing owls; but they must have been startled! They even fly towards
+the camp, as if to give warning of the approach of the swarthy foe.
+
+Suddenly from the edge of the lake a sound like the blast of a trumpet is
+heard; another and another, and finally a chorus of trumpet notes; and
+shortly after a flock of huge flamingoes are seen wheeling in the moonlit
+air.
+
+'It is as I thought,' says Moncrieff; 'they are creeping through the
+grass. Hurry round, Dugald, and call the men quietly to quarters.'
+
+Moncrieff himself, rifle in hand, climbs up to the top of the waggon.
+
+'Go down now,' he tells the sentry. 'I mean to fire the first shot.'
+
+He lies down to wait and watch. No bloodhound could have a better eye.
+Presently he sees a dark form raise itself near a tussock of grass. There
+is a sharp report, and the figure springs into the air, then falls dead on
+the pampas.
+
+No need for the foe to conceal themselves any longer. With a wild and
+unearthly scream, that the very earth itself seems to re-echo, they spring
+from their hiding and advance at the double towards the fort--for fort it
+is now. As they come yelling on they fire recklessly towards it. They
+might as well fire in the air.
+
+Moncrieff's bold Doric is heard, and to some purpose, at this juncture.
+
+'Keep weel down, men! Keep weel to cove_rrr_! Fire never a shot till he
+has the o_rr_der. Let every bullet have its billet. Ready!
+Fire-_r_-_r_-_r_!'
+
+Moncrieff rattled out the _r_'s indefinitely, and the rifles rattled out
+at the same time. So well aimed was the volley that the dark cloud seemed
+staggered. The savages wavered for a time, but on they came again,
+redoubling their yells. They fired again, then, dropping their guns,
+rushed on towards the breastwork spears in hand. It was thus that the
+conflict commenced in dread earnest, and the revolvers now did fearful
+execution. The Indians were hurled back again and again, and finally they
+broke and sought cover in the bush. Their wounded lay writhing and crying
+out close beneath the rampart, and among these were also many who would
+never move more in this world.
+
+On seeing the savages take to the bush, Moncrieff's anxiety knew no
+bounds. The danger of their discovering the horses was extreme. And if
+they did so, revenge would speedily follow defeat. They would either drive
+them away across the pampas, or in their wrath slaughter them where they
+stood.
+
+What was to be done to avert so great a catastrophe? A forlorn hope was
+speedily formed, and this my two brothers volunteered to lead. On the
+first shout heard down in the hollow--indicating the finding of our
+horses--Donald, Dugald, and fifteen men were to rush out and turn the
+flank of the swarthy army if they could, or die in the attempt.
+
+Meanwhile, however, the enemy appeared bent on trying cunning and
+desperate tactics. They were heard cutting down the bushes and smaller
+trees, and not long afterwards it looked as if the whole wood was
+advancing bodily up towards the breastwork on that side.
+
+A rapid and no doubt effective fire was now kept up by Moncrieff and his
+men. This delayed the terrible _dénoûment_, but it was soon apparent that
+if some more strategic movement was not made on our part it could not
+wholly thwart it.
+
+At all hazards that advancing wood must be checked, else the horrors of
+fire would be the prelude to one of the most awful massacres that ever
+took place on the lonely pampas.
+
+'How is the wind?' asked Moncrieff, as if speaking to himself.
+
+'It blows from the wood towards the camp,' said Dugald, 'but not quite in
+a line. See, I am ready to rush out and fire that pile.'
+
+'No, Dugald,' cried Donald; 'I am the elder--I will go.'
+
+'Brother, I spoke first.'
+
+'Yes,' said Moncrieff, quietly, 'Dugald must go, and go now. Take five
+men, ten if you want them.'
+
+'Five will do--five Gauchos,' said Dugald.
+
+It was wise of Dugald to choose Gauchos. If the truth must be told,
+however, he did so to spare more valuable lives. But these wild plainsmen
+are the bravest of the brave, and are far better versed in the tactics of
+Indian warfare than any white man could be.
+
+Dugald's plan would have been to issue out and make a bold rush across the
+open space of seventy and odd yards that intervened between the moving
+pile of brushwood and the camp. Had this been done, every man would have
+been speared ere he got half across.
+
+The preparations for the sally were speedily made. Each man had a revolver
+and knife in his belt, and carried in his hands matches, a bundle of _pob_
+(or tarred yarn), and a small cask of petroleum oil. They issued from the
+side of the camp farthest from the wood, and, crawling on their faces,
+took advantage of every tussock of grass, waving thistle, or hemlock bush
+in their way. Meanwhile a persistent fire was kept up from behind the
+breastwork, which, from the screams and yells proceeding from the savages,
+must have been doing execution.
+
+Presently, close behind the bush and near the ground, Moncrieff could see
+Dugald's signal, the waving of a white handkerchief, and firing
+immediately ceased.
+
+Almost immediately afterwards smoke and flames ran all along the wood and
+increased every moment. There was a smart volley of revolver firing, and
+in a minute more Dugald and his Gauchos were safe again within the fort.
+
+'Stand by now, lads, to defend the ramparts!' cried Moncrieff; 'the worst
+is yet to come.'
+
+The worst was indeed to come. For under cover of the smoke the Indians now
+made ready for their final assault. In the few minutes of silence that
+elapsed before the attack, the voice of a Gaucho malo was heard haranguing
+his men in language that could not but inflame their blood and passions.
+He spoke of the riches, the wealth of the camp, of the revenge they were
+going to have on the hated white man who had stolen their hunting fields,
+and driven them to the barren plains and mountains to seek for food with
+the puma and the snake, and finally began to talk of the pale-face
+prisoners that would become their possession.
+
+'Give them another volley, men,' said Moncrieff, grimly. 'Fire low through
+the smoke.'
+
+It would have been better, probably, had our leader waited.
+
+Little need to precipitate an onslaught that could have but one
+ending--unless indeed assistance arrived from the fort.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The long, long hour of waiting came to an end at last, and the commander
+and myself left the frontier fort at the head of the men.
+
+How terribly tedious the march back seemed! The officer would keep talking
+as cheerfully as if going to a concert or evening party. I hardly
+answered, I hardly heard him. I felt ashamed of my anxiety, but still I
+could not help it. I was but a young soldier.
+
+At last we are within sight, ay, and hearing, of the camp, and the events
+of the next hour float before my memory now as I write, like the shadowy
+pantomime of some terrible dream.
+
+First we see smoke and fire, but hear no sound. All must be over, I
+think--tragedy and massacre, all--and the camp is on fire.
+
+Even the commander of our little force takes a serious view of the case
+now. He draws his sword, looks to his revolver, and speaks to his men in
+calm, determined tones.
+
+For long minutes the silence round the camp is unbroken, but suddenly
+rifles ring out in the still air, and I breathe more freely once again.
+Then the firing ceases, and is succeeded by the wild war-cries of the
+attacking savages, and the hoarse, defiant slogan of the defending Scots.
+
+'Hurrah!' I shout, 'we are yet in time. Oh, good sir, hurry on! Listen!'
+
+Well might I say listen, for now high above the yell of savages and ring
+of revolvers rises the shriek of frightened women.
+
+I can stand this no longer. I set spur to my horse, and go dashing on
+towards the camp.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE FLIGHT AND THE CHASE.
+
+
+The very last thing I had seen that cool Argentine commander do, was to
+light a fresh cigarette with the stump of the old one. The next time I saw
+him, he was standing by his wounded horse, in the moonlight, with a spear
+wound in his brow, but smoking still.
+
+The onslaught of the savages had been for a while a terrible one, but the
+soldiers came in time, and the camp was saved.
+
+Hardly knowing what I did--not knowing till this day how I did it--I had
+put my good steed at the breastwork, and, tired though he was, he fairly
+cleared it. Next I remember hewing my way, sword in hand, through a crowd
+of spear-armed savages, finding myself close to the ladies' caravan, and
+next minute inside it.
+
+A single glance showed me all were safe. Aileen lay pale and motionless on
+the sofa. Near her, revolver in hand, stood my brave aunt, and by the
+stove was old Jenny herself.
+
+'Oh, bless you, dear boy!' cried auntie. 'How glad we are to see you!'
+
+"Deed are we, laddie!' chimed old Jenny; 'but--' and she grinned as she
+spoke, 'they rievin' Philistines will be fools if they come this road
+again. I've gi'en some o' them het [hot] hurdies. Ha, ha! I'm makin' a
+drap mair for them in case they come again.'
+
+'Poor thing!' I think; 'she has gone demented.'
+
+There was no time now, however, to ask for explanation; for although the
+Indians had really been driven off, the chase, and, woe is me, the
+slaughter, had commenced.
+
+And I shudder even yet when I think of that night's awful work on the
+moonlit pampas. Still, the sacrifice of so many redskins was calculated to
+insure our safety. Moreover, had our camp fallen into the hands of those
+terrible Indians, what a blood-blotted page would have been added to the
+history of the Silver West!
+
+It is but just and fair to Moncrieff, however, to say that he did all in
+his power to stay the pursuit; but in vain. The soldiers were just
+returning, tired and breathless, from a fruitless chase after the now
+panic-stricken enemy, when a wild shout was heard, and our Gauchos were
+seen riding up from the woods, brandishing the very spears they had
+captured from the Indians, and each one leading a spare horse.
+
+The _soldados_ welcomed them with a shout. Next minute each was mounted
+and galloping across the pampas in one long extended line.
+
+They were going to treat the Indians to a taste of their own tactics, for
+between each horse a lasso rope was fastened.
+
+All our men who were safe and unwounded now clambered into the waggon to
+witness the pursuit. Nothing could exceed the mad grandeur of that
+charge--nothing could withstand that wild rash. The Indians were mowed
+down by the lasso lines, then all we could see was a dark commingled mass
+of rearing horses, of waving swords and spears, and struggling, writhing
+men.
+
+Yells and screams died away at last, and no sound was now heard on the
+pampas except the thunder of the horses' hoofs, as our people returned to
+the camp, and occasionally the trumpet-like notes of the startled
+flamingoes.
+
+As soon as daylight began to appear in the east the ramparts were razed,
+and soon after we were once more on the move, glad to leave the scene of
+battle and carnage.
+
+From higher ground, at some distance, I turned and looked back. Already
+the air was darkened by flocks of pampas kites, among them many
+slow-winged vultures, and I knew the awful feast that ever follows
+slaughter had already commenced.
+
+We had several Gauchos killed and one of our own countrymen, but many more
+were wounded, some severely enough, so that our victory had cost us dear,
+and yet we had reason to be thankful, and my only surprise to this day is
+that we escaped utter annihilation.
+
+It would be anything but fair to pass on to other scenes without
+mentioning the part poor old Jenny played in the defence of the caravan.
+
+Jenny was not demented--not she. Neither the fatigue of the journey, the
+many wonders she had witnessed, including the shower of golochs, nor the
+raid upon the camp had deprived Moncrieff's wonderful mither of her wits.
+I have said there was a stove burning in the caravan. As soon, then, as
+Jenny found out that they were fortifying or entrenching the camp, and
+that the Philistines, as she called them, might be expected at any moment,
+she awoke to a true sense of the situation. The first thing she did was to
+replenish the fire, then she put the biggest saucepan on top of the stove,
+and as soon as it commenced to boil she began 'mealing in,' as she called
+it.
+
+'Oatmeal would have been best,' she told my aunt; 'but, after a',' she
+added, 'Indian meal, though it be but feckless stuff, is the kind o' kail
+they blackamoors are maist used to.'
+
+Aunt wondered what she meant, but was silent, and, indeed, she had other
+things to think about than Jenny and her strange doings, for Aileen
+required all her attention.
+
+[Illustration: 'Ye can Claw the Pat']
+
+When, however, the fight had reached its very fiercest, when the camp
+itself was enveloped in smoke, and the constant cracking of revolvers, the
+shrieks of the wounded men and clashing of weapons would have daunted a
+less bold heart than Jenny's--the old lady took her saucepan from the
+stove and stationed herself by the front door of the caravan. She had not
+long to wait. Three of the fiercest of the Indian warriors had sprung to
+the _coupé_ and were half up,
+
+                'But little kenned they Jenny's mettle,
+                Or dreamt what lay in Jenny's kettle.'
+
+With eyes that seemed to flash living fire, her grey hair streaming over
+her shoulders, she must have looked a perfect fury as she rushed out and
+deluged the up-turned faces and shoulders of the savages with the boiling
+mess. They dropped yelling to the ground, and Jenny at once turned her
+attention to the back door of the van, where already one of the leading
+Gaucho malos--aunt's beautiful blackguards of the day before--had gained
+footing. This villain she fairly bonneted with the saucepan.
+
+'Your brithers have gotten the big half o' the kail,' she cried, 'and ye
+can claw the pat.'
+
+It was not till next evening that aunt told Moncrieff the brave part old
+Jenny had played. He smiled in his quiet way as he patted his mother's
+hand.
+
+'Just as I told ye, Miss M'Crimman,' he said; 'mither's a ma_rrr_vel!'
+
+But where had the bold Bombazo been during the conflict? Sword and
+revolver in hand, in the foremost ranks, and wherever the battle raged the
+fiercest? Nay, reader, nay. The stern truth remains to be told. During all
+the terrible tulzie Bombazo had never once been either seen or heard. Nor
+could he be anywhere found after the fight, nor even after the camp was
+struck, though search was made for him high and low.
+
+Some one suggested that he might have been overcome by fear, and might
+have hidden himself. Moncrieff looked incredulous. What! the bold Bombazo
+be afraid--the hero of a hundred fights, the slayer of lions, the terror
+of the redskins, the brave hunter of pampas and prairie? Captain Rodrigo
+de Bombazo hide himself? Yet where could he be? Among the slain? No. Taken
+prisoner? Alas! for the noble redman. Those who had escaped would hardly
+have thought of taking prisoners. Bombazo's name was shouted, the wood was
+searched, the waggons overhauled, not a stone was left unturned,
+figuratively speaking, yet all in vain.
+
+But, wonderful to relate, what _men_ failed to do a _dog_ accomplished. An
+honest collie found Bombazo--actually scraped him up out of the sand,
+where he lay buried, with his head in a tussock of grass. It would be
+unfair to judge him too harshly, wrong not to listen to his vouchsafed
+explanation; yet, sooth to say, to this very day I believe the little man
+had hidden himself after the manner of the armadillos.
+
+'Where is my sword?' he shouted, staggering to his feet. 'Where is the
+foe?'
+
+The Scotchmen and even the Gauchos laughed in his face. He turned from
+them scornfully on his heel and addressed Moncrieff.
+
+'Dey tried to keel me,' he cried. 'Dey stunned me and covered me up wit'
+sand. But here I am, and now I seek revenge. Ha! ha! I will seek
+revenge!'
+
+Old Jenny could stand it no longer.
+
+'Oh, ye shameless sinner!' she roared. 'Oh, ye feckless fusionless winner!
+Let me at him. _I'll_ gie him revenge.'
+
+There was no restraining Jenny. With a yell like the war cry of a clucking
+hen, she waved her umbrella aloft, and went straight for the hero.
+
+The blow intended for his head alighted lower down. Bombazo turned and
+fled, pursued by the remorseless Jenny; and not even once did she miss her
+aim till the terror of the redskins, to save his own skin, had taken
+refuge beneath the caravan.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+As at sea, so in travelling. Day after day, amid scenes that are for ever
+new, the constantly recurring adventure and incident suffice to banish
+even thoughts of the dead themselves. But neither seafarers nor travellers
+need be ashamed of this; it is only natural. God never condemns His
+creatures to constant sorrow. The brave fellows, the honest Scot and the
+Gauchos, that we had laid side by side in one grave in the little
+burying-place at the frontier fort, were gone beyond recall. No amount of
+sorrowing could bring them back. We but hoped they were happier now than
+even we were, and so we spoke of them no more; and in a week's time
+everything about our caravan and camp resumed its wonted appearance, and
+we no longer feared the Indians.
+
+One Gaucho, however, had escaped, and there was still the probability he
+might seek for revenge some other day.
+
+We have left the bleak pampas land, although now and then we come to bare
+prairie land but scantily furnished with even bushes, and destitute of
+grass; houses and _estancias_ become more frequent, and _fondas_ too, but
+nothing like that fearful _fonda_ in the prairie--the scene of the
+massacre.
+
+We have passed through San Lui--too wretched a place to say much about;
+and even La Paz and Santa Rosa; and on taking her usual seat one forenoon
+in front of the caravan, old Jenny's eyes grew bright and sparkling with
+very delight.
+
+'Saw anybody ever the like o' that?' she cried, as she raised both her
+hands and eyes cloudwards. But it was not the clouds old Jenny was
+marvelling at--for here we were in the Province of Mendoza, and a
+measurable distance from the beautiful city itself; and instead of the
+barren lands we had recently emerged from, beheld a scene of such natural
+loveliness and fertility, that we seemed to have suddenly dropped into a
+new world.
+
+The sky was blue and almost cloudless; winter though it was, the fields
+were clad in emerald green; the trees, the vineyards, the verandahed
+houses, the comfortable dwellings, the cattle, the sheep, and flocks of
+poultry--all testified to the fact that in summer this must indeed be a
+paradise.
+
+'What do you think of all this, mither?' said Moncrieff, with a happy
+smile. He was riding close to the caravan _coupé_.
+
+'Think o' it, laddie! Loshie me, laddie! it beats the braes o' Foudlan'!
+It is surely the garden o' Eden we're coming to at last.'
+
+It was shortly after this that Moncrieff went galloping on ahead. We could
+see him miles and miles away, for the road was as straight as one of the
+avenues in some English lord's domains. Suddenly he disappeared. Had the
+earth swallowed him up? Not quite. He had merely struck into a side path,
+and here we too turned with our whole cavalcade; and our road now lay away
+across a still fertile but far more open country. After keeping to this
+road for miles, we turned off once more and headed for the distant
+mountains, whose snow-clad, rugged tops formed so grand a horizon to the
+landscape.
+
+On we journey for many a long hour, and the sun goes down and down in the
+west, and sinks at last behind the hills; and oh, with what ineffably
+sweet tints and shades of pink and blue and purple his farewell rays paint
+the summits!
+
+Twilight is beginning to fall, and great bats are flitting about. We come
+within sight of a wide and well-watered valley; and in the very centre
+thereof, and near a broad lagoon which reminds us somewhat of dear old
+Coila, stands a handsome _estancia_ and farmyard. There are rows and rows
+of gigantic poplar-trees everywhere in this glen, and the house
+itself--mansion, I might almost say--lies in the midst of a cloud of trees
+the names of which we cannot even guess. There was altogether such a
+home-like look about the valley, that I knew at once our long, long
+journey was over, and our weary wanderings finished for a time. There was
+not a very great deal of romance in honest Moncrieff's nature, but as he
+pointed with outstretched arm to the beautiful _estancia_ by the lake, and
+said, briefly, 'Mither, there's your hame!' I felt sure and certain those
+blue eyes of his were moist with tears, and that there was the slightest
+perceptible waver in his manly voice.
+
+But, behold! they have seen us already at the _estancia_.
+
+There is a hurrying and scurrying to and fro, and out and in. We notice
+this, although the figures we see look no larger than ants, so clear and
+transparent is even the gloaming air in this wonderful new land of ours.
+
+By and by we see these same figures on horseback, coming away from the
+farm, and hurrying down the road towards us. One, two, three, six! Why,
+there must be well-nigh a score of them altogether. Nearer and nearer they
+come, and now we see their arms wave. Nearer still, and we hear them
+shout; and now at length they are on us, with us, and around us, waving
+their caps, laughing, talking, and shaking hands over and over again--as
+often as not twice or thrice with the same person. Verily they are half
+delirious with joy and wholly hysterical.
+
+What volleys of questions have to be asked and answered! What volumes of
+news to get and to give! What hurrying here and there and up and down to
+admire the new horses and mules, the new waggons and caravan--to admire
+everything! while the half-frightened looks those sturdy, sun-browned,
+bearded men cast at auntie and Aileen were positively comical to witness!
+
+Then, when the first wave of joyous excitement had partially expended
+itself--
+
+'Stand back, boys!' shouted Moncrieff's partner, a bold-faced little
+Welshman, with hair and beard just on the turn; 'stand back, my lads, and
+give them one more little cheer.'
+
+But was it a little cheer? Nay, but a mighty rattling cheer--a cheer that
+could have issued only from brave British throats; a cheer that I almost
+expected to hear re-echoed back from the distant mountains.
+
+Ah! but it _was_ echoed back. Echoed by us, the new-comers, and with
+interest too, our faithful Gauchos swelling the chorus with their shrill
+but not unmusical voices.
+
+But look! more people are coming down the road. The welcome home is not
+half over yet. Yonder are the lads and lasses, English, Irish, Castilian
+and Scotch, who have no horses to ride. Foremost among them is a
+Highlander in tartan trews and bagpipes. And if the welcome these give us
+is not altogether so boisterous it is none the less sincere.
+
+In another hour we are all safe at home. All and everything appears to us
+very strange at first, but we soon settle down, and if we marvelled at the
+outside of Moncrieff's mansion, the interior of it excites our wonder to
+even a greater degree. Who could have credited the brawny Scot with so
+much refinement of taste? The rooms were large, the windows were bowers,
+and bowers of beauty too, around which climbed and trailed--winter though
+it was--flowers of such strange shapes and lovely colours that the best of
+our floral favourites in this country would look tame beside them. None of
+the walls were papered, but all were painted, and many had pictures in
+light, airy and elegant frames. The furniture too was all light and
+elegant, and quite Oriental in appearance. Oriental did I say? Nay, but
+even better; it was Occidental. One room in particular took my aunt's
+fancy. This was to be the boudoir, and everything in it was the work of
+Indian hands. It opened on to a charming trellised verandah, and thence
+was a beautiful garden which to-night was lit up with coloured lanterns,
+and on the whole looked like a scene in some Eastern fairy tale.
+
+'And would you believe it, Aileen,' said Moncrieff, when he was done
+showing us round the rooms; 'would you believe it, auntie, when I came
+here first my good partner and I had no place to live in for years but a
+reed shanty, a butt and a ben, mither mine, with never a stick of
+furniture in it, and neither a chair nor stool nor table worth the
+name?'
+
+'That is so, Miss M'Crimman,' said the partner, Mr. Jones. 'And I think my
+dear friend Moncrieff will let the ladies see the sort of place we lived
+in.'
+
+'This way, then, ladies,' said the big Scot. He seized a huge naphtha lamp
+as he spoke, and strode before them through the garden. Arrived at the end
+of it they came to a strange little hut built apparently of mud and
+straw.
+
+With little ceremony he kicked open the rickety door, and made them enter.
+Both aunt and Aileen did so, marvelling much to find themselves in a room
+not ten feet wide, and neither round nor square. The roof was blackened
+rafters and straw, the floor was hardened clay. A bed--a very rude
+one--stood in one corner. It was supported by horses' bones; the table in
+the centre was but a barrel lid raised on crossed bones.
+
+'Won't you sit down, ladies?' said Moncrieff, smiling.
+
+He pointed to a seat as he spoke. It was formed of horses' skulls.
+
+Aunt smiled too, but immediately after looked suddenly serious, gathered
+her dress round her with a little shudder, and backed towards the door.
+
+'Come away,' she said; 'I've seen enough.'
+
+What she had seen more particularly was an awful-looking crimson and grey
+spider as big as a soft-shell crab. He was squatting on a bone in one
+corner, glaring at her with his little evil eyes, and moving his
+horizontal mandibles as if he would dearly like to eat her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+LIFE ON AN ARGENTINE ESTANCIA.
+
+
+I verily believe that Britons, whether English, Irish, or Scotch, are all
+born to wander, and born colonists. There really seems to be something in
+the very air of a new land, be it Australia, America, or the Silver West,
+that brings all their very best and noblest qualities to the surface, and
+oftentimes makes men--bold, hardy, persevering men--of individuals who,
+had they stayed in this old cut-and-dry country, would never have been
+anything better than louts or Johnnie Raws. I assure the reader that I
+speak from long experience when I make these remarks, and on any Saturday
+evening when I happen to be in London, and see poor young fellows coming
+home to garrets, perhaps with their pittance in their pockets, I feel for
+them from the very depths of my soul. And sometimes I sigh and murmur to
+myself----
+
+'Oh dear me!' I say, 'if my purse were only half as big as my heart,
+wouldn't I quickly gather together a thousand of these white slaves and
+sail merrily off with them to the Land of the Silver West! And men would
+learn to laugh there who hardly ever smiled before, and tendons would wax
+wiry, and muscles hard, and pale faces grow brown with the tints of
+health. And health would mean work, and work would mean wealth, and--but,
+heigho! what is the good of dreaming? Only some day--yes, _some_ day--and
+what a glorious sunrise it will be for this empire--Government will see
+its way to grant free passages to far-off lands, in which there is peace
+and plenty, work and food for all, and where the bread one eats is never
+damped by falling tears. God send that happy day! And send it soon!
+
+It is the memory of our first months and years of a downright pleasant
+life that makes me write like this. We poor lads--my brothers and I--poor,
+but determined, found everything so enjoyable at our new home in the
+Silver West that oftentimes we could not help wishing that thousands of
+toiling mortals from Glasgow and other great overcrowded cities would only
+come out somehow and share our posy. For really, to put it in plain and
+simple language, next to the delight of enjoying anything oneself, should
+it only be an apple, is the pleasure of seeing one's neighbour have a
+bite.
+
+Now here is a funny thing, but it is a fact. The air of Mendoza is so
+wonderfully dry and strong and bracing that it makes men of boys in a very
+short time, and makes old people young again. It might not smooth away
+wrinkles from the face, or turn grey hair brown, or even make two hairs
+grow where only one grew before; but it does most assuredly rejuvenate the
+heart, and shakes all the wrinkles out of that. Out here it is no uncommon
+thing for the once rheumatic to learn to dance, while stiff-jointed
+individuals who immigrated with crutches under their arms, pitch these
+crutches into the irrigation canals, and take to spades and guns instead.
+
+It is something in the air, I think, that works these wondrous changes,
+though I am sure I could not say what. It may be oxygen in double doses,
+or it may be ozone, or even laughing gas; but there it is, and whosoever
+reads these lines and doubts what I say, has only to take flight for the
+beautiful province of Mendoza, and he shall remain a sceptic no longer.
+
+Well, as soon as we got over the fatigues of our long journey, and began
+to realize the fact that we were no longer children of the desert, no
+longer nomads and gipsies, my brothers and I set to work with a hearty
+good-will that astonished even ourselves. In preparing our new homes we,
+and all the other settlers of this infant colony as well, enjoyed the same
+kind of pleasure that Robinson Crusoe must have done when he and his man
+Friday set up house for themselves in the island of Juan Fernandez.
+
+Even the labourers or 'hands' whom Moncrieff had imported had their own
+dwellings to erect, but instead of looking upon this as a hardship, they
+said that this was the fun of the thing, and that it was precisely here
+where the laugh came in.
+
+Moreover they worked for themselves out of hours, and I dare say that is
+more than any of them would have done in the old country.
+
+Never once was the labour of the _estancia_ neglected, nor the state of
+the aqueducts, nor Moncrieff's flocks and herds, nor his fences.
+
+Some of these men had been ploughmen, others shepherds, but every one of
+them was an artisan more or less, and it is just such men that do
+well--men who know a good deal about country life, and can deftly use the
+spade, the hoe, the rake, the fork, as well as the hammer, the axe, the
+saw, and the plane. Thanks to the way dear father had brought us up, my
+brothers and I were handy with all sorts of tools, and we were rather
+proud than otherwise of our handicraft.
+
+I remember that Dugald one day, as we sat at table, after looking at his
+hands--they had become awfully brown--suddenly said to Moncrieff,
+
+'Oh, by the by, Brother Moncrieff, there is one thing that I'm ready to
+wager you forgot to bring out with you from England.'
+
+'What was that?' said Moncrieff, looking quite serious.
+
+'Why, a supply of kid gloves, white and coloured.'
+
+We all laughed.
+
+'My dear boy,' said this huge brother of ours, 'the sun supplies the kid
+gloves, and it strikes me, lad, you've a pair of coloured ones already.'
+
+'Yes,' said Dugald, 'black-and-tan.'
+
+'But, dear laddies,' old Jenny put in, 'if ye really wad like mittens,
+I'll shortly shank a curn for ye.'
+
+'Just listen to the old braid Scotch tongue o' that mither o'
+moine--"shortly shank a curn."[5] Who but an Aberdonian could understand
+that?'
+
+But indeed poor old Jenny was a marvel with her 'shank,' as she called her
+knitting, and almost every third day she turned off a splendid pair of
+rough woollen stockings for one or other of her bairns, as she termed us
+generically. And useful weather-defiant articles of hosiery they were too.
+When our legs were encased in these, our feet protected by a pair of
+double-soled boots, and our ankles further fortified by leather gaiters,
+there were few snakes even we were afraid to tackle.
+
+The very word 'snake,' or 'serpent,' makes some people shudder, and it is
+as well to say a word or two about these ophidians here, and have done
+with them. I have, then, no very wild adventures to record concerning
+those we encountered on our _estancias_. Nor were either my brothers or
+myself much afraid of them, for a snake--this is my firm belief--will
+never strike a human being except in self-defence; and, of all the
+thousands killed annually in India itself by ophidians, most of the
+victims have been tramping about with naked feet, or naked legs at least.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Independent of the pure, wholesome, bracing air, there appeared to us to
+be another peculiarity in the climate which is worthy of note. It is
+_calmative_. There is more in that simple sentence than might at first be
+imagined, and the effect upon settlers might be best explained by giving
+an example: A young man, then, comes to this glorious country fresh from
+all the excitement and fever of Europe, where people are, as a rule,
+overcrowded and elbowing each other for a share of the bread that is not
+sufficient to feed all; he settles down, either to steady work under a
+master, or to till his own farm and mind his own flocks. In either case,
+while feeling labour to be not only a pleasure, but actually a luxury,
+there is no heat of blood and brain; there is no occasion to either chase
+or hurry. Life now is not like a game of football on Rugby lines--all
+scurry, push, and perspiration. The new-comer's prospects are everything
+that could be desired, and--mark this--_he does not live for the future
+any more than the present_. There is enough of everything around him
+_now_, so that his happiness does not consist in building upon the far-off
+_then_, which strugglers in this Britain of ours think so much about. The
+settler then, I say, be he young or old, can afford to enjoy himself
+to-day, certain in his own mind that to-morrow will provide for itself.
+
+But this calmness of mind, which really is a symptom of glorious health,
+never merges into the dreamy laziness and ignoble activity exhibited by
+Brazilians in the east and north of him.
+
+My brothers and I were happily saved a good deal of business worry in
+connection with the purchase of our _estancia_, so, too, were the new
+settlers, for Moncrieff, with that long Scotch head of his, had everything
+cut and dry, as he called it, so that the signing of a few papers and the
+writing of a cheque or two made us as proud as any Scottish laird in the
+old country.
+
+'You must creep before you walk,' Moncrieff told us; 'you mustn't go like
+a bull at a gate. Just look before you "loup."'
+
+So we consulted him in everything.
+
+Suppose, for instance, we wanted another mule or horse, we went to
+Moncrieff for advice.
+
+'Can you do without it?' he would say. 'Go home and settle that question
+between you, and if you find you can't, come and tell me, and I'll let you
+have the beast as cheap as you can buy it anywhere.'
+
+Well, we started building our houses. Unlike the pampas, Mendoza _can_
+boast of stone and brick, and even wood, though round our district a deal
+of this had been planted. The woods that lay on Moncrieff's colony had
+been reared more for shelter to the flocks against the storms and tempests
+that often sweep over the country.
+
+In the more immediate vicinity of the dwelling-houses, with the exception
+of some splendid elms and plane-trees, and the steeple-high solemn-looking
+poplar, no great growth of wood was encouraged. For it must be remembered
+we were living in what Moncrieff called uncanny times. The Indians[6] were
+still a power in the country, and their invasions were looked for
+periodically. The State did not then give the protection against this foe
+it does now. True, there existed what were called by courtesy frontier
+forts; they were supposed to billet soldiers there, too, but as these men
+were often destitute of a supply of ammunition, and spent much of their
+time playing cards and drinking the cheap wines of the country, the
+settlers put but little faith in them, and the wandering pampa Indians
+treated them with disdain.
+
+Our houses, then, for safety's sake, were all built pretty close together,
+and on high ground, so that we had a good view all over the beautiful
+valley. They could thus be more easily defended.
+
+Here and there over the _estancias_, _puestos_, as they were called, were
+erected for the convenience of the shepherds. They were mere huts, but,
+nevertheless, they were far more comfortable in every way than many a
+crofter's cottage in the Scottish Highlands.
+
+Round the dwellings of the new settlers, which were built in the form of a
+square, each square, three in all, having a communication, a rampart and
+ditch were constructed. The making of these was mere pastime to these
+hardy Scots, and they took great delight in the work, for not only would
+it enable them to sleep in peace and safety, but the keeping of it in
+thorough decorative repair, as house agents say, would always form a
+pleasant occupation for spare time.
+
+The mansion, as Moncrieff's beautiful house came to be called, was
+similarly fortified, but as it stood high in its grounds the rampart did
+not hide the building. Moreover, the latter was partially decorated inside
+with flowers, and the external embankment always kept as green as an
+English lawn in June.
+
+The ditches were wide and deep, and were so arranged that in case of
+invasion they could be filled with water from a natural lake high up on
+the brae lands. For that matter they might have been filled at any time,
+or kept filled, but Moncrieff had an idea--and probably he was right--that
+too much stagnant, or even semi-stagnant water near a house rendered it
+unhealthy.
+
+As soon as we had bought our claims and marked them out, each settler's
+distinct from the other, but ours--my brothers' and mine--all in one lot,
+we commenced work in earnest. There was room and to spare for us all about
+the Moncrieff mansion and farmyard, we--the M'Crimmans--being guests for a
+time, and living indoors, the others roughing it as best they could in the
+out-houses, some of which were turned into temporary huts.
+
+Nothing could exceed the beauty of Moncrieff's _estancia_. It was miles
+and miles in extent, and more like a lovely garden than anything else. The
+fields were all square. Round each, in tasteful rows, waved noble trees,
+the weird and ghostly poplar, whose topmost branches touched the clouds
+apparently, the wide-spreading elm, the shapely chestnut, the dark,
+mysterious cypress, the fairy-leaved acacia, the waving willow and sturdy
+oak. These trees had been planted with great taste and judgment around the
+fields, and between all stretched hedges of laurel, willow, and various
+kinds of shrubs. The fields themselves were not without trees; in fact,
+trees were dotted over most of them, notably chestnuts, and many species
+of fruit trees.
+
+But something else added to the extreme beauty of these fields, namely,
+the irrigation canals--I prefer the word canals to ditches. The highest of
+all was very deep and wide, and was supplied with water from the distant
+hills and river, while in its turn it supplied the whole irrigation system
+of the _estancia_. The plan for irrigating the fields was the simplest
+that could be thought of, but it was quite as perfect as it was simple.
+
+Add to the beauty of the trees and hedges the brilliancy of trailing
+flowers of gorgeous hues and strange, fantastic shapes; let some of those
+trees be actually hanging gardens of beauty; let flowers float ever on the
+waters around the fields, and the fields themselves be emerald green--then
+imagine sunshine, balmy air, and perfume everywhere, and you will have
+some idea of the charm spread from end to end of Moncrieff's great
+_estancia_.
+
+But there was another kind of beauty about it which I have not yet
+mentioned--namely, its flocks and herds and poultry.
+
+A feature of the strath, or valley, occupied by this little Scoto-Welsh
+colony was the sandhills or dunes.
+
+'Do you call those sandhills?' I said to Moncrieff one day, shortly after
+our arrival. 'Why, they are as green and bonnie as the Broad Hill on the
+links of Aberdeen.'
+
+Moncrieff smiled, but looked pleased.
+
+'Man!' he replied, 'did you ever hear of the proverb that speaks about
+making mountains of mole-hills? Well, that's what I've done up yonder.
+When my partner and I began serious work on these fields of ours, those
+bits of hills were a constant trouble and menace to us. They were just as
+big then, maybe, as they are now--about fifty feet high at the highest,
+perhaps, but they were bare sandy hillocks, constantly changing shape and
+even position with every big storm, till a happy thought struck my
+partner, and we chose just the right season for acting on it. We got the
+Gauchos to gather for us pecks and bushels of all kinds of wild seed,
+especially that of the long-rooted grasses, and these we sowed all over
+the mole-hills, as we called them, and we planted bushes here and there,
+and also in the hollows, and, lo! the mole-hills were changed into fairy
+little mountains, and the bits o' glens between into bosky dells.'
+
+'Dear Brother Moncrieff,' I said, 'you are a genius, and I'm so glad I met
+you. What would I have been without you?'
+
+'Twaddle, man! nonsensical havers and twaddle! If you hadn't met me you
+would have met somebody else; and if you hadn't met him, you would have
+foregathered wi' experience; and, man, experience is the best teacher in
+a' the wide worruld.'
+
+In laying out and planning our farm, my brothers and I determined,
+however, not to wait for experience of our own, but just take advantage of
+Moncrieff's. That would sustain us, as the oak sustains the ivy.
+
+-----
+
+  [5] 'Shortly shank a curn'--speedily knit a few pairs.
+
+  [6] Since then the Indians have been swept far to the south,
+      and so hemmed in that the provinces north of their
+      territory are as safe from invasion as England
+      itself.--G. S.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+WE BUILD OUR HOUSE AND LAY OUT GARDENS.
+
+
+About a hundred yards to the left of the buildings erected for the new
+colony and down near the lake, or laguna, was an elevated piece of ground
+about an acre in extent. It was bounded on two sides by water, which would
+thus form for it a kind of natural protection in case of Indian invasion.
+It really was part and parcel of Moncrieff's claim or land, and at an
+early date in his career, thinking probably it might come in handy some
+day for a site on which to build, he had taken considerable pains to plant
+it with rows of beautiful trees, especially on the sides next the water
+and facing the west.
+
+My brothers and I arranged to have this, and Moncrieff was well pleased to
+have us so near to him. A more excellent position for a house could hardly
+be, and we determined it should be a good substantial one, and of as great
+architectural beauty as possible.
+
+Having therefore laid out our farm proper, and stocked it with sheep and
+cattle, positioned our shepherds, and installed our labourers and general
+servants under the charge of a _capataz_, or working bailiff, we turned
+our attention to the erection of our house, or mansion, as Dugald grandly
+called it.
+
+'Of course you will cut your coat according to your cloth,' said
+Moncrieff, as he came one evening into the room we had set apart for our
+private study. He had found us to-night with our heads all together over
+a huge sheet of paper on which we were planning out our house.
+
+'Oh yes,' said Donald, 'that we must do.'
+
+'But,' said Dugald, 'we do not expect to remain all our lives downright
+poor settlers.'
+
+'That I am sure you won't.'
+
+'Well, I propose building a much bigger house than we really want, so that
+when we do get a bit rich we can furnish it and set up--set up--'
+
+'Set up a carriage and pair, eh?' said Donald, who was very matter of
+fact--'a carriage and pair, Dugald, a billiard-room, Turkey carpets, woven
+all in one piece, a cellar of old wine, a butler in black and flunkeys in
+plush--is that your notion?'
+
+Donald and I laughed, and Dugald looked cross.
+
+Moncrieff did not laugh: he had too much tact, and was far too
+kind-hearted to throw cold water over our young brother's ambitions and
+aspirations.
+
+'And what sort of a house do you propose?' he said to us.
+
+As he spoke he took a chair at Dugald's side of the table and put his arm
+gently across the boy's shoulders. There was very much in this simple act,
+and I feel sure Dugald loved him for it, and felt he had some one to
+assist his schemes.
+
+'Oh,' replied Donald, 'a small tasteful cottage. That would suit well for
+the present, I think. What do you think, Murdoch?'
+
+'I think with you,' I replied.
+
+After having heard Moncrieff speaking so much about cutting coats
+according to cloth and looking before 'louping,' and all the rest of it,
+we were hardly prepared to hear him on the present occasion say boldly,
+
+'And _I_ think with Dugald.'
+
+'Bravo, Moncrieff!' cried Dugald. 'I felt sure--'
+
+'Bide a wee, though, lad. Ca' canny.[7] Now listen, the lot o' ye. Ye see,
+Murdoch man, your proposed cottage would cost a good bit of money and
+time and trouble, and when you thought of a bigger place, down that
+cottage must come, with an expense of more time and more trouble, even
+allowing that money was of little object. Besides, where are you going to
+live after your cottage is knocked down and while your mansion is
+building? So I say Dugald is right to some extent. Begin building your big
+house bit by bit.'
+
+'In wings?'
+
+'Preceesely, sirs; ye can add and add as you like, and as you can afford
+it.'
+
+It was now our time to cry, 'Bravo, Moncrieff!'
+
+'I wonder, Donald, we didn't think of this plan.'
+
+'Ah,' said Moncrieff, 'ye canna put young he'ds on auld shoulders, as my
+mither says.'
+
+So Moncrieff's plan was finally adopted--we would build our house wing by
+wing.
+
+It took us weeks, however, to decide in what particular style of
+architecture it should be built. Among the literature which Moncrieff had
+brought out from England with him was a whole library in itself of the
+bound volumes of good magazines; and it was from a picture in one of these
+that we finally decided what our Coila Villa should be like, though, of
+course, the plan would be slightly altered to suit circumstances of
+climate, &c. It was to be--briefly stated--a winged bungalow of only one
+story, with a handsome square tower and portico in the centre, and
+verandahs nearly all round. So one wing and the tower was commenced at
+once. But bricks were to be made, and timber cut and dried and fashioned,
+and no end of other things were to be accomplished before we actually set
+about the erection.
+
+To do all these things we appointed a little army of Gauchos, with two or
+three handy men-of-all-work from Scotland.
+
+Meanwhile our villa gardens were planned and our bushes and trees were
+planted.
+
+Terraces, too, were contrived to face the lake, and Dugald one evening
+proposed a boat-house and boat, and this was carried without a dissentient
+voice.
+
+Dugald was extremely fond of our sister Flora. We only wondered that he
+now spoke about her so seldom. But if he spoke but little of her he
+thought the more, and we could see that all his plans for the
+beautification and adornment of the villa had but one end and object--the
+delight and gratification of its future little mistress.
+
+Dear old Dugald! he had such a kind lump of a heart of his own, and never
+took any of our chaff and banter unpleasantly. But I am quite sure that as
+far as he himself was concerned he never would have troubled himself about
+even the boat-house or the terraced gardens either, for every idle hour
+that he could spare he spent on the hill, as he called it, with his dog--a
+lovely Irish setter--and his gun.
+
+I met him one morning going off as usual with Dash, the setter, close
+beside the little mule he rode, and with his gun slung over his back.
+
+'Where away, old man?' I said.
+
+'Only to a little laguna I've found among the hills, and I mean to have a
+grand bag to-day.'
+
+'Well, you're off early!'
+
+'Yes; there is little to be done at home, and there are some rare fine
+ducks up yonder.'
+
+'You'll be back to luncheon?'
+
+'I'll try. If not, don't wait.'
+
+'Not likely; ta-ta! Good luck to you! But you really ought to have a
+Gaucho with you.'
+
+'Nonsense, Murdoch! I don't need a groom. Dash and old Tootsie, the mule,
+are all I want.'
+
+It was the end of winter, or rather beginning of spring, but Moncrieff had
+not yet declared close time, and Dugald managed to supply the larder with
+more species of game than we could tell the names of. Birds, especially,
+he brought home on his saddle and in his bag; birds of all sizes, from
+the little luscious dove to the black swan itself; and one day he actually
+came along up the avenue with a dead ostrich. He could ride that mule of
+his anywhere. I believe he could have ridden along the parapet of London
+Bridge, so we were never surprised to see Dugald draw rein at the lower
+sitting-room window, within the verandah. He was always laughing and merry
+and mischievous-looking when he had had extra good luck; but the day he
+landed that ostrich he was fairly wild with excitement. The body of it was
+given to the Gauchos, and they made very merry over it: invited their
+friends, in fact, and roasted the huge bird whole out of doors. They did
+so in true Patagonian fashion--to wit, the ostrich was first trussed and
+cleaned, a roaring fire of wood having been made, round stones were made
+almost red-hot. The stones were for stuffing, though this kind of stuffing
+is not very eatable, but it helps to cook the bird. The fire was then
+raked away, and the dinner laid down and covered up. Meanwhile the
+Gauchos, male and female, girls and boys, had a dance. The ubiquitous
+guitars, of course, were the instruments, and two of these made not a bad
+little band. After dinner they danced again, and wound up by wishing
+Dugald all the good luck in the world, and plenty more ostriches. The
+feathers of this big game-bird were carefully packed and sent home to
+mother and Flora.
+
+Well, we had got so used to Dugald's solitary ways that we never thought
+anything of even his somewhat prolonged absence on the hill, for he
+usually dropped round when luncheon was pretty nearly done. There was
+always something kept warm for 'old Dugald,' as we all called him, and I
+declare it did every one of us good to see him eat. His appetite was
+certainly the proverbial appetite of a hunter.
+
+On this particular day, however, old Dugald did not return to luncheon.
+
+'Perhaps,' said Donald, 'he is dining with some of the shepherds, or
+having "a pick at a priest's," as he calls it.'
+
+'Perhaps,' I said musingly. The afternoon wore away, and there were no
+signs of our brother coming, so I began to get rather uneasy, and spoke to
+Donald about it.
+
+'He may have met with an accident,' I said, 'or fifty things may have
+happened.'
+
+'Well,' replied Donald, 'I don't suppose fifty things have happened; but
+as you seem a bit anxious, suppose we mount our mules, take a Gaucho with
+us, and institute a search expedition?'
+
+'I'm willing,' I cried, jumping up, 'and here's for off!'
+
+There was going to be an extra good dinner that day, because we expected
+letters from home, and our runner would be back from the distant
+post-office in good time to let us read our epistles before the gong
+sounded and so discuss them at table.
+
+'Hurry up, boys; don't be late, mind!' cried aunt, as our mules were
+brought round to the portico, and we were mounted.
+
+'All right, auntie dear!' replied Donald, waving his hand; 'and mind those
+partridges are done to a turn; we'll be all delightfully hungry.'
+
+The Gaucho knew all Dugald's trails well, and when we mentioned the small
+distant laguna, he set out at once in the direction of the glen. He made
+so many windings, however, and took so many different turns through bush
+and grass and scrub, that we began to wonder however Dugald could have
+found the road.
+
+But Dugald had a way of his own of getting back through even a cactus
+labyrinth. It was a very simple one, too. He never 'loaded up,' as he
+termed it; that is, he did not hang his game to his saddle till he meant
+to start for home; then he mounted, whistled to Dash, who capered and
+barked in front of the mule, permitted the reins to lie loosely on the
+animal's neck, and--there he was! For not only did the good beast take him
+safely back to Coila, as we called our _estancia_, but he took him by the
+best roads; and even when he seemed to Dugald's human sense to be going
+absolutely and entirely wrong, he never argued with him.
+
+              'Reason raise o'er instinct, if you can;
+              In this 'tis God directs, in that 'tis man.'
+
+'You are certain he will come this way, Zambo?' I said to our Gaucho.
+
+'Plenty certain, señor. I follow de trail now.'
+
+I looked over my saddle-bow; so did Donald, but no trail could we
+see--only the hard, yellow, sandy gravel.
+
+We came at last to the hilly regions. It was exceedingly quiet and still
+here; hardly a creature of any kind to be seen except now and then a kite,
+or even condor, the latter winging his silent way to the distant
+mountains. At times we passed a biscacha village. The biscacha is not a
+tribe of Indians, but, like the coney, a very feeble people, who dwell in
+caves or burrow underground, but all day long may be seen playing about
+the mounds they raise, or sitting on their hind legs on top of them. They
+are really a species of prairie-dog. With them invariably live a tribe of
+little owls--the burrowing owls--and it seems to be a mutual understanding
+that the owls have the principal possession of these residential chambers
+by day, while the biscachas occupy them by night. This arrangement answers
+wonderfully well, and I have proved over and over again that they are
+exceedingly fond of each other. The biscachas themselves are not very
+demonstrative, either in their fun or affection, but if one of them be
+killed, and is lying dead outside the burrow, the poor owl often exhibits
+the most frantic grief for the murder of his little housekeeper, and will
+even show signs of a desire to attack the animal--especially if a
+dog--which has caused his affliction.
+
+Donald and I, with our guide, now reached the land of the giant cacti. We
+all at home here in Britain know something of the beauty of the common
+prickly cactus that grows in window-gardens or in hot-houses, and
+surprises us with the crimson glory of its flowers, which grow from such
+odd parts of the plant; but here we were in the land of the cacti. Dugald
+knew it well, and used to tell us all about them; so tall, so stately, so
+strange and weird, that we felt as if in another planet. Already the bloom
+was on some of them--for in this country flowers soon hear the voice of
+spring--but in the proper season nothing that ever I beheld can surpass
+the gorgeous beauty of these giant cacti.
+
+The sun began to sink uncomfortably low down on the horizon, and my
+anxiety increased every minute. Why did not Dugald meet us? Why did we not
+even hear the sound of his gun, for the Gaucho told us we were close to
+the laguna?
+
+Presently the cacti disappeared behind us, and we found ourselves in open
+ground, with here and there a tall, weird-looking tree. How those
+trees--they were not natives--had come there we were at first at a loss to
+understand, but when we reached the foot of a grass-grown hill or sand
+dune, and came suddenly on the ruins of what appeared a Jesuit hermitage
+or monastery, the mystery was explained.
+
+On rounding a spur of this hill, lo! the lake; and not far from the foot
+of a tree, behold! our truant brother. Beside him was Dash, and not a
+great way off, tied to a dwarf algaroba tree, stood the mule. Dugald was
+sitting on the ground, with his gun over his arm, gazing up into the
+tree.
+
+'Dugald! Dugald!' I cried.
+
+But Dugald never moved his head. Was he dead, or were these green sand
+dunes fairy hillocks, and my brother enchanted?
+
+I leapt off my mule, and, rifle in hand, went on by myself, never taking
+my eyes off my brother, and with my heart playing pit-a-pat against my
+ribs.
+
+'Dugald!' I said again.
+
+He never moved.
+
+'Dugald, speak!'
+
+He spoke now almost in a stage whisper:
+
+'A lion in the tree. Have you your rifle?'
+
+I beckoned to my brother to come on, and at the same moment the monster
+gave voice. I was near enough now to take aim at the puma; he was lying in
+a cat-like attitude on one of the highest limbs. But the angry growl and
+the moving tail told me plainly enough he was preparing to spring, and
+spring on Dugald. It was the first wild beast I had ever drawn bead upon,
+and I confess it was a supreme moment; oh, not of joy, but,--shall I say
+it?--fear.
+
+What if I should miss!
+
+But there was no time for cogitation. I raised my rifle. At the self-same
+moment, as if knowing his danger, the brute sprang off the bough. The
+bullet met him in mid-air, and--_he fell dead at Dugald's feet_.
+
+The ball had entered the neck and gone right on and through the heart. One
+coughing roar, an opening and shutting of the terrible jaws--which were
+covered with blood and froth--and a few convulsive movements of the hind
+legs, and all was over.
+
+'Thank Heaven, you are saved, dear old Dugald!' I cried.
+
+'Yes,' said Dugald, getting up and coolly stretching himself; 'but you've
+been a precious long time in coming.'
+
+'And you were waiting for us?'
+
+'I couldn't get away. I was sitting here when I noticed the lion. Dash and
+I were having a bit of lunch. My cartridges are all on the mule, so I've
+been staring fixedly at that monster ever since. I knew it was my only
+chance. If I had moved away, or even turned my head, he would have had me
+as sure as--'
+
+'But, I say,' he added, touching the dead puma with his foot, '_isn't_ he
+a fine fellow? What a splendid skin to send home to Flora!'
+
+This shows what sort of a boy Brother Dugald was; and now that all danger
+was past and gone, although I pretended to be angry with him for his
+rashness, I really could not help smiling.
+
+'But what a crack shot you are, Murdoch!' he added; 'I had no idea--I--I
+really couldn't have done much better myself.'
+
+'Well, Dugald,' I replied, 'I may do better next time, but to tell the
+truth I aimed at the beast _when he was on the branch_.'
+
+'And hit him ten feet below it. Ha! ha! ha!'
+
+We all laughed now. We could afford it.
+
+The Gaucho whipped the puma out of his skin in less than a minute, and off
+we started for home.
+
+I was the hero of the evening; though Dugald never told them of my funny
+aim. Bombazo, who had long since recovered his spirits, was well to the
+front with stories of his own personal prowess and narrow escapes; but
+while relating these he never addressed old Jenny, for the ancient and
+humorsome dame had told him one day that 'big lees were thrown awa' upon
+her.'
+
+What a happy evening we spent, for our Gaucho runner had brought
+
+                         'Good news from Home!'
+
+-----
+
+  [7] 'Ca' Canny' = Drive slowly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+SUMMER IN THE SILVER WEST.
+
+
+Though it really was not so very long since we had said farewell to our
+friends in Scotland and the dear ones at home, it seemed an age. So it is
+no wonder, seeing that all were well, our letters brought us joy. Not for
+weeks did we cease to read them over and over again and talk about them.
+One of mine was from Archie Bateman, and, much to my delight and that of
+my brothers, he told us that he had never ceased worrying his father and
+mother to let him come out to the Silver West and join us, and that they
+were yielding fast. He meant, he said, to put the screw on a little harder
+soon, by running away and taking a cruise as far as Newcastle-on-Tyne in a
+coal-boat. He had no doubt that this would have the desired effect of
+showing his dearly-beloved _pater et mater_ that he was in downright
+earnest in his desire to go abroad. So we were to expect him next
+summer--'that is,' he added, 'summer in England, and winter with you.'
+
+Another letter of mine was from Irene M'Rae. I dare say there must have
+been a deal of romance about me even then, for Irene's delightful little
+matter-of-fact and prosaic letter gave me much pleasure, and I--I believe
+I carried it about with me till it was all frayed at every fold, and I
+finally stowed it away in my desk.
+
+Flora wrote to us all, with a postscript in addition to Dugald. And we
+were to make haste and get rich enough to send for pa and ma and her.
+
+I did not see Townley's letter to aunt, but I know that much of it related
+to the 'Coila crime,' as we all call it now. The scoundrel M'Rae had
+disappeared, and Mr. Townley had failed to trace him. But he could wait.
+He would not get tired. It was as certain as Fate that as soon as the
+poacher spent his money--and fellows like him could not keep money
+long--he would appear again at Coila, to extort more by begging or
+threatening. Townley had a watch set for him, and as soon as he should
+appear there would be an interview.
+
+'It would,' the letter went on, 'aid my case very much indeed could I but
+find the men who assisted him to restore the vault in the old ruin. But
+they, too, are spirited away, apparently, and all I can do fails to find
+them. But I live in hope. The good time is bound to come, and may Heaven
+in justice send it soon!'
+
+Moncrieff had no letters, but I am bound to say that he was as much
+delighted to see us happy as if we were indeed his own brothers, and our
+aunt his aunt, if such a thing could have been possible.
+
+But meanwhile the building of our Coila Villa moved on apace, and only
+those situated as we were could understand the eager interest we took in
+its gradual rise. At the laying of the foundation-stone we gave all the
+servants and workmen, and settlers, new and old, an entertainment. We had
+not an ostrich to roast whole this time, but the supper placed before our
+guests under Moncrieff's biggest tent was one his cook might well have
+been proud of. After supper music commenced, only on this special and
+auspicious occasion the guitars did not have it all their own way, having
+to give place every now and then to the inspiring strains of the Highland
+bagpipes. That was a night which was long remembered in our little
+colony.
+
+While the villa was being built our furniture was being made. This, like
+that in Moncrieff's mansion, was all, or mostly, Indian work, and
+manufactured by our half-caste Gauchos. The wood chiefly used was
+algaroba, which, when polished, looked as bright as mahogany, and quite as
+beautiful. This Occidental furniture, as we called it, was really very
+light and elegant, the seats of the couches, fauteuils and sofas, and
+chairs being worked with thongs, or pieces of hardened skin, in quite a
+marvellous manner.
+
+We had fences to make all round our fields, and hedges to plant, and even
+trees. Then there was the whole irrigation system to see to, and the land
+to sow with grain and lucerne, after the soil had been duly ploughed and
+attended to. All this kept us young fellows very busy indeed, for we
+worked with the men almost constantly, not only as simple superintendents,
+but as labourers.
+
+Yes, the duties about an _estancia_, even after it is fairly established,
+are very varied; but, nevertheless, I know of no part of the world where
+the soil responds more quickly or more kindly to the work of the tiller
+than it does in the Silver West. And this is all the more wonderful when
+we consider that a great part of the land hereabouts is by nature barren
+in the extreme.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+I do not think I am wrong in saying that sheep, if not first introduced
+into the _estancias_ of the Silver West by the Scotch, have at all events
+been elevated to the rank of a special feature of produce in the country
+by them. Moncrieff had done much for the improvement of the breed, not
+only as regards actual size of body, but in regard to the texture of the
+wool; and it was his proudest boast to be able to say that the land of his
+adoption could already compare favourably with Australia itself, and that
+in the immediate future it was bound to beat that island.
+
+It is no wonder, therefore, that we all looked forward to our first great
+shearing as a very busy time indeed. Our great wool harvest was, indeed,
+one of the principal events of the year. Moncrieff said he always felt
+young again at the sheep-shearing times.
+
+Now there are various styles of wool harvesting. Moncrieff's was simple
+enough. Preparations were made for it, both out-doors and in, at least a
+fortnight beforehand. Indoors, hams, &c., were got ready for cooking, and
+the big tent was erected once more near and behind the mansion, for extra
+hands to the number of twenty at least were to be imported; several
+neighbour settlers--they lived ten miles off, and still were
+neighbours--were coming over to lend a hand, and all had to eat, and most
+had to sleep, under canvas.
+
+If sheep-shearing prospects made Moncrieff young again, so they did his
+mother. She was here, there, and everywhere; now in parlour or
+dining-room, in kitchen and scullery, in out-houses and tent, giving
+orders, leading, directing, ay, and sometimes even driving, the servants,
+for few of the Gauchos, whether male or female, could work with speed
+enough to please old Jenny.
+
+Well, the sheds had to be cleared out, and a system of corralling adopted
+which was only called for during times like these. Then there were the
+weighing machines to be seen to; the tally tables and all the packing and
+pressing machinery--which on this large _estancia_ was carried almost to
+perfection--had all to be got into the very best working order imaginable.
+For, in the matter of sheep-shearing, Moncrieff was fastidious to a
+degree.
+
+The sheep were washed the day before. This was hard work, for no animal I
+know of is more obstinate than a sheep when it makes up its mind to be
+so.
+
+So the work commenced, and day after day it went merrily on. Moncrieff did
+not consider this a very large shearing, and yet in six days' time no less
+than 11,000 sheep were turned away fleeceless.
+
+And what a scene it was, to be sure!
+
+I remember well, when quite a little lad, thinking old Parson McGruer's
+shearing a wonderful sight. The old man, who was very fat and podgy, and
+seldom got down to breakfast before eleven in the morning, considered
+himself a sheep farmer on rather a large scale. Did he not own a flock of
+nearly six hundred--one shepherd's work--that fed quietly on the
+heath-clad braes of Coila? One shepherd and two collies; and the collies
+did nearly all the duty in summer and a great part of it in winter. The
+shepherd had his bit of shieling in a clump of birch-trees at the
+glen-foot, and at times, crook in hand, his Highland plaid dangling from
+his shoulder, he might be seen slowly winding along the braes, or
+standing, statue-like, on the hill-top, his romantic figure well defined
+against the horizon, and very much in keeping with the scene. I never yet
+saw the minister's shepherd running. His life was almost an idyllic one in
+summer, when the birks waved green and eke, or in autumn, when the hills
+were all ablaze with the crimson glory of the heather. To be sure, his pay
+was not a great deal, and his fare for the most part consisted of oatmeal
+and milk, with now and then a slice of the best part of a 'braxied' sheep.
+Here, in our home in the Silver West, how different! Every _puestero_ had
+a house or hut as good as the minister's shepherd; and as for living, why,
+the worthy Mr. McGruer himself never had half so well-found a table. Our
+dogs in the Silver West lived far more luxuriously than any farm servant
+or shepherd, or even gamekeeper, 'in a' braid Scotland.'
+
+But our shepherds had to run and to ride both. Wandering over miles upon
+miles of pasturage, sheep learn to be dainty, and do not stay very long in
+any one place; so it is considered almost impossible to herd them on foot.
+It is not necessary to do so; at all events, where one can buy a horse for
+forty shillings, and where his food costs _nil_, or next to _nil_, one
+usually prefers riding to walking.
+
+But it was a busy time in May even at the Scotch minister's place when
+sheep-shearing came round. The minister got up early then, if he did not
+do so all the year round again. The hurdles were all taken to the
+river-side, or banks of the stream that, leaving Loch Coila, went
+meandering through the glen. Here the sheep were washed and penned, and
+anon turned into the enclosures where the shearers were. Lads and lasses
+all took part in the work in one capacity or another. The sun would be
+brightly shining, the 'jouking burnie' sparkling clear in its rays; the
+glens and hills all green and bonnie; the laughing and joking and lilting
+and singing, and the constant bleating of sheep and lambs, made altogether
+a curious medley; but every now and then Donald the piper would tune his
+pipes and make them 'skirl,' drowning all other sounds in martial melody.
+
+But here on Moncrieff's _estancia_ everything was on a grander scale.
+There was the same bleating of sheep, the same laughing, joking, lilting,
+singing, and piping; the same hurry-scurry of dogs and men; the same
+prevailing busy-ness and activity; but everything was multiplied by
+twenty.
+
+McGruer at home in Coila had his fleeces thrust into a huge sack, which
+was held up by two stalwart Highlanders. Into this not only were the
+fleeces put, but also a boy, to jump on them and pack them down. At the
+_estancia_ we had the very newest forms of machinery to do everything.
+
+Day by day, as our shearing went on, Moncrieff grew gayer and gayer, and
+on the final morning he was as full of life and fun as a Harrow schoolboy
+out on the range. The wool harvest had turned out well.
+
+It had not been so every year with Moncrieff and his partner. They had had
+many struggles to come through--sickness had at one time more than
+decimated the flocks. The Indians, though they do not as a rule drive away
+sheep, had played sad havoc among them, and scattered them far and wide
+over the adjoining pampas, and the pampero[8] had several times destroyed
+its thousands, before the trees had grown up to afford protection and
+shelter.
+
+I have said before that Moncrieff was fond of doing things in his own
+fashion. He was willing enough to adopt all the customs of his adopted
+country so long as he thought they were right, but many of the habits of
+his native land he considered would engraft well with those of Mendoza.
+Moncrieff delighted in dancing--that is, in giving a good hearty rout,
+and he simply did so whenever there was the slightest excuse. The cereal
+harvest ended thus, the grape harvest also, and making of the wine and
+preserves, and so of course did the shearing.
+
+The dinner at the mansion itself was a great success; the supper in the
+marquee, with the romp to follow, was even a greater. Moncrieff himself
+opened the fun with Aunt Cecilia as a partner, Donald and a charming
+Spanish girl completing the quartette necessary for a real Highland reel.
+The piper played, of course (guitars were not good enough for this sort of
+thing), and I think we must have kept that first 'hoolichin' up for nearly
+twenty minutes. Then Moncrieff and aunt were fain to retire
+'for-fochten.'[9]
+
+Well Moncrieff might have been 'for-fochten,' but neither Donald nor his
+Spanish lassie were half tired. Nor was the piper.
+
+'Come on, Dugald,' cried Donald, 'get a partner, lad. Hooch!'
+
+'Hooch!' shouted Dugald in response, and lo and behold! he gaily led
+forth--whom? Why, whom but old Jenny herself? What roars of laughter there
+was as, keeping time to a heart-stirring strathspey, the litle lady
+cracked her thumbs and danced, reeling, setting, and deeking! roars of
+laughter, and genuine hearty applause as well.
+
+Moncrieff was delighted with his mother's performance. It was glorious, he
+said, and so true to time; surely everybody would believe him now that
+mither was a downright ma_r-r-r-_vel. And everybody did.
+
+During the shearing Donald and I had done duty as clerks; and very busy we
+had been kept. As for Dugald, it would have been a pity to have parted him
+and his dear gun, so the work assigned to him was that of lion's
+provider--we, the shearing folk, being the lion.
+
+For a youth of hardly sixteen Dugald was a splendid shot, and during the
+shearing he really kept up his credit well. Moncrieff objected to have
+birds killed when breeding; but in this country, as indeed in any other
+where game is numerous, there are hosts of birds that do not, for various
+reasons, breed or mate every season. These generally are to be found
+either singly and solitary, as if they had some great grief on their minds
+that they desired to nurse in solitude, or in small flocks of gay young
+bachelors. Dugald knew such birds well, and it was from the ranks of these
+he always filled the larder.
+
+To the supply thus brought daily by Dugald were added fowls, ducks, and
+turkeys from the _estancia's_ poultry-yard, to say nothing of joints of
+beef, mutton, and pork. Nor was it birds alone that Dugald's seemingly
+inexhaustible creels and bags were laden with, but eggs of the swan[10]
+and the wild-duck and goose, with--to serve as tit-bits for those who
+cared for such desert delicacies--cavies, biscachas, and now and then an
+armadillo. If these were not properly appreciated by the new settlers, the
+eyes of the old, and especially the Gauchos, sparkled with anticipation of
+gustatory delight on beholding them.
+
+For some days after the shearing was over comparative peace reigned around
+and over the great _estancia_. But nevertheless preparations were being
+made to send off a string of waggons to Villa Mercedes. The market at
+Mendoza was hardly large enough to suit Moncrieff, nor were the prices so
+good as could be obtained in the east. Indeed, Moncrieff had purchasing
+agents from Villa Mercedes to meet his waggons on receipt of a telegram.
+
+So the waggons were loaded up--wool, wine, and preserves, as well as
+raisins.
+
+To describe the vineyards at our _estancia_ would take up far too much
+space. I must leave them to the reader's imagination; but I hardly think I
+am wrong in stating that there are no grapes in the world more delicious
+or more viniferous than those that grow in the province of Mendoza. The
+usual difficulty is not in the making of wine, but in the supply of
+barrels and bottles. Moncrieff found a way out of this; and in some hotels
+in Buenos Ayres, and even Monte Video, the Château Moncrieff had already
+gained some celebrity.
+
+The manufacture of many different kinds of preserves was quite an industry
+at the _estancia_, and one that paid fairly well. There were orangeries as
+well as vineries; and although the making of marmalade had not before been
+attempted, Moncrieff meant now to go in for it on quite a large scale.
+This branch was to be superintended by old Jenny herself, and great was
+her delight to find out that she was of some use on the estate, for
+'really 'oman,' she told aunt, 'a body gets tired of the stockin'--shank,
+shank, shank a' day is hard upon the hands, though a body maun do
+something.'
+
+Well, the waggons were laden and off at last. With them went Moncrieff's
+Welsh partner as commander, to see to the sale, and prevent the Gauchos
+and drivers generally from tapping the casks by the way. The force of men,
+who were all well armed, was quite sufficient to give an excellent account
+of any number of prowling Indians who were likely to put in an
+appearance.
+
+And now summer, in all its glory, was with us. And such glory! Such glory
+of vegetable life, such profusion of foliage, such wealth of colouring,
+such splendour of flowers! Such glory of animal life, beast and bird and
+insect! The flowers themselves were not more gay and gorgeous than some of
+these latter.
+
+Nor were we very greatly plagued with the hopping and blood-sucking
+genera. Numerous enough they were at times, it must be confessed, both by
+day and night; but somehow we got used to them. The summer was wearing to
+a close, the first wing of our Coila Villa was finished and dry, the
+furniture was put in, and as soon as the smell of paint left we took
+possession.
+
+This was made the occasion for another of Moncrieff's festive gatherings.
+Neighbours came from all directions except the south, for we knew of none
+in this direction besides the wild Pampean Indians, and they were not
+included in the invitation. Probably we should make them dance some other
+day.
+
+About a fortnight after our opening gathering, or 'house-warming,' as
+Moncrieff called it, we had a spell of terribly hot weather. The heat was
+of a sultry, close description, difficult to describe: the cattle, sheep,
+and horses seemed to suffer very much, and even the poor dogs. These last,
+by the way, we found it a good plan to clip. Long coats did not suit the
+summer season.
+
+One evening it seemed hotter and sultrier than ever. We were all seated
+out in the verandah, men-folk smoking, and aunt and Aileen fanning
+themselves and fighting the insects, when suddenly a low and ominous
+rumbling was heard which made us all start except Moncrieff.
+
+Is it thunder? No; there is not at present a cloud in the sky, although a
+strange dark haze is gathering over the peaks on the western horizon.
+
+'Look!' said Moncrieff to me. As he spoke he pointed groundwards. Beetles
+and ants and crawling insects of every description were heading for the
+verandah, seeking shelter from the coming storm.
+
+The strange rumbling grew louder!
+
+It was not coming from the sky, but from the earth!
+
+-----
+
+  [8] Pampero, a storm wind that blows from the south.
+
+  [9] For-fochten = worn out. The term usually applies to
+      barn-yard roosters, who have been settling a quarrel, and
+      pause to pant, with their heads towards the ground.
+
+  [10] Swans usually commence laying some time before either
+       ducks or geese; but much depends upon the season.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+THE EARTHQUAKE.
+
+
+With a rapidity that was truly alarming the black haze in the west crept
+upwards over the sky, the sun was engulfed in a few minutes, and before
+half an hour, accompanied by a roaring wind and a whirl of dust and
+decayed leaves, the storm was with us and on us, the whole _estancia_
+being enveloped in clouds and darkness.
+
+The awful earth sounds still continued--increased, in fact--much to the
+terror of every one of us. We had retreated to the back sitting-room.
+Moncrieff had left us for a time, to see to the safety of the cattle and
+the farm generally, for the Gauchos were almost paralyzed with fear, and
+it was found afterwards that the very shepherds had left their flocks and
+fled for safety--if safety it could be called--to their _puestos_.
+
+Yet Gauchos are not as a rule afraid of storms, but--and it is somewhat
+remarkable--an old Indian seer had for months before been predicting that
+on this very day and night the city of Mendoza would be destroyed by an
+earthquake, and that not only the town but every village in the province
+would be laid low at the same time.
+
+It is difficult to give the reader any idea of the events of this dreadful
+night. I can only briefly relate my own feelings and experiences. As we
+all sat there, suddenly a great river of blood appeared to split the dark
+heavens in two, from zenith to horizon. It hung in the sky for long
+seconds, and was followed by a peal of thunder of terrific violence,
+accompanied by sounds as if the whole building and every building on the
+estate were being rent and riven in pieces. At the self-same moment a
+strange, dizzy, sleepy feeling rushed through my brain. I could only see
+those around me as if enshrouded in a blue-white mist. I tried to rise
+from my chair, but fell back, not as I thought into a chair but into a
+boat. Floor and roof and walls appeared to meet and clasp. My head swam. I
+was not only dizzy but deaf apparently, not too deaf, however, to hear the
+wild, unearthly, frightened screams of twenty at least of our Gaucho
+servants, who were huddled together in the centre of the garden. It was
+all over in a few seconds: even the thunder was hushed and the wind no
+longer bent the poplars or roared through the cloud-like elm-trees. A
+silence that could be felt succeeded, broken only by the low moan of
+terror that the Gauchos kept up; a silence that soon checked even that
+sound itself; a silence that crept round the heart, and held us all
+spellbound; a silence that was ended at last by terrible thunderings and
+lightnings and earth-tremblings, with all the same dizzy, sleepy,
+sickening sensations that had accompanied the first shock. I felt as if
+chaos had come again, and for a time felt also as if death itself would
+have been a relief.
+
+But this shock passed next, and once more there was a solemn silence, a
+drear stillness. And now fear took possession of every one of us, and a
+desire to flee away somewhere--anywhere. This had almost amounted to
+panic, when Moncrieff himself appeared in the verandah.
+
+'I've got our fellows to put up the marquee,' he said, almost in a
+whisper. 'Come--we'll be safer there. Mither, I'll carry you. You're not
+afraid, are you?'
+
+'Is the worruld comin' tae an end?' asked old Jenny, looking dazed as her
+son picked her up. 'Is the worruld comin' tae an end, _and the marmalade
+no made yet_?'
+
+In about an hour after this the storm was at its worst. Flash followed
+flash, peal followed peal: the world seemed in flames, the hills appeared
+to be falling on us. The rain and hailstones came down in vast sheets, and
+with a noise so great that even the thunder itself was heard but as a
+subdued roar.
+
+We had no light here--we needed none. The lightning, or the reflection of
+it, ran in under the canvas on the surface of the water, which must have
+been inches deep. The hail melted as soon as it fell, and finally gave
+place to rain alone; then the water that flowed through the tent felt
+warm, if not hot, to the touch. This was no doubt occasioned by the force
+with which it fell to the ground. The falling rain now looked like cords
+of gold and silver, so brightly was it illuminated by the lightning.
+
+While the storm was still at its height suddenly there was a shout from
+one of the Gauchos.
+
+'Run, run! the tent is falling!' was the cry.
+
+It was only too true. A glance upwards told us this. We got into the open
+air just in time, before, weighted down by tons of water, the great
+marquee came groundwards with a crash.
+
+But though the rain still came down in torrents and the thunder roared and
+rattled over and around us, no further shock of earthquake was felt. Fear
+fled then, and we made a rush for the house once more. Moncrieff reached
+the casement window first, with a Gaucho carrying a huge lantern. This man
+entered, but staggered out again immediately.
+
+'The ants! the ants!' he shouted in terror.
+
+Moncrieff had one glance into the room, as if to satisfy himself. I took
+the lantern from the trembling hands of the Gaucho and held it up, and the
+sight that met my astonished gaze was one I shall never forget. The whole
+room was in possession of myriads of black ants of enormous size; they
+covered everything--walls, furniture, and floor--with one dense and awful
+pall.
+
+The room looked strange and mysterious in its living, moving covering.
+Here was indeed the blackness of darkness. Yes, and it was a darkness too
+that could be felt. Of this I had a speedy proof of a most disagreeable
+nature. I was glad to hand the lantern back and seek for safety in the
+rain again.
+
+Luckily the sitting-room door was shut, and this was the only room not
+taken possession of.
+
+After lights had been lit in the drawing-room the storm did not appear
+quite so terrible; but no one thought of retiring that night. The vague
+fear that something more dreadful still might occur kept hanging in our
+minds, and was only dispelled when daylight began to stream in at the
+windows.
+
+By breakfast-time there was no sign in the blue sky that so fearful a
+storm had recently raged there. Nor had any very great violence been done
+about the farmyards by the earthquake.
+
+Many of the cattle that had sought shelter beneath the trees had been
+killed, however; and in one spot we found the mangled remains of over one
+hundred sheep. Here also a huge chestnut-tree had been struck and
+completely destroyed, pieces of the trunk weighing hundreds of pounds
+being scattered in every direction over the field.
+
+Earthquakes are of common occurrence in the province of Mendoza, but
+seldom are they accompanied by such thunder, lightning, and rain as we had
+on this occasion. It was this demonstration, coupled with the warning
+words of the Indian seer, which had caused the panic among our worthy
+Gaucho servants. But the seer had been a false prophet for once, and as
+the Gauchos seized him on this same day and half drowned him in the lake,
+there was but little likelihood that he would prophesy the destruction of
+Mendoza again.
+
+Mendoza had been almost totally destroyed already by an awful earthquake
+that occurred in 1861. Out of a population of nearly sixteen thousand
+souls no less than thirteen thousand, we are told, were killed--swallowed
+up by the yawning earth. Fire broke out afterwards, and, as if to
+increase the wretchedness and sad condition of the survivors, robbers from
+all directions--even from beyond the Andes--flocked to the place to loot
+and pillage it. But Mendoza is now built almost on the ashes of the
+destroyed city, and its population must be equal to, even if it does not
+exceed, its former aggregate.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the exception of a few losses, trifling enough to one in Moncrieff's
+position, the whole year was a singularly successful one. Nor had my
+brothers nor I and the other settlers any occasion to complain, and our
+prospects began to be very bright indeed.
+
+Nor did the future belie the present, for ere another year had rolled over
+our heads we found ourselves in a fair way to fortune. We felt by this
+time that we were indeed old residents. We were thoroughly acclimatized:
+healthy, hardy, and brown. In age we were, some would say, mere lads; in
+experience we were already men.
+
+Our letters from home continued to be of the most cheering description,
+with the exception of Townley's to aunt. He had made little if any
+progress in his quest. Not that he despaired. Duncan M'Rae was still
+absent, but sooner or later--so Townley believed--poverty would bring him
+to bay, and _then_--
+
+Nothing of this did my aunt tell me at the time. I remained in blissful
+ignorance of anything and everything that our old tutor had done or was
+doing.
+
+True, the events of that unfortunate evening at the old ruin sometimes
+arose in my mind to haunt me. My greatest sorrow was my being bound down
+by oath to keep what seemed to me the secret of a villain--a secret that
+had deprived our family of the estates of Coila, had deprived my
+parents--yes, that was the hard and painful part. For, strange as it may
+appear, I cared nothing for myself. So enamoured had I become of our new
+home in the Silver West, that I felt but little longing to return to the
+comparative bleakness and desolation of even Scottish Highland scenery. I
+must not be considered unpatriotic on this account, or if there was a
+decay of patriotism in my heart, the fascinating climate of Mendoza was to
+blame for it. I could not help feeling at times that I had eaten the
+lotus-leaf. Had we not everything that the heart of young men could
+desire? On my own account, therefore, I felt no desire to turn the good
+soldier M'Rae away from Coila, and as for Irene--as for bringing a tear to
+the eyes of that beautiful and engaging girl, I would rather, I thought,
+that the dark waters of the laguna should close over my head for ever.
+
+Besides, dear father was happy. His letters told me that. He had even come
+to like his city life, and he never wrote a word about Coila.
+
+Still, the oath--the oath that bound me! It was a dark spot in my
+existence.
+
+_Did_ it bind me? I remember thinking that question over one day. Could an
+oath forced upon any one be binding in the sight of Heaven? I ran off to
+consult my brother Moncrieff. I found him riding his great bay mare, an
+especial favourite, along the banks of the highest _estancia_ canal--the
+canal that fed the whole system of irrigation. Here I joined him, myself
+on my pet brown mule.
+
+'Planning more improvements, Moncrieff?' I asked.
+
+He did not speak for a minute or two.
+
+'I'm not planning improvements,' he said at last, 'but I was just thinking
+it would be well, in our orra[11] moments, if we were to strengthen this
+embankment. There is a terrible power o' water here. Now supposing that
+during some awful storm, with maybe a bit shock of earthquake, it were to
+burst here or hereabouts, don't you see that the flood would pour right
+down upon the mansion-house, and clean it almost from its foundations?'
+
+'I trust,' I said, 'so great a catastrophe will not occur in our day.'
+
+'It would be a fearful accident, and a judgment maybe on my want of
+forethought.'
+
+'I want to ask you a question,' I said, 'on another subject, Moncrieff.'
+
+'You're lookin' scared, laddie. What's the matter?'
+
+I told him as much as I could.
+
+'It's a queer question, laddie--a queer question. Heaven give me help to
+answer you! I think, as the oath was to keep a secret, you had best keep
+the oath, and trust to Heaven to set things right in the end, if it be for
+the best.'
+
+'Thanks, Moncrieff,' I said; 'thanks. I will take your advice.'
+
+That very day Moncrieff set a party of men to strengthen the embankment;
+and it was probably well he did so, for soon after the work was finished
+another of those fearful storms, accompanied as usual by shocks of
+earthquake, swept over our valley, and the canal was filled to
+overflowing, but gave no signs of bursting. Moncrieff had assuredly taken
+time by the forelock.
+
+One day a letter arrived, addressed to me, which bore the London
+post-mark.
+
+It was from Archie, and a most spirited epistle it was. He wanted us to
+rejoice with him, and, better still, to expect him out by the very first
+packet. His parents had yielded to his request. It had been the voyage to
+Newcastle that had turned the scale. There was nothing like pluck, he
+said; 'But,' he added, 'between you and me, Murdoch, I would not take
+another voyage in a Newcastle collier, not to win all the honour and glory
+of Livingstone, Stanley, Gordon-Cumming, and Colonel Frederick Burnaby put
+in a bushel basket.'
+
+I went tearing away over the _estancia_ on my mule, to find my brothers
+and tell them the joyful tidings. And we rejoiced together. Then I went
+off to look for Moncrieff, and he rejoiced, to keep me company.
+
+'And mind you,' he said, 'the very day after he arrives we'll have a
+dinner and a kick-up.'
+
+'Of course we will,' I said. 'We'll have the dinner and fun at Coila
+Villa, which, remember, can now boast of two wings besides the tower.'
+
+'Very well,' he assented, 'and after that we can give another dinner and
+rout at my diggings. Just a sort of return match, you see?'
+
+'But I don't see,' I said; 'I don't see the use of two parties.'
+
+'Oh, but I do, Murdoch. We must make more of a man than we do of a
+nowt[12] beast. Now you mind that bull I had sent out from England--Towsy
+Jock that lives in the Easter field?--well, I gave a dinner when he came.
+£250 I paid for him too.'
+
+'Yes, and I remember also you gave a dinner and fun when the prize ram
+came out. Oh, catch you not finding an excuse for a dinner! However, so be
+it: one dinner and fun for a bull, two for Archie.'
+
+'That's agreed then,' said Moncrieff.
+
+Now, my brothers and I and a party of Gauchos, with the warlike Bombazo
+and a Scot or two, had arranged a grand hunt into the guanaco country; but
+as dear old Archie was coming out so soon we agreed to postpone it, in
+order that he might join in the fun. Meanwhile we commenced to make all
+preparations.
+
+They say that the principal joy in life lies in the anticipation of
+pleasure to come. I think there is a considerable amount of truth in this,
+and I am sure that not even bluff old King Hal setting out to hunt in the
+New Forest could have promised himself a greater treat than we did as we
+got ready for our tour in the land of the guanaco, and country of the
+condor.
+
+We determined to be quite prepared to start by the time Archie was due.
+Not that we meant to hurry our dear cockney cousin right away to the wilds
+as soon as he arrived. No; we would give him a whole week to 'shake
+down,' as Moncrieff called it, and study life on the _estancia_.
+
+And, indeed, life on the _estancia_, now that we had become thoroughly
+used to it, was exceedingly pleasant altogether.
+
+I cannot say that either my brothers or I were ever much given to lazing
+in bed of a morning in Scotland itself. To have done so we should have
+looked upon as bad form; but to encourage ourselves in matutinal sloth in
+a climate like this would have seemed a positive crime.
+
+Even by seven in the morning we used to hear the great gong roaring
+hoarsely on Moncrieff's lawn, and this used to be the signal for us to
+start and draw aside our mosquito curtains. Our bedrooms adjoined, and all
+the time we were splashing in our tubs and dressing we kept up an
+incessant fire of banter and fun. The fact is, we used to feel in such
+glorious form after a night's rest. Our bedroom windows were very large
+casements, and were kept wide open all the year round, so that virtually
+we slept in the open air. We nearly always went to bed in the dark, or if
+we did have lights we had to shut the windows till we had put them out,
+else moths as big as one's hand, and all kinds and conditions of insect
+life, would have entered and speedily extinguished our candles. Even had
+the windows been protected by glass, this insect life would have been
+troublesome. In the drawing and dining rooms we had specially prepared
+blinds of wire to exclude these creatures, while admitting air enough.
+
+The mosquito curtains round our beds effectually kept everything
+disagreeable at bay, and insured us wholesome rest.
+
+But often we were out of bed and galloping over the country long before
+the gong sounded. This ride used to give us such appetites for breakfast,
+that sometimes we had to apologize to aunt and Aileen for our apparent
+greediness. We were out of doors nearly all day, and just as often as not
+had a snack of luncheon on the hills at some settler's house or at an
+outlying _puesto_.
+
+Aunt was now our housekeeper, but nevertheless so accustomed had we and
+Moncrieff and Aileen become to each other's society that hardly a day
+passed without our dining together either at his house or ours.
+
+The day, what with one thing and another, used to pass quickly enough, and
+the evening was most enjoyable, despite even the worry of flying and
+creeping insects. After dinner my brothers and I, with at times Moncrieff
+and Bombazo, used to lounge round to see what the servants were doing.
+
+They had a concert, and as often as not some fun, every night with the
+exception of Sabbath, when Moncrieff insisted that they should retire
+early.
+
+At many _estancias_ wine is far too much in use--even to the extent of
+inebriety. Our places, however, owing to Moncrieff's strictness, were
+models of temperance, combined with innocent pleasures. The master, as he
+was called, encouraged all kinds of games, though he objected to gambling,
+and drinking he would not permit at any price.
+
+One morning our post-runner came to Coila Villa in greater haste than
+usual, and from his beaming eyes and merry face I conjectured he had a
+letter for me.
+
+I took it from him in the verandah, and sent him off round to the kitchen
+to refresh himself. No sooner had I glanced at its opening sentences than
+I rushed shouting into the breakfast-room.
+
+'Hurrah!' I cried, waving the letter aloft. 'Archie's coming, and he'll be
+here to-day. Hurrah! for the hunt, lads, and hurrah! for the hills!'
+
+-----
+
+  [11] Orra = leisure, idle. An orra-man is one who does all
+       kinds of odd jobs about a farm.
+
+  [12] Nowt = cattle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+OUR HUNTING EXPEDITION.
+
+
+If not quite so exuberant as the welcome that awaited us on our arrival in
+the valley, Archie's was a right hearty one, and assuredly left our cousin
+nothing to complain of.
+
+He had come by diligence from Villa Mercedes, accomplishing the journey,
+therefore, in a few days, which had occupied us in our caravan about as
+many weeks.
+
+We were delighted to see him looking so well. Why, he had even already
+commenced to get brown, and was altogether hardy and hearty and manlike.
+
+We were old _estancieros_, however, and it gave us unalloyed delight to
+show him round our place and put him up to all the outs and ins of a
+settler's life.
+
+Dugald even took him away to the hills with him, and the two of them did
+not get home until dinner was on the table.
+
+Archie, however, although not without plenty of pluck and willingness to
+develop into an _estanciero_ pure and simple, had not the stamina my
+brothers and I possessed, but this only made us all the more kind to him.
+In time, we told him, he would be quite as strong and wiry as any of us.
+
+'There is one thing I don't think I shall ever be able to get over,' said
+Archie one day. It may be observed that he did not now talk with the
+London drawl; he had left both his cockney tongue and his tall hat at
+home.
+
+'What is it you do not think you will ever get over, Arch?' I asked.
+
+'Why, the abominable creepies,' he answered, looking almost miserable.
+
+'Why,' he continued, 'it isn't so much that I mind being bitten by
+mosquitoes--of which it seems you have brutes that fly by day, and gangs
+that go on regular duty at night--but it is the other abominations that
+make my blood run positively cold. Now your cockroaches are all very well
+down in the coal-cellar, and centipedes are interesting creatures in glass
+cases with pins stuck through them; but to find cockroaches in your boots
+and centipedes in your bed is rather too much of a good thing.'
+
+'Well,' said Dugald, laughing, 'you'll get used to even that. I don't
+really mind now what bites me or what crawls over me. Besides, you know
+all those creepie-creepies, as you call them, afford one so excellent an
+opportunity of studying natural history from the life.'
+
+'Oh, bother such life, Dugald! My dear cousin, I would rather remain in
+blissful ignorance of natural history all my life than have even an earwig
+reposing under my pillow.  Besides, I notice that even your Yahoo
+servants--'
+
+'I beg your pardon, cousin; Gaucho, not Yahoo.'
+
+'Well, well, Gaucho servants shudder, and even run from our common bedroom
+creepies.'
+
+'Oh! they are nothing at all to go by, Archie. They think because a thing
+is not very pretty it is bound to be venomous.'
+
+'But does not the bite of a centipede mean death?'
+
+'Oh dear no. It isn't half as bad as London vermin.'
+
+'Then there are scorpions. Do they kill you? Is not their bite highly
+dangerous?'
+
+'Not so bad as a bee's sting.'
+
+'Then there are so many flying beetles.'
+
+'Beauties, Archie, beauties. Why, Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed
+like some of these.'
+
+'Perhaps not. But then, Solomon or not Solomon, how am I to know which
+sting and which don't?'
+
+'_Experientia docet_, Archie.'
+
+Archie shuddered.
+
+'Again, there are spiders. Oh, they do frighten me. They're as big as
+lobsters. Ugh!'
+
+'Well, they won't hurt. They help to catch the other things!'
+
+'Yes, and that's just the worst of it. First a lot of creepies come in to
+suck your blood and inject poison into your veins, to say nothing of half
+scaring a fellow to death; and then a whole lot of flying creepies, much
+worse than the former, come in to hunt them up; and bats come next, to say
+nothing of lizards; and what with the buzzing and singing and hopping and
+flapping and beating and thumping, poor _me_ has to lie awake half the
+night, falling asleep towards morning to dream I'm in purgatory.'
+
+'Poor _you_ indeed!' said Dugald.
+
+'You have told me, too, I must sleep in the dark, but I want to know what
+is the good of that when about one half of those flying creepies carry a
+lamp each, and some of them two. Only the night before last I awoke in a
+fright. I had been dreaming about the great sea-serpent, and the first
+thing I saw was a huge creature about as long as a yard stick wriggling
+along my mosquito curtains.'
+
+'Ah! How could you see it in the dark?'
+
+'Why, the beggar carried two lamps ahead of him, and he had a smaller chap
+with a light. Ugh!'
+
+'These were some good specimens of the _Lampyridæ_, no doubt.'
+
+'Well, perhaps; but having such a nice long name doesn't make them a bit
+less hideous to me. Then in the morning when I looked into the glass I
+didn't know myself from Adam. I had a black eye that some bug or other
+had given me--I dare say he also had a nice long name. I had a lump on my
+brow as large as a Spanish onion, and my nose was swollen and as big as a
+bladder of lard. From top to toe I was covered with hard knots, as if I'd
+been to Donnybrook Fair, and what with aching and itching it would have
+been a comfort to me to have jumped out of my skin.'
+
+'Was that all?' I said, laughing.
+
+'Not quite. I went to take up a book to fling at a monster spider in the
+corner, and put my hand on a scorpion. I cracked him and crushed the
+spider, and went to have my bath, only to find I had to fish out about
+twenty long-named indescribables that had committed suicide during the
+night. Other creepies had been drowned in the ewer. I found earwigs in my
+towels, grasshoppers in my clothes, and wicked-looking little beetles even
+in my hairbrushes. This may be a land flowing with milk and honey and all
+the rest of it, Murdoch, but it is also a land crawling with
+creepie-creepies.'
+
+'Well, anyhow,' said Dugald, 'here comes your mule. Mount and have a ride,
+and we'll forget everything but the pleasures of the chase. Come, I think
+I know where there is a jaguar--an immense great brute. I saw him killing
+geese not three days ago.'
+
+'Oh, that will be grand!' cried Archie, now all excitement.
+
+And five minutes afterwards Dugald and he were off to the hills.
+
+But in two days more we would be off to the hills in earnest.
+
+For this tour we would not of our own free-will have made half the
+preparations Moncrieff insisted on, and perhaps would hardly have provided
+ourselves with tents. However, we gave in to his arrangements in every
+way, and certainly we had no cause to repent it.
+
+The guide--he was to be called our _cacique_ for the time being--that
+Moncrieff appointed had been a Gaucho malo, a pampas Cain. No one ever
+knew half the crimes the fellow had committed, and I suppose he himself
+had forgotten. But he was a reformed man and really a Christian, and it is
+difficult to find such an anomaly among Gauchos. He knew the pampas well,
+and the Andes too, and was far more at home in the wilds than at the
+_estancia_. A man like this, Moncrieff told us, was worth ten times his
+weight in gold.
+
+And so it turned out.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The summer had well-nigh gone when our caravan at length left Moncrieff's
+beautiful valley. The words 'caravan at length' in the last sentence may
+be understood in two ways, either as regards space or time. Ours was no
+caravan on wheels. Not a single wheeled waggon accompanied us, for we
+should cross deserts, and pass through glens where there would be no road,
+perhaps hardly even a bridle-path. So the word caravan is to be understood
+in the Arab sense of the word. And it certainly was a lengthy one. For we
+had a pack mule for every two men, including our five Gauchos.
+
+Putting it in another way, there were five of us Europeans--Donald,
+Dugald, Archie Bateman, Sandie Donaldson, and myself; each European had a
+horse and a Gaucho servant, and each Gaucho had a mule.
+
+Bombazo meant to have come; he said so to the very last, at all events,
+but an unfortunate attack of toothache confined him to bed. Archie, who
+had no very exalted idea of the little Spanish captain's courage, was rude
+enough to tell us in his hearing that he was 'foxing.' I do not pretend to
+understand what Archie meant, but I feel certain it was nothing very
+complimentary to Bombazo's bravery.
+
+'Dear laddies,' old Jenny had said, 'if you think you want onybody to darn
+your hose on the road, I'll gang wi' ye mysel'. As for that feckless loon
+Bombazo, the peer[13] body is best in bed.'
+
+Our arms consisted of rifles, shot-guns, the bolas, and lasso. Each man
+carried a revolver as well, and we had also abundance of fishing tackle.
+Our tents were only three in all, but they were strong and waterproof, a
+great consideration when traversing a country like this.
+
+We were certainly prepared to rough it, but had the good sense to take
+with us every contrivance which might add to our comfort, so long as it
+was fairly portable.
+
+Archie had one particular valise of his own that he declared contained
+only a few nicknacks which no one ought to travel without. He would not
+gratify us by even a peep inside, however, so for a time we had to be
+content with guessing what the nicknacks were. Archie got pretty well
+chaffed about his Gladstone bag, as he called it.
+
+'You surely haven't got the tall hat in it,' said Dugald.
+
+'Of course you haven't forgotten your nightcap,' said Donald.
+
+'Nor your slippers, Archie?' I added.
+
+'And a dressing-gown would be indispensable in the desert,' said Sandie
+Donaldson.
+
+Archie only smiled to himself, but kept his secret.
+
+What a lovely morning it was when we set out! So blue was the sky, so
+green the fields of waving lucerne, so dense the foliage and flowers and
+hedgerows and trees, it really seemed that summer would last for many and
+many a month to come.
+
+We were all fresh and happy, and full of buoyant anticipation of pleasures
+to come. Our very dogs went scampering on ahead, barking for very joy. Of
+these we had quite a pack--three pure Scotch collies, two huge
+bloodhound-mastiffs, and at least half a dozen animals belonging to our
+Gauchos, which really were nondescripts but probably stood by greyhounds.
+These dogs were on exceedingly good terms with themselves and with each
+other--the collies jumping up to kiss the horses every minute by way of
+encouragement, the mastiffs trotting steadily on ahead cheek-by-jowl, and
+the hounds everywhere--everywhere at once, so it appeared.
+
+Being all so fresh, we determined to make a thorough long day's journey of
+it. So, as soon as we had left the glen entirely and disappeared among the
+sand dunes, we let our horses have their heads, the _capataz_ Gaucho
+riding on ahead on a splendid mule as strong as a stallion and as lithe as
+a Scottish deerhound.
+
+Not long before our start for the hunting grounds men had arrived from the
+Chilian markets to purchase cattle. The greatest dainty to my mind they
+had brought with them was a quantity of _Yerba maté_, as it is called. It
+is the dried leaves of a species of Patagonian ilex, which is used in this
+country as tea, and very delightful and soothing it is. This was to be our
+drink during all our tour. More refreshing than tea, less exciting than
+wine, it not only seems to calm the mind but to invigorate the body. Drunk
+warm, with or without sugar, all feeling of tiredness passes away, and one
+is disposed to look at the bright side of life, and that alone.
+
+We camped the first night on high ground nearly forty miles from our own
+_estancia_. It was a long day's journey in so rough a country, but we had
+a difficulty earlier in the afternoon in finding water. Here, however, was
+a stream as clear as crystal, that doubtless made its way from springs in
+the _sierras_ that lay to the west of us at no very great distance. Behind
+these jagged hills the sun was slowly setting when we erected our tents.
+The ground chosen was at some little distance from the stream, and on the
+bare gravel. The cacti that grew on two sides of us were of gigantic
+height, and ribboned or edged with the most beautiful flowers. Our horses
+and mules were hobbled and led to the stream, then turned on to the grass
+which grew green and plentiful all along its banks.
+
+A fire was quickly built and our great stewpan put on. We had already
+killed our dinner in the shape of a small deer or fawn which had crossed
+our path on the plains lower down. With biscuits, of which we had a
+store, some curry, roots, which the Gauchos had found, and a handful or
+two of rice, we soon had a dinner ready, the very flavour of which would
+have been enough to make a dying man eat.
+
+The dogs sat around us and around the Gauchos as we dined, and, it must be
+allowed, behaved in a most mannerly way; only the collies and mastiffs
+kept together. They must have felt their superiority to those mongrel
+greyhounds, and desired to show it in as calm and dignified a manner as
+possible.
+
+After dinner sentries were set, one being mounted to watch the horses and
+mules. We were in no great fear of their stampeding, but we had promised
+Moncrieff to run as little risk of any kind as possible on this journey,
+and therefore commenced even on this our first night to be as good as our
+word.
+
+The best Gauchos had been chosen for us, and every one of them could talk
+English after a fashion, especially our bold but not handsome _capataz_,
+or _cacique_ Yambo. About an hour after dinner the latter began serving
+out the _maté_. This put us all in excellent humour and the best of
+spirits. As we felt therefore as happy as one could wish to be, we were
+not surprised when the _capataz_ proposed a little music.
+
+'It is the pampas fashion, señor,' he said to me.
+
+'Will you play and sing?' I said.
+
+'Play and sing?' he replied, at once producing his guitar, which lay in a
+bag not far off. '_Si_, señor, I will play and sing for you. If you bid
+me, I will dance; every day and night I shall cook for you; when de
+opportunity come I will fight for you. I am your servant, your slave, and
+delighted to be so.'
+
+'Thank you, my _capataz_; I have no doubt you are a very excellent
+fellow.'
+
+'Oh, señor, do not flatter yourself too mooch, too very mooch. It is not
+for the sake of you young señors I care, but for the sake of the dear
+master.'
+
+'Sing, _capataz_,' I said, 'and talk after.'
+
+To our surprise, not one but three guitars were handed out, and the songs
+and melodies were very delightful to listen to.
+
+Then our Sandie Donaldson, after handing his cup to be replenished, sang,
+_Ye banks and braes_ with much feeling and in fine manly tenor. We all
+joined in each second verse, while the guitars gave excellent
+accompaniment. One song suggested another, and from singing to
+conversational story-telling the transition was easy. To be sure, neither
+my brothers nor I nor Archie had much to tell, but some of the experiences
+of the Gauchos, and especially those of our _capataz_, were thrilling in
+the extreme, and we never doubted their truth.
+
+But now it was time for bed, and we returned to the tents and lit our
+lamps.
+
+Our beds were the hard ground, with a rug and guanaco robe, our saddles
+turned upside down making as good a pillow as any one could wish.
+
+We had now the satisfaction of knowing something concerning the contents
+of that mysterious grip-sack of Archie's. So judge of our surprise when
+this wonderful London cousin of ours first produced a large jar of what he
+called mosquito cream, and proceeded to smear his face and hands with the
+odorous compound.
+
+'This cream,' he said, 'I bought at Buenos Ayres, and it is warranted to
+keep all pampas creepies away, or anything with two wings or four, six
+legs or sixty. Have a rub, Dugald?'
+
+'Not I,' cried Dugald. 'Why, man, the smell is enough to kill bees.'
+
+Archie proceeded with his preparations. Before enshrouding himself in his
+guanaco mantle he drew on a huge waterproof canvas sack and fastened it
+tightly round his chest. He next produced a hooped head-dress. I know no
+other name for it.
+
+'It is an invention of my own,' said Archie, proudly, 'and is, as you see,
+composed of hoops of wire--'
+
+'Like a lady's crinoline,' said Dugald.
+
+'Well, yes, if you choose to call it so, and is covered with mosquito
+muslin. This is how it goes on, and I'm sure it will form a perfect
+protection.'
+
+He then inserted his head into the wondrous muslin bladder, and the
+appearance he now presented was comical in the extreme. His body in a
+sack, his head in a white muslin bag, nothing human-looking about him
+except his arms, that, encased in huge leather gloves, dangled from his
+shoulders like an immense pair of flippers.
+
+We three brothers looked at him just for a moment, then simultaneously
+exploded into a perfect roar of laughter. Sandie Donaldson, who with the
+_capataz_ occupied the next tent, came rushing in, then all the Gauchos
+and even the dogs. The latter bolted barking when they saw the apparition,
+but the rest joined the laughing chorus.
+
+And the more we looked at Archie the more we laughed, till the very sand
+dunes near us must have been shaken to their foundations by the
+manifestation of our mirth.
+
+'Laugh away, boys,' said our cousin. 'Laugh and grow fat. I don't care how
+I look, so long as my dress and my cream keep the creepies away.'
+
+-----
+
+  [13] Peer = poor.
+
+[Illustration: Comical in the Extreme]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+IN THE WILDERNESS.
+
+
+Some days afterwards we found ourselves among the mountains in a region
+whose rugged grandeur and semi-desolation, whose rock-filled glens, tall,
+frowning precipices, with the stillness that reigned everywhere around,
+imparted to it a character approaching even to sublimity.
+
+The _capataz_ was still our guide, our foremost man in everything; but
+close beside him rode our indefatigable hunter, Dugald.
+
+We had already seen pumas, and even the terrible jaguar of the plains; we
+had killed more than one rhea--the American ostrich--and deer in
+abundance. Moreover, Dugald had secured about fifty skins of the most
+lovely humming-birds, with many beetles, whose elytra, painted and adorned
+by Nature, looked like radiant jewels. All these little skins and beetles
+were destined to be sent home to Flora. As yet, however, we had not come
+in contact with the guanaco, although some had been seen at a distance.
+
+But to-day we were in the very country of the guanaco, and pressing
+onwards and ever upwards, in the hopes of soon being able to draw trigger
+on some of these strange inhabitants of the wilderness.
+
+Only this morning Dugald and I had been bantering each other as to who
+should shoot the first.
+
+'I mean to send my first skin to Flora,' Dugald had said.
+
+'And I my first skin to Irene,' I said.
+
+On rounding the corner of a cliff we suddenly came in sight of a whole
+herd of the creatures, but they were in full retreat up the glen, while
+out against the sky stood in bold relief a tall buck. It was the trumpet
+tones of his voice ringing out plaintively but musically on the still
+mountain air that had warned the herd of our approach.
+
+Another long ride of nearly two hours. And now we must have been many
+thousands of feet above the sea level, or even the level of the distant
+plains.
+
+It is long past midday, so we determine to halt, for here, pure, bubbling
+from a dark green slippery rock, is a spring of water as clear as crystal
+and deliciously cool. What a treat for our horses and dogs! What a treat
+even for ourselves!
+
+I notice that Dugald seems extra tired. He has done more riding to-day
+than any of us, and made many a long _détour_ in search of that guanaco
+which he has hitherto failed to find.
+
+A kind of brotherly rivalry takes possession of me, and I cannot help
+wishing that the first guanaco would fall to my rifle. The Gauchos are
+busy preparing the stew and boiling water for the _maté_, so shouldering
+my rifle, and carelessly singing to myself, I leave my companions and
+commence sauntering higher up the glen. The hill gets very steep, and I
+have almost to climb on my hands and knees, starting sometimes in dread as
+a hideous snake goes wriggling past me or raises head and body from behind
+a stone, and hisses defiance and hate almost in my face. But I reach the
+summit at last, and find myself on the very edge of a precipice.
+
+Oh, joy! On a little peak down beneath, and not a hundred yards away,
+stands one of the noblest guanacos I have ever seen. He has heard
+something, or scented something, for he stands there as still as a statue,
+with head and neck in the air sniffing the breeze.
+
+How my heart beats! How my hand trembles! I cannot understand my anxiety.
+Were I face to face with a lion or tiger I could hardly be more nervous. A
+thousand thoughts seem to cross my mind with a rush, but uppermost of all
+is the fear that, having fired, I shall miss.
+
+He whinnies his warning now: only a low and undecided one. He is evidently
+puzzled; but the herd down in the bottom of the cañon hear it, and every
+head is elevated. I have judged the distance; I have drawn my bead. If my
+heart would only keep still, and there were not such a mist before my
+eyes! Bang! I have fired, and quickly load again. Have I missed? Yes--no,
+no; hurrah! hurrah! yonder he lies, stark and still, on the very rock on
+which he stood--my first guanaco!
+
+The startled herd move up the cañon. They must have seen their leader
+drop.
+
+I am still gazing after them, full of exultation, when a hand is laid on
+my shoulder, and, lo! there stands Dugald laughing.
+
+'You sly old dog,' he says, 'to steal a march on your poor little brother
+thus!'
+
+For a moment I am startled, mystified.
+
+'Dugald,' I say, 'did I really kill that guanaco?'
+
+'No one else did.'
+
+'And you've only just come--only just this second? Well, I'm glad to hear
+it. It was after all a pure accident my shooting the beast. I _did_ hold
+the rifle his way. I _did_ draw the trigger----'
+
+'Well, and the bullet did the rest, boy. Funny, you always kill by the
+merest chance! Ah, Murdoch, you're a better shot than I am, for all you
+won't allow it.'
+
+Wandering still onwards and still upwards next day, through lonely glens
+and deep ravines, through cañons the sides of which were as perpendicular
+as walls, their flat green or brown bottoms sometimes scattered with huge
+boulders, casting shadows so dark in the sunlight that a man or horse
+disappeared in them as if the earth had opened and swallowed him up, we
+came at length to a dell, or strath, of such charming luxuriance that it
+looked to us, amid all the barrenness of this dreary wilderness, like an
+oasis dropped from the clouds, or some sweet green glade where fairies
+might dwell.
+
+I looked at my brother. The same thought must have struck each of us, at
+the same moment--Why not make this glen our _habitat_ for a time?
+
+'Oh!' cried Archie, 'this is a paradise!'
+
+'Beautiful! lovely!' said Dugald. 'Suppose now--'
+
+'Oh, I know what you are going to say,' cried Donald.
+
+'And I second the motion,' said Sandie Donaldson.
+
+'Well,' I exclaimed, 'seeing, Sandie, that no motion has yet been made--'
+
+'Here is the motion, then,' exclaimed Dugald, jumping out of his saddle.
+
+It was a motion we all followed at once; and as the day was getting near
+its close, the Gauchos set about looking for a bit of camping-ground at
+once. As far as comfort was concerned, this might have been chosen almost
+anywhere, but we wanted to be near to water. Now here was the mystery: the
+glen was not three miles long altogether, and nowhere more than a mile
+broad; all along the bottom it was tolerably level and extremely well
+wooded with quite a variety of different trees, among which pines, elms,
+chestnuts, and stunted oak-trees were most abundant; each side of the glen
+was bounded by rising hills or braes covered with algorroba bushes and
+patches of charmingly-coloured cacti, with many sorts of prickly shrubs,
+the very names of which we could not tell. Curious to say, there was very
+little undergrowth; and, although the trees were close enough in some
+places to form a jungle, the grass was green beneath. But at first we
+could find no water. Leaving the others to rest by the edge of the
+miniature forest, Dugald and I and Archie set out to explore, and had not
+gone more than a hundred yards when we came to a little lake. We bent
+down and tasted the water; it was pure and sweet and cool.
+
+'What a glorious find!' said Dugald. 'Why, this place altogether was
+surely made for us.'
+
+We hurried back to tell the news, and the horses and mules were led to the
+lake, which was little more than half an acre in extent. But not satisfied
+with drinking, most of the dogs plunged in; and horses and mules followed
+suit.
+
+'Come,' cried Donald, 'that is a sort of motion I will willingly second.'
+He commenced to undress as he spoke. So did we all, and such splashing and
+dashing, and laughing and shouting, the birds and beasts in this romantic
+dale had surely never witnessed before.
+
+Dugald was an excellent swimmer, and as bold and headstrong in the water
+as on the land. He had left us and set out to cross the lake. Suddenly we
+saw him throw up his arms and shout for help, and we--Donald and I--at
+once commenced swimming to his assistance. He appeared, however, in no
+danger of sinking, and, to our surprise, although heading our way all the
+time, he was borne away from us one minute and brought near us next.
+
+When close enough a thrill of horror went through me to hear poor Dugald
+cry in a feeble, pleading voice,
+
+'Come no nearer, boys: I soon must sink. Save yourselves: I'm in a
+whirlpool.'
+
+It was too true, though almost too awful to be borne. I do not know how
+Donald felt at that moment, but as for myself I was almost paralyzed with
+terror.
+
+'Back, back, for your lives!' shouted a voice behind us.
+
+It was our Gaucho _capataz_. He was coming towards us with powerful
+strokes, holding in one hand a lasso. Instead of swimming on with us when
+he saw Dugald in danger, he had gone ashore at once and brought the
+longest thong.
+
+We white men could have done nothing. We knew of nothing to do. We should
+have floated there and seen our dear brother go down before our eyes, or
+swam recklessly, madly on, only to sink with him.
+
+Dugald, weak as he had become, sees the Gaucho will make an attempt to
+save him, and tries to steady himself to catch the end of the lasso that
+now flies in his direction.
+
+But to our horror it falls short, and Dugald is borne away again, the
+circles round which he is swept being now narrower.
+
+The Gaucho is nearer. He is perilously near. He will save him or perish.
+
+Again the lasso leaves his hand. Dugald had thrown up his hands and almost
+leapt from the water. He is sinking. Oh, good Gaucho! Oh, good _capataz_,
+surely Heaven itself directed that aim, for the noose fell over our
+brother's arms and tightened round the chest!
+
+In a few minutes more we have laid his lifeless body on the green bank.
+
+Lifeless only for a time, however. Presently he breathes, and we carry him
+away into the evening sunshine and place him on the soft warm moss. He
+soon speaks, but is very ill and weak; yet our thanks to God for his
+preservation are very sincere. Surely there is a Providence around one
+even in the wilderness!
+
+We might have explored our glen this same evening, perhaps we really ought
+to have done so, but the excitement caused by Dugald's adventure put
+everything else out of our heads.
+
+In this high region, the nights were even cold enough to make a position
+near the camp fire rather a thing to be desired than otherwise. It was
+especially delightful, I thought, on this particular evening to sit around
+the fire and quietly talk. I reclined near Dugald, who had not yet quite
+recovered. I made a bed for him with extra rugs; and, as he coughed a good
+deal, I begged of him to consider himself an invalid for one night at
+least; but no sooner had he drunk his mug of _maté_ than he sat up and
+joined in the conversation, assuring us he felt as well as ever he had in
+his life.
+
+[Illustration: Tries to steady himself to catch the Lasso]
+
+It was a lovely evening. The sky was unclouded, the stars shining out very
+clear, and looking very near, while a round moon was rising slowly over
+the hill-peaks towards the east, and the tall dark pine-trees were casting
+gloomy shadows on the lake, near which, in an open glade, we were
+encamped. I could not look at the dark waters without a shudder, as I
+thought of the danger poor Dugald had so narrowly escaped. I am not sure
+that the boy was not always my mother's favourite, and I know he was
+Flora's. How could I have written and told them of his fearful end? The
+very idea made me creep nearer to him and put my arm round his shoulder. I
+suppose he interpreted my thoughts, for he patted my knee in his brotherly
+fond old fashion.
+
+Our Gaucho _capataz_ was just telling a story, an adventure of his own, in
+the lonely pampas. He looked a strange and far from comely being, with his
+long, straggling, elf-like locks of hair, his low, receding forehead, his
+swarthy complexion, and high cheek bones. The mark of a terrible spear
+wound across his face and nose did not improve his looks.
+
+'Yes, señors,' he was saying, 'that was a fearful moment for me.' He threw
+back his poncho as he spoke, revealing three ugly scars on his chest. 'You
+see these, señors? It was that same tiger made the marks. It was a
+keepsake, ha! ha! that I will take to de grave with me, if any one should
+trouble to bury me. It was towards evening, and we were journeying across
+the pampa. We had come far that day, my Indians and me. We felt
+tired--sometimes even Indians felt tired on de weary wide pampa. De sun
+has been hot all day. We have been chased far by de white settlers. Dey
+not love us. Ha! ha! We have five score of de cattle with us. And we have
+spilt blood, and left dead and wounded Indians plenty on de pampa. Never
+mind, I swear revenge. Oh, I am a bad man den. Gaucho malo, mucho malo,
+Nandrin, my brother _cacique_, hate me. I hate him. I wish him dead. But
+de Indians love him all de same as me. By and by de sun go down, down,
+down, and we raise de _toldo_[14] in de cañon near a stream. Here grow
+many ombu-trees. The young señors have not seen this great tree; it is de
+king of the lonely pampa. Oh, so tall! Oh, so wide! so spreading and
+shady! Two, three ombu-trees grow near; but I have seen de great tiger
+sleep in one. My brother _cacique_ have seen him too. When de big moon
+rise, and all is bright like de day, and no sound make itself heard but de
+woo-hoo-woo of de pampa owl, I get quietly up and go to de ombu-tree. I
+think myself much more brave as my brother _cacique_. Ha! ha! he think
+himself more brave as me. When I come near de ombu-trees I shout. Ugh! de
+scream dat comes from de ombu-tree make me shake and shiver. Den de
+terrible tiger spring down; I will not run, I am too brave. I shoot. He
+not fall. Next moment I am down--on my back I lie. One big foot is on me;
+his blood pour over my face. He pull me close and more close to him. Soon,
+ah, soon, I think my brother _cacique_ will be chief--I will be no more.
+De tiger licks my arm--my cheek. How he growl and froth! He is now going
+to eat me. But no! Ha! ha! my brother _cacique_ have also leave de camp to
+come to de ombu-tree. De tiger see him. P'r'aps he suppose his blood more
+sweet as mine. He leave poor me. Ha! ha! he catch my brother _cacique_ and
+carry him under de shade of de ombu-tree. By and by I listen, and hear my
+brother's bones go crash! crash! crash! De tiger is enjoying his supper!'
+
+'But, _capataz_,' I said, with a shudder, 'did you make no attempt to save
+your brother chief?'
+
+'Not much! You see, he all same as dead. Suppose I den shoot, p'r'aps I
+kill him for true; 'sides, I bad Gaucho den; not love anybody mooch. Next
+day I kill dat tiger proper, and his skin make good ponchos. Ha! ha!'
+
+Many a time during the Gaucho's recital he had paused and looked uneasily
+around him, for ever and anon the woods re-echoed with strange cries. We
+white men had not lived long enough in beast-haunted wildernesses to
+distinguish what those sounds were, whether they proceeded from bird or
+beast.
+
+As the _capataz_ stopped speaking, and we all sat silent for a short time,
+the cries were redoubled. They certainly were not calculated to raise our
+spirits: some were wild and unearthly in the extreme, some were growls of
+evident anger, some mere groanings, as if they proceeded from creatures
+dying in pain and torment, while others again began in a low and most
+mournful moan, rising quickly into a hideous, frightened, broken, or
+gurgling yell, then dying away again in dreary cadence.
+
+I could not help shuddering a little as I looked behind me into the
+darkness of the forest. The whole place had an uncanny, haunted sort of
+look, and I even began to wonder whether we might not possibly be the
+victims of enchantment. Would we awaken in the morning and find no trees,
+no wood, no water, only a green cañon, with cliffs and hills on every
+side?
+
+'Look, look!' I cried, starting half up at last. 'Did none of you see
+that?'
+
+'What is it? Speak, Murdoch!' cried Archie; 'your face is enough to
+frighten a fellow.'
+
+I pressed my hand to my forehead.
+
+'Surely,' I said, 'I am going to be ill, but I thought I could distinctly
+see a tall grey figure standing among the trees.'
+
+We resumed talking, but in a lower, quieter key. The events of the
+evening, our strange surroundings, the whispering trees, the occasional
+strange cries, and the mournful beauty of the night, seemed to have cast a
+glamour over every heart that was here; and though it was now long past
+our usual hour for bed, no one appeared wishful to retire.
+
+All at once Archie grasped me by the shoulder and glanced fearfully into
+the forest behind me. I dared scarcely turn my head till the click of
+Yambo's revolver reassured me.
+
+Yes, there was the figure in grey moving silently towards us.
+
+'Speak, quick, else I fire!' shouted our _capataz_.
+
+'_Ave Maria!_'
+
+Yambo lowered the revolver, and we all started to our feet to confront the
+figure in grey.
+
+-----
+
+  [14] Toldo = a tent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE MOUNTAIN CRUSOE.
+
+
+The figure in grey--the grey was a garment of skin, cap, coat, breeches,
+and even boots, apparently all of the same material--approached with
+extended hand. We could see now it was no ghost who stood before us, but a
+man of flesh and blood. Very solid flesh, too, judging from the cheeks
+that surmounted the silvery beard. The moon shone full on his face, and a
+very pleasant one it was, with a bright, merry twinkle in the eye.
+
+'Who are you?' said I.
+
+'Nay, pardon me,' was the bold reply, 'but the question would come with
+greater propriety from my lips. I need not ask it, however. You are right
+welcome to my little kingdom. You are, I can see, a party of roving
+hunters. Few of your sort have ever come here before, I can tell you.'
+
+'And you?' I said, smiling.
+
+'_I_ am--but there, what need to give myself a name? I have not heard my
+name for years. Call me Smith, Jones, Robinson; call me a hunter, a
+trapper, a madman, a fool--anything.'
+
+'A hermit, anyhow,' said Dugald.
+
+'Yes, boy, a hermit.'
+
+'And an Englishman?'
+
+'No; I am a Portuguese by birth, but I have lived in every country under
+the sun, and here I am at last. Have I introduced myself sufficiently?'
+
+'No,' I said; 'but sit down. You have,' I continued, 'only introduced
+yourself sufficiently to excite our curiosity. Yours must be a strange
+story.'
+
+'Oh, anybody and everybody who lives for over fifty years in the world as
+I have done has a strange story, if he cared to tell it. Mine is too long,
+and some of it too sad. I have been a soldier, a sailor, a traveller; I
+have been wealthy, I have been poor; I have been in love--my love left
+_me_. I forgot _her_. I have done everything except commit crime. I have
+not run away from anywhere, gentlemen. There is no blood on my hands. I
+can still pray. I still love. She whom I love is here.'
+
+'Oh!' cried Dugald, 'won't you bring the lady?'
+
+The hermit laughed.
+
+'She _is_ here, there, all around us. My mistress is Nature. Ah! boys,' he
+said, turning to us with such a kind look, 'Nature breaks no hearts; and
+the more you love her, the more she loves you, and leads you
+upwards--always upwards, never down.'
+
+It was strange, but from the very moment he began to talk both my brothers
+and I began to like this hermit. His ways and his manners were quite
+irresistible, and before we separated we felt as if we had known him all
+our lives.
+
+He was the last man my brothers and I saw that night, and he was the first
+we met in the morning. He had donned a light cloth poncho and a broad
+sombrero hat, and really looked both handsome and picturesque.
+
+We went away together, and bathed, and I told him of Dugald's adventure.
+He looked interested, patted my brother's shoulder, and said:
+
+'Poor boy, what a narrow escape you have had!
+
+'The stream,' he continued, 'that flows through this strange glen rises in
+the hills about five miles up. It rises from huge springs--you shall see
+them--flows through the woods, and is sucked into the earth in the middle
+of that lake. I have lived here for fifteen years. Walk with me up the
+glen. Leave your rifles in your tents; there is nothing to hurt.'
+
+We obeyed, and soon joined him, and together we strolled up the path that
+led close by the banks of a beautiful stream. We were enchanted with the
+beauty displayed everywhere about us, and our guide seemed pleased.
+
+'Almost all the trees and shrubs you see,' he said, 'I have planted, and
+many of the beautiful flowers--the orchids, the climbers, and creepers,
+all are my pets. Those I have not planted I have encouraged, and I believe
+they all know me.'
+
+At this moment a huge puma came bounding along the path, but stopped when
+he saw us.
+
+'Don't be afraid, boys,' said the hermit. 'This, too, is a pet. Do not be
+shy, Jacko. These are friends.'
+
+The puma smelt us, then rubbed his great head against his master's leg,
+and trotted along by his side.
+
+'I have several. You will not shoot while you live here? Thanks. I have a
+large family. The woods are filled with my family. I have brought them
+from far and near, birds and beasts of every kind. They see us now, but
+are shy.'
+
+'I say, sir,' said Dugald, 'you are Adam, and this is Paradise.'
+
+The hermit smiled in recognition of the compliment, and we now approached
+his house.
+
+'I must confess,' I said, 'that a more Crusoe-looking establishment it has
+never been my luck to behold.'
+
+'You are young yet,' replied the hermit, laughing, 'although you speak so
+like a book.
+
+'Here we are, then, in my compound. The fence, you see, is a very open
+one, for I desire neither to exclude the sunshine nor the fresh air from
+my vegetables. Observe,' he continued, 'that my hut, which consists of one
+large room, stands in the centre of a gravel square.'
+
+'It is strange-looking gravel!' said Dugald.
+
+'It is nearly altogether composed of salt. My house is built of stone, but
+it is plastered with a kind of cement I can dig here in the hills. There
+is not a crevice nor hollow in all the wall, and it is four feet thick.
+The floor is also cemented, and so is the roof.'
+
+'And this,' I remarked, 'is no doubt for coolness in summer.'
+
+'Yes, and warmth in winter, if it comes to that, and also for cleanliness.
+Yonder is a ladder that leads to the roof. Up there I lounge and think,
+drink my _maté_ and read. Oh yes, I have plenty of books, which I keep in
+a safe with bitter-herb powder--to save them, you know, from literary ants
+and other insects who possess an ambition to solve the infinite. Observe
+again, that I have neither porch nor verandah to my house, and that the
+windows are small. I object to a porch and to climbing things on the same
+principle that I do to creeping, crawling creatures. The world is wide
+enough for us all. But they must keep to their side of the house at night,
+and I to mine. And mine is the inside. This is also the reason why most of
+the gravel is composed of salt. As a rule, creepies don't like it.'
+
+'Oh, I'm glad you told us that,' said Archie; 'I shall make my mule carry
+a bushel of it. I'm glad you don't like creepies, sir.'
+
+'But, boy, I _do_. Only I object to them indoors. Walk in. Observe again,
+as a showman would say, how very few my articles of furniture are. Notice,
+however, that they are all scrupulously clean. Nevertheless, I have every
+convenience. That thong-bottomed sofa is my bed. My skins and rugs are
+kept in a bag all day, and hermetically sealed against the prying
+probosces of insectivora. Here is my stove, yonder my kitchen and
+scullery, and there hangs my armoury. Now I am going to call my servant.
+He is a Highlander like yourselves, boys; at any rate, he appears to be,
+for he never wears anything else except the kilt, and he talks a language
+which, though I have had him for ten years, I do not yet understand.
+Archie, Archie, where are you?'
+
+'Another Archie!' said Dugald, 'and a countryman, too?'
+
+'He is shy of strangers. Archie, boy! He is swinging in some tree-top, no
+doubt.'
+
+'What a queer fellow he must be! Wears nothing but the kilt, speaks
+Gaelic, swings in tree-tops, and is shy! A _rara avis_ indeed.'
+
+'Ah! here he comes. Archie, spread the awning out of doors, lay the table,
+bring a jug of cold _maté_ and the cigars.'
+
+Truly Archie was a curious Highlander. He was quite as tall as our Archie,
+and though the hermit assured us he was only a baby when he bought him in
+Central Africa for about sevenpence halfpenny in Indian coin, he had now
+the wrinkled face of an old man of ninety--wrinkled, wizened, and weird.
+But his eye was singularly bright and young-looking. In his hand he
+carried a long pole from which he had bitten all the bark, and his only
+dress was a little petticoat of skunk skin, which the hermit called his
+kilt. He was, in fact, an African orang-outang.
+
+'Come and shake hands with the good gentlemen, Archie.'
+
+Archie knitted his brows, and looked at us without moving. The hermit
+laughingly handed him a pair of big horn-rimmed spectacles. These he put
+on with all the gravity of some ancient professor of Sanscrit, then looked
+us all over once again.
+
+We could stand this no longer, and so burst into a chorus of laughing.
+
+'Don't laugh longer than you can help, boys. See, Archie is angry.'
+
+Archie was. He showed a mouth full of fearful-looking fangs, and fingered
+his club in a way that was not pleasant.
+
+'Archie, you may have some peaches presently.'
+
+[Illustration: Interview with the Orang-outang]
+
+Archie grew pleasant again in a moment, and advanced and shook hands with
+us all round, looking all the time, however, as if he had some silent
+sorrow somewhere.  I confess he wrung our hands pretty hard. Neither my
+brother nor I made any remark, but when it came to Archie's turn--
+
+'Honolulu!' he shouted, shaking his fingers, and blowing on them. 'I
+believe he has made the blood come!'
+
+'I suppose,' said Dugald, laughing, 'he knows you are a namesake.'
+
+Off went the great baboon, and to our intense astonishment spread the
+awning, placed table and camp-stools under it, and fetched the cold _maté_
+with all the gravity and decorum of the chief steward on a first-class
+liner.
+
+I looked at my brothers, and they looked at me.
+
+'You seem all surprised,' the hermit said, 'but remember that in olden
+times it was no rare thing to see baboons of this same species waiting at
+the tables of your English nobility. Well, I am not only a noble, but a
+king; why should not I also have an anthropoid as a butler and valet?'
+
+'I confess,' I said, 'I for one am very much surprised at all I have seen
+and all that has happened since last night, and I really cannot help
+thinking that presently I shall awake and find, as the story-books say, it
+is all a dream.'
+
+'You will find it all a very substantial dream, I do assure you, sir. But
+help yourself to the _maté_. You will find it better than any imported
+stuff.'
+
+'Archie! Archie! Where are you?'
+
+'Ah! ah! Yah, yah, yah!' cried Archie, hopping round behind his master.
+
+'The sugar, Archie.'
+
+'Ah, ah, ah! Yah, yah!'
+
+'Is that Gaelic, Dugald?' said our Archie.
+
+'Not quite, my cockney cousin.'
+
+'I thought not.'
+
+'Why?' said Dugald.
+
+'It is much more intelligible.'
+
+The hermit laughed.
+
+'I think, Dugald,' he said, 'your cousin has the best of you.'
+
+He then made us tell him all our strange though brief history, as the
+reader already knows it. If he asked us questions, however, it was
+evidently not for the sake of inquisitiveness, but to exchange
+experiences, and support the conversation. He was quite as ready to impart
+as to solicit information; but somehow we felt towards him as if he were
+an elder brother or uncle; and this only proves the hermit was a perfect
+gentleman.
+
+'Shall you live much longer in this beautiful wilderness?' asked Donald.
+
+'Well, I will tell you all about that,' replied the hermit. 'And the all
+is very brief. When I came here first I had no intention of making a long
+stay.  I was a trapper and hunter then pure and simple, and sold my skins
+and other odds and ends which these hills yield--and what these are I must
+not even tell to you--journeying over the Andes with mules twice every
+year for that purpose.  But gradually, as my trees and bushes and all the
+beauty of this wild garden-glen grew up around me, and so many of God's
+wild children came to keep me company, I got to love my strange life. So
+from playing at being a hermit, I dare say I have come to be one in
+reality. And now, though I have money--much more than one would
+imagine--in the Chilian banks, I do not seem to care to enter civilized
+life again. For some years back I have been promising myself a city
+holiday, but I keep putting it off and off.  I should not wonder if it
+never comes, or, to speak more correctly, I should wonder if it ever came.
+Oh, I dare say I shall die in my own private wilderness here, with no one
+to close my eyes but old Archie.'
+
+'Do you still go on journeys to Chili?'
+
+'I still go twice a year. I have strong fleet mules. I go once in summer
+and once in winter.'
+
+'Going in winter across the Andes! That must be a terribly dreary
+journey.'
+
+'It is. Yet it has its advantages. I never have to flee from hostile
+Indians then. They do not like the hills in winter.'
+
+'Are you not afraid of the pampas Indians?'
+
+'No, not at all. They visit me occasionally here, but do not stay long. I
+trust them, I am kind to them, and I have nothing they could find to
+steal, even if they cared to be dishonest. But they are _not_. They are
+good-hearted fellows in their own way.'
+
+'Yes,' I said, 'very much in their own way.'
+
+'My dear boy,' said the hermit, 'you do not know all. A different policy
+would have made those Indians the sworn friends, the faithful allies and
+servants of the white man. They would have kept then to their own
+hunting-grounds, they would have brought to you wealth of skins, and
+wealth of gold and silver, too, for believe me, they (the Indians) have
+secrets that the white trader little wots of. No, it is the dishonest,
+blood-stained policy of the Republic that has made the Indian what he
+is--his hand against every man, every man's hand against him.'
+
+'But they even attack you at times, I think you gave us to understand?'
+
+'Nay, not the pampas or pampean Indians: only prowling gipsy tribes from
+the far north. Even they will not when they know me better. My fame is
+spreading as a seer.'
+
+'As a seer?'
+
+'Yes, a kind of prophet. Do not imagine that I foster any such folly, only
+they will believe that, living here all alone in the wilds, I must have
+communication with--ha! ha! a worse world than this.'
+
+As we rose to go the hermit held out his hand.
+
+'Come and see me to-night,' he said; 'and let me advise you to make this
+glen your headquarters for a time. The hills and glens and bush for
+leagues around abound in game. Then your way back lies across a pampa
+north and east of here; not the road you have come.'
+
+'By the by,' said Archie, 'before we go, I want to ask you the question
+which tramps always put in England: "Are the dogs all safe?"'
+
+'Ah,' said the hermit, smiling, 'I know what you mean. Yes, the dogs are
+safe. My pet pumas will not come near you. I do not think that even my
+jaguars would object to your presence; but for safety's sake Archie shall
+go along with you, and he shall also come for you in the evening. Give him
+these peaches when you reach camp. They are our own growing, and Archie
+dotes upon them.'
+
+So away back by the banks of the stream we went, our strange guide, club
+in hand, going hopping on before. It did really seem all like a scene of
+enchantment.
+
+We gave Archie the peaches, and he looked delighted.
+
+'Good-bye, old man,' said Dugald, as he presented him with his.
+
+'Speak a word or two of Gaelic to him,' said our Archie.
+
+Sandie Donaldson was indeed astonished at all we told him.
+
+'I suppose it's all right,' he said, 'but dear me, that was an
+uncanny-looking creature you had hirpling on in front of you!'
+
+In the evening, just as we had returned from a most successful guanaco
+hunt, we found Donaldson's uncanny creature coming along the path.
+
+'I suppose he means us to dine with him,' I remarked.
+
+'Ah, ah, ah! Yah, ah, yah!' cried the baboon.
+
+'Well, will you come, Sandie?'
+
+Sandie shook his head.
+
+'Not to-night,' said Sandie. 'Take care of yourselves, boys. Mind what the
+old proverb says: "They need a lang spoon wha sup wi' the deil."'
+
+We found the hermit at his gate, and glad he seemed to see us.
+
+'I've been at home all the afternoon,' he said, 'cooking your dinner. Most
+enjoyable work, I can assure you. All the vegetables are fresh, and even
+the curry has been grown on the premises. I hope you are fond of
+armadillo; that is a favourite dish of mine. But here we have roast ducks,
+partridges, and something that perhaps you have never tasted before,
+roast or boiled. For bread we have biscuit; for wine we have _maté_ and
+milk. My goats come every night to be milked. Archie does the milking as
+well as any man could. Ah, here come my dogs.'
+
+Two deerhounds trotted up and made friends with us.
+
+'I bought them from a roving Scot two years ago while on a visit to
+Chili.'
+
+'How about the pumas? Don't they--'
+
+'No, they come from the trees to sleep with Rob and Rory. Even the jaguars
+do not attempt to touch them. Sit down; you see I dine early. We will have
+time before dusk to visit some of my pets. I hope they did not keep you
+awake.'
+
+'No, but the noise would have done so, had we not known what they were.'
+
+Conversation never once flagged all the time we sat at table. The hermit
+himself had put most of the dishes down, but Archie duly waited behind his
+master's chair, and brought both the _maté_ and the milk, as well as the
+fruit. This dessert was of the most tempting description; and not even at
+our own _estancia_ had I tasted more delicious grapes. But there were many
+kinds of fruit here we had never even seen before. As soon as we were done
+the waiter had _his_ repast, and the amount of fruit he got through
+surprised us beyond measure. He squatted on the ground to eat. Well, when
+he commenced his dinner he looked a little old gentleman of somewhat spare
+habit; when he rose up--by the aid of his pole--he was decidedly plump,
+not to say podgy. Even his cheeks were puffed out; and no wonder, they
+were stuffed with nuts to eat at his leisure.
+
+'I dare say Archie eats at all odd hours,' I said.
+
+'No, he does not,' replied the hermit. 'I never encouraged him to do so,
+and now he is quite of my way of thinking, and never eats between meals.
+But come, will you light a cigarette and stroll round with me?'
+
+'We will stroll round without the cigarette,' I said.
+
+'Then fill your pockets with nuts and raisins; you must do something.'
+
+'Feed the birds, Archie.'
+
+'Ah, ah, ah! Yah, ah! Yah, yah!'
+
+'The birds need not come to be fed; there is enough and to spare for them
+in the woods, but they think whatever we eat must be extra nice.  We have
+all kinds of birds except the British sparrow. I really hope you have not
+brought him.  They say he follows Englishmen to the uttermost parts of the
+world.'
+
+We waited for a moment, and wondered at the flocks of lovely bright-winged
+doves and pigeons and other birds that had alighted round the table to
+receive their daily dole, then followed our hermit guide, to feast our
+eyes on other wonders not a whit less wonderful than all we had seen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+WILD ADVENTURES ON PRAIRIE AND PAMPAS.
+
+
+If I were to describe even one half of the strange creatures we saw in the
+hermit's glen, the reader would be tired before I had finished, and even
+then I should not have succeeded in conveying anything like a correct
+impression of this floral wilderness and natural menagerie.
+
+It puzzled me to know, and it puzzles me still, how so many wild creatures
+could have been got together in one place.
+
+'I brought many of them here,' the hermit told us, 'but the others came,
+lured, no doubt, by the water, the trees, and the flowers.'
+
+'But was the water here when you arrived?'
+
+'Oh yes, else I would not have settled down here. The glen was a sort of
+oasis even then, and there were more bushes and trees than ever I had seen
+before in one place. The ducks and geese and swans, in fact, all the
+web-footed fraternity, had been here before me, and many birds and beasts
+besides--the biscachas, the armadilloes, the beetle-eating pichithiego,
+for instance--the great ant-eater, and the skunk--I have banished that,
+however--wolves, foxes, kites, owls, and condors. I also found peccaries,
+and some deer. These latter, and the guanaco, give me a wide berth now.
+They do not care for dogs, pumas, and jaguars. Insects are rather too
+numerous, and I have several species of snakes.'
+
+Archie's--_our_ Archie's--face fell.
+
+'Are they?' he began, 'are they very--'
+
+'Very beautiful? Yes; indeed, some are charming in colour. One, for
+example, is of the brightest crimson streaked with black.'
+
+'I was not referring to their beauty; I meant were they dangerous?'
+
+'Well, I never give them a chance to bite me, and I do not think they want
+to; but all snakes are to be avoided and left severely alone.'
+
+'Or killed, sir?'
+
+'Yes, perhaps, if killed outright; for the pampan Indians have an idea
+that if a rattlesnake be only wounded, he will come back for revenge. But
+let us change the subject. You see those splendid butterflies? Well, by
+and by the moths will be out; they are equally lovely, but when I first
+came here there were very few of either. They followed the flowers, and
+the humming-birds came next, and many other lovely gay-coloured little
+songsters. I introduced most of the parrots and toucans. There are two up
+there even now. They would come down if you were not here.'
+
+'They are very funny-looking, but very pretty,' said Dugald. 'I could stop
+and look at them for hours.'
+
+'But we must proceed. Here are the trees where the parrots mostly live.
+Early as it is, you see they are retiring.'
+
+What a sight! What resplendency of colour and beauty! Such bright metallic
+green, lustrous orange, crimson and bronze!
+
+'Why do they frequent this particular part of the wood?' said Dugald.
+
+'Ah, boy,' replied the hermit, 'I see you want to know everything. Don't
+be ashamed of that; you are a true naturalist at heart. Well, the parrots
+like to be by themselves, and few of my birds care to live among them.
+You will notice, too, that yonder are some eucalyptus trees, and farther
+up some wide-spreading, open-branched trees, with flowers creeping and
+clinging around the stems. Parrots love those trees, because while there
+they have sunshine, and because birds of prey cannot easily tell which is
+parrot and which is flower or flame-coloured lichen.'
+
+'That is an advantage.'
+
+'Well, yes; but it is an advantage that also has a disadvantage, for our
+serpents are so lovely that even they are not easily seen by the parrots
+when they wriggle up among the orchids.'
+
+'Can the parrots defend themselves against snakes?'
+
+'Yes, they can, and sometimes even kill them. I have noticed this, but as
+a rule they prefer to scare them off by screaming. And they can scream,
+too. "As deaf as an adder," is a proverb; well, I believe it was the
+parrot that first deafened the adder, if deaf it be.'
+
+'Have you many birds of prey?'
+
+'Yes, too many. But, see here.'
+
+'I see nothing.'
+
+'No, but you soon shall. Here in the sunniest bank, and in this sunniest
+part of the wood, dwell a family of that remarkable creature the blind
+armadillo, or pichithiego. I wonder if any one is at home.'
+
+As he spoke, the hermit knelt down and buried his hands in the sand, soon
+bringing to the surface a very curious little animal indeed, one of the
+tenderest of all armadilloes.
+
+It shivered as it cuddled into the hermit's arms.
+
+Dugald laughed aloud.
+
+'Why,' he cried, 'it seems to end suddenly half-way down; and that droll
+tail looks stuck on for fun.'
+
+'Yes, it is altogether a freak of Nature, and the wonder to me is how,
+being so tender, it lives here at all. You see how small and delicate a
+thing it is. They say it is blind, but you observe it is not; although
+the creatures live mostly underground. They also say that the
+_chlamyphorus truncatus_--which is the grand name for my wee
+friend,--carries its young under this pink or rosy shell jacket, but this
+I very much doubt. Now go to bed, little one.
+
+'I have prettier pets than even these, two species of agoutis, for
+instance, very handsome little fellows indeed, and like rats in many of
+their ways and in many of their droll antics. They are not fond of
+strangers, but often come out to meet me in my walks about the woods. They
+live in burrows, but run about plentifully enough in the open air,
+although their enemies are very numerous. Even the Indians capture and eat
+them, as often raw as not.
+
+'You have heard of the peccary. Well, I have never encouraged these wild
+wee pigs, and for some years after I came, there were none in the woods.
+One morning I found them, however, all over the place in herds. I never
+knew where they came from, nor how they found us out. But I do know that
+for more than two years I had to wage constant war with them.'
+
+'They were good to eat?'
+
+'They were tolerably good, especially the young, but I did not want for
+food; and, besides, they annoyed my wee burrowing pets, and, in fact, they
+deranged everything, and got themselves thoroughly hated wherever they
+went.'
+
+'And how did you get rid of them?'
+
+'They disappeared entirely one night as if by magic, and I have never seen
+nor heard one since. But here we are at my stable.'
+
+'I see no stable,' I said.
+
+'Well, it is an enclosure of half an acre, and my mules and goats are
+corralled here at night.'
+
+'Do not the pumas or jaguars attempt to molest the mules or goats?'
+
+'Strange to say, they do not, incredible as it may seem. But come in, and
+you will see a happy family.'
+
+'What are these?' cried Dugald. 'Dogs?'
+
+'No, boy, one is a wolf, the other two are foxes. All three were suckled
+by one of my dogs, and here they are. You see, they play with the goats,
+and are exceedingly fond of the mules. They positively prefer the company
+of the mules to mine, although when I come here with their foster-dam, the
+deerhound, they all condescend to leave this compound and to follow me
+through the woods.
+
+'Here come my mules. Are they not beauties?'
+
+We readily admitted they were, never having seen anything in size and
+shape to equal them.
+
+'Now, you asked me about the jaguars. Mine are but few; they are also very
+civil; but I do believe that one of these mules would be a match even for
+a jaguar. If the jaguar had one kick he would never need another. The
+goats--here they come--herd close to the mules, and the foxes and wolf are
+sentinels, and give an alarm if even a strange monkey comes near the
+compound. Ah, here come my pet toucans!'
+
+These strange-beaked birds came floating down from a tree to the number of
+nearly a dozen, nor did they look at all ungainly, albeit their beaks are
+so wondrously large.
+
+'What do they eat?'
+
+'Everything; but fruit is the favourite dish with them. But look up. Do
+you see that speck against the cloud yonder, no bigger in appearance than
+the lark that sings above the cornfields in England? See how it circles
+and sweeps round and round. Do you know that bird is a mile above us?'
+
+'That is wonderful!'
+
+'And what think you it is doing? Why, it is eyeing you and me. It is my
+pet condor. The only bird I do not feed; but the creature loves me well
+for all that. He is suspicious of your presence. Now watch, and I will
+bring him down like an arrow.'
+
+The hermit waved a handkerchief in a strange way, and with one fell
+downward swoop, in a few seconds the monster eagle had alighted near us.
+
+Well may the condor be called 'king of the air,' I thought, for never
+before had I seen so majestic a bird. He was near us now, and scrutinizing
+us with that bold fierce eye of his, as some chieftain in the brave days
+of old might have gazed upon spies that he was about to order away to
+execution. I believed then--and I am still of the same opinion--that there
+was something akin to pity and scorn in his steadfast looks, as if we had
+been brought here for his especial delectation and study.
+
+'Poor wretched bipeds!' he seemed to say; 'not even possessed of feathers,
+no clothes of their own, obliged to wrap themselves in the hair and skins
+of dead quadrupeds. No beaks, no talons; not even the wings of a miserable
+bat. Never knew what it was to mount and soar into the blue sky to meet
+the morning sun; never floated free as the winds far away in the realms of
+space; never saw the world spread out beneath them like a living panorama,
+its woods and forests mere patches of green or purple, its lakes like
+sheets of shimmering ice, its streams like threads of spiders' webs before
+the day has drunk the dew, its very deserts dwarfed by distance till the
+guanacos and the ostriches[15] look like mites, and herds of wild horses
+appear but crawling ants. Never knew what it was to circle round the
+loftiest summits of the snow-clad voiceless Andes, while down in the
+valleys beneath dark clouds rolled fiercely on, and lightnings played
+across the darkness; nor to perch cool and safe on peak or pinnacle, while
+below on earth's dull level the hurricane Pampero was levelling house and
+hut and tree; or the burning breath of the Zonda was sweeping over the
+land, scorching every flower and leaf, drinking every drop of dew,
+draining even the blood of moving beings till eyes ache and brains reel,
+till man himself looks haggard, wild, and worn, and the beasts of the
+forest, hidden in darkling caves, go mad and rend their young.'
+
+The hermit returned with us to our camping-ground just as great bats began
+to circle and wheel around, as butterflies were folding their wings and
+going to sleep beneath the leaves, and the whole woodland glen began to
+awake to the screaming of night-birds, to the mournful howling of strange
+monkeys, and hoarse growl of beasts of prey.
+
+We sat together till far into the night listening to story after story of
+the wild adventures of our new but nameless hero, and till the moon--so
+high above us now that the pine-trees no longer cast their shadows across
+the glade--warned us it was time to retire.
+
+'Good night, boys all,' said the hermit; 'I will come again to-morrow.'
+
+He turned and walked away, his _potro_ boots making no sound on the sward.
+We watched him till the gloom of the forest seemed to swallow him up.
+
+'What a strange being!' said Archie, with a sigh.
+
+'And what a lonely life to lead!' said Donald.
+
+'Ah!' said Dugald, 'you may sigh as you like, Archie, and say what you
+please, I think there is no life so jolly, and I've half a mind to turn
+hermit myself.'
+
+We lived in the glen for many weeks. No better or more idyllic
+headquarters could possibly have been found or even imagined, while all
+around us was a hunter's paradise. We came at last to look upon the
+hermit's dell as our home, but we did not bivouac there every night. There
+were times when we wandered too far away in pursuit of the guanaco, the
+puma, jaguar, or even the ostrich, which we found feeding on plains at no
+great distance from our camp.
+
+It was a glorious treat for all of us to find ourselves on these miniature
+pampas, across which we could gallop unfettered and free.
+
+Under the tuition of Yambo, our _capataz_, and the other Gauchos, we
+became adepts in the use of both bolas and lasso. Away up among the
+beetling crags and in the deep, gloomy caverns we had to stalk the
+guanacos as the Swiss mountaineer stalks the chamois. Oh, our adventures
+among the rocks were sometimes thrilling enough! But here on the plains
+another kind of tactics was pursued. I doubt if we could have ridden near
+enough to the ostriches to bola them, so our plan was to make _détours_ on
+the pampas until we had outflanked, encircled, and altogether puzzled our
+quarry. Then riding in a zigzag fashion, gradually we narrowed the ring
+till near enough to fire. When nearer still the battue and stampede
+commenced, and the scene was then wild and confusing in the extreme. The
+frightened whinny or neigh of the guanacos, the hoarse whirr of the flying
+ostriches, the shouts of the Gauchos, the bark and yell of dogs, the
+whistling noise of lasso or bolas, the sharp ringing of rifle and
+revolver--all combined to form a medley, a huntsman's chorus which no one
+who has once heard it and taken part in it is likely to forget.
+
+When too far from the camp, then we hobbled our horses at the nearest spot
+where grass and water could be found, and after supping on broiled guanaco
+steak and ostrich's gizzard--in reality right dainty morsels--we would
+roll ourselves in our guanaco robes, and with saddles for pillows go
+quietly to sleep. Ah, I never sleep so soundly now as I used to then
+beneath the stars, fanned by the night breeze; and although the dews lay
+heavy on our robes in the morning, we awoke as fresh as the daisies and as
+happy as puma cubs that only wake to play.
+
+We began to get wealthy ere long with a weight of skins of birds and
+beasts. Some of the most valuable of these were procured from a species of
+otter that lived in the blackest, deepest pools of a stream we had fallen
+in with in our wanderings. The Gauchos had a kind of superstitious dread
+of the huge beast, whom they not inappropriately termed the river tiger.
+
+We had found our dogs of the greatest use in the hills, especially our
+monster bloodhound-mastiffs. These animals possessed nearly all the
+tracking qualities of the bloodhound, with more fierceness and speed than
+the mastiff, and nearly the same amount of strength. Their courage, too,
+and general hardiness were very great.
+
+Among our spoils we could count the skins of no less than fifteen splendid
+pumas. Several of these had shown fight. Once, I remember, Archie had
+leapt from his horse and was making his way through a patch of bush on the
+plains, in pursuit of a young guanaco which he had wounded. He was all
+alone: not even a dog with him; but Yambo's quick ear had detected the
+growl of a lion in that bit of scrub, and he at once started off three of
+his best dogs to the scene of Archie's adventure. Not two hundred yards
+away myself, but on high ground, I could see everything, though powerless
+to aid. I could see Archie hurrying back through the bush. I could see the
+puma spring, and my poor cousin fall beneath the blow--then the death
+struggle began. It was fearful while it lasted, which was only the
+briefest possible time, for, even as I looked, the dogs were on the puma.
+The worrying, yelling, and gurgling sounds were terrible. I saw the puma
+on its hind legs, I saw one dog thrown high in the air, two others on the
+wild beast's neck, and next moment Yambo himself was there, with every
+other horseman save myself tearing along full tilt for the battle-field.
+
+Yambo's long spear had done the work, and all the noise soon ceased.
+Though stunned and frightened, Archie was but little the worse. One dog
+was killed. It seemed to have been Yambo's favourite. I could not help
+expressing my astonishment at the exhibition of Yambo's grief. Here was a
+man, once one of the cruellest and most remorseless of desert wanderers,
+whose spear and knife had many a time and oft drunk human blood, shedding
+tears over the body of his poor dog! Nor would he leave the place until he
+had dug a grave, and, placing the bleeding remains therein, sadly and
+slowly covered them up.
+
+But Yambo would meet his faithful hound again in the happy hunting-grounds
+somewhere beyond the sky. That, at least, was Yambo's creed, and who
+should dare deny him the comfort and joy the thought brings him!
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was now the sweetest season of all the year in the hills--the Indian
+summer. The fierce heat had fled to the north, fled beyond the salt plains
+of San Juan, beyond the wild desert lands of Rioja and arid sands of
+Catamarca, lingering still, perhaps, among the dreamland gardens of
+Tucuman, and reaching its eternal home among the sun-kissed forests of
+leafy Brazil and Bolivia. The autumn days were getting shorter, the sky
+was now more soft, the air more cool and balmy, while evening after
+evening the sun went down amidst a fiery magnificence of colouring that
+held us spellbound and silent to behold.
+
+A month and more in the hermit's glen! We could hardly believe it. How
+quickly the time had flown! How quickly time always does fly when one is
+happy!
+
+And now our tents are struck, our mules are laden. We have but to say
+good-bye to the solitary being who has made the garden in the wilderness
+his home, and go on our way.
+
+'Good-bye!'
+
+'Good-bye!'
+
+Little words, but sometimes _so_ hard to say.
+
+We had actually begun to like--ay, even to love the hermit, and we had not
+found it out till now. But I noticed tears in Dugald's eye, and I am not
+quite sure my own were not moist as we said farewell.
+
+We glanced back as we rode away to wave our hands once more. The hermit
+was leaning against a tree. Just then the sun came struggling out from
+under a cloud, the shadow beneath the tree darkened and darkened, till it
+swallowed him up.
+
+And we never saw the hermit more.
+
+-----
+
+  [15] The _Rhea Americana_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+ADVENTURE WITH A TIGER.
+
+
+Two years more have passed away, four years in all, since we first set
+foot in the Silver West. What happy, blithesome years they had been, too!
+Every day had brought its duties, every duty its pleasures as well. During
+all this time we could not look back with regret to one unpleasant hour.
+Sometimes we had endured some crosses as well, but we brothers bore them,
+I believe, without a murmur, and Moncrieff without one complaining word.
+
+'Boys,' he would say, quietly, 'nobody gets it all his own way in this
+world. We must just learn to take the thick wi' the thin.'
+
+Moncrieff was somewhat of a proverbial philosopher; but had he been
+entrusted with the task of selecting proverbs that should smooth one's
+path in life, I feel sure they would have been good ones.
+
+Strath Coila New, as we called the now green valley in which our little
+colony had been founded, had improved to a wonderful extent in so brief a
+time. The settlers had completed their houses long ago; they, like
+ourselves, had laid out their fields and farms and planted their
+vineyards; the hedges were green and flowering; the poplar-trees and
+willows had sprung skywards as if influenced by magic--the magic of a
+virgin soil; the fields were green with waving grain and succulent
+lucerne; the vines needed the help of man to aid them in supporting their
+wondrous wealth of grapes; fruit grew everywhere; birds sang everywhere,
+and to their music were added sounds even sweeter still to our ears--the
+lowing of herds of sleek fat cattle, the bleating armies of sheep, the
+home-like noise of poultry and satisfied grunting of lazy pigs. The latter
+sometimes fed on peaches that would have brought tears of joy to the eyes
+of many an English market gardener.
+
+Our villa was complete now; wings and tower, and terraced lawns leading
+down to the lake, close beside which Dugald had erected a boat-house that
+was in itself like a little fairy palace. Dugald had always a turn for the
+romantic, and nothing would suit him by way of a boat except a gondola.
+What an amount of time and taste he had bestowed on it too! and how the
+Gaucho carpenters had worked and slaved to please him and make it
+complete! But there it was at last, a thing of beauty, in all
+conscience--prows and bows, cushioned seats, and oars, and awnings, all
+complete.
+
+It was his greatest pleasure to take auntie, Aileen, and old Jenny out to
+skim the lake in this gondola, and sit for long happy hours reading or
+fishing.
+
+Even Bombazo used to form an item in these pleasant little excursions. He
+certainly was no use with an oar, but it was the 'bravo' captain's delight
+to dress as a troubadour and sit twanging the light guitar under the
+awnings, while Aileen and auntie plied the oars.
+
+Dugald was still our mighty hunter, the fearless Nimrod of hill and strath
+and glen. But he was amply supported in all his adventures by Archie, who
+had wonderfully changed for the better. He was brown and hard now, an
+excellent horseman, and crack shot with either the revolver or rifle.
+
+Between the two of them, though ably assisted by a Gaucho or two, they had
+fitted up the ancient ruined monastery far away among the hills as a kind
+of shooting-box, and here they spent many a day, and many a night as
+well. Archie had long since become acclimatized to all kinds of
+creepies--they no longer possessed any terrors for him.
+
+The ruin, as I have before hinted, must have, at some bygone period,
+belonged to the Jesuits; but so blown up with sand was it when Dugald took
+possession that the work of restoration to something like its pristine
+form had been a task of no little difficulty. The building stood on a
+slight eminence, and at one side grew a huge ombu-tree. It was under this
+that the only inhabitable room lay. This room had two windows, one on each
+side, facing each other, one looking east, the other west. Neither glass
+nor frames were in these windows, and probably had not existed even in the
+Jesuits' time. The room was cooler without any such civilized
+arrangements.
+
+It was a lonesome, eerie place at the very best, and that weird looking
+ombu-tree, spreading its dark arms above the grey old walls, did not
+detract from the air of gloom that surrounded it. Sometimes Archie said
+laughingly that the tree was like a funeral pall. Well, the half-caste
+Indians of the _estancias_ used to give this ruin a wide berth; they had
+nasty stories to tell about it, stories that had been handed down through
+generations. There were few indeed of even the Gauchos who would have
+cared to remain here after night-fall, much less sleep within its walls.
+But when Dugald's big lamp stood lighted on the table, when a fire of wood
+burned on the low hearth, and a plentiful repast, with bowls of steaming
+fragrant _maté_, stood before the young men, then the room looked far from
+uncomfortable.
+
+There was at each side a hammock hung, which our two hunters slept in on
+nights when they had remained too long on the hill, or wanted to be early
+at the chase in the morning.
+
+'Whose turn is it to light the fire to-night?' said Dugald, one winter
+evening, as the two jogged along together on their mules towards the ruin.
+
+'I think it is mine, cousin. Anyhow, if you feel lazy I'll make it so.'
+
+'No, I'm not lazy, but I want to take home a bird or two to-morrow that
+auntie's very soul loveth, so if you go on and get supper ready I shall go
+round the red dune and try to find them.'
+
+'You won't be long?'
+
+'I sha'n't be over an hour.'
+
+Archie rode on, humming a tune to himself. Arrived at the ruin, he cast
+the mule loose, knowing he would not wander far away, and would find juicy
+nourishment among the more tender of the cacti sprouts.
+
+Having lit a roaring fire, and seen it burn up, Archie spread asunder some
+of the ashes, and placed thereon a huge pie-dish--not an empty one--to
+warm. Meanwhile he hung a kettle of water on the hook above the fire, and,
+taking up a book, sat down by the window to read by the light of the
+setting sun until the water should boil.
+
+A whole half-hour passed away. The kettle had rattled its lid, and Archie
+had hooked it up a few links, so that the water should not be wasted. It
+was very still and quiet up here to-night, and very lonesome too. The sun
+had just gone down, and all the western sky was aglow with clouds, whose
+ever-changing beauty it was a pleasure to watch. Archie was beginning to
+wish that Dugald would come, when he was startled at hearing a strange and
+piercing cry far down below him in the cactus jungle. It was a cry that
+made his flesh quiver and his very spine feel cold. It came from no human
+lips, and yet it was not even the scream of a terror-struck mule. Next
+minute the mystery was unravelled, and Dugald's favourite mule came
+galloping towards the ruin, pursued by an enormous tiger, as the jaguar is
+called here.
+
+[Illustration: On the same Limb of the Tree]
+
+Just as he had reached the ruin the awful beast had made his spring. His
+talons drew blood, but the next moment he was rolling on the ground with
+one eye apparently knocked out, and the foam around his fang-filled mouth
+mixed with blood; and the mule was over the hills and safe, while the
+jaguar was venting his fume and fury on Archie's rugs, which, with his
+gun, he had left out there.
+
+There is no occasion to deny that the young man was almost petrified with
+fear, but this did not last long: he must seek for safety somehow,
+somewhere. To leave the ruin seems certain death, to remain is impossible.
+Look, the tiger even already has scented him; he utters another fearful
+yell, and makes direct for the window. The tree! the tree! Something seems
+to utter those words in his ear as he springs from the open window. The
+jaguar has entered the room as Archie, with a strength he never knew he
+possessed, catches a lower limb and hoists himself up into the tree. He
+hears yell after yell; now first in the ruin, next at the tree foot, and
+then in the tree itself. Archie creeps higher and higher up, till the
+branches can no longer bear him, and after him creeps death in the most
+awful form imaginable. Already the brute is so close that he sees his
+glaring eye and hears his awful scenting and snuffling. Archie is
+fascinated by that tiger's face so near him--on the same limb of the tree,
+he himself far out towards the point. This must be fascination. He feels
+like one in a strange dream, for as the time goes by and the tiger springs
+not, he takes to speculating almost calmly on his fate, and wondering
+where the beast will seize him first, and if it will be very painful; if
+he will hear his own bones crash, and so faint and forget everything. What
+fangs the tiger has! How broad the head, and terribly fierce the grin! But
+how the blood trickles from the wound in the skull! He can hear it
+pattering on the dead leaves far beneath.
+
+Why doesn't the tiger spring and have it over? Why does--but look, look,
+the brute has let go the branch and fallen down, down with a crash, and
+Archie hears the dull thud of the body on the ground.
+
+Dead--to all intents and purposes. The good mule's hoof had cloven the
+skull.
+
+'Archie! Archie! where on earth are you? Oh, Archie!'
+
+It is Dugald's voice. The last words are almost a shriek.
+
+Then away goes fear from Archie's heart, and joy unspeakable takes its
+place.
+
+'Up here, Dugald,' he shouts, 'safe and sound.'
+
+I leave the reader to guess whether Dugald was glad or not to see his
+cousin drop intact from the ombu-tree, or whether or not they enjoyed
+their pie and _maté_ that evening after this terrible adventure.
+
+'I wonder,' said Archie, later on, and just as they were preparing for
+hammock, 'I wonder, Dugald, if that tiger has a wife. I hope she won't
+come prowling round after her dead lord in the middle of the night.'
+
+'Well, anyhow, Archie, we'll have our rifles ready, and Dash will give us
+ample warning, you know. So good-night.'
+
+'Good-night. Don't be astonished if you hear me scream in my sleep. I feel
+sure I'll dream I'm up in that dark ombu-tree, and perhaps in the clutches
+of that fearsome tiger.'
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+About a month after the above related adventure the young men had another
+at that very ruin, which, if not quite so stirring, was at all events far
+more mysterious.
+
+It happened soon after a wild storm, a kind of semi-pampero, had swept
+over the glen with much thunder and lightning and heavy rains. It had
+cleared the atmosphere, however, which previously had been hazy and close.
+It had cooled it as well, so that one afternoon, Dugald, addressing
+Archie, said,
+
+'What do you say to an early morning among the birds to-morrow, cousin?'
+
+'Oh, I'm ready, Dugald, if you are,' was the reply.
+
+'Well, then, off you trot to the kitchen, and get food ready, and I'll see
+to the shooting tackle and the mules.'
+
+When Dugald ran over to say good-night to Moncrieff and Aileen before they
+started, he met old Jenny in the door.
+
+'Dear laddie,' she said, when she heard he was bound for the hills, 'I
+hope nae ill will come over ye; but I wot I had an unco' ugly dream last
+night. Put your trust in Providence, laddie. And ye winna forget to say
+your prayers, will ye?'
+
+'That we won't, mother. Ta, ta!'
+
+Moncrieff saw Dugald to his own gate. With them went Wolf, the largest
+bloodhound-mastiff.
+
+'Dreams,' said Moncrieff, 'may be neither here nor there; but you'll be
+none the worse for taking Wolf.'
+
+'Thank you,' said Dugald; 'he shall come, and welcome.'
+
+The sun had quite set before they reached the ruin, but there was a
+beautiful after-glow in the west--a golden haze beneath, with a kind of
+crimson blush over it higher up. When they were on a level with the ruin,
+the two windows of which, as already stated, were opposite to each other,
+Archie said, musingly,
+
+'Look, Dugald, what a strange and beautiful light is streaming through the
+windows!'
+
+'Yes,' replied Dugald, 'but there is something solemn, even ghostly, about
+it. Don't you think so?'
+
+'True; there always is something ghostly about an empty ruin, I think. Are
+you superstitious?'
+
+'No; but--see. What was that? Why, there is some one there! Look to your
+rifle, Archie. It was an Indian, I am certain.'
+
+What had they seen? Why, only the head and shoulders of a passing figure
+in the orange light of the two windows. It had appeared but one
+moment--next it was gone. Rifles in left hand, revolvers in right, they
+cautiously approached the ruin and entered. Never a soul was here. They
+went out again, and looked around; they even searched the ombu-tree, but
+all in vain.
+
+'Our eyes must have deceived us,' said Dugald.
+
+'I think,' said Archie, 'I have a theory that might explain the mystery.'
+
+'What is it, then?'
+
+'Well, that was no living figure we saw.'
+
+'What! You don't mean to say, Archie, it was a ghost?'
+
+'No, but a branch of that ghostly ombu-tree moved by a passing wind
+between us and the light.'
+
+As he spoke they rounded the farthest off gable of the ruin, and there
+both stopped as suddenly as if shot. Close beside the wall, with some rude
+digging tools lying near, was a newly-opened grave!
+
+'This is indeed strange,' said Dugald, remembering old Jenny's warning and
+dream; 'I cannot make it out.'
+
+'Nor can I. However, we must make the best of it.'
+
+By the time supper was finished they had almost forgotten all about it.
+Only before lying down that night--
+
+'I say, Archie,' said Dugald, 'why didn't we think of it?'
+
+'Think of what?'
+
+'Why, of putting Wolf the mastiff on the track. If there have been Indians
+here he would have found them out.'
+
+'It will not be too late to-morrow, perhaps.'
+
+Dugald lay awake till it must have been long past midnight. He tried to
+sleep, but failed, though he could tell from his regular breathing that
+nothing was disturbing Archie's repose. It was a beautiful night outside,
+and the light from a full moon streamed in at one window and fell on the
+form of good Wolf, who was curled up on the floor; the other window was
+shaded by the branches of the ombu-tree. No matter how calm it might be in
+the valley below, away up here there was always a light breeze blowing,
+and to-night the whispering in the tree at times resembled the sound of
+human voices. So thought Dugald. Several times he started and listened,
+and once he felt almost sure he heard footsteps as of people moving
+outside. Then again all sounds--if sounds there had been--ceased, and
+nothing was audible save the sighing wind in the ombu-tree. Oh, that
+strange waving ombu-tree! He wondered if it really had some dark secret to
+whisper to him, and had chosen this silent hour of night to reveal it.
+
+Hark, that was a sound this time! The mournful but piercing cry of a
+night-bird. 'Chee-hee-ee! chee-hee-ee!' It was repeated farther up the
+hill. But could the dog be deceived? Scarcely; and growling low as if in
+anger, Wolf had arisen and stood pointing towards the ombu-shaded window.
+
+With one accord both Dugald and Archie, seizing their revolvers and
+jumping from their hammocks, ran out just in time to see a tall figure
+cross a patch of moonlit sward and disappear in the cactus jungle.
+
+Both fired in the direction, but of course aimlessly, and it was with the
+greatest difficulty they succeeded in keeping the great dog from following
+into the bush.
+
+They were disturbed no more that night; and daylight quite banished their
+fears, though it could not dispel the mystery of the newly-dug grave.
+
+Indeed, they could even afford to joke a little over the matter now.
+
+'There is something in it, depend upon that,' said Dugald, as the two
+stood together looking into the hole.
+
+'There doesn't seem to be,' said Archie, quizzingly.
+
+'And I mean to probe it to the bottom.'
+
+'Suppose you commence now, Dugald. Believe me, there is no time like the
+present. Here are the tools. They look quite antediluvian. Do you think
+now that it really was a flesh-and-blood Indian we saw here; or was it the
+ghost of some murdered priest? And has he been digging down here to
+excavate his own old bones, or have a peep to see that they are safe?'
+
+'Archie,' said Dugald, at last, as if he had not listened to a word of his
+companion's previous remarks, 'Archie, we won't go shooting to-day.'
+
+'No?'
+
+'No, we will go home instead, and bring Moncrieff and my brothers here. I
+begin to think this is no grave after all.'
+
+'Indeed, Dugald, and why?'
+
+'Why, simply for this reason: Yambo has told me a wonderful blood-curdling
+story of two hermit priests who lived here, and who had found treasure
+among the hills, and were eventually murdered and buried in this very
+ruin. According to the tradition the slaughtering Indians were themselves
+afterwards killed, and since then strange appearances have taken place
+from time to time, and until we made a shooting-box of the ruin no Gauchos
+could be found bold enough to go inside it, nor would any Indian come
+within half a mile of the place. That they have got more courageous now we
+had ample evidence last night.'
+
+'And you think that--'
+
+'I think that Indians are not far away, and that--but come, let us saddle
+our mules and be off.'
+
+It was high time, for at that very moment over a dozen pairs of fierce
+eyes were watching them from the cactus jungle. Spears were even poised
+ready for an attack, and only perhaps the sight of that ferocious-looking
+dog restrained them.
+
+No one could come more speedily to a conclusion than Moncrieff. He hardly
+waited to hear Dugald's story before he had summoned Yambo, and bade him
+get ready with five trusty Gauchos to accompany them to the hills.
+
+'Guns, señor?'
+
+'Ay, guns, Yambo, and the other dog. We may have to draw a trigger or two.
+Sharp is the word, Yambo!'
+
+In two hours more, and just as the winter's sun was at its highest, we all
+reached the cactus near the old monastic ruin. Here a spear flew close
+past Moncrieff's head. A quick, fierce glance of anger shot from the eyes
+of this buirdly Scot. He called a dog, and in a moment more disappeared in
+the jungle. A minute after there was the sharp ring of a revolver, a
+shriek, a second shot, and all was still. Presently Moncrieff rode back,
+looking grim, but calm and self-possessed.
+
+There was no one near the ruin when we advanced, but the Indians had been
+here. The grave was a grave no longer in shape, but a huge hole.
+
+'Set to work, Yambo, with your men. They have saved us trouble. Dugald and
+Archie and Donald, take three men and the dogs and scour the bush round
+here. Then place sentinels about, and post yourselves on top of the red
+dune.'
+
+Yambo and his men set to work in earnest, and laboured untiringly for
+hours and hours, but without finding anything. A halt was called at last
+for rest and refreshment; then the work was commenced with greater heart
+than ever.
+
+I had ridden away to the red dune to carry food to my brothers and the
+dogs and the sentinels.
+
+The day was beginning already to draw to a close. The sky all above was
+blue and clear, but along the horizon lay a bank of grey rolling clouds,
+that soon would be changed to crimson and gold by the rays of the setting
+sun. Hawks were poised high in the air, and flocks of kites were slowly
+winging their way to the eastward.
+
+From our position on the summit of the red dune we had a most extended
+view on all sides. We could even see the tall waving poplars of our own
+_estancias_, and away westward a vast rolling prairie of pampa land,
+bounded by the distant _sierras_. My eyes were directed to one level and
+snow-white patch in the plain, which might have been about three square
+miles in extent, when suddenly out from behind some dunes that lay beyond
+rode a party of horsemen. We could tell at a glance they were Indians, and
+that they were coming as fast as fleet horses could carry them, straight
+for the hill on which we stood. There was not a moment to lose, so,
+leaping to the back of my mule, I hurried away to warn our party.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+A RIDE FOR LIFE.
+
+
+'Moncrieff!' I cried, as soon as I got within hail, 'the Indians will be
+on us in less than half an hour!'
+
+'Then, boy,' replied Moncrieff, 'call in your brothers and the men; they
+cannot hold the dune. We must fight them here, if it be fighting they
+mean. Hurry back, I have something to show you.'
+
+We had all returned in less than ten minutes. Greatly to our astonishment,
+we found no one in the pit now, but we heard voices beneath, and I hurried
+in and down.
+
+They had found a cave; whether natural or not we could not at present say.
+At one side lay a heap of mouldering bones, in the opposite corner a huge
+wooden chest. Moncrieff had improvised a torch, and surely Aladdin in his
+cave could not have been more astonished at what he saw than we were now!
+The smoky light fell on the golden gleam of nuggets! Yes, there they were,
+of all shapes and sizes. Moncrieff plunged his hand to the bottom of the
+box and stirred them up as he might have done roots or beans.
+
+This, then, was the secret the ruin had held so long--the mystery of the
+giant ombu-tree.
+
+That the Indians in some way or other had got scent of this treasure was
+evident, and as these wandering savages care little if anything for gold
+on their own account, it was equally evident that some white man--himself
+not caring to take the lead or even appear--was hounding them on to find
+it, with the promise doubtless of a handsome reward.
+
+Not a moment was there to be lost now. The treasure must be removed. An
+attempt was first made to lift the chest bodily. This was found to be
+impossible owing to the decayed condition of the wood. The grain-sacks,
+therefore, which formed a portion of the Gaucho's mule-trappings, were
+requisitioned, and in a very short time every gold nugget was carried out
+and placed in safety in a corner of our principal room in the
+hunting-box.
+
+The beasts were placed for safety in another room of the ruin, a trench
+being dug before the door, which could be commanded from one of our
+windows.
+
+'How many horsemen did you count?' said Moncrieff to me.
+
+'As near as I could judge,' I replied, 'there must be fifty.'
+
+'Yes, there may be a swarm more. One of you boys must ride to-night to the
+_estancia_ and get assistance. Who volunteers?'
+
+'I do,' said Dugald at once.
+
+'Then it will be well to start without delay before we are surrounded.
+See, it is already dusk, and we may expect our Indian friends at any
+moment. Mount, lad, and Heaven preserve you!'
+
+Dugald hardly waited to say another word. He saw to the revolvers in his
+saddle-bows, slung his rifle over his shoulder, sprang to the saddle, and
+had disappeared like a flash.
+
+And now we had but to wait the turn of events--turn how they might.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dugald told us afterwards that during that memorable ride to the
+_estancia_ he felt as if the beast beneath him was a winged horse instead
+of his own old-fashioned and affectionate mule. Perhaps it was fear that
+lent him such speed, and possibly it was fear transmitted even from his
+rider. Times without number since we had come out to our new home in the
+Silver West my brother had shown what sort of stuff he was made of, but a
+ride like this is trying to a heart like oak or nerves like steel, and a
+young man must be destitute of soul itself not to feel fear on such an
+occasion. Besides, the very fact of flying from unseen foes adds to the
+terror.
+
+Down through the cactus jungle he went, galloping in and out and out and
+in, himself hardly knowing the road, trusting everything to the sagacity
+of the wondrous mule. Oftentimes when returning from a day on the hills,
+tired and weary, he had thought the way through this strange green
+bushland interminably long; but now, fleetly though he was speeding on, he
+thought it would never, never end, that he would never, never come out
+into the open braeland, and see, miles away beneath him, the twinkling
+lights of the _estancia_. Many an anxious glance, too, did he cast around
+him or into the gloomiest shades of the jungle, more than once imagining
+he saw dusky figures therein with long spears ready to launch at him.
+
+He is out at last, however; but the path is now loose and rough and stony.
+After riding for some hundred yards he has to cut across at right angles
+to the jungle he has left. To his horror, a dozen armed Indians at that
+very moment leave the cactus, and with levelled spears and wild shouts
+dash onward to intercept him. This is indeed a ride for life, for to his
+immediate left is a precipice full twenty feet in height. He must gain the
+end of this before he can put even a yard of actual distance betwixt
+himself and the savages who are thirsting for his life. More than once he
+has half made up his mind to dare the leap, but the venture is far too
+great.
+
+Nearer and nearer sweep the Indians. Dugald is close at the turning-point
+now, but he sees the foremost savage getting the deadly lasso ready. He
+must shoot, though he has to slacken speed slightly to take better aim.
+
+He fires. Down roll horse and man, and Dugald is saved.
+
+They have heard that rifle-shot far away on the _estancia_. Quick eyes are
+turned towards the braelands, and, dusk though it is, they notice that
+something more than usual is up. Five minutes afterwards half a dozen
+armed horsemen thunder out to meet Dugald. They hear his story, and all
+return to alarm the colony and put the whole place in a state of defence.
+Then under the guidance of Dugald they turn back once more--a party of
+twenty strong now--towards the hills, just as the moon, which is almost
+full, is rising and shining through between the solemn steeple-like
+poplars.
+
+To avoid the jungle, and a probable ambuscade, they have to make a long
+_détour_, but they reach the ruin at last, to find all safe and sound. The
+Indians know that for a time their game is played, and they have lost; and
+they disappeared as quickly and mysteriously as they came leaving not a
+trace behind.
+
+The gold is now loaded on the backs of the mules, and the journey home
+commenced.
+
+As they ride down through the giant cacti two huge vultures rise with
+flapping wings and heavy bodies at no great distance. It was into that
+very thicket that Moncrieff rode this morning. It was there he fired his
+revolver. The vultures had been disturbed at a feast--nothing more.
+
+Great was the rejoicing at the safe return of Moncrieff and his party from
+the hills. Our poor aunt had been troubled, indeed, but Aileen was
+frantic, and threw herself into her husband's arms when she saw him in
+quite a passion of hysterical joy.
+
+Now although there was but little if any danger of an attack to-night on
+the _estancias_, no one thought of retiring to bed. There was much to be
+done by way of preparation, for we were determined not to lose a horse,
+nor even a sheep, if we could help it. So we arranged a code of signals by
+means of rifle-shots, and spent the whole of the hours that intervened
+betwixt the time of our return and sunrise in riding round the farms and
+visiting even distant _puestos_.
+
+My brothers and I and Moncrieff lay down when day broke to snatch a few
+hours of much-needed rest.
+
+It was well on in the forenoon when I went over to Moncrieff's mansion. I
+had already been told that strangers had arrived from distant _estancias_
+bringing evil tidings. The poor men whom I found in the drawing-room with
+Moncrieff had indeed brought dreadful news. They had escaped from their
+burned _estancias_ after seeing their people massacred by savages before
+their eyes. They had seen others on the road who had suffered even worse,
+and did not know what to do or where to fly. Many had been hunted into the
+bush and killed there. Forts had been attacked further south, and even the
+soldiers of the republic in some instances had been defeated and scattered
+over the country.
+
+The year, indeed, was one that will be long remembered by the citizens of
+the Argentine Republic. Happily things have now changed for the better,
+and the Indians have been driven back south of the Rio Negro, which will
+for ever form a boundary which they must not cross on pain of death.
+
+More fugitives dropped in that day, and all had pitiful, heartrending
+stories to tell.
+
+Moncrieff made every one welcome, and so did we all, trying our very best
+to soothe the grief and anguish they felt for those dear ones they would
+never see more on earth.
+
+And now hardly a day passed that did not bring news of some kind of the
+doings of the Indians. Success had rendered them bold, while it appeared
+to have cowed for a time the Government of this noble republic, or, at
+all events, had confused and paralyzed all its action. Forts were overcome
+almost without resistance. Indeed, some of them were destitute of the
+means of resisting, the men having no proper supply of ammunition.
+_Estancia_ after _estancia_ on the frontier had been raided and burned,
+with the usual shocking barbarities that make one shudder even to think
+of.
+
+It was but little likely that our small but wealthy colony would escape,
+for the fact that we were now possessed of the long-buried treasure--many
+thousands of pounds in value--must have spread like wild-fire.
+
+One morning Moncrieff and I started early, and rode to a distant
+_estancia_, which we were told had been attacked and utterly destroyed,
+not a creature being left alive about the place with the exception of the
+cattle and horses, which the Indians had captured. We had known this
+family. They had often attended Moncrieff's happy little evening parties,
+and the children had played in our garden and rowed with us in the
+gondola.
+
+Heaven forbid I should attempt to draw a graphic picture of all we saw!
+Let it be sufficient to say that the rumours which had reached us were all
+too true, and that Moncrieff and I saw sights which will haunt us both
+until our dying day.
+
+The silence all round the _estancia_ when we rode up was eloquent,
+terribly eloquent. The buildings were blackened ruins, and it was painful
+to notice the half-scorched trailing flowers, many still in bloom,
+clinging around the wrecked and charred verandah. But everywhere about, in
+the out-buildings, on the lawn, in the garden itself, were the remains of
+the poor creatures who had suffered.
+
+                   'Alas! for love of this were all,
+                       And none beyond, O earth!'
+
+Moncrieff spoke but little all the way back. While standing near the
+verandah I had seen him move his hand to his eyes and impatiently brush
+away a tear, but after that his face became firm and set, and for many a
+day after this I never saw him smile.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+At this period of our strange family story I lay down my pen and lean
+wearily back in my chair. It is not that I am tired of writing. Oh, no!
+Evening after evening for many and many a long week I have repaired up
+here to my turret chamber--my beautiful study in our Castle of Coila--and
+with my faithful hound by my feet I have bent over my sheets and
+transcribed as faithfully as I could events as I remember them. But it is
+the very multiplicity of these events as I near the end of my story that
+causes me to pause and think.
+
+Ah! here comes aunt, gliding into my room, pausing for a moment, curtain
+in hand, half apologetically, as she did on that evening described in our
+first chapter.
+
+'No, auntie, you do not disturb me. Far from it. I was longing for your
+company.'
+
+She is by my side now, and looking down at my manuscript.
+
+'Yes,' she says many times--nodding assent to every sentence, and ever
+turning back the pages for reference--'yes, and now you come near the last
+events of this story of the M'Crimmans of Coila. Come out to the castle
+roof, and breathe the evening air, and I will talk.'
+
+We sit there nearly an hour. Aunt's memory is better even than mine, and I
+listen to her without ever once opening my lips. Then I lead her back to
+the tower, and point smilingly to the harp.
+
+She has gone at last, and I resume my story.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+We, Moncrieff and I, saw no signs of Indians during our long ride that
+day. We had gone on this journey with our lives in our hands. The very
+daringness and dash of it was probably our salvation. The enemy were
+about--they might be here, there, anywhere. Every bush might conceal a
+foe, but they certainly made no appearance.
+
+All was the same apparently about our _estancias_; _but_ I wondered a
+little that my brothers had not come out to meet me as usual, and that
+faithful, though plain-faced Yambo looked at me strangely, and I thought
+pityingly, as he took my mule to lead away to the compound.
+
+I went straight away through our gardens, and entered the drawing-room by
+the verandah window.
+
+I paused a moment, holding the casement in my hand. Coming straight out of
+the glare of the evening sunset, the room appeared somewhat dark, but I
+noticed Dugald sitting at the table with his face bent down over his hand,
+and Donald lying on the couch.
+
+'Dugald!'
+
+He started up and ran towards me, seizing and wringing my hand.
+
+'Oh, Murdoch,' he cried, 'our poor father!'
+
+'You have had a letter--he is ill?'
+
+'He is ill.'
+
+'Dugald,' I cried, 'tell me all! Dugald--is--father--dead?'
+
+No reply.
+
+I staggered towards the table, and dropped limp and stricken and helpless
+into a chair.
+
+I think I must have been ill for many, many days after this sad news. I
+have little recollection of the events of the next week--I was engrossed,
+engulfed in the one great sorrow. The unexpected death of so well-beloved
+a father in the meridian of life was a terrible blow to us all, but more
+so to me, with all I had on my mind.
+
+'And so, and so,' I thought, as I began to recover, 'there is an end to my
+bright dreams of future happiness--_the_ dream of all my dreams, to have
+father out here among us in our new home in the Silver West, and all the
+dark portions of the past forgotten. Heaven give me strength to bear it!'
+
+I had spoken the last words aloud, for a voice at my elbow said--
+
+'Amen! Poor boy! Amen!'
+
+I turned, and--_there stood Townley_.
+
+'You wonder to see me here,' he said, as he took my hand. 'Nay, but nobody
+should ever wonder at anything I do. I am erratic. I did not come over
+before, because I did not wish to influence your mind. You have been ill,
+but--I'm glad to see you weeping.'
+
+I did really sob and cry then as if my very heart would burst and break.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was well enough in a day or two to hear the rest of the news. Townley,
+who was very wise, had hesitated to tell me everything at once.
+
+But if anything could be called joyful news now surely this was--mother
+and Flora were at Villa Mercedes, and would be here in a day or two.
+Townley had come on before, even at considerable personal risk, to break
+the news to us, and prepare us all. Mother and sister were waiting an
+escort, not got up specially for them certainly, but that would see to
+their safety. It consisted of a large party of officers and men who were
+passing on to the frontiers to repel, or try to repel, the Indian
+invasion.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+We all went to meet mother and sister at the far-off cross roads. There
+was quite a large and very well-armed party of us, and we encamped for
+three days near an _estancia_ to await their coming.
+
+It was on the morning of the fourth day that one of the Gauchos reported
+an immense cloud of dust far away eastwards on the Mendoza road.
+
+'They might be Indians,' he added.
+
+'Perhaps,' said Moncrieff, 'but we will risk it.'
+
+So camp was struck and off we rode, my brothers and I forming the
+vanguard, Moncrieff and Archie bringing up the rear. How my heart beat
+with emotion when the first horsemen of the advancing party became visible
+through the cloud of dust, and I saw they were soldiers!
+
+On we rode now at the gallop.
+
+Yes, mother was there, and sister, and they were well. Our meeting may be
+better imagined than described.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Both mother and Flora were established at the _estancia_, and so days and
+weeks flew by, and I was pleased to see them smile, though mother looked
+sad, so sad, yet so beautiful, just as she had ever looked to me.
+
+Dugald was the first to recover anything approaching to a chastened
+happiness. He had his darling sister with him. He was never tired taking
+her out and showing her all the outs-and-ins and workings of our new
+home.
+
+It appeared to give him the chiefest delight, however, to see her in the
+gondola.
+
+I remember him saying one evening:
+
+'Dear Flora! What a time it seems to look back since we parted in old
+Edina. But through all these long years I have worked for you and thought
+about you, and strange, I have always pictured you just as you are now,
+sitting under the gondola awnings, looking piquant and pretty, and on just
+such a lovely evening as this. But I didn't think you would be so big,
+Flora.'
+
+'Dear stupid Dugald!' replied Flora, blushing slightly because Archie's
+eyes were bent on her in admiration, respectful but unconcealable. 'Did
+you think I would always remain a child?'
+
+'You'll always be a child to me, Flo,' said Dugald.
+
+But where had the Indians gone?
+
+Had our bold troops beaten them back? or was the cloud still floating over
+the _estancia_, and floating only to burst?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+THE ATTACK ON THE ESTANCIA.
+
+
+Shortly after we had all settled down at the _estancia_, and things began
+to resume their wonted appearance, albeit we lived in a state of constant
+preparation to repel attack, an interview took place one day in
+Moncrieff's drawing-room, at which, though I was not present, I now know
+all that happened.
+
+To one remark of Townley's my mother replied as follows:
+
+'No, Mr. Townley, I think with you. I feel even more firmly, I believe,
+than you do on the subject, for you speak with, pardon me, some little
+doubt or hesitancy. Our boy's conscience must not be tampered with, not
+for all the estates in the world. Much though I love Coila, from which
+villainy may have banished us, let it remain for ever in the possession of
+the M'Rae sooner than even hint to Murdoch that an oath, however imposed,
+is not binding.'
+
+'Yes,' said Townley, 'you are right, Mrs. M'Crimman; but the present
+possessor of Coila, the younger Le Roi, or M'Rae, as he was called before
+his father's death, has what he is pleased to call broader views on the
+subject than we have.'
+
+'Mr. Townley, the M'Rae is welcome to retain his broad views, and we will
+stick to the simple faith of our forefathers. The M'Rae is of French
+education.'
+
+'Yes, and at our meeting, though he behaved like a perfect
+gentleman--indeed, he is a gentleman--'
+
+'True, in spite of the feud I cannot forget that the M'Raes are distant
+relatives of the M'Crimmans. He must, therefore, be a gentleman.'
+
+'"My dear sir," he said to me, "I cannot conceive of such
+folly"--superstitious folly, he called it--"as that which your young
+friend Murdoch M'Crimman is guilty of. Let him come to me and say boldly
+that the ring found in the box and in the vault was on the finger of
+Duncan--villain he is, at all events--on the night he threatened to shoot
+him, and I will give up all claim to the estates of Coila; but till he
+does so, or until you bring me other proof, I must be excused for
+remaining where I am."'
+
+'Then let him,' said my mother quietly.
+
+'Nay, but,' said Townley, 'I do not _mean_ to let him. It has become the
+one dream of my existence to see justice and right done to my dear old
+pupil Murdoch, and I think I begin to see land.'
+
+'Yes?'
+
+'I believe I do. I waited and watched untiringly. Good Gilmore, who still
+lives in Coila, watched for me too. I knew one thing was certain--namely,
+that the ex-poacher Duncan M'Rae would turn up again at the castle. He
+did. He went to beg money from the M'Rae. The M'Rae is a man of the world;
+he saw that this visit of Duncan's was but the beginning of a never-ending
+persecution. He refused Duncan's request point-blank. Then the man changed
+flank and breathed dark threatenings. The M'Rae, he hinted, had better not
+make him (Duncan) his enemy. He (M'Rae) was obliged to him for the house
+and position he occupied, but the same hand that _did_ could _undo_. At
+this juncture the M'Rae had simply rung the bell, and the ex-poacher had
+to retire foiled, but threatening still. It was on that same day I
+confronted him and told him all I knew. Then I showed him the spurious
+ring, which, as I placed it on my finger, even he could not tell from the
+original. Even this did not overawe him, but when I ventured a guess that
+this very ring had belonged to a dead man, and pretended I knew more than
+I did, he turned pale. He was silent for a time--thinking, I suppose. Then
+he put a question which staggered me with its very coolness, and,
+clergyman though I am, I felt inclined at that moment to throttle the man
+where he stood. Would we pay him handsomely for turning king's evidence on
+himself and confessing the whole was a conspiracy, and would we save him
+from the legal penalty of the confessed crime?
+
+'I assure you, Mrs. M'Crimman, that till then I had leaned towards the
+belief that, scoundrel though this Duncan be, some little spark of
+humanity remained in his nature, and that he might be inclined to do
+justice for justice's sake. I dare say he read my answer in my eyes, and
+he judged too that for the time being I was powerless to act. Could he
+have killed me then, I know he would have done so. Once more he was silent
+for a time. He did not dare to repeat his first question, but he put
+another, "Have you any charge to make against me about _anything_?" He
+placed a terribly-meaning emphasis on that word "anything." I looked at
+him. I was wondering whether he really had had anything to do with the
+death of old Mawsie, and if the ring of which I had the facsimile on my
+finger had in reality belonged to a murdered man. Seeing me hesitate, he
+played a bold card; it was, I suppose, suggested to him by the appearance
+at that moment of the village policeman walking calmly past the window of
+the little inn where we sat. He knocked, and beckoned to him, while I sat
+wondering and thinking that verily the man before me was cleverer by far
+than I. On the entrance of the policeman--"This gentleman, policeman," he
+said, quietly and slowly, "makes or insinuates charges against me in
+private which now in your presence I dare him to repeat." Then turning to
+me--"The ball is with you," he said. And what could I reply? Nothing. I do
+believe that at that very moment even the worthy village policeman
+noticed and pitied my position, for he turned to Duncan, and, nodding,
+made this remark in Gaelic: "I know Mr. Townley as a gentleman, and I know
+you, Duncan M'Rae, to be something very different. If Mr. Townley makes no
+charge against you it is no doubt because he is not prepared with proofs.
+But, Duncan, boy, if you like to remain in the glen for a few days, I'm
+not sure there isn't a charge or two I could rub up against you myself."
+
+'I left the room with the policeman. Now I knew that, although foiled,
+Duncan did not consider himself beaten. I had him watched therefore, and
+followed by a detective. I wanted to find out his next move. It was
+precisely what I thought it would be. He had heard of our poor chief
+M'Crimman's death, remember. Well, a day or two after our conversation in
+the little inn at Coila, Duncan presented himself at the M'Rae's
+advocate's office and so pleaded his case--so begged and partially hinted
+at disclosures and confessions--that this solicitor, not possessed of the
+extraordinary pride and independence of the M'Rae--'
+
+'A pride and independence, Mr. Townley,' said my aunt, 'which the M'Raes
+take from their relatedness to our family.'
+
+'That is true,' said my mother.
+
+'Well, I was going to say,' continued Townley, 'that Duncan so far
+overcame the advocate that this gentleman thought it would be for his
+client's interest to accede in part to his demands, or rather to one of
+them--viz., to pay him a sum of money to leave the country for ever. But
+this money was not to be paid until he had taken his passage and was about
+to sail for some--any--country, not nearer than the United States of
+America, Mr. Moir's--the advocate's--clerk was to see him on board ship,
+and see him sail.'
+
+'And did he sail?' said my aunt, as Townley paused and looked at her.
+
+'Yes, in a passenger ship, for Buenos Ayres.'
+
+'I see it all now,' said my aunt. 'He thinks that no charge can be made
+against him there for conspiracy or crime committed at home.'
+
+'Yes, and he thinks still further: he thinks that he will be more
+successful with dear Murdoch than he was with either the M'Rae or
+myself.'
+
+There was a few minutes' pause, my aunt being the first to break the
+silence.
+
+'What a depth of well-schemed villainy!' was the remark she made.
+
+Moncrieff had listened to all the conversation without once putting in a
+word. Now all he said was--
+
+'Dinna forget, Miss M'Crimman, the words o' the immortal Bobbie Burns:
+
+               "The best laid schemes o' mice and men
+                                     Gang aft agley,
+               And leave us naught but grief and pain
+                                     For promised joy."'
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+To the fear and fever consequent upon the depredations committed by the
+Indians there succeeded a calmness and lull which the canny Moncrieff
+thought almost unnatural, considering all that had gone before. He took
+pains to find out whether, as had been currently reported, our Argentine
+troops had been victorious all along the frontier line. He found that the
+report, like many others, had been grossly exaggerated. If a foe retires,
+a foe is beaten by the army which _sees_ that foe retire. This seems too
+often to be the logic of the war-path. In the present instance, however,
+the Indians belonged to races that lived a nomad life. They were
+constantly advancing and retreating. When they chose to advance in this
+particular year there was not a sufficient number of cavalry to oppose
+them, nor were the soldiers well mounted. The savages knew precisely on
+what part of the stage to enter, and they did not think it incumbent on
+them to previously warn our Argentine troops. Indeed, they, like sensible
+savages, rather avoided a conflict than courted one. It was not conflict
+but cattle they were after principally; then if at any time strategy
+directed retreat, why, they simply turned their horses' heads to the
+desert, the pampas, or mountain wilds, and the troops for a time had seen
+the last of them.
+
+I think Moncrieff would have made a capital general, for fancied security
+never sent him to sleep. What had happened once might happen again, he
+thought, and his _estancias_ were big prizes for Indians to try for,
+especially as there was plenty to gain by success, and little to lose by
+defeat.
+
+I have said that our Coila Villa was some distance from the fortified
+Moncrieff houses. It was now connected with the general rampart and
+ditches. It was part and parcel of the whole system of fortification; so
+my brothers and I might rest assured it would be defended, if ever there
+was any occasion.
+
+'It seems hard,' said Townley to Moncrieff one day, 'that you should be
+put to so much trouble and expense. Why does not the Government protect
+its settlers?'
+
+'The Government will in course of time,' replied Moncrieff. 'At present,
+as we lie pretty low down in the western map, we are looked upon as rich
+pioneers, and left to protect ourselves.'
+
+They were riding then round the _estancias_, visiting outlying _puestos_.
+
+'You have your rockets and red-lights for night signals, and your flags
+for day use?' Moncrieff was saying to each _puestero_ or shepherd.
+
+'We have,' was the invariable reply.
+
+'Well, if the Indians are sighted, signal at once, pointing the fan in
+their direction, then proceed to drive the flocks towards the _estancias_.
+There,' continued Moncrieff, 'there is plenty of corraling room, and we
+can concentrate a fire that will, I believe, effectually hold back these
+raiding thieves.'
+
+One day there came a report that a fort had been carried by a cloud of
+Indians.
+
+This was in the forenoon. Towards evening some Gauchos came in from a
+distant _estancia_. They brought the old ugly story of conflagration and
+murder, to which Moncrieff and his Welsh partner had long since become
+used.
+
+But now the cloud was about to burst over our _estancia_. We all ate our
+meals together at the present awful crisis, just, I think, to be company
+to each other, and to talk and keep up each other's heart.
+
+But to-day Moncrieff had ordered an early dinner, and this was ominous.
+Hardly any one spoke much during the meal. A heaviness was on every heart,
+and if any one of us made an effort to smile and look cheerful, others saw
+that this was only assumed, and scarcely responded.
+
+Perhaps old Jenny spoke more than all of us put together. And her remarks
+at times made us laugh, gloomy though the situation was.
+
+'They reeving Philistines are coming again, are they? Well, laddie, if the
+worst should happen I'll just treat them to a drap parridge.'
+
+'What, mither?'
+
+'A drap parridge, laddie. It was boiled maize I poured ower the shoulders
+o' them in the caravan. But oatmeal is better, weel scalded. Na, na,
+naething beats a drap parridge. Bombazo,' she said presently,'you've been
+unco quiet and douce for days back, I hope you'll no show the white
+feather this time and bury yoursel' in the moold like a rabbit.'
+
+Poor Bombazo winced, and really, judging from his appearance, he had been
+ill at ease for weeks back. There was no singing now, and the guitar lay
+unheeded in its case.
+
+'Do not fear for me, lady. I am burning already to see the foe.'
+
+'Weel, Bombazo man, ye dinna look vera warlike. You're unco white about
+the gills already, but wae worth the rigging o' you if ye dinna fecht. My
+arm is strong to wield the auld ginghamrella yet.'
+
+'Hush, mither, hush!' said Moncrieff.
+
+Immediately after dinner Moncrieff beckoned to Townley, and the two left
+the room and the house together.
+
+'You think the Indians will come to-night?' said Townley, after a time.
+
+'I know they will, and in force too.'
+
+'Well, I feel like an idler. You, General Moncrieff, have not appointed me
+any station.'
+
+Moncrieff smiled.
+
+'I am now going to do so,' he said, 'and it is probably the most important
+position and trust on the _estancia_.'
+
+They walked up as far as the great canal while they conversed.
+
+Arrived there, Moncrieff pointed to what looked like a bundle of
+brushwood.
+
+'You see those branches?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'And you see that wooden lock or huge doorway?'
+
+'I do.'
+
+'Well, my friend, the brushwood conceals a sentry-box. It overlooks the
+whole _estancia_. It conceals something else, a small barrel of gunpowder,
+which you are to hang to the hook yonder on the wooden lock, and explode
+the moment you have the signal.'
+
+'And the signal will be?'
+
+'A huge rocket sent up from either my _estancia_ house or Coila Villa.
+There may be several, but you must act when you see the first. There is
+fuse enough to the bomb to give you time to escape, and the bomb is big
+enough to burst the lock and flood the whole ditch system in and around
+the _estancia_. You are to run as soon as you fire. Further on you will
+find another brushwood place of concealment. Hide there. Heaven forbid I
+should endanger a hair of your head! Now you know your station!'
+
+'I do,' said Townley, 'and thankful I am to think I can be of service in
+this great emergency.'
+
+Before dark all the most valuable portion of our stock was safely
+corraled, and silence, broken only by the occasional lowing of the cattle
+or the usual night sounds of farm life, reigned around and over the
+_estancia_.
+
+Later on Townley stole quietly out, and betook himself to his station.
+
+Still later on Yambo rode in and right up to the verandah of our chief
+sitting-room. The horse he bestrode was drenched in sweat. He had seen
+Indians in force; they were even now advancing. He had ridden for his
+life.
+
+The order 'Every man to his quarters!' was now given.
+
+The night which was to be so terrible and so memorable in the annals of
+Moncrieff's _estancia_ had begun. It was very still, and at present very
+dark. But by and by the moon would rise.
+
+'A rocket, sir!' we heard Archie shout from his post as sentinel; 'a
+rocket from the south-western _puesto_.'
+
+We waited, listening, starting almost at every sound. At length in the
+distance we could plainly hear the sound of horses' hoofs on the road, and
+before many minutes the first _puestero_ rode to the gate and was
+admitted. The men from the other _puestos_ were not far behind; and, all
+being safe inside, the gates were fastened and fortified by triple bars of
+wood.
+
+All along the ditches, and out for many yards, was spread such a thorny
+spikework of pointed wood as to defy the approach of the cleverest Indian
+for hours at least.
+
+While we waited I found time to run round to the drawing-room. There was
+no sign of fear on any face there, with the exception perhaps of that of
+poor Irish Aileen. And I could well believe her when she told me it was
+not for herself she cared, but for her 'winsome man.'
+
+I was talking to them as cheerfully as I could, when I heard the sound of
+a rifle, and, waving them good-bye, I rushed off to my station.
+
+Slowly the moon rose, and before many minutes the whole _estancia_ was
+flooded with its light. And how we thanked Heaven for that light only
+those who have been situated as we were now can fully understand.
+
+Up it sailed between the dark whispering poplars. Never had these trees
+seemed to me more stately, more noble. Towering up into the starry sky,
+they seemed like sentinels set to guard and defend us, while their taper
+fingers, piercing heavenwards, carried our thoughts to One who never
+deserts those who call on Him in faith in their hour of need.
+
+The moon rose higher and higher, and its light--for it was a full
+moon--got still more silvery as it mounted towards its zenith. But as yet
+there was no sign that a foe as remorseless and implacable as the tiger of
+the jungle was abroad on the plains.
+
+A huge fire had been erected behind the mansion, and about ten o'clock the
+female servants came round our lines with food, and huge bowls of steaming
+_maté_.
+
+Almost immediately after we were at our quarters again.
+
+I was stationed near our own villa. Leaning over a parapet, I could not
+help, as I gazed around me, being struck with the exceeding beauty of the
+night. Not far off the lake shone in the moon's rays like a silver mirror,
+but over the distant hills and among the trees and hedges was spread a
+thin blue gauzy mist that toned and softened the whole landscape.
+
+As I gazed, and was falling into a reverie, a puff of white smoke and a
+flash not fifty yards away, and the ping of a bullet close to my ear,
+warned me that the attack had commenced.
+
+There had been no living thing visible just before then, but the field on
+one side of our villa was now one moving mass of armed Indians, rushing on
+towards the ditch and breastwork.
+
+At the same moment all along our lines ran the rattle of rifle-firing.
+That savage crowd, kept at bay by the spikework, made a target for our men
+that could hardly be missed. The war-cry, which they had expected to
+change in less than a minute to the savage shout of victory, was mingled
+now with groans and yells of anger and pain.
+
+But this, after all, was not the main attack. From a red signal-light far
+along the lines I soon discovered that Moncrieff was concentrating his
+strength there, and I hastened in that direction with five of my best men.
+The Indians were under the charge of a _cacique_ on horseback, whose
+shrill voice sounded high over the din of battle and shrieks of the
+wounded. He literally hurled his men like seas against the gates and
+ramparts here.
+
+But all in vain. Our fellows stood; and the _cacique_ at length withdrew
+his men, firing a volley or two as they disappeared behind the hedges.
+
+There was comparative silence for a space now. It was soon broken,
+however, by the thunder of Indian cavalry. The savages were going to
+change their tactics.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+THE LAST ASSAULT.
+
+
+Never before, perhaps, in all the annals of Indian warfare had a more
+determined attack been made upon a settler's _estancia_. The _cacique_ or
+_caciques_ who led the enemy seemed determined to purchase victory at any
+cost or hazard. Nor did the principal _cacique_ hesitate to expose himself
+to danger. During the whole of the first onset he moved about on horseback
+close in the rear of his men, and appeared to bear a charmed life. The
+bullets must have been whizzing past him as thick as flies. Moncrieff
+himself tried more than once to bring him down, but all in vain.
+
+During the final assault he was equally conspicuous; he was here, there,
+and everywhere, and his voice and appearance, even for a moment, among
+them never failed to cause his men to redouble their efforts.
+
+It was not, however, until far on into the night that this last and awful
+charge was made.
+
+The savage foe advanced with a wild shout all along the line of rampart
+that connected the Moncrieff main _estancia_ with our villa. This was
+really our weakest part.
+
+[Illustration: The Indians advanced with a Wild Shout]
+
+The assault was made on horseback. We heard them coming thundering on some
+time before we saw them and could fire. They seemed mad, furious; their
+tall feather-bedecked spears were waved high in air; they sat like huge
+baboons on their high saddles, and their very horses had been imbued with
+the recklessness of their riders, and came on bounding and flying over our
+frail field of spikes. It was to be all spear work till they came to close
+quarters; then they would use their deadly knives.
+
+Hardly had the first sound of the horses' hoofs reached our ears ere one,
+two, three rockets left Coila Villa; and scarcely had they exploded in the
+air and cast their golden showers of sparks abroad, before the roar of an
+explosion was heard high up on the braeland that shook the houses to their
+very foundations--and then--there is the awful rush of foaming, seething
+water.
+
+Nothing could withstand that unexpected flood; men and horses were floated
+and washed away, struggling and helpless, before it.
+
+Just at the time when the last assault was nearly at its grim close I felt
+my arm pulled, and looking quickly round found Yambo at my side. He still
+clutched me by the arm, but he was waving his blood-stained sword in the
+direction of Moncrieff's house, and I could see by the motions of his
+mouth and face he wished me to come with him.
+
+Something had occurred, something dreadful surely, and despite the
+excitement of battle a momentary cold wave of fear seemed to rush over my
+frame.
+
+Sandie Donaldson was near me. This bold big fellow had been everywhere
+conspicuous to-night for his bravery. He had fought all through with
+extraordinary intrepidity.
+
+Wherever I had glanced that night I had seen Sandie, the moon shining down
+on the white shirt and trousers he wore, and which made him altogether so
+conspicuous a figure, as he took aim with rifle or revolver, or dashed
+into a crowd of spear-armed Indians, his claymore hardly visible, so
+swiftly was it moved to and fro. I grasped his shoulder, pointed in the
+direction indicated by Yambo, and on we flew.
+
+As soon as we had rounded the wing of an outbuilding and reached
+Moncrieff's terraced lawn, the din of the fight we had just left became
+more indistinct, but we now heard sounds that, while they thrilled us with
+terror and anger, made us rush on across the grass with the speed of the
+panther.
+
+They were the voices of shrieking women, the crashing of glass and
+furniture, and the savage and exultant yell of the Indians.
+
+Looking back now to this episode of the night, I can hardly realize that
+so many terrible events could have occurred in so brief a time, for, from
+the moment we charged up across the lawn not six minutes could have
+elapsed ere all was over. It is like a dream, but a dream every turn of
+which has been burned into my memory, to remain while life shall last.
+Yonder is a tall _cacique_ hurrying out into the bright moonlight from
+under the verandah. He bears in his arms the inanimate form of my dear
+sister Flora. Is it really _I_ myself who rush up to meet him? Have _I_
+fired that shot that causes the savage to reel and fall? Is it I who lift
+poor Flora and lay her in the shade of a mimosa-tree? It must be I, yet
+every action seems governed by instinct; I am for the time being a strange
+psychological study. It is as if my soul had left the body, but still
+commanded it, standing aside, ruling every motion, directing every blow
+from first to last, and being implicitly obeyed by the other _ego_, the
+_ego_-incorporate. There is a crowd, nay, a cloud even it seems, around
+me; but see, I have cut my way through them at last: they have fallen
+before me, fallen at my side--fallen or fled. I step over bodies, I enter
+the room, I stumble over other bodies. Now a light is struck and a lamp is
+lit, and standing beside the table, calm, but very pale, I see my aunt
+dimly through the smoke. My mother is near her--my own brave mother. Both
+have revolvers in their hands; and I know now why bodies are stretched on
+the floor. One glance shows me Aileen, lying like a dead thing in a
+chair, and beside her, smoothing her brow, chafing her hands, Moncrieff's
+marvellous mother.
+
+But in this life the humorous is ever mixed up with the tragic or sad, for
+lo! as I hurry away to join the fight that is still going on near the
+verandah I almost stumble across something else. Not a body this time--not
+quite--only Bombazo's ankles sticking out from under the sofa. I could
+swear to those striped silk socks anywhere, and the boots are the boots of
+Bombazo. I administer a kick to those shins, and they speedily disappear.
+I am out on the moonlit lawn now, and what do I see? First, good brave
+Yambo, down on one knee, being borne backwards, fierce hands at his
+throat, a short knife at his chest. The would-be assassin falls; Yambo
+rises intact, and together we rush on further down to where, on a terrace,
+Donaldson has just been overpowered. But see, a new combatant has come
+upon the scene; several revolver shots are fired in quick succession. A
+tall dark figure in semi-clerical garb is cutting right and left with a
+good broadsword. And now--why, now it is all over, and Townley stands
+beside us panting.
+
+Well might he pant--he had done brave work. But he had come all too late
+to save Sandie. He lies there quietly enough on the grass. His shirt is
+stained with blood, and it is his own blood this time.
+
+Townley bends over and quietly feels his arm. No pulse there. Then he
+breathes a half audible prayer and reverently closes the eyes.
+
+I am hurrying back now to the room with Flora.
+
+'All is safe, mother, now. Flora is safe. See, she is smiling: she knows
+us all. Oh, Heaven be praised, she is safe!'
+
+We leave Townley there, and hurry back to the ramparts.
+
+The stillness alone would have told us that the fight was finished and the
+victory won.
+
+A few minutes after this, standing high up on the rampart there,
+Moncrieff is mustering his people. One name after another is called. Alas!
+there are many who do not answer, many who will never answer more, for our
+victory has been dearly bought.
+
+Four of our Scottish settlers were found dead in the trench; over a dozen
+Gauchos had been killed. Moncrieff and his partner were both wounded,
+though neither severely. Archie and Dugald were also badly cut, and
+answered but faintly and feebly to the roll-call. Sandie we know is dead,
+and Bombazo is--under the sofa. So I thought; but listen.
+
+'Captain Rodrigo de Bombazo!'
+
+'Here, general, here,' says a bold voice close behind me, and Bombazo
+himself presses further to the front.
+
+I can hardly believe my eyes and ears. Could those have been Bombazo's
+boots? Had I really kicked the shins of Bombazo? Surely the events of the
+night had turned my brain. Bombazo's boots indeed! Bombazo skulk and hide
+beneath a sofa! Impossible. Look at him now. His hair is dishevelled;
+there is blood on his brow. He is dressed only in shirt and trousers, and
+these are marked with blood; so is his right arm, which is bared over the
+elbow, and the sword he carries in his hand. Bold Bombazo! How I have
+wronged him! But the silk striped socks? No; I cannot get over that.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Barely a month before the events just narrated took place at the
+_estancias_ of Moncrieff there landed from a sailing ship at the port of
+Buenos Ayres a man whose age might have been represented by any number of
+years 'twixt thirty and forty. There were grey hairs on his temples, but
+these count for nothing in a man whose life has been a struggle with
+Fortune and Fate. The individual in question, whom his shipmates called
+Dalston, was tall and tough and wiry. He had shown what he was and what he
+could do in less than a week from the time of his joining. At first he
+had been a passenger, and had lived away aft somewhere, no one could tell
+exactly where, for he did not dine in the saloon with the other
+passengers, and he looked above messing with the stewards. As the mate and
+he were much together it was supposed that Dalston made use of the first
+officer's cabin. The ship had encountered dirty weather from the very
+outset; head winds and choppy seas all the way down Channel, so that she
+was still 'kicking about off the coast'--this is how the seamen phrased
+it--when she ought to have been crossing the Bay or stretching away out
+into the broad Atlantic. She fared worse by far when she reached the Bay,
+having met with a gale of wind that blew most of her cloth to ribbons,
+carried away her bowsprit, and made hurdles of her bulwarks both forward
+and amidships. Worse than all, two men were blown from aloft while trying
+to reef a sail during a squall of more than hurricane violence. I say
+blown from aloft, and I say so advisedly, for the squall came on after
+they had gone up, a squall that even the men on deck could not stand
+against, a squall that levelled the very waves, and made the sea away to
+leeward--no one could see to windward--look like boiling milk.
+
+The storm began to go down immediately after the squall, and next day the
+weather was fine enough to make sail, and mend sail. But the ship was
+short-handed, for the skipper had made no provision against loss by
+accident. He was glad then when the mate informed him that the 'gentleman'
+Dalston was as good as any two men on board.
+
+'Send him to me,' said the skipper.
+
+'Good morning. Ahem, I hear, sir, you would be willing to assist in the
+working of the ship. May I ask on what terms?'
+
+'Certainly,' said Dalston. 'I'm going out to the Argentine, to buy a bit
+of land; well, naturally, money is some object to me. You see?'
+
+'I understand.'
+
+'Well, my terms are the return of my passage money and civility.'
+
+'Agreed; but why do you mention civility?'
+
+'Because I've heard you using rather rough language to your men. Now, if
+you forgot yourself so far as to call me a bad name I'd----'
+
+He paused, and there was a look in his eyes the captain hardly relished.
+
+'Well! What would you do?'
+
+'Why, I'd--retire to my cabin.'
+
+'All right then, I think we understand each other.'
+
+So Dalston was installed, and now dined forward. He became a favourite
+with his messmates. No one could tell a more thrilling and adventuresome
+yarn than Dalston, no one could sing a better song than himself or join
+more heartily in the chorus when another sang, and no one could work more
+cheerily on deck, or fly more quickly to tack a sheet.
+
+Smyth had been the big man in the forecastle before Dalston's day. But
+Smyth was eclipsed now, and I dare say did not like his rival. One day,
+near the quarter-deck, Smyth called Dalston an ugly name. Dalston's answer
+was a blow which sent the fellow reeling to leeward, where he lay
+stunned.
+
+'Have you killed him, Dalston?' said the captain.
+
+'Not quite, sir; but I could have.'
+
+'Well, Dalston, you are working for two men now; don't let us lose another
+hand, else you'll have to work for three.'
+
+Dalston laughed.
+
+Smyth gathered himself up and slunk away, but his look was one Dalston
+would have cause to remember.
+
+This good ship--Sevenoaks she was called, after the captain's wife's
+birthplace--had a long and a rough passage all along. The owners were
+Dutchmen, so it did not matter a very great deal. There was plenty of
+time, and the ship was worked on the cheap. Perhaps the wonder is she
+kept afloat at all, for at one period of the voyage she leaked so badly
+that the crew had to pump three hours out of every watch. Then she crossed
+a bank on the South American coast, and the men said she had sucked in a
+bit of seaweed, for she did not leak much after this.
+
+The longest voyage has an end, however, and when the Sevenoaks arrived at
+Buenos Ayres, Dalston bade his messmates adieu, had his passage money duly
+returned, and went on shore, happy because he had many more golden
+sovereigns to rattle than he had expected.
+
+Dalston went to a good hotel, found out all about the trains, and next day
+set out, in company with a waiter who had volunteered to be his escort, to
+purchase a proper outfit--only light clothes, a rifle, a good revolver,
+and a knife or two to wear in his belt, for he was going west to a rough
+country.
+
+In the evening, after the waiter and he had dined well at another hotel:
+
+'You go home now,' said Dalston; 'I'm going round to have a look at the
+town,'
+
+'Take care of yourself,' the waiter said.
+
+'No fear of me,' was the laughing reply.
+
+But that very night he was borne back to his inn, cut, bruised, and
+faint.
+
+And robbed of all his gold.
+
+'Who has done this?' said the waiter, aghast at his friend's appearance.
+
+'Smyth!' That was all the reply.
+
+Dalston lay for weeks between life and death. Then he came round almost at
+once, and soon started away on his journey. The waiter--good-natured
+fellow--had lent him money to carry him to Mendoza.
+
+But Dalston's adventures were not over yet.
+
+He arrived at Villa Mercedes well and hopeful, and was lucky enough to
+secure a passage in the diligence about to start under mounted escort to
+Mendoza. After a jolting ride of days, the like of which he had never been
+used to in the old country, the ancient-looking coach had completed
+three-quarters of the journey, and the rest of the road being considered
+safe the escort was allowed to go on its way to the frontier.
+
+They had not departed two hours, however, before the travellers were
+attacked, the driver speared, and the horses captured. The only passenger
+who made the slightest resistance was Dalston. He was speedily
+overpowered, and would have been killed on the spot had not the _cacique_
+of the party whom Dalston had wounded interfered and spared his life.
+
+Spared his life! But for what? He did not know. Some of the passengers
+were permitted to go free, the rest were killed. He alone was mounted on
+horseback, his legs tied with thongs and his horse led by an Indian.
+
+All that night and all next day his captors journeyed on, taking, as far
+as Dalston could judge, a south-west course. His sufferings were extreme.
+His legs were swollen, cut, and bleeding; his naked shoulders--for they
+had stripped him almost naked--burned and blistered with the sun; and
+although his tongue was parched and his head drooping wearily on his
+breast, no one offered him a mouthful of water.
+
+He begged them to kill him. Perhaps the _cacique_, who was almost a white
+man, understood his meaning, for he grinned in derision and pointed to his
+own bullet-wounded arm. The _cacique_ knew well there were sufferings
+possible compared to which death itself would be as pleasure.
+
+When the Indians at last went into camp--which they did but for a
+night--he was released, but guarded; a hunk of raw guanaco meat was thrown
+to him, which he tried to suck for the juices it contained.
+
+Next day they went on and on again, over a wild pampa land now, with here
+and there a bush or tussock of grass or thistles, and here and there a
+giant ombu-tree. His ankles were more painful than ever, his shoulders
+were raw, the horse he rode was often prodded with a spear, and he too
+was wounded at the same time. Once or twice the _cacique_, maddened by the
+pain of his wound, rushed at Dalston with uplifted knife, and the wretched
+prisoner begged that the blow might fall.
+
+Towards evening they reached a kind of hill and forest land, where the
+flowering cacti rose high above the tallest spear. Then they came to a
+ruin. Indians here were in full force, horses dashed to and fro, and it
+was evident from the bustle and stir that they were on the war-path, and
+soon either to attack or be attacked.
+
+The prisoner was now roughly unhorsed and cruelly lashed to a tree, and
+left unheeded by all. For a moment or two he felt grateful for the shade,
+but his position after a time became painful in the extreme. At night-fall
+all the Indians left, and soon after the sufferings of the poor wretch
+grew more dreadful than pen can describe. He was being slowly eaten alive
+by myriads of insects that crept and crawled or flew; horrid spiders with
+hairy legs and of enormous size ran over his neck and naked chest,
+loathsome centipedes wriggled over his shoulders and face and bit him, and
+ants covered him black from head to feet. Towards dusk a great jaguar went
+prowling past, looked at him with green fierce eyes, snarled low, and went
+on. Vultures alighted near him, but they too passed by; they could wait.
+Then it was night, and many of the insect pests grew luminous. They
+flitted and danced before his eyes till tortured nature could bear no
+more, and insensibility ended his sufferings for a time.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Indians must have thought that, although their attack on our
+_estancia_ had failed, we were too weak or too frightened to pursue them.
+They did not know Moncrieff. Wounded though he was, he had issued forth
+from behind the ramparts with thirty well-armed and splendidly-mounted
+men. They followed the enemy up for seven long hours, and succeeded in
+teaching them such a lesson that they have never been seen in that
+district since.
+
+Towards noon we were riding homewards, tired and weary enough now, when
+Donald suggested our visiting the old Jesuit ruin, and so we turned our
+horses' heads in that direction.
+
+Donald had ridden on before, and as I drew near I heard him cry, 'Oh,
+Moncrieff, come quickly! Here is some poor fellow lashed to the
+ombu-tree!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+FAREWELL TO THE SILVER WEST.
+
+
+We cut the man's cords of thongs, we spread rugs on the grass and laid him
+gently down, then bathed his poor body with wine, and poured a little down
+his throat.
+
+In about half an hour the wretched being we had thought dead slowly raised
+himself on his elbow and gazed at _me_ as well as his swollen eyes would
+permit him. His lips moved as if to speak, but no intelligible sound
+escaped them. The recollection dawned on my mind all at once, and in that
+sadly-distorted face I discovered traces of the man who had wrought us so
+much sorrow and evil.
+
+I took his hand in mine.
+
+'Am I right?' I said. 'Are you Duncan M'Rae?'
+
+He nodded drowsily, closed his eyes again, and lay back.
+
+We cut branches from the ombu-tree, tied them together with the thongs
+that had bound the victim's limbs, and so made a litter. On this we placed
+rugs and laid the man; and between two mules he was borne by the Gauchos
+slowly homewards to the _estancias_. Poor wretch! he had expected to come
+here all but a conqueror, and in a position to dictate his own terms--he
+arrived a dying man.
+
+Our _estancia_ for many weeks was now turned almost into a hospital, for
+even those Indians who had crept wounded into the bush, preferring to die
+at the sides of hedges to falling into our hands, we had brought in and
+treated with kindness, and many recovered.
+
+All the dead we could find we buried in the humble little graveyard on the
+braeside. We buried them without respect of nationality, only a few feet
+of clay separating the white man's grave from that of his Indian foe.
+
+'It matters little,' said Moncrieff. 'where one rests,
+
+                "For still and peaceful is the grave,
+                  Where, life's vain tumults past,
+                The appointed house, by Heaven's decree,
+                  Receives us all at last."'
+
+Both Dugald and Archie made excellent patients, and Flora and Aileen the
+best of nurses. But _the_ nurse over even these was old Jenny. She was
+hospital superintendent, and saw to all the arrangements, even making the
+poultices and spreading the salves and plasters with her own hands.
+
+'My mither's a ma_rr_vel at he_rr_bs!' said Moncrieff over and over again,
+when he saw the old lady busy at work.
+
+There was one patient, and only one, whom old Jenny did not nurse. This
+was Duncan himself. For him Townley did all his skill could suggest, and
+was seldom two consecutive hours away from the room where he lay.
+
+In spite of all this it was evident that the ex-poacher was sinking fast.
+
+Then came a day when Moncrieff, Archie, and myself were called into the
+dying man's apartment, and heard him make the fullest confession of all
+his villainy, and beg for our forgiveness with the tears roiling down his
+wan, worn face.
+
+Yes, we forgave him willingly.
+
+May Heaven forgive him too!
+
+At the time of his confession he was strong enough to read over and sign
+the document that Townley placed before him. He told Townley too the
+addresses of the men who had assisted him in the old vault at the ruined
+kirk in Coila.
+
+And Duncan had seemed brighter and calmer for several days after this. But
+he told us he had no desire to live now.
+
+Then, one morning the change came, and so he sank and died.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was several months before we could make up our minds to leave 'Our Home
+in the Silver West.' Indeed, there was considerable preparation to be made
+for the long homeward voyage that was before us; besides, Townley had no
+inclination to hurry matters now that he felt sure of victory.
+
+Victory was not even yet a certainty, however. The estate of Coila was
+well worth fighting for. Was there not the possibility, the bare
+possibility, that the solicitors or advocates of Le Roi, or the M'Rae, who
+now held the castle and glen, might find some fatal flaw in the evidence
+which Townley had spent so much time and care in working out and
+collecting?
+
+It was not at all probable. In fact, despite the blood-feud, that ancient
+family folly, I believed that M'Rae would act the part of a gentleman.
+
+'If,' said Townley to me one day, as we walked for almost the last time in
+the beautiful gardens around Moncrieff's mansion-house, 'we have anything
+to fear, I believe it is from the legal advisers of the present
+"occupier"'--Townley would not say 'owner'--'of the estate. These men, you
+know, Murdoch, can hardly expect to be _our_ advocates. They are well
+aware that if they lose hold of Coila now the title-deeds thereof will
+never again rest in the fireproof safes of their offices.'
+
+'I am afraid,' I said, 'you have but a poor opinion of Edinburgh
+advocates.'
+
+'Not so, Murdoch, not so. But,' he added, meaningly 'I have lived longer
+in life than you, and I have but a poor opinion of human nature.'
+
+'I suppose,' I said, 'that the M'Rae will know nothing of what is coming
+till our arrival on Scottish shores!'
+
+'On the contrary,' answered Townley; 'although it may really seem like
+playing into our opponent's hands, I have written a friendly letter to the
+M'Rae, and have told him to be prepared; that I have irrefragable
+evidence--mind, I do not particularize--that you, Murdoch M'Crimman, are
+the true and only proprietor of the estates of Coila. I want him to see
+and feel that I am treating him as the man of honour I believe him to be,
+and that the only thing we really desire is justice to all concerned.'
+
+I smiled, and could not help saying, 'Townley, my best of friends, what an
+excellent advocate you would have made!'
+
+Townley smiled in turn.
+
+'Say, rather,' he replied, 'what an excellent detective I should have
+made! But, after all, Murdoch, it may turn out that there is a spice of
+selfishness in all I am doing.'
+
+'I do not believe a word of it, Townley.'
+
+Townley only laughed, and looked mysterious.
+
+'Hold on a little,' he said; 'don't be too quick to express your
+judgment.'
+
+'I will wait, then,' I answered; 'but really I cannot altogether
+understand you.'
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Perhaps nothing shows true physical courage better than the power to say
+'Farewell' apparently unmoved. It is a kind of courage, however, that is
+very rare indeed, and all sorts of stratagems have been adopted to soften
+the grief of parting. I am not sure that I myself was not guilty of
+adopting one of these on the morning we left that pleasant home by the
+lake.
+
+'I'm not going to say "farewell" at all,' I insisted, as I shook hands
+with Irish Aileen and poor old Jenny, Moncrieff's 'marvellous mither.'
+'I'm coming out again to see you all as soon as ever I can get settled. Do
+you think I could leave this beautiful country entirely, without spending
+at least a few more years in it? Not I! And even if I do succeed in
+getting old Coila back once more--even that, mind, is uncertain--I sha'n't
+quite give up Coila New. So _au revoir_, Moncrieff; _au revoir_!'
+
+Then, turning to Jenny, '_Au revoir_, Jenny,' I said.
+
+'Guid-bye, laddie, and God be wi' ye. I canna speak French. I've tried a
+word or twa mair than once, and nearly knocked my jaws out o' the joint;
+so I'll just say "Guid-bye." Lang, lang ere you can come back to Coila New
+puir old Jenny's bones will be in the mools.'
+
+I felt a big lump in my throat just then, and was positively grateful when
+Bombazo strutted up dressed in full uniform.
+
+'_A dios_', he said; 'my friend, _a dios_. And now you have but to say the
+word, and if you have the least fear of being molested by Indians, my
+trusty sword is at your service, and I will gladly escort you as far as
+Villa Mercedes.'
+
+It is needless to say that I declined this truly heroic offer.
+
+Our party--the departing one--consisted of mother, aunt, Townley, Archie,
+and myself. My sister and my brothers came many miles on the road with us;
+then we bade them good-bye, and I felt glad when that was over.
+
+But Moncrieff's convoy was a truly Scottish one. He and his good men never
+thought of turning back till they had seen us safely on board the train,
+and rapidly being whirled away southwards.
+
+As long as I could see this honest settler he was waving his broad bonnet
+in the air, and--I felt sure of this--commending us all to a kind
+Providence.
+
+The vessel in which we took passage was a steamer that bore us straight to
+the Clyde. Our voyage was a splendid one; in fact, I believe we were all
+just a little sorry when it was finished.
+
+Landing there in the Broomielaw on a cold forenoon in early spring would
+have possessed but little of interest for any of us--so full were our
+minds with the meeting that was before us, the meeting of M'Crimman and
+M'Rae--only we received a welcome that, being all so unexpected, caused
+tears of joy to spring to my eyes. For hardly was the gangway thrust on
+board from the quay ere more than twenty sturdy Highlanders, who somehow
+had got possession of it, came rushing and shouting on board. I knew every
+face at once, though some were changed--with illness, years, or sorrow.
+
+Perhaps few such scenes had ever before been witnessed on the Broomielaw,
+for those men were arrayed in the full Scottish costume and wore the
+M'Crimman tartan, and their shouts of joy might have been heard a good
+half-mile off, despite the noises of the great city.
+
+How they had heard of our coming it never occurred to me to inquire.
+Suffice it to say that here they were, and I leave the reader to guess the
+kind of welcome they gave us.
+
+No, nothing would satisfy them short of escorting us to our hotel.
+
+Our carriages, therefore, to please these kindly souls from Coila, were
+obliged to proceed but slowly, for five pipers marched in front, playing
+the bold old air of 'The March of the Cameron Men,' while the rest, with
+drawn claymores, brought up the rear.
+
+On the very next day Townley, Archie, and I received a message from M'Rae
+himself, announcing that he would gladly meet us at the Royal Hotel in
+Edinburgh. We were to bring no advocate with us, the letter advised; if
+any dispute arose, then, and not till then, would be the time to call in
+the aid of the law.
+
+I confess that I entered M'Rae's room with a beating heart. How would he
+receive us?
+
+We found him quietly smoking a cigar and gazing out of the window.
+
+But he turned with a kindly smile towards us as soon as we entered, and
+the next minute we were all seated round the table, and business--_the_
+business--was entered into.
+
+M'Rae listened without a word. He never even moved a muscle while Townley
+told all his long story, or rather read it from paper after paper, which
+he took from his bag. The last of these papers was Duncan's own
+confession, with Archie's signature and mine as witnesses alongside
+Moncrieff's.
+
+He opened his lips at last.
+
+'This is your signature, and you duly attest all this?'
+
+He put the question first to Archie and then to me.
+
+Receiving a reply in the affirmative, it was but natural that I should
+look for some show of emotion in M'Rae's face. I looked in vain. I have
+never seen more consummate coolness before nor since. Indeed, it was a
+coolness that alarmed me.
+
+And when he rose from the table after a few minutes of apparently
+engrossing thought, and walked directly towards a casket that stood on the
+writing-table, I thought that after all our cause was lost.
+
+In that casket, I felt sure, lay some strange document that should utterly
+undo all Townley's work of years.
+
+M'Rae is now at the table. He opens the casket, and for a moment looks
+critically at its contents.
+
+I can hear my heart beating. I'm sure I look pale with anxiety.
+
+Now M'Rae puts his hand inside and quietly takes out--a fresh cigar.
+
+Then, humming a tune the while, he brings the casket towards Townley, and
+bids him help himself.
+
+Townley does as he is told, but at the same time bursts into a hearty
+laugh.
+
+'Mr. M'Rae,' he says, 'you are the coolest man that ever I met. I do
+believe that if you were taken out to be shot--'
+
+'Stay,' said M'Rae, 'I _was_ once. I was tried for a traitor--tried for a
+crime in France called "Treason," that I was as guiltless of as an unborn
+babe--and condemned.'
+
+'And what did you do?'
+
+'Some one on the ground handed me a cigar, and--I lit it.
+
+'Nay, my dear friends, I have lost my case here. Indeed, I never, it would
+seem, had one.
+
+'M'Crimman,' he continued, shaking me by the hand, 'Coila is yours.'
+
+'Strathtoul,' I answered, 'is our blood feud at an end?'
+
+'It is,' was the answer; and once again hand met hand across the table.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Need I tell of the home-coming of the M'Crimmans of Coila? Of the clansmen
+who met us in the glen and marched along with us? Of the cheering strains
+of music that re-echoed from every rock? Of the flags that fluttered over
+and around our Castle Coila? Of the bonfires that blazed that night on
+every hill, and cast their lurid light across the darkling lake? Or of the
+tears my mother shed when, looking round the tartan drawing-room, the
+cosiest in all the castle, she thought of father, dead and gone? No, for
+some things are better left to the reader's imagination.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+I throw down my pen with a sigh of relief.
+
+I think I have finished my story; my noble deerhound thinks so too. He
+gets slowly up from the hearthrug, conies towards me, and places his
+honest head on my arm, but his eyes are fixed on mine.
+
+It is not patting that he wants, nor petting either.
+
+'Come out now, master,' he seems to say, speaking with soft brown eyes and
+wagging tail; 'come out, master; mount your fleetest horse, and let us
+have a glorious gallop across the hills. See how the sun shines and
+glitters on grass, on leaves and lake! While you have been writing there
+day after day, I, your faithful dog, have been languishing. Come, master,
+come!'
+
+And we go together.
+
+When I return, refreshed, and run up stairs to the room in the tower, I
+find dear auntie there. She has been reading my manuscript.
+
+'There is,' she says, 'only one addition to make.'
+
+'Name it, auntie,' I say; 'it is not yet too late.'
+
+But she hesitates.
+
+'It is almost a secret,' she says at last, bending down and smoothing the
+deerhound.
+
+'A secret, auntie? Ha, ha!' I laugh. 'I have it, auntie! I have it!'
+
+And I kiss her there and then.
+
+'It is Townley's secret and yours. He has proposed, and you are to--'
+
+But auntie has run out of the room.
+
+And now, come to think of it, there is something to add to all this.
+
+Can you guess _my_ secret, reader mine?
+
+Irene, my darling Irene and I, Murdoch M'Crimman, are also to be--
+
+But, there, you have guessed my secret, as I guessed auntie's.
+
+And just let me ask this: Could any better plan have been devised of
+burying the hatchet betwixt two rival Highland clans, and putting an end
+for ever to a blood feud?
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED,
+LONDON AND BUNGAY.
+
+THE BOY'S OWN BOOKSHELF.
+
+This is a Series of Popular Reprints from volumes of the BOY'S OWN
+PAPER, most of which are now quite out of print. The Books are very
+attractively bound, and are freely Illustrated.
+
+ADVENTURES OF A THREE-GUINEA WATCH.
+
+By Talbot Baines Reed. Illustrations. New Edition, reduced in price.
+Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
+
+FOOTBALL.
+
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+should be played, by such authorities as C. W. Alcock and Dr. Irvine.
+Illustrated. 1s. 6d.
+
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+
+By Dr. W. G. Grace, Rev. J. Pycroft, Lord Charles Russell, Frederick
+Gale, and others. Many Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 2s.
+
+A GREAT MISTAKE.
+
+By T. S. Millington. With many Illustrations. Small 4to.  3s. 6d.
+
+THE FIFTH FORM AT ST. DOMINIC'S.
+
+By Talbot B. Reed, Author of "The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch,"
+etc. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
+
+THROUGH FIRE AND THROUGH WATER.
+
+A Story of Adventure and Peril. By T. S. Millington, Author of
+"Straight to the Mark," etc. Illustrated. Crown 8vo.  3s. 6d.
+
+HAROLD, THE BOY EARL.
+
+A Story of Old England. By J. F. Hodgetts, Author of "Edric the
+Norseman," "Kornak the Viking," etc. Illustrated. Crown 8vo.  3s. 6d.
+
+MY FRIEND SMITH.
+
+By Talbot Baines Reed, Author of "Adventures of a Three-Guinea
+Watch," etc. With an Introduction by G. A. Hutchison. Illustrated.
+Crown 8vo. 5s.
+
+56, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON; and of all Booksellers.
+
+
+
+
+SIXPENCE MONTHLY, with FRONTISPIECE, or ONE PENNY WEEKLY.
+
+The BOY'S OWN PAPER.
+
+"The Boy's Own holds its place against competitors with undiminished
+vitality. It is very proper, of course, yet not the less surprising in
+this age of rivalry, to find this entertaining miscellany in its
+thirteenth year preserving the freshness and exuberance of youth. The
+stories are as thrilling as any in the past, and the pictures run them
+hard in vigour."--Saturday Review.
+
+"Simply crammed with good things, and has heaps of spirited
+illustrations, many being effectively coloured."--Pall Mall Gazette.
+
+"Deservedly popular on both sides of the ocean."--New York Herald.
+
+[Illustration: BOYS OWN PAPER]
+
+"As for the tales, they tell of travel, sport, and adventure all over
+the world. Games of all kinds are discussed with the careful attention
+they deserve. There are, of course, good articles on natural history
+and the domestic animals; science and the severer pursuits are by no
+means neglected, and the notes under 'Doings of the Month' are full of
+useful information on every possible subject."--Times.
+
+"A very feast of good things."--Christian.
+
+"An abundant store of amusement and instruction."--Spectator.
+
+"A wonderful sixpennyworth."--Queen.
+
+"We strongly advise all our readers to introduce, in its monthly form,
+this splendid collection of pure literature to their school libraries
+and book clubs."--Teachers' Aid.
+
+56, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON; and of all Booksellers.
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS by the Rev. J. G. WOOD, M.A.
+
+THE HANDY NATURAL HISTORY. By the Rev. J. G. Wood, M.A., Author of
+"Homes without Hands," etc. With 224 Engravings. Small 4to. 8s. cloth
+boards, gilt edges.
+
+"A handsome volume, in which the author, a well-known naturalist, tells
+his readers in simple, untechnical language, the habits and nature of
+birds, beasts, and reptiles. Mr. Wood's style is excellently adapted
+for attracting the interest and insuring the attention of even
+ordinarily careless readers."--Mail.
+
+"A delightful book, and will make a very handsome and enviable
+high-class prize or present."--School Board Chronicle.
+
+THE BROOK AND ITS BANKS. By the Rev. J. G. Wood, M.A., Author of "The
+Handy Natural History," etc., etc. With many Illustrations. Imperial
+16mo. 6s. cloth boards, gilt edges.
+
+"A book of real power, and its value is enhanced by scores of
+well-drawn and carefully executed pictures. One of the most popular
+gift-books of the season."--Record.
+
+"Handsome and most interesting."--Times.
+
+"Will form an admirable present for the young."--Queen.
+
+"A charmingly written series of chapters on natural history. A reader of
+the book will be instructed without knowing it."--Scotsman.
+
+"No more delightful book can be cited among the writings of its lamented
+author."--Saturday Review.
+
+"A nicer book for boys than this it would be hard to
+imagine."--Spectator.
+
+"Few writers have done so much to familiarise boys and girls with the
+simple facts of natural history as Mr. Wood, for he always painted the
+inhabitants of fields, forests and rivers from actual eye-witness, and
+pressed home his lessons by cheery anecdotes sure to be
+remembered."--The Graphic.
+
+56, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON; and of all Booksellers.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Books for Boys.]
+
+A YACHT VOYAGE ROUND ENGLAND. By William H. G. Kingston. Profusely
+Illustrated. 5s. cloth, gilt edges.
+
+HOW LONDON LIVES. By W. J. Gordon. The Leisure Hour Library. New
+Series. No. 1. With Illustrations. 2s. cloth' boards. Contents:--How
+London is Fed--How London is Cleansed--The Lighting of London--The
+London Police--The Thames Police--A London Hospital--A Day at the Post
+Office--The Commissionaires--A Day at the Mint--On Coming to London.
+
+FOUNDRY, FORGE, AND FACTORY. By W. J. Gordon. The Leisure Hour Library.
+New Series. No. 2. With many Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 2s. cloth.
+Contents:--"Armstrongs"--The Forth Bridge--Among the Shipwrights--The
+Foundry Boys--Hæmatite--The Timbermen--The Glassworkers--Building a
+Railway Carriage--A Reel of Cotton--Printing a Cotton Gown--Centenary
+of Rotary Press.
+
+THE BLACK TROOPERS, and other Tales. 2s. 6d. cloth, gilt edges.
+
+STRANGE TALES OF PERIL & ADVENTURE. 2s. 6d. cloth, gilt edges.
+
+REMARKABLE ADVENTURES FROM REAL LIFE. 2s. 6d. cloth, gilt edges.
+
+ADVENTURES ASHORE & AFLOAT. 2s. 6d. cloth, gilt edges.
+
+AMONG THE MONGOLS. By J. Gilmour, M.A. 2s. 6d. cloth, gilt edges.
+
+WITHIN SEA WALLS. By G. E. Sargent and Miss Walshe. 2s. 6d. cloth, gilt
+edges.
+
+THE FOSTER BROTHERS OF DOON. A Tale of the Irish Rebellion of 1798. 2s.
+6d. cloth, gilt edges.
+
+CEDAR CREEK. A Tale of Canadian Life. 2s. 6d. cloth, gilt edges.
+
+CHRONICLES OF AN OLD MANOR HOUSE. By G. E. Sargent. 2s. 6d. cloth, gilt
+edges.
+
+A RACE FOR LIFE, and other Tales. 2s. 6d. cloth, gilt edges.
+
+THE STORY OF A CITY ARAB. By G. E. Sargent. 2s. 6d. cloth, gilt edges.
+
+THE STORY OF A POCKET BIBLE. By G. E. Sargent. 2s. 6d. cloth, gilt
+edges.
+
+FRANK LAYTON. An Australian Story. By G. E. Sargent. 2s. 6d. cloth, gilt
+edges.
+
+SHADES AND ECHOES OF OLD LONDON. By John Stoughton, D.D. 2s. 6d. cloth,
+gilt edges.
+
+RICHARD HUNNE. By G. E. Sargent. 2s. 6d. cloth, gilt edges.
+
+ONCE UPON A TIME; or, The Boy's Book of Adventures. 2s. 6d. cloth, gilt
+edges.
+
+GEORGE BURLEY: His History, Experiences, and Observations. By G. E.
+Sargent. 2s. 6d. cloth, gilt edges.
+
+CAPTAIN COOK: His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries. By W. G. Kingston.
+2s. 6d. cloth, gilt edges.
+
+THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. By John Bunyan. With Illustrations. 2s. 6d.
+cloth, gilt edges.
+
+ARTHUR GLYNN'S CHRISTMAS BOX, and other Stories. By Ruth Lamb. 2s. 6d.
+cloth, gilt edges.
+
+THE HOLY WAR made by Shaddai upon Diabolus for the Regaining of the
+Metropolis of the World; or The Losing and Taking again of the Town of
+Mansoul. By John Bunyan. 2s. 6d. cloth, gilt edges.
+
+56, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON; and of all Booksellers.
+
+
+
+
+Book for every Boy's Library.
+
+INDOOR GAMES AND RECREATIONS.
+
+A popular Encyclopædia for Boys. Edited by G. A. Hutchison. Including
+chapters by J. N. Maskelyne, Lt.-Col. Cuthell, Dr. Gordon Stables, R.N.,
+Rev. A. N. Malan, M.A., C. Stansfield-Hicks, Dr. Stradling, and others.
+With many Engravings. Quarto. A splendid Gift-book or Prize for Boys.
+528 pages. 8s. cloth boards, gilt edges.
+
+"No more valuable gift-book could be chosen for young people with active
+brains."--Saturday Review.
+
+"This is an admirable book for boys; no mere réchauffé of the ordinary
+boys' handbooks, but prepared by experts in their several subjects, and
+justifying in every way the editor's claim that there is sufficient
+amplitude of detail and thoroughness of exposition to render their
+respective contributions of very real and permanent educational
+value."--Star.
+
+"A splendid gift-book for an intelligent lad."--Methodist Recorder.
+
+"It contains information on nearly every subject dear to boys, and
+should certainly find a place on every boy's bookshelf."--Educational
+Times.
+
+"Is bound to delight every boy fortunate to obtain it. All subjects in
+which boys are most interested will be found here, skilfully treated by
+well-known writers who have long catered for the amusement and
+instruction of the young. It is a decidedly handsome gift."--National
+Church.
+
+56, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON; and of all Booksellers.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATED BOOKS BY MRS. O. F. WALTON,
+
+Author of "Christies Old Organ," etc.
+
+THE MYSTERIOUS HOUSE. With Frontispiece by M. E. Edwards.
+Crown 8vo. 1s. cloth boards.
+
+WINTER'S FOLLY. 18 Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 2s. cloth boards.
+
+GOLDEN THREADS FOR DAILY WEAVING. A Text, Meditation, and Verse for each
+Morning and Evening of a Week. 6d., exquisitely printed in colours.
+
+CHRISTIE'S OLD ORGAN; or, Home, Sweet Home. 1s. cloth.
+
+ANGEL'S CHRISTMAS. 16mo. 6d. cloth.
+
+LAUNCH THE LIFEBOAT. With 44 Coloured Pictures or Vignettes. 4to. 3s.
+Coloured Cover.
+
+LITTLE DOT. Coloured Frontispiece. 6d.
+
+LITTLE FAITH; or, The Child of the Toy Stall. 1s. cloth.
+
+NOBODY LOVES ME. 1s. cloth.
+
+OLIVE'S STORY; or, Life at Ravenscliffe. 2s. cloth, gilt.
+
+WAS I RIGHT? Illustrated. 3s. 6d. cloth, gilt.
+
+OUR GRACIOUS QUEEN: Pictures and Stories from Her Majesty's Life. With
+many Illustrations. 1s. cloth.
+
+TAKEN OR LEFT. Crown 8vo. 1s. cloth.
+
+A PEEP BEHIND THE SCENES. Illustrated. Imperial 16mo. 3s. 6d. cloth,
+gilt edges.
+
+POPPIE'S PRESENTS. Crown 8vo. 1s. cloth.
+
+SAVED AT SEA. A Lighthouse Story. New and cheaper Edition. 1s. cloth
+boards.
+
+SHADOWS. Scenes in the Life of an Old Arm Chair. Illustrated. 4s.
+cloth, gilt edges.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATED BOOKS BY
+
+HESBA  STRETTON,
+
+Author of "Jessica's First Prayer," etc.
+
+ALONE IN LONDON. 1s. 6d.
+
+A MISERABLE CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR. 9d.
+
+A NIGHT AND A DAY. 9d.
+
+A THORNY PATH. 2s.
+
+BEDE'S CHARITY. 2s. 6d.
+
+CAROLA. 3s. 6d.
+
+CASSY. 1s. 6d.
+
+CHRISTMAS CHILD. 6d.
+
+CHILDREN OF CLOVERLEY. 2s.
+
+COBWEBS AND CABLES. 5s.
+
+CREW OF THE DOLPHIN. 1s. 6d.
+
+ENOCH RODEN'S TRAINING. 2s.
+
+FERN'S HOLLOW. 2s.
+
+FISHERS OF DERBY HAVEN. 2s.
+
+FRIENDS TILL DEATH. 9d.
+
+HOW APPLE-TREE COURT WAS WON. 6d.
+
+JESSICA'S FIRST PRAYER. 1s.
+
+LEFT ALONE. 6d.
+
+LITTLE MEG'S CHILDREN. 1s. 6d.
+
+LOST GIP. 1s. 6d.
+
+MAX KROMER. 1s. 6d.
+
+MICHEL LORIO'S CROSS. 6d.
+
+NO PLACE LIKE HOME. 1s.
+
+ONLY A DOG. 6d.
+
+PILGRIM STREET. 2s.
+
+SAM FRANKLIN'S SAVINGS BANK. 6d.
+
+STORM OF LIFE. 1s. 6d.
+
+THE KING'S SERVANTS. 1s. 6d.
+
+UNDER THE OLD ROOF. 1s.
+
+WORTH OF A BABY. 6d.
+
+56, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON; and of all Booksellers.
+
+
+
+
+MISSIONARY BOOKS FOR BOYS.
+
+AMONG THE MONGOLS. By the Rev. James Gilmour, M.A., of Pekin. With Map
+and numerous Engravings from Photographs and Native Sketches. 2s. 6d.
+cloth, gilt edges.
+
+CHILD LIFE IN CHINESE HOMES. By Mrs. Bryson, of Wuchang, China.
+With many Illustrations. 5s. cloth, gilt edges.
+
+THE CHILDREN OF INDIA. Written for the Children of England by one of
+their Friends. With Illustrations and Map. 4s. cloth, gilt edges.
+
+THE CHILDREN OF MADAGASCAR. By H. F. Standing, of Antananarivo.
+Illustrated. 3s. 6d. cloth, gilt edges.
+
+EVERY-DAY LIFE IN SOUTH INDIA; or, The Story of Coopooswamey. An
+Autobiography. Many Engravings by E. Whymper. 3s. 6d. cloth, gilt.
+
+PERIL AND ADVENTURE IN CENTRAL AFRICA: Being Illustrated Letters
+to the Youngsters at Home. By the late Bishop Hannington.  1s. cloth.
+
+TULSIPUR FAIR. Glimpses of Missionary Life and Work in North India. A
+Book for the Children. By the Rev. H. B. Badley, M.A., for Ten Years a
+Missionary in North India. With many fine Engravings.
+4s. cloth, gilt.
+
+THE VANGUARD OF THE CHRISTIAN ARMY; or, Sketches of Missionary Life.
+Illustrated. 5s. cloth, gilt edges.
+
+56, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON; and of all Booksellers.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATED ANNUALS.
+
+THE BOY'S OWN ANNUAL.
+
+The Annual Volume of the "Boy's Own Paper" contains 848 large pages of
+Tales of Schoolboy Life, and of Adventure on Land and Sea; Outdoor
+and Indoor Games for every Season; Perilous Adventures at Home and
+Abroad; Amusements for Summer and Winter; and Instructive Papers
+written so as to be read by boys and youths. With many Coloured and
+Wood Engravings. Price 8s. handsome cloth; 9s. 6d. gilt edges; 12s. 6d.
+half-morocco.
+
+THE GIRL'S OWN ANNUAL.
+
+The Volume of "The Girl's Own Paper" contains 848 pages of interesting
+and useful reading. Stories by popular writers; Music by eminent
+Composers; Practical Papers for Young Housekeepers; Medical Papers by
+a well-known Practitioner; Needlework, Plain and Fancy; Helpful Papers
+for Christian Girls; Papers on Reasonable and Seasonable Dress, etc.,
+etc. Profusely Illustrated. Price 8s. handsome cloth; 9s. 6d. gilt
+edges; 12s. 6d. half-morocco.
+
+THE LEISURE HOUR ANNUAL.
+
+"Behold in these what leisure hours demand: Amusement and true
+knowledge hand in hand."
+
+The Volume of this Monthly Magazine for Family and General Reading
+contains 856 Imperial 8vo pages of interesting reading, with numerous
+Illustrations by eminent Artists. It forms a handsome Book for
+Presentation, and an appropriate and instructive volume for a School or
+College Prize. Price 7s. cloth boards; 8s. extra boards, gilt edges;
+10s. 6d. half-bound in calf.
+
+THE SUNDAY AT HOME ANNUAL.
+
+AN ILLUSTRATED FAMILY MAGAZINE FOR SABBATH READING.
+
+This Volume forms a very suitable Book for Presentation. It contains
+828 pages, Imperial 8vo, with a great variety of interesting and
+instructive Sabbath reading for every Member of the Family. It is
+profusely illustrated by Coloured and Wood Engravings. Price 7s. cloth
+boards; 8s. extra boards, gilt edges; 10s. 6d. half-bound in calf.
+
+56, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON; and of all Booksellers.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Our Home in the Silver West, by Gordon Stables
+
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+"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+<title>
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Our Home in the Silver West, by Gordon Stables.
+</title>
+
+<style type="text/css">
+    p                 {margin-top: 0.5em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: 0.5em;}
+    body              {margin-left: 11%; margin-right: 10%;}
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+    @media screen     {
+      hr.ppg-pb       {margin:30px 0; width:100%; border:none;border-top:thin dashed silver;}
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+    .footnote         {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;}
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+    div.ce p          {text-align: center; margin: auto 0;}
+    .figcenter        {margin: 2em auto 2em auto; text-align: center;}
+    hr.mini           {width: 2em; margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; border:none; border-bottom:1px solid black; clear:both;}
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+    hr.tb             {width: 35%; margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; border:none; border-bottom:1px solid black; clear:both;}
+    hr.major          {width: 65%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em; border:none; border-bottom:1px solid black; clear:both;}
+    h2                {text-align:center; font-weight:normal; font-size:1.4em;}
+</style>
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+</head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Home in the Silver West, by Gordon Stables
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Our Home in the Silver West
+       A Story of Struggle and Adventure
+
+Author: Gordon Stables
+
+Release Date: March 9, 2009 [EBook #28291]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR HOME IN THE SILVER WEST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank, Juliet Sutherland and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<hr class='ppg-pb' />
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_1' id='linki_1'></a>
+<img src='images/frontis.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 374px; height: 603px;' /><br />
+<p class='caption' style='margin: 0 auto; text-align:center;width: 374px;'>
+[<i>See page 129.</i>]<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='ppg-pb' />
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<img src='images/illus002.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 361px; height: 222px;' /><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='ce'>
+<p style='font-size:1.8em; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em;'>OUR HOME IN THE SILVER WEST</p>
+<p style='font-size:1.4em; margin-bottom:3em;'>A Story of Struggle and Adventure</p>
+<p style='margin-bottom:2em;'>BY</p>
+<p style='font-size:1.2em;'>GORDON STABLES, C.M., M.D., R.N.</p>
+<p style='font-size:0.8em;'>AUTHOR OF 'THE CRUISE OF THE SNOWBIRD,' 'WILD ADVENTURES ROUND THE POLE,'</p>
+<p style='font-size:0.8em; margin-bottom:5em;'>ETC., ETC.</p>
+<p>THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY</p>
+<p style='font-variant:small-caps;'>56, Paternoster Row; 65, St. Paul's Churchyard</p>
+<p style='font-variant:small-caps;'>and 164 Piccadilly</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='ppg-pb' />
+<div class='ce'>
+<p><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Richard Clay and Sons, Limited</span>,</p>
+<p><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>london and bungay.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='ppg-pb' />
+<div class='ce'>
+<p>CONTENTS.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='mini' />
+
+<table border='0' width='500' cellpadding='2' cellspacing='0' summary='Contents' style='margin:1em auto;'>
+<tr>
+  <td align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'><span style='font-size:small;'>CHAPTER</span></td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align='right'><span style='font-size:small;'>PAGE</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>I.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>The Highland Feud.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#I_THE_HIGHLAND_FEUD'>11</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>II.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Our Boyhood's Life.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#II_OUR_BOYHOODS_LIFE'>23</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>III.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>A Terrible Ride.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#III_A_TERRIBLE_RIDE'>30</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>IV.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>The Ring and the Book.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#IV_THE_RING_AND_THE_BOOK'>44</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>V.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>A New Home in the West.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#V_A_NEW_HOME_IN_THE_WEST'>54</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>VI.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>The Promised Land at Last.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#VI_THE_PROMISED_LAND_AT_LAST'>64</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>VII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>On Shore at Rio.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#VII_ON_SHORE_AT_RIO'>77</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>VIII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Moncrieff Relates His Experiences.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#VIII_MONCRIEFF_RELATES_HIS_EXPERIENCES'>86</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>IX.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Shopping and Shooting.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#IX_SHOPPING_AND_SHOOTING'>96</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>X.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>A Journey That Seems Like a Dream.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#X_A_JOURNEY_THAT_SEEMS_LIKE_A_DREAM'>106</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XI.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>The Tragedy at the Fonda.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XI_THE_TRAGEDY_AT_THE_FONDA'>115</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Attack by Pampa Indians.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XII_ATTACK_BY_PAMPA_INDIANS'>125</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XIII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>The Flight and the Chase.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XIII_THE_FLIGHT_AND_THE_CHASE'>134</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XIV.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Life on an Argentine Estancia.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XIV_LIFE_ON_AN_ARGENTINE_ESTANCIA'>146</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XV.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>We Build our House and Lay Out Gardens.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XV_WE_BUILD_OUR_HOUSE_AND_LAY_OUT_GARDENS'>155</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XVI.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Summer in the Silver West.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XVI_SUMMER_IN_THE_SILVER_WEST'>165</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XVII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>The Earthquake.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XVII_THE_EARTHQUAKE'>175</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XVIII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Our Hunting Expedition.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XVIII_OUR_HUNTING_EXPEDITION'>185</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XIX.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>In the Wilderness.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XIX_IN_THE_WILDERNESS'>197</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XX.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>The Mountain Crusoe.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XX_THE_MOUNTAIN_CRUSOE'>209</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XXI.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Wild Adventures on Prairie and Pampas.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XXI_WILD_ADVENTURES_ON_PRAIRIE_AND_PAMPAS'>221</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XXII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Adventure With a Tiger.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XXII_ADVENTURE_WITH_A_TIGER'>231</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XXIII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>A Ride for Life.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XXIII_A_RIDE_FOR_LIFE'>244</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XXIV.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>The Attack on the Estancia.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XXIV_THE_ATTACK_ON_THE_ESTANCIA'>255</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XXV.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>The Last Assault.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XXV_THE_LAST_ASSAULT'>266</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XXV</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Farewell to the Silver West.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XXV_FAREWELL_TO_THE_SILVER_WEST'>279</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<hr class='ppg-pb' />
+<div class='ce'>
+<p>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='mini' />
+
+<table border='0' width='400' cellpadding='2' cellspacing='0' summary='Illustrations' style='margin:1em auto'>
+<col style='width:80%;' />
+<col style='width:20%;' />
+<tr>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align='right'><span style='font-size:small'>PAGE</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>The Figure Springs into the Air</span> </td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_1'><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Orla thrusts his Muzzle into my Hand</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_2'>10</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Ray lay Stark and Stiff</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_3'>18</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>'Look! He is Over!'</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_4'>33</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>He pointed his Gun at me</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_5'>41</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>'I'll teach ye!'</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_6'>74</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Fairly Noosed</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_7'>99</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>'Ye can Claw the Pat'</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_8'>138</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Comical in the Extreme</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_9'>195</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Tries to steady himself to catch the Lasso</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_10'>203</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Interview with the Orang-outang</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_11'>214</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>On the same Limb of the Tree</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_12'>236</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>The Indians advanced with a Wild Shout</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_13'>268</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<hr class='ppg-pb' />
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_2' id='linki_2'></a>
+<img src='images/illus009.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 332px; height: 556px;' /><br />
+</div>
+
+<hr class='ppg-pb' />
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_11' name='page_11'></a>11</span></div>
+<div class='ce'>
+<p style='font-size:1.4em;'>OUR HOME IN THE SILVER WEST</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='mini' />
+
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='I_THE_HIGHLAND_FEUD' id='I_THE_HIGHLAND_FEUD'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+<h3>THE HIGHLAND FEUD.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>Why should I, Murdoch M'Crimman of Coila, be
+condemned for a period of indefinite length to the
+drudgery of the desk's dull wood? That is the question
+I have just been asking myself. Am I emulous of the
+honour and glory that, they say, float halo-like round the
+brow of the author? Have I the desire to awake and
+find myself famous? The fame, alas! that authors chase
+is but too often an <i>ignis fatuus</i>. No; honour like theirs
+I crave not, such toil is not incumbent on me. Genius in
+a garret! To some the words may sound romantic enough,
+but&mdash;ah me!&mdash;the position seems a sad one. Genius
+munching bread and cheese in a lonely attic, with nothing
+betwixt the said genius and the sky and the cats but
+rafters and tiles! I shudder to think of it. If my will
+were omnipotent, Genius should never shiver beneath the
+tiles, never languish in an attic. Genius should be clothed
+in purple and fine linen, Genius should&mdash;&mdash; 'Yes, aunt,
+come in; I'm not very busy yet.'</p>
+<p>My aunt sails into my beautiful room in the eastern
+tower of Castle Coila.</p>
+<p>'I was afraid,' she says, almost solemnly, 'I might be
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_12' name='page_12'></a>12</span>
+disturbing your meditations. Do I find you really at
+work?'</p>
+<p>'I've hardly arrived at that point yet, dear aunt. Indeed,
+if the truth will not displease you, I greatly fear serious
+concentration is not very much in my line. But as you
+desire me to write our strange story, and as mother also
+thinks the duty devolves on me, behold me seated at my
+table in this charming turret chamber, which owes its all
+of comfort to your most excellent taste, auntie mine.'</p>
+<p>As I speak I look around me. The evening sunshine
+is streaming into my room, which occupies the whole of
+one story of the tower. Glance where I please, nothing
+is here that fails to delight the eye. The carpet beneath
+my feet is soft as moss, the tall mullioned windows are
+bedraped with the richest curtains. Pictures and mirrors
+hang here and there, and seem part and parcel of the
+place. So does that dark lofty oak bookcase, the great
+harp in the west corner, the violin that leans against it,
+the <i>jardinière</i>, the works of art, the arms from every land&mdash;the
+shields, the claymores, the spears and helmets,
+everything is in keeping. This is my garret. If I want
+to meditate, I have but to draw aside a curtain in yonder
+nook, and lo! a little baize-covered door slides aside and
+admits me to one of the tower-turrets, a tiny room in
+which fairies might live, with a window on each side
+giving glimpses of landscape&mdash;and landscape unsurpassed
+for beauty in all broad Scotland.</p>
+<p>But it was by the main doorway of my chamber that
+auntie entered, drawing aside the curtains and pausing a
+moment till she should receive my cheering invitation.
+And this door leads on to the roof, and this roof itself is
+a sight to see. Loftily domed over with glass, it is at
+once a conservatory, a vinery, and tropical aviary. Room
+here for trees even, for miniature palms, while birds of
+the rarest plumage flit silently from bough to bough among
+the oranges, or lisp out the sweet lilts that have descended
+to them from sires that sang in foreign lands. Yonder a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_13' name='page_13'></a>13</span>
+fountain plays and casts its spray over the most lovely
+feathery ferns. The roof is very spacious, and the
+conservatory occupies the greater part of it, leaving room
+outside, however, for a delightful promenade. After
+sunset coloured lamps are often lit here, and the place
+then looks even more lovely than before. All this, I need
+hardly say, was my aunt's doing.</p>
+<p>I wave my hand, and the lady sinks half languidly into
+a fauteuil.</p>
+<p>'And so,' I say, laughingly, 'you have come to visit
+Genius in his garret.'</p>
+<p>My aunt smiles too, but I can see it is only out of
+politeness.</p>
+<p>I throw down my pen; I leave my chair and seat myself
+on the bearskin beside the ample fireplace and begin
+toying with Orla, my deerhound.</p>
+<p>'Aunt, play and sing a little; it will inspire me.'</p>
+<p>She needs no second bidding. She bends over the great
+harp and lightly touches a few chords.</p>
+<p>'What shall I play or sing?'</p>
+<p>'Play and sing as you feel, aunt.'</p>
+<p>'I feel thus,' my aunt says, and her fingers fly over the
+strings, bringing forth music so inspiriting and wild that
+as I listen, entranced, some words of Ossian come rushing
+into my memory:</p>
+<p>'The moon rose in the East. Fingal returned in the
+gleam of his arms. The joy of his youth was great, their
+souls settled as a sea from a storm. Ullin raised the song
+of gladness. The hills of Inistore rejoiced. The flame of
+the oak arose, and the tales of heroes were told.'</p>
+<p>Aunt is not young, but she looks very noble now&mdash;looks
+the very incarnation of the music that fills the room. In
+it I can hear the battle-cry of heroes, the wild slogan of
+clan after clan rushing to the fight, the clang of claymore
+on shield, the shout of victory, the wail for the dead.
+There are tears in my eyes as the music ceases, and my
+aunt turns once more towards me.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_14' name='page_14'></a>14</span></p>
+<p>'Aunt, your music has made me ashamed of myself.
+Before you came I recoiled from the task you had set
+before me; I longed to be out and away, marching over
+the moors gun in hand and dogs ahead. Now I&mdash;I&mdash;yes,
+aunt, this music inspires me.'</p>
+<p>Aunt rises as I speak, and together we leave the turret
+chamber, and, passing through the great conservatory, we
+reach the promenade. We lean on the battlement, long
+since dismantled, and gaze beneath us. Close to the castle
+walls below is a well-kept lawn trending downwards with
+slight incline to meet the loch which laps over its borders.
+This loch, or lake, stretches for miles and miles on every
+side, bounded here and there by bare, black, beetling cliffs,
+and in other places</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto; '><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>'O'erhung by wild woods thickening green,</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>a very cloudland of foliage. The easternmost horizon of
+this lake is a chain of rugged mountains, one glance at
+which would tell you the season was autumn, for they are
+crimsoned over with blooming heather. The season is
+autumn, and the time is sunset; the shadow of the great
+tower falls darkling far over the loch, and already crimson
+streaks of cloud are ranged along the hill-tops. So silent
+and still is it that we can hear the bleating of sheep a
+good mile off, and the throb of the oars of a boat far away
+on the water, although the boat itself is but a little dark
+speck. There is another dark speck, high, high above the
+crimson clouds. It comes nearer and nearer; it gets bigger
+and bigger; and presently a huge eagle floats over the
+castle, making homeward to his eyrie in the cliffs of Ben
+Coila.</p>
+<p>The air gets cooler as the shadows fall; I draw the shawl
+closer round my aunt's shoulders. She lifts a hand as if
+to deprecate the attention.</p>
+<p>'Listen, Murdoch,' she says. 'Listen, Murdoch
+M'Crimman.'</p>
+<p>She seldom calls me by my name complete.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_15' name='page_15'></a>15</span></p>
+<p>'I may leave you now, may I not?'</p>
+<p>'I know what you mean, aunt,' I reply. 'Yes; to the
+best of my ability I will write our strange story.'</p>
+<p>'Who else would but you, Murdoch M'Crimman, chief
+of the house of Crimman, chief of the clan?'</p>
+<p>I bow my head in silent sorrow.</p>
+<p>'Yes, aunt; I know. Poor father is gone, and I <i>am</i>
+chief.'</p>
+<p>She touches my hand lightly&mdash;it is her way of taking
+farewell. Next moment I am alone. Orla thrusts his
+great muzzle into my hand; I pat his head, then go back
+with him to my turret chamber, and once more take up
+my pen.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>A blood feud! Has the reader ever heard of such a
+thing? Happily it is unknown in our day. A blood feud&mdash;a
+quarrel 'twixt kith and kin, a feud oftentimes bequeathed
+from bleeding sire to son, handed down from generation to
+generation, getting more bitter in each; a feud that not
+even death itself seems enough to obliterate; an enmity
+never to be forgotten while hills raise high their heads to
+meet the clouds.</p>
+<p>Such a feud is surely cruel. It is more, it is sinful&mdash;it
+is madness. Yet just such a feud had existed for far more
+than a hundred years between our family of M'Crimman
+and the Raes of Strathtoul.</p>
+<p>There is but little pleasure in referring back to such a
+family quarrel, but to do so is necessary. Vast indeed is
+the fire that a small spark may sometimes kindle. Two
+small dead branches rubbing together as the wind blows
+may fire a forest, and cause a conflagration that shall
+sweep from end to end of a continent.</p>
+<p>It was a hundred years ago, and forty years to that; the
+head of the house of Stuart&mdash;Prince Charles Edward,
+whom his enemies called the Pretender&mdash;had not yet set
+foot on Scottish shore, though there were rumours almost
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_16' name='page_16'></a>16</span>
+daily that he had indeed come at last. The Raes were
+cousins of the M'Crimmans; the Raes were head of the
+clan M'Rae, and their country lay to the south of our
+estates. It was an ill-fated day for both clans when one
+morning a stalwart Highlander, flying from glen to glen
+with the fiery cross waving aloft, brought a missive to the
+chief of Coila. The Raes had been summoned to meet
+their prince; the M'Crimman had been <i>solicited</i>. In two
+hours' time the straths were all astir with preparations
+for the march. No boy or man who could carry arms,
+'twixt the ages of sixteen and sixty, but buckled his
+claymore to his side and made ready to leave. Listen to
+the wild shout of the men, the shrill notes of bagpipes,
+the wailing of weeping women and children! Oh, it was
+a stirring time; my Scotch blood leaps in all my veins as
+I think of it even now. Right on our side; might on our
+side! We meant to do or die!</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto; '><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>'Rise! rise! lowland and highland men!</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 1.1037527593819em;'>Bald sire to beardless son, each come and early.</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Rise! rise! mainland and island men,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 1.1037527593819em;'>Belt on your claymores and fight for Prince Charlie.</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 2.94334069168506em;'>Down from the mountain steep&mdash;</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 2.94334069168506em;'>Up from the valley deep&mdash;</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Out from the clachan, the bothy and shieling;</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 2.94334069168506em;'>Bugle and battle-drum,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 2.94334069168506em;'>Bid chief and vassal come,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Loudly our bagpipes the pibroch are pealing.'</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>M'Crimman of Coila that evening met the Raes
+hastening towards the lake.</p>
+<p>'Ah, kinsman,' cried M'Crimman, 'this is indeed a
+glorious day! I have been summoned by letter from the
+royal hands of our bold young prince himself.'</p>
+<p>'And I, chief of the Raes, have been summoned by
+cross. A letter was none too good for Coila. Strathtoul
+must be content to follow the pibroch and drum.'</p>
+<p>'It was an oversight. My brother must neither fret
+nor fume. If our prince but asked me, I'd fight in the
+ranks for him, and carry musket or pike or pistol.'</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_18' name='page_18'></a>18</span>
+<a name='linki_3' id='linki_3'></a>
+<img src='images/illus017.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 350px; height: 509px;' /><br />
+</div>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_19' name='page_19'></a>19</span></div>
+<p>'It's good being you, with your letter and all that.
+Kinsman though you be, I'd have you know, and I'd have
+our prince understand, that the Raes and Crimmans are
+one and the same family, and equal where they stand
+or fall.'</p>
+<p>'Of that,' said the proud Coila, drawing himself up and
+lowering his brows, 'our prince is the best judge.'</p>
+<p>'These are pretty airs to give yourself, M'Crimman!
+One would think your claymore drank blood every
+morning!'</p>
+<p>'Brother,' said M'Crimman, 'do not let us quarrel. I
+have orders to see your people on the march. They are
+to come with us. I must do my duty.'</p>
+<p>'Never!' shouted Rae. 'Never shall my clan obey
+your commands!'</p>
+<p>'You refuse to fight for Charlie?'</p>
+<p>'Under your banner&mdash;yes!'</p>
+<p>'Then draw, dog! Were you ten times more closely
+related to me, you should eat your words or drown them
+in your blood!'</p>
+<p>Half an hour afterwards the M'Crimmans were on the
+march southwards, their bold young chief at their head,
+banners streaming and pibroch ringing! but, alas! their
+kinsman Rae lay stark and stiff on the bare hillside.</p>
+<p>There and then was established the feud that lasted so
+long and so bitterly. Surrounded by her vassals and
+retainers, loud in their wailing for their departed chief, the
+widowed wife had thrown herself on the body of her
+husband in a paroxysm of wild, uncontrollable grief.</p>
+<p>But nought could restore life and animation to that
+lowly form. The dead chief lay on his back, with face
+up-turned to the sky's blue, which his eyes seemed to
+pierce. His bonnet had fallen off, his long yellow hair
+floated on the grass, his hand yet grasped the great
+claymore, but his tartans were dyed with blood.</p>
+<p>Then a brother of the Rae approached and led the
+weeping woman gently away. Almost immediately the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_20' name='page_20'></a>20</span>
+warriors gathered and knelt around the corpse and swore
+the terrible feud&mdash;swore eternal enmity to the house of
+Coila&mdash;'to fight the clan wherever found, to wrestle, to
+rackle and rive with them, and never to make peace</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto; '><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>'While there's leaf on the forest</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 1.1037527593819em;'>Or foam on the river.'</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>We all know the story of Prince Charlie's expedition,
+and how, after victories innumerable, all was lost to his
+cause through disunions in his own camps; how his sun
+went down on the red field of Culloden Moor; how true
+and steadfast, even after defeat, the peasant Highlanders
+were to their chief; and how the glens and straths were
+devastated by fire and sword; and how the streams ran
+red with the innocent blood of old men and children, spilled
+by the brutal soldiery of the ruthless duke.</p>
+<p>The M'Crimmans lost their estates. The Raes had
+never fought for Charlie. Their glen was spared, but the
+hopes of M'Rae&mdash;the young chief&mdash;were blighted, for
+after years of exile the M'Crimman was pardoned, and
+fires were once more lit in the halls of Castle Coila.</p>
+<p>Long years went by, many of the Raes went abroad to
+fight in foreign lands wherever good swords were needed
+and lusty arms to wield them withal; but those who
+remained in or near Strathtoul still kept up the feud with
+as great fierceness as though it had been sworn but
+yesterday.</p>
+<p>Towards the beginning of the present century, however,
+a strange thing happened. A young officer of French
+dragoons came to reside for a time in Glen Coila. His
+name was Le Roi. Though of Scotch extraction, he had
+never been before to our country. Now hospitality is part
+and parcel of the religion of Scotland; it is not surprising,
+therefore, that this young son of the sword should have been
+received with open arms at Coila, nor that, dashing, handsome,
+and brave himself, he should have fallen in love with
+the winsome daughter of the then chief of the M'Crimmans.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_21' name='page_21'></a>21</span>
+When he sought to make her his bride explanations were
+necessary. It was no uncommon thing in those days for
+good Scotch families to permit themselves to be allied
+with France; but there must be rank on both sides. Had
+a thunderbolt burst in Castle Coila then it could have
+caused no greater commotion than did the fact when it
+came to light that Le Roi was a direct descendant of the
+chief of the Raes. Alas! for the young lovers now. Le
+Roi in silence and sorrow ate his last meal at Castle Coila.
+Hospitality had never been shown more liberally than it
+was that night, but ere the break of day Le Roi had gone&mdash;never
+to return to the glen <i>in propriâ personâ</i>. Whether
+or not an aged harper who visited the castle a month
+thereafter was Le Roi in disguise may never be known;
+but this, at least, is fact&mdash;that same night the chief's
+daughter was spirited away and seen no more in Coila.</p>
+<p>There was talk, however, of a marriage having been
+solemnized by torchlight, in the little Catholic chapel at
+the foot of the glen, but of this we will hear more anon,
+for thereby hangs a tale.</p>
+<p>In course of time Coila presented the sad spectacle of a
+house without a head. Who should now be heir? The
+Scottish will of former chiefs notified that in event of such
+an occurrence the estates should pass 'to the nearest heirs
+whatever.'</p>
+<p>But was there no heir of direct descent? For a time it
+seemed there would be or really was. To wit, a son of Le
+Roi, the officer who had wedded into the house of
+M'Crimman.</p>
+<p>Now our family was brother-family to the M'Crimmans.
+M'Crimmans we were ourselves, and Celtic to the last drop
+of blood in our veins.</p>
+<p>Our claim to the estate was but feebly disputed by the
+French Rae's son. His father and mother had years ago
+crossed the bourne from which no traveller ever returns,
+and he himself was not young. The little church or chapel
+in which the marriage had been celebrated was a ruin&mdash;it
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_22' name='page_22'></a>22</span>
+had been burned to the ground, whether as part price of
+the terrible feud or not, no one could say; the priest was
+dead, or gone none knew whither; and old Mawsie, a
+beldame, lived in the cottage that had once been the
+Catholic manse.</p>
+<p>Those were wild and strange times altogether in this
+part of the Scottish Highlands, and law was oftentimes the
+property of might rather than right.</p>
+<p>At the time, then, our story really opens, my father had
+lived in the castle and ruled in the glens for many a long
+year. I was the first-born, next came Donald, then Dugald,
+and last of all our one sister Flora.</p>
+<p>What a happy life was ours in Glen Coila, till the cloud
+arose on our horizon, which, gathering force amain, burst
+in storm at last over our devoted heads!</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='II_OUR_BOYHOODS_LIFE' id='II_OUR_BOYHOODS_LIFE'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_23' name='page_23'></a>23</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+<h3>OUR BOYHOOD'S LIFE.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>On our boyhood's life&mdash;that, I mean, of my brothers and
+myself&mdash;I must dwell no longer than the interest of
+our strange story demands, for our chapters must soon be
+filled with the relation of events and adventures far more
+stirring than anything that happened at home in our day.</p>
+<p>And yet no truer words were ever spoken than these&mdash;'the
+boy is father of the man.' The glorious battle of
+Waterloo&mdash;Wellington himself told us&mdash;was won in the
+cricket field at home. And in like manner our greatest
+pioneers of civilisation, our most successful emigrants,
+men who have often literally to lash the rifle to the
+plough stilts, as they cultivate and reclaim the land of the
+savage, have been made and manufactured, so to speak,
+in the green valleys of old England, and on the hills and
+moors of bonnie Scotland.</p>
+<p>Probably the new M'Crimman of Coila, as my father
+was called on the lake side and in the glens, had mingled
+more, far more, in life than any chief who had ever reigned
+before him. He would not have been averse to drawing
+the sword in his country's cause, had it been necessary,
+but my brothers and I were born in peaceful times, shortly
+after the close of the war with Russia. No, my father
+could have drawn the claymore, but he could also use the
+ploughshare&mdash;and did.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_24' name='page_24'></a>24</span></p>
+<p>There were at first grumblers in the clans, who lamented
+the advent of anything that they were pleased to call
+new-fangled. Men there were who wished to live as their
+forefathers had done in the 'good old times'&mdash;cultivate
+only the tops of the 'rigs,' pasture the sheep and cattle
+on the upland moors, and live on milk and meal, and the
+fish from the lake, with an occasional hare, rabbit, or bird
+when Heaven thought fit to send it.</p>
+<p>They were not prepared for my father's sweeping innovations.
+They stared in astonishment to see the bare
+hillsides planted with sheltering spruce and pine trees; to
+see moss and morass turned inside out, drained and made
+to yield crops of waving grain, where all was moving bog
+before; to see comfortable cottages spring up here and
+there, with real stone walls and smiling gardens front
+and rear, in place of the turf and tree shielings of
+bygone days; and to see a new school-house, where
+English&mdash;real English&mdash;was spoken and taught, pour forth
+a hundred happy children almost every weekday all the
+year round.</p>
+<p>This was 'tempting Providence, and no good could come
+of it;' so spoke the grumblers, and they wondered indeed
+that the old warlike chiefs of M'Crimman did not turn
+in their graves. But even the grumblers got fewer and
+further between, and at last long peace and plenty reigned
+contentedly hand in hand from end to end of Glen Coila,
+and all around the loch that was at once the beauty and
+pride of our estate.</p>
+<p>Improvements were not confined to the crofters'
+holdings; they extended to the castle farm and to the
+castle itself. Nothing that was old about the latter was
+swept away, but much that was new sprang up, and rooms
+long untenanted were now restored.</p>
+<p>A very ancient and beautiful castle was that of Coila,
+with its one huge massive tower, and its dark frowning
+embattled walls. It could be seen from far and near, for
+even the loch itself was high above the level of the sea.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_25' name='page_25'></a>25</span>
+I speak of it, be it observed, in the past tense, solely
+because I am writing of the past&mdash;of happy days for ever
+fled. The castle is still as beautiful&mdash;nay, even more so,
+for my aunt's good taste has completed the improvements
+my father began.</p>
+<p>I do not think any one could have come in contact with
+father, as I remember him during our early days at Coila,
+without loving and respecting him. He was our hero&mdash;my
+brothers' and mine&mdash;so tall, so noble-looking, so
+handsome, whether ranging over the heather in autumn
+with his gun on his shoulder, or labouring with a hoe or
+rake in hand in garden or meadow.</p>
+<p>Does it surprise any one to know that even a Highland
+chieftain, descended from a long line of warriors, could
+handle a hoe as deftly as a claymore? I grant he may
+have been the first who ever did so from choice, but was
+he demeaned thereby? Assuredly not; and work in the
+fields never went half so cheerfully on as when father and
+we boys were in the midst of the servants. Our tutor
+was a young clergyman, and he, too, used to throw off his
+black coat and join us.</p>
+<p>At such times it would have done the heart of a cynic
+good to have been there; song and joke and hearty laugh
+followed in such quick succession that it seemed more like
+working for fun than anything else.</p>
+<p>And our triumph of triumphs was invariably consummated
+at the end of harvest, for then a supper was given
+to the tenants and servants. This supper took place in
+the great hall of the castle&mdash;the hall that in ancient days
+had witnessed many a warlike meeting and Bacchanalian
+feast.</p>
+<p>Before a single invitation was made out for this event
+of the season every sheaf and stook had to be stored and
+the stubble raked, every rick in the home barn-yards had
+to be thatched and tidied; 'whorls' of turnips had to be
+got up and put in pits for the cattle, and even a considerable
+portion of the ploughing done.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_26' name='page_26'></a>26</span></p>
+<p>'Boys,' my father would say then, pointing with pride
+to his lordly stacks of grain and hay, 'Boys,</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto; '><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 2.94334069168506em;'>'"Peace hath her victories,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>No less renowned than war."</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>And now,' he would add, 'go and help your tutor to write
+out the invitations.'</p>
+<p>So kindly-hearted was father that he would even have
+extended the right hand of peace and fellowship to the
+Raes of Strathtoul. The head of this house, however,
+was too proud; yet his pride was of a different kind from
+father's. It was of the stand-aloof kind. It was even
+rumoured that Le Roi, or Rae, had said at a dinner-party
+that my good, dear father brought disgrace on the
+warlike name of M'Crimman because he mingled with his
+servants in the field, and took a very personal interest in
+the welfare of his crofter tenantry.</p>
+<p>But my father had different views of life from this
+semi-French Rae of Strathtoul. He appreciated the
+benefits and upheld the dignity, and even sanctity, of
+honest labour. Had he lived in the days of Ancient
+Greece, he might have built a shrine to Labour, and
+elevated it to the rank of goddess. Only my father
+was no heathen, but a plain, God-fearing man, who loved,
+or tried to love, his neighbour as himself.</p>
+<p>If our father was a hero to us boys, not less so was he
+to our darling mother, and to little Sister Flora as well.
+So it may be truthfully said that we were a happy family.
+The time sped by, the years flew on without, apparently,
+ever a bit of change from one Christmas Day to another.
+Mr. Townley, our tutor, seemed to have little ambition to
+'better himself,' as it is termed. When challenged one
+morning at breakfast with his want of desire to push,</p>
+<p>'Oh,' said Townley, 'I'm only a young man yet, and
+really I do not wish to be any happier than I am. It
+will be a grief to me when the boys grow older and go
+out into the world and need me no more.'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_27' name='page_27'></a>27</span></p>
+<p>Mr. Townley was a strict and careful teacher, but by no
+means a hard taskmaster. Indoors during school hours he
+was the pedagogue all over. He carried etiquette even to
+the extent of wearing cap and gown, but these were
+thrown off with scholastic duties; he was then&mdash;out of
+doors&mdash;as jolly as a schoolboy going to play at his first
+cricket-match.</p>
+<p>In the field father was our teacher. He taught us, and
+the 'grieve,' or bailiff, taught us everything one needs to
+know about a farm. Not in headwork alone. No; for,
+young as we were at this time, my brothers and I could
+wield axe, scythe, hoe, and rake.</p>
+<p>We were Highland boys all over, in mind and body,
+blood and bone. I&mdash;Murdoch&mdash;was fifteen when the
+cloud gathered that finally changed our fortunes. Donald
+and Dugald were respectively fourteen and thirteen, and
+Sister Flora was eleven.</p>
+<p>Big for our years we all were, and I do not think there
+was anything on dry land, or on the water either, that we
+feared. Mr. Townley used very often to accompany us to
+the hills, to the river and lake, but not invariably. We
+dearly loved our tutor. What a wonderful piece of
+muscularity and good-nature he was, to be sure, as I
+remember him! Of both his muscularity and good-nature
+I am afraid we often took advantage. Flora invariably
+did, for out on the hills she would turn to him with the
+utmost <i>sang-froid</i>, saying, 'Townley, I'm tired; take me
+on your back.' And for miles Townley would trudge along
+with her, feeling her weight no more than if she had been
+a moth that had got on his shoulders by accident. There
+was no tiring Townley.</p>
+<p>To look at our tutor's fair young face, one would never
+have given him the credit of possessing a deal of romance,
+or believed it possible that he could have harboured any
+feeling akin to love. But he did. Now this is a story of
+stirring adventure and of struggle, and not a love tale; so
+the truth may be as well told in this place as further
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_28' name='page_28'></a>28</span>
+on&mdash;Townley loved my aunt. It should be remembered that
+at this time she was young, but little over twenty, and
+in every way she was worthy to be the heroine of a
+story.</p>
+<p>Townley, however, was no fool. Although he was
+admitted to the companionship of every member of our
+family, and treated in every respect as an equal, he could
+not forget that there was a great gulf fixed between the
+humble tutor and the youngest sister of the chief of the
+M'Crimmans. If he loved, he kept the secret bound up
+in his own breast, content to live and be near the object
+of his adoration. Perhaps this hopeless passion of
+Townley's had much to do with the formation of his
+history.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>Those dear old days of boyhood! Even as they were
+passing away we used to wish they would last for ever.
+Surely that is proof positive that we were very happy,
+for is it not common for boys to wish they were men?
+We never did.</p>
+<p>For we had everything we could desire to make our
+little lives a pleasure long drawn out. Boys who were
+born in towns&mdash;and we knew many of these, and invited
+them occasionally to visit us at our Highland home&mdash;we
+used to pity from the bottom of our hearts. How little
+they knew about country sports and country life!</p>
+<p>One part of our education alone was left to our darling
+mother&mdash;namely, Bible history. Oh, how delightful it
+used to be to listen to her voice as, seated by our bedside
+in the summer evenings, she told us tales from the Book
+of Books! Then she would pray with us, for us, and for
+father; and sweet and soft was the slumber that soon
+visited our pillows.</p>
+<p>Looking back now to those dear old days, I cannot help
+thinking that the practice of religion as carried on in our
+house was more Puritanical in its character than any I
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_29' name='page_29'></a>29</span>
+have seen elsewhere. The Sabbath was a day of such
+solemn rest that one lived as it were in a dream. No
+food was cooked; even the tables in breakfast-room and
+dining-hall were laid on Saturday; no horse left the
+stables, the servants dressed in their sombrest and best,
+moved about on tiptoe, and talked in whispers. We
+children were taught to consider it sinful even to think
+our own thoughts on this holy day. If we boys ever
+forgot ourselves so far as to speak of things secular, there
+was Flora to lift a warning finger and with terrible
+earnestness remind us that this was God's day.</p>
+<p>From early morn to dewy eve all throughout the
+Sabbath we felt as if our footsteps were on the boundaries
+of another world&mdash;that kind, loving angels were near
+watching all our doings.</p>
+<p>I am drawing a true picture of Sunday life in many a
+Scottish family, but I would not have my readers mistake
+me. Let me say, then, that ours was not a religion of
+fear so much as of love. To grieve or vex the great Good
+Being who made us and gave us so much to be thankful
+for would have been a crime which would have brought
+its own punishment by the sorrow and repentance created
+in our hearts.</p>
+<p>Just one other thing I must mention, because it has
+a bearing on events to be related in the next chapter.
+We were taught then never to forget that a day of
+reckoning was before us all, that after death should
+come the judgment. But mother's prayers and our
+religion brought us only the most unalloyed happiness.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='III_A_TERRIBLE_RIDE' id='III_A_TERRIBLE_RIDE'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_30' name='page_30'></a>30</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+<h3>A TERRIBLE RIDE.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>I have but to gaze from the window of the tower in
+which I am writing to see a whole fieldful of the
+daftest-looking long-tailed, long-maned ponies imaginable.
+These are the celebrated Castle Coila ponies, as full of
+mischief, fun, and fire as any British boy could wish, most
+difficult to catch, more difficult still to saddle, and requiring
+all the skill of a trained equestrian to manage after mounting.
+As these ponies are to-day, so they were when I was a
+boy. The very boys whom I mentioned in the last chapter
+would have gone anywhere and done anything rather than
+attempt to ride a Coila pony. Not that they ever refused,
+they were too courageous for that. But when Gilmore led a
+pony round, I know it needed all the pluck they could
+muster to put foot in stirrup. Flora's advice to them was
+not bad.</p>
+<p>'There is plenty of room on the moors, boys,' she would
+say, laughing; and Flora always brought out the word
+'boys' with an air of patronage and self-superiority that
+was quite refreshing. 'Plenty of room on the moors, so
+you keep the ponies hard at the gallop, till they are quite
+tired. Mind, don't let them trot. If you do, they will lie
+down and tumble.'</p>
+<p>Poor Archie Bateman! I shall never forget his first wild
+scamper over the moorland. He would persist in riding in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_31' name='page_31'></a>31</span>
+his best London clothes, spotless broad white collar, shining
+silk hat, gloves, and all. Before mounting he even bent
+down to flick a little tiny bit of dust off his boots.</p>
+<p>The ponies were fresh that morning. In fact, the word
+'fresh' hardly describes the feeling of buoyancy they gave
+proof of. For a time it was as difficult to mount one as it
+would be for a fly to alight on a top at full spin. We took
+them to the paddock, where the grass and moss were soft.
+Donald, Dugald, and I held Flora's fiery steed <i>vi et armis</i>
+till she got into the saddle.</p>
+<p>'Mind to keep them at it, boys,' were her last words, as
+she flew out and away through the open gateway. Then
+we prepared to follow. Donald, Dugald, and I were used
+to tumbles, and for five minutes or more we amused ourselves
+by getting up only to get off again. But we were
+not hurt. Finally we mounted Archie. His brother was
+not going out that morning, and I do believe to this day
+that Archie hoped to curry favour with Flora by a little
+display of horsemanship, for he had been talking a deal to
+her the evening before of the delights of riding in London.</p>
+<p>At all events, if he had meant to create a sensation he
+succeeded admirably, though at the expense of a portion of
+his dignity.</p>
+<p>No sooner was he mounted than off he rode. Stay,
+though, I should rather say that no sooner did we mount
+him than off he was carried. That is a way of putting it
+which is more in accordance with facts, for we&mdash;Donald,
+Dugald, and I&mdash;mounted him, and the pony did the rest,
+he, Archie, being legally speaking <i>nolens volens</i>. When
+my brothers and I emerged at last, we could just distinguish
+Flora waiting on the horizon of a braeland, her figure
+well thrown out against the sky, her pony curveting round
+and round, which was Flora's pet pony's way of keeping
+still. Away at a tangent from the proper line of march,
+Archie on his steed was being rapidly whirled. As soon as
+we came within sight of our sister, we observed her making
+signs in Archie's direction and concluded to follow.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_32' name='page_32'></a>32</span>
+Having duly signalled her wishes, Flora disappeared over the
+brow of the hill. Her intention was, we afterwards found
+out, to take a cross-cut and intercept, if possible, the mad
+career of Archie's Coila steed.</p>
+<p>'Hurry up, Donald,' I shouted to my nearest brother;
+'that pony is mad. It is making straight for the cliffs of
+Craigiemore.'</p>
+<p>On we went at furious speed. It was in reality, or
+appeared to be, a race for life; but should we win? The
+terrible cliffs for which Archie's pony was heading away
+were perpendicular bluffs that rose from a dark slimy morass
+near the lake. Fifty feet high they were at the lowest,
+and pointed unmistakably to some terrible convulsion of
+Nature in ages long gone by. They looked like hills that
+had been sawn in half&mdash;one half taken, the other left.</p>
+<p>Our ponies were gaining on Archie's. The boy had given
+his its head, but it was evident he was now aware of his
+danger and was trying to rein in. Trying, but trying in
+vain. The pony was in command of the situation.</p>
+<p>On&mdash;on&mdash;on they rush. I can feel my heart beating
+wildly against my ribs as we all come nigher and nigher to
+the cliffs. Donald's pony and Dugald's both overtake me.
+Their saddles are empty. My brothers have both been
+unhorsed. I think not of that, all my attention is bent
+on the rider ahead. If he could but turn his pony's head
+even now, he would be saved. But no, it is impossible.
+They are on the cliff. There! they are over it, and a wild
+scream of terror seems to rend the skies and turn my blood
+to water.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_33' name='page_33'></a>33</span>
+<a name='linki_4' id='linki_4'></a>
+<img src='images/illus032.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 609px; height: 400px;' /><br />
+</div>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_35' name='page_35'></a>35</span></div>
+<p>But lo! I, too, am now in danger. My pony has the bit
+fast between his teeth. He means to play at an awful game&mdash;follow
+my leader! I feel dizzy; I have forgotten that
+I might fling myself off even at the risk of broken bones.
+I am close to the cliff&mdash;I&mdash;hurrah! I am saved! Saved
+at the very moment when it seemed nothing could save me,
+for dear Flora has dashed in front of me&mdash;has cut across
+my bows, as sailors would say, striking my pony with all
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_36' name='page_36'></a>36</span>
+the strength of her arm as she is borne along. Saved, yes,
+but both on the ground. I extricate myself and get up.
+Our ponies are all panting; they appear now to realize the
+fearfulness of the danger, and stand together cowed and
+quiet. Poor Flora is very pale, and blood is trickling from
+a wound in her temple, while her habit is torn and soiled.
+We have little time to notice this; we must ride round and
+look for the body of poor Archie.</p>
+<p>It was a ride of a good mile to reach the cliff foot, but
+it took us but a very short time to get round, albeit the
+road was rough and dangerous. We had taken our bearings
+aright, but for a time we could see no signs of those we
+had come to seek. But presently with her riding-whip
+Flora pointed to a deep black hole in the slimy bog.</p>
+<p>'They are there!' she cried; then burst into a flood of
+tears.</p>
+<p>We did the best we could to comfort our little sister, and
+were all returning slowly, leading our steeds along the
+cliff foot, when I stumbled against something lying behind
+a tussock of grass.</p>
+<p>The something moved and spoke when I bent down. It
+was poor Archie, who had escaped from the morass as if by
+a miracle.</p>
+<p>A little stream was near; it trickled in a half-cataract
+down the cliffs. Donald and Dugald hurried away to this
+and brought back Highland bonnetfuls of water. Then we
+washed Archie's face and made him drink. How we rejoiced
+to see him smile again! I believe the London
+accent of his voice was at that moment the sweetest music
+to Flora she had ever heard in her life.</p>
+<p>'What a pwepostewous tumble I've had! How vewy,
+<i>vewy</i> stoopid of me to be wun away with!'</p>
+<p>Poor Flora laughed one moment at her cousin and cried
+the next, so full was her heart. But presently she proved
+herself quite a little woman.</p>
+<p>'I'll ride on to the castle,' she said, 'and get dry things
+ready. You'd better go to bed, Archie, when you come
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_37' name='page_37'></a>37</span>
+home; you are not like a Highland boy, you know. Oh,
+I'm so glad you're alive! But&mdash;ha, ha, ha! excuse me&mdash;but
+you do look <i>so</i> funny!' and away she rode.</p>
+<p>We mounted Archie on Dugald's nag and rode straight
+away to the lake. Here we tied our ponies to the birch-trees,
+and, undressing, plunged in for a swim. When we
+came out we arranged matters thus: Dugald gave Archie
+his shirt, Donald gave him a pair of stockings, and I gave
+him a cap and my jacket, which was long enough to reach
+his knees. We tied the wet things, after washing the slime
+off, all in a bundle, and away the procession went to Coila.
+Everybody turned out to witness our home-coming. Well,
+we did look rather motley, but&mdash;Archie was saved.</p>
+<p>My own adventures, however, had not ended yet. Neither
+my brothers nor Flora cared to go out again that day,
+so in the afternoon I shouldered my fishing rod and went
+off to enjoy a quiet hour's sport.</p>
+<p>What took my footsteps towards the stream that made
+its exit from the loch, and went meandering down the
+glen, I never could tell. It was no favourite stream of
+mine, for though it contained plenty of trout, it passed
+through many woods and dark, gloomy defiles, with here
+and there a waterfall, and was on the whole so overhung
+with branches that there was difficulty in making a cast.
+I was far more successful than I expected to be, however,
+and the day wore so quickly away that on looking up I was
+surprised to find that the sun had set, and I must be quite
+seven miles from home. What did that matter? there
+would be a moon! I had Highland legs and a Highland
+heart, and knew all the cross-cuts in the country side. I
+would try for that big trout that had just leapt up to catch
+a moth. It took me half an hour to hook it. But I did,
+and after some pretty play I had the satisfaction of landing
+a lovely three-pounder. I now reeled up, put my rod in
+its canvas case, and prepared to make the best of my way
+to the castle.</p>
+<p>It was nearly an hour since the sun had gone down like
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_38' name='page_38'></a>38</span>
+a huge crimson ball in the west, and now slowly over the
+hills a veritable facsimile of it was rising, and soon the
+stars came out as gloaming gave place to night, and
+moonlight flooded all the woods and glen.</p>
+<p>The scene around me was lovely, but lonesome in the
+extreme, for there was not a house anywhere near, nor a
+sound to break the stillness except now and then the
+eerisome cry of the brown owl that flitted silently past
+overhead. Had I been very timid I could have imagined
+that figures were creeping here and there in the flickering
+shadows of the trees, or that ghosts and bogles had come
+out to keep me company. My nearest way home would
+be to cross a bit of heathery moor and pass by the
+neglected graveyard and ruined Catholic chapel; and,
+worse than all, the ancient manse where lived old
+Mawsie.</p>
+<p>I never believed that Mawsie was a witch, though
+others did. She was said to creep about on moonlight
+nights like a dry aisk,<a name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> so people said, 'mooling' among
+heaps of rubbish and the mounds over the graves as she
+gathered herbs to concoct strange mixtures withal. Certainly
+Mawsie was no beauty; she walked 'two-fold,'
+leaning on a crutch; she was gray-bearded, wrinkled beyond
+conception; her head was swathed winter and
+summer in wraps of flannel, and altogether she looked
+uncanny. Nevertheless, the peasant people never hesitated
+to visit her to beg for herb-tea and oil to rub their
+joints. But they always chose the daylight in which to
+make their calls.</p>
+<p>'Perhaps,' I thought, 'I'd better go round.' Then
+something whispered to me, 'What! you a M'Crimman,
+and confessing to fear!'</p>
+<p>That decided me, and I went boldly on. For the life of
+me, however, I could not keep from mentally repeating
+those weird and awful lines in Burns' 'Tam o' Shanter,'
+descriptive of the hero's journey homewards on that
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_39' name='page_39'></a>39</span>
+unhallowed and awful night when he forgathered with
+the witches:</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto; '><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>'By this time he was 'cross the ford</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Whare in the snaw the chapman smo'red;<a name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>And past the birks<a name="FNanchor_3" id="FNanchor_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> and meikle stane</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Whare drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane;</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>And through the furze and by the cairn</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Where hunters found the murdered bairn,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>And near the thorn, aboon the well,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Where Mungo's mither hanged hersel',</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>When glimmering through the groaning trees,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Kirk Alloway seemed in a bleeze.'</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>I almost shuddered as I said to myself, 'What if there
+be lights glimmering from the frameless windows of the
+ruined chapel? or what if old Mawsie's windows be "in a
+bleeze"?'</p>
+<p>Tall, ghostly-looking elder-trees grew round the old
+manse, which people had told me always kept moving,
+even when no breath of wind was blowing.</p>
+<p>If I had shuddered before, my heart stood still now with
+a nameless dread, for sure enough, from both the 'butt'
+and the 'ben' of the so-called witch's cottage lights were
+glancing.</p>
+<p>What could it mean? She was too old to have company,
+almost an invalid, with age alone and its attendant
+infirmities&mdash;so, at least, people said. But it had also been
+rumoured lately that Mawsie was up to doings which
+were far from canny, that lights had been seen flitting
+about the old churchyard and ruin, and that something
+was sure to happen. Nobody in the parish could have
+been found hardy enough to cross the glen-foot where
+Mawsie lived long after dark. Well, had I thought of all
+this before, it is possible that I might have given her
+house a wide berth. It was now too late. I felt like one
+in a dream, impelled forward towards the cottage. I
+seemed to be walking on the air as I advanced.</p>
+<p>To get to the windows, however, I must cross the graveyard
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_40' name='page_40'></a>40</span>
+yard and the ruin. This last was partly covered with tall
+rank ivy, and, hearing sounds inside, and seeing the
+glimmer of lanterns, I hid in the old porch, quite shaded
+by the greenery.</p>
+<p>From my concealment I could notice that men were at
+work in a vault or pit on the floor of the old chapel, from
+which earth and rubbish were being dislodged, while
+another figure&mdash;not that of a workman&mdash;was bending
+over and addressing them in English. It was evident,
+therefore, those people below were not Highlanders, for in
+the face of the man who spoke I was able at a glance to
+distinguish the hard-set lineaments of the villain Duncan
+M'Rae. This man had been everything in his time&mdash;soldier,
+school-teacher, poacher, thief. He was abhorred
+by his own clan, and feared by every one. Even the school
+children, if they met him on the road, would run back to
+avoid him.</p>
+<p>Duncan had only recently come back to the glen after
+an absence of years, and every one said his presence boded
+no good. I shuddered as I gazed, almost spellbound, on
+his evil countenance, rendered doubly ugly in the uncertain
+light of the lantern. Suppose he should find me! I crept
+closer into my corner now, and tried to draw the ivy round
+me. I dared not run, for fear of being seen, for the moonlight
+was very bright indeed, and M'Rae held a gun in his
+hand.</p>
+<p>After a time, which appeared to be interminable, I
+heard Duncan invite the men into supper, and slowly they
+clambered up out of the pit, and the three prepared to
+leave together.</p>
+<p>All might have been well now, for they passed me without
+even a glance in my direction; but presently I heard
+one of the men stumble.</p>
+<p>'Hullo!' he said; 'is this basket of fish yours, Mr.
+Mac?'</p>
+<p>'No,' was the answer, with an imprecation that made me
+quake. 'We are watched!'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_41' name='page_41'></a>41</span></p>
+<p>In another moment I was dragged from my place of
+concealment, and the light was held up to my face.</p>
+<p>'A M'Crimman of Coila, by all that is furious! And
+so, youngster, you've come to watch? You know the
+family feud, don't you? Well, prepare to meet your doom.
+You'll never leave here alive.'</p>
+<p>He pointed his gun at me as he spoke.</p>
+<p>'Hold!' cried one of the men. 'We came from town
+to do a bit of honest work, but we will not witness
+murder.'</p>
+<p>'I only wanted to frighten him,' said M'Rae, lowering
+his gun. 'Look you, sir,' he continued, addressing me
+once more, 'I don't want revenge, even on a M'Crimman
+of Coila. I'm a poacher; perhaps I'm a distiller in a quiet
+way. No matter, you know what an oath is. You'll
+swear ere you leave here, not to breathe a word of what
+you've seen. You hear?'</p>
+<p>'I promise I won't,' I faltered.</p>
+<p>He handled his fowling-piece threateningly once again.
+Verily, he had just then a terribly evil look.</p>
+<p>'I swear,' I said, with trembling lips.</p>
+<p>His gun was again lowered. He seemed to breathe
+more freely&mdash;less fiercely.</p>
+<p>'Go, now,' he said, pointing across the moor. 'If a poor
+man like myself wants to hide either his game or his
+private still, what odds is it to a M'Crimman of Coila?'</p>
+<p>How I got home I never knew. I remember that evening
+being in our front drawing-room with what seemed a
+sea of anxious faces round me, some of which were bathed
+in tears. Then all was a long blank, interspersed with
+fearful dreams.</p>
+<p>It was weeks before I recovered consciousness. I was
+then lying in bed. In at the open window was wafted
+the odour of flowers, for it was a summer's evening, and
+outside were the green whispering trees. Townley sat
+beside the bed, book in hand, and almost started when I
+spoke.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_5' id='linki_5'></a>
+<img src='images/illus040.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 608px; height: 374px;' /><br />
+</div>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_43' name='page_43'></a>43</span></div>
+<p>'Mr. Townley!'</p>
+<p>'Yes, dear boy.'</p>
+<p>'Have I been long ill?'</p>
+<p>'For weeks&mdash;four, I think. How glad I am you are
+better! But you must keep very, <i>very</i> quiet. I shall go
+and bring your mother now, and Flora.'</p>
+<p>I put out my thin hand and detained him.</p>
+<p>'Tell me, Mr. Townley,' I said, 'have I spoken much in
+my sleep, for I have been dreaming such foolish dreams?'</p>
+<p>Townley looked at me long and earnestly. He seemed
+to look me through and through. Then he replied slowly,
+almost solemnly,</p>
+<p>'Yes, dear boy, you have spoken <i>much</i>.'</p>
+<p>I closed my eyes languidly. For now I knew that
+Townley was aware of more than ever I should have dared
+to reveal.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_44' name='page_44'></a>44</span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 10%; border:none; border-bottom:1px solid black; clear:both; margin: 2em auto 1em 0' />
+
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_1' id='Footnote_1'></a><a href='#FNanchor_1'><span class='label'>[1]</span></a>
+<p style='font-size: small'>Triton.</p></div>
+
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_2' id='Footnote_2'></a><a href='#FNanchor_2'><span class='label'>[2]</span></a>
+<p style='font-size: small'>Smothered.</p></div>
+
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_3' id='Footnote_3'></a><a href='#FNanchor_3'><span class='label'>[3]</span></a>
+<p style='font-size: small'>Birch-trees.</p></div>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='IV_THE_RING_AND_THE_BOOK' id='IV_THE_RING_AND_THE_BOOK'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+<h3>THE RING AND THE BOOK.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>My return to health was a slow though not a painful
+one. My mind, however, was clear, and even before
+I could partake of food I enjoyed hearing sister play to me
+on her harp. Sometimes aunt, too, would play. My
+mother seldom left the room by day, and one of my chief
+delights was her stories from Bible life and tales of Bible
+lands.</p>
+<p>At last I was permitted to get up and recline in fauteuil
+or on sofa.</p>
+<p>'Mother,' I said one day, 'I feel getting stronger, but
+somehow I do not regain spirits. Is there some sorrow in
+your heart, mother, or do I only imagine it?'</p>
+<p>She smiled, but there were tears in her eyes.</p>
+<p>'I'm sure we are all very, <i>very</i> happy, Murdoch, to have
+you getting well again.'</p>
+<p>'And, mother,' I persisted, 'father does not seem easy
+in mind either. He comes in and talks to me, but often I
+think his mind is wandering to other subjects.'</p>
+<p>'Foolish child! nothing could make your father unhappy.
+He does his duty by us all, and his faith is fixed.'</p>
+<p>One day they came and told me that the doctor had
+ordered me away to the seaside. Mother and Flora were
+to come, and one servant; the rest of our family were to
+follow.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_45' name='page_45'></a>45</span></p>
+<p>It was far away south to Rothesay we went, and here,
+my cheeks fanned by the delicious sea-breezes, I soon
+began to grow well and strong again. But the sorrow in
+my mother's face was more marked than ever, though I
+had ceased to refer to it.</p>
+<p>The rooms we had hired were very pleasant, but looked
+very small in comparison with the great halls I had been
+used to.</p>
+<p>Well, on a beautiful afternoon father and my brothers
+arrived, and we all had tea out on the shady lawn, up to
+the very edge of which the waves were lapping and
+lisping.</p>
+<p>I was reclining in a hammock chair, listening to the
+sea's soft, soothing murmur, when father brought his
+camp-stool and sat near me.</p>
+<p>'Murdoch, boy,' he said, taking my hand gently, almost
+tenderly, in his, 'are you strong enough to bear bad
+news?'</p>
+<p>My heart throbbed uneasily, but I replied, bravely
+enough, 'Yes, dear father; yes.'</p>
+<p>'Then,' he said, speaking very slowly, as if to mark the
+effect of every word, 'we are&mdash;never&mdash;to return&mdash;to Castle
+Coila!'</p>
+<p>I was calm now, for, strange to say, the news appeared
+to be no news at all.</p>
+<p>'Well, father,' I answered, cheerfully, 'I can bear that&mdash;I
+could bear anything but separation.'</p>
+<p>I went over and kissed my mother and sister.</p>
+<p>'So this is the cloud that was in your faces, eh? Well,
+the worst is over. I have nothing to do now but get well.
+Father, I feel quite a man.'</p>
+<p>'So do we both feel men,' said Donald and Dugald;
+'and we are all going to work. Won't that be jolly?'</p>
+<p>In a few brief words father then explained our position.
+There had arrived one day, some weeks after the worst
+and most dangerous part of my illness was over, an
+advocate from Aberdeen, in a hired carriage. He had, he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_46' name='page_46'></a>46</span>
+said, a friend with him, who seemed, so he worded it, 'like
+one risen from the dead.'</p>
+<p>His friend was helped down, and into father's private
+room off the hall.</p>
+<p>His friend was the old beldame Mawsie, and a short but
+wonderful story she had to tell, and did tell, the Aberdeen
+advocate sitting quietly by the while with a bland smile on
+his face. She remembered, she said with many a sigh and
+groan, and many a doleful shake of head and hand, the
+marriage of Le Roi the dragoon with the Miss M'Crimman
+of Coila, although but a girl at the time; and she
+remembered, among many other things, that the priest's
+books were hidden for safety in a vault, where he also kept
+all the money he possessed. No one knew of the existence
+of this vault except her, and so on and so forth. So
+voluble did the old lady become that the advocate had to
+apply the <i>clôture</i> at last.</p>
+<p>'It is strange&mdash;if true,' my father had muttered.
+'Why,' he added, 'had the old lady not spoken of this
+before?'</p>
+<p>'Ah, yes, to be sure,' said the Aberdonian. 'Well, that
+also is strange, but easily explained. The shock received
+on the night of the fire at the chapel had deprived the poor
+soul of memory. For years and years this deprivation
+continued, but one day, not long ago, the son of the present
+claimant, and probably rightful heir, to Coila walked into
+her room at the old manse, gun in hand. He had been
+down shooting at Strathtoul, and naturally came across to
+view the ruin so intimately connected with his father's fate
+and fortune. No sooner had he appeared than the good
+old dame rushed towards him, calling him by his
+grandfather's name. Her memory had returned as
+suddenly as it had gone. She had even told him of the
+vault. 'Perhaps,' continued he, with a meaning smile,</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto; '><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>'"'Tis the sunset of life gives her mystical lore,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>And coming events cast their shadow before."'</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_47' name='page_47'></a>47</span></div>
+<p>A fortnight after this visit a meeting of those concerned
+took place at the beldame's house. She herself pointed to
+the place where she thought the vault lay, and with all
+due legal formality digging was commenced, and the place
+was found not far off. At first glance the vault seemed
+empty. In one corner, however, was found, covered lightly
+over with withered ferns, many bottles of wine and&mdash;a box.
+The two men of law, Le Roi's solicitor and M'Crimman's,
+had a little laugh all to themselves over the wine. Legal
+men will laugh at anything.</p>
+<p>'The priest must have kept a good cellar on the sly,'
+one said.</p>
+<p>'That is evident,' replied the other.</p>
+<p>The box was opened with some little difficulty. In it
+was a book&mdash;an old Latin Bible. But something else was
+in it too. Townley was the first to note it. Only a silver
+ring such as sailors wear&mdash;a ring with a little heart-shaped
+ruby stone in it. Book and ring were now sealed up in
+the box, and next day despatched to Edinburgh with all
+due formality. The best legal authorities the Scotch
+metropolis could boast of were consulted on both sides, but
+fate for once was against the M'Crimmans of Coila. The
+book told its tale. Half-carelessly written on fly-leaves,
+but each duly dated and signed by Stewart, the priest, were
+notes concerning many marriages, Le Roi's among the
+rest.</p>
+<p>Even M'Crimman himself confessed that he was satisfied&mdash;as
+was every one else save Townley.</p>
+<p>'The book has told one tale&mdash;or rather its binding has,'
+said Townley; 'but the ring may yet tell another.'</p>
+<p>All this my father related to me that evening as we sat
+together on the lawn by the beach of Rothesay.</p>
+<p>When he had finished I sat silently gazing seawards, but
+spoke not. My brothers told me afterwards that I looked
+as if turned to stone. And, indeed, indeed, my heart felt
+so. When father first told me we should go back no more
+to Coila I felt almost happy that the bad news was no
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_48' name='page_48'></a>48</span>
+worse; but now that explanations had followed, my
+perplexity was extreme.</p>
+<p>One thing was sure and certain&mdash;there was a conspiracy,
+and the events of that terrible night at the ruin had to do
+with it. The evil man Duncan M'Rae was in it. Townley
+suspected it from words I must have let fall in my
+delirium; but, worst of all, my mouth was sealed. Oh,
+why, why did I not rather die than be thus bound!</p>
+<p>It must be remembered that I was very young, and knew
+not then that an oath so forced upon me could not be
+binding.</p>
+<p>Come weal, come woe, however, I determined to keep
+my word.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>The scene of our story changes now to Edinburgh itself.
+Here we had all gone to live in a house owned by aunt,
+not far from the Calton Hill. We were comparatively poor
+now, for father, with the honour and Christian feeling that
+ever characterized him, had even paid up back rent to the
+new owner of Coila Castle and Glen.</p>
+<p>That parting from Coila had been a sad one. I was not
+there&mdash;luckily for me, perhaps; but Townley has told me
+of it often and often.</p>
+<p>'Yes, Murdoch M'Crimman,' he said, 'I have been
+present at the funeral of many a Highland chief, but none
+of these impressed me half so much as the scene in Glen
+Coila, when the carriage containing your dear father and
+mother and Flora left the old castle and wound slowly
+down the glen. Men, women, and little ones joined in
+procession, and marched behind it, and so followed on and
+on till they reached the glen-foot, with the bagpipes
+playing "Farewell to Lochaber." This affected your father
+as much, I think, as anything else. As for your mother,
+she sat silently weeping, and Flora dared hardly trust
+herself to look up at all. Then the parting! The chief,
+your father, stood up and addressed his people&mdash;for "his
+people" he still would call them. There was not a tremor
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_49' name='page_49'></a>49</span>
+in his voice, nor was there, on the other hand, even a spice
+of bravado. He spoke to them calmly, logically. In the
+old days, he said, might had been right, and many a gallant
+corps of heroes had his forefathers led from the glen, but
+times had changed. They were governed by good laws,
+and good laws meant fair play, for they protected all alike,
+gentle and simple, poor as well as rich. He bade them
+love and honour the new chief of Coila, to whom, as his
+proven right, he not only heartily transferred his lands and
+castle, but even, as far as possible, the allegiance of his
+people. They must be of good cheer, he said; he would
+never forget the happy time he had spent in Coila, and if
+they should meet no more on this earth, there was a
+Happier Land beyond death and the grave. He ended his
+brief oration with that little word which means so much,
+"Good-bye." But scarcely would they let him go. Old,
+bare-headed, white-haired men crowded round the carriage
+to bless their chief and press his hand; tearful women held
+children up that he might but touch their hair, while some
+had thrown themselves on the heather in paroxysms of a
+grief which was uncontrollable. Then the pipes played
+once more as the carriage drove on, while the voices of the
+young men joined in chorus&mdash;</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto; '><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>"Youth of the daring heart, bright be thy doom</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 1.47167034584253em;'>As the bodings that light up thy bold spirit now.</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>But the fate of M'Crimman is closing in gloom,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 1.47167034584253em;'>And the breath of the grey wraith hath passed o'er his brow."</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>'When,' added Townley, 'a bend of the road and the
+drooping birch-trees shut out the mournful sight, I am sure
+we all felt relieved. Your father, smiling, extended his
+hand to your mother, and she fondled it and wept no more.'</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>For a time our life, to all outward seeming, was now a
+very quiet one. Although Donald and Dugald were sent
+to that splendid seminary which has given so many great
+men and heroes to the world, the 'High School of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_50' name='page_50'></a>50</span>
+Edinburgh,' Townley still lived on with us as my tutor
+and Flora's.</p>
+<p>What my father seemed to suffer most from was the
+want of something at which to employ his time, and what
+Townley called his 'talent for activity.' 'Doing nothing'
+was not father's form after leading so energetic a life for
+so many years at Coila. Like the city of Boston in
+America, Edinburgh prides itself on the selectness of its
+society. To this, albeit we had come down in the world,
+pecuniarily speaking, our family had free <i>entrée</i>. This
+would have satisfied some men; it did not satisfy father.
+He missed the bracing mountain air, he missed the
+freedom of the hills and the glorious exercise to which he
+had been accustomed.</p>
+<p>He missed it, but he mourned it not. His was the most
+unselfish nature one could imagine. Whatever he may
+have felt in the privacy of his own apartment, however
+much he may have sorrowed in silence, among us he was
+ever cheerful and even gay. Perhaps, on the whole, it
+may seem to some that I write or speak in terms too
+eulogistic. But it should not be forgotten that the
+M'Crimman was my father, and that he is&mdash;gone. <i>De
+mortuis nil nisi bonum.</i></p>
+<p>The ex-chief of Coila was a gentleman. And what a
+deal there is in that one wee word! No one can ape the
+gentleman. True gentlemanliness must come from the
+heart; the heart is the well from which it must spring&mdash;constantly,
+always, in every position of life, and wherever
+the owner may be. No amount of exterior polish can
+make a true gentleman. The actor can play the part on
+the stage, but here he is but acting, after all. Off the
+stage he may or may not be the gentleman, for then he
+must not be judged by his dress, by his demeanour in
+company, his calmness, or his ducal bow, but by his actions,
+his words, or his spoken thoughts.</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto; '><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>'Chesterfields and modes and rules</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>For polished age and stilted youth.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_51' name='page_51'></a>51</span></div>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>And high breeding's choicest school</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>Need to learn this deeper truth:</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>That to act, whate'er betide,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>Nobly on the Christian plan,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>This is still the surest guide</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>How to be a gentleman.'</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>About a year after our arrival in Edinburgh, Townley
+was seated one day midway up the beautiful mountain
+called Arthur's Seat. It was early summer; the sky was
+blue and almost cloudless; far beneath, the city of palaces
+and monuments seemed to sleep in the sunshine; away to
+the east lay the sea, blue even as the sky itself, except
+where here and there a cloud shadow passed slowly over
+its surface. Studded, too, was the sea with many a white
+sail, and steamers with trailing wreaths of smoke.</p>
+<p>The noise of city life, faint and far, fell on the ear with
+a hum hardly louder than the murmur of the insects and
+bees that sported among the wild flowers.</p>
+<p>Townley would not have been sitting here had he been
+all by himself, for this Herculean young parson never yet
+set eye on a hill he meant to climb without going straight
+to the top of it.</p>
+<p>'There is no tiring Townley.' I have often heard father
+make that remark; and, indeed, it gave in a few words a
+complete clue to Townley's character.</p>
+<p>But to-day my aunt Cecilia was with him, and it was
+on her account he was resting. They had been sitting for
+some time in silence.</p>
+<p>'It is almost too lovely a day for talking,' she said, at
+last.</p>
+<p>'True; it is a day for thinking and dreaming.'</p>
+<p>'I do not imagine, sir, that either thinking or dreaming
+is very much in your way.'</p>
+<p>He turned to her almost sharply.</p>
+<p>'Oh, indeed,' he said, 'you hardly gauge my character
+aright, Miss M'Crimman.'</p>
+<p>'Do I not?'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_52' name='page_52'></a>52</span></p>
+<p>'No, if you only knew how much I think at times;
+if you only knew how much I have even dared to
+dream&mdash;'</p>
+<p>There was a strange meaning in his looks if not in his
+words. Did she interpret either aright, I wonder? I
+know not. Of one thing I am sure, and that is, my friend
+and tutor was far too noble to seem to take advantage of
+my aunt's altered circumstances in life to press his suit.
+He might be her equal some day, at present he was&mdash;her
+brother's guest and domestic.</p>
+<p>'Tell me,' she said, interrupting him, 'some of your
+thoughts; dreams at best are silly.'</p>
+<p>He heaved the faintest sigh, and for a few moments
+appeared bent only on forming an isosceles triangle of
+pebbles with his cane.</p>
+<p>Then he put his fingers in his pocket.</p>
+<p>'I wish to show you,' he said, 'a ring.'</p>
+<p>'A ring, Mr. Townley! What a curious ring! Silver,
+set with a ruby heart. Why, this is the ring&mdash;the
+mysterious ring that belonged to the priest, and was found
+in his box in the vault.'</p>
+<p>'No, that is not <i>the</i> ring. <i>The</i> ring is in a safe and
+under seal. That is but a facsimile. But, Miss M'Crimman,
+the ring in question did not, I have reason to believe,
+belong to the priest Stewart, nor was it ever worn by
+him.'</p>
+<p>'How strangely you talk and look, Mr. Townley!'</p>
+<p>'Whatever I say to you now, Miss M'Crimman, I wish
+you to consider sacred.'</p>
+<p>The lady laughed, but not lightly.</p>
+<p>'Do you think,' she said, 'I can keep a secret?'</p>
+<p>'I do, Miss M'Crimman, and I want a friend and
+occasional adviser.'</p>
+<p>'Go on, Mr. Townley. You may depend on me.'</p>
+<p>'All we know, or at least all he will tell us of Murdoch's&mdash;your
+nephew's&mdash;illness, is that he was frightened at the
+ruin that night. He did not lead us to infer&mdash;for this boy
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_53' name='page_53'></a>53</span>
+is honest&mdash;that the terror partook of the supernatural, but
+he seemed pleased we did so infer.'</p>
+<p>'Yes, Mr. Townley.'</p>
+<p>'I watched by his bedside at night, when the fever was
+at its hottest. I alone listened to his ravings. Such
+ravings have always, so doctors tell us, a foundation in
+fact. He mentioned this ring over and over again. He
+mentioned a vault; he mentioned a name, and starting
+sometimes from uneasy slumber, prayed the owner of that
+name to spare him&mdash;to shoot him not.'</p>
+<p>'And from this you deduce&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+<p>'From this,' said Townley, 'I deduce that poor Murdoch
+had seen that ring on the left hand of a villain who had
+threatened to shoot him, for some potent reason or another,
+that Murdoch had seen that vault open, and that he has
+been bound down by sacred oath not to reveal what he
+did see.'</p>
+<p>'But oh, Mr. Townley, such oath could not, cannot be
+binding on the boy. We must&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+<p>'No, we must <i>not</i>, Miss M'Crimman. We must not put
+pressure on Murdoch at present. We must not treat
+lightly his honest scruples. <i>You</i> must leave <i>me</i> to work
+the matter out in my own way. Only, whenever I need
+your assistance or friendship to aid me, I may ask for it,
+may I not?'</p>
+<p>'Indeed you may, Mr. Townley.'</p>
+<p>Her hand lay for one brief moment in his; then they
+got up silently and resumed their walk.</p>
+<p>Both were thinking now.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='V_A_NEW_HOME_IN_THE_WEST' id='V_A_NEW_HOME_IN_THE_WEST'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_54' name='page_54'></a>54</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+<h3>A NEW HOME IN THE WEST.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>To-night, before I entered my tower-room study and
+sat down to continue our strange story, I was leaning
+over the battlements and gazing admiringly at the
+beautiful sunset effects among the hills and on the lake,
+when my aunt came gliding to my side. She always
+comes in this spirit-like way.</p>
+<p>'May I say one word,' she said, 'without interrupting
+the train of your thoughts?'</p>
+<p>'Yes, dear aunt,' I replied; 'speak as you please&mdash;say
+what you will.'</p>
+<p>'I have been reading your manuscript, Murdoch, and I
+think it is high time you should mention that the M'Raes
+of Strathtoul were in no degree connected with or
+voluntarily mixed up in the villainy that banished your
+poor father from Castle Coila.'</p>
+<p>'It shall be as you wish,' I said, and then Aunt Cecilia
+disappeared as silently as she had come.</p>
+<p>Aunt is right. Nor can I forget that&mdash;despite the long-lasting
+and unfortunate blood-feud&mdash;the Strathtouls were
+and are our kinsmen. It is due to them to add that they
+ever acted honourably, truthfully; that there was but one
+villain, and whatever of villainy was transacted was his.
+Need I say his name was Duncan M'Rae? A M'Rae of
+Strathtoul? No; I am glad and proud to say he was not.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_55' name='page_55'></a>55</span>
+I even doubt if he had any right or title to the name at
+all. It may have been but an <i>alias</i>. An <i>alias</i> is often of
+the greatest use to such a man as this Duncan; so is an
+<i>alibi</i> at times!</p>
+<p>I have already mentioned the school in the glen which
+my father the chief had built. M'Rae was one of its
+first teachers. He was undoubtedly clever, and, though
+he had not come to Coila without a little cloud on his
+character, his plausibility and his capability prevailed upon
+my father to give him a chance. There used at that time
+to be services held in the school on Sunday evenings, to
+which the most humbly dressed peasant could come.
+Humble though they were, they invariably brought their
+mite for the collection. It was dishonesty&mdash;even
+sacrilegious dishonesty&mdash;in Duncan to appropriate such
+moneys to his use, and to falsify the books. It is needless
+to say he was dismissed, and ever after he bore little
+good-will to the M'Crimmans of Coila.</p>
+<p>He had now to live on his wits. His wits led him to
+dishonesty of a different sort&mdash;he became a noted poacher.
+His quarrels with the glen-keepers often led to ugly
+fights and to bloodshed, but never to Duncan's reform.
+He lived and lodged with old Mawsie. It suited him to
+do so for several reasons, one of which was that she had,
+as I have already said, an ill-name, and the keepers were
+superstitious; besides, her house was but half a mile from
+a high road, along which a carrier passed once a week on
+his way to a distant town, and Duncan nearly always had
+a mysterious parcel for him.</p>
+<p>The poacher wanted a safe or store for his ill-gotten
+game. What better place than the floor of the ruined
+church? While digging there, to his surprise he had
+discovered a secret vault or cell; the roof and sides had
+fallen in, but masons could repair them. Such a place
+would be invaluable in his craft if it could be kept secret,
+and he determined it should be. After this, strange lights
+were said to be seen sometimes by belated travellers
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_56' name='page_56'></a>56</span>
+flitting among the old graves; twice also a ghost had been
+met on the hill adjoining&mdash;some <i>thing</i> at least that
+disappeared immediately with eldritch scream.</p>
+<p>It was shortly after this that Duncan had imported two
+men to do what they called 'a bit of honest work.'
+Duncan had lodged and fed them at Mawsie's; they
+worked at night, and when they had done the 'honest
+work,' he took them to Invergowen and shipped them back
+to Aberdeen.</p>
+<p>But the poacher's discovery of the priest's Bible turned
+his thoughts to a plan of enriching himself far more
+effectually and speedily than he ever could expect to do by
+dealing in game without a licence.</p>
+<p>At the same time Duncan had found the poor priest's
+modest store of wine. A less scientific villain would have
+made short work with this, but the poacher knew better at
+present than to 'put an enemy in his mouth to steal away
+his brains;' besides, the vault would look more natural,
+when afterwards 'discovered,' with a collection of old bottles
+of wine in it.</p>
+<p>To forge an entry on one of the fly-leaves of the book
+was no difficult task, nor was it difficult to deal with
+Mawsie so as to secure the end he had in view in the
+most natural way. Once again his villain-wit showed its
+ascendency. A person of little acumen would have sought
+to work upon the old lady's greed&mdash;would have tried to
+bribe her to say this or that, or to swear to anything.
+But well Duncan knew how treacherous is the aged
+memory, and yet how easily acted on. He began by talking
+much about the Le Roi marriage which had taken place
+when she was a girl. He put words in the old lady's
+mouth without seeming to do so; he manufactured an
+artificial memory for her, and neatly fitted it.</p>
+<p>'Surely, mother,' he would say, 'you remember the
+marriage that took place in the chapel at midnight&mdash;the
+rich soldier, you know, Le Roi, and the bonnie M'Crimman
+lady? You're not so <i>very</i> old as to forget that.'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_57' name='page_57'></a>57</span></p>
+<p>'Heigho! it's a long time ago, <i>ma yhillie og</i>, a long
+time ago, and I was young.'</p>
+<p>'True, but old people remember things that happened
+when they were young better than more recent events.'</p>
+<p>They talked in Gaelic, so I am not giving their exact
+words.</p>
+<p>'Ay, ay, lad&mdash;ay, ay! And, now that you mention it, I
+do remember it well&mdash;the lassie M'Crimman and the bonnie,
+bonnie gentleman.'</p>
+<p>'Gave you a guinea&mdash;don't you remember?'</p>
+<p>'Ay, ay, the dear man!'</p>
+<p>'Is this it?' continued Duncan, holding up a golden
+coin.</p>
+<p>Her eyes gloated over the money, her birdlike claw
+clutched it; she 'crooned' over it, sang to it, rolled it in a
+morsel of flannel, and put it away in her bosom.</p>
+<p>A course of this kind of tuition had a wonderful effect
+on Mawsie. After the marriage came the vault, and she
+soon remembered all that. But probably the guinea had
+more effect than anything else in fixing her mind on the
+supposed events of the past.</p>
+<p>You see, Duncan was a psychologist, and a good one,
+too. Pity he did not turn his talents to better use.</p>
+<p>The poacher's next move was to hurry up to London,
+and obtain an interview with the chief of Strathtoul's son.
+He seldom visited Scotland, being an officer of the Guards&mdash;a
+soldier, as his grandfather had been.</p>
+<p>Is it any wonder that Duncan M'Rae's plausible story
+found a ready listener in young Le Roi, or that he was
+only too happy to pay the poacher a large but reasonable
+sum for proofs which should place his father in possession
+of fortune and a fine estate?</p>
+<p>The rest was easy. A large coloured sketch was shown
+to old Mawsie as a portrait of the Le Roi who had been
+married in the old chapel in her girlhood. It was that of
+his grandson, who shortly after visited the manse and the
+ruin.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_58' name='page_58'></a>58</span></p>
+<p>Duncan was successful beyond his utmost expectations.
+Only 'the wicked flee when no man pursueth' them, and
+this villain could not feel easy while he remained at home.
+Two things preyed on his mind&mdash;first, the meeting with
+myself at the ruin; secondly, the loss of his ring.
+Probably had the two men not interfered that night he
+would have made short work of me. As for the ring, he
+blamed his own carelessness for losing it. It was a dead
+man's ring; would it bring him ill-luck?</p>
+<p>So he fled&mdash;or departed&mdash;put it as you please; but,
+singular to say, old Mawsie was found dead in her house
+the day <i>after</i> he had been seen to take his departure from
+the glen. It was said she had met her death by
+premeditated violence; but who could have slain the poor
+old crone, and for what reason? It was more charitable
+and more reasonable to believe that she had fallen and
+died where she was found. So the matter had been
+allowed to rest. What could it matter to Mawsie?</p>
+<p>Townley alone had different and less charitable views
+about the matter. Meanwhile Townley's bird had flown.
+But everything comes to him who can wait, and&mdash;there
+was no tiring Townley.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>A year or two flew by quickly enough. I know what
+that year or two did for me&mdash;<i>it made me a man!</i></p>
+<p>Not so much in stature, perhaps&mdash;I was young, barely
+seventeen&mdash;but a man in mind, in desire, in ambition, and
+in brave resolve. Do not imagine that I had been very
+happy since leaving Coila; my mind was racked by a
+thousand conflicting thoughts that often kept me awake at
+night when all others were sunk in slumber. Something
+told me that the doings of that night at the ruin had
+undone our fortunes, and I was bound by solemn promise
+never to divulge what I had seen or what I knew. A
+hundred times over I tried to force myself to the belief
+that the poacher was only a poacher, and not a villain of
+deeper dye, but all in vain.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_59' name='page_59'></a>59</span></p>
+<p>Time, however, is the <i>edax rerum</i>&mdash;the devourer of all
+things, even of grief and sorrow. Well, I saw my father
+and mother and Flora happy in their new home, content
+with their new surroundings, and I began to take heart.
+But to work I must go. What should I do? What should
+I be? The questions were answered in a way I had little
+dreamt of.</p>
+<p>One evening, about eight o'clock, while passing along a
+street in the new town, I noticed well-dressed mechanics and
+others filing into a hall, where, it was announced, a lecture
+was to be delivered&mdash;</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto; '><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>'<span style='font-variant: small-caps'>A New Home in the West.</span>'</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>Such was the heading of the printed bills. Curiosity
+led me to enter with others.</p>
+<p>I listened entranced. The lecture was a revelation to
+me. The 'New Home in the West' was the Argentine
+Republic, and the speaker was brimful of his subject, and
+brimful to overflowing with the rugged eloquence that
+goes straight to the heart.</p>
+<p>There was wealth untold in the silver republic for those
+who were healthy, young, and willing to work&mdash;riches
+enough to be had for the digging to buy all Scotland up&mdash;riches
+of grain, of fruit, of spices, of skins and wool and
+meat&mdash;wealth all over the surface of the new home&mdash;wealth
+<i>in</i> the earth and bursting through it&mdash;wealth and
+riches everywhere.</p>
+<p>And beauty everywhere too&mdash;beauty of scenery, beauty
+of woods and wild flowers; of forest stream and sunlit skies.
+Why stay in Scotland when wealth like this was to be had
+for the gathering? England was a glorious country, but
+its very over-population rendered it a poor one, and poorer
+it was growing every day.</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto; '><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>'Hark! old Ocean's tongue of thunder,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>Hoarsely calling, bids you speed</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>To the shores he held asunder</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>Only for these times of need.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_60' name='page_60'></a>60</span></div>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Now, upon his friendly surges</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>Ever, ever roaring "Come,"</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>All the sons of hope he urges</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>To a new, a richer home.</p>
+<br />
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>There, instead of festering alleys,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>Noisome dirt and gnawing dearth,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Sunny hills and smiling valleys</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>Wait to yield the wealth of earth.</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>All she seeks is human labour,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>Healthy in the open air;</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>All she gives is&mdash;every neighbour</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>Wealthy, hale, and happy There!'</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>Language like this was to me simply intoxicating. I
+talked all next day about what I had heard, and when
+evening came I once more visited the lecture-hall, this
+time in company with my brothers.</p>
+<p>'Oh,' said Donald, as we were returning home, 'that
+is the sort of work we want.'</p>
+<p>'Yes,' cried Dugald the younger; 'and that is the land
+to go to.'</p>
+<p>'You are so young&mdash;sixteen and fifteen&mdash;I fear I cannot
+take you with me,' I put in.</p>
+<p>Donald stopped short in the street and looked straight
+in my face.</p>
+<p>'So <i>you</i> mean to go, then? And you think you can go
+without Dugald and me? Young, are we? But won't we
+grow out of that? We are not town-bred brats. Feel my
+arm; look at brother's lusty legs! And haven't we both
+got hearts&mdash;the M'Crimman heart? Ho, ho, Murdoch!
+big as you are, you don't go without Dugald and me!'</p>
+<p>'That he sha'n't!' said Dugald, determinedly.</p>
+<p>'Come on up to the top of the craig,' I said; 'I want a
+walk. It is only half-past nine.'</p>
+<p>But it was well-nigh eleven before we three brothers
+had finished castle-building.</p>
+<p>Remember, it was not castles in the air, either, we were
+piling up. We had health, strength, and determination,
+with a good share of honest ambition; and with these we
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_61' name='page_61'></a>61</span>
+believed we could gather wealth. The very thoughts of
+doing so filled me with a joy that was inexpressible. Not
+that I valued money for itself, but because wealth, if I
+could but gain it, would enable me to in some measure
+restore the fortunes of our fallen house.</p>
+<p>We first consulted father. It was not difficult to secure
+his acquiescence to our scheme, and he even told mother
+that it was unnatural to expect birds to remain always in
+the parent nest.</p>
+<p>I have no space to detail all the outs and ins of our
+arguments; suffice it to say they were successful, and
+preparations for our emigration were soon commenced.
+One stipulation of dear mother's we were obliged to give
+in to&mdash;namely, that Aunt Cecilia should go with us.
+Aunt was very wise, though very romantic withal&mdash;a
+strange mixture of poetry and common-sense. My father
+and mother, however, had very great faith in her.
+Moreover, she had already travelled all by herself half-way
+over the world. She had therefore the benefit of former
+experiences. But in every way we were fain to admit
+that aunt was eminently calculated to be our friend and
+mentor. She was and is clever. She could talk philosophy
+to us, even while darning our stockings or seeing after our
+linen; she could talk half a dozen languages, but she could
+talk common-sense to the cook as well; she was fitted to
+mix in the very best society, but she could also mix a
+salad. She played entrancingly on the harp, sang well,
+recited Ossian's poems by the league, had a beautiful face,
+and the heart of a lion, which well became the sister of a
+chief.</p>
+<p>It is only fair to add that it was aunt who found the
+sinews of war&mdash;our war with fortune. She, however, made
+a sacrifice to our pride in promising to consider any and all
+moneys spent upon us as simply loans, to be repaid with
+interest when we grew rich, if not&mdash;and this was only an
+honest stipulation&mdash;worked off beforehand.</p>
+<p>But poor dear aunt, her love of travel and adventure was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_62' name='page_62'></a>62</span>
+quite wonderful, and she had a most childlike faith in the
+existence and reality of the El Dorado we were going in
+search of.</p>
+<p>The parting with father, mother, and Flora was a terrible
+trial. I can hardly think of it yet without a feeling akin to
+melancholy. But we got away at last amid prayers and
+blessings and tears. A hundred times over Flora had
+begged us to write every week, and to make haste and get
+ready a place for her and mother and father and all in our
+new home in the West, for she would count the days until
+the summons came to follow.</p>
+<p>Fain would honest, brawny Townley have gone with us.
+What an acquisition he would have proved! only, he told
+me somewhat significantly, he had work to do, and if he
+was successful he might follow on. I know, though, that
+parting with Aunt Cecilia almost broke his big brave
+heart.</p>
+<p>There was so much to do when we arrived in London,
+from which port we were to sail, so much to buy, so much
+to be seen, and so many people to visit, that I and my
+brothers had little time to revert even to the grief of
+parting from all we held dear at home.</p>
+<p>We did not forget to pay a visit to our forty-second
+cousins in their beautiful and aristocratic mansion at the
+West End. Archie Bateman was our favourite. My
+brothers and I were quite agreed as to that. The other
+cousin&mdash;who was also the elder&mdash;was far too much
+swamped in <i>bon ton</i> to please Highland lads such as we
+were.</p>
+<p>But over and over again Archie made us tell him all we
+knew or had heard of the land we were going to. The first
+night Archie had said,</p>
+<p>'Oh, I wish I were going too!'</p>
+<p>The second evening his remark was,</p>
+<p>'Why <i>can't</i> I go?'</p>
+<p>But on the third and last day of our stay Archie took
+me boldly by the hand&mdash;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_63' name='page_63'></a>63</span></p>
+<p>'Don't tell anybody,' he said, 'but I'm going to follow
+you very soon. Depend upon that. I'm only a younger
+son. Younger sons are nobodies in England. The eldest
+sons get all the pudding, and we have only the dish to
+scrape. They talk about making me a barrister. I don't
+mean to be made a barrister; I'd as soon be a bumbailiff.
+No, I'm going to follow you, cousin, so I sha'n't say good-bye&mdash;just
+<i>au revoir</i>.'</p>
+<p>And when we drove away from the door, I really could
+not help admiring the handsome bold-looking English lad
+who stood in the porch waving his handkerchief and
+shouting,</p>
+<p>'<i>Au revoir&mdash;au revoir.</i>'</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='VI_THE_PROMISED_LAND_AT_LAST' id='VI_THE_PROMISED_LAND_AT_LAST'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_64' name='page_64'></a>64</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+<h3>THE PROMISED LAND AT LAST.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>'There is nothing more annoyin' than a hitch at the
+hin'eren'. What think you, young sir?'</p>
+<p>'I beg pardon,' I replied, 'but I'm afraid I did not
+quite understand you.'</p>
+<p>I had been standing all alone watching our preparations
+for dropping down stream with the tide. What a wearisome
+time it had been, too!</p>
+<p>The Canton was advertised to sail the day before, but
+did not. We were assured, however, she would positively
+start at midnight, and we had gone to bed expecting to
+awake at sea. I had fallen asleep brimful of all kinds of
+romantic thoughts. But lo! I had been awakened early
+on the dark morning of this almost wintry day with the
+shouting of men, the rattling of chains, and puff-puff-puffing
+of that dreadful donkey-engine.</p>
+<p>'Oh yes, we'll be off, sure enough, about eight bells.'</p>
+<p>This is what the steward told us after breakfast, but all
+the forenoon had slipped away, and here we still were.
+The few people on shore who had stayed on, maugre wind
+and sleet, to see the very, <i>very</i> last of friends on board,
+looked very worn and miserable.</p>
+<p>But surely we were going at last, for everything was
+shipped and everything was comparatively still&mdash;far too
+still, indeed, as it turned out!
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_65' name='page_65'></a>65</span></p>
+<p>'I said I couldn't stand a hitch at the hin'eren', young
+sir&mdash;any trouble at the tail o' the chapter.'</p>
+<p>I looked up&mdash;I <i>had</i> to look up, for the speaker was a
+head and shoulders bigger than I&mdash;a broad-shouldered,
+brawny, brown-bearded Scotchman. A Highlander evidently
+by his brogue, but one who had travelled south,
+and therefore only put a Scotch word in here and there
+when talking&mdash;just, he told me afterwards, to make better
+sense of the English language.</p>
+<p>'Do I understand you to mean that something has
+happened to delay the voyage?'</p>
+<p>'I dinna care whether you understand me or not,' he
+replied, with almost fierce independence, 'but we're broken
+down.'</p>
+<p>It was only too true, and the news soon went all over
+the ship&mdash;spread like wild-fire, in fact. Something had
+gone wrong in the engine-room, and it would take a
+whole week to make good repairs.</p>
+<p>I went below to report matters to aunt and my brothers,
+and make preparations for disembarking again.</p>
+<p>When we reached the deck we found the big Scot
+walking up and down with rapid, sturdy strides; but he
+stopped in front of me, smiling. He had an immense
+plaid thrown Highland-fashion across his chest and left
+shoulder, and clutched a huge piece of timber in his hand,
+which by courtesy might have been called a cane.</p>
+<p>'You'll doubtless go on shore for a spell?' he said.
+'A vera judicious arrangement. I'll go myself, and take
+my mither with me. And are these your two brotheries,
+and your sister? How d'ye do, miss?'</p>
+<p>He lifted his huge tam-o'-shanter as he made these
+remarks&mdash;or, in other words, he seized it by the top and
+raised it into the form of a huge pyramid.</p>
+<p>'My aunt,' I said, smiling.</p>
+<p>'A thousand pa<i>rr</i>dons, ma'am!' he pleaded, once more
+making a pyramid of his 'bonnet,' while the colour
+mounted to his brow. 'A thousand pa<i>rr</i>dons!'</p>
+<p>Like most of his countrymen, he spoke broader when
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_66' name='page_66'></a>66</span>
+taken off his guard or when excited. At such times the
+<i>r</i>'s were thundered or rolled out.</p>
+<p>Aunt Cecilia smiled most graciously, and I feel sure she
+did not object to be mistaken for our sister.</p>
+<p>'It seems,' he added, 'we are to be fellow-passengers.
+My name is Moncrieff, and if ever I can be of the
+slightest service to you, pray command me.'</p>
+<p>'You mentioned your mother,' said aunt, by way of
+saying something. 'Is the old&mdash;I mean, is she going with
+you?'</p>
+<p>'What else, what else? And you wouldn't be wrong in
+calling her "old" either. My mither's no' a spring
+chicken, but&mdash;she's a marvel. Ay, mither's a marvel.'</p>
+<p>'I presume, sir, you've been out before?'</p>
+<p>'I've lived for many years in the Silver West. I've
+made a bit of money, but I couldn't live a year longer
+without my mither, so I just came straight home to take
+her out. I think when you know my mither you'll agree
+with me&mdash;she's a marvel.'</p>
+<p>On pausing here for a minute to review a few of the
+events of my past life, I cannot agree with those
+pessimists who tell us we are the victims of chance; that
+our fates and our fortunes have nothing more certain to
+guide them to a good or a bad end than yonder thistle-down
+which is the sport of the summer breeze.</p>
+<p>When I went on board the good ship Canton, had
+any one told me that in a few days more I would be
+standing by the banks of Loch Coila, I would have laughed
+in his face.</p>
+<p>Yet so it was. Aunt and Donald stayed in London,
+while I and Dugald formed the strange resolve of running
+down and having one farewell glance at Coila. I seemed
+impelled to do so, but how or by what I never could say.</p>
+<p>No; we did not go near Edinburgh. Good-byes had
+been said, why should we rehearse again all the agony of
+parting?</p>
+<p>Nor did we show ourselves to many of the villagers, and
+those who did see us hardly knew us in our English dress.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_67' name='page_67'></a>67</span></p>
+<p>Just one look at the lake, one glance at the old castle,
+and we should be gone, never more to set foot in Coila.</p>
+<p>And here we were close by the water, almost under
+shadow of our own old home. It was a forenoon in the
+end of February, but already the larch-trees were
+becoming tinged with tender green, a balmy air went
+whispering through the drooping silver birches, the sky
+was blue, flecked only here and there with fleecy clouds
+that cast shadow-patches on the lake. Up yonder a lark
+was singing, in adjoining spruce thickets we could hear the
+croodle of the ringdove, and in the swaying branches of the
+elms the solemn-looking rooks were already building their
+nests. Dugald and I were lying on the moss.</p>
+<p>'Spring always comes early to dear Coila,' I was saying;
+'and I'm so glad the ship broke down, just to give me a
+chance of saying "Good-bye" to the loch. You, Dugald, did
+say "Good-bye" to it, you know, but I never had a chance.</p>
+<p>Ahem! We were startled by the sound of a little
+cough right behind us&mdash;a sort of made cough, such as
+people do when they want to attract attention.</p>
+<p>Standing near us was a gentleman of soldierly bearing,
+but certainly not haughty in appearance, for he was
+smiling. He held a book in his hand, and on his arm
+leant a beautiful young girl, evidently his daughter, for
+both had blue eyes and fair hair.</p>
+<p>Dugald and I had started to our feet, and for the life of
+me I could not help feeling awkward.</p>
+<p>'I fear,' I stammered, 'we are trespassing. But&mdash;but
+my brother and I ran down from London to say good-bye
+to Coila. We will go at once.'</p>
+<p>'Stay one moment,' said the gentleman. 'Do not run
+away without explaining. You have been here before?'</p>
+<p>'We are the young M'Crimmans of Coila, sir.'</p>
+<p>I spoke sadly&mdash;I trust not fiercely.</p>
+<p>'Pardon me, but something seemed to tell me you
+were. We are pleased to meet you. Irene, my daughter.
+It is no fault of ours&mdash;at least, of mine&mdash;that your family
+and the M'Raes were not friendly long ago.'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_68' name='page_68'></a>68</span></p>
+<p>'But my father <i>would</i> have made friends with the chief
+of Strathtoul,' I said.</p>
+<p>'Yes, and mine had old Highland prejudices. But look,
+yonder comes a thunder-shower. You <i>must</i> stay till it is
+over.'</p>
+<p>'I feel, sir,' I said, 'that I am doing wrong, and that I
+have done wrong. My father, even, does not know we
+are here. <i>He</i> has prejudices now, too,'</p>
+<p>'Well,' said the officer, laughing, 'my father is in
+France. Let us both be naughty boys. You must come
+and dine with me and my daughter, anyhow. Bother old-fashioned
+blood-feuds! We must not forget that we are
+living in the nineteenth century.'</p>
+<p>I hesitated a moment, then I glanced at the girl, and
+next minute we were all walking together towards the
+castle.</p>
+<p>We did stop to dinner, nor did we think twice about
+leaving that night. The more I saw of these, our hereditary
+enemies, the more I liked them. Irene was very
+like Flora in appearance and manner, but she had a
+greater knowledge of the world and all its ways. She was
+very beautiful. Yes, I have said so already, but somehow
+I cannot help saying it again. She looked older than she
+really was, and taller than most girls of fourteen.</p>
+<p>'Well,' I said in course of the evening, 'it <i>is</i> strange my
+being here.'</p>
+<p>'It is only the fortune of war our both being here,' said
+M'Rae.</p>
+<p>'I wonder,' I added, 'how it will all end!'</p>
+<p>'If it would only end as I should wish, it would end
+very pleasantly indeed. But it will not. You will write
+filially and tell your good father of your visit. He will
+write cordially, but somewhat haughtily, to thank us.
+That will be all. Oh, Highland blood is very red, and
+Highland pride is very high. Well, at all events, Murdoch
+M'Crimman&mdash;if you will let me call you by your name
+without the "Mr."&mdash;we shall never forget your visit,
+shall we, darling?'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_69' name='page_69'></a>69</span></p>
+<p>I looked towards Miss M'Rae. Her answer was a
+simple 'No'; but I was much surprised to notice that her
+eyes were full of tears, which she tried in vain to conceal.</p>
+<p>I saw tears in her eyes next morning as we parted.
+Her father said 'Good-bye' so kindly that my whole heart
+went out to him on the spot.</p>
+<p>'I'm not sorry I came,' I said; 'and, sir,' I added, 'as
+far as you and I are concerned, the feud is at an end?'</p>
+<p>'Yes, yes; and better so. And,' he continued, 'my
+daughter bids me say that she is happy to have seen you,
+that she is going to think about you very often, and is so
+sorrowful you poor lads should have to go away to a
+foreign land to seek your fortune while we remain at Coila.
+That is the drift of it, but I fear I have not said it prettily
+enough to please Irene. Good-bye.'</p>
+<p>We had found fine weather at Coila, and we brought it
+back with us to London. There was no hitch this time in
+starting. The Canton got away early in the morning, even
+before breakfast. The last person to come on board was
+the Scot, Moncrieff. He came thundering across the plank
+gangway with strides like a camel, bearing something or
+somebody rolled in a tartan plaid.</p>
+<p>Dugald and I soon noticed two little legs dangling from
+one end of the bundle and a little old face peeping out of
+the other. It was his mother undoubtedly.</p>
+<p>He put her gently down when he gained the deck, and
+led her away amidships somewhere, and there the two
+disappeared. Presently Moncrieff came back alone and
+shook hands with us in the most friendly way.</p>
+<p>'I've just disposed of my mither,' he said, as if she had
+been a piece of goods and he had sold her. 'I've just
+disposed of the poor dear creature, and maybe she won't
+appear again till we're across the bay.'</p>
+<p>'You did not take the lady below?'</p>
+<p>'There's no' much of the lady about my mither, though
+I'm doing all I can to make her one. No; I didn't take
+her below. Fact is, we have state apartments, as you
+might say, for I've rented the second lieutenant's and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_70' name='page_70'></a>70</span>
+purser's cabins. There they are, cheek-by-jowl, as cosy as
+wrens'-nests, just abaft the cook's galley amidships
+yonder.'</p>
+<p>'Well,' I said, 'I hope your mother will be happy and
+enjoy the voyage.'</p>
+<p>'Hurrah!' shouted the Scot; 'we're off at last! Now
+for a fair wind and a clear sea to the shores of the Silver
+West. I'll run and tell my mither we're off.'</p>
+<p>That evening the sun sank on the western waves with a
+crimson glory that spoke of fine weather to follow. We
+were steaming down channel with just enough sail set to
+give us some degree of steadiness.</p>
+<p>Though my brothers and I had never been to sea before,
+we had been used to roughing it in storms around the
+coast and on Loch Coila, and probably this may account
+for our immunity from that terror of the ocean, <i>mal-de-mer</i>.
+As for aunt, she was an excellent sailor. The saloon, when
+we went below to dinner, was most gay, beautifully lighted,
+and very home-like. The officers present were the captain,
+the surgeon, and one lieutenant. The captain was
+president, while the doctor occupied the chair of <i>vice</i>.
+Both looked thorough sailors, and both appeared as happy
+as kings. There seemed also to exist a perfect understanding
+between the pair, and their remarks and
+anecdotes kept the passengers in excellent good humour
+during dinner.</p>
+<p>The doctor had been the first to enter, and he came
+sailing in with aunt, whom he seated on his right hand.
+Now aunt was the only young lady among the passengers,
+and she certainly had dressed most becomingly. I could
+not help admiring her&mdash;so did the doctor, but so also did
+the captain.</p>
+<p>When he entered he gave his surgeon a comical kind of
+a look and shook his head.</p>
+<p>'Walked to windward of me, I see!' he said. 'Miss
+M'Crimman,' he added, 'we don't, as a rule, keep particular
+seats at table in this ship.'</p>
+<p>'Don't believe a word he says, Miss M'Crimman!' cried
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_71' name='page_71'></a>71</span>
+the doctor. 'Look, he's laughing! He never is serious
+when he smiles like that. Steward, what is the number
+of this chair?'</p>
+<p>'Fifteen, sir.'</p>
+<p>'Fifteen, Miss M'Crimman, and you won't forget it; and
+this table-napkin ring, observe, is Gordon tartan, green and
+black and orange.'</p>
+<p>'Miss M'Crimman,' the captain put in, as if the doctor
+had not said a word, 'to-morrow evening, for example, you
+will have the honour to sit on my right.'</p>
+<p>'Honour, indeed!' laughed the doctor.</p>
+<p>'The honour to sit on my right. You will find I can
+tell much better stories than old Conserve-of-roses there;
+and I feel certain you will not sit anywhere else all the
+voyage!'</p>
+<p>'Ah, stay one moments!' cried a merry-looking little
+Spaniard, who had just entered and seated himself quietly
+at the table; 'the young lady weel not always sit dere, or
+dere, for sometime she weel have de honour to sit at my
+right hand, for example, eh, capitan?'</p>
+<p>There was a hearty laugh at these words, and after this,
+every one seemed on the most friendly terms with every one
+else, and willing to serve every one else first and himself
+last. This is one good result that accrues from travelling,
+and I have hardly ever yet known a citizen of the world
+who could be called selfish.</p>
+<p>There were three other ladies at table to-night, each of
+whom sat by her husband's side. Though they were all in
+what Dr. Spinks afterwards termed the sere and yellow
+leaf, both he and the good captain really vied with each
+other in paying kindly attention to their wants.</p>
+<p>So pleasantly did this our first dinner on board pass
+over that by the time we had risen from our seats we felt,
+one and all, as if we had known each other for a very long
+time indeed.</p>
+<p>Next came our evening concert. One of the married
+ladies played exceedingly well, and the little Spanish
+gentleman sang like a minor Sims Reeves.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_72' name='page_72'></a>72</span></p>
+<p>'Your sister sings, I feel sure,' he said to me.</p>
+<p>'My aunt plays the harp and sings,' I answered.</p>
+<p>'And the harp&mdash;you have him?'</p>
+<p>'Yes.'</p>
+<p>'Oh, bring him&mdash;bring him! I do love de harp!'</p>
+<p>While my aunt played and sang, it would have been
+difficult to say which of her audience listened with the
+most delighted attention. The doctor's face was a study;
+the captain looked tenderly serious; Captain Bombazo, the
+black-moustachioed Spaniard, was animation personified;
+his dark eyes sparkled like diamonds, his very eyelids
+appeared to snap with pleasure. Even the stewards and
+stewardess lingered in the passage to listen with respectful
+attention, so that it is no wonder we boys were
+proud of our clever aunt.</p>
+<p>When she ceased at last there was that deep silence
+which is far more eloquent than applause. The first to
+break it was Moncrieff.</p>
+<p>'Well,' he said, with a deep sigh, 'I never heard the
+like o' that afore!'</p>
+<p>The friendly relations thus established in the saloon
+lasted all the voyage long&mdash;so did the captain's, the
+doctor's, and little Spanish officer's attentions to my aunt.
+She had made a triple conquest; three hearts, to speak
+figuratively, lay at her feet.</p>
+<p>Our voyage was by no means a very eventful one, and
+but little different from thousands of others that take
+place every month.</p>
+<p>Some degree of merriment was caused among the men,
+when, on the fourth day, big Moncrieff led his mother out
+to walk the quarter-deck leaning on his arm. She was
+indeed a marvel. It would have been impossible even to
+guess at her age; for though her face was as yellow as a
+withered lemon, and as wrinkled as a Malaga rasin, she
+walked erect and firm, and was altogether as straight as a
+rush. She was dressed with an eye to comfort, for, warm
+though the weather was getting, her cloak was trimmed
+with fur. On her head she wore a neat old-fashioned cap,
+and in her hand carried a huge green umbrella, which
+evening and morning she never laid down except at
+meals.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_74' name='page_74'></a>74</span></div>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_6' id='linki_6'></a>
+<img src='images/illus073.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 604px; height: 375px;' /><br />
+</div>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_75' name='page_75'></a>75</span></div>
+<p>This umbrella was a weapon of offence as well as
+defence. We had proof of that on the very first day, for
+as he passed along the deck the second steward had the
+bad manners to titter. Next moment the umbrella had
+descended with crushing force on his head, and he lay
+sprawling in the lee scuppers.</p>
+<p>'I'll teach ye,' she said, 'to laugh at an auld wife, you
+gang-the-gate swinger.'</p>
+<p>'Mither! mither!' pleaded Moncrieff, 'will you never
+be able to behave like a lady?'</p>
+<p>The steward crawled forward crestfallen, and the men
+did not let him forget his adventure in a hurry.</p>
+<p>'Mither's a ma<i>rr</i>vel,' Moncrieff whispered to me more
+than once that evening, for at table no 'laird's lady' could
+have behaved so well, albeit her droll remarks and
+repartee kept us all laughing. After dinner it was just
+the same&mdash;there were no bounds to her good-nature, her
+excellent spirits and comicality. Even when asked to
+sing she was by no means taken aback, but treated us to a
+ballad of five-and-twenty verses, with a chorus to each;
+but as it told a story of love and war, of battle and siege,
+of villainy for a time in the ascendant, and virtue
+triumphant at the end, it really was not a bit wearisome;
+and when Moncrieff told us that she could sing a hundred
+more as good, we all agreed that his mother was indeed a
+marvel.</p>
+<p>I have said the voyage was uneventful, but this is
+talking as one who has been across the wide ocean many
+times and oft. No long voyage can be uneventful; but
+nothing very dreadful happened to mar our passage to Rio
+de Janeiro. We were not caught in a tornado; we were
+not chased by a pirate; we saw no suspicious sail; no
+ghostly voice hailed us from aloft at the midnight hour;
+no shadowy form beckoned us from a fog. We did not
+even spring a leak, nor did the mainyard come tumbling
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_76' name='page_76'></a>76</span>
+down. But we <i>did</i> have foul weather off Finisterre; a
+man <i>did</i> fall overboard, and was duly picked up again; a
+shark <i>did</i> follow the ship for a week, but got no corpse to
+devour, only the contents of the cook's pail, sundry bullets
+from sundry revolvers, and, finally, a red-hot brick rolled
+in a bit of blanket. Well, of course, a man fell from aloft
+and knocked his shoulder out&mdash;a man always does&mdash;and
+Mother Carey's chickens flew around our stern, boding
+bad weather, which never came, and shoals of porpoises
+danced around us at sunset, and we saw huge whales
+pursuing their solitary path through the bosom of the
+great deep, and we breakfasted off flying fish, and caught
+Cape pigeons, and wondered at the majestic flight of the
+albatross; and we often saw lightning without hearing
+thunder, and heard thunder without seeing lightning; and
+in due course we heard the thrilling shout from aloft of
+'Land ho!' and heard the officer of the watch sing out,
+'Where away?'</p>
+<p>And lo and behold! three or four hours afterwards we
+were all on deck marvelling at the rugged grandeur of the
+shores of Rio, and the wondrous steeple-shaped mountain
+that stands sentry for ever and ever and ever at the
+entrance to the marvellous haven.</p>
+<p>When this was in sight, Moncrieff rushed off into the
+cabin and bore his mother out.</p>
+<p>He held the old lady aloft, on one arm, shouting, as he
+pointed landwards&mdash;</p>
+<p>'Look, mither, look! the Promised Land! Our new
+home in the Silver West!'</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='VII_ON_SHORE_AT_RIO' id='VII_ON_SHORE_AT_RIO'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_77' name='page_77'></a>77</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+<h3>ON SHORE AT RIO.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was well on in the afternoon when land was sighted,
+but so accurately had the ship been navigated for all
+the long, pleasant weeks of our voyage that both the
+captain and his first officer might easily have been excused
+for showing a little pride in their seamanship. Your British
+sailor, however, is always a modest man, and there was not
+the slightest approach to bombast. The ship was now
+slowed, for we could not cross the bar that night.</p>
+<p>At the dinner-table we were all as merry as schoolboys
+on the eve of a holiday. Old Jenny, as Moncrieff's mother
+had come to be called, was in excellent spirits, and her
+droll remarks not only made us laugh, but rendered it very
+difficult indeed for the stewards to wait with anything
+approaching to <i>sang-froid</i>. Moncrieff was quietly happy.
+He seemed pleased his mother was so great a favourite.
+Aunt, in her tropical toilet, looked angelic. The adjective
+was applied by our mutual friend Captain Roderigo de
+Bombazo, and my brothers and I agreed that he had
+spoken the truth for once in a way. Did he not always
+speak the truth? it may be asked. I am not prepared to
+accuse the worthy Spaniard of deliberate falsehood, but if
+everything he told us was true, then he must indeed have
+come through more wild and terrible adventures, and done
+more travelling and more fighting, than any lion-hunter
+that ever lived and breathed.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_78' name='page_78'></a>78</span></p>
+<p>He was highly amusing nevertheless, and as no one, with
+the exception of Jenny, ever gave any evidence of doubting
+what he said and related concerning his strange career, he
+was encouraged to carry on; and even the exploits of Baron
+Munchausen could not have been compared to some of his.
+I think it used to hurt his feelings somewhat that old
+Jenny listened so stolidly to his relations, for he used to
+cater for her opinion at times.</p>
+<p>'Ah!' Jenny would say, 'you're a wonderful mannie wi'
+your way o't! And what a lot you've come through! I
+wonder you have a hair in your heed!'</p>
+<p>'But the señora believes vot I say?'</p>
+<p>'Believe ye? If a' stories be true, yours are no lees,
+and I'm not goin' ahint your back to tell ye, sir.'</p>
+<p>Once, on deck, he was drawing the long-bow, as the
+Yankees call it, at a prodigious rate. He was telling how,
+once upon a time, he had caught a young alligator; how
+he had tamed it and fed it till it grew a monster twenty
+feet long; how he used to saddle it and bridle it, and ride
+through the streets of Tulcora on its back&mdash;men, women,
+and children screaming and flying in all directions; how,
+armed only with his good sabre, he rode it into a lake
+which was infested with these dread saurians; how he was
+attacked in force by the awful reptiles, and how he had
+killed and wounded so many that they lay dead in dozens
+next day along the banks.</p>
+<p>'Humph!' grunted old Jenny when he had finished.</p>
+<p>The little captain put the questions,</p>
+<p>'Ah! de aged señora not believe! De aged señora not
+have seen much of de world?'</p>
+<p>Jenny had grasped her umbrella.</p>
+<p>'Look here, my mannie,' she said, 'I'll gie ye a caution;
+dinna you refer to my age again, or I'll "aged-snorer" you.
+If ye get the weight o' my gingham on your shou'ders, ye'll
+think a coo has kick't ye&mdash;so mind.'</p>
+<p>And the Spanish captain had slunk away very unlike a
+lion-hunter, but he never called Jenny old again.</p>
+<p>To-night, however, even before we had gone below,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_79' name='page_79'></a>79</span>
+Jenny had given proofs that she was in an extra good
+temper, for being a little way behind Bombazo&mdash;as if
+impelled by some sudden and joyous impulse&mdash;she lifted
+that everlasting umbrella and hit him a friendly thwack
+that could be heard from bowsprit to binnacle.</p>
+<p>'Tell as mony lees the nicht as ye like, my mannie,' she
+cried, 'and I'll never contradict ye, for I've seen the
+promised land!'</p>
+<p>'And so, captain, you must stay at Rio a whole week?'
+said my aunt at dessert.</p>
+<p>'Yes, Miss M'Crimman,' replied the captain. 'Are you
+pleased?'</p>
+<p>'I'm delighted. And I propose that we get up a grand
+picnic in "the promised land," as good old Jenny calls it.'</p>
+<p>And so it was arranged. Bombazo and Dr. Spinks,
+having been at Rio de Janeiro before, were entrusted with
+the organization of the 'pig-neeg,' as Bombazo called it,
+and held their first consultation on ways and means that
+very evening. Neither I nor my brothers were admitted
+to this meeting, though aunt was. Nevertheless, we felt
+confident the picnic would be a grand success, for, to a late
+hour, men were hurrying fore and aft, and the stewards
+were up to their eyes packing baskets and making preparations,
+while from the cook's gally gleams of rosy light
+shot out every time the door was opened, to say nothing of
+odours so appetising that they would have awakened Van
+Winkle himself.</p>
+<p>Before we turned in, we went on deck to have a look at
+the night. It was certainly full of promise. We were not
+far from the shore&mdash;near enough to see a long line of
+white which we knew was breakers, and to hear their deep
+sullen boom as they spent their fury on the rocks. The
+sky was studded with brilliant stars&mdash;far more bright, we
+thought them, than any we ever see in our own cold
+climate. Looking aloft, the tall masts seemed to mix and
+mingle with the stars at every roll of the ship. The moon,
+too, was as bright as silver in the east, its beams making
+strange quivering lines and crescents in each approaching
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_80' name='page_80'></a>80</span>
+wave. And somewhere&mdash;yonder among those wondrous
+cone-shaped hills, now bathed in this purple moonlight&mdash;lay
+the promised land, the romantic town of Rio, which
+to-morrow we should visit.</p>
+<p>We went below, and, as if by one accord, my brothers
+and I knelt down together to thank the Great Power on
+high who had guided us safely over the wide illimitable
+ocean, and to implore His blessing on those at home, and
+His guidance on all our future wanderings.</p>
+<p>Early next morning we were awakened by a great noise
+on deck, and the dash and turmoil of breaking water.
+The rudder-chains, too, were constantly rattling as the men
+at the wheel obeyed the shouts of the officer of the watch.</p>
+<p>'Starboard a little!'</p>
+<p>'Starboard it is, sir!'</p>
+<p>'Easy as you go! Steady!'</p>
+<p>'Steady it is, sir!'</p>
+<p>'Port a little! Steady!'</p>
+<p>Then came a crash that almost flung us out of our beds.
+Before we gained the deck of our cabin there was another,
+and still another. Had we run on shore? We dreaded to
+ask each other.</p>
+<p>But just then the steward, with kindly thought, drew
+back our curtain and reassured us.</p>
+<p>'We're only bumping over the bar, young gentlemen&mdash;we'll
+be in smooth water in a jiffey.'</p>
+<p>We were soon all dressed and on deck. We were
+passing the giant hill called Sugar Loaf, and the mountains
+seemed to grow taller and taller, and to frown over
+us as we got nearer.</p>
+<p>Once through the entrance, the splendid bay itself lay
+spread out before us in all its silver beauty. Full twenty
+miles across it is, and everywhere surrounded by the
+grandest hills imaginable. Not even in our dreams could
+we have conceived of such a noble harbour, for here not
+only could all the fleets in the world lie snug, but even
+cruise and man&oelig;uvre. Away to the west lay the picturesque
+town itself, its houses and public buildings
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_81' name='page_81'></a>81</span>
+shining clear in the morning sun, those nearest nestling in a
+beauty of tropical foliage I have never seen surpassed.</p>
+<p>My brothers and I felt burning to land at once, but
+regulations must be carried out, and before we had cleared
+the customs, and got a clean bill of health, the day was
+far spent. Our picnic must be deferred till to-morrow.</p>
+<p>However, we could land.</p>
+<p>As they took their seats in the boat and she was rowed
+shoreward, I noticed that Donald and Dugald seemed both
+speechless with delight and admiration; as for me, I felt
+as if suddenly transported to a new world. And such a
+world&mdash;beauty and loveliness everywhere around us!
+How should I ever be able to describe it, I kept wondering&mdash;how
+give dear old mother and Flora any notion,
+even the most remote, of the delight instilled into our
+souls by all we saw and felt in this strange, strange land!
+Without doubt, the beauty of our surroundings constitutes
+one great factor in our happiness, wherever we are.</p>
+<p>When we landed&mdash;indeed, before we landed&mdash;while the
+boat was still skimming over the purple waters, the green
+mountains appearing to mingle and change places every
+moment as we were borne along, I felt conquered, if I
+may so express it, by the enchantment of my situation. I
+gave in my allegiance to the spirit of the scene, I
+abandoned all thoughts of being able to describe anything,
+I abandoned myself to enjoyment. <i>Laisser faire</i>, I
+said to my soul, is to live. Every creature, every being
+here seems happy. To partake of the <i>dolce far niente</i>
+appears the whole aim and object of their lives.</p>
+<p>And so I stepped on shore, regretting somewhat that
+Flora was not here, feeling how utterly impossible it
+would be to write that 'good letter' home descriptive of
+this wondrous medley of tropical life and loveliness, but
+somewhat reckless withal, and filled with a determination
+to give full rein to my sense of pleasure. I could not help
+wondering, however, if everything I saw was real. Was I
+in a dream, from which I should presently be rudely
+awakened by the rattle and clatter of the men hauling up
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_82' name='page_82'></a>82</span>
+ashes, and find myself in bed on board the Canton?
+Never mind, I would enjoy it were it even a dream.</p>
+<p>What a motley crowd of people of every colour! How
+jolly those negroes look! How gaily the black ladies are
+dressed! How the black men laugh! What piles of
+fruit and green stuff! What a rich, delicious, warm
+aroma hovers everywhere!</p>
+<p>An interpreter? You needn't ask <i>me</i>. I'm not in
+charge. Ask my aunt here; but she herself can talk
+many languages. Or ask that tall brawny Scot, who is
+hustling the darkies about as if South America all
+belonged to him.</p>
+<p>'A carriage, Moncrieff? Oh, this is delightful! Auntie,
+dear, let me help you on board. Hop in, Dugald. Jump,
+Donald. No, no, Moncrieff, I mean to have the privilege
+of sitting beside the driver. Off we go. Hurrah! Do
+you like it, Donald? But aren't the streets rough! I
+won't talk any more; I want to watch things.'</p>
+<p>I wonder, though, if Paradise itself was a bit more lovely
+than the gardens we catch glimpses of as we drive along?</p>
+<p>How cool they look, though the sun is shining in a blue
+and cloudless sky! What dark shadows those gently
+waving palm-trees throw! Look at those cottage verandahs!
+Look, oh, look at the wealth of gorgeous flowers&mdash;the
+climbing, creeping, wreathing flowers! What
+colours! What fantastic shapes! What a merry mood
+Nature must have been in when she framed them so!
+And the perfume from those fairy gardens hangs heavy on
+the air; the delicious balmy breeze that blows through
+the green, green palm-leaves is not sufficient to waft
+away the odour of that orange blossom. Behold those
+beautiful children in groups, on terraces and lawns, at
+windows, or in verandahs&mdash;so gaily are they dressed that
+they themselves might be mistaken for bouquets of lovely
+flowers!</p>
+<p>I wonder what the names of all those strange blossom-bearing
+shrubs are. But, bah! who would bother about
+names of flowers on a day like this? The butterflies do
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_83' name='page_83'></a>83</span>
+not, and the bees do not. Are those really butterflies,
+though&mdash;really and truly? Are they not gorgeously painted
+fans, waved and wafted by fairies, themselves unseen?</p>
+<p>The people we meet chatter gaily as we pass, but they
+do not appear to possess a deal of curiosity; they are
+too contented for anything. All life here must be one
+delicious round of enjoyment. And nobody surely ever
+dies here; I do not see how they could.</p>
+<p>'Is this a cave we are coming to, Moncrieff? What is
+that long row of columns and that high, green, vaulted
+roof, through which hardly a ray of sunshine can struggle?
+Palm-trees! Oh, Moncrieff, what glorious palms! And
+there is life upon life there, for the gorgeous trees, not
+apparently satisfied with their own magnificence of shape
+and foliage, must array themselves in wreaths of dazzling
+orchids and festoons of trailing flowers. The fairies <i>must</i>
+have hung those flowers there? Do not deny it,
+Moncrieff!'</p>
+<p>And here, in the Botanical Gardens, imagination must
+itself be dumb&mdash;such a wild wealth of all that is charming
+in the vegetable and animal creation.</p>
+<p>'Donald, go your own road. Dugald, go yours; let us
+wander alone. We may meet again some day. It hardly
+matters whether we do or not. I'm in a dream, and I
+don't think I want to awaken for many a long year.'</p>
+<p>I go wandering away from my brothers, away from
+every one.</p>
+<p>A fountain is sending its spray aloft till the green
+drooping branches of the bananas and those feathery tree-ferns
+are everywhere spangled with diamonds. I will rest
+here. I wish I could catch a few of those wondrous
+butterflies, or even one of those fairylike humming-birds&mdash;mere
+sparks of light and colour that flit and buzz from flower
+to flower. I wish I could&mdash;that I&mdash;I mean&mdash;I&mdash;wish&mdash;'</p>
+<p>'Hullo! Murdoch. Where are you? Why, here he is
+at last, sound asleep under an orange-tree!'</p>
+<p>It is my wild Highland brothers. They have both been
+shaking me by the shoulders. I sit up and rub my eyes.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_84' name='page_84'></a>84</span></p>
+<p>'Do you know we've been looking for you for over an
+hour?'</p>
+<p>'Ah, Dugald!' I reply, 'what is an hour, one wee hour,
+in a place like this?'</p>
+<p>We must now go to visit the market-place, and then we
+are going to the hotel to dine and sleep.</p>
+<p>The market is a wondrously mixed one, and as
+wondrously foreign and strange as it is possible to conceive.
+The gay dresses of the women&mdash;some of whom are as black
+as an ebony ball; their gaudy head-gear; their glittering
+but tinselled ornaments; their round laughing faces, in
+which shine rows of teeth as white perhaps as alabaster;
+the jaunty men folks; the world of birds and beasts, all on
+the best of terms with themselves, especially the former,
+arrayed in all the colours of the rainbow; the world of
+fruit, tempting in shape, in beauty, and in odour; the
+world of fish, some of them beautiful enough to have
+dwelt in the coral caves of fairyland beneath the glittering
+sea&mdash;some ugly, even hideous enough to be the creatures
+of a demon's dream, and some, again, so odd-looking or so
+grotesque as to make one smile or laugh outright;&mdash;the
+whole made up a picture that even now I have but to
+close my eyes to see again!</p>
+<p>When night falls the streets get for a time more
+crowded; side-paths hardly exist&mdash;at all events, the
+inhabitants show their independence by crowding along the
+centre of the streets. Not much light to guide them,
+though, except where from open doors or windows the rays
+from lamps shoot out into the darkness.</p>
+<p>Away to the hotel. A dinner in a delightfully cool,
+large room, a punkah waving overhead, brilliant lights, joy
+on all our faces, a dessert fit to set before a king. Now
+we shall know how those strange fruits taste, whose
+perfume hung around the market to-day. To bed at last
+in a room scented with orange-blossoms, and around the
+windows of which the sweet stephanotis clusters in beauty&mdash;to
+bed, to sleep, and dream of all we have done and seen.</p>
+<p>We awaken&mdash;at least, I do&mdash;in the morning with a glad
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_85' name='page_85'></a>85</span>
+sensation of anticipated pleasure. What is it? Oh yes,
+the picnic!</p>
+<p>But it is no ordinary picnic. It lasts for three long
+days and nights, during which we drive by day through
+scenes of enchantment apparently, and sleep by night
+under canvas, wooed to slumber by the wind whispering
+in the waving trees.</p>
+<p>'Moncrieff,' I say on the second day, 'I should like to
+live here for ever and ever and ever.'</p>
+<p>'Man!' replies Moncrieff, 'I'm glad ye enjoy it, and so
+does my mither here. But dinna forget, lads, that hard
+work is all before us when we reach Buenos Ayres.'</p>
+<p>'But I will, and I <i>shall</i> forget, Moncrieff,' I cry. 'This
+country is full of forgetfulness. Away with all thoughts of
+work; let us revel in the sunshine like the bees, and the
+birds, and the butterflies.'</p>
+<p>'Revel away, then,' says Moncrieff; and dear aunt
+smiles languidly.</p>
+<p>On the last day of 'the show,' as Dugald called it, and
+while our mule team is yet five good miles from town,
+clouds dark and threatening bank rapidly up in the west.
+The driver lashes the beasts and encourages them with
+shout and cry to do their speedy utmost; but the storm
+breaks over us in all its fury, the thunder seems to rend
+the very mountains, the rain pours down in white sheets,
+the lightning runs along the ground and looks as if it
+would set the world on fire; the wind goes tearing through
+the trees, bending the palms like reeds, rending the broad
+banana-leaves to ribbons; branches crack and fall down,
+and the whole air is filled with whirling fronds and foliage.</p>
+<p>Moncrieff hastily envelopes his mother in that Highland
+plaid till nought is visible of the old lady save the nose
+and one twinkling eye. We laugh in spite of the storm.
+Louder and louder roars the thunder, faster and faster fly
+the mules, and at last we are tearing along the deserted
+streets, and hastily draw up our steaming steeds at the
+hotel door. And that is almost all I remember of Rio;
+and to-morrow we are off to sea once more.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='VIII_MONCRIEFF_RELATES_HIS_EXPERIENCES' id='VIII_MONCRIEFF_RELATES_HIS_EXPERIENCES'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_86' name='page_86'></a>86</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+<h3>MONCRIEFF RELATES HIS EXPERIENCES.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>Our life at sea had been like one long happy dream.
+That, at all events, is how it had felt to me. 'A
+dream I could have wished to last for aye.' I was
+enamoured of the ocean, and more than once I caught
+myself yearning to be a sailor. There are people who are
+born with strange longings, strange desires, which only a
+life on the ever-changing, ever-restless waves appears to
+suit and soothe. To such natures the sea seems like a
+mother&mdash;a wild, hard, harsh mother at times, perhaps, but
+a mother who, if she smiles but an hour, makes them
+forget her stormy anger of days or weeks.</p>
+<p>But the dream was past and gone. And here we had
+settled down for a spell at Buenos Ayres. We had parted
+with the kindly captain and surgeon of the Canton, with
+many a heartily expressed hope of meeting again another
+day, with prayers on their side for our success in the new
+land, with kindliest wishes on ours for a pleasant voyage
+and every joy for them.</p>
+<p>Dear me! What a very long time it felt to look back
+to, since we had bidden them 'good-bye' at home! How
+very old I was beginning to feel! I asked my brothers if
+their feelings were the same, and found them identical.
+Time had been apparently playing tricks on us.</p>
+<p>And yet we did not look any older in each other's eyes,
+only just a little more serious. Yes, that was it&mdash;<i>serious</i>.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_87' name='page_87'></a>87</span>
+Even Dugald, who was usually the most light-hearted and
+merry of the three of us, looked as if he fully appreciated
+the magnitude of what we had undertaken.</p>
+<p>Here we were, three&mdash;well, young men say, though some
+would have called us boys&mdash;landed on a foreign shore,
+without an iota of experience, without much knowledge of
+the country apart from that we had gleaned from books or
+gathered from the conversations of Bombazo and Moncrieff.
+And yet we had landed with the intention, nay, even the
+determination, to make our way in the new land&mdash;not
+only to seek our fortunes, but to find them.</p>
+<p>Oh, we were not afraid! We had the glorious inheritance
+of courage, perseverance, and self-reliance. Here is
+how Donald, my brother, argued one night:</p>
+<p>'Look, here, Murdo,' he said. 'This <i>is</i> a land of milk
+and honey, isn't it? Well, we're going to be the busy bees
+to gather it. It <i>is</i> a silver land, isn't it? Well, we're
+the boys to tap it. Fortunes <i>are</i> made here, and <i>have</i> been
+made. What is done once can be done five hundred
+times. Whatever men dare they can do. <i>Quod erat
+demonstrandum.</i>'</p>
+<p>'<i>Et nil desperandum</i>,' added Dugald.</p>
+<p>'I'm not joking, I can tell you, Dugald, I'm serious now,
+and I mean to remain so, and stick to work&mdash;aren't you,
+Murdo?'</p>
+<p>'I am, Donald.'</p>
+<p>Then we three brothers, standing there, one might say,
+on the confines of an unknown country, with all the world
+before us, shook hands, and our looks, as we gazed into
+each other's eyes, said&mdash;if they said anything&mdash;'We'll do
+the right thing one by the other, come weal, come woe.'</p>
+<p>Aunt entered soon after.</p>
+<p>'What are you boys so serious about?' she said, laughing
+merrily, as she seated herself on the couch. 'You look
+like three conspirators.'</p>
+<p>'So we are, aunt. We're conspiring together to make
+our fortunes.'</p>
+<p>'What! building castles in the air?'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_88' name='page_88'></a>88</span></p>
+<p>'Oh, no, no, <i>no</i>,' cried Donald, 'not in the air, but on the
+earth. And our idols are not going to have feet of clay, I
+assure you, auntie, but of solid silver.'</p>
+<p>'Well, we shall hope for the best. I have just parted
+with Mr. Moncrieff, whom I met down town. We have
+had a long walk together and quite a nice chat. He has
+made me his confidant&mdash;think of that!'</p>
+<p>'What! you, auntie?'</p>
+<p>'Yes, me. Who else? And that sober, honest, decent,
+Scot is going to take a wife. It was so good of him to
+tell <i>me</i>. We are all going to the wedding next week,
+and I'm sure I wish the dear man every happiness and
+joy.'</p>
+<p>'So do we, aunt.'</p>
+<p>'And oh, by the way, he is coming to dine here to-night,
+and I feel sure he wants to give you good advice, and that
+means me too, of course.'</p>
+<p>'Of course, auntie, you're one of us.'</p>
+<p>Moncrieff arrived in good time, and brought his mother
+with him.</p>
+<p>'Ye didn't include my mither in the invitation, Miss
+M'Crimman,' said the Scot; 'but I knew you meant her to
+come. I've been so long without the poor old creature,
+that I hardly care to move about without her now.'</p>
+<p>'Poor old creature, indeed!' Mrs. Moncrieff was heard
+to mumble. 'Where,' she said to a nattily dressed waiter,
+'will you put my umbrella?'</p>
+<p>'I'll take the greatest care of it, madam,' the man replied.</p>
+<p>'Do, then,' said the little old dame, 'and I may gi'e ye a
+penny, though I dinna mak' ony promises, mind.'</p>
+<p>A nicer little dinner was never served, nor could a
+snugger room for such a <i>tête-à-tête</i> meal be easily
+imagined. It was on the ground floor, the great casement
+windows opening on to a verandah in a shady garden,
+where grass was kept green and smooth as velvet, where
+rare ferns grew in luxurious freedom with dwarf palms
+and drooping bananas, and where stephanotis and the
+charming lilac bougainvillea were still in bloom.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_89' name='page_89'></a>89</span></p>
+<p>When the dessert was finished, and old Jenny was quite
+tired talking, it seemed so natural that she should curl up
+in an easy-chair and go off to sleep.</p>
+<p>'I hope my umbrella's safe, laddie,' were her last words
+as her son wrapped her in his plaid.</p>
+<p>'As safe as the Union Bank,' he replied.</p>
+<p>So we left her there, for the waiter had taken coffee into
+the verandah.</p>
+<p>Aunt, somewhat to our astonishment, ordered cigars, and
+explained to Moncrieff that she did not object to smoking,
+but <i>did</i> like to see men happy.</p>
+<p>Moncrieff smiled.</p>
+<p>'You're a marvel as well as my mither,' he said.</p>
+<p>He smoked on in silence for fully five minutes, but he
+often took the cigar from his mouth and looked at it
+thoughtfully; then he would allow his eyes to follow the
+curling smoke, watching it with a smile on his face as it
+faded into invisibility, as they say ghosts do.</p>
+<p>'Mr. Moncrieff,' said aunt, archly, 'I know what you are
+thinking about.'</p>
+<p>Moncrieff waved his hand through a wreath of smoke as
+if to clear his sight.</p>
+<p>'If you were a man,' he answered, 'I'd offer to bet you
+couldn't guess my thoughts. I was not thinking about my
+Dulcinea, nor even about my mither; I was thinking
+about you and your britheries&mdash;I mean your nephews.'</p>
+<p>'You are very kind, Mr. Moncrieff.'</p>
+<p>'I'm a man of the wo<i>rrr</i>ld, though I wasn't aye a man of
+the wo<i>rrr</i>ld. I had to pay deep and dear for my
+experience, Miss M'Crimman.'</p>
+<p>'I can easily believe that; but you have benefited by it.'</p>
+<p>'Doubtless, doubtless; only it was concerning yourselves
+I was about to make an observation or two.'</p>
+<p>'Oh, thanks, do. You are so kind.'</p>
+<p>'Never a bit. This is a weary wo<i>rrr</i>ld at best. Where
+would any of us land if the one didn't help the other?
+Well then, there you sit, and woman of the wo<i>rrr</i>ld
+though you be, you're in a strange corner of it. You're in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_90' name='page_90'></a>90</span>
+a foreign land now if ever you were. You have few
+friends. Bah! what are all your letters of introduction
+worth? What do they bring you in? A few invitations
+to dinner, or to spend a week up country by a wealthy
+<i>estanciero</i>, advice from this friend and the next friend, and
+from a dozen friends maybe, but all different. You are
+already getting puzzled. You don't know what to do for
+the best. You're stopping here to look about you, as the
+saying is. You might well ask me what right have I to
+advise you. The right of brotherhood, I may answer. By
+birth and station you may be far above me, but&mdash;you are
+friends&mdash;you are from dear auld Scotland. Boys, you are
+my brothers!'</p>
+<p>'And I your sister!' Aunt extended her hand as she
+spoke, and the worthy fellow 'coralled' it, so to speak, in
+his big brown fist, and tears sprang to his eyes.</p>
+<p>He pulled himself up sharp, however, and surrounded
+himself with smoke, as the cuttle-fish does with black
+water, and probably for the same reason&mdash;to escape
+observation.</p>
+<p>'Now,' he said, 'this is no time for sentiment; it is no
+land for sentiment, but for hard work. Well, what are
+you going to do? Simply to say you're going to make
+your fortune is all fiddlesticks and folly. How are you
+going to begin?'</p>
+<p>'We were thinking&mdash;' I began, but paused.</p>
+<p>'<i>I</i> was thinking&mdash;' said my aunt; then she paused
+also.</p>
+<p>Moncrieff laughed, but not unmannerly.</p>
+<p>'I was thinking,' he said. '<i>You</i> were thinking; <i>he</i>, <i>she</i>,
+or <i>it</i> was thinking. Well, my good people, you may stop
+all your life in Buenos Ayres and conjugate the verb "to
+think"; but if you'll take my advice you will put a
+shoulder to the wheel of life, and try to conjugate the
+verb "to do".'</p>
+<p>'We all want to <i>do</i> and act,' said Donald, energetically.</p>
+<p>'Right. Well, you see, you have one thing already in
+your favour. You have a wee bit o' siller in your pouch.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_91' name='page_91'></a>91</span>
+It is a nest egg, though; it is not to be spent&mdash;it is there
+to bring more beside it. Now, will I tell you how I got
+on in the world? I'm not rich, but I am in a fair way to
+be independent. I am very fond of work, for work's sake,
+and I'm thirty years of age. Been in this country now for
+over fourteen years. Had I had a nest egg when I started,
+I'd have been half a millionaire by now. But, wae's me!
+I left the old country with nothing belonging to me but my
+crook and my plaid.'</p>
+<p>'You were a shepherd before you came out, then?' said aunt.</p>
+<p>'Yes; and that was the beauty of it. You've maybe
+heard o' Foudland, in Aberdeenshire? Well, I came fra
+far ayant the braes o' Foudland. That's, maybe, the way
+my mither's sae auldfarrent. There, ye see, I'm talkin'
+Scotch, for the very thought of Foudland brings back my
+Scotch tongue. Ay, dear lady, dear lady, my father was
+an honest crofter there. He owned a bit farm and
+everything, and things went pretty well with us till
+death tirled at the door-sneck and took poor father away
+to the mools. I was only a callan o' some thirteen
+summers then, and when we had to leave the wee croft
+and sell the cows we were fain to live in a lonely shieling
+on the bare brae side, just a butt and a ben with a wee
+kailyard, and barely enough land to grow potatoes and
+keep a little Shetland cowie. But, young though I was,
+I could herd sheep&mdash;under a shepherd at first, but finally
+all by myself. I'm not saying that wasn't a happy time.
+Oh, it was, lady! it was! And many a night since then
+have I lain awake thinking about it, till every scene of my
+boyhood's days rose up before me. I could see the hills,
+green with the tints of spring, or crimson with the glorious
+heather of autumn; see the braes yellow-tasselled with the
+golden broom and fragrant with the blooming whins; see
+the glens and dells, the silver, drooping birch-trees, the
+grand old waving pines, the wimpling burns, the roaring
+linns and lochs asleep in the evening sunset. And see my
+mither's shieling, too; and many a night have I lain awake
+to pray I might have her near me once again.'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_92' name='page_92'></a>92</span></p>
+<p>'And a kind God has answered that prayer!'</p>
+<p>'Ay, Miss M'Crimman, and I'll have the sad satisfaction
+of one day closing her een. Never mind, we do our duty
+here, and we'll all meet again in the great "Up-bye."
+But, dear boys, to continue my story&mdash;if story I dare call
+it. Not far from the hills where I used to follow Laird
+Glennie's sheep, and down beside a bonnie wood and
+stream, was a house, of not much pretension, but tenanted
+every year by a gentleman who used to paint the hills and
+glens and country all round. They say he got great
+praise for his pictures, and big prices as well. I used
+often to arrange my sheep and dogs for him into what he
+would call picturesque groups and attitudes. Then he
+painted them and me and dogs and all. He used to
+delight to listen to my boyish story of adventure, and in
+return would tell me tales of far-off lands he had been in,
+and about the Silver Land in particular. Such stories
+actually fired my blood. He had sown the seeds of
+ambition in my soul, and I began to long for a chance of
+getting away out into the wide, wide world, and seeing all
+its wonders, and, maybe, becoming a great man myself.
+But how could a penniless laddie work his way abroad?
+Impossible.</p>
+<p>'Well, one autumn a terrible storm swept over the
+country. It began with a perfect hurricane of wind, then
+it settled down to rain, till it became a perfect "spate." I
+had never seen such rain, nor such tearing floods as came
+down from the hills.</p>
+<p>'Our shieling was a good mile lower down the stream
+than the artist's summer hut. It was set well up the
+brae, and was safe. But on looking out next day a sight
+met my eyes that quite appalled me. All the lowlands
+and haughs were covered with a sea of water, down the
+centre of which a mighty river was chafing and roaring,
+carrying on its bosom trees up-torn from their roots,
+pieces of green bank, "stooks" of corn and "coles" of hay,
+and, saddest of all, the swollen bodies of sheep and oxen.
+My first thought was for the artist. I ran along the bank
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_93' name='page_93'></a>93</span>
+till opposite his house. Yes, there it was flooded to the
+roof, to which poor Mr. Power was clinging in desperation,
+expecting, doubtless, that every moment would be his last,
+for great trees were surging round the house and dashing
+against the tiles.</p>
+<p>'Hardly knowing what I did, I waved my plaid and
+shouted. He saw me, and waved his arm in response.
+Then I remembered that far down stream a man kept a
+boat, and I rushed away, my feet hardly seeming to touch
+the ground, till I reached&mdash;not the dwelling, that was
+covered, but the bank opposite; and here, to my delight,
+I found old M'Kenzie seated in his coble. He laughed at
+me when I proposed going to the rescue of Mr. Power.</p>
+<p>'"Impossible!" he said. "Look at the force of the
+stream."</p>
+<p>'"But we have not to cross. We can paddle up the
+edge," I insisted.</p>
+<p>'He ventured at last, much to my joy. It was hard,
+dangerous work, and often we found it safest to land and
+haul up the boat along the side.</p>
+<p>'We were opposite the artist's hut at length, hardly
+even the chimney of which was now visible. But Power
+was safe as yet.</p>
+<p>'At the very moment our boat reached him the
+chimney disappeared, and with it the artist. The turmoil
+was terrible, for the whole house had collapsed. For a
+time I saw nothing, then only a head and arm raised
+above the foaming torrent, far down stream. I dashed in,
+in spite of M'Kenzie's remonstrances, and in a minute
+more I had caught the drowning man. I must have been
+struck on the head by the advancing boat. That mattered
+little&mdash;the sturdy old ferryman saved us both; and for a
+few days the artist had the best room in mither's
+shieling.</p>
+<p>'And this, dear lady, turned out to be&mdash;as I dare say
+you have guessed&mdash;my fairy godfather. He went back to
+Buenos Ayres, taking me as servant. He is here now. I
+saw him but yesterday, and we are still the fastest friends.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_94' name='page_94'></a>94</span></p>
+<p>'But, boys, do not let me deceive you. Mr. Power was
+not rich; all he could do for me was to pay my passage
+out, and let me trust to Providence for the rest.</p>
+<p>'I worked at anything I could get to do for a time,
+principally holding horses in the street, for you know
+everybody rides here. But I felt sure enough that one
+day, or some day, a settler would come who could value
+the services of an honest, earnest Scottish boy.</p>
+<p>'And come the settler did. He took me away, far
+away to the west, to a wild country, but one that was far
+too flat and level to please me, who had been bred and
+born among the grand old hills of Scotland.</p>
+<p>'Never mind, I worked hard, and this settler&mdash;a
+Welshman he was&mdash;appreciated my value, and paid me
+fairly well. The best of it was that I could save every
+penny of my earnings.</p>
+<p>'Yes, boys, I roughed it more than ever you'll have to
+do, though remember you'll have to rough it too for a
+time. You don't mind that, you say. Bravely spoken,
+boys. Success in the Silver Land rarely fails to fall to
+him who deserves it.</p>
+<p>'Well, in course of time I knew far more about sheep
+and cattle-raising than my master, so he took me as a
+partner, and since then I have done well. We changed
+our quarters, my partner and I. We have now an excellent
+steading of houses, and a grand place for the beasts.'</p>
+<p>'And to what qualities do you chiefly attribute your
+success?' said my aunt.</p>
+<p>'Chiefly,' replied Moncrieff, 'to good common-sense, to
+honest work and perseverance. I'm going back home in
+a week or two, as soon as I get married and my mither
+gets the "swimming" out of her head. She says she still
+feels the earth moving up and down with her; and I don't
+wonder, an auld body like her doesn't stand much codging
+about.</p>
+<p>'Well, you see, boys, that I, like yourselves, had one
+advantage to begin with. You have a bit o' siller&mdash;I got
+a fairy godfather. But if I had a year to spare I'd go
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_95' name='page_95'></a>95</span>
+back to Scotland and lecture. I'd tell them all my own
+ups and downs, and I'd end by saying that lads or young
+men, with plenty of go in them and willingness to work,
+will get on up country here if they can once manage to
+get landed. Ay, even if they have hardly one penny to
+rattle against another.</p>
+<p>'Now, boys, do you care to go home with me? Mind it
+is a wild border-land I live on. There are wild beasts in
+the hill jungles yet, and there are wilder men&mdash;the
+Indians. Yes, I've fought them before, and hope to live
+to fight them once again.'</p>
+<p>'I don't think <i>we'll</i> fear the Indians <i>very</i> much,' said
+my bold brother Donald.</p>
+<p>'And,' I added, 'we are so glad you have helped us to
+solve the problem that we stood face to face with&mdash;namely,
+how to begin to do something.'</p>
+<p>'Well, if that is all, I'll give you plenty to do. I've
+taken out with me waggon-loads of wire fencing as well as
+a wife. Next week, too, I expect a ship from Glasgow to
+bring me seven sturdy Scotch servant men that I picked
+myself. Every one of them has legs like pillar post-offices,
+hands as broad as spades, and a heart like a lion's.
+And, more than all this, we are trying to form a little
+colony out yonder, then we'll be able to hold our own
+against all the reeving Indians that ever strode a horse.
+Ah! boys, this Silver Land has a mighty future before it!
+We have just to settle down a bit and work with a will
+and a steady purpose, then we'll fear competition neither
+with Australia nor the United States of America either.</p>
+<p>'But you'll come. That's right. And now I have you
+face to face with fate and fortune.</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto; '><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>"Now's the day and now's the hour,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>See the front of battle lower."</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>Yes, boys, the battle of life, and I would not give a fig for
+any lad who feared to face it.</p>
+<p>'Coming, mither, coming. That's the auld lady waking
+up, and she'll want a cup o' tea.'</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='IX_SHOPPING_AND_SHOOTING' id='IX_SHOPPING_AND_SHOOTING'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_96' name='page_96'></a>96</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+<h3>SHOPPING AND SHOOTING.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>We all went to Moncrieff's wedding, and it passed off
+much the same way as do weddings in other parts of
+the world. The new Mrs. Moncrieff was a very modest
+and charming young person indeed, and a native of our
+sister island&mdash;Ireland. I dare say Moncrieff loved his wife
+very much, though there was no extra amount of romance
+about his character, else he would hardly have spoken
+about his wife and a truck-load of wire fencing in the
+self-same sentence. But I dare say this honest Scot
+believed that wire fencing was quite as much a matter of
+necessity in the Silver West as a wife was.</p>
+<p>As for my brothers and me, and even aunt, we were
+impatient now&mdash;'burning' bold Donald called it&mdash;to get
+away to this same Silver West and begin the very new
+life that was before us.</p>
+<p>But ships do not always arrive from England exactly to
+a day; the vessel in which Moncrieff's men, dogs, goods,
+and chattels were coming was delayed by contrary winds,
+and was a whole fortnight behind her time.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile we restrained ourselves as well as we could,
+and aunt went shopping. She had set her heart upon
+guanaco robes or ponchos for each of us; and though they
+cost a deal of money, and were, according to Moncrieff,
+a quite unnecessary expense, she bought them all the same.</p>
+<p>'They will last for ever, you know,' was aunt's excuse
+for the extravagance.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_97' name='page_97'></a>97</span></p>
+<p>'Yes,' he said, 'but we won't. Besides,' he added,
+'these ponchos may bring the Gaucho malo (the bad
+Gaucho) round us.'</p>
+<p>'All the better,' persisted aunt. 'I've heard such a deal
+about this Gaucho malo that I should very much like to
+see a live specimen.'</p>
+<p>Moncrieff laughed.</p>
+<p>'I much prefer <i>dead</i> specimens,' he said, with that canny
+twinkle in his eye. 'That's the way I like to see them
+served up. It is far the safest plan.'</p>
+<p>We were very fond of aunt's company, for she really
+was more of a sister to us than our auntie; but for all that
+we preferred going shopping with Moncrieff. The sort of
+stores he was laying in gave such earnest of future sport
+and wild adventure.</p>
+<p>Strange places he took us to sometimes&mdash;the shop of a
+half-caste Indian, for instance, a fellow from the far south
+of Patagonia. Here Moncrieff bought quite a quantity of
+ordinary ponchos, belts, and linen trousers of great width
+with hats enough of the sombrero type to thatch a rick.
+This mild and gentle savage also sold Moncrieff some
+dozen of excellent lassoes and bolas as well. From the
+way our friend examined the former, and tried the thong-strength
+of the latter, it was evident he was an expert in
+the use of both. Bolas may be briefly described as three
+long leather thongs tied together at one end, and having a
+ball at the free end of each. On the pampas, these balls
+are as often as not simply stones tied up in bits of skin;
+but the bolas now bought by Moncrieff were composed of
+shining metal, to prevent their being lost on the pampas.
+These bolas are waved round the heads of the horsemen
+hunters when chasing ostriches, or even pumas. As soon
+as the circular motion has given them impetus they are
+dexterously permitted to leave the hand at a tangent, and
+if well thrown go circling round the legs, or probably neck
+of the animal, and bring it to the ground by tripping it
+up, or strangling it.</p>
+<p>The lasso hardly needs any description.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_98' name='page_98'></a>98</span></p>
+<p>'Can you throw that thing well?' said Dugald, his eyes
+sparkling with delight.</p>
+<p>'I think I can,' replied Moncrieff. 'Come to the door
+and see me lasso a dog or something.'</p>
+<p>Out we all went.</p>
+<p>'Oh!' cried Dugald, exultingly, 'here comes little
+Captain Bombazo, walking on the other side of the
+street with my aunt. Can you lasso him without hurting
+auntie?'</p>
+<p>'I believe I can,' said Moncrieff. 'Stand by, and let's
+have a good try. Whatever a man dares he can do.
+Hoop là!'</p>
+<p>The cord left the Scotchman's hand like a flash of lightning,
+and next moment Bombazo, who at the time was
+smiling and talking most volubly, was fairly noosed.</p>
+<p>The boys in the street got up a cheer. Bombazo
+jumped and struggled, but Moncrieff stood his ground.</p>
+<p>'He must come,' he said, and sure enough, greatly to
+the delight of the town urchins, Moncrieff rounded in
+the slack of the rope and landed the captain most
+beautifully.</p>
+<p>'Ah! you beeg Scot,' said Bombazo, laughing good-humouredly.
+'I would not care so mooch, if it were not
+for de lady.'</p>
+<p>'Oh, she won't miss you, Bombazo.'</p>
+<p>'On the contraire, she veel be inconsolabeel.'</p>
+<p>'Ha, ha, ha!' laughed Moncrieff. 'What a tall opinion
+of yourself you have, my little friend!'</p>
+<p>Bombazo drew himself up, but it hardly added an inch
+to his height, and nothing to his importance.</p>
+<p>Saddles of the pampas pattern the semi-savage had also
+plenty of, and bridles too, and Moncrieff gave a handsome
+order.</p>
+<p>A more respectable and highly civilized saddler's store
+was next visited, and real English gear was bought,
+including two charming ladies' saddles of the newest
+pattern, and a variety of rugs of various kinds.</p>
+<p>Off we went next to a wholesale grocer's place. Out
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_99' name='page_99'></a>99</span>
+came Moncrieff's great note-book, and he soon gave
+evidence that he possessed a wondrous memory, and was
+a thorough man of business. He kept the shopman hard
+at it for half an hour, by which time one of the pyramids
+of Egypt, on a small scale, was built upon the counter.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_7' id='linki_7'></a>
+<img src='images/illus098.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 605px; height: 374px;' /><br />
+</div>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_101' name='page_101'></a>101</span></div>
+<p>'Now for the draper's, and then the chemist's,' said
+our friend. From the former&mdash;a Scot, like himself&mdash;he
+bought a pile of goods of the better sort, but from their
+appearance all warranted to wear a hundred years.</p>
+<p>His visit to the druggist was of brief duration.</p>
+<p>'Is my medicine chest filled?'</p>
+<p>'Yes, sir, all according to your orders.'</p>
+<p>'Thanks; send it, and send the bill.'</p>
+<p>'Never mind about the bill, Mr. Moncrieff. You'll be
+down here again.'</p>
+<p>'Send the bill, all the same. And I say, Mr. Squills&mdash;'</p>
+<p>'Yes, sir.'</p>
+<p>'Don't forget to deduct the discount.'</p>
+<p>But Moncrieff's shopping was not quite all over yet, and
+the last place he went to was a gunsmith's shop.</p>
+<p>And here I and my brothers learned a little about
+Silver West shooting, and witnessed an exhibition that
+made us marvel.</p>
+<p>Moncrieff, after most careful examination, bought half
+a dozen good rifles, and a dozen fowling pieces. It took
+him quite a long time to select these and the ammunition.</p>
+<p>'You have good judgment, sir,' said the proprietor.</p>
+<p>'I require it all,' said Moncrieff. 'But now I'd look at
+some revolvers.'</p>
+<p>He was shown some specimens.</p>
+<p>'Toys&mdash;take them away.'</p>
+<p>He was shown others.</p>
+<p>'Toys again. Have you nothing better?'</p>
+<p>'There is nothing better made.'</p>
+<p>'Very well. Your bill please. Thanks.'</p>
+<p>'If you'll wait one minute,' the shopkeeper said, 'I
+should feel obliged. My man has gone across the way to
+a neighbour gunsmith.'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_102' name='page_102'></a>102</span></p>
+<p>'Couldn't I go across the way myself?'</p>
+<p>'No,' and the man smiled. 'I don't want to lose your
+custom.'</p>
+<p>'Your candour is charming. I'll wait.'</p>
+<p>In a few minutes the man returned with a big basket.</p>
+<p>'Ah! these are beauties,' cried Moncrieff. 'Now, can I
+try one or two?'</p>
+<p>'Certainly.'</p>
+<p>The man led the way to the back garden of the premises.
+Against a wall a target was placed, and Moncrieff loaded
+and took up his position. I noticed that he kept his
+elbow pretty near his side. Then he slowly raised the
+weapon.</p>
+<p>Crack&mdash;crack&mdash;crack! six times in all.</p>
+<p>'Bravo!' cried the shopkeeper. 'Why, almost every
+shot has hit the spot.'</p>
+<p>Moncrieff threw the revolver towards the man as if it
+had been a cricket-ball.</p>
+<p>'Take off the trigger,' he said.</p>
+<p>'Off the trigger, sir?'</p>
+<p>'Yes,' said Moncrieff, quietly; 'I seldom use the
+trigger.'</p>
+<p>The man obeyed. Then he handed back the weapon,
+which he had loaded.</p>
+<p>Moncrieff looked one moment at the target, then the
+action of his arm was for all the world like that of throwing
+stones or cracking a whip.</p>
+<p>He seemed to bring the revolver down from his ear each
+time.</p>
+<p>Bang&mdash;bang&mdash;bang! and not a bullet missed the bull's-eye.</p>
+<p>'How is it done?' cried Dugald, excitedly.</p>
+<p>'I lift the hammer a little way with my thumb and let
+it go again as I get my aim&mdash;that is all. It is a rapid way
+of firing, but I don't advise you laddies to try it, or you
+may blow off your heads. Besides, the aim, except in
+practised hands like mine, is not so accurate. To hit well
+it is better to raise the weapon. First fix your eye on
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_103' name='page_103'></a>103</span>
+your man's breast-button&mdash;if he has one&mdash;then elevate till
+you have your sight straight, and there you are, and there
+your Indian is, or your "Gaucho malo."'</p>
+<p>Moncrieff pointed grimly towards the ground with his
+pistol as he spoke, and Dugald gave a little shudder, as if
+in reality a dead man lay there.</p>
+<p>'It is very simple, you see.'</p>
+<p>'Oh, Mr. Moncrieff,' said Dugald, 'I never thought you
+were so terrible a man!'</p>
+<p>Moncrieff laughed heartily, finished his purchases,
+ordering better cartridges, as these, he said, had been
+badly loaded, and made the weapon kick, and then we
+left the shop.</p>
+<p>'Now then, boys, I'm ready, and in two days' time
+hurrah for the Silver West! Between you and me, I'm
+sick of civilization.'</p>
+<p>And in two days' time, sure enough, we had all started.</p>
+<p>The train we were in was more like an American than
+an English one. We were in a very comfortable saloon,
+in which we could move about with freedom.</p>
+<p>Moncrieff, as soon as we had rattled through the streets
+and found ourselves out in the green, cool country, was
+brimful of joy and spirits. Aunt said he reminded her
+of a boy going off on a holiday. His wife, too, looked
+'blithe' and cheerful, and nothing could keep his mother's
+tongue from wagging.</p>
+<p>Bombazo made the old lady a capital second, while
+several other settlers who were going out with us&mdash;all
+Scotch, by the way&mdash;did nothing but smile and wonder at
+all they saw. We soon passed away for a time beyond the
+region of trees into a rich green rolling country, which
+gave evidence of vast wealth, and sport too. Of this
+latter fact Dugald took good notice.</p>
+<p>'Oh, look!' he would cry, pointing to some wild wee
+lake. 'Murdoch! Donald! wouldn't you like to be at
+the lochside yonder, gun in hand?'</p>
+<p>And, sure enough, all kinds of feathered game were
+very plentiful.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_104' name='page_104'></a>104</span></p>
+<p>But after a journey of five hours we left the train, and
+now embarked on a passenger steamer, and so commenced
+our journey up the Paraná. Does not the very name
+sound musical? But I may be wrong, according to some,
+in calling the Paraná beautiful, for the banks are not high;
+there are no wild and rugged mountains, nor even great
+forests; nevertheless, its very width, its silent moving
+power, and its majesticness give it a beauty in my eye that
+few rivers I know of possess. We gazed on it as the
+sunset lit up its wondrous waters till an island we were
+passing appeared to rise into the sky and float along in the
+crimson haze. We gazed on it again ere we retired for
+the night. The stars were now all out, and the river's
+dark bosom was studded here and there with ripples and
+buttons of light; but still it was silent, as if it hid some
+dark mysterious secret which it must tell only to the
+distant ocean.</p>
+<p>We slept very soundly this night, for the monotonous
+throb-throb of the engine's great pulse and the churning
+rush of the screw not only wooed us to slumber, but
+seemed to mingle even with our dreams.</p>
+<p>All night long, then, we were on the river, and nearly
+all next day as well. But the voyage appeared to my
+brothers and me to be all too short. We neared Rosario
+about sunset, and at last cast anchor. But we did not
+land. We were too snug where we were, and the hotel
+would have had far fewer charms.</p>
+<p>To-night we had a little impromptu concert, for several
+of Moncrieff's friends came on board, and, strange to say,
+they were nearly all Scotch. So Scotch was spoken,
+Scotch songs were sung, and on deck, to the wild notes of
+the great bagpipes, Scotch reels and strathspeys were
+danced. After that,</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto; '><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>'The nicht drave on wi' songs and clatter,'</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>till it was well into the wee short hours of the morning.</p>
+<p>At Rosario we stopped for a day&mdash;more, I think,
+because Moncrieff wished to give aunt and his young wife
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_105' name='page_105'></a>105</span>
+a chance of seeing the place than for any business reason.
+Neither my brothers nor I were very much impressed by
+it, though it is a large and flourishing town, built somewhat
+on Philadelphia principles, in blocks, and, like Philadelphia,
+gridironed all over with tramway lines. It is a
+good thing one is able to get off the marble pavements
+into the cars without having far to go, for the streets are
+at times mere sloughs of despond. It is the same in all
+new countries.</p>
+<p>Rosario lies in the midst of a flat but fertile country,
+on the banks of the Paraná. The hotel where we lodged
+was quite Oriental in its appearance, being built round a
+beautiful square, paved with marble, and adorned with
+the most lovely tropical shrubs, flowers, and climbing
+plants.</p>
+<p>There seems to be a flea in Rosario, however&mdash;just one
+flea; but he is a most ubiquitous and a most insatiably
+blood-thirsty little person. The worst of it is that, night
+or day, you are never perfectly sure where he may be.
+It is no use killing him either&mdash;that is simply labour
+thrown away, for he appears to come to life again, and
+resumes his evil courses as merrily as before.</p>
+<p>Fifty times a day did I kill that flea, and Dugald said
+he had slain him twice as often; but even as Dugald
+spoke I could have vowed the lively <i>pulex</i> was thoroughly
+enjoying a draught of my Highland blood inside my right
+sock.</p>
+<p>Although none of our party shed tears as we mounted
+into the train, still the kindly hand-shakings and the
+hearty good-byes were affecting enough; and just as the
+train went puffing and groaning away from the station
+they culminated in one wild Highland hurrah! repeated
+three times thrice, and augmented by the dissonance of
+a half-ragged crew of urchins, who must needs wave their
+arms aloft and shout, without the faintest notion what it
+was all about.</p>
+<p>We were now <i>en route</i> for Cordoba, westward ho! by
+Frayle Muerto and Villa Neuva.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='X_A_JOURNEY_THAT_SEEMS_LIKE_A_DREAM' id='X_A_JOURNEY_THAT_SEEMS_LIKE_A_DREAM'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_106' name='page_106'></a>106</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+<h3>A JOURNEY THAT SEEMS LIKE A DREAM.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was towards sunset on the day we had left Rosario,
+and we had made what our guard called a grand run,
+though to us it was a somewhat tedious one. Moncrieff
+had tucked his mother up in the plaid, and she had gone
+off to sleep on the seat 'as gentle as "ewe lammie,"'
+according to her son. My aunt and the young bride were
+quietly talking together, and I myself was in that delightful
+condition called "twixt sleeping and waking,' when suddenly
+Dugald, who had been watching everything from the window,
+cried, 'Oh, Donald, look here. What a lovely changing
+cloud!'</p>
+<p>Had Moncrieff not been busy just then&mdash;very earnestly
+busy indeed&mdash;discussing the merits of some sample
+packets of seeds with one of his new men, he might have
+come at once and explained the mystery.</p>
+<p>It was indeed a lovely cloud, and it lay low on the
+north-western horizon. But we had never before seen so
+strange a cloud, for not only did it increase in length and
+breadth more rapidly than do most clouds, but it caught
+the sun's parting rays in quite a marvellous manner.
+When first we looked at it the colour throughout was a
+bluish purple; suddenly it changed to a red with resplendent
+border of fiery orange. Next it collapsed, getting broader
+and rounder, and becoming a dark blue, almost approaching
+to black, while the border beneath was orange-red. But
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_107' name='page_107'></a>107</span>
+the glowing magnificence of the colour it is impossible to
+describe in words; and the best artist would have failed
+to reproduce it even were he ten times a Turner.</p>
+<p>At this moment, and just as the cloud was becoming
+elongated again, Moncrieff came to our side. His usually
+bright face fell at once as soon as he glanced at it.</p>
+<p>'Locusts!' He almost gasped the word out.</p>
+<p>'Locusts!' was re-echoed from every corner of the
+carriage; and immediately all eyes were strained in the
+direction of our 'lofty golden cloud.'</p>
+<p>As we approached nearer to it, and it came nearer to us,
+even the light from the setting sun was obscured, and in a
+short time we were in the cloud, and apparently part of it.
+It had become almost too dark to see anything inside our
+carriage, owing to that dense and awful fog of insect life.
+We quickly closed the windows, for the loathsome insects
+were now pattering against the glass, and many had already
+obtained admittance, much to the horror of young Mrs.
+Moncrieff, though aunt took matters easy enough, having
+seen such sights before.</p>
+<p>The train now slowly came to a standstill. Something&mdash;no
+one appeared to know what&mdash;had happened on ahead
+of us, and here we must wait till the line was clear. Even
+Moncrieff's mother had awakened, and was looking out
+with the rest of us.</p>
+<p>'Dearie me! Dearie me!' she exclaimed. 'A shower
+o' golochs! The very licht o' day darkened wi' the
+fu'some craiters. Ca' you this a land o' milk and honey?
+Egyptian darkness and showers o' golochs!'</p>
+<p>We descended and walked some little distance into the
+country, and the sight presented to our astonished gaze I,
+for one, will not forget to my dying day. The locusts
+were still around us, but were bearing away southward,
+having already devastated the fields in this vicinity. But
+they fell in hundreds and thousands around us; they
+struck against our hands, our faces, and hats; they got
+into our sleeves, and even into our pockets; and we could
+not take a step without squashing them under foot.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_108' name='page_108'></a>108</span></p>
+<p>Only an hour before we had been passing through a
+country whose green fertility was something to behold
+once and dream about for ever. Evidence of wealth and
+contentment had been visible on all sides. Beautiful,
+home-looking, comfortable <i>estancias</i> and out-buildings, fat,
+sleek cattle and horses, and flocks of beautiful sheep, with
+feathered fowls of every description. But here, though
+there were not wanting good farmsteadings, all was desolation
+and threatened famine; hardly a green blade or leaf
+was left, and the woebegone looks of some of the people
+we met wandering aimlessly about, dazed and almost
+distracted, were pitiful to behold. I was not sorry when
+a shriek from the engine warned us that it was time to
+retrace our slippery footsteps.</p>
+<p>'Is this a common occurrence?' I could not help asking
+our friend Moncrieff.</p>
+<p>He took me kindly by the arm as he replied,</p>
+<p>'It's a depressing sight to a youngster, I must allow;
+but we should not let our thoughts dwell on it. Sometimes
+the locusts are a terrible plague, but they manage to get
+over even that. Come in, and we'll light up the saloon.'</p>
+<p>For hours after this the pattering continued at the
+closed windows, showing that the shower of golochs had
+not yet ceased to fall. But with lights inside, the carriage
+looked comfortable and cheerful enough, and when presently
+Moncrieff got out Bombazo's guitar and handed it to him,
+and that gentleman began to sing, we soon got happy
+again, and forgot even the locusts&mdash;at least, all but
+Moncrieff's mother did. She had gone to sleep in a
+corner, but sometimes we heard her muttering to herself,
+in her dreams, about the 'land o' promise,' 'showers of
+golochs,' and 'Egyptian darkness.'</p>
+<p>The last thing I remember as I curled up on the floor
+of the saloon, with a saddle for a pillow and a rug round
+me&mdash;for the night had grown bitterly cold&mdash;was Bombazo's
+merry face as he strummed on his sweet guitar and sang
+of tresses dark, and love-lit eyes, and sunny Spain. This
+was a delightful way of going to sleep; the awakening
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_109' name='page_109'></a>109</span>
+was not quite so pleasant, however, for I opened my eyes
+only to see a dozen of the ugly 'golochs' on my rug, and
+others asquat on the saddle, washing their faces as flies do.
+I got up and went away to wash mine.</p>
+<p>The sun was already high in the heavens, and on
+opening a window and looking out, I found we were
+passing through a woodland country, and that far away in
+the west were rugged hills. Surely, then, we were nearing
+the end of our journey.</p>
+<p>I asked our mentor Moncrieff, and right cheerily he replied,</p>
+<p>'Yes, my lad, and we'll soon be in Cordoba now.'</p>
+<p>This visit of ours to Cordoba was in reality a little
+pleasure trip, got up for the special delectation of our
+aunt and young Mrs. Moncrieff. It formed part and
+parcel of the Scotchman's honeymoon, which, it must be
+allowed, was a very chequered one.</p>
+<p>If the reader has a map handy he will find the name
+Villa Maria thereon, a place lying between Rosario and
+Cordoba. This was our station, and there we had left all
+heavy baggage, including Moncrieff's people. On our
+return we should once more resume travelling together
+westward still by Mercedes. And thence to our destination
+would be by far and away the most eventful portion
+of the journey.</p>
+<p>'Look out,' continued Moncrieff, 'and behold the rugged
+summits of the grand old hills.'</p>
+<p>'And these are the Sierras?'</p>
+<p>'These are the Sierras; and doesn't the very sight of
+mountains once again fill your heart with joy? Don't you
+want to sing and jump&mdash;'</p>
+<p>'And call aloud for joy,' said his mother, who had come
+up to have a peep over our shoulders. 'Dearie me,' she
+added, 'they're no half so bonny and green as the braes o'
+Foudland.'</p>
+<p>'Ah! mither, wait till you get to our beautiful home in
+Mendoza. Ye'll be charmed wi' a' you see.'</p>
+<p>'I wish,' I said, 'I was half as enthusiastic as you are,
+Moncrieff.'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_110' name='page_110'></a>110</span></p>
+<p>'You haven't been many days in the Silver Land.
+Wait, lad, wait! When once you've fairly settled and can
+feel at home, man, you'll think the time as short as pleasure
+itself. Days and weeks flee by like winking, and every
+day and every week brings its own round o' duty to
+perform. And all the time you'll be makin' money as easy
+as makin' slates.'</p>
+<p>'Money isn't everything,' I said.</p>
+<p>'No, lad, money isn't everything; but money is a deal
+in this wo<i>rrr</i>ld, and we mustn't forget that money puts
+the power in our hands to do others good, and that I
+think is the greatest pleasure of a'. And you know,
+Murdoch, that if God does put talents in our hands He
+expects us to make use of them.'</p>
+<p>'True enough, Moncrieff,' I said.</p>
+<p>'See, see! that is Cordoba down in the hollow yonder,
+among the hills. Look, mither! see how the domes and
+steeples sparkle in the mornin's sunshine. Yonder dome
+is the cathedral, and further off you see the observatory,
+and maybe, mither, you'll have a peep through a telescope
+that will bring the moon so near to you that you'll be able
+to see the good folks thereon ploughin' fields and milkin'
+kye.'</p>
+<p>We stayed at Cordoba for four days. I felt something
+of the old pleasant languor of Rio stealing over me again as
+I lounged about the handsome streets, gazed on the ancient
+churches and convent, and its world-renowned University,
+or climbed its <i>barranca</i>, or wandered by the Rio Balmeiro,
+and through the lovely and romantic suburbs. In good
+sooth, Cordoba is a dreamy old place, and I felt better
+for being in it. The weather was all in our favour also,
+being dry, and neither hot nor cold, although it was now
+winter in these regions. I was sorry to leave Cordoba, and
+so I feel sure was aunt, and even old Jenny.</p>
+<p>Then came the journey back to Villa Maria, and thence
+away westward to Villa Mercedes. The railway to the
+latter place had not long been opened.</p>
+<p>It seems all like a beautiful halo&mdash;that railway ride to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_111' name='page_111'></a>111</span>
+the <i>Ultima Thule</i> of the iron horse&mdash;and, like a dream, it is
+but indistinctly remembered. Let me briefly catch the
+salient points of this pleasant journey.</p>
+<p>Villa Maria we reach in the evening. The sun is setting
+in a golden haze; too golden, for it bodes rain, and presently
+down it comes in a steady pour, changing the dust of the
+roads into the stickiest of mud, and presently into rivers.
+Moncrieff is here, there, and everywhere, seeing after
+his manifold goods and chattels; but just as the short
+twilight is deepening into night, he returns 'dressed
+and dry,' as he calls it, to the snug little room of the
+inn, where a capital dinner is spread for us, and we are
+all hungry. Even old Jenny, forgetting her troubles and
+travels, makes merry music with knife and fork, and
+Bombazo is all smiles and chatter. It rains still; what of
+that? It will drown the mosquitoes and other flying 'jerlies.'
+It is even pleasant to listen to the rattle of the rain-drops
+during the few lulls there were in the conversation. The
+sound makes the room inside seem ever so much more
+cosy. Besides, there is a fire in the grate, and, to add
+to our enjoyment, Bombazo has his guitar.</p>
+<p>Even the landlord takes the liberty of lingering in the
+room, standing modestly beside the door, to listen. It is
+long, he tells us, since he has had so cheerful a party at his
+house.</p>
+<p>Aileen, as Moncrieff calls his pretty bride, is not long in
+discovering that the innkeeper hails from her own sweet
+Isle of Sorrow, and many friendly questions are asked on
+both sides.</p>
+<p>Bed at last. A bright morning, the sun coming up
+red and rosy through an ocean of clouds more gorgeous than
+ever yet was seen in tame old England.</p>
+<p>We are all astir very early. We are all merry and
+hungry. Farewells are said, and by and by off we rattle.
+The train moves very slowly at first, but presently warms
+to her work and settles down to it. We catch a glimpse of
+a town some distance off, and nearer still the silver gleam
+of a river reflecting the morning sun. By and by we are on
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_112' name='page_112'></a>112</span>
+the river bridge, and over it, and so on and away through
+an open pampa. Such, at least, I call it. Green swelling
+land all around, with now and then a lake or loch swarming
+with web-footed fowl, the sight of which makes Dugald's
+eyes water.</p>
+<p>We pass station after station, stopping at all. More
+woods, more pampa; thriving fields and fertile lands;
+<i>estancias</i>, flocks of sheep, herds of happy cattle. A busy,
+bustling railway station, with as much noise around it as
+we find at Clapham Junction; another river&mdash;the Rio
+Cuarto, if my memory does not play me false; pampas
+again, with hills in the distance. Wine and water-melons
+at a station; more wine and more water-melons at another.</p>
+<p>After this I think I fall asleep, and I wonder now if the
+wine and the water-melons had anything to do with that.
+I awake at last and rub my eyes. Bombazo is also dozing;
+so is old Jenny. Old Jenny is a marvel to sleep. Dugald
+is as bright as a humming bird; he says I have lost a
+sight.</p>
+<p>'What was the sight?'</p>
+<p>'Oh, droves upon droves of real wild horses, wilder far
+than our ponies at Coila.'</p>
+<p>I close my eyes again. Dear old Coila! I wish Dugald
+had not mentioned the word. It takes me back again in
+one moment across the vast and mighty ocean we have
+crossed to our home, to father, mother, and Flora.</p>
+<p>Before long we are safe at Villa Mercedes. Not much
+to see here, and the wind blows cold from west and south.</p>
+<p>We are not going to lodge in the town, however. We
+are independent of inns, if there are any, and independent
+of everything. We are going under canvas.</p>
+<p>Already our pioneers have the camp ready in a piece of
+ground sheltered by a row of lordly poplars; and to-morrow
+morning we start by road for the far interior.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>Another glorious morning! There is a freshness in the
+air which almost amounts to positive cold, and reminds one
+of a November day in Scotland. Bombazo calls it bitterly
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_113' name='page_113'></a>113</span>
+cold, and my aunt has distributed guanaco ponchos to us,
+and has adorned herself with her own. Yes, adorned is
+the right word to apply to auntie's own travelling toilet;
+but we brothers think we look funny in ours, and laugh at
+each other in turn. Moncrieff sticks to the Highland
+plaid, but the sight of a guanaco poncho to old Jenny does,
+I verily believe, make her the happiest old lady in all the
+Silver Land. She is mounted in the great canvas-covered
+waggon, which is quite a caravan in every respect. It
+has even windows in the sides and real doorways, and is
+furnished inside with real sofas and Indian-made chairs, to
+say nothing of hammocks and tables and a stove. This
+caravan is drawn by four beautiful horses, and will be our
+sitting-room and dining-room by day, and the ladies'
+boudoir and bedroom for some time to come.</p>
+<p>Away we rattle westwards, dozens of soldiers, half-bred
+Chilians, Gauchos, and a crowd of dark-eyed but dirty
+children, giving us a ringing cheer as we start.</p>
+<p>What a cavalcade it is, to be sure! Waggons, drays,
+carts, mules, and horses. All our imported Scotchmen are
+riding, and glorious fellows they look. Each has a rifle
+slung across his shoulder, belts and sheath knives, and
+broad sombrero hat. The giant Moncrieff himself is riding,
+and looks to me the bravest of the brave. I and each of
+my brothers have undertaken to drive a cart or waggon,
+and we feel men from hat to boots, and as proud all over
+as a cock with silver spurs.</p>
+<p>We soon leave behind us those tall, mysterious-looking
+poplar trees. So tall are they that, although when we
+turned out not a breath of wind was blowing on the surface
+of the ground, away aloft their summits were waving gently
+to and fro, with a whispering sound, as if they were talking
+to unseen spirits in the sky.</p>
+<p>We leave even the <i>estancias</i> behind. We are out now
+on the lonesome rolling plain. Here and there are woods;
+away, far away, behind us are the jagged summits of the
+everlasting hills. By and by the diligence, a strange-looking
+rattle-trap of a coach&mdash;a ghost of a coach, I might
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_114' name='page_114'></a>114</span>
+call it&mdash;goes rattling and swaying past us. Its occupants
+raise a feeble cheer, to which we respond with a three
+times three; for we seem to like to hear our voices.</p>
+<p>After this we feel more alone than ever. On and on
+and on we jog. The road is broad and fairly good; our
+waggons have broad wheels; this retards our speed, but
+adds to our comfort and that of the mules and horses.</p>
+<p>Before very long we reach a broad river, and in we
+plunge, the horsemen leading the van, with the water up
+to their saddle-girths. I give the reins of my team to my
+attendant Gaucho, and, running forward, jump on board
+the caravan to keep the ladies company while we fight the
+ford. But the ladies are in no way afraid; they are
+enjoying themselves in the front of the carriage, which is
+open. Old Jenny is in an easy-chair and buried to the
+nose in her guanaco robe. She is muttering something
+to herself, and as I bend down to listen I can catch the
+words: 'Dearie me! Dearie me! When'll ever we reach
+the Land o' Promise? Egyptian darkness! Showers of
+golochs! Chariots and horsemen! Dearie me! Dearie
+me!'</p>
+<p>But we are over at last, and our whole cavalcade looks
+sweeter and fresher for the bath.</p>
+<p>Presently we reach a corral, where two men beckon to
+Moncrieff. They are wild and uncouth enough in all
+conscience; their baggy breeches and ponchos are in sad
+need of repair, and a visit to a barber would add to the
+respectability of their appearance. They look excited,
+wave their arms, and point southwards. But they talk in
+a strange jargon, and there are but two words intelligible
+to me. These, however, are enough to set my heart
+throbbing with a strange feeling of uneasiness I never felt
+before.</p>
+<p>'<i>Los Indios! Los Indios!</i>'</p>
+<p>Moncrieff points significantly to his armed men and
+smiles. The Gauchos wave their arms in the air, rapidly
+opening and shutting their hands in a way that to me is
+very mysterious. And so they disappear.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XI_THE_TRAGEDY_AT_THE_FONDA' id='XI_THE_TRAGEDY_AT_THE_FONDA'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_115' name='page_115'></a>115</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+<h3>THE TRAGEDY AT THE FONDA.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>I could not help wondering, as I glanced at aunt
+whether she had heard and understood the meaning
+of those wild Gauchos' warning. If she did she made no
+sign. But aunt is a M'Crimman, and the sister of a bold
+Highland chief. She would not <i>show</i> fear even if she <i>felt</i>
+it. Yes, the brave may feel fear, but the coward alone is
+influenced by it.</p>
+<p>Old Jenny had gone to sleep, so I said good-bye to aunt,
+nodded to Aileen, and went back to my waggon once more.</p>
+<p>We made good progress that day, though we did not
+hurry. We stopped to feed our cattle, and to rest and
+feed ourselves. The jolting had been terrible on some
+parts of the road. But now the sun was getting very low
+indeed, and as we soon came to a piece of high, hard
+ground, with a view of the country round us for miles, we
+determined to bivouac for the night.</p>
+<p>The horses and mules were hobbled and turned off to
+graze under the charge of sentry Gauchos. No fear of
+their wandering off far. They were watered not an hour
+ago, and would be fresh by daybreak.</p>
+<p>Now, Moncrieff had been too long in the wilds to neglect
+precautions while camping out. I had taken an early
+opportunity to-day to interview our leader concerning the
+report that Indians were abroad.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_116' name='page_116'></a>116</span></p>
+<p>'Ah!' he answered, 'you heard and understood what
+that half-breed said, then?'</p>
+<p>'Just a word or two. He appeared to give us a warning
+of some kind. Is it of any account?'</p>
+<p>'Well, there's always some water where the stirkie
+drowns; there's always some fire where you see smoke;
+and it is better to be sure than sorry.'</p>
+<p>I could elicit no more information from my canny
+countryman than that. I said nothing to any one, not
+even my brothers. Why should I cause them the slightest
+alarm, and speak a word that might tend to make them
+sleep less soundly?</p>
+<p>However, as soon as the halt was made, I was glad to
+see that Moncrieff took every precaution against a surprise.
+The caravan was made the centre of a square, the waggons
+being 'laggered' around it. The fire was lit and the
+dinner cooked close beside a sheltering <i>barranca</i>, and as
+soon as this meal was discussed the fire was extinguished.</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto; '><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>'Then came still evening on,'</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>and we all gathered together for prayer. Even the
+Gauchos were summoned, though I fear paid but little
+attention, while Moncrieff, standing bare-headed in the
+midst of us, read a chapter from the Book by the pale
+yellow light of the western sky. Then, still standing&mdash;</p>
+<p>'Brothers, let us pray,' he said.</p>
+<p>Erect there, with the twilight shadows falling around
+him, with open eyes and face turned skywards, with the
+sunset's after-glow falling on his hard but comely features,
+his plaid depending from his broad shoulders, I could not
+help admiring the man. His prayer&mdash;and it was but
+brief&mdash;had all the trusting simplicity of a little child's,
+yet it was in every way the prayer of a man communing
+with his God; in every tone thereof was breathed belief,
+reliance, gratitude, and faith in the Father.</p>
+<p>As he finished, Dugald pressed my arm and pointed
+eastwards, smiling. A star had shone out from behind a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_117' name='page_117'></a>117</span>
+little cloud, and somehow it seemed to me as if it were an
+angel's eye, and that it would watch over us all the live-long
+night. Our evening service concluded with that
+loveliest of hymns, commencing&mdash;</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto; '><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>'O God of Bethel, by whose hand</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>Thy children still are fed;</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Who through this weary wilderness</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>Hath all our fathers led.'</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>He gave it out in the old Scotch way, two lines at a time,
+and to the tune 'Martyrdom.'</p>
+<p>It was surely appropriate to our position and our
+surroundings, especially that beautiful verse&mdash;</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto; '><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>'Oh, spread Thy covering wings around,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>Till all our wanderings cease,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>And at our Father's loved abode</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>Our souls arrive in peace.'</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>We now prepared for rest. The sentries were set, and in a
+short time all was peace and silence within our camp.
+More than once during the night the collies&mdash;dogs brought
+out by Moncrieff's men&mdash;gave an uneasy bark or two,
+their slumbers being probably disturbed by the cry of
+some night bird, or the passing of a prowling fox.</p>
+<p>So, wrapped in our guanaco robes&mdash;the benefit of which
+we felt now&mdash;my brothers and I slept sweetly and deeply
+till the sun once more rose in the east.</p>
+<p>Soon all was bustle and stir again.</p>
+<p>Thus were our days spent on the road, thus our evenings,
+and eke our nights. And at the end of some days we
+were still safe and sound, and happy. No one sick in the
+camp; no horse or mule even lame; while we were
+all hardening to travel already.</p>
+<p>So far, hardly anything had happened to break the even
+tenour of our journey. Our progress, however, with so
+much goods and chattels, and over such roads, was
+necessarily slow; yet we never envied the lumbering diligence
+that now and then went rattling past us.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_118' name='page_118'></a>118</span></p>
+<p>We saw many herds of wild horses. Some of these, led
+by beautiful stallions, came quite close to us. They
+appeared to pity our horses and mules, condemned to the
+shafts and harness, and compelled to work their weary
+lives away day after day. Our beasts were slaves. They
+were free&mdash;free as the breezes that blew over the pampas
+and played with their long manes, as they went thundering
+over the plains. We had seen several ostriches, and my
+brothers and I had enjoyed a wild ride or two after them.
+Once we encountered a puma, and once we saw an
+armadillo. We had never clapped eyes on a living specimen
+before, but there could be no mistaking the gentleman
+in armour. Not that he gave us much time for
+study, however. Probably the creature had been asleep
+as we rounded the corner of a gravel bank, but in one
+moment he became alive to his danger. Next moment we
+saw nothing but a rising cloud of dust and sand; lo! the
+armadillo was gone to the Antipodes, or somewhere in that
+direction&mdash;buried alive. Probably the speed with which
+an armadillo&mdash;there are several different species in the
+Silver West&mdash;disappears at the scent of any one belonging
+to the <i>genus homo</i>, is caused by the decided objection he
+has to be served up as a side-dish. He is excellent
+eating&mdash;tender as a chicken, juicy as a sucking-pig, but
+the honour of being roasted whole and garnished is one he
+does not crave.</p>
+<p>Riding on ahead one day&mdash;I had soon got tired of the
+monotony of driving, and preferred the saddle&mdash;at a bend
+of the road I came suddenly upon two horsemen, who
+had dismounted and were lying on a patch of sward
+by the roadside. Their horses stood near. Both sprang
+up as I appeared, and quick as lightning their hands
+sought the handles of the ugly knives that depended
+in sheaths from their girdles. At this moment there
+was a look in the swarthy face of each that I can
+only describe as diabolical. Hatred, ferocity, and cunning
+were combined in that glance; but it vanished in a moment,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_119' name='page_119'></a>119</span>
+and the air assumed by them now was one of cringing
+humility.</p>
+<p>'The Gaucho malo,' I said to myself as soon as I saw
+them. Their horses were there the nobler animals.
+Bitted, bridled, and saddled, the latter were in the manner
+usual to the country, the saddle looking like a huge
+hillock of skins and rags; but rifles were slung alongside,
+to say nothing of bolas and lasso. The dress of the men
+was a kind of nondescript garb. Shawls round the loins,
+tucked up between their legs and fastened with a girdle,
+did duty as breeches; their feet were encased in <i>potro</i> boots,
+made of the hock-skin of horses, while over their half-naked
+shoulders hung ponchos of skin, not without a
+certain amount of wild grace.</p>
+<p>Something else as well as his rifle was lashed to the
+saddle of one of these desert gipsies, and being new to the
+country, I could not help wondering at this&mdash;namely, a
+guitar in a case of skin.</p>
+<p>With smiles that I knew were false one now beckoned
+me to alight, while the other unslung the instrument and
+began to tune it. The caravan must have been fully two
+miles behind me, so that to some extent I was at the
+mercy of these Gauchos, had they meant mischief. This
+was not their plan of campaign, however.</p>
+<p>Having neighed in recognition of the other horses, my
+good nag stood as still as a statue; while, with my eyes
+upon the men and my hand within easy distance of my
+revolver, I listened to their music. One sang while the other
+played, and I must confess that the song had a certain
+fascination about it, and only the thought that I was far
+from safe prevented me from thoroughly enjoying it. I
+knew, as if by instinct, however, that the very fingers that
+were eliciting those sweet sad tones were itching to clutch
+my throat, and that the voice that thrilled my senses
+could in a moment be changed into a tiger yell, with which
+men like these spring upon their human prey.</p>
+<p>On the whole I felt relieved when the rumble of the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_120' name='page_120'></a>120</span>
+waggon wheels fell once more on my ears. I rode back to
+meet my people, and presently a halt was made for the
+midday feed.</p>
+<p>If aunt desired to feast her eyes on the Gaucho malo she
+had now a chance. They played to her, sang to her, and
+went through a kind of wild dance for her especial
+delectation.</p>
+<p>'What romantic and beautiful blackguards they are!'
+was the remark she made to Moncrieff.</p>
+<p>Moncrieff smiled, somewhat grimly, I thought.</p>
+<p>'It's no' for nought the cland<a name="FNanchor_4" id="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> whistles,' he said in his
+broadest, canniest accents.</p>
+<p>These Gauchos were hunting, they told Moncrieff. Had
+they seen any Indians about? No, no, not an Indian.
+The Indians were far, far south.</p>
+<p>Aunt gave them some garments, food, and money; and,
+with many bows and salaams, they mounted their steeds
+and went off like the wind.</p>
+<p>I noticed that throughout the remainder of the day
+Moncrieff was unusually silent, and appeared to wish to be
+alone. Towards evening he beckoned to me.</p>
+<p>'We'll ride on ahead,' he said, 'and look for a good bit
+of camping-ground.'</p>
+<p>Then away we both went at a canter, but in silence.</p>
+<p>We rode on and on, the ground rising gently but steadily,
+until we stopped at last on a high plateau, and gazed
+around us at the scene. A more bleak and desolate country
+it would be impossible to imagine. One vast and semi-desert
+plain, the eye relieved only by patches of algarrobo
+bushes, or little lakes of water. Far ahead of us the cone
+of a solitary mountain rose on the horizon, and towards
+this the sun was slowly declining. Away miles in our
+rear were the waggons and horses struggling up the hill.
+But silence as deep as death was everywhere. Moncrieff
+stretched his arm southwards.</p>
+<p>'What do you see yonder, Murdo?' he said.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_121' name='page_121'></a>121</span></div>
+<p>'I see,' I replied, after carefully scanning the rolling
+plain, 'two ostriches hurrying over the pampas.'</p>
+<p>'Those are not ostriches, boy. They are those same
+villain Gauchos, and they are after no good. I tell you
+this, that you may be prepared for anything that may
+happen to-night. But look,' he added, turning his horse's
+head; 'down here is a corral, and we are sure to find
+water.'</p>
+<p>We soon reached it. Somewhat to our surprise we
+found no horses anywhere about, and no sign of life around
+the little inn or <i>fonda</i> except one wretched-looking
+dog.</p>
+<p>As we drew up at the door and listened the stillness
+felt oppressive. Moncrieff shouted. No human voice
+responded; but the dog, seated on his haunches, gave vent
+to a melancholy howl.</p>
+<p>'Look,' I said, 'the dog's paws are red with blood. He
+is wounded.'</p>
+<p>'It isn't <i>his</i> blood, boy.'</p>
+<p>The words thrilled me. I felt a sudden fear at my
+heart, born perhaps of the death-like stillness. Ah! it
+was indeed a death-like stillness, and the stillness of death
+itself as well.</p>
+<p>Moncrieff dismounted. I followed his example, and
+together we entered the <i>fonda</i>.</p>
+<p>We had not advanced a yard when we came on an
+awesome sight&mdash;the dead body of a Gaucho! It lay on its
+back with the arms spread out, the face hacked to pieces,
+and gashes in the neck. The interior of the hut was a
+chaos of wild confusion, the little furniture there was
+smashed, and evidently everything of value had been
+carried away. Half buried in the <i>débris</i> was the body of
+a woman, and near it that of a child. Both were slashed
+and disfigured, while pools of blood lay everywhere about.
+Young though I was, I had seen death before in several
+shapes, but never anything so ghastly and awful as this.</p>
+<p>A cold shudder ran through my frame and seemed to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_122' name='page_122'></a>122</span>
+pierce to the very marrow of my bones. I felt for a few
+moments as if in some dreadful nightmare, and I do not
+hesitate to confess that, M'Crimman and all as I am, had
+those Gauchos suddenly appeared now in the doorway, I
+could not have made the slightest resistance to their attack.
+I should have taken my death by almost rushing on the
+point of their terrible knives. But Moncrieff's calm
+earnest voice restored me in a moment. At its tones I
+felt raised up out of my coward self, and prepared to face
+anything.</p>
+<p>'Murdoch,' he said, 'this is a time for calm thought and
+action.'</p>
+<p>'Yes,' I answered; 'bid me do anything, and I will do
+it. But come out of this awful place. I&mdash;I feel a little
+faint.'</p>
+<p>Together we left the blood-stained <i>fonda</i>, Moncrieff
+shutting the door behind him.</p>
+<p>'No other eye must look in there,' he said. 'Now,
+Murdoch, listen.'</p>
+<p>He paused, and I waited; his steadfast eyes bent on my
+face.</p>
+<p>'You are better now? You are calm, and no longer
+afraid?'</p>
+<p>'I am no longer afraid.'</p>
+<p>'Well, I can trust <i>you</i>, and no one else. Led by those
+evil fiends whom we saw to-day, the Indians will be on us
+to-night in force. I will prepare to give them a warm
+reception&mdash;'</p>
+<p>'And I will assist,' I hastened to say.</p>
+<p>'No, Murdoch, you will not be here to help us at the
+commencement. I said the Indians would attack in <i>force</i>,
+because they know our numbers. Those <i>malo</i> men have
+been spying on us when we little thought it. They know
+our strength to a gun, and they will come in a cloud that
+nothing can withstand, or that nothing could withstand in
+the open. But we will entrench and defend ourselves till
+your return.'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_123' name='page_123'></a>123</span></p>
+<p>'My return!'</p>
+<p>'Twelve miles from here,' he went on, 'is a fort. It
+contains two officers and over a score soldiers. In two
+hours it will be dusk, in an hour after that the moon rises.
+'Twixt twilight and moonrise you must ride to that fort
+and bring assistance. Depend upon it, we can defend
+ourselves till you come with your men, and you must
+attack the savages in the rear. You understand?'</p>
+<p>'Perfectly. But had I not better ride away at
+once?'</p>
+<p>'No, the Indians would waylay you. You never would
+reach the frontier fort. Even if you did escape from the
+chase, the knowledge that the troops were coming would
+prevent them from attacking to-night.'</p>
+<p>'And you want them to attack to-night?'</p>
+<p>'I wish them to attack to-night. We may never be able
+to give a good account of them again, but all depends on
+your success.'</p>
+<p>In a short time the first waggons came up. They would
+have stopped, but Moncrieff beckoned them onwards.
+When the last waggon had gone we mounted our horses
+and slowly followed. At a stream not far distant we
+watered, and once more continued our journey.</p>
+<p>The road now rose rapidly, till in half an hour we were
+on high ground, and here the halt was made. I could
+breathe more easily now we had left that blood-stained
+hollow, though well I knew the sight I had witnessed
+would not leave my thoughts for years to come.</p>
+<p>Everything was done as quietly and orderly as if no
+cloud were hovering over us, so soon to burst. The big fire
+was lit as usual, supper cooked, prayers said, and the fire
+also lit in the ladies' caravan, for the nights were cold and
+raw now.</p>
+<p>The night began to fall. Moncrieff and I had kept our
+secret to ourselves hitherto, but we could no longer conceal
+from any one that there was danger in the air. Yet the
+news seemed to astonish no one, not even aunt.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_124' name='page_124'></a>124</span></p>
+<p>'Dear brother,' she said to our leader, 'I read it in your
+face all the afternoon.'</p>
+<p>It was almost dusk now, and work was commenced in
+earnest. Spades were got out, and every man worked
+like a slave to entrench the whole position. The strength
+that I was to leave behind me was seven-and-twenty men
+all told, but this included ten Gauchos. Nevertheless,
+behind trenches, with plenty of guns, revolvers, and
+ammunition, they were powerful enough to defend the
+position against hundreds of badly-armed Indians. Not far
+off was a patch of wood which stretched downwards into a
+rocky ravine. Luckily it lay on the north side of the road,
+and hither, as soon as it was dark enough, every horse and
+mule was led and secured to the trees. Nor even in this
+extremity of danger were their wants forgotten, for grass
+mixed with grains was placed in front of each.</p>
+<p>My horse was now led round. Each hoof was encased in
+a new and strong <i>potro</i> boot, secured by thongs around the
+legs.</p>
+<p>'You must neither be heard nor seen,' said Moncrieff, as
+he pointed to these. 'Now, good-night, boy; God be wi'
+ye, and with us all!'</p>
+<p>'Amen!' I responded, earnestly.</p>
+<p>Then away I rode in silence, through the starlight; but
+as I looked back to the camp my heart gave an uneasy
+throb. Should I ever see them alive again?
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_125' name='page_125'></a>125</span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 10%; border:none; border-bottom:1px solid black; clear:both; margin: 2em auto 1em 0' />
+
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_4' id='Footnote_4'></a><a href='#FNanchor_4'><span class='label'>[4]</span></a>
+<p style='font-size: small'>Cland, a kind of hawk.</p></div>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XII_ATTACK_BY_PAMPA_INDIANS' id='XII_ATTACK_BY_PAMPA_INDIANS'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+<h3>ATTACK BY PAMPA INDIANS.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>So lonesome a ride in the darkness of night, through a
+country wild and bleak, with danger lurking perhaps
+on either side of me, might easily have daunted a bolder
+heart than mine.</p>
+<p>Something of the unspeakable feeling of dread I had
+experienced in the <i>fonda</i> while surrounded by those awful
+corpses came back to me now. I tried to banish it, but
+failed. My nervousness became extreme, and appeared to
+increase rather than diminish as I left the camp farther
+and farther behind me. It was almost a superstitious fear
+that had gotten possession of my soul. It was fear of the
+unseen; and even at this distance of time I can only say I
+would willingly face death in open day a hundred times
+over rather than endure for an hour the terrors I suffered
+that night. Every bush I saw I took for a figure lurking
+by the roadside, while solitary trees I had to pass assumed
+the form and shape and even movement of an enemy on
+horseback riding silently down to meet me. Again and
+again I clutched my revolver, and even now I cannot tell
+what power prevented me from firing at my phantom
+foes. Over and over again I reined up to listen, and at
+such times the wind whispering through the tall grass
+sounded to me like human voices, while the cry of birds
+that now and then rose startlingly close to me, made my
+heart beat with a violence that in itself was painful.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_126' name='page_126'></a>126</span></p>
+<p>Sometimes I closed my eyes, and gave the horse his
+head, trying to carry my thoughts back to the lights of the
+camp, or forward to the fort which I hoped soon to reach.</p>
+<p>I had ridden thus probably five good miles, when I
+ventured to look behind me, and so great had been the
+strain on my nerves that the sight I now witnessed almost
+paralyzed me.</p>
+<p>It was the reflection as of a great fire on the brow of the
+hill where my people were beleaguered.</p>
+<p>'The camp is already attacked, and in flames,' I muttered.
+Whither should I ride now&mdash;backwards or forwards?</p>
+<p>While I yet hesitated the flames appeared to wax fiercer
+and fiercer, till presently&mdash;oh, joy!&mdash;a big round moon
+gradually shook itself clear of a cloud and began slowly to
+climb the eastern sky.</p>
+<p>All fear fled now. I muttered a prayer of thankfulness,
+dashed the spurs into my good horse's sides, and went on
+at the gallop.</p>
+<p>The time seemed short after this, and almost before I
+knew I came right upon the fort, and was challenged by the
+sentry.</p>
+<p>'<i>Amigo!</i>' I yelled. '<i>Amigo! Angleese!</i>'</p>
+<p>I dare say I was understood, for soon after lights appeared
+on the ramparts, and I was hailed again, this time in
+English, or for what passed as English. I rode up under
+the ramparts, and quickly told my tale.</p>
+<p>In ten minutes more I was received within the fort. A
+tumble-down place I found it, but I was overjoyed to be
+in it, nevertheless. In the principal room most of the men
+were playing games, and smoking and talking, while the
+commandant himself lounged about with a cigarette in his
+mouth.</p>
+<p>He considered for a minute or two&mdash;an age it appeared
+to me&mdash;ere he answered. Yes; he would come, and take
+with him fifteen soldiers, leaving the rest to guard the
+fort. I could have embraced him, so joyful did I feel on
+hearing these words.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_127' name='page_127'></a>127</span></p>
+<p>How long would he be? One hour, no more. For arms
+had to be cleaned, and ammunition to be got ready; and
+the men must feed.</p>
+<p>A whole hour! No wonder I sighed and looked anxious.
+Why, every minute was precious to my poor beleaguered
+friends. It would be long past midnight ere I reached
+the camp again, for these men would not be mounted.
+Yet I saw the good little commander was doing his best,
+not only to expedite matters, but to treat me with kindness
+and hospitality. He brought forth food and wine, and
+forced me to eat and drink. I did so to please him; but
+when he proposed a game to pass the time, I began to
+think the man was crazed. He was not. No; but
+possessed a soldierly virtue which I could not boast of&mdash;namely,
+patience.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>The work of entrenchment was soon completed after my
+departure; then there was nothing more to be done except
+to appoint the men to their quarters, place sentinels on the
+highest of the waggons, and wait.</p>
+<p>Ah, but this waiting is a weary thing under circumstances
+like the present&mdash;waiting and watching, not knowing from
+what quarter the attack will come, what form it will take,
+or when it will commence.</p>
+<p>Except in the chief caravan itself, where Moncrieff and
+Donald sat for a time to keep up the hearts of the ladies,
+no lights were lit.</p>
+<p>There was no singing to-night, hardly a smile on any
+face, and no one spoke much above a whisper. Poor old
+Jenny had gone to sleep, as usual.</p>
+<p>'Wake me,' had been her last words. 'Wake me, laddie,
+when the Philistines are upon us.'</p>
+<p>'The old lady's a marvel!' Moncrieff had whispered to
+aunt.</p>
+<p>Moncrieff was doing all he could to keep conversation
+alive, though, strange to say, Bombazo seldom spoke.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_128' name='page_128'></a>128</span>
+Surely he could not be afraid. Moncrieff had his suspicions.
+Brave as my aunt was, the waiting made her nervous.</p>
+<p>'Hark!' she would say every now and then; or, 'Listen!
+What was that?'</p>
+<p>'Only the cry of a burrowing owl,' Moncrieff might have
+to answer; or, 'Only the yap of a prowling fox.' Oh, the
+waiting, the weary waiting!</p>
+<p>The moon rose at last, and presently it was almost as
+light as day.</p>
+<p>'Will they come soon, think you?' whispered poor
+Aileen.</p>
+<p>'No, darling; not for hours yet. Believe me there is
+no danger. We are well prepared.'</p>
+<p>'Oh, Alec, Alec!' she answered, bursting into tears; 'it
+is you I fear for, not myself. Let me go with you when
+they come. I would not then be afraid; but waiting
+here&mdash;oh, it is the waiting that takes all the heart out of
+me.'</p>
+<p>'Egyptian darkness!' murmured the old lady in her
+sleep. Then in louder, wilder key, 'Smite them!' she
+exclaimed. 'Smite this host of the Philistines from Gideon
+to Gaza.'</p>
+<p>'Dear old mither, she's dreaming,' said Moncrieff.
+'But, oh, we'll laugh at all this by to-morrow night, Aileen,
+my darling.'</p>
+<p>One hour, two hours went slowly, painfully past. The
+moon mounted higher and higher, and shone clearer and
+clearer, but not yet on all the plains were there signs of a
+mounted Indian.</p>
+<p>Yet even at that moment, little though our people knew
+it, swarthy forms were creeping stealthily through the
+pampas grass, with spears and guns at trail, pausing often
+to glance towards the camp they meant so soon to surprise
+and capture.</p>
+<p>The moon gets yet brighter. Moncrieff is watching.
+Shading his eyes from the light, he is gazing across the
+marsh and listening to every sound. Not a quarter of a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_129' name='page_129'></a>129</span>
+mile away is a little marshy lake. From behind it for
+several minutes he has heard mournful cries. They
+proceed from the burrowing owls; but they must have
+been startled! They even fly towards the camp, as if to
+give warning of the approach of the swarthy foe.</p>
+<p>Suddenly from the edge of the lake a sound like the
+blast of a trumpet is heard; another and another, and
+finally a chorus of trumpet notes; and shortly after a flock
+of huge flamingoes are seen wheeling in the moonlit air.</p>
+<p>'It is as I thought,' says Moncrieff; 'they are creeping
+through the grass. Hurry round, Dugald, and call the men
+quietly to quarters.'</p>
+<p>Moncrieff himself, rifle in hand, climbs up to the top of
+the waggon.</p>
+<p>'Go down now,' he tells the sentry. 'I mean to fire
+the first shot.'</p>
+<p>He lies down to wait and watch. No bloodhound could
+have a better eye. Presently he sees a dark form raise itself
+near a tussock of grass. There is a sharp report, and
+the figure springs into the air, then falls dead on the
+pampas.</p>
+<p>No need for the foe to conceal themselves any longer.
+With a wild and unearthly scream, that the very earth
+itself seems to re-echo, they spring from their hiding and
+advance at the double towards the fort&mdash;for fort it is now. As
+they come yelling on they fire recklessly towards it. They
+might as well fire in the air.</p>
+<p>Moncrieff's bold Doric is heard, and to some purpose, at
+this juncture.</p>
+<p>'Keep weel down, men! Keep weel to cove<i>rrr</i>! Fire
+never a shot till he has the o<i>rr</i>der. Let every bullet have
+its billet. Ready! Fire-<i>r</i>-<i>r</i>-<i>r</i>!'</p>
+<p>Moncrieff rattled out the <i>r</i>'s indefinitely, and the rifles
+rattled out at the same time. So well aimed was the volley
+that the dark cloud seemed staggered. The savages
+wavered for a time, but on they came again, redoubling
+their yells. They fired again, then, dropping their guns,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_130' name='page_130'></a>130</span>
+rushed on towards the breastwork spears in hand. It was
+thus that the conflict commenced in dread earnest, and the
+revolvers now did fearful execution. The Indians were
+hurled back again and again, and finally they broke and
+sought cover in the bush. Their wounded lay writhing
+and crying out close beneath the rampart, and among these
+were also many who would never move more in this
+world.</p>
+<p>On seeing the savages take to the bush, Moncrieff's anxiety
+knew no bounds. The danger of their discovering the
+horses was extreme. And if they did so, revenge would
+speedily follow defeat. They would either drive them
+away across the pampas, or in their wrath slaughter them
+where they stood.</p>
+<p>What was to be done to avert so great a catastrophe?
+A forlorn hope was speedily formed, and this my two brothers
+volunteered to lead. On the first shout heard down in
+the hollow&mdash;indicating the finding of our horses&mdash;Donald,
+Dugald, and fifteen men were to rush out and turn the flank
+of the swarthy army if they could, or die in the attempt.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile, however, the enemy appeared bent on trying
+cunning and desperate tactics. They were heard cutting
+down the bushes and smaller trees, and not long afterwards
+it looked as if the whole wood was advancing bodily up towards
+the breastwork on that side.</p>
+<p>A rapid and no doubt effective fire was now kept up by
+Moncrieff and his men. This delayed the terrible <i>dénoûment</i>,
+but it was soon apparent that if some more strategic
+movement was not made on our part it could not wholly
+thwart it.</p>
+<p>At all hazards that advancing wood must be checked,
+else the horrors of fire would be the prelude to one of the
+most awful massacres that ever took place on the lonely
+pampas.</p>
+<p>'How is the wind?' asked Moncrieff, as if speaking to
+himself.</p>
+<p>'It blows from the wood towards the camp,' said Dugald,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_131' name='page_131'></a>131</span>
+'but not quite in a line. See, I am ready to rush out and
+fire that pile.'</p>
+<p>'No, Dugald,' cried Donald; 'I am the elder&mdash;I will
+go.'</p>
+<p>'Brother, I spoke first.'</p>
+<p>'Yes,' said Moncrieff, quietly, 'Dugald must go, and go
+now. Take five men, ten if you want them.'</p>
+<p>'Five will do&mdash;five Gauchos,' said Dugald.</p>
+<p>It was wise of Dugald to choose Gauchos. If the truth
+must be told, however, he did so to spare more valuable
+lives. But these wild plainsmen are the bravest of the
+brave, and are far better versed in the tactics of Indian
+warfare than any white man could be.</p>
+<p>Dugald's plan would have been to issue out and make a
+bold rush across the open space of seventy and odd yards
+that intervened between the moving pile of brushwood
+and the camp. Had this been done, every man would
+have been speared ere he got half across.</p>
+<p>The preparations for the sally were speedily made. Each
+man had a revolver and knife in his belt, and carried in
+his hands matches, a bundle of <i>pob</i> (or tarred yarn), and
+a small cask of petroleum oil. They issued from the side
+of the camp farthest from the wood, and, crawling on their
+faces, took advantage of every tussock of grass, waving
+thistle, or hemlock bush in their way. Meanwhile a
+persistent fire was kept up from behind the breastwork,
+which, from the screams and yells proceeding from the
+savages, must have been doing execution.</p>
+<p>Presently, close behind the bush and near the ground,
+Moncrieff could see Dugald's signal, the waving of a white
+handkerchief, and firing immediately ceased.</p>
+<p>Almost immediately afterwards smoke and flames ran
+all along the wood and increased every moment. There
+was a smart volley of revolver firing, and in a minute more
+Dugald and his Gauchos were safe again within the fort.</p>
+<p>'Stand by now, lads, to defend the ramparts!' cried
+Moncrieff; 'the worst is yet to come.'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_132' name='page_132'></a>132</span></p>
+<p>The worst was indeed to come. For under cover of the
+smoke the Indians now made ready for their final assault.
+In the few minutes of silence that elapsed before the
+attack, the voice of a Gaucho malo was heard haranguing
+his men in language that could not but inflame their blood
+and passions. He spoke of the riches, the wealth of the
+camp, of the revenge they were going to have on the hated
+white man who had stolen their hunting fields, and driven
+them to the barren plains and mountains to seek for food
+with the puma and the snake, and finally began to talk of
+the pale-face prisoners that would become their possession.</p>
+<p>'Give them another volley, men,' said Moncrieff, grimly.
+'Fire low through the smoke.'</p>
+<p>It would have been better, probably, had our leader
+waited.</p>
+<p>Little need to precipitate an onslaught that could have
+but one ending&mdash;unless indeed assistance arrived from the
+fort.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>The long, long hour of waiting came to an end at last,
+and the commander and myself left the frontier fort at the
+head of the men.</p>
+<p>How terribly tedious the march back seemed! The
+officer would keep talking as cheerfully as if going to a
+concert or evening party. I hardly answered, I hardly
+heard him. I felt ashamed of my anxiety, but still I
+could not help it. I was but a young soldier.</p>
+<p>At last we are within sight, ay, and hearing, of the camp,
+and the events of the next hour float before my memory
+now as I write, like the shadowy pantomime of some terrible
+dream.</p>
+<p>First we see smoke and fire, but hear no sound. All
+must be over, I think&mdash;tragedy and massacre, all&mdash;and the
+camp is on fire.</p>
+<p>Even the commander of our little force takes a serious
+view of the case now. He draws his sword, looks to his
+revolver, and speaks to his men in calm, determined tones.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_133' name='page_133'></a>133</span></p>
+<p>For long minutes the silence round the camp is unbroken,
+but suddenly rifles ring out in the still air, and I breathe
+more freely once again. Then the firing ceases, and is
+succeeded by the wild war-cries of the attacking savages,
+and the hoarse, defiant slogan of the defending Scots.</p>
+<p>'Hurrah!' I shout, 'we are yet in time. Oh, good sir,
+hurry on! Listen!'</p>
+<p>Well might I say listen, for now high above the yell of
+savages and ring of revolvers rises the shriek of frightened
+women.</p>
+<p>I can stand this no longer. I set spur to my horse, and
+go dashing on towards the camp.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XIII_THE_FLIGHT_AND_THE_CHASE' id='XIII_THE_FLIGHT_AND_THE_CHASE'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_134' name='page_134'></a>134</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+<h3>THE FLIGHT AND THE CHASE.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>The very last thing I had seen that cool Argentine
+commander do, was to light a fresh cigarette with the
+stump of the old one. The next time I saw him, he was
+standing by his wounded horse, in the moonlight, with a
+spear wound in his brow, but smoking still.</p>
+<p>The onslaught of the savages had been for a while a
+terrible one, but the soldiers came in time, and the camp
+was saved.</p>
+<p>Hardly knowing what I did&mdash;not knowing till this day
+how I did it&mdash;I had put my good steed at the breastwork,
+and, tired though he was, he fairly cleared it. Next I
+remember hewing my way, sword in hand, through a crowd
+of spear-armed savages, finding myself close to the ladies'
+caravan, and next minute inside it.</p>
+<p>A single glance showed me all were safe. Aileen lay
+pale and motionless on the sofa. Near her, revolver in
+hand, stood my brave aunt, and by the stove was old Jenny
+herself.</p>
+<p>'Oh, bless you, dear boy!' cried auntie. 'How glad
+we are to see you!'</p>
+<p>"Deed are we, laddie!' chimed old Jenny; 'but&mdash;' and
+she grinned as she spoke, 'they rievin' Philistines will be
+fools if they come this road again. I've gi'en some o' them
+het [hot] hurdies. Ha, ha! I'm makin' a drap mair for
+them in case they come again.'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_135' name='page_135'></a>135</span></p>
+<p>'Poor thing!' I think; 'she has gone demented.'</p>
+<p>There was no time now, however, to ask for explanation;
+for although the Indians had really been driven off, the
+chase, and, woe is me, the slaughter, had commenced.</p>
+<p>And I shudder even yet when I think of that night's
+awful work on the moonlit pampas. Still, the sacrifice of
+so many redskins was calculated to insure our safety.
+Moreover, had our camp fallen into the hands of those
+terrible Indians, what a blood-blotted page would have
+been added to the history of the Silver West!</p>
+<p>It is but just and fair to Moncrieff, however, to say that
+he did all in his power to stay the pursuit; but in vain.
+The soldiers were just returning, tired and breathless, from
+a fruitless chase after the now panic-stricken enemy, when
+a wild shout was heard, and our Gauchos were seen riding
+up from the woods, brandishing the very spears they had
+captured from the Indians, and each one leading a spare
+horse.</p>
+<p>The <i>soldados</i> welcomed them with a shout. Next
+minute each was mounted and galloping across the pampas
+in one long extended line.</p>
+<p>They were going to treat the Indians to a taste of their own
+tactics, for between each horse a lasso rope was fastened.</p>
+<p>All our men who were safe and unwounded now
+clambered into the waggon to witness the pursuit. Nothing
+could exceed the mad grandeur of that charge&mdash;nothing
+could withstand that wild rash. The Indians were mowed
+down by the lasso lines, then all we could see was a dark
+commingled mass of rearing horses, of waving swords and
+spears, and struggling, writhing men.</p>
+<p>Yells and screams died away at last, and no sound was
+now heard on the pampas except the thunder of the horses'
+hoofs, as our people returned to the camp, and occasionally
+the trumpet-like notes of the startled flamingoes.</p>
+<p>As soon as daylight began to appear in the east the
+ramparts were razed, and soon after we were once more on
+the move, glad to leave the scene of battle and carnage.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_136' name='page_136'></a>136</span></p>
+<p>From higher ground, at some distance, I turned and
+looked back. Already the air was darkened by flocks of
+pampas kites, among them many slow-winged vultures, and
+I knew the awful feast that ever follows slaughter had
+already commenced.</p>
+<p>We had several Gauchos killed and one of our own
+countrymen, but many more were wounded, some severely
+enough, so that our victory had cost us dear, and yet we
+had reason to be thankful, and my only surprise to this day
+is that we escaped utter annihilation.</p>
+<p>It would be anything but fair to pass on to other scenes
+without mentioning the part poor old Jenny played in the
+defence of the caravan.</p>
+<p>Jenny was not demented&mdash;not she. Neither the fatigue
+of the journey, the many wonders she had witnessed,
+including the shower of golochs, nor the raid upon the camp
+had deprived Moncrieff's wonderful mither of her wits.
+I have said there was a stove burning in the caravan. As
+soon, then, as Jenny found out that they were fortifying or
+entrenching the camp, and that the Philistines, as she called
+them, might be expected at any moment, she awoke to a
+true sense of the situation. The first thing she did was to
+replenish the fire, then she put the biggest saucepan on top
+of the stove, and as soon as it commenced to boil she began
+'mealing in,' as she called it.</p>
+<p>'Oatmeal would have been best,' she told my aunt; 'but,
+after a',' she added, 'Indian meal, though it be but
+feckless stuff, is the kind o' kail they blackamoors are maist
+used to.'</p>
+<p>Aunt wondered what she meant, but was silent, and,
+indeed, she had other things to think about than Jenny
+and her strange doings, for Aileen required all her
+attention.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_138' name='page_138'></a>138</span>
+<a name='linki_8' id='linki_8'></a>
+<img src='images/illus137.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 379px; height: 610px;' /><br />
+</div>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_139' name='page_139'></a>139</span></div>
+<p>When, however, the fight had reached its very fiercest,
+when the camp itself was enveloped in smoke, and the
+constant cracking of revolvers, the shrieks of the wounded
+men and clashing of weapons would have daunted a less
+bold heart than Jenny's&mdash;the old lady took her saucepan
+from the stove and stationed herself by the front door of
+the caravan. She had not long to wait. Three of the
+fiercest of the Indian warriors had sprung to the <i>coupé</i> and
+were half up,</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto; '><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>'But little kenned they Jenny's mettle,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Or dreamt what lay in Jenny's kettle.'</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>With eyes that seemed to flash living fire, her grey hair
+streaming over her shoulders, she must have looked a
+perfect fury as she rushed out and deluged the up-turned
+faces and shoulders of the savages with the boiling mess.
+They dropped yelling to the ground, and Jenny at once
+turned her attention to the back door of the van, where
+already one of the leading Gaucho malos&mdash;aunt's beautiful
+blackguards of the day before&mdash;had gained footing. This
+villain she fairly bonneted with the saucepan.</p>
+<p>'Your brithers have gotten the big half o' the kail,' she
+cried, 'and ye can claw the pat.'</p>
+<p>It was not till next evening that aunt told Moncrieff the
+brave part old Jenny had played. He smiled in his quiet
+way as he patted his mother's hand.</p>
+<p>'Just as I told ye, Miss M'Crimman,' he said; 'mither's
+a ma<i>rrr</i>vel!'</p>
+<p>But where had the bold Bombazo been during the
+conflict? Sword and revolver in hand, in the foremost
+ranks, and wherever the battle raged the fiercest? Nay,
+reader, nay. The stern truth remains to be told. During
+all the terrible tulzie Bombazo had never once been either
+seen or heard. Nor could he be anywhere found after the
+fight, nor even after the camp was struck, though search
+was made for him high and low.</p>
+<p>Some one suggested that he might have been overcome
+by fear, and might have hidden himself. Moncrieff looked
+incredulous. What! the bold Bombazo be afraid&mdash;the
+hero of a hundred fights, the slayer of lions, the terror of
+the redskins, the brave hunter of pampas and prairie?
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_140' name='page_140'></a>140</span>
+Captain Rodrigo de Bombazo hide himself? Yet where
+could he be? Among the slain? No. Taken prisoner?
+Alas! for the noble redman. Those who had escaped would
+hardly have thought of taking prisoners. Bombazo's name
+was shouted, the wood was searched, the waggons
+overhauled, not a stone was left unturned, figuratively
+speaking, yet all in vain.</p>
+<p>But, wonderful to relate, what <i>men</i> failed to do a <i>dog</i>
+accomplished. An honest collie found Bombazo&mdash;actually
+scraped him up out of the sand, where he lay buried, with
+his head in a tussock of grass. It would be unfair to judge
+him too harshly, wrong not to listen to his vouchsafed
+explanation; yet, sooth to say, to this very day I believe
+the little man had hidden himself after the manner of the
+armadillos.</p>
+<p>'Where is my sword?' he shouted, staggering to his feet.
+'Where is the foe?'</p>
+<p>The Scotchmen and even the Gauchos laughed in his
+face. He turned from them scornfully on his heel and
+addressed Moncrieff.</p>
+<p>'Dey tried to keel me,' he cried. 'Dey stunned me and
+covered me up wit' sand. But here I am, and now I seek
+revenge. Ha! ha! I will seek revenge!'</p>
+<p>Old Jenny could stand it no longer.</p>
+<p>'Oh, ye shameless sinner!' she roared. 'Oh, ye feckless
+fusionless winner! Let me at him. <i>I'll</i> gie him revenge.'</p>
+<p>There was no restraining Jenny. With a yell like the
+war cry of a clucking hen, she waved her umbrella aloft,
+and went straight for the hero.</p>
+<p>The blow intended for his head alighted lower down.
+Bombazo turned and fled, pursued by the remorseless
+Jenny; and not even once did she miss her aim till the
+terror of the redskins, to save his own skin, had taken
+refuge beneath the caravan.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>As at sea, so in travelling. Day after day, amid scenes
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_141' name='page_141'></a>141</span>
+that are for ever new, the constantly recurring adventure
+and incident suffice to banish even thoughts of the dead
+themselves. But neither seafarers nor travellers need
+be ashamed of this; it is only natural. God never
+condemns His creatures to constant sorrow. The brave
+fellows, the honest Scot and the Gauchos, that we had
+laid side by side in one grave in the little burying-place
+at the frontier fort, were gone beyond recall. No amount
+of sorrowing could bring them back. We but hoped they
+were happier now than even we were, and so we spoke of
+them no more; and in a week's time everything about our
+caravan and camp resumed its wonted appearance, and we
+no longer feared the Indians.</p>
+<p>One Gaucho, however, had escaped, and there was still
+the probability he might seek for revenge some other
+day.</p>
+<p>We have left the bleak pampas land, although now and
+then we come to bare prairie land but scantily furnished with
+even bushes, and destitute of grass; houses and <i>estancias</i>
+become more frequent, and <i>fondas</i> too, but nothing like that
+fearful <i>fonda</i> in the prairie&mdash;the scene of the massacre.</p>
+<p>We have passed through San Lui&mdash;too wretched a place
+to say much about; and even La Paz and Santa Rosa; and
+on taking her usual seat one forenoon in front of the
+caravan, old Jenny's eyes grew bright and sparkling with
+very delight.</p>
+<p>'Saw anybody ever the like o' that?' she cried, as she
+raised both her hands and eyes cloudwards. But it was
+not the clouds old Jenny was marvelling at&mdash;for here we
+were in the Province of Mendoza, and a measurable
+distance from the beautiful city itself; and instead of the
+barren lands we had recently emerged from, beheld a
+scene of such natural loveliness and fertility, that we
+seemed to have suddenly dropped into a new world.</p>
+<p>The sky was blue and almost cloudless; winter though it
+was, the fields were clad in emerald green; the trees, the
+vineyards, the verandahed houses, the comfortable dwellings,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_142' name='page_142'></a>142</span>
+the cattle, the sheep, and flocks of poultry&mdash;all testified
+to the fact that in summer this must indeed be a
+paradise.</p>
+<p>'What do you think of all this, mither?' said Moncrieff,
+with a happy smile. He was riding close to the caravan
+<i>coupé</i>.</p>
+<p>'Think o' it, laddie! Loshie me, laddie! it beats the
+braes o' Foudlan'! It is surely the garden o' Eden we're
+coming to at last.'</p>
+<p>It was shortly after this that Moncrieff went galloping
+on ahead. We could see him miles and miles away, for the
+road was as straight as one of the avenues in some English
+lord's domains. Suddenly he disappeared. Had the
+earth swallowed him up? Not quite. He had merely
+struck into a side path, and here we too turned with our
+whole cavalcade; and our road now lay away across a still
+fertile but far more open country. After keeping to
+this road for miles, we turned off once more and headed
+for the distant mountains, whose snow-clad, rugged tops
+formed so grand a horizon to the landscape.</p>
+<p>On we journey for many a long hour, and the sun goes
+down and down in the west, and sinks at last behind the
+hills; and oh, with what ineffably sweet tints and shades
+of pink and blue and purple his farewell rays paint the
+summits!</p>
+<p>Twilight is beginning to fall, and great bats are flitting
+about. We come within sight of a wide and well-watered
+valley; and in the very centre thereof, and near a broad
+lagoon which reminds us somewhat of dear old Coila, stands
+a handsome <i>estancia</i> and farmyard. There are rows and
+rows of gigantic poplar-trees everywhere in this glen, and
+the house itself&mdash;mansion, I might almost say&mdash;lies in the
+midst of a cloud of trees the names of which we cannot
+even guess. There was altogether such a home-like look
+about the valley, that I knew at once our long, long
+journey was over, and our weary wanderings finished for a
+time. There was not a very great deal of romance in honest
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_143' name='page_143'></a>143</span>
+Moncrieff's nature, but as he pointed with outstretched
+arm to the beautiful <i>estancia</i> by the lake, and said, briefly,
+'Mither, there's your hame!' I felt sure and certain those
+blue eyes of his were moist with tears, and that there was
+the slightest perceptible waver in his manly voice.</p>
+<p>But, behold! they have seen us already at the <i>estancia</i>.</p>
+<p>There is a hurrying and scurrying to and fro, and out
+and in. We notice this, although the figures we see look
+no larger than ants, so clear and transparent is even the
+gloaming air in this wonderful new land of ours.</p>
+<p>By and by we see these same figures on horseback,
+coming away from the farm, and hurrying down the road
+towards us. One, two, three, six! Why, there must be
+well-nigh a score of them altogether. Nearer and nearer
+they come, and now we see their arms wave. Nearer still,
+and we hear them shout; and now at length they are on
+us, with us, and around us, waving their caps, laughing,
+talking, and shaking hands over and over again&mdash;as often
+as not twice or thrice with the same person. Verily they
+are half delirious with joy and wholly hysterical.</p>
+<p>What volleys of questions have to be asked and
+answered! What volumes of news to get and to give! What
+hurrying here and there and up and down to admire the
+new horses and mules, the new waggons and caravan&mdash;to
+admire everything! while the half-frightened looks those
+sturdy, sun-browned, bearded men cast at auntie and
+Aileen were positively comical to witness!</p>
+<p>Then, when the first wave of joyous excitement had
+partially expended itself&mdash;</p>
+<p>'Stand back, boys!' shouted Moncrieff's partner, a bold-faced
+little Welshman, with hair and beard just on the
+turn; 'stand back, my lads, and give them one more little
+cheer.'</p>
+<p>But was it a little cheer? Nay, but a mighty rattling
+cheer&mdash;a cheer that could have issued only from brave
+British throats; a cheer that I almost expected to hear
+re-echoed back from the distant mountains.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_144' name='page_144'></a>144</span></p>
+<p>Ah! but it <i>was</i> echoed back. Echoed by us, the
+new-comers, and with interest too, our faithful Gauchos
+swelling the chorus with their shrill but not unmusical
+voices.</p>
+<p>But look! more people are coming down the road. The
+welcome home is not half over yet. Yonder are the lads
+and lasses, English, Irish, Castilian and Scotch, who have
+no horses to ride. Foremost among them is a Highlander
+in tartan trews and bagpipes. And if the welcome these
+give us is not altogether so boisterous it is none the less
+sincere.</p>
+<p>In another hour we are all safe at home. All and everything
+appears to us very strange at first, but we soon settle
+down, and if we marvelled at the outside of Moncrieff's
+mansion, the interior of it excites our wonder to even a
+greater degree. Who could have credited the brawny
+Scot with so much refinement of taste? The rooms were
+large, the windows were bowers, and bowers of beauty too,
+around which climbed and trailed&mdash;winter though it was&mdash;flowers
+of such strange shapes and lovely colours that the
+best of our floral favourites in this country would look tame
+beside them. None of the walls were papered, but all
+were painted, and many had pictures in light, airy and
+elegant frames. The furniture too was all light and
+elegant, and quite Oriental in appearance. Oriental did I
+say? Nay, but even better; it was Occidental. One room
+in particular took my aunt's fancy. This was to be the
+boudoir, and everything in it was the work of Indian
+hands. It opened on to a charming trellised verandah,
+and thence was a beautiful garden which to-night was lit up
+with coloured lanterns, and on the whole looked like a
+scene in some Eastern fairy tale.</p>
+<p>'And would you believe it, Aileen,' said Moncrieff, when
+he was done showing us round the rooms; 'would you
+believe it, auntie, when I came here first my good partner
+and I had no place to live in for years but a reed shanty, a
+butt and a ben, mither mine, with never a stick of furniture
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_145' name='page_145'></a>145</span>
+in it, and neither a chair nor stool nor table worth the
+name?'</p>
+<p>'That is so, Miss M'Crimman,' said the partner,
+Mr. Jones. 'And I think my dear friend Moncrieff will
+let the ladies see the sort of place we lived in.'</p>
+<p>'This way, then, ladies,' said the big Scot. He seized a
+huge naphtha lamp as he spoke, and strode before them
+through the garden. Arrived at the end of it they came
+to a strange little hut built apparently of mud and straw.</p>
+<p>With little ceremony he kicked open the rickety door,
+and made them enter. Both aunt and Aileen did so,
+marvelling much to find themselves in a room not ten feet
+wide, and neither round nor square. The roof was
+blackened rafters and straw, the floor was hardened clay.
+A bed&mdash;a very rude one&mdash;stood in one corner. It was
+supported by horses' bones; the table in the centre was but
+a barrel lid raised on crossed bones.</p>
+<p>'Won't you sit down, ladies?' said Moncrieff, smiling.</p>
+<p>He pointed to a seat as he spoke. It was formed of
+horses' skulls.</p>
+<p>Aunt smiled too, but immediately after looked suddenly
+serious, gathered her dress round her with a little shudder,
+and backed towards the door.</p>
+<p>'Come away,' she said; 'I've seen enough.'</p>
+<p>What she had seen more particularly was an awful-looking
+crimson and grey spider as big as a soft-shell crab.
+He was squatting on a bone in one corner, glaring at her
+with his little evil eyes, and moving his horizontal
+mandibles as if he would dearly like to eat her.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XIV_LIFE_ON_AN_ARGENTINE_ESTANCIA' id='XIV_LIFE_ON_AN_ARGENTINE_ESTANCIA'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_146' name='page_146'></a>146</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+<h3>LIFE ON AN ARGENTINE ESTANCIA.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>I verily believe that Britons, whether English, Irish,
+or Scotch, are all born to wander, and born colonists.
+There really seems to be something in the very air of a
+new land, be it Australia, America, or the Silver West,
+that brings all their very best and noblest qualities to the
+surface, and oftentimes makes men&mdash;bold, hardy, persevering
+men&mdash;of individuals who, had they stayed in this
+old cut-and-dry country, would never have been anything
+better than louts or Johnnie Raws. I assure the reader
+that I speak from long experience when I make these
+remarks, and on any Saturday evening when I happen to
+be in London, and see poor young fellows coming home to
+garrets, perhaps with their pittance in their pockets, I feel
+for them from the very depths of my soul. And sometimes
+I sigh and murmur to myself&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+<p>'Oh dear me!' I say, 'if my purse were only half as
+big as my heart, wouldn't I quickly gather together a
+thousand of these white slaves and sail merrily off with
+them to the Land of the Silver West! And men would
+learn to laugh there who hardly ever smiled before, and
+tendons would wax wiry, and muscles hard, and pale faces
+grow brown with the tints of health. And health would
+mean work, and work would mean wealth, and&mdash;but,
+heigho! what is the good of dreaming? Only some
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_147' name='page_147'></a>147</span>
+day&mdash;yes, <i>some</i> day&mdash;and what a glorious sunrise it will be for
+this empire&mdash;Government will see its way to grant free
+passages to far-off lands, in which there is peace and
+plenty, work and food for all, and where the bread one eats
+is never damped by falling tears. God send that happy
+day! And send it soon!</p>
+<p>It is the memory of our first months and years of a
+downright pleasant life that makes me write like this.
+We poor lads&mdash;my brothers and I&mdash;poor, but determined,
+found everything so enjoyable at our new home in the Silver
+West that oftentimes we could not help wishing that
+thousands of toiling mortals from Glasgow and other great
+overcrowded cities would only come out somehow and
+share our posy. For really, to put it in plain and simple
+language, next to the delight of enjoying anything oneself,
+should it only be an apple, is the pleasure of seeing
+one's neighbour have a bite.</p>
+<p>Now here is a funny thing, but it is a fact. The air of
+Mendoza is so wonderfully dry and strong and bracing that
+it makes men of boys in a very short time, and makes old
+people young again. It might not smooth away wrinkles
+from the face, or turn grey hair brown, or even make two
+hairs grow where only one grew before; but it does most
+assuredly rejuvenate the heart, and shakes all the wrinkles
+out of that. Out here it is no uncommon thing for the
+once rheumatic to learn to dance, while stiff-jointed individuals
+who immigrated with crutches under their arms,
+pitch these crutches into the irrigation canals, and take to
+spades and guns instead.</p>
+<p>It is something in the air, I think, that works these
+wondrous changes, though I am sure I could not say what.
+It may be oxygen in double doses, or it may be ozone, or
+even laughing gas; but there it is, and whosoever reads
+these lines and doubts what I say, has only to take flight
+for the beautiful province of Mendoza, and he shall remain
+a sceptic no longer.</p>
+<p>Well, as soon as we got over the fatigues of our long
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_148' name='page_148'></a>148</span>
+journey, and began to realize the fact that we were no
+longer children of the desert, no longer nomads and
+gipsies, my brothers and I set to work with a hearty good-will
+that astonished even ourselves. In preparing our new
+homes we, and all the other settlers of this infant colony
+as well, enjoyed the same kind of pleasure that Robinson
+Crusoe must have done when he and his man Friday set
+up house for themselves in the island of Juan Fernandez.</p>
+<p>Even the labourers or 'hands' whom Moncrieff had
+imported had their own dwellings to erect, but instead of
+looking upon this as a hardship, they said that this was
+the fun of the thing, and that it was precisely here where
+the laugh came in.</p>
+<p>Moreover they worked for themselves out of hours, and
+I dare say that is more than any of them would have done
+in the old country.</p>
+<p>Never once was the labour of the <i>estancia</i> neglected,
+nor the state of the aqueducts, nor Moncrieff's flocks and
+herds, nor his fences.</p>
+<p>Some of these men had been ploughmen, others shepherds,
+but every one of them was an artisan more or less,
+and it is just such men that do well&mdash;men who know a
+good deal about country life, and can deftly use the spade,
+the hoe, the rake, the fork, as well as the hammer, the
+axe, the saw, and the plane. Thanks to the way dear
+father had brought us up, my brothers and I were handy
+with all sorts of tools, and we were rather proud than
+otherwise of our handicraft.</p>
+<p>I remember that Dugald one day, as we sat at table,
+after looking at his hands&mdash;they had become awfully
+brown&mdash;suddenly said to Moncrieff,</p>
+<p>'Oh, by the by, Brother Moncrieff, there is one thing
+that I'm ready to wager you forgot to bring out with you
+from England.'</p>
+<p>'What was that?' said Moncrieff, looking quite serious.</p>
+<p>'Why, a supply of kid gloves, white and coloured.'</p>
+<p>We all laughed.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_149' name='page_149'></a>149</span></p>
+<p>'My dear boy,' said this huge brother of ours, 'the sun
+supplies the kid gloves, and it strikes me, lad, you've a
+pair of coloured ones already.'</p>
+<p>'Yes,' said Dugald, 'black-and-tan.'</p>
+<p>'But, dear laddies,' old Jenny put in, 'if ye really wad
+like mittens, I'll shortly shank a curn for ye.'</p>
+<p>'Just listen to the old braid Scotch tongue o' that
+mither o' moine&mdash;"shortly shank a curn."<a name="FNanchor_5" id="FNanchor_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> Who but an
+Aberdonian could understand that?'</p>
+<p>But indeed poor old Jenny was a marvel with her
+'shank,' as she called her knitting, and almost every
+third day she turned off a splendid pair of rough woollen
+stockings for one or other of her bairns, as she termed
+us generically. And useful weather-defiant articles of
+hosiery they were too. When our legs were encased in
+these, our feet protected by a pair of double-soled boots,
+and our ankles further fortified by leather gaiters, there
+were few snakes even we were afraid to tackle.</p>
+<p>The very word 'snake,' or 'serpent,' makes some people
+shudder, and it is as well to say a word or two about these
+ophidians here, and have done with them. I have, then,
+no very wild adventures to record concerning those we
+encountered on our <i>estancias</i>. Nor were either my
+brothers or myself much afraid of them, for a snake&mdash;this
+is my firm belief&mdash;will never strike a human being
+except in self-defence; and, of all the thousands killed
+annually in India itself by ophidians, most of the victims
+have been tramping about with naked feet, or naked legs
+at least.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>Independent of the pure, wholesome, bracing air, there
+appeared to us to be another peculiarity in the climate
+which is worthy of note. It is <i>calmative</i>. There is more
+in that simple sentence than might at first be imagined,
+and the effect upon settlers might be best explained by
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_150' name='page_150'></a>150</span>
+giving an example: A young man, then, comes to this
+glorious country fresh from all the excitement and fever
+of Europe, where people are, as a rule, overcrowded and
+elbowing each other for a share of the bread that is not
+sufficient to feed all; he settles down, either to steady
+work under a master, or to till his own farm and mind his
+own flocks. In either case, while feeling labour to be not
+only a pleasure, but actually a luxury, there is no heat of
+blood and brain; there is no occasion to either chase or
+hurry. Life now is not like a game of football on Rugby
+lines&mdash;all scurry, push, and perspiration. The new-comer's
+prospects are everything that could be desired,
+and&mdash;mark this&mdash;<i>he does not live for the future any more
+than the present</i>. There is enough of everything around
+him <i>now</i>, so that his happiness does not consist in building
+upon the far-off <i>then</i>, which strugglers in this Britain of
+ours think so much about. The settler then, I say, be he
+young or old, can afford to enjoy himself to-day, certain in
+his own mind that to-morrow will provide for itself.</p>
+<p>But this calmness of mind, which really is a symptom
+of glorious health, never merges into the dreamy laziness
+and ignoble activity exhibited by Brazilians in the east
+and north of him.</p>
+<p>My brothers and I were happily saved a good deal of
+business worry in connection with the purchase of our
+<i>estancia</i>, so, too, were the new settlers, for Moncrieff, with
+that long Scotch head of his, had everything cut and dry,
+as he called it, so that the signing of a few papers and the
+writing of a cheque or two made us as proud as any
+Scottish laird in the old country.</p>
+<p>'You must creep before you walk,' Moncrieff told us;
+'you mustn't go like a bull at a gate. Just look before
+you "loup."'</p>
+<p>So we consulted him in everything.</p>
+<p>Suppose, for instance, we wanted another mule or horse,
+we went to Moncrieff for advice.</p>
+<p>'Can you do without it?' he would say. 'Go home
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_151' name='page_151'></a>151</span>
+and settle that question between you, and if you find you
+can't, come and tell me, and I'll let you have the beast
+as cheap as you can buy it anywhere.'</p>
+<p>Well, we started building our houses. Unlike the
+pampas, Mendoza <i>can</i> boast of stone and brick, and even
+wood, though round our district a deal of this had been
+planted. The woods that lay on Moncrieff's colony had
+been reared more for shelter to the flocks against the
+storms and tempests that often sweep over the
+country.</p>
+<p>In the more immediate vicinity of the dwelling-houses,
+with the exception of some splendid elms and plane-trees,
+and the steeple-high solemn-looking poplar, no great
+growth of wood was encouraged. For it must be
+remembered we were living in what Moncrieff called
+uncanny times. The Indians<a name="FNanchor_6" id="FNanchor_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> were still a power in the
+country, and their invasions were looked for periodically.
+The State did not then give the protection against this
+foe it does now. True, there existed what were called
+by courtesy frontier forts; they were supposed to billet
+soldiers there, too, but as these men were often destitute
+of a supply of ammunition, and spent much of their time
+playing cards and drinking the cheap wines of the country,
+the settlers put but little faith in them, and the wandering
+pampa Indians treated them with disdain.</p>
+<p>Our houses, then, for safety's sake, were all built pretty
+close together, and on high ground, so that we had a good
+view all over the beautiful valley. They could thus be
+more easily defended.</p>
+<p>Here and there over the <i>estancias</i>, <i>puestos</i>, as they were
+called, were erected for the convenience of the shepherds.
+They were mere huts, but, nevertheless, they were far
+more comfortable in every way than many a crofter's
+cottage in the Scottish Highlands.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_152' name='page_152'></a>152</span></p>
+<p>Round the dwellings of the new settlers, which were
+built in the form of a square, each square, three in all,
+having a communication, a rampart and ditch were
+constructed. The making of these was mere pastime to
+these hardy Scots, and they took great delight in the
+work, for not only would it enable them to sleep in peace
+and safety, but the keeping of it in thorough decorative
+repair, as house agents say, would always form a pleasant
+occupation for spare time.</p>
+<p>The mansion, as Moncrieff's beautiful house came to be
+called, was similarly fortified, but as it stood high in its
+grounds the rampart did not hide the building. Moreover,
+the latter was partially decorated inside with flowers, and
+the external embankment always kept as green as an
+English lawn in June.</p>
+<p>The ditches were wide and deep, and were so arranged
+that in case of invasion they could be filled with water
+from a natural lake high up on the brae lands. For that
+matter they might have been filled at any time, or kept
+filled, but Moncrieff had an idea&mdash;and probably he was
+right&mdash;that too much stagnant, or even semi-stagnant
+water near a house rendered it unhealthy.</p>
+<p>As soon as we had bought our claims and marked them
+out, each settler's distinct from the other, but ours&mdash;my
+brothers' and mine&mdash;all in one lot, we commenced work
+in earnest. There was room and to spare for us all
+about the Moncrieff mansion and farmyard, we&mdash;the
+M'Crimmans&mdash;being guests for a time, and living indoors,
+the others roughing it as best they could in the out-houses,
+some of which were turned into temporary huts.</p>
+<p>Nothing could exceed the beauty of Moncrieff's <i>estancia</i>.
+It was miles and miles in extent, and more like a lovely
+garden than anything else. The fields were all square.
+Round each, in tasteful rows, waved noble trees, the weird
+and ghostly poplar, whose topmost branches touched the
+clouds apparently, the wide-spreading elm, the shapely
+chestnut, the dark, mysterious cypress, the fairy-leaved
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_153' name='page_153'></a>153</span>
+acacia, the waving willow and sturdy oak. These trees
+had been planted with great taste and judgment around
+the fields, and between all stretched hedges of laurel,
+willow, and various kinds of shrubs. The fields themselves
+were not without trees; in fact, trees were dotted
+over most of them, notably chestnuts, and many species
+of fruit trees.</p>
+<p>But something else added to the extreme beauty of
+these fields, namely, the irrigation canals&mdash;I prefer the
+word canals to ditches. The highest of all was very deep
+and wide, and was supplied with water from the distant
+hills and river, while in its turn it supplied the whole
+irrigation system of the <i>estancia</i>. The plan for irrigating
+the fields was the simplest that could be thought of, but
+it was quite as perfect as it was simple.</p>
+<p>Add to the beauty of the trees and hedges the brilliancy
+of trailing flowers of gorgeous hues and strange, fantastic
+shapes; let some of those trees be actually hanging
+gardens of beauty; let flowers float ever on the waters
+around the fields, and the fields themselves be emerald
+green&mdash;then imagine sunshine, balmy air, and perfume
+everywhere, and you will have some idea of the charm
+spread from end to end of Moncrieff's great <i>estancia</i>.</p>
+<p>But there was another kind of beauty about it which I
+have not yet mentioned&mdash;namely, its flocks and herds and
+poultry.</p>
+<p>A feature of the strath, or valley, occupied by this little
+Scoto-Welsh colony was the sandhills or dunes.</p>
+<p>'Do you call those sandhills?' I said to Moncrieff one
+day, shortly after our arrival. 'Why, they are as green
+and bonnie as the Broad Hill on the links of Aberdeen.'</p>
+<p>Moncrieff smiled, but looked pleased.</p>
+<p>'Man!' he replied, 'did you ever hear of the proverb
+that speaks about making mountains of mole-hills? Well,
+that's what I've done up yonder. When my partner and I
+began serious work on these fields of ours, those bits of
+hills were a constant trouble and menace to us. They
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_154' name='page_154'></a>154</span>
+were just as big then, maybe, as they are now&mdash;about fifty
+feet high at the highest, perhaps, but they were bare sandy
+hillocks, constantly changing shape and even position with
+every big storm, till a happy thought struck my partner,
+and we chose just the right season for acting on it. We
+got the Gauchos to gather for us pecks and bushels of all
+kinds of wild seed, especially that of the long-rooted
+grasses, and these we sowed all over the mole-hills, as we
+called them, and we planted bushes here and there, and
+also in the hollows, and, lo! the mole-hills were changed
+into fairy little mountains, and the bits o' glens between
+into bosky dells.'</p>
+<p>'Dear Brother Moncrieff,' I said, 'you are a genius, and
+I'm so glad I met you. What would I have been without
+you?'</p>
+<p>'Twaddle, man! nonsensical havers and twaddle! If
+you hadn't met me you would have met somebody else;
+and if you hadn't met him, you would have foregathered
+wi' experience; and, man, experience is the best teacher
+in a' the wide worruld.'</p>
+<p>In laying out and planning our farm, my brothers and I
+determined, however, not to wait for experience of our
+own, but just take advantage of Moncrieff's. That would
+sustain us, as the oak sustains the ivy.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_155' name='page_155'></a>155</span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 10%; border:none; border-bottom:1px solid black; clear:both; margin: 2em auto 1em 0' />
+
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_5' id='Footnote_5'></a><a href='#FNanchor_5'><span class='label'>[5]</span></a>
+<p style='font-size: small'>'Shortly shank a curn'&mdash;speedily knit a few pairs.</p></div>
+
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_6' id='Footnote_6'></a><a href='#FNanchor_6'><span class='label'>[6]</span></a>
+<p style='font-size: small'>Since then the Indians have been swept far to the south, and so hemmed in that the provinces north of their territory are as safe from invasion as England itself.&mdash;G. S.</p></div>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XV_WE_BUILD_OUR_HOUSE_AND_LAY_OUT_GARDENS' id='XV_WE_BUILD_OUR_HOUSE_AND_LAY_OUT_GARDENS'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+<h3>WE BUILD OUR HOUSE AND LAY OUT GARDENS.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>About a hundred yards to the left of the buildings
+erected for the new colony and down near the lake,
+or laguna, was an elevated piece of ground about an acre
+in extent. It was bounded on two sides by water, which
+would thus form for it a kind of natural protection
+in case of Indian invasion. It really was part and parcel
+of Moncrieff's claim or land, and at an early date in his
+career, thinking probably it might come in handy some
+day for a site on which to build, he had taken considerable
+pains to plant it with rows of beautiful trees, especially
+on the sides next the water and facing the west.</p>
+<p>My brothers and I arranged to have this, and Moncrieff
+was well pleased to have us so near to him. A more
+excellent position for a house could hardly be, and we
+determined it should be a good substantial one, and of as
+great architectural beauty as possible.</p>
+<p>Having therefore laid out our farm proper, and stocked
+it with sheep and cattle, positioned our shepherds, and
+installed our labourers and general servants under the
+charge of a <i>capataz</i>, or working bailiff, we turned our
+attention to the erection of our house, or mansion, as
+Dugald grandly called it.</p>
+<p>'Of course you will cut your coat according to your cloth,'
+said Moncrieff, as he came one evening into the room we
+had set apart for our private study. He had found us
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_156' name='page_156'></a>156</span>
+to-night with our heads all together over a huge sheet of
+paper on which we were planning out our house.</p>
+<p>'Oh yes,' said Donald, 'that we must do.'</p>
+<p>'But,' said Dugald, 'we do not expect to remain all our
+lives downright poor settlers.'</p>
+<p>'That I am sure you won't.'</p>
+<p>'Well, I propose building a much bigger house than we
+really want, so that when we do get a bit rich we can
+furnish it and set up&mdash;set up&mdash;'</p>
+<p>'Set up a carriage and pair, eh?' said Donald, who was
+very matter of fact&mdash;'a carriage and pair, Dugald, a
+billiard-room, Turkey carpets, woven all in one piece, a
+cellar of old wine, a butler in black and flunkeys in plush&mdash;is
+that your notion?'</p>
+<p>Donald and I laughed, and Dugald looked cross.</p>
+<p>Moncrieff did not laugh: he had too much tact, and was
+far too kind-hearted to throw cold water over our young
+brother's ambitions and aspirations.</p>
+<p>'And what sort of a house do you propose?' he said to us.</p>
+<p>As he spoke he took a chair at Dugald's side of the table
+and put his arm gently across the boy's shoulders. There
+was very much in this simple act, and I feel sure Dugald
+loved him for it, and felt he had some one to assist his
+schemes.</p>
+<p>'Oh,' replied Donald, 'a small tasteful cottage. That
+would suit well for the present, I think. What do you
+think, Murdoch?'</p>
+<p>'I think with you,' I replied.</p>
+<p>After having heard Moncrieff speaking so much about
+cutting coats according to cloth and looking before 'louping,'
+and all the rest of it, we were hardly prepared to hear him
+on the present occasion say boldly,</p>
+<p>'And <i>I</i> think with Dugald.'</p>
+<p>'Bravo, Moncrieff!' cried Dugald. 'I felt sure&mdash;'</p>
+<p>'Bide a wee, though, lad. Ca' canny.<a name="FNanchor_7" id="FNanchor_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> Now listen, the
+lot o' ye. Ye see, Murdoch man, your proposed cottage
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_157' name='page_157'></a>157</span>
+would cost a good bit of money and time and trouble, and
+when you thought of a bigger place, down that cottage
+must come, with an expense of more time and more
+trouble, even allowing that money was of little object.
+Besides, where are you going to live after your cottage is
+knocked down and while your mansion is building? So I
+say Dugald is right to some extent. Begin building your
+big house bit by bit.'</p>
+<p>'In wings?'</p>
+<p>'Preceesely, sirs; ye can add and add as you like, and as
+you can afford it.'</p>
+<p>It was now our time to cry, 'Bravo, Moncrieff!'</p>
+<p>'I wonder, Donald, we didn't think of this plan.'</p>
+<p>'Ah,' said Moncrieff, 'ye canna put young he'ds on auld
+shoulders, as my mither says.'</p>
+<p>So Moncrieff's plan was finally adopted&mdash;we would build
+our house wing by wing.</p>
+<p>It took us weeks, however, to decide in what particular
+style of architecture it should be built. Among the literature
+which Moncrieff had brought out from England with him
+was a whole library in itself of the bound volumes of
+good magazines; and it was from a picture in one of these
+that we finally decided what our Coila Villa should be like,
+though, of course, the plan would be slightly altered to
+suit circumstances of climate, &amp;c. It was to be&mdash;briefly
+stated&mdash;a winged bungalow of only one story, with a
+handsome square tower and portico in the centre, and
+verandahs nearly all round. So one wing and the tower was
+commenced at once. But bricks were to be made, and
+timber cut and dried and fashioned, and no end of other
+things were to be accomplished before we actually set about
+the erection.</p>
+<p>To do all these things we appointed a little army of
+Gauchos, with two or three handy men-of-all-work from
+Scotland.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile our villa gardens were planned and our
+bushes and trees were planted.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_158' name='page_158'></a>158</span></p>
+<p>Terraces, too, were contrived to face the lake, and Dugald
+one evening proposed a boat-house and boat, and this was
+carried without a dissentient voice.</p>
+<p>Dugald was extremely fond of our sister Flora. We only
+wondered that he now spoke about her so seldom. But if
+he spoke but little of her he thought the more, and we could
+see that all his plans for the beautification and adornment
+of the villa had but one end and object&mdash;the delight and
+gratification of its future little mistress.</p>
+<p>Dear old Dugald! he had such a kind lump of a heart
+of his own, and never took any of our chaff and banter
+unpleasantly. But I am quite sure that as far as he himself
+was concerned he never would have troubled himself about
+even the boat-house or the terraced gardens either, for
+every idle hour that he could spare he spent on the hill, as
+he called it, with his dog&mdash;a lovely Irish setter&mdash;and his
+gun.</p>
+<p>I met him one morning going off as usual with Dash, the
+setter, close beside the little mule he rode, and with his
+gun slung over his back.</p>
+<p>'Where away, old man?' I said.</p>
+<p>'Only to a little laguna I've found among the hills, and
+I mean to have a grand bag to-day.'</p>
+<p>'Well, you're off early!'</p>
+<p>'Yes; there is little to be done at home, and there are
+some rare fine ducks up yonder.'</p>
+<p>'You'll be back to luncheon?'</p>
+<p>'I'll try. If not, don't wait.'</p>
+<p>'Not likely; ta-ta! Good luck to you! But you really
+ought to have a Gaucho with you.'</p>
+<p>'Nonsense, Murdoch! I don't need a groom. Dash and
+old Tootsie, the mule, are all I want.'</p>
+<p>It was the end of winter, or rather beginning of spring,
+but Moncrieff had not yet declared close time, and Dugald
+managed to supply the larder with more species of game
+than we could tell the names of. Birds, especially, he
+brought home on his saddle and in his bag; birds of all
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_159' name='page_159'></a>159</span>
+sizes, from the little luscious dove to the black swan itself;
+and one day he actually came along up the avenue with a
+dead ostrich. He could ride that mule of his anywhere.
+I believe he could have ridden along the parapet of London
+Bridge, so we were never surprised to see Dugald draw
+rein at the lower sitting-room window, within the verandah.
+He was always laughing and merry and mischievous-looking
+when he had had extra good luck; but the day
+he landed that ostrich he was fairly wild with excitement.
+The body of it was given to the Gauchos, and they
+made very merry over it: invited their friends, in fact,
+and roasted the huge bird whole out of doors. They did so
+in true Patagonian fashion&mdash;to wit, the ostrich was first
+trussed and cleaned, a roaring fire of wood having been
+made, round stones were made almost red-hot. The stones
+were for stuffing, though this kind of stuffing is not very
+eatable, but it helps to cook the bird. The fire was then
+raked away, and the dinner laid down and covered up.
+Meanwhile the Gauchos, male and female, girls and boys,
+had a dance. The ubiquitous guitars, of course, were the
+instruments, and two of these made not a bad little
+band. After dinner they danced again, and wound up by
+wishing Dugald all the good luck in the world, and plenty
+more ostriches. The feathers of this big game-bird were
+carefully packed and sent home to mother and Flora.</p>
+<p>Well, we had got so used to Dugald's solitary ways that
+we never thought anything of even his somewhat prolonged
+absence on the hill, for he usually dropped round when
+luncheon was pretty nearly done. There was always
+something kept warm for 'old Dugald,' as we all called him,
+and I declare it did every one of us good to see him eat.
+His appetite was certainly the proverbial appetite of a
+hunter.</p>
+<p>On this particular day, however, old Dugald did not
+return to luncheon.</p>
+<p>'Perhaps,' said Donald, 'he is dining with some of the
+shepherds, or having "a pick at a priest's," as he calls it.'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_160' name='page_160'></a>160</span></p>
+<p>'Perhaps,' I said musingly. The afternoon wore away,
+and there were no signs of our brother coming, so I began
+to get rather uneasy, and spoke to Donald about it.</p>
+<p>'He may have met with an accident,' I said, 'or fifty
+things may have happened.'</p>
+<p>'Well,' replied Donald, 'I don't suppose fifty things have
+happened; but as you seem a bit anxious, suppose we
+mount our mules, take a Gaucho with us, and institute a
+search expedition?'</p>
+<p>'I'm willing,' I cried, jumping up, 'and here's for off!'</p>
+<p>There was going to be an extra good dinner that day,
+because we expected letters from home, and our runner
+would be back from the distant post-office in good time to
+let us read our epistles before the gong sounded and so
+discuss them at table.</p>
+<p>'Hurry up, boys; don't be late, mind!' cried aunt, as our
+mules were brought round to the portico, and we were
+mounted.</p>
+<p>'All right, auntie dear!' replied Donald, waving his
+hand; 'and mind those partridges are done to a turn;
+we'll be all delightfully hungry.'</p>
+<p>The Gaucho knew all Dugald's trails well, and when we
+mentioned the small distant laguna, he set out at once in
+the direction of the glen. He made so many windings,
+however, and took so many different turns through bush
+and grass and scrub, that we began to wonder however
+Dugald could have found the road.</p>
+<p>But Dugald had a way of his own of getting back through
+even a cactus labyrinth. It was a very simple one, too.
+He never 'loaded up,' as he termed it; that is, he did not
+hang his game to his saddle till he meant to start for home;
+then he mounted, whistled to Dash, who capered and
+barked in front of the mule, permitted the reins to lie
+loosely on the animal's neck, and&mdash;there he was! For not
+only did the good beast take him safely back to Coila, as
+we called our <i>estancia</i>, but he took him by the best roads;
+and even when he seemed to Dugald's human sense to be
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_161' name='page_161'></a>161</span>
+going absolutely and entirely wrong, he never argued with
+him.</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto; '><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>'Reason raise o'er instinct, if you can;</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>In this 'tis God directs, in that 'tis man.'</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>'You are certain he will come this way, Zambo?' I
+said to our Gaucho.</p>
+<p>'Plenty certain, señor. I follow de trail now.'</p>
+<p>I looked over my saddle-bow; so did Donald, but no trail
+could we see&mdash;only the hard, yellow, sandy gravel.</p>
+<p>We came at last to the hilly regions. It was exceedingly
+quiet and still here; hardly a creature of any kind to be
+seen except now and then a kite, or even condor, the latter
+winging his silent way to the distant mountains. At
+times we passed a biscacha village. The biscacha is not a
+tribe of Indians, but, like the coney, a very feeble people,
+who dwell in caves or burrow underground, but all day
+long may be seen playing about the mounds they raise, or
+sitting on their hind legs on top of them. They are really
+a species of prairie-dog. With them invariably live a tribe
+of little owls&mdash;the burrowing owls&mdash;and it seems to be a
+mutual understanding that the owls have the principal
+possession of these residential chambers by day, while the
+biscachas occupy them by night. This arrangement answers
+wonderfully well, and I have proved over and over again
+that they are exceedingly fond of each other. The biscachas
+themselves are not very demonstrative, either in their fun
+or affection, but if one of them be killed, and is lying dead
+outside the burrow, the poor owl often exhibits the most
+frantic grief for the murder of his little housekeeper, and
+will even show signs of a desire to attack the animal&mdash;especially
+if a dog&mdash;which has caused his affliction.</p>
+<p>Donald and I, with our guide, now reached the land of
+the giant cacti. We all at home here in Britain know
+something of the beauty of the common prickly cactus that
+grows in window-gardens or in hot-houses, and surprises
+us with the crimson glory of its flowers, which grow from
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_162' name='page_162'></a>162</span>
+such odd parts of the plant; but here we were in the land
+of the cacti. Dugald knew it well, and used to tell us all
+about them; so tall, so stately, so strange and weird, that
+we felt as if in another planet. Already the bloom was on
+some of them&mdash;for in this country flowers soon hear the
+voice of spring&mdash;but in the proper season nothing that ever
+I beheld can surpass the gorgeous beauty of these giant
+cacti.</p>
+<p>The sun began to sink uncomfortably low down on the
+horizon, and my anxiety increased every minute. Why did
+not Dugald meet us? Why did we not even hear the
+sound of his gun, for the Gaucho told us we were close to
+the laguna?</p>
+<p>Presently the cacti disappeared behind us, and we found
+ourselves in open ground, with here and there a tall, weird-looking
+tree. How those trees&mdash;they were not natives&mdash;had
+come there we were at first at a loss to understand, but
+when we reached the foot of a grass-grown hill or sand dune,
+and came suddenly on the ruins of what appeared a Jesuit
+hermitage or monastery, the mystery was explained.</p>
+<p>On rounding a spur of this hill, lo! the lake; and not far
+from the foot of a tree, behold! our truant brother. Beside
+him was Dash, and not a great way off, tied to a dwarf
+algaroba tree, stood the mule. Dugald was sitting on the
+ground, with his gun over his arm, gazing up into the tree.</p>
+<p>'Dugald! Dugald!' I cried.</p>
+<p>But Dugald never moved his head. Was he dead, or
+were these green sand dunes fairy hillocks, and my brother
+enchanted?</p>
+<p>I leapt off my mule, and, rifle in hand, went on by
+myself, never taking my eyes off my brother, and with
+my heart playing pit-a-pat against my ribs.</p>
+<p>'Dugald!' I said again.</p>
+<p>He never moved.</p>
+<p>'Dugald, speak!'</p>
+<p>He spoke now almost in a stage whisper:</p>
+<p>'A lion in the tree. Have you your rifle?'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_163' name='page_163'></a>163</span></p>
+<p>I beckoned to my brother to come on, and at the same
+moment the monster gave voice. I was near enough now
+to take aim at the puma; he was lying in a cat-like attitude
+on one of the highest limbs. But the angry growl and the
+moving tail told me plainly enough he was preparing to
+spring, and spring on Dugald. It was the first wild beast
+I had ever drawn bead upon, and I confess it was a supreme
+moment; oh, not of joy, but,&mdash;shall I say it?&mdash;fear.</p>
+<p>What if I should miss!</p>
+<p>But there was no time for cogitation. I raised my rifle.
+At the self-same moment, as if knowing his danger, the
+brute sprang off the bough. The bullet met him in mid-air,
+and&mdash;<i>he fell dead at Dugald's feet</i>.</p>
+<p>The ball had entered the neck and gone right on and
+through the heart. One coughing roar, an opening and
+shutting of the terrible jaws&mdash;which were covered with
+blood and froth&mdash;and a few convulsive movements of the
+hind legs, and all was over.</p>
+<p>'Thank Heaven, you are saved, dear old Dugald!' I
+cried.</p>
+<p>'Yes,' said Dugald, getting up and coolly stretching
+himself; 'but you've been a precious long time in
+coming.'</p>
+<p>'And you were waiting for us?'</p>
+<p>'I couldn't get away. I was sitting here when I noticed
+the lion. Dash and I were having a bit of lunch. My
+cartridges are all on the mule, so I've been staring fixedly
+at that monster ever since. I knew it was my only chance.
+If I had moved away, or even turned my head, he would
+have had me as sure as&mdash;'</p>
+<p>'But, I say,' he added, touching the dead puma with his
+foot, '<i>isn't</i> he a fine fellow? What a splendid skin to send
+home to Flora!'</p>
+<p>This shows what sort of a boy Brother Dugald was; and
+now that all danger was past and gone, although I
+pretended to be angry with him for his rashness, I really
+could not help smiling.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_164' name='page_164'></a>164</span></p>
+<p>'But what a crack shot you are, Murdoch!' he added;
+'I had no idea&mdash;I&mdash;I really couldn't have done much
+better myself.'</p>
+<p>'Well, Dugald,' I replied, 'I may do better next time,
+but to tell the truth I aimed at the beast <i>when he was on
+the branch</i>.'</p>
+<p>'And hit him ten feet below it. Ha! ha! ha!'</p>
+<p>We all laughed now. We could afford it.</p>
+<p>The Gaucho whipped the puma out of his skin in less
+than a minute, and off we started for home.</p>
+<p>I was the hero of the evening; though Dugald never told
+them of my funny aim. Bombazo, who had long since
+recovered his spirits, was well to the front with stories of
+his own personal prowess and narrow escapes; but while
+relating these he never addressed old Jenny, for the ancient
+and humorsome dame had told him one day that 'big lees
+were thrown awa' upon her.'</p>
+<p>What a happy evening we spent, for our Gaucho runner
+had brought</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto; '><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>'Good news from Home!'</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_165' name='page_165'></a>165</span></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 10%; border:none; border-bottom:1px solid black; clear:both; margin: 2em auto 1em 0' />
+
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_7' id='Footnote_7'></a><a href='#FNanchor_7'><span class='label'>[7]</span></a>
+<p style='font-size: small'>'Ca' Canny' = Drive slowly.</p></div>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XVI_SUMMER_IN_THE_SILVER_WEST' id='XVI_SUMMER_IN_THE_SILVER_WEST'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+<h3>SUMMER IN THE SILVER WEST.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>Though it really was not so very long since we had
+said farewell to our friends in Scotland and the dear
+ones at home, it seemed an age. So it is no wonder, seeing
+that all were well, our letters brought us joy. Not for
+weeks did we cease to read them over and over again and
+talk about them. One of mine was from Archie Bateman,
+and, much to my delight and that of my brothers, he told
+us that he had never ceased worrying his father and
+mother to let him come out to the Silver West and join
+us, and that they were yielding fast. He meant, he said,
+to put the screw on a little harder soon, by running away
+and taking a cruise as far as Newcastle-on-Tyne in a coal-boat.
+He had no doubt that this would have the desired
+effect of showing his dearly-beloved <i>pater et mater</i> that he
+was in downright earnest in his desire to go abroad. So
+we were to expect him next summer&mdash;'that is,' he added,
+'summer in England, and winter with you.'</p>
+<p>Another letter of mine was from Irene M'Rae. I dare
+say there must have been a deal of romance about me
+even then, for Irene's delightful little matter-of-fact and
+prosaic letter gave me much pleasure, and I&mdash;I believe I
+carried it about with me till it was all frayed at every fold,
+and I finally stowed it away in my desk.</p>
+<p>Flora wrote to us all, with a postscript in addition to
+Dugald. And we were to make haste and get rich enough
+to send for pa and ma and her.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_166' name='page_166'></a>166</span></p>
+<p>I did not see Townley's letter to aunt, but I know that
+much of it related to the 'Coila crime,' as we all call it
+now. The scoundrel M'Rae had disappeared, and Mr.
+Townley had failed to trace him. But he could wait.
+He would not get tired. It was as certain as Fate that as
+soon as the poacher spent his money&mdash;and fellows like
+him could not keep money long&mdash;he would appear again
+at Coila, to extort more by begging or threatening.
+Townley had a watch set for him, and as soon as he should
+appear there would be an interview.</p>
+<p>'It would,' the letter went on, 'aid my case very much
+indeed could I but find the men who assisted him to
+restore the vault in the old ruin. But they, too, are
+spirited away, apparently, and all I can do fails to find
+them. But I live in hope. The good time is bound to
+come, and may Heaven in justice send it soon!'</p>
+<p>Moncrieff had no letters, but I am bound to say that he
+was as much delighted to see us happy as if we were
+indeed his own brothers, and our aunt his aunt, if such a
+thing could have been possible.</p>
+<p>But meanwhile the building of our Coila Villa moved
+on apace, and only those situated as we were could understand
+the eager interest we took in its gradual rise. At
+the laying of the foundation-stone we gave all the servants
+and workmen, and settlers, new and old, an entertainment.
+We had not an ostrich to roast whole this time, but the
+supper placed before our guests under Moncrieff's biggest
+tent was one his cook might well have been proud of.
+After supper music commenced, only on this special and
+auspicious occasion the guitars did not have it all their
+own way, having to give place every now and then to the
+inspiring strains of the Highland bagpipes. That was a
+night which was long remembered in our little colony.</p>
+<p>While the villa was being built our furniture was being
+made. This, like that in Moncrieff's mansion, was all, or
+mostly, Indian work, and manufactured by our half-caste
+Gauchos. The wood chiefly used was algaroba, which,
+when polished, looked as bright as mahogany, and quite as
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_167' name='page_167'></a>167</span>
+beautiful. This Occidental furniture, as we called it, was
+really very light and elegant, the seats of the couches,
+fauteuils and sofas, and chairs being worked with thongs,
+or pieces of hardened skin, in quite a marvellous manner.</p>
+<p>We had fences to make all round our fields, and hedges
+to plant, and even trees. Then there was the whole
+irrigation system to see to, and the land to sow with grain
+and lucerne, after the soil had been duly ploughed and attended
+to. All this kept us young fellows very busy
+indeed, for we worked with the men almost constantly, not
+only as simple superintendents, but as labourers.</p>
+<p>Yes, the duties about an <i>estancia</i>, even after it is fairly
+established, are very varied; but, nevertheless, I know of
+no part of the world where the soil responds more quickly
+or more kindly to the work of the tiller than it does in the
+Silver West. And this is all the more wonderful when
+we consider that a great part of the land hereabouts is by
+nature barren in the extreme.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>I do not think I am wrong in saying that sheep, if not
+first introduced into the <i>estancias</i> of the Silver West by the
+Scotch, have at all events been elevated to the rank of
+a special feature of produce in the country by them.
+Moncrieff had done much for the improvement of the
+breed, not only as regards actual size of body, but in
+regard to the texture of the wool; and it was his proudest
+boast to be able to say that the land of his adoption
+could already compare favourably with Australia itself, and
+that in the immediate future it was bound to beat that
+island.</p>
+<p>It is no wonder, therefore, that we all looked forward to
+our first great shearing as a very busy time indeed. Our
+great wool harvest was, indeed, one of the principal events
+of the year. Moncrieff said he always felt young again at
+the sheep-shearing times.</p>
+<p>Now there are various styles of wool harvesting.
+Moncrieff's was simple enough. Preparations were made
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_168' name='page_168'></a>168</span>
+for it, both out-doors and in, at least a fortnight beforehand.
+Indoors, hams, &amp;c., were got ready for cooking, and
+the big tent was erected once more near and behind the
+mansion, for extra hands to the number of twenty at least
+were to be imported; several neighbour settlers&mdash;they
+lived ten miles off, and still were neighbours&mdash;were coming
+over to lend a hand, and all had to eat, and most had to
+sleep, under canvas.</p>
+<p>If sheep-shearing prospects made Moncrieff young again,
+so they did his mother. She was here, there, and everywhere;
+now in parlour or dining-room, in kitchen and
+scullery, in out-houses and tent, giving orders, leading,
+directing, ay, and sometimes even driving, the servants,
+for few of the Gauchos, whether male or female, could
+work with speed enough to please old Jenny.</p>
+<p>Well, the sheds had to be cleared out, and a system of
+corralling adopted which was only called for during times
+like these. Then there were the weighing machines to be
+seen to; the tally tables and all the packing and pressing
+machinery&mdash;which on this large <i>estancia</i> was carried
+almost to perfection&mdash;had all to be got into the very best
+working order imaginable. For, in the matter of sheep-shearing,
+Moncrieff was fastidious to a degree.</p>
+<p>The sheep were washed the day before. This was hard
+work, for no animal I know of is more obstinate than a
+sheep when it makes up its mind to be so.</p>
+<p>So the work commenced, and day after day it went
+merrily on. Moncrieff did not consider this a very large
+shearing, and yet in six days' time no less than 11,000
+sheep were turned away fleeceless.</p>
+<p>And what a scene it was, to be sure!</p>
+<p>I remember well, when quite a little lad, thinking old
+Parson McGruer's shearing a wonderful sight. The old
+man, who was very fat and podgy, and seldom got down to
+breakfast before eleven in the morning, considered himself
+a sheep farmer on rather a large scale. Did he not own a
+flock of nearly six hundred&mdash;one shepherd's work&mdash;that
+fed quietly on the heath-clad braes of Coila? One
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_169' name='page_169'></a>169</span>
+shepherd and two collies; and the collies did nearly all
+the duty in summer and a great part of it in winter. The
+shepherd had his bit of shieling in a clump of birch-trees
+at the glen-foot, and at times, crook in hand, his Highland
+plaid dangling from his shoulder, he might be seen slowly
+winding along the braes, or standing, statue-like, on the
+hill-top, his romantic figure well defined against the
+horizon, and very much in keeping with the scene. I
+never yet saw the minister's shepherd running. His life
+was almost an idyllic one in summer, when the birks
+waved green and eke, or in autumn, when the hills were
+all ablaze with the crimson glory of the heather. To be
+sure, his pay was not a great deal, and his fare for the
+most part consisted of oatmeal and milk, with now and
+then a slice of the best part of a 'braxied' sheep. Here,
+in our home in the Silver West, how different! Every
+<i>puestero</i> had a house or hut as good as the minister's
+shepherd; and as for living, why, the worthy Mr.
+McGruer himself never had half so well-found a table.
+Our dogs in the Silver West lived far more luxuriously than
+any farm servant or shepherd, or even gamekeeper, 'in a'
+braid Scotland.'</p>
+<p>But our shepherds had to run and to ride both.
+Wandering over miles upon miles of pasturage, sheep
+learn to be dainty, and do not stay very long in any one
+place; so it is considered almost impossible to herd them on
+foot. It is not necessary to do so; at all events, where one
+can buy a horse for forty shillings, and where his food costs
+<i>nil</i>, or next to <i>nil</i>, one usually prefers riding to walking.</p>
+<p>But it was a busy time in May even at the Scotch
+minister's place when sheep-shearing came round. The
+minister got up early then, if he did not do so all the year
+round again. The hurdles were all taken to the river-side,
+or banks of the stream that, leaving Loch Coila,
+went meandering through the glen. Here the sheep were
+washed and penned, and anon turned into the enclosures
+where the shearers were. Lads and lasses all took part
+in the work in one capacity or another. The sun would
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_170' name='page_170'></a>170</span>
+be brightly shining, the 'jouking burnie' sparkling clear
+in its rays; the glens and hills all green and bonnie; the
+laughing and joking and lilting and singing, and the
+constant bleating of sheep and lambs, made altogether a
+curious medley; but every now and then Donald the
+piper would tune his pipes and make them 'skirl,'
+drowning all other sounds in martial melody.</p>
+<p>But here on Moncrieff's <i>estancia</i> everything was on a
+grander scale. There was the same bleating of sheep, the
+same laughing, joking, lilting, singing, and piping; the
+same hurry-scurry of dogs and men; the same prevailing
+busy-ness and activity; but everything was multiplied by
+twenty.</p>
+<p>McGruer at home in Coila had his fleeces thrust into a
+huge sack, which was held up by two stalwart Highlanders.
+Into this not only were the fleeces put, but also a boy, to
+jump on them and pack them down. At the <i>estancia</i> we
+had the very newest forms of machinery to do everything.</p>
+<p>Day by day, as our shearing went on, Moncrieff grew
+gayer and gayer, and on the final morning he was as full
+of life and fun as a Harrow schoolboy out on the range.
+The wool harvest had turned out well.</p>
+<p>It had not been so every year with Moncrieff and his
+partner. They had had many struggles to come through&mdash;sickness
+had at one time more than decimated the
+flocks. The Indians, though they do not as a rule drive
+away sheep, had played sad havoc among them, and
+scattered them far and wide over the adjoining pampas,
+and the pampero<a name="FNanchor_8" id="FNanchor_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> had several times destroyed its thousands,
+before the trees had grown up to afford protection and
+shelter.</p>
+<p>I have said before that Moncrieff was fond of doing
+things in his own fashion. He was willing enough to
+adopt all the customs of his adopted country so long as he
+thought they were right, but many of the habits of his
+native land he considered would engraft well with those
+of Mendoza. Moncrieff delighted in dancing&mdash;that is, in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_171' name='page_171'></a>171</span>
+giving a good hearty rout, and he simply did so whenever
+there was the slightest excuse. The cereal harvest ended
+thus, the grape harvest also, and making of the wine and
+preserves, and so of course did the shearing.</p>
+<p>The dinner at the mansion itself was a great success;
+the supper in the marquee, with the romp to follow, was even
+a greater. Moncrieff himself opened the fun with Aunt
+Cecilia as a partner, Donald and a charming Spanish girl
+completing the quartette necessary for a real Highland
+reel. The piper played, of course (guitars were not good
+enough for this sort of thing), and I think we must have
+kept that first 'hoolichin' up for nearly twenty minutes.
+Then Moncrieff and aunt were fain to retire 'for-fochten.'<a name="FNanchor_9" id="FNanchor_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>
+<p>Well Moncrieff might have been 'for-fochten,' but
+neither Donald nor his Spanish lassie were half tired.
+Nor was the piper.</p>
+<p>'Come on, Dugald,' cried Donald, 'get a partner, lad.
+Hooch!'</p>
+<p>'Hooch!' shouted Dugald in response, and lo and
+behold! he gaily led forth&mdash;whom? Why, whom but old
+Jenny herself? What roars of laughter there was as,
+keeping time to a heart-stirring strathspey, the litle lady
+cracked her thumbs and danced, reeling, setting, and
+deeking! roars of laughter, and genuine hearty applause
+as well.</p>
+<p>Moncrieff was delighted with his mother's performance.
+It was glorious, he said, and so true to time; surely
+everybody would believe him now that mither was a
+downright ma<i>r-r-r-</i>vel. And everybody did.</p>
+<p>During the shearing Donald and I had done duty as
+clerks; and very busy we had been kept. As for Dugald,
+it would have been a pity to have parted him and his dear
+gun, so the work assigned to him was that of lion's
+provider&mdash;we, the shearing folk, being the lion.</p>
+<p>For a youth of hardly sixteen Dugald was a splendid
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_172' name='page_172'></a>172</span>
+shot, and during the shearing he really kept up his credit
+well. Moncrieff objected to have birds killed when
+breeding; but in this country, as indeed in any other
+where game is numerous, there are hosts of birds that do
+not, for various reasons, breed or mate every season.
+These generally are to be found either singly and
+solitary, as if they had some great grief on their minds
+that they desired to nurse in solitude, or in small flocks of
+gay young bachelors. Dugald knew such birds well, and
+it was from the ranks of these he always filled the
+larder.</p>
+<p>To the supply thus brought daily by Dugald were
+added fowls, ducks, and turkeys from the <i>estancia's</i>
+poultry-yard, to say nothing of joints of beef, mutton, and
+pork. Nor was it birds alone that Dugald's seemingly
+inexhaustible creels and bags were laden with, but eggs
+of the swan<a name="FNanchor_10" id="FNanchor_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> and the wild-duck and goose, with&mdash;to serve
+as tit-bits for those who cared for such desert delicacies&mdash;cavies,
+biscachas, and now and then an armadillo. If these
+were not properly appreciated by the new settlers, the
+eyes of the old, and especially the Gauchos, sparkled with
+anticipation of gustatory delight on beholding them.</p>
+<p>For some days after the shearing was over comparative
+peace reigned around and over the great <i>estancia</i>. But
+nevertheless preparations were being made to send off a
+string of waggons to Villa Mercedes. The market at
+Mendoza was hardly large enough to suit Moncrieff, nor
+were the prices so good as could be obtained in the east.
+Indeed, Moncrieff had purchasing agents from Villa
+Mercedes to meet his waggons on receipt of a telegram.</p>
+<p>So the waggons were loaded up&mdash;wool, wine, and
+preserves, as well as raisins.</p>
+<p>To describe the vineyards at our <i>estancia</i> would take
+up far too much space. I must leave them to the
+reader's imagination; but I hardly think I am wrong
+in stating that there are no grapes in the world more
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_173' name='page_173'></a>173</span>
+delicious or more viniferous than those that grow in the
+province of Mendoza. The usual difficulty is not in the
+making of wine, but in the supply of barrels and bottles.
+Moncrieff found a way out of this; and in some hotels in
+Buenos Ayres, and even Monte Video, the Château
+Moncrieff had already gained some celebrity.</p>
+<p>The manufacture of many different kinds of preserves
+was quite an industry at the <i>estancia</i>, and one that paid
+fairly well. There were orangeries as well as vineries;
+and although the making of marmalade had not before
+been attempted, Moncrieff meant now to go in for it on
+quite a large scale. This branch was to be superintended
+by old Jenny herself, and great was her delight to find
+out that she was of some use on the estate, for 'really
+'oman,' she told aunt, 'a body gets tired of the stockin'&mdash;shank,
+shank, shank a' day is hard upon the hands,
+though a body maun do something.'</p>
+<p>Well, the waggons were laden and off at last. With
+them went Moncrieff's Welsh partner as commander, to
+see to the sale, and prevent the Gauchos and drivers
+generally from tapping the casks by the way. The force
+of men, who were all well armed, was quite sufficient to
+give an excellent account of any number of prowling
+Indians who were likely to put in an appearance.</p>
+<p>And now summer, in all its glory, was with us. And
+such glory! Such glory of vegetable life, such profusion
+of foliage, such wealth of colouring, such splendour of
+flowers! Such glory of animal life, beast and bird and
+insect! The flowers themselves were not more gay and
+gorgeous than some of these latter.</p>
+<p>Nor were we very greatly plagued with the hopping and
+blood-sucking genera. Numerous enough they were at
+times, it must be confessed, both by day and night; but
+somehow we got used to them. The summer was wearing
+to a close, the first wing of our Coila Villa was finished
+and dry, the furniture was put in, and as soon as the smell
+of paint left we took possession.</p>
+<p>This was made the occasion for another of Moncrieff's
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_174' name='page_174'></a>174</span>
+festive gatherings. Neighbours came from all directions
+except the south, for we knew of none in this direction
+besides the wild Pampean Indians, and they were not
+included in the invitation. Probably we should make them
+dance some other day.</p>
+<p>About a fortnight after our opening gathering, or
+'house-warming,' as Moncrieff called it, we had a spell of
+terribly hot weather. The heat was of a sultry, close
+description, difficult to describe: the cattle, sheep, and
+horses seemed to suffer very much, and even the poor dogs.
+These last, by the way, we found it a good plan to clip.
+Long coats did not suit the summer season.</p>
+<p>One evening it seemed hotter and sultrier than ever.
+We were all seated out in the verandah, men-folk
+smoking, and aunt and Aileen fanning themselves and
+fighting the insects, when suddenly a low and ominous
+rumbling was heard which made us all start except
+Moncrieff.</p>
+<p>Is it thunder? No; there is not at present a cloud in
+the sky, although a strange dark haze is gathering over
+the peaks on the western horizon.</p>
+<p>'Look!' said Moncrieff to me. As he spoke he pointed
+groundwards. Beetles and ants and crawling insects of
+every description were heading for the verandah, seeking
+shelter from the coming storm.</p>
+<p>The strange rumbling grew louder!</p>
+<p>It was not coming from the sky, but from the earth!
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_175' name='page_175'></a>175</span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 10%; border:none; border-bottom:1px solid black; clear:both; margin: 2em auto 1em 0' />
+
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_8' id='Footnote_8'></a><a href='#FNanchor_8'><span class='label'>[8]</span></a>
+<p style='font-size: small'>Pampero, a storm wind that blows from the south.</p></div>
+
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_9' id='Footnote_9'></a><a href='#FNanchor_9'><span class='label'>[9]</span></a>
+<p style='font-size: small'>For-fochten = worn out. The term usually applies to barn-yard roosters, who have been settling a quarrel, and pause to pant, with their heads towards the ground.</p></div>
+
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_10' id='Footnote_10'></a><a href='#FNanchor_10'><span class='label'>[10]</span></a>
+<p style='font-size: small'>Swans usually commence laying some time before either ducks or geese; but much depends upon the season.</p></div>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XVII_THE_EARTHQUAKE' id='XVII_THE_EARTHQUAKE'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+<h3>THE EARTHQUAKE.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>With a rapidity that was truly alarming the black haze
+in the west crept upwards over the sky, the sun was
+engulfed in a few minutes, and before half an hour,
+accompanied by a roaring wind and a whirl of dust and
+decayed leaves, the storm was with us and on us, the whole
+<i>estancia</i> being enveloped in clouds and darkness.</p>
+<p>The awful earth sounds still continued&mdash;increased, in fact&mdash;much
+to the terror of every one of us. We had retreated
+to the back sitting-room. Moncrieff had left us for a time,
+to see to the safety of the cattle and the farm generally,
+for the Gauchos were almost paralyzed with fear, and it
+was found afterwards that the very shepherds had left
+their flocks and fled for safety&mdash;if safety it could be called&mdash;to
+their <i>puestos</i>.</p>
+<p>Yet Gauchos are not as a rule afraid of storms, but&mdash;and
+it is somewhat remarkable&mdash;an old Indian seer had for
+months before been predicting that on this very day and
+night the city of Mendoza would be destroyed by an
+earthquake, and that not only the town but every village
+in the province would be laid low at the same time.</p>
+<p>It is difficult to give the reader any idea of the events of
+this dreadful night. I can only briefly relate my own
+feelings and experiences. As we all sat there, suddenly
+a great river of blood appeared to split the dark heavens in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_176' name='page_176'></a>176</span>
+two, from zenith to horizon. It hung in the sky for long
+seconds, and was followed by a peal of thunder of terrific
+violence, accompanied by sounds as if the whole building
+and every building on the estate were being rent and riven
+in pieces. At the self-same moment a strange, dizzy, sleepy
+feeling rushed through my brain. I could only see those
+around me as if enshrouded in a blue-white mist. I tried
+to rise from my chair, but fell back, not as I thought into
+a chair but into a boat. Floor and roof and walls appeared
+to meet and clasp. My head swam. I was not only dizzy
+but deaf apparently, not too deaf, however, to hear the wild,
+unearthly, frightened screams of twenty at least of our
+Gaucho servants, who were huddled together in the centre
+of the garden. It was all over in a few seconds: even the
+thunder was hushed and the wind no longer bent the poplars
+or roared through the cloud-like elm-trees. A silence that
+could be felt succeeded, broken only by the low moan of
+terror that the Gauchos kept up; a silence that soon
+checked even that sound itself; a silence that crept round the
+heart, and held us all spellbound; a silence that was ended
+at last by terrible thunderings and lightnings and earth-tremblings,
+with all the same dizzy, sleepy, sickening
+sensations that had accompanied the first shock. I felt as
+if chaos had come again, and for a time felt also as if death
+itself would have been a relief.</p>
+<p>But this shock passed next, and once more there was a
+solemn silence, a drear stillness. And now fear took
+possession of every one of us, and a desire to flee away
+somewhere&mdash;anywhere. This had almost amounted to
+panic, when Moncrieff himself appeared in the verandah.</p>
+<p>'I've got our fellows to put up the marquee,' he said,
+almost in a whisper. 'Come&mdash;we'll be safer there.
+Mither, I'll carry you. You're not afraid, are you?'</p>
+<p>'Is the worruld comin' tae an end?' asked old Jenny,
+looking dazed as her son picked her up. 'Is the worruld
+comin' tae an end, <i>and the marmalade no made yet</i>?'</p>
+<p>In about an hour after this the storm was at its worst.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_177' name='page_177'></a>177</span>
+Flash followed flash, peal followed peal: the world seemed
+in flames, the hills appeared to be falling on us. The rain
+and hailstones came down in vast sheets, and with a noise
+so great that even the thunder itself was heard but as a
+subdued roar.</p>
+<p>We had no light here&mdash;we needed none. The lightning,
+or the reflection of it, ran in under the canvas on the
+surface of the water, which must have been inches deep.
+The hail melted as soon as it fell, and finally gave place to
+rain alone; then the water that flowed through the tent
+felt warm, if not hot, to the touch. This was no doubt
+occasioned by the force with which it fell to the ground.
+The falling rain now looked like cords of gold and silver,
+so brightly was it illuminated by the lightning.</p>
+<p>While the storm was still at its height suddenly there
+was a shout from one of the Gauchos.</p>
+<p>'Run, run! the tent is falling!' was the cry.</p>
+<p>It was only too true. A glance upwards told us this.
+We got into the open air just in time, before, weighted
+down by tons of water, the great marquee came groundwards
+with a crash.</p>
+<p>But though the rain still came down in torrents and the
+thunder roared and rattled over and around us, no further
+shock of earthquake was felt. Fear fled then, and we
+made a rush for the house once more. Moncrieff reached
+the casement window first, with a Gaucho carrying a
+huge lantern. This man entered, but staggered out again
+immediately.</p>
+<p>'The ants! the ants!' he shouted in terror.</p>
+<p>Moncrieff had one glance into the room, as if to satisfy
+himself. I took the lantern from the trembling hands of
+the Gaucho and held it up, and the sight that met my
+astonished gaze was one I shall never forget. The whole
+room was in possession of myriads of black ants of
+enormous size; they covered everything&mdash;walls, furniture,
+and floor&mdash;with one dense and awful pall.</p>
+<p>The room looked strange and mysterious in its living,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_178' name='page_178'></a>178</span>
+moving covering. Here was indeed the blackness of
+darkness. Yes, and it was a darkness too that could be
+felt. Of this I had a speedy proof of a most disagreeable
+nature. I was glad to hand the lantern back and seek for
+safety in the rain again.</p>
+<p>Luckily the sitting-room door was shut, and this was the
+only room not taken possession of.</p>
+<p>After lights had been lit in the drawing-room the storm
+did not appear quite so terrible; but no one thought of
+retiring that night. The vague fear that something more
+dreadful still might occur kept hanging in our minds, and
+was only dispelled when daylight began to stream in at the
+windows.</p>
+<p>By breakfast-time there was no sign in the blue sky that
+so fearful a storm had recently raged there. Nor had any
+very great violence been done about the farmyards by the
+earthquake.</p>
+<p>Many of the cattle that had sought shelter beneath the
+trees had been killed, however; and in one spot we found
+the mangled remains of over one hundred sheep. Here
+also a huge chestnut-tree had been struck and completely
+destroyed, pieces of the trunk weighing hundreds of
+pounds being scattered in every direction over the field.</p>
+<p>Earthquakes are of common occurrence in the province
+of Mendoza, but seldom are they accompanied by such
+thunder, lightning, and rain as we had on this occasion.
+It was this demonstration, coupled with the warning words
+of the Indian seer, which had caused the panic among our
+worthy Gaucho servants. But the seer had been a false
+prophet for once, and as the Gauchos seized him on this
+same day and half drowned him in the lake, there was but
+little likelihood that he would prophesy the destruction of
+Mendoza again.</p>
+<p>Mendoza had been almost totally destroyed already by
+an awful earthquake that occurred in 1861. Out of a
+population of nearly sixteen thousand souls no less than
+thirteen thousand, we are told, were killed&mdash;swallowed up
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_179' name='page_179'></a>179</span>
+by the yawning earth. Fire broke out afterwards, and, as
+if to increase the wretchedness and sad condition of the
+survivors, robbers from all directions&mdash;even from beyond
+the Andes&mdash;flocked to the place to loot and pillage it.
+But Mendoza is now built almost on the ashes of the
+destroyed city, and its population must be equal to, even
+if it does not exceed, its former aggregate.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>With the exception of a few losses, trifling enough to
+one in Moncrieff's position, the whole year was a singularly
+successful one. Nor had my brothers nor I and the other
+settlers any occasion to complain, and our prospects began
+to be very bright indeed.</p>
+<p>Nor did the future belie the present, for ere another
+year had rolled over our heads we found ourselves in a
+fair way to fortune. We felt by this time that we were
+indeed old residents. We were thoroughly acclimatized:
+healthy, hardy, and brown. In age we were, some would
+say, mere lads; in experience we were already men.</p>
+<p>Our letters from home continued to be of the most
+cheering description, with the exception of Townley's to
+aunt. He had made little if any progress in his quest.
+Not that he despaired. Duncan M'Rae was still absent,
+but sooner or later&mdash;so Townley believed&mdash;poverty would
+bring him to bay, and <i>then</i>&mdash;</p>
+<p>Nothing of this did my aunt tell me at the time. I
+remained in blissful ignorance of anything and everything
+that our old tutor had done or was doing.</p>
+<p>True, the events of that unfortunate evening at the old
+ruin sometimes arose in my mind to haunt me. My
+greatest sorrow was my being bound down by oath to keep
+what seemed to me the secret of a villain&mdash;a secret that
+had deprived our family of the estates of Coila, had
+deprived my parents&mdash;yes, that was the hard and painful
+part. For, strange as it may appear, I cared nothing for
+myself. So enamoured had I become of our new home in
+the Silver West, that I felt but little longing to return to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_180' name='page_180'></a>180</span>
+the comparative bleakness and desolation of even Scottish
+Highland scenery. I must not be considered unpatriotic
+on this account, or if there was a decay of patriotism in
+my heart, the fascinating climate of Mendoza was to blame
+for it. I could not help feeling at times that I had eaten
+the lotus-leaf. Had we not everything that the heart of
+young men could desire? On my own account, therefore,
+I felt no desire to turn the good soldier M'Rae away from
+Coila, and as for Irene&mdash;as for bringing a tear to the eyes
+of that beautiful and engaging girl, I would rather, I
+thought, that the dark waters of the laguna should close
+over my head for ever.</p>
+<p>Besides, dear father was happy. His letters told me
+that. He had even come to like his city life, and he
+never wrote a word about Coila.</p>
+<p>Still, the oath&mdash;the oath that bound me! It was a
+dark spot in my existence.</p>
+<p><i>Did</i> it bind me? I remember thinking that question
+over one day. Could an oath forced upon any one be
+binding in the sight of Heaven? I ran off to consult my
+brother Moncrieff. I found him riding his great bay mare,
+an especial favourite, along the banks of the highest
+<i>estancia</i> canal&mdash;the canal that fed the whole system of
+irrigation. Here I joined him, myself on my pet brown
+mule.</p>
+<p>'Planning more improvements, Moncrieff?' I asked.</p>
+<p>He did not speak for a minute or two.</p>
+<p>'I'm not planning improvements,' he said at last, 'but
+I was just thinking it would be well, in our orra<a name="FNanchor_11" id="FNanchor_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> moments,
+if we were to strengthen this embankment. There is a
+terrible power o' water here. Now supposing that during
+some awful storm, with maybe a bit shock of earthquake,
+it were to burst here or hereabouts, don't you see that the
+flood would pour right down upon the mansion-house, and
+clean it almost from its foundations?'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_181' name='page_181'></a>181</span></p>
+<p>'I trust,' I said, 'so great a catastrophe will not occur
+in our day.'</p>
+<p>'It would be a fearful accident, and a judgment maybe
+on my want of forethought.'</p>
+<p>'I want to ask you a question,' I said, 'on another
+subject, Moncrieff.'</p>
+<p>'You're lookin' scared, laddie. What's the matter?'</p>
+<p>I told him as much as I could.</p>
+<p>'It's a queer question, laddie&mdash;a queer question. Heaven
+give me help to answer you! I think, as the oath was to
+keep a secret, you had best keep the oath, and trust to
+Heaven to set things right in the end, if it be for the best.'</p>
+<p>'Thanks, Moncrieff,' I said; 'thanks. I will take your
+advice.'</p>
+<p>That very day Moncrieff set a party of men to strengthen
+the embankment; and it was probably well he did so, for
+soon after the work was finished another of those fearful
+storms, accompanied as usual by shocks of earthquake,
+swept over our valley, and the canal was filled to overflowing,
+but gave no signs of bursting. Moncrieff had
+assuredly taken time by the forelock.</p>
+<p>One day a letter arrived, addressed to me, which bore
+the London post-mark.</p>
+<p>It was from Archie, and a most spirited epistle it was.
+He wanted us to rejoice with him, and, better still, to
+expect him out by the very first packet. His parents had
+yielded to his request. It had been the voyage to
+Newcastle that had turned the scale. There was nothing
+like pluck, he said; 'But,' he added, 'between you and me,
+Murdoch, I would not take another voyage in a Newcastle
+collier, not to win all the honour and glory of Livingstone,
+Stanley, Gordon-Cumming, and Colonel Frederick Burnaby
+put in a bushel basket.'</p>
+<p>I went tearing away over the <i>estancia</i> on my mule, to
+find my brothers and tell them the joyful tidings. And
+we rejoiced together. Then I went off to look for
+Moncrieff, and he rejoiced, to keep me company.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_182' name='page_182'></a>182</span></p>
+<p>'And mind you,' he said, 'the very day after he arrives
+we'll have a dinner and a kick-up.'</p>
+<p>'Of course we will,' I said. 'We'll have the dinner and
+fun at Coila Villa, which, remember, can now boast of two
+wings besides the tower.'</p>
+<p>'Very well,' he assented, 'and after that we can give
+another dinner and rout at my diggings. Just a sort of
+return match, you see?'</p>
+<p>'But I don't see,' I said; 'I don't see the use of two
+parties.'</p>
+<p>'Oh, but I do, Murdoch. We must make more of a
+man than we do of a nowt<a name="FNanchor_12" id="FNanchor_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> beast. Now you mind that
+bull I had sent out from England&mdash;Towsy Jock that lives
+in the Easter field?&mdash;well, I gave a dinner when he came.
+£250 I paid for him too.'</p>
+<p>'Yes, and I remember also you gave a dinner and fun
+when the prize ram came out. Oh, catch you not finding
+an excuse for a dinner! However, so be it: one dinner
+and fun for a bull, two for Archie.'</p>
+<p>'That's agreed then,' said Moncrieff.</p>
+<p>Now, my brothers and I and a party of Gauchos, with
+the warlike Bombazo and a Scot or two, had arranged a
+grand hunt into the guanaco country; but as dear old
+Archie was coming out so soon we agreed to postpone it,
+in order that he might join in the fun. Meanwhile we
+commenced to make all preparations.</p>
+<p>They say that the principal joy in life lies in the anticipation
+of pleasure to come. I think there is a considerable
+amount of truth in this, and I am sure that not even bluff
+old King Hal setting out to hunt in the New Forest could
+have promised himself a greater treat than we did as we
+got ready for our tour in the land of the guanaco, and
+country of the condor.</p>
+<p>We determined to be quite prepared to start by the
+time Archie was due. Not that we meant to hurry our
+dear cockney cousin right away to the wilds as soon as he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_183' name='page_183'></a>183</span>
+arrived. No; we would give him a whole week to 'shake
+down,' as Moncrieff called it, and study life on the <i>estancia</i>.</p>
+<p>And, indeed, life on the <i>estancia</i>, now that we had become
+thoroughly used to it, was exceedingly pleasant altogether.</p>
+<p>I cannot say that either my brothers or I were ever
+much given to lazing in bed of a morning in Scotland
+itself. To have done so we should have looked upon as
+bad form; but to encourage ourselves in matutinal sloth
+in a climate like this would have seemed a positive crime.</p>
+<p>Even by seven in the morning we used to hear the great
+gong roaring hoarsely on Moncrieff's lawn, and this used
+to be the signal for us to start and draw aside our mosquito
+curtains. Our bedrooms adjoined, and all the time we
+were splashing in our tubs and dressing we kept up an
+incessant fire of banter and fun. The fact is, we used to
+feel in such glorious form after a night's rest. Our bedroom
+windows were very large casements, and were kept
+wide open all the year round, so that virtually we slept in
+the open air. We nearly always went to bed in the dark,
+or if we did have lights we had to shut the windows till we
+had put them out, else moths as big as one's hand, and all
+kinds and conditions of insect life, would have entered
+and speedily extinguished our candles. Even had the
+windows been protected by glass, this insect life would have
+been troublesome. In the drawing and dining rooms we
+had specially prepared blinds of wire to exclude these
+creatures, while admitting air enough.</p>
+<p>The mosquito curtains round our beds effectually kept
+everything disagreeable at bay, and insured us wholesome
+rest.</p>
+<p>But often we were out of bed and galloping over the
+country long before the gong sounded. This ride used to
+give us such appetites for breakfast, that sometimes we had
+to apologize to aunt and Aileen for our apparent greediness.
+We were out of doors nearly all day, and just as
+often as not had a snack of luncheon on the hills at some
+settler's house or at an outlying <i>puesto</i>.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_184' name='page_184'></a>184</span></p>
+<p>Aunt was now our housekeeper, but nevertheless so
+accustomed had we and Moncrieff and Aileen become to
+each other's society that hardly a day passed without our
+dining together either at his house or ours.</p>
+<p>The day, what with one thing and another, used to pass
+quickly enough, and the evening was most enjoyable,
+despite even the worry of flying and creeping insects.
+After dinner my brothers and I, with at times Moncrieff
+and Bombazo, used to lounge round to see what the
+servants were doing.</p>
+<p>They had a concert, and as often as not some fun, every
+night with the exception of Sabbath, when Moncrieff
+insisted that they should retire early.</p>
+<p>At many <i>estancias</i> wine is far too much in use&mdash;even
+to the extent of inebriety. Our places, however, owing
+to Moncrieff's strictness, were models of temperance,
+combined with innocent pleasures. The master, as he was
+called, encouraged all kinds of games, though he objected
+to gambling, and drinking he would not permit at any
+price.</p>
+<p>One morning our post-runner came to Coila Villa in
+greater haste than usual, and from his beaming eyes and
+merry face I conjectured he had a letter for me.</p>
+<p>I took it from him in the verandah, and sent him off
+round to the kitchen to refresh himself. No sooner had I
+glanced at its opening sentences than I rushed shouting
+into the breakfast-room.</p>
+<p>'Hurrah!' I cried, waving the letter aloft. 'Archie's
+coming, and he'll be here to-day. Hurrah! for the hunt,
+lads, and hurrah! for the hills!'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_185' name='page_185'></a>185</span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 10%; border:none; border-bottom:1px solid black; clear:both; margin: 2em auto 1em 0' />
+
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_11' id='Footnote_11'></a><a href='#FNanchor_11'><span class='label'>[11]</span></a>
+<p style='font-size: small'>Orra = leisure, idle. An orra-man is one who does all kinds of odd jobs about a farm.</p></div>
+
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_12' id='Footnote_12'></a><a href='#FNanchor_12'><span class='label'>[12]</span></a>
+<p style='font-size: small'>Nowt = cattle.</p></div>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XVIII_OUR_HUNTING_EXPEDITION' id='XVIII_OUR_HUNTING_EXPEDITION'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+<h3>OUR HUNTING EXPEDITION.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>If not quite so exuberant as the welcome that awaited
+us on our arrival in the valley, Archie's was a right
+hearty one, and assuredly left our cousin nothing to
+complain of.</p>
+<p>He had come by diligence from Villa Mercedes,
+accomplishing the journey, therefore, in a few days,
+which had occupied us in our caravan about as many
+weeks.</p>
+<p>We were delighted to see him looking so well. Why,
+he had even already commenced to get brown, and was
+altogether hardy and hearty and manlike.</p>
+<p>We were old <i>estancieros</i>, however, and it gave us
+unalloyed delight to show him round our place and put
+him up to all the outs and ins of a settler's life.</p>
+<p>Dugald even took him away to the hills with him, and
+the two of them did not get home until dinner was on the
+table.</p>
+<p>Archie, however, although not without plenty of pluck
+and willingness to develop into an <i>estanciero</i> pure and
+simple, had not the stamina my brothers and I possessed,
+but this only made us all the more kind to him. In time,
+we told him, he would be quite as strong and wiry as any
+of us.</p>
+<p>'There is one thing I don't think I shall ever be able to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_186' name='page_186'></a>186</span>
+get over,' said Archie one day. It may be observed that
+he did not now talk with the London drawl; he had left
+both his cockney tongue and his tall hat at home.</p>
+<p>'What is it you do not think you will ever get over,
+Arch?' I asked.</p>
+<p>'Why, the abominable creepies,' he answered, looking
+almost miserable.</p>
+<p>'Why,' he continued, 'it isn't so much that I mind
+being bitten by mosquitoes&mdash;of which it seems you have
+brutes that fly by day, and gangs that go on regular duty at
+night&mdash;but it is the other abominations that make my
+blood run positively cold. Now your cockroaches are all
+very well down in the coal-cellar, and centipedes are interesting
+creatures in glass cases with pins stuck through
+them; but to find cockroaches in your boots and centipedes
+in your bed is rather too much of a good thing.'</p>
+<p>'Well,' said Dugald, laughing, 'you'll get used to even
+that. I don't really mind now what bites me or what
+crawls over me. Besides, you know all those creepie-creepies,
+as you call them, afford one so excellent an
+opportunity of studying natural history from the life.'</p>
+<p>'Oh, bother such life, Dugald! My dear cousin, I would
+rather remain in blissful ignorance of natural history all
+my life than have even an earwig reposing under my
+pillow.  Besides, I notice that even your Yahoo
+servants&mdash;'</p>
+<p>'I beg your pardon, cousin; Gaucho, not Yahoo.'</p>
+<p>'Well, well, Gaucho servants shudder, and even run from
+our common bedroom creepies.'</p>
+<p>'Oh! they are nothing at all to go by, Archie. They
+think because a thing is not very pretty it is bound to be
+venomous.'</p>
+<p>'But does not the bite of a centipede mean death?'</p>
+<p>'Oh dear no. It isn't half as bad as London vermin.'</p>
+<p>'Then there are scorpions. Do they kill you? Is not
+their bite highly dangerous?'</p>
+<p>'Not so bad as a bee's sting.'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_187' name='page_187'></a>187</span></p>
+<p>'Then there are so many flying beetles.'</p>
+<p>'Beauties, Archie, beauties. Why, Solomon in all his
+glory was not arrayed like some of these.'</p>
+<p>'Perhaps not. But then, Solomon or not Solomon, how
+am I to know which sting and which don't?'</p>
+<p>'<i>Experientia docet</i>, Archie.'</p>
+<p>Archie shuddered.</p>
+<p>'Again, there are spiders. Oh, they do frighten me.
+They're as big as lobsters. Ugh!'</p>
+<p>'Well, they won't hurt. They help to catch the other
+things!'</p>
+<p>'Yes, and that's just the worst of it. First a lot of
+creepies come in to suck your blood and inject poison into
+your veins, to say nothing of half scaring a fellow to death;
+and then a whole lot of flying creepies, much worse than
+the former, come in to hunt them up; and bats come next,
+to say nothing of lizards; and what with the buzzing and
+singing and hopping and flapping and beating and thumping,
+poor <i>me</i> has to lie awake half the night, falling asleep
+towards morning to dream I'm in purgatory.'</p>
+<p>'Poor <i>you</i> indeed!' said Dugald.</p>
+<p>'You have told me, too, I must sleep in the dark, but I
+want to know what is the good of that when about one
+half of those flying creepies carry a lamp each, and some of
+them two. Only the night before last I awoke in a fright.
+I had been dreaming about the great sea-serpent, and the
+first thing I saw was a huge creature about as long as a
+yard stick wriggling along my mosquito curtains.'</p>
+<p>'Ah! How could you see it in the dark?'</p>
+<p>'Why, the beggar carried two lamps ahead of him, and
+he had a smaller chap with a light. Ugh!'</p>
+<p>'These were some good specimens of the <i>Lampyridæ</i>, no
+doubt.'</p>
+<p>'Well, perhaps; but having such a nice long name
+doesn't make them a bit less hideous to me. Then in the
+morning when I looked into the glass I didn't know myself
+from Adam. I had a black eye that some bug or other
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_188' name='page_188'></a>188</span>
+had given me&mdash;I dare say he also had a nice long name. I
+had a lump on my brow as large as a Spanish onion, and
+my nose was swollen and as big as a bladder of lard.
+From top to toe I was covered with hard knots, as if I'd
+been to Donnybrook Fair, and what with aching and itching
+it would have been a comfort to me to have jumped out of
+my skin.'</p>
+<p>'Was that all?' I said, laughing.</p>
+<p>'Not quite. I went to take up a book to fling at a
+monster spider in the corner, and put my hand on a
+scorpion. I cracked him and crushed the spider, and went
+to have my bath, only to find I had to fish out about twenty
+long-named indescribables that had committed suicide
+during the night. Other creepies had been drowned in
+the ewer. I found earwigs in my towels, grasshoppers in
+my clothes, and wicked-looking little beetles even in my
+hairbrushes. This may be a land flowing with milk and
+honey and all the rest of it, Murdoch, but it is also a land
+crawling with creepie-creepies.'</p>
+<p>'Well, anyhow,' said Dugald, 'here comes your mule.
+Mount and have a ride, and we'll forget everything but
+the pleasures of the chase. Come, I think I know where
+there is a jaguar&mdash;an immense great brute. I saw him
+killing geese not three days ago.'</p>
+<p>'Oh, that will be grand!' cried Archie, now all
+excitement.</p>
+<p>And five minutes afterwards Dugald and he were off to
+the hills.</p>
+<p>But in two days more we would be off to the hills in
+earnest.</p>
+<p>For this tour we would not of our own free-will have
+made half the preparations Moncrieff insisted on, and
+perhaps would hardly have provided ourselves with tents.
+However, we gave in to his arrangements in every way,
+and certainly we had no cause to repent it.</p>
+<p>The guide&mdash;he was to be called our <i>cacique</i> for the time
+being&mdash;that Moncrieff appointed had been a Gaucho malo,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_189' name='page_189'></a>189</span>
+a pampas Cain. No one ever knew half the crimes the
+fellow had committed, and I suppose he himself had
+forgotten. But he was a reformed man and really a
+Christian, and it is difficult to find such an anomaly among
+Gauchos. He knew the pampas well, and the Andes too,
+and was far more at home in the wilds than at the <i>estancia</i>.
+A man like this, Moncrieff told us, was worth ten times
+his weight in gold.</p>
+<p>And so it turned out.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>The summer had well-nigh gone when our caravan at
+length left Moncrieff's beautiful valley. The words 'caravan
+at length' in the last sentence may be understood in two
+ways, either as regards space or time. Ours was no caravan
+on wheels. Not a single wheeled waggon accompanied us,
+for we should cross deserts, and pass through glens where
+there would be no road, perhaps hardly even a bridle-path.
+So the word caravan is to be understood in the Arab sense
+of the word. And it certainly was a lengthy one. For we
+had a pack mule for every two men, including our five
+Gauchos.</p>
+<p>Putting it in another way, there were five of us
+Europeans&mdash;Donald, Dugald, Archie Bateman, Sandie
+Donaldson, and myself; each European had a horse and a
+Gaucho servant, and each Gaucho had a mule.</p>
+<p>Bombazo meant to have come; he said so to the very last,
+at all events, but an unfortunate attack of toothache
+confined him to bed. Archie, who had no very exalted idea
+of the little Spanish captain's courage, was rude enough to
+tell us in his hearing that he was 'foxing.' I do not pretend
+to understand what Archie meant, but I feel certain it was
+nothing very complimentary to Bombazo's bravery.</p>
+<p>'Dear laddies,' old Jenny had said, 'if you think you
+want onybody to darn your hose on the road, I'll gang wi'
+ye mysel'. As for that feckless loon Bombazo, the peer<a name="FNanchor_13" id="FNanchor_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a>
+body is best in bed.'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_190' name='page_190'></a>190</span></p>
+<p>Our arms consisted of rifles, shot-guns, the bolas, and
+lasso. Each man carried a revolver as well, and we had
+also abundance of fishing tackle. Our tents were only
+three in all, but they were strong and waterproof, a great
+consideration when traversing a country like this.</p>
+<p>We were certainly prepared to rough it, but had the good
+sense to take with us every contrivance which might add
+to our comfort, so long as it was fairly portable.</p>
+<p>Archie had one particular valise of his own that he
+declared contained only a few nicknacks which no one
+ought to travel without. He would not gratify us by even
+a peep inside, however, so for a time we had to be content
+with guessing what the nicknacks were. Archie got pretty
+well chaffed about his Gladstone bag, as he called it.</p>
+<p>'You surely haven't got the tall hat in it,' said
+Dugald.</p>
+<p>'Of course you haven't forgotten your nightcap,' said
+Donald.</p>
+<p>'Nor your slippers, Archie?' I added.</p>
+<p>'And a dressing-gown would be indispensable in the
+desert,' said Sandie Donaldson.</p>
+<p>Archie only smiled to himself, but kept his secret.</p>
+<p>What a lovely morning it was when we set out! So blue
+was the sky, so green the fields of waving lucerne, so dense
+the foliage and flowers and hedgerows and trees, it really
+seemed that summer would last for many and many a
+month to come.</p>
+<p>We were all fresh and happy, and full of buoyant
+anticipation of pleasures to come. Our very dogs went
+scampering on ahead, barking for very joy. Of these we
+had quite a pack&mdash;three pure Scotch collies, two huge
+bloodhound-mastiffs, and at least half a dozen animals
+belonging to our Gauchos, which really were nondescripts
+but probably stood by greyhounds. These dogs were on
+exceedingly good terms with themselves and with each
+other&mdash;the collies jumping up to kiss the horses every
+minute by way of encouragement, the mastiffs trotting
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_191' name='page_191'></a>191</span>
+steadily on ahead cheek-by-jowl, and the hounds everywhere&mdash;everywhere
+at once, so it appeared.</p>
+<p>Being all so fresh, we determined to make a thorough
+long day's journey of it. So, as soon as we had left the glen
+entirely and disappeared among the sand dunes, we let our
+horses have their heads, the <i>capataz</i> Gaucho riding on
+ahead on a splendid mule as strong as a stallion and as lithe
+as a Scottish deerhound.</p>
+<p>Not long before our start for the hunting grounds men
+had arrived from the Chilian markets to purchase cattle.
+The greatest dainty to my mind they had brought with
+them was a quantity of <i>Yerba maté</i>, as it is called. It is
+the dried leaves of a species of Patagonian ilex, which is
+used in this country as tea, and very delightful and soothing
+it is. This was to be our drink during all our tour. More
+refreshing than tea, less exciting than wine, it not only
+seems to calm the mind but to invigorate the body. Drunk
+warm, with or without sugar, all feeling of tiredness passes
+away, and one is disposed to look at the bright side of life,
+and that alone.</p>
+<p>We camped the first night on high ground nearly forty
+miles from our own <i>estancia</i>. It was a long day's journey
+in so rough a country, but we had a difficulty earlier in the
+afternoon in finding water. Here, however, was a stream
+as clear as crystal, that doubtless made its way from springs
+in the <i>sierras</i> that lay to the west of us at no very great
+distance. Behind these jagged hills the sun was slowly
+setting when we erected our tents. The ground chosen was
+at some little distance from the stream, and on the bare
+gravel. The cacti that grew on two sides of us were of
+gigantic height, and ribboned or edged with the most
+beautiful flowers. Our horses and mules were hobbled and
+led to the stream, then turned on to the grass which grew
+green and plentiful all along its banks.</p>
+<p>A fire was quickly built and our great stewpan put on.
+We had already killed our dinner in the shape of a small
+deer or fawn which had crossed our path on the plains
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_192' name='page_192'></a>192</span>
+lower down. With biscuits, of which we had a store, some
+curry, roots, which the Gauchos had found, and a handful
+or two of rice, we soon had a dinner ready, the very flavour
+of which would have been enough to make a dying man eat.</p>
+<p>The dogs sat around us and around the Gauchos as we
+dined, and, it must be allowed, behaved in a most
+mannerly way; only the collies and mastiffs kept together.
+They must have felt their superiority to those mongrel
+greyhounds, and desired to show it in as calm and dignified
+a manner as possible.</p>
+<p>After dinner sentries were set, one being mounted to
+watch the horses and mules. We were in no great fear of
+their stampeding, but we had promised Moncrieff to run as
+little risk of any kind as possible on this journey, and
+therefore commenced even on this our first night to be as
+good as our word.</p>
+<p>The best Gauchos had been chosen for us, and every one
+of them could talk English after a fashion, especially our
+bold but not handsome <i>capataz</i>, or <i>cacique</i> Yambo. About
+an hour after dinner the latter began serving out the <i>maté</i>.
+This put us all in excellent humour and the best of spirits.
+As we felt therefore as happy as one could wish to be, we
+were not surprised when the <i>capataz</i> proposed a little music.</p>
+<p>'It is the pampas fashion, señor,' he said to me.</p>
+<p>'Will you play and sing?' I said.</p>
+<p>'Play and sing?' he replied, at once producing his
+guitar, which lay in a bag not far off. '<i>Si</i>, señor, I will
+play and sing for you. If you bid me, I will dance; every
+day and night I shall cook for you; when de opportunity
+come I will fight for you. I am your servant, your slave,
+and delighted to be so.'</p>
+<p>'Thank you, my <i>capataz</i>; I have no doubt you are a very
+excellent fellow.'</p>
+<p>'Oh, señor, do not flatter yourself too mooch, too very
+mooch. It is not for the sake of you young señors I care,
+but for the sake of the dear master.'</p>
+<p>'Sing, <i>capataz</i>,' I said, 'and talk after.'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_193' name='page_193'></a>193</span></p>
+<p>To our surprise, not one but three guitars were handed
+out, and the songs and melodies were very delightful to
+listen to.</p>
+<p>Then our Sandie Donaldson, after handing his cup to be
+replenished, sang, <i>Ye banks and braes</i> with much feeling
+and in fine manly tenor. We all joined in each
+second verse, while the guitars gave excellent accompaniment.
+One song suggested another, and from singing to
+conversational story-telling the transition was easy. To be
+sure, neither my brothers nor I nor Archie had much to
+tell, but some of the experiences of the Gauchos, and
+especially those of our <i>capataz</i>, were thrilling in the
+extreme, and we never doubted their truth.</p>
+<p>But now it was time for bed, and we returned to the
+tents and lit our lamps.</p>
+<p>Our beds were the hard ground, with a rug and guanaco
+robe, our saddles turned upside down making as good a
+pillow as any one could wish.</p>
+<p>We had now the satisfaction of knowing something
+concerning the contents of that mysterious grip-sack of
+Archie's. So judge of our surprise when this wonderful
+London cousin of ours first produced a large jar of what he
+called mosquito cream, and proceeded to smear his face and
+hands with the odorous compound.</p>
+<p>'This cream,' he said, 'I bought at Buenos Ayres, and
+it is warranted to keep all pampas creepies away, or
+anything with two wings or four, six legs or sixty. Have
+a rub, Dugald?'</p>
+<p>'Not I,' cried Dugald. 'Why, man, the smell is enough
+to kill bees.'</p>
+<p>Archie proceeded with his preparations. Before
+enshrouding himself in his guanaco mantle he drew on a
+huge waterproof canvas sack and fastened it tightly round
+his chest. He next produced a hooped head-dress. I know
+no other name for it.</p>
+<p>'It is an invention of my own,' said Archie, proudly,
+'and is, as you see, composed of hoops of wire&mdash;'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_194' name='page_194'></a>194</span></p>
+<p>'Like a lady's crinoline,' said Dugald.</p>
+<p>'Well, yes, if you choose to call it so, and is covered with
+mosquito muslin. This is how it goes on, and I'm sure it
+will form a perfect protection.'</p>
+<p>He then inserted his head into the wondrous muslin
+bladder, and the appearance he now presented was comical
+in the extreme. His body in a sack, his head in a white
+muslin bag, nothing human-looking about him except his
+arms, that, encased in huge leather gloves, dangled from
+his shoulders like an immense pair of flippers.</p>
+<p>We three brothers looked at him just for a moment, then
+simultaneously exploded into a perfect roar of laughter.
+Sandie Donaldson, who with the <i>capataz</i> occupied the next
+tent, came rushing in, then all the Gauchos and even the
+dogs. The latter bolted barking when they saw the
+apparition, but the rest joined the laughing chorus.</p>
+<p>And the more we looked at Archie the more we laughed,
+till the very sand dunes near us must have been shaken to
+their foundations by the manifestation of our mirth.</p>
+<p>'Laugh away, boys,' said our cousin. 'Laugh and grow
+fat. I don't care how I look, so long as my dress and my
+cream keep the creepies away.'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_195' name='page_195'></a>195</span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 10%; border:none; border-bottom:1px solid black; clear:both; margin: 2em auto 1em 0' />
+
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_13' id='Footnote_13'></a><a href='#FNanchor_13'><span class='label'>[13]</span></a>
+<p style='font-size: small'>Peer = poor.</p></div>
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_9' id='linki_9'></a>
+<img src='images/illus194.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 381px; height: 606px;' /><br />
+</div>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XIX_IN_THE_WILDERNESS' id='XIX_IN_THE_WILDERNESS'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_197' name='page_197'></a>197</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
+<h3>IN THE WILDERNESS.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>Some days afterwards we found ourselves among the
+mountains in a region whose rugged grandeur and
+semi-desolation, whose rock-filled glens, tall, frowning precipices,
+with the stillness that reigned everywhere around,
+imparted to it a character approaching even to sublimity.</p>
+<p>The <i>capataz</i> was still our guide, our foremost man in
+everything; but close beside him rode our indefatigable
+hunter, Dugald.</p>
+<p>We had already seen pumas, and even the terrible
+jaguar of the plains; we had killed more than one rhea&mdash;the
+American ostrich&mdash;and deer in abundance. Moreover,
+Dugald had secured about fifty skins of the most lovely
+humming-birds, with many beetles, whose elytra, painted
+and adorned by Nature, looked like radiant jewels. All
+these little skins and beetles were destined to be sent
+home to Flora. As yet, however, we had not come in
+contact with the guanaco, although some had been seen
+at a distance.</p>
+<p>But to-day we were in the very country of the guanaco,
+and pressing onwards and ever upwards, in the hopes of
+soon being able to draw trigger on some of these strange
+inhabitants of the wilderness.</p>
+<p>Only this morning Dugald and I had been bantering
+each other as to who should shoot the first.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_198' name='page_198'></a>198</span></p>
+<p>'I mean to send my first skin to Flora,' Dugald had said.</p>
+<p>'And I my first skin to Irene,' I said.</p>
+<p>On rounding the corner of a cliff we suddenly came in
+sight of a whole herd of the creatures, but they were in
+full retreat up the glen, while out against the sky stood in
+bold relief a tall buck. It was the trumpet tones of his
+voice ringing out plaintively but musically on the still
+mountain air that had warned the herd of our approach.</p>
+<p>Another long ride of nearly two hours. And now we
+must have been many thousands of feet above the sea
+level, or even the level of the distant plains.</p>
+<p>It is long past midday, so we determine to halt, for
+here, pure, bubbling from a dark green slippery rock, is a
+spring of water as clear as crystal and deliciously cool.
+What a treat for our horses and dogs! What a treat even
+for ourselves!</p>
+<p>I notice that Dugald seems extra tired. He has done
+more riding to-day than any of us, and made many a long
+<i>détour</i> in search of that guanaco which he has hitherto
+failed to find.</p>
+<p>A kind of brotherly rivalry takes possession of me, and
+I cannot help wishing that the first guanaco would fall to
+my rifle. The Gauchos are busy preparing the stew and
+boiling water for the <i>maté</i>, so shouldering my rifle, and
+carelessly singing to myself, I leave my companions and
+commence sauntering higher up the glen. The hill gets
+very steep, and I have almost to climb on my hands and
+knees, starting sometimes in dread as a hideous snake
+goes wriggling past me or raises head and body from
+behind a stone, and hisses defiance and hate almost in
+my face. But I reach the summit at last, and find
+myself on the very edge of a precipice.</p>
+<p>Oh, joy! On a little peak down beneath, and not a
+hundred yards away, stands one of the noblest guanacos
+I have ever seen. He has heard something, or scented
+something, for he stands there as still as a statue, with
+head and neck in the air sniffing the breeze.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_199' name='page_199'></a>199</span></p>
+<p>How my heart beats! How my hand trembles! I
+cannot understand my anxiety. Were I face to face with
+a lion or tiger I could hardly be more nervous. A
+thousand thoughts seem to cross my mind with a rush,
+but uppermost of all is the fear that, having fired, I
+shall miss.</p>
+<p>He whinnies his warning now: only a low and undecided
+one. He is evidently puzzled; but the herd down in the
+bottom of the cañon hear it, and every head is elevated.
+I have judged the distance; I have drawn my bead. If
+my heart would only keep still, and there were not such
+a mist before my eyes! Bang! I have fired, and quickly
+load again. Have I missed? Yes&mdash;no, no; hurrah!
+hurrah! yonder he lies, stark and still, on the very rock
+on which he stood&mdash;my first guanaco!</p>
+<p>The startled herd move up the cañon. They must
+have seen their leader drop.</p>
+<p>I am still gazing after them, full of exultation, when a
+hand is laid on my shoulder, and, lo! there stands Dugald
+laughing.</p>
+<p>'You sly old dog,' he says, 'to steal a march on your
+poor little brother thus!'</p>
+<p>For a moment I am startled, mystified.</p>
+<p>'Dugald,' I say, 'did I really kill that guanaco?'</p>
+<p>'No one else did.'</p>
+<p>'And you've only just come&mdash;only just this second?
+Well, I'm glad to hear it. It was after all a pure accident
+my shooting the beast. I <i>did</i> hold the rifle his way. I
+<i>did</i> draw the trigger&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+<p>'Well, and the bullet did the rest, boy. Funny, you
+always kill by the merest chance! Ah, Murdoch, you're
+a better shot than I am, for all you won't allow it.'</p>
+<p>Wandering still onwards and still upwards next day,
+through lonely glens and deep ravines, through cañons the
+sides of which were as perpendicular as walls, their flat
+green or brown bottoms sometimes scattered with huge
+boulders, casting shadows so dark in the sunlight that a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_200' name='page_200'></a>200</span>
+man or horse disappeared in them as if the earth had
+opened and swallowed him up, we came at length to a
+dell, or strath, of such charming luxuriance that it looked
+to us, amid all the barrenness of this dreary wilderness,
+like an oasis dropped from the clouds, or some sweet green
+glade where fairies might dwell.</p>
+<p>I looked at my brother. The same thought must have
+struck each of us, at the same moment&mdash;Why not make
+this glen our <i>habitat</i> for a time?</p>
+<p>'Oh!' cried Archie, 'this is a paradise!'</p>
+<p>'Beautiful! lovely!' said Dugald. 'Suppose now&mdash;'</p>
+<p>'Oh, I know what you are going to say,' cried Donald.</p>
+<p>'And I second the motion,' said Sandie Donaldson.</p>
+<p>'Well,' I exclaimed, 'seeing, Sandie, that no motion has
+yet been made&mdash;'</p>
+<p>'Here is the motion, then,' exclaimed Dugald, jumping
+out of his saddle.</p>
+<p>It was a motion we all followed at once; and as the day
+was getting near its close, the Gauchos set about looking
+for a bit of camping-ground at once. As far as comfort
+was concerned, this might have been chosen almost
+anywhere, but we wanted to be near to water. Now here
+was the mystery: the glen was not three miles long altogether,
+and nowhere more than a mile broad; all along the
+bottom it was tolerably level and extremely well wooded
+with quite a variety of different trees, among which pines,
+elms, chestnuts, and stunted oak-trees were most abundant;
+each side of the glen was bounded by rising hills or braes
+covered with algorroba bushes and patches of charmingly-coloured
+cacti, with many sorts of prickly shrubs, the very
+names of which we could not tell. Curious to say, there
+was very little undergrowth; and, although the trees were
+close enough in some places to form a jungle, the grass
+was green beneath. But at first we could find no water.
+Leaving the others to rest by the edge of the miniature
+forest, Dugald and I and Archie set out to explore, and
+had not gone more than a hundred yards when we came
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_201' name='page_201'></a>201</span>
+to a little lake. We bent down and tasted the water; it
+was pure and sweet and cool.</p>
+<p>'What a glorious find!' said Dugald. 'Why, this
+place altogether was surely made for us.'</p>
+<p>We hurried back to tell the news, and the horses and
+mules were led to the lake, which was little more than
+half an acre in extent. But not satisfied with drinking,
+most of the dogs plunged in; and horses and mules
+followed suit.</p>
+<p>'Come,' cried Donald, 'that is a sort of motion I will
+willingly second.' He commenced to undress as he spoke.
+So did we all, and such splashing and dashing, and
+laughing and shouting, the birds and beasts in this
+romantic dale had surely never witnessed before.</p>
+<p>Dugald was an excellent swimmer, and as bold and
+headstrong in the water as on the land. He had left us
+and set out to cross the lake. Suddenly we saw him
+throw up his arms and shout for help, and we&mdash;Donald
+and I&mdash;at once commenced swimming to his assistance.
+He appeared, however, in no danger of sinking, and, to
+our surprise, although heading our way all the time, he
+was borne away from us one minute and brought near
+us next.</p>
+<p>When close enough a thrill of horror went through
+me to hear poor Dugald cry in a feeble, pleading voice,</p>
+<p>'Come no nearer, boys: I soon must sink. Save yourselves:
+I'm in a whirlpool.'</p>
+<p>It was too true, though almost too awful to be borne.
+I do not know how Donald felt at that moment, but as
+for myself I was almost paralyzed with terror.</p>
+<p>'Back, back, for your lives!' shouted a voice behind us.</p>
+<p>It was our Gaucho <i>capataz</i>. He was coming towards
+us with powerful strokes, holding in one hand a lasso.
+Instead of swimming on with us when he saw Dugald in
+danger, he had gone ashore at once and brought the
+longest thong.</p>
+<p>We white men could have done nothing. We knew of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_202' name='page_202'></a>202</span>
+nothing to do. We should have floated there and seen
+our dear brother go down before our eyes, or swam
+recklessly, madly on, only to sink with him.</p>
+<p>Dugald, weak as he had become, sees the Gaucho will
+make an attempt to save him, and tries to steady himself
+to catch the end of the lasso that now flies in his direction.</p>
+<p>But to our horror it falls short, and Dugald is borne
+away again, the circles round which he is swept being
+now narrower.</p>
+<p>The Gaucho is nearer. He is perilously near. He will
+save him or perish.</p>
+<p>Again the lasso leaves his hand. Dugald had thrown
+up his hands and almost leapt from the water. He is
+sinking. Oh, good Gaucho! Oh, good <i>capataz</i>, surely
+Heaven itself directed that aim, for the noose fell over
+our brother's arms and tightened round the chest!</p>
+<p>In a few minutes more we have laid his lifeless body
+on the green bank.</p>
+<p>Lifeless only for a time, however. Presently he
+breathes, and we carry him away into the evening sunshine
+and place him on the soft warm moss. He soon
+speaks, but is very ill and weak; yet our thanks to God
+for his preservation are very sincere. Surely there is a
+Providence around one even in the wilderness!</p>
+<p>We might have explored our glen this same evening,
+perhaps we really ought to have done so, but the excitement
+caused by Dugald's adventure put everything else
+out of our heads.</p>
+<p>In this high region, the nights were even cold enough
+to make a position near the camp fire rather a thing to be
+desired than otherwise. It was especially delightful, I
+thought, on this particular evening to sit around the fire
+and quietly talk. I reclined near Dugald, who had not
+yet quite recovered. I made a bed for him with extra
+rugs; and, as he coughed a good deal, I begged of him to
+consider himself an invalid for one night at least; but no
+sooner had he drunk his mug of <i>maté</i> than he sat up and
+joined in the conversation, assuring us he felt as well as
+ever he had in his life.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_203' name='page_203'></a>203</span></div>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_10' id='linki_10'></a>
+<img src='images/illus202.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 589px; height: 392px;' /><br />
+</div>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_205' name='page_205'></a>205</span></div>
+<p>It was a lovely evening. The sky was unclouded, the
+stars shining out very clear, and looking very near, while
+a round moon was rising slowly over the hill-peaks towards
+the east, and the tall dark pine-trees were casting gloomy
+shadows on the lake, near which, in an open glade, we were
+encamped. I could not look at the dark waters without a
+shudder, as I thought of the danger poor Dugald had so
+narrowly escaped. I am not sure that the boy was not
+always my mother's favourite, and I know he was Flora's.
+How could I have written and told them of his fearful
+end? The very idea made me creep nearer to him and
+put my arm round his shoulder. I suppose he interpreted
+my thoughts, for he patted my knee in his brotherly
+fond old fashion.</p>
+<p>Our Gaucho <i>capataz</i> was just telling a story, an
+adventure of his own, in the lonely pampas. He looked
+a strange and far from comely being, with his long,
+straggling, elf-like locks of hair, his low, receding forehead,
+his swarthy complexion, and high cheek bones. The
+mark of a terrible spear wound across his face and nose
+did not improve his looks.</p>
+<p>'Yes, señors,' he was saying, 'that was a fearful moment
+for me.' He threw back his poncho as he spoke, revealing
+three ugly scars on his chest. 'You see these, señors?
+It was that same tiger made the marks. It was a keepsake,
+ha! ha! that I will take to de grave with me, if
+any one should trouble to bury me. It was towards
+evening, and we were journeying across the pampa. We
+had come far that day, my Indians and me. We felt
+tired&mdash;sometimes even Indians felt tired on de weary wide
+pampa. De sun has been hot all day. We have been
+chased far by de white settlers. Dey not love us. Ha!
+ha! We have five score of de cattle with us. And we
+have spilt blood, and left dead and wounded Indians
+plenty on de pampa. Never mind, I swear revenge. Oh,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_206' name='page_206'></a>206</span>
+I am a bad man den. Gaucho malo, mucho malo, Nandrin,
+my brother <i>cacique</i>, hate me. I hate him. I wish him dead.
+But de Indians love him all de same as me. By and by
+de sun go down, down, down, and we raise de <i>toldo</i><a name="FNanchor_14" id="FNanchor_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> in de
+cañon near a stream. Here grow many ombu-trees. The
+young señors have not seen this great tree; it is de king
+of the lonely pampa. Oh, so tall! Oh, so wide! so
+spreading and shady! Two, three ombu-trees grow near;
+but I have seen de great tiger sleep in one. My brother
+<i>cacique</i> have seen him too. When de big moon rise, and
+all is bright like de day, and no sound make itself heard
+but de woo-hoo-woo of de pampa owl, I get quietly up
+and go to de ombu-tree. I think myself much more
+brave as my brother <i>cacique</i>. Ha! ha! he think himself
+more brave as me. When I come near de ombu-trees I
+shout. Ugh! de scream dat comes from de ombu-tree
+make me shake and shiver. Den de terrible tiger spring
+down; I will not run, I am too brave. I shoot. He not
+fall. Next moment I am down&mdash;on my back I lie. One
+big foot is on me; his blood pour over my face. He pull
+me close and more close to him. Soon, ah, soon, I think
+my brother <i>cacique</i> will be chief&mdash;I will be no more. De
+tiger licks my arm&mdash;my cheek. How he growl and froth!
+He is now going to eat me. But no! Ha! ha! my
+brother <i>cacique</i> have also leave de camp to come to de
+ombu-tree. De tiger see him. P'r'aps he suppose his
+blood more sweet as mine. He leave poor me. Ha! ha!
+he catch my brother <i>cacique</i> and carry him under de
+shade of de ombu-tree. By and by I listen, and hear my
+brother's bones go crash! crash! crash! De tiger is
+enjoying his supper!'</p>
+<p>'But, <i>capataz</i>,' I said, with a shudder, 'did you make
+no attempt to save your brother chief?'</p>
+<p>'Not much! You see, he all same as dead. Suppose
+I den shoot, p'r'aps I kill him for true; 'sides, I bad
+Gaucho den; not love anybody mooch. Next day I kill
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_207' name='page_207'></a>207</span>
+dat tiger proper, and his skin make good ponchos. Ha!
+ha!'</p>
+<p>Many a time during the Gaucho's recital he had paused
+and looked uneasily around him, for ever and anon the
+woods re-echoed with strange cries. We white men had
+not lived long enough in beast-haunted wildernesses to
+distinguish what those sounds were, whether they proceeded
+from bird or beast.</p>
+<p>As the <i>capataz</i> stopped speaking, and we all sat silent
+for a short time, the cries were redoubled. They certainly
+were not calculated to raise our spirits: some were
+wild and unearthly in the extreme, some were growls of
+evident anger, some mere groanings, as if they proceeded
+from creatures dying in pain and torment, while others
+again began in a low and most mournful moan, rising
+quickly into a hideous, frightened, broken, or gurgling
+yell, then dying away again in dreary cadence.</p>
+<p>I could not help shuddering a little as I looked behind
+me into the darkness of the forest. The whole place had
+an uncanny, haunted sort of look, and I even began to
+wonder whether we might not possibly be the victims of
+enchantment. Would we awaken in the morning and find
+no trees, no wood, no water, only a green cañon, with cliffs
+and hills on every side?</p>
+<p>'Look, look!' I cried, starting half up at last. 'Did
+none of you see that?'</p>
+<p>'What is it? Speak, Murdoch!' cried Archie; 'your
+face is enough to frighten a fellow.'</p>
+<p>I pressed my hand to my forehead.</p>
+<p>'Surely,' I said, 'I am going to be ill, but I thought I
+could distinctly see a tall grey figure standing among the
+trees.'</p>
+<p>We resumed talking, but in a lower, quieter key. The
+events of the evening, our strange surroundings, the
+whispering trees, the occasional strange cries, and the
+mournful beauty of the night, seemed to have cast a
+glamour over every heart that was here; and though it
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_208' name='page_208'></a>208</span>
+was now long past our usual hour for bed, no one
+appeared wishful to retire.</p>
+<p>All at once Archie grasped me by the shoulder and
+glanced fearfully into the forest behind me. I dared
+scarcely turn my head till the click of Yambo's revolver
+reassured me.</p>
+<p>Yes, there was the figure in grey moving silently towards
+us.</p>
+<p>'Speak, quick, else I fire!' shouted our <i>capataz</i>.</p>
+<p>'<i>Ave Maria!</i>'</p>
+<p>Yambo lowered the revolver, and we all started to our
+feet to confront the figure in grey.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_209' name='page_209'></a>209</span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 10%; border:none; border-bottom:1px solid black; clear:both; margin: 2em auto 1em 0' />
+
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_14' id='Footnote_14'></a><a href='#FNanchor_14'><span class='label'>[14]</span></a>
+<p style='font-size: small'>Toldo = a tent.</p></div>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XX_THE_MOUNTAIN_CRUSOE' id='XX_THE_MOUNTAIN_CRUSOE'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XX.</h2>
+<h3>THE MOUNTAIN CRUSOE.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>The figure in grey&mdash;the grey was a garment of skin,
+cap, coat, breeches, and even boots, apparently all of
+the same material&mdash;approached with extended hand. We
+could see now it was no ghost who stood before us, but a
+man of flesh and blood. Very solid flesh, too, judging
+from the cheeks that surmounted the silvery beard. The
+moon shone full on his face, and a very pleasant one it
+was, with a bright, merry twinkle in the eye.</p>
+<p>'Who are you?' said I.</p>
+<p>'Nay, pardon me,' was the bold reply, 'but the question
+would come with greater propriety from my lips. I need
+not ask it, however. You are right welcome to my little
+kingdom. You are, I can see, a party of roving hunters.
+Few of your sort have ever come here before, I can tell
+you.'</p>
+<p>'And you?' I said, smiling.</p>
+<p>'<i>I</i> am&mdash;but there, what need to give myself a name?
+I have not heard my name for years. Call me Smith,
+Jones, Robinson; call me a hunter, a trapper, a madman,
+a fool&mdash;anything.'</p>
+<p>'A hermit, anyhow,' said Dugald.</p>
+<p>'Yes, boy, a hermit.'</p>
+<p>'And an Englishman?'</p>
+<p>'No; I am a Portuguese by birth, but I have lived in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_210' name='page_210'></a>210</span>
+every country under the sun, and here I am at last. Have
+I introduced myself sufficiently?'</p>
+<p>'No,' I said; 'but sit down. You have,' I continued,
+'only introduced yourself sufficiently to excite our
+curiosity. Yours must be a strange story.'</p>
+<p>'Oh, anybody and everybody who lives for over fifty
+years in the world as I have done has a strange story, if
+he cared to tell it. Mine is too long, and some of it too
+sad. I have been a soldier, a sailor, a traveller; I have
+been wealthy, I have been poor; I have been in love&mdash;my
+love left <i>me</i>. I forgot <i>her</i>. I have done everything
+except commit crime. I have not run away from anywhere,
+gentlemen. There is no blood on my hands. I
+can still pray. I still love. She whom I love is here.'</p>
+<p>'Oh!' cried Dugald, 'won't you bring the lady?'</p>
+<p>The hermit laughed.</p>
+<p>'She <i>is</i> here, there, all around us. My mistress is
+Nature. Ah! boys,' he said, turning to us with such a
+kind look, 'Nature breaks no hearts; and the more you
+love her, the more she loves you, and leads you upwards&mdash;always
+upwards, never down.'</p>
+<p>It was strange, but from the very moment he began to
+talk both my brothers and I began to like this hermit.
+His ways and his manners were quite irresistible, and
+before we separated we felt as if we had known him all
+our lives.</p>
+<p>He was the last man my brothers and I saw that night,
+and he was the first we met in the morning. He had
+donned a light cloth poncho and a broad sombrero hat,
+and really looked both handsome and picturesque.</p>
+<p>We went away together, and bathed, and I told him of
+Dugald's adventure. He looked interested, patted my
+brother's shoulder, and said:</p>
+<p>'Poor boy, what a narrow escape you have had!</p>
+<p>'The stream,' he continued, 'that flows through this
+strange glen rises in the hills about five miles up. It
+rises from huge springs&mdash;you shall see them&mdash;flows through
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_211' name='page_211'></a>211</span>
+the woods, and is sucked into the earth in the middle of
+that lake. I have lived here for fifteen years. Walk with
+me up the glen. Leave your rifles in your tents; there is
+nothing to hurt.'</p>
+<p>We obeyed, and soon joined him, and together we
+strolled up the path that led close by the banks of a
+beautiful stream. We were enchanted with the beauty displayed
+everywhere about us, and our guide seemed pleased.</p>
+<p>'Almost all the trees and shrubs you see,' he said, 'I
+have planted, and many of the beautiful flowers&mdash;the
+orchids, the climbers, and creepers, all are my pets. Those
+I have not planted I have encouraged, and I believe they
+all know me.'</p>
+<p>At this moment a huge puma came bounding along the
+path, but stopped when he saw us.</p>
+<p>'Don't be afraid, boys,' said the hermit. 'This, too, is
+a pet. Do not be shy, Jacko. These are friends.'</p>
+<p>The puma smelt us, then rubbed his great head against
+his master's leg, and trotted along by his side.</p>
+<p>'I have several. You will not shoot while you live
+here? Thanks. I have a large family. The woods are
+filled with my family. I have brought them from far and
+near, birds and beasts of every kind. They see us now,
+but are shy.'</p>
+<p>'I say, sir,' said Dugald, 'you are Adam, and this is
+Paradise.'</p>
+<p>The hermit smiled in recognition of the compliment,
+and we now approached his house.</p>
+<p>'I must confess,' I said, 'that a more Crusoe-looking
+establishment it has never been my luck to behold.'</p>
+<p>'You are young yet,' replied the hermit, laughing,
+'although you speak so like a book.</p>
+<p>'Here we are, then, in my compound. The fence, you
+see, is a very open one, for I desire neither to exclude the
+sunshine nor the fresh air from my vegetables. Observe,'
+he continued, 'that my hut, which consists of one large
+room, stands in the centre of a gravel square.'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_212' name='page_212'></a>212</span></p>
+<p>'It is strange-looking gravel!' said Dugald.</p>
+<p>'It is nearly altogether composed of salt. My house is
+built of stone, but it is plastered with a kind of cement I
+can dig here in the hills. There is not a crevice nor
+hollow in all the wall, and it is four feet thick. The floor
+is also cemented, and so is the roof.'</p>
+<p>'And this,' I remarked, 'is no doubt for coolness in
+summer.'</p>
+<p>'Yes, and warmth in winter, if it comes to that, and
+also for cleanliness. Yonder is a ladder that leads to the
+roof. Up there I lounge and think, drink my <i>maté</i> and
+read. Oh yes, I have plenty of books, which I keep in a
+safe with bitter-herb powder&mdash;to save them, you know,
+from literary ants and other insects who possess an ambition
+to solve the infinite. Observe again, that I have neither
+porch nor verandah to my house, and that the windows
+are small. I object to a porch and to climbing things on
+the same principle that I do to creeping, crawling creatures.
+The world is wide enough for us all. But they must keep
+to their side of the house at night, and I to mine. And
+mine is the inside. This is also the reason why most of
+the gravel is composed of salt. As a rule, creepies don't
+like it.'</p>
+<p>'Oh, I'm glad you told us that,' said Archie; 'I shall
+make my mule carry a bushel of it. I'm glad you don't
+like creepies, sir.'</p>
+<p>'But, boy, I <i>do</i>. Only I object to them indoors. Walk
+in. Observe again, as a showman would say, how very
+few my articles of furniture are. Notice, however, that
+they are all scrupulously clean. Nevertheless, I have
+every convenience. That thong-bottomed sofa is my bed.
+My skins and rugs are kept in a bag all day, and hermetically
+sealed against the prying probosces of insectivora.
+Here is my stove, yonder my kitchen and scullery, and
+there hangs my armoury. Now I am going to call my
+servant. He is a Highlander like yourselves, boys; at
+any rate, he appears to be, for he never wears anything else
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_213' name='page_213'></a>213</span>
+except the kilt, and he talks a language which, though I
+have had him for ten years, I do not yet understand.
+Archie, Archie, where are you?'</p>
+<p>'Another Archie!' said Dugald, 'and a countryman,
+too?'</p>
+<p>'He is shy of strangers. Archie, boy! He is swinging
+in some tree-top, no doubt.'</p>
+<p>'What a queer fellow he must be! Wears nothing
+but the kilt, speaks Gaelic, swings in tree-tops, and is
+shy! A <i>rara avis</i> indeed.'</p>
+<p>'Ah! here he comes. Archie, spread the awning
+out of doors, lay the table, bring a jug of cold <i>maté</i>
+and the cigars.'</p>
+<p>Truly Archie was a curious Highlander. He was quite
+as tall as our Archie, and though the hermit assured us
+he was only a baby when he bought him in Central Africa
+for about sevenpence halfpenny in Indian coin, he had
+now the wrinkled face of an old man of ninety&mdash;wrinkled,
+wizened, and weird. But his eye was singularly bright
+and young-looking. In his hand he carried a long pole
+from which he had bitten all the bark, and his only dress
+was a little petticoat of skunk skin, which the hermit
+called his kilt. He was, in fact, an African orang-outang.</p>
+<p>'Come and shake hands with the good gentlemen,
+Archie.'</p>
+<p>Archie knitted his brows, and looked at us without
+moving. The hermit laughingly handed him a pair of big
+horn-rimmed spectacles. These he put on with all the
+gravity of some ancient professor of Sanscrit, then looked
+us all over once again.</p>
+<p>We could stand this no longer, and so burst into a chorus
+of laughing.</p>
+<p>'Don't laugh longer than you can help, boys. See,
+Archie is angry.'</p>
+<p>Archie was. He showed a mouth full of fearful-looking
+fangs, and fingered his club in a way that was not
+pleasant.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_214' name='page_214'></a>214</span></p>
+<p>'Archie, you may have some peaches presently.'</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_11' id='linki_11'></a>
+<img src='images/illus213.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 391px; height: 394px;' /><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Archie grew pleasant again in a moment, and advanced
+and shook hands with us all round, looking all the time,
+however, as if he had some silent sorrow somewhere.  I
+confess he wrung our hands pretty hard. Neither my
+brother nor I made any remark, but when it came to Archie's
+turn&mdash;</p>
+<p>'Honolulu!' he shouted, shaking his fingers, and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_215' name='page_215'></a>215</span>
+blowing on them. 'I believe he has made the blood
+come!'</p>
+<p>'I suppose,' said Dugald, laughing, 'he knows you are
+a namesake.'</p>
+<p>Off went the great baboon, and to our intense
+astonishment spread the awning, placed table and
+camp-stools under it, and fetched the cold <i>maté</i> with
+all the gravity and decorum of the chief steward on a
+first-class liner.</p>
+<p>I looked at my brothers, and they looked at me.</p>
+<p>'You seem all surprised,' the hermit said, 'but remember
+that in olden times it was no rare thing to see baboons of
+this same species waiting at the tables of your English
+nobility. Well, I am not only a noble, but a king; why
+should not I also have an anthropoid as a butler and
+valet?'</p>
+<p>'I confess,' I said, 'I for one am very much surprised at
+all I have seen and all that has happened since last night,
+and I really cannot help thinking that presently I shall
+awake and find, as the story-books say, it is all a dream.'</p>
+<p>'You will find it all a very substantial dream, I do assure
+you, sir. But help yourself to the <i>maté</i>. You will find it
+better than any imported stuff.'</p>
+<p>'Archie! Archie! Where are you?'</p>
+<p>'Ah! ah! Yah, yah, yah!' cried Archie, hopping round
+behind his master.</p>
+<p>'The sugar, Archie.'</p>
+<p>'Ah, ah, ah! Yah, yah!'</p>
+<p>'Is that Gaelic, Dugald?' said our Archie.</p>
+<p>'Not quite, my cockney cousin.'</p>
+<p>'I thought not.'</p>
+<p>'Why?' said Dugald.</p>
+<p>'It is much more intelligible.'</p>
+<p>The hermit laughed.</p>
+<p>'I think, Dugald,' he said, 'your cousin has the best of
+you.'</p>
+<p>He then made us tell him all our strange though brief
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_216' name='page_216'></a>216</span>
+history, as the reader already knows it. If he asked us
+questions, however, it was evidently not for the sake of
+inquisitiveness, but to exchange experiences, and support
+the conversation. He was quite as ready to impart as to
+solicit information; but somehow we felt towards him as
+if he were an elder brother or uncle; and this only proves
+the hermit was a perfect gentleman.</p>
+<p>'Shall you live much longer in this beautiful wilderness?'
+asked Donald.</p>
+<p>'Well, I will tell you all about that,' replied the hermit.
+'And the all is very brief. When I came here first I had
+no intention of making a long stay.  I was a trapper and
+hunter then pure and simple, and sold my skins and other
+odds and ends which these hills yield&mdash;and what these are
+I must not even tell to you&mdash;journeying over the Andes with
+mules twice every year for that purpose.  But gradually,
+as my trees and bushes and all the beauty of this wild
+garden-glen grew up around me, and so many of God's wild
+children came to keep me company, I got to love my strange
+life. So from playing at being a hermit, I dare say I have
+come to be one in reality. And now, though I have money&mdash;much
+more than one would imagine&mdash;in the Chilian
+banks, I do not seem to care to enter civilized life again.
+For some years back I have been promising myself a city
+holiday, but I keep putting it off and off.  I should not
+wonder if it never comes, or, to speak more correctly, I
+should wonder if it ever came. Oh, I dare say I shall die
+in my own private wilderness here, with no one to close
+my eyes but old Archie.'</p>
+<p>'Do you still go on journeys to Chili?'</p>
+<p>'I still go twice a year. I have strong fleet mules. I
+go once in summer and once in winter.'</p>
+<p>'Going in winter across the Andes! That must be a
+terribly dreary journey.'</p>
+<p>'It is. Yet it has its advantages. I never have to flee
+from hostile Indians then. They do not like the hills in
+winter.'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_217' name='page_217'></a>217</span></p>
+<p>'Are you not afraid of the pampas Indians?'</p>
+<p>'No, not at all. They visit me occasionally here, but do
+not stay long. I trust them, I am kind to them, and I
+have nothing they could find to steal, even if they cared to
+be dishonest. But they are <i>not</i>. They are good-hearted
+fellows in their own way.'</p>
+<p>'Yes,' I said, 'very much in their own way.'</p>
+<p>'My dear boy,' said the hermit, 'you do not know all.
+A different policy would have made those Indians the sworn
+friends, the faithful allies and servants of the white man.
+They would have kept then to their own hunting-grounds,
+they would have brought to you wealth of skins, and wealth
+of gold and silver, too, for believe me, they (the Indians)
+have secrets that the white trader little wots of. No, it is
+the dishonest, blood-stained policy of the Republic that
+has made the Indian what he is&mdash;his hand against every
+man, every man's hand against him.'</p>
+<p>'But they even attack you at times, I think you gave us
+to understand?'</p>
+<p>'Nay, not the pampas or pampean Indians: only
+prowling gipsy tribes from the far north. Even they will
+not when they know me better. My fame is spreading as
+a seer.'</p>
+<p>'As a seer?'</p>
+<p>'Yes, a kind of prophet. Do not imagine that I foster
+any such folly, only they will believe that, living here all
+alone in the wilds, I must have communication with&mdash;ha!
+ha! a worse world than this.'</p>
+<p>As we rose to go the hermit held out his hand.</p>
+<p>'Come and see me to-night,' he said; 'and let me advise
+you to make this glen your headquarters for a time. The
+hills and glens and bush for leagues around abound in
+game. Then your way back lies across a pampa north and
+east of here; not the road you have come.'</p>
+<p>'By the by,' said Archie, 'before we go, I want to ask
+you the question which tramps always put in England:
+"Are the dogs all safe?"'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_218' name='page_218'></a>218</span></p>
+<p>'Ah,' said the hermit, smiling, 'I know what you mean.
+Yes, the dogs are safe. My pet pumas will not come near
+you. I do not think that even my jaguars would object to
+your presence; but for safety's sake Archie shall go along
+with you, and he shall also come for you in the evening.
+Give him these peaches when you reach camp. They are
+our own growing, and Archie dotes upon them.'</p>
+<p>So away back by the banks of the stream we went, our
+strange guide, club in hand, going hopping on before. It
+did really seem all like a scene of enchantment.</p>
+<p>We gave Archie the peaches, and he looked delighted.</p>
+<p>'Good-bye, old man,' said Dugald, as he presented him
+with his.</p>
+<p>'Speak a word or two of Gaelic to him,' said our
+Archie.</p>
+<p>Sandie Donaldson was indeed astonished at all we told
+him.</p>
+<p>'I suppose it's all right,' he said, 'but dear me, that was
+an uncanny-looking creature you had hirpling on in front
+of you!'</p>
+<p>In the evening, just as we had returned from a most
+successful guanaco hunt, we found Donaldson's uncanny
+creature coming along the path.</p>
+<p>'I suppose he means us to dine with him,' I remarked.</p>
+<p>'Ah, ah, ah! Yah, ah, yah!' cried the baboon.</p>
+<p>'Well, will you come, Sandie?'</p>
+<p>Sandie shook his head.</p>
+<p>'Not to-night,' said Sandie. 'Take care of yourselves,
+boys. Mind what the old proverb says: "They need a
+lang spoon wha sup wi' the deil."'</p>
+<p>We found the hermit at his gate, and glad he seemed to
+see us.</p>
+<p>'I've been at home all the afternoon,' he said, 'cooking
+your dinner. Most enjoyable work, I can assure you. All
+the vegetables are fresh, and even the curry has been grown
+on the premises. I hope you are fond of armadillo; that
+is a favourite dish of mine. But here we have roast ducks,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_219' name='page_219'></a>219</span>
+partridges, and something that perhaps you have never
+tasted before, roast or boiled. For bread we have biscuit;
+for wine we have <i>maté</i> and milk. My goats come every
+night to be milked. Archie does the milking as well as
+any man could. Ah, here come my dogs.'</p>
+<p>Two deerhounds trotted up and made friends with us.</p>
+<p>'I bought them from a roving Scot two years ago while
+on a visit to Chili.'</p>
+<p>'How about the pumas? Don't they&mdash;'</p>
+<p>'No, they come from the trees to sleep with Rob and
+Rory. Even the jaguars do not attempt to touch them. Sit
+down; you see I dine early. We will have time before
+dusk to visit some of my pets. I hope they did not keep
+you awake.'</p>
+<p>'No, but the noise would have done so, had we not known
+what they were.'</p>
+<p>Conversation never once flagged all the time we sat at
+table. The hermit himself had put most of the dishes
+down, but Archie duly waited behind his master's chair,
+and brought both the <i>maté</i> and the milk, as well as the
+fruit. This dessert was of the most tempting description;
+and not even at our own <i>estancia</i> had I tasted more delicious
+grapes. But there were many kinds of fruit here we had
+never even seen before. As soon as we were done the waiter
+had <i>his</i> repast, and the amount of fruit he got through
+surprised us beyond measure. He squatted on the ground
+to eat. Well, when he commenced his dinner he looked
+a little old gentleman of somewhat spare habit; when he
+rose up&mdash;by the aid of his pole&mdash;he was decidedly plump,
+not to say podgy. Even his cheeks were puffed out; and
+no wonder, they were stuffed with nuts to eat at his
+leisure.</p>
+<p>'I dare say Archie eats at all odd hours,' I said.</p>
+<p>'No, he does not,' replied the hermit. 'I never encouraged
+him to do so, and now he is quite of my way of thinking, and
+never eats between meals. But come, will you light a
+cigarette and stroll round with me?'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_220' name='page_220'></a>220</span></p>
+<p>'We will stroll round without the cigarette,' I said.</p>
+<p>'Then fill your pockets with nuts and raisins; you must
+do something.'</p>
+<p>'Feed the birds, Archie.'</p>
+<p>'Ah, ah, ah! Yah, ah! Yah, yah!'</p>
+<p>'The birds need not come to be fed; there is enough
+and to spare for them in the woods, but they think whatever
+we eat must be extra nice.  We have all kinds of birds
+except the British sparrow. I really hope you have not
+brought him.  They say he follows Englishmen to the
+uttermost parts of the world.'</p>
+<p>We waited for a moment, and wondered at the flocks of
+lovely bright-winged doves and pigeons and other birds
+that had alighted round the table to receive their daily
+dole, then followed our hermit guide, to feast our eyes on
+other wonders not a whit less wonderful than all we had
+seen.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XXI_WILD_ADVENTURES_ON_PRAIRIE_AND_PAMPAS' id='XXI_WILD_ADVENTURES_ON_PRAIRIE_AND_PAMPAS'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_221' name='page_221'></a>221</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXI.</h2>
+<h3>WILD ADVENTURES ON PRAIRIE AND PAMPAS.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>If I were to describe even one half of the strange
+creatures we saw in the hermit's glen, the reader
+would be tired before I had finished, and even then I
+should not have succeeded in conveying anything like a
+correct impression of this floral wilderness and natural
+menagerie.</p>
+<p>It puzzled me to know, and it puzzles me still, how
+so many wild creatures could have been got together in
+one place.</p>
+<p>'I brought many of them here,' the hermit told us, 'but
+the others came, lured, no doubt, by the water, the trees,
+and the flowers.'</p>
+<p>'But was the water here when you arrived?'</p>
+<p>'Oh yes, else I would not have settled down here. The
+glen was a sort of oasis even then, and there were more
+bushes and trees than ever I had seen before in one place.
+The ducks and geese and swans, in fact, all the web-footed
+fraternity, had been here before me, and many birds and
+beasts besides&mdash;the biscachas, the armadilloes, the beetle-eating
+pichithiego, for instance&mdash;the great ant-eater, and
+the skunk&mdash;I have banished that, however&mdash;wolves, foxes,
+kites, owls, and condors. I also found peccaries, and some
+deer. These latter, and the guanaco, give me a wide berth
+now. They do not care for dogs, pumas, and jaguars.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_222' name='page_222'></a>222</span>
+Insects are rather too numerous, and I have several species
+of snakes.'</p>
+<p>Archie's&mdash;<i>our</i> Archie's&mdash;face fell.</p>
+<p>'Are they?' he began, 'are they very&mdash;'</p>
+<p>'Very beautiful? Yes; indeed, some are charming in
+colour. One, for example, is of the brightest crimson
+streaked with black.'</p>
+<p>'I was not referring to their beauty; I meant were they
+dangerous?'</p>
+<p>'Well, I never give them a chance to bite me, and I do
+not think they want to; but all snakes are to be avoided
+and left severely alone.'</p>
+<p>'Or killed, sir?'</p>
+<p>'Yes, perhaps, if killed outright; for the pampan
+Indians have an idea that if a rattlesnake be only wounded,
+he will come back for revenge. But let us change the
+subject. You see those splendid butterflies? Well, by
+and by the moths will be out; they are equally lovely,
+but when I first came here there were very few of either.
+They followed the flowers, and the humming-birds came
+next, and many other lovely gay-coloured little songsters.
+I introduced most of the parrots and toucans. There are
+two up there even now. They would come down if you
+were not here.'</p>
+<p>'They are very funny-looking, but very pretty,' said
+Dugald. 'I could stop and look at them for hours.'</p>
+<p>'But we must proceed. Here are the trees where the
+parrots mostly live. Early as it is, you see they are
+retiring.'</p>
+<p>What a sight! What resplendency of colour and
+beauty! Such bright metallic green, lustrous orange,
+crimson and bronze!</p>
+<p>'Why do they frequent this particular part of the
+wood?' said Dugald.</p>
+<p>'Ah, boy,' replied the hermit, 'I see you want to know
+everything. Don't be ashamed of that; you are a true
+naturalist at heart. Well, the parrots like to be by
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_223' name='page_223'></a>223</span>
+themselves, and few of my birds care to live among them.
+You will notice, too, that yonder are some eucalyptus
+trees, and farther up some wide-spreading, open-branched
+trees, with flowers creeping and clinging around the stems.
+Parrots love those trees, because while there they have
+sunshine, and because birds of prey cannot easily tell
+which is parrot and which is flower or flame-coloured
+lichen.'</p>
+<p>'That is an advantage.'</p>
+<p>'Well, yes; but it is an advantage that also has a disadvantage,
+for our serpents are so lovely that even they are
+not easily seen by the parrots when they wriggle up among
+the orchids.'</p>
+<p>'Can the parrots defend themselves against snakes?'</p>
+<p>'Yes, they can, and sometimes even kill them. I have
+noticed this, but as a rule they prefer to scare them off by
+screaming. And they can scream, too. "As deaf as an
+adder," is a proverb; well, I believe it was the parrot that
+first deafened the adder, if deaf it be.'</p>
+<p>'Have you many birds of prey?'</p>
+<p>'Yes, too many. But, see here.'</p>
+<p>'I see nothing.'</p>
+<p>'No, but you soon shall. Here in the sunniest bank, and
+in this sunniest part of the wood, dwell a family of that
+remarkable creature the blind armadillo, or pichithiego. I
+wonder if any one is at home.'</p>
+<p>As he spoke, the hermit knelt down and buried his
+hands in the sand, soon bringing to the surface a very
+curious little animal indeed, one of the tenderest of all
+armadilloes.</p>
+<p>It shivered as it cuddled into the hermit's arms.</p>
+<p>Dugald laughed aloud.</p>
+<p>'Why,' he cried, 'it seems to end suddenly half-way
+down; and that droll tail looks stuck on for fun.'</p>
+<p>'Yes, it is altogether a freak of Nature, and the wonder
+to me is how, being so tender, it lives here at all. You see
+how small and delicate a thing it is. They say it is blind,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_224' name='page_224'></a>224</span>
+but you observe it is not; although the creatures live
+mostly underground. They also say that the <i>chlamyphorus
+truncatus</i>&mdash;which is the grand name for my wee friend,&mdash;carries
+its young under this pink or rosy shell jacket, but
+this I very much doubt. Now go to bed, little one.</p>
+<p>'I have prettier pets than even these, two species of
+agoutis, for instance, very handsome little fellows indeed,
+and like rats in many of their ways and in many of their
+droll antics. They are not fond of strangers, but often
+come out to meet me in my walks about the woods.
+They live in burrows, but run about plentifully enough in
+the open air, although their enemies are very numerous.
+Even the Indians capture and eat them, as often raw as not.</p>
+<p>'You have heard of the peccary. Well, I have never
+encouraged these wild wee pigs, and for some years after
+I came, there were none in the woods. One morning I
+found them, however, all over the place in herds. I never
+knew where they came from, nor how they found us out.
+But I do know that for more than two years I had to
+wage constant war with them.'</p>
+<p>'They were good to eat?'</p>
+<p>'They were tolerably good, especially the young, but I
+did not want for food; and, besides, they annoyed my
+wee burrowing pets, and, in fact, they deranged everything,
+and got themselves thoroughly hated wherever
+they went.'</p>
+<p>'And how did you get rid of them?'</p>
+<p>'They disappeared entirely one night as if by magic,
+and I have never seen nor heard one since. But here we
+are at my stable.'</p>
+<p>'I see no stable,' I said.</p>
+<p>'Well, it is an enclosure of half an acre, and my mules
+and goats are corralled here at night.'</p>
+<p>'Do not the pumas or jaguars attempt to molest the
+mules or goats?'</p>
+<p>'Strange to say, they do not, incredible as it may seem.
+But come in, and you will see a happy family.'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_225' name='page_225'></a>225</span></p>
+<p>'What are these?' cried Dugald. 'Dogs?'</p>
+<p>'No, boy, one is a wolf, the other two are foxes. All
+three were suckled by one of my dogs, and here they are.
+You see, they play with the goats, and are exceedingly
+fond of the mules. They positively prefer the company
+of the mules to mine, although when I come here with
+their foster-dam, the deerhound, they all condescend to
+leave this compound and to follow me through the woods.</p>
+<p>'Here come my mules. Are they not beauties?'</p>
+<p>We readily admitted they were, never having seen
+anything in size and shape to equal them.</p>
+<p>'Now, you asked me about the jaguars. Mine are but
+few; they are also very civil; but I do believe that one
+of these mules would be a match even for a jaguar. If
+the jaguar had one kick he would never need another.
+The goats&mdash;here they come&mdash;herd close to the mules, and
+the foxes and wolf are sentinels, and give an alarm if
+even a strange monkey comes near the compound. Ah,
+here come my pet toucans!'</p>
+<p>These strange-beaked birds came floating down from a
+tree to the number of nearly a dozen, nor did they look
+at all ungainly, albeit their beaks are so wondrously
+large.</p>
+<p>'What do they eat?'</p>
+<p>'Everything; but fruit is the favourite dish with them.
+But look up. Do you see that speck against the cloud
+yonder, no bigger in appearance than the lark that sings
+above the cornfields in England? See how it circles and
+sweeps round and round. Do you know that bird is a
+mile above us?'</p>
+<p>'That is wonderful!'</p>
+<p>'And what think you it is doing? Why, it is eyeing
+you and me. It is my pet condor. The only bird I do
+not feed; but the creature loves me well for all that. He
+is suspicious of your presence. Now watch, and I will
+bring him down like an arrow.'</p>
+<p>The hermit waved a handkerchief in a strange way,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_226' name='page_226'></a>226</span>
+and with one fell downward swoop, in a few seconds the
+monster eagle had alighted near us.</p>
+<p>Well may the condor be called 'king of the air,'
+I thought, for never before had I seen so majestic a bird.
+He was near us now, and scrutinizing us with that bold
+fierce eye of his, as some chieftain in the brave days of
+old might have gazed upon spies that he was about to
+order away to execution. I believed then&mdash;and I am
+still of the same opinion&mdash;that there was something akin
+to pity and scorn in his steadfast looks, as if we had
+been brought here for his especial delectation and
+study.</p>
+<p>'Poor wretched bipeds!' he seemed to say; 'not even
+possessed of feathers, no clothes of their own, obliged to
+wrap themselves in the hair and skins of dead quadrupeds.
+No beaks, no talons; not even the wings of a
+miserable bat. Never knew what it was to mount and
+soar into the blue sky to meet the morning sun; never
+floated free as the winds far away in the realms of space;
+never saw the world spread out beneath them like a
+living panorama, its woods and forests mere patches of
+green or purple, its lakes like sheets of shimmering ice,
+its streams like threads of spiders' webs before the day
+has drunk the dew, its very deserts dwarfed by distance
+till the guanacos and the ostriches<a name="FNanchor_15" id="FNanchor_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> look like mites, and
+herds of wild horses appear but crawling ants. Never
+knew what it was to circle round the loftiest summits of
+the snow-clad voiceless Andes, while down in the valleys
+beneath dark clouds rolled fiercely on, and lightnings
+played across the darkness; nor to perch cool and safe on
+peak or pinnacle, while below on earth's dull level the
+hurricane Pampero was levelling house and hut and tree;
+or the burning breath of the Zonda was sweeping over the
+land, scorching every flower and leaf, drinking every
+drop of dew, draining even the blood of moving beings till
+eyes ache and brains reel, till man himself looks haggard,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_227' name='page_227'></a>227</span>
+wild, and worn, and the beasts of the forest, hidden in
+darkling caves, go mad and rend their young.'</p>
+<p>The hermit returned with us to our camping-ground
+just as great bats began to circle and wheel around, as
+butterflies were folding their wings and going to sleep
+beneath the leaves, and the whole woodland glen began
+to awake to the screaming of night-birds, to the mournful
+howling of strange monkeys, and hoarse growl of beasts
+of prey.</p>
+<p>We sat together till far into the night listening to story
+after story of the wild adventures of our new but nameless
+hero, and till the moon&mdash;so high above us now that the
+pine-trees no longer cast their shadows across the glade&mdash;warned
+us it was time to retire.</p>
+<p>'Good night, boys all,' said the hermit; 'I will come
+again to-morrow.'</p>
+<p>He turned and walked away, his <i>potro</i> boots making no
+sound on the sward. We watched him till the gloom of
+the forest seemed to swallow him up.</p>
+<p>'What a strange being!' said Archie, with a sigh.</p>
+<p>'And what a lonely life to lead!' said Donald.</p>
+<p>'Ah!' said Dugald, 'you may sigh as you like, Archie,
+and say what you please, I think there is no life so jolly,
+and I've half a mind to turn hermit myself.'</p>
+<p>We lived in the glen for many weeks. No better or
+more idyllic headquarters could possibly have been found
+or even imagined, while all around us was a hunter's
+paradise. We came at last to look upon the hermit's dell
+as our home, but we did not bivouac there every night.
+There were times when we wandered too far away in
+pursuit of the guanaco, the puma, jaguar, or even the
+ostrich, which we found feeding on plains at no great
+distance from our camp.</p>
+<p>It was a glorious treat for all of us to find ourselves on
+these miniature pampas, across which we could gallop
+unfettered and free.</p>
+<p>Under the tuition of Yambo, our <i>capataz</i>, and the other
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_228' name='page_228'></a>228</span>
+Gauchos, we became adepts in the use of both bolas and
+lasso. Away up among the beetling crags and in the deep,
+gloomy caverns we had to stalk the guanacos as the Swiss
+mountaineer stalks the chamois. Oh, our adventures
+among the rocks were sometimes thrilling enough! But
+here on the plains another kind of tactics was pursued.
+I doubt if we could have ridden near enough to the
+ostriches to bola them, so our plan was to make <i>détours</i> on
+the pampas until we had outflanked, encircled, and
+altogether puzzled our quarry. Then riding in a zigzag
+fashion, gradually we narrowed the ring till near enough to
+fire. When nearer still the battue and stampede commenced,
+and the scene was then wild and confusing in the
+extreme. The frightened whinny or neigh of the guanacos,
+the hoarse whirr of the flying ostriches, the shouts of the
+Gauchos, the bark and yell of dogs, the whistling noise of
+lasso or bolas, the sharp ringing of rifle and revolver&mdash;all
+combined to form a medley, a huntsman's chorus which
+no one who has once heard it and taken part in it is likely
+to forget.</p>
+<p>When too far from the camp, then we hobbled our
+horses at the nearest spot where grass and water could be
+found, and after supping on broiled guanaco steak and
+ostrich's gizzard&mdash;in reality right dainty morsels&mdash;we
+would roll ourselves in our guanaco robes, and with saddles
+for pillows go quietly to sleep. Ah, I never sleep so soundly
+now as I used to then beneath the stars, fanned by the
+night breeze; and although the dews lay heavy on our
+robes in the morning, we awoke as fresh as the daisies and
+as happy as puma cubs that only wake to play.</p>
+<p>We began to get wealthy ere long with a weight of
+skins of birds and beasts. Some of the most valuable of
+these were procured from a species of otter that lived in
+the blackest, deepest pools of a stream we had fallen in
+with in our wanderings. The Gauchos had a kind of
+superstitious dread of the huge beast, whom they not
+inappropriately termed the river tiger.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_229' name='page_229'></a>229</span></p>
+<p>We had found our dogs of the greatest use in the
+hills, especially our monster bloodhound-mastiffs. These
+animals possessed nearly all the tracking qualities of the
+bloodhound, with more fierceness and speed than the
+mastiff, and nearly the same amount of strength. Their
+courage, too, and general hardiness were very great.</p>
+<p>Among our spoils we could count the skins of no less
+than fifteen splendid pumas. Several of these had shown
+fight. Once, I remember, Archie had leapt from his
+horse and was making his way through a patch of bush
+on the plains, in pursuit of a young guanaco which he had
+wounded. He was all alone: not even a dog with him;
+but Yambo's quick ear had detected the growl of a lion in
+that bit of scrub, and he at once started off three of his
+best dogs to the scene of Archie's adventure. Not two
+hundred yards away myself, but on high ground, I could
+see everything, though powerless to aid. I could see
+Archie hurrying back through the bush. I could see the
+puma spring, and my poor cousin fall beneath the blow&mdash;then
+the death struggle began. It was fearful while it
+lasted, which was only the briefest possible time, for, even
+as I looked, the dogs were on the puma. The worrying,
+yelling, and gurgling sounds were terrible. I saw the
+puma on its hind legs, I saw one dog thrown high in the
+air, two others on the wild beast's neck, and next moment
+Yambo himself was there, with every other horseman save
+myself tearing along full tilt for the battle-field.</p>
+<p>Yambo's long spear had done the work, and all the
+noise soon ceased. Though stunned and frightened,
+Archie was but little the worse. One dog was killed.
+It seemed to have been Yambo's favourite. I could not
+help expressing my astonishment at the exhibition of
+Yambo's grief. Here was a man, once one of the
+cruellest and most remorseless of desert wanderers, whose
+spear and knife had many a time and oft drunk human
+blood, shedding tears over the body of his poor dog! Nor
+would he leave the place until he had dug a grave, and,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_230' name='page_230'></a>230</span>
+placing the bleeding remains therein, sadly and slowly
+covered them up.</p>
+<p>But Yambo would meet his faithful hound again in the
+happy hunting-grounds somewhere beyond the sky. That,
+at least, was Yambo's creed, and who should dare deny
+him the comfort and joy the thought brings him!</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>It was now the sweetest season of all the year in the
+hills&mdash;the Indian summer. The fierce heat had fled to
+the north, fled beyond the salt plains of San Juan, beyond
+the wild desert lands of Rioja and arid sands of Catamarca,
+lingering still, perhaps, among the dreamland gardens of
+Tucuman, and reaching its eternal home among the sun-kissed
+forests of leafy Brazil and Bolivia. The autumn
+days were getting shorter, the sky was now more soft, the
+air more cool and balmy, while evening after evening the
+sun went down amidst a fiery magnificence of colouring
+that held us spellbound and silent to behold.</p>
+<p>A month and more in the hermit's glen! We could
+hardly believe it. How quickly the time had flown! How
+quickly time always does fly when one is happy!</p>
+<p>And now our tents are struck, our mules are laden. We
+have but to say good-bye to the solitary being who has made
+the garden in the wilderness his home, and go on our way.</p>
+<p>'Good-bye!'</p>
+<p>'Good-bye!'</p>
+<p>Little words, but sometimes <i>so</i> hard to say.</p>
+<p>We had actually begun to like&mdash;ay, even to love the
+hermit, and we had not found it out till now. But I
+noticed tears in Dugald's eye, and I am not quite sure my
+own were not moist as we said farewell.</p>
+<p>We glanced back as we rode away to wave our hands
+once more. The hermit was leaning against a tree. Just
+then the sun came struggling out from under a cloud,
+the shadow beneath the tree darkened and darkened, till
+it swallowed him up.</p>
+<p>And we never saw the hermit more.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_231' name='page_231'></a>231</span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 10%; border:none; border-bottom:1px solid black; clear:both; margin: 2em auto 1em 0' />
+
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_15' id='Footnote_15'></a><a href='#FNanchor_15'><span class='label'>[15]</span></a>
+<p style='font-size: small'>The <i>Rhea Americana</i>.</p></div>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XXII_ADVENTURE_WITH_A_TIGER' id='XXII_ADVENTURE_WITH_A_TIGER'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXII.</h2>
+<h3>ADVENTURE WITH A TIGER.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>Two years more have passed away, four years in all,
+since we first set foot in the Silver West. What happy,
+blithesome years they had been, too! Every day had
+brought its duties, every duty its pleasures as well. During
+all this time we could not look back with regret to one
+unpleasant hour. Sometimes we had endured some crosses
+as well, but we brothers bore them, I believe, without a
+murmur, and Moncrieff without one complaining word.</p>
+<p>'Boys,' he would say, quietly, 'nobody gets it all his own
+way in this world. We must just learn to take the thick
+wi' the thin.'</p>
+<p>Moncrieff was somewhat of a proverbial philosopher;
+but had he been entrusted with the task of selecting
+proverbs that should smooth one's path in life, I feel sure
+they would have been good ones.</p>
+<p>Strath Coila New, as we called the now green valley in
+which our little colony had been founded, had improved
+to a wonderful extent in so brief a time. The settlers
+had completed their houses long ago; they, like ourselves,
+had laid out their fields and farms and planted their
+vineyards; the hedges were green and flowering; the
+poplar-trees and willows had sprung skywards as if
+influenced by magic&mdash;the magic of a virgin soil; the
+fields were green with waving grain and succulent lucerne;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_232' name='page_232'></a>232</span>
+the vines needed the help of man to aid them in supporting
+their wondrous wealth of grapes; fruit grew everywhere;
+birds sang everywhere, and to their music were added
+sounds even sweeter still to our ears&mdash;the lowing of herds
+of sleek fat cattle, the bleating armies of sheep, the home-like
+noise of poultry and satisfied grunting of lazy pigs.
+The latter sometimes fed on peaches that would have
+brought tears of joy to the eyes of many an English market
+gardener.</p>
+<p>Our villa was complete now; wings and tower, and
+terraced lawns leading down to the lake, close beside
+which Dugald had erected a boat-house that was in itself
+like a little fairy palace. Dugald had always a turn for
+the romantic, and nothing would suit him by way of a boat
+except a gondola. What an amount of time and taste he
+had bestowed on it too! and how the Gaucho carpenters
+had worked and slaved to please him and make it complete!
+But there it was at last, a thing of beauty, in all conscience&mdash;prows
+and bows, cushioned seats, and oars, and awnings,
+all complete.</p>
+<p>It was his greatest pleasure to take auntie, Aileen, and
+old Jenny out to skim the lake in this gondola, and sit for
+long happy hours reading or fishing.</p>
+<p>Even Bombazo used to form an item in these pleasant
+little excursions. He certainly was no use with an oar,
+but it was the 'bravo' captain's delight to dress as a
+troubadour and sit twanging the light guitar under the
+awnings, while Aileen and auntie plied the oars.</p>
+<p>Dugald was still our mighty hunter, the fearless Nimrod
+of hill and strath and glen. But he was amply supported
+in all his adventures by Archie, who had wonderfully
+changed for the better. He was brown and hard now, an
+excellent horseman, and crack shot with either the revolver
+or rifle.</p>
+<p>Between the two of them, though ably assisted by a
+Gaucho or two, they had fitted up the ancient ruined
+monastery far away among the hills as a kind of shooting-box,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_233' name='page_233'></a>233</span>
+and here they spent many a day, and many a night as
+well. Archie had long since become acclimatized to all kinds
+of creepies&mdash;they no longer possessed any terrors for him.</p>
+<p>The ruin, as I have before hinted, must have, at some
+bygone period, belonged to the Jesuits; but so blown up
+with sand was it when Dugald took possession that the
+work of restoration to something like its pristine form had
+been a task of no little difficulty. The building stood on
+a slight eminence, and at one side grew a huge ombu-tree.
+It was under this that the only inhabitable room lay.
+This room had two windows, one on each side, facing each
+other, one looking east, the other west. Neither glass nor
+frames were in these windows, and probably had not
+existed even in the Jesuits' time. The room was cooler
+without any such civilized arrangements.</p>
+<p>It was a lonesome, eerie place at the very best, and that
+weird looking ombu-tree, spreading its dark arms above the
+grey old walls, did not detract from the air of gloom that
+surrounded it. Sometimes Archie said laughingly that the
+tree was like a funeral pall. Well, the half-caste Indians
+of the <i>estancias</i> used to give this ruin a wide berth; they
+had nasty stories to tell about it, stories that had been
+handed down through generations. There were few indeed
+of even the Gauchos who would have cared to remain here
+after night-fall, much less sleep within its walls. But
+when Dugald's big lamp stood lighted on the table, when
+a fire of wood burned on the low hearth, and a plentiful
+repast, with bowls of steaming fragrant <i>maté</i>, stood before
+the young men, then the room looked far from uncomfortable.</p>
+<p>There was at each side a hammock hung, which our two
+hunters slept in on nights when they had remained too
+long on the hill, or wanted to be early at the chase in the
+morning.</p>
+<p>'Whose turn is it to light the fire to-night?' said
+Dugald, one winter evening, as the two jogged along
+together on their mules towards the ruin.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_234' name='page_234'></a>234</span></p>
+<p>'I think it is mine, cousin. Anyhow, if you feel lazy I'll
+make it so.'</p>
+<p>'No, I'm not lazy, but I want to take home a bird or
+two to-morrow that auntie's very soul loveth, so if you go
+on and get supper ready I shall go round the red dune
+and try to find them.'</p>
+<p>'You won't be long?'</p>
+<p>'I sha'n't be over an hour.'</p>
+<p>Archie rode on, humming a tune to himself. Arrived
+at the ruin, he cast the mule loose, knowing he would not
+wander far away, and would find juicy nourishment among
+the more tender of the cacti sprouts.</p>
+<p>Having lit a roaring fire, and seen it burn up, Archie
+spread asunder some of the ashes, and placed thereon a
+huge pie-dish&mdash;not an empty one&mdash;to warm. Meanwhile
+he hung a kettle of water on the hook above the fire, and,
+taking up a book, sat down by the window to read by the
+light of the setting sun until the water should boil.</p>
+<p>A whole half-hour passed away. The kettle had rattled
+its lid, and Archie had hooked it up a few links, so that the
+water should not be wasted. It was very still and quiet
+up here to-night, and very lonesome too. The sun had just
+gone down, and all the western sky was aglow with clouds,
+whose ever-changing beauty it was a pleasure to watch.
+Archie was beginning to wish that Dugald would come,
+when he was startled at hearing a strange and piercing cry
+far down below him in the cactus jungle. It was a cry
+that made his flesh quiver and his very spine feel cold. It
+came from no human lips, and yet it was not even the
+scream of a terror-struck mule. Next minute the mystery
+was unravelled, and Dugald's favourite mule came galloping
+towards the ruin, pursued by an enormous tiger, as the
+jaguar is called here.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_236' name='page_236'></a>236</span></div>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_12' id='linki_12'></a>
+<img src='images/illus235.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 598px; height: 371px;' /><br />
+</div>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_237' name='page_237'></a>237</span></div>
+<p>Just as he had reached the ruin the awful beast had made
+his spring. His talons drew blood, but the next moment
+he was rolling on the ground with one eye apparently
+knocked out, and the foam around his fang-filled mouth
+mixed with blood; and the mule was over the hills and
+safe, while the jaguar was venting his fume and fury on
+Archie's rugs, which, with his gun, he had left out there.</p>
+<p>There is no occasion to deny that the young man was
+almost petrified with fear, but this did not last long: he
+must seek for safety somehow, somewhere. To leave the
+ruin seems certain death, to remain is impossible. Look,
+the tiger even already has scented him; he utters another
+fearful yell, and makes direct for the window. The tree!
+the tree! Something seems to utter those words in his
+ear as he springs from the open window. The jaguar has
+entered the room as Archie, with a strength he never knew
+he possessed, catches a lower limb and hoists himself up
+into the tree. He hears yell after yell; now first in the
+ruin, next at the tree foot, and then in the tree itself.
+Archie creeps higher and higher up, till the branches can
+no longer bear him, and after him creeps death in the
+most awful form imaginable. Already the brute is so close
+that he sees his glaring eye and hears his awful scenting
+and snuffling. Archie is fascinated by that tiger's face so
+near him&mdash;on the same limb of the tree, he himself far out
+towards the point. This must be fascination. He feels
+like one in a strange dream, for as the time goes by and
+the tiger springs not, he takes to speculating almost calmly
+on his fate, and wondering where the beast will seize him
+first, and if it will be very painful; if he will hear his own
+bones crash, and so faint and forget everything. What
+fangs the tiger has! How broad the head, and terribly
+fierce the grin! But how the blood trickles from the
+wound in the skull! He can hear it pattering on the dead
+leaves far beneath.</p>
+<p>Why doesn't the tiger spring and have it over? Why
+does&mdash;but look, look, the brute has let go the branch and
+fallen down, down with a crash, and Archie hears the dull
+thud of the body on the ground.</p>
+<p>Dead&mdash;to all intents and purposes. The good mule's
+hoof had cloven the skull.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_238' name='page_238'></a>238</span></p>
+<p>'Archie! Archie! where on earth are you? Oh,
+Archie!'</p>
+<p>It is Dugald's voice. The last words are almost a
+shriek.</p>
+<p>Then away goes fear from Archie's heart, and joy
+unspeakable takes its place.</p>
+<p>'Up here, Dugald,' he shouts, 'safe and sound.'</p>
+<p>I leave the reader to guess whether Dugald was glad or
+not to see his cousin drop intact from the ombu-tree, or
+whether or not they enjoyed their pie and <i>maté</i> that
+evening after this terrible adventure.</p>
+<p>'I wonder,' said Archie, later on, and just as they were
+preparing for hammock, 'I wonder, Dugald, if that tiger
+has a wife. I hope she won't come prowling round after
+her dead lord in the middle of the night.'</p>
+<p>'Well, anyhow, Archie, we'll have our rifles ready, and
+Dash will give us ample warning, you know. So good-night.'</p>
+<p>'Good-night. Don't be astonished if you hear me
+scream in my sleep. I feel sure I'll dream I'm up in that
+dark ombu-tree, and perhaps in the clutches of that fearsome
+tiger.'</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>About a month after the above related adventure the
+young men had another at that very ruin, which, if not
+quite so stirring, was at all events far more mysterious.</p>
+<p>It happened soon after a wild storm, a kind of semi-pampero,
+had swept over the glen with much thunder and
+lightning and heavy rains. It had cleared the atmosphere,
+however, which previously had been hazy and close. It
+had cooled it as well, so that one afternoon, Dugald,
+addressing Archie, said,</p>
+<p>'What do you say to an early morning among the birds
+to-morrow, cousin?'</p>
+<p>'Oh, I'm ready, Dugald, if you are,' was the reply.</p>
+<p>'Well, then, off you trot to the kitchen, and get food
+ready, and I'll see to the shooting tackle and the mules.'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_239' name='page_239'></a>239</span></p>
+<p>When Dugald ran over to say good-night to Moncrieff
+and Aileen before they started, he met old Jenny in the
+door.</p>
+<p>'Dear laddie,' she said, when she heard he was bound
+for the hills, 'I hope nae ill will come over ye; but I wot
+I had an unco' ugly dream last night. Put your trust in
+Providence, laddie. And ye winna forget to say your
+prayers, will ye?'</p>
+<p>'That we won't, mother. Ta, ta!'</p>
+<p>Moncrieff saw Dugald to his own gate. With them
+went Wolf, the largest bloodhound-mastiff.</p>
+<p>'Dreams,' said Moncrieff, 'may be neither here nor
+there; but you'll be none the worse for taking Wolf.'</p>
+<p>'Thank you,' said Dugald; 'he shall come, and
+welcome.'</p>
+<p>The sun had quite set before they reached the ruin, but
+there was a beautiful after-glow in the west&mdash;a golden
+haze beneath, with a kind of crimson blush over it higher
+up. When they were on a level with the ruin, the two
+windows of which, as already stated, were opposite to each
+other, Archie said, musingly,</p>
+<p>'Look, Dugald, what a strange and beautiful light is
+streaming through the windows!'</p>
+<p>'Yes,' replied Dugald, 'but there is something solemn,
+even ghostly, about it. Don't you think so?'</p>
+<p>'True; there always is something ghostly about an
+empty ruin, I think. Are you superstitious?'</p>
+<p>'No; but&mdash;see. What was that? Why, there is some
+one there! Look to your rifle, Archie. It was an Indian,
+I am certain.'</p>
+<p>What had they seen? Why, only the head and shoulders
+of a passing figure in the orange light of the two windows.
+It had appeared but one moment&mdash;next it was gone.
+Rifles in left hand, revolvers in right, they cautiously
+approached the ruin and entered. Never a soul was here.
+They went out again, and looked around; they even
+searched the ombu-tree, but all in vain.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_240' name='page_240'></a>240</span></p>
+<p>'Our eyes must have deceived us,' said Dugald.</p>
+<p>'I think,' said Archie, 'I have a theory that might
+explain the mystery.'</p>
+<p>'What is it, then?'</p>
+<p>'Well, that was no living figure we saw.'</p>
+<p>'What! You don't mean to say, Archie, it was a
+ghost?'</p>
+<p>'No, but a branch of that ghostly ombu-tree moved by
+a passing wind between us and the light.'</p>
+<p>As he spoke they rounded the farthest off gable of the
+ruin, and there both stopped as suddenly as if shot. Close
+beside the wall, with some rude digging tools lying near,
+was a newly-opened grave!</p>
+<p>'This is indeed strange,' said Dugald, remembering old
+Jenny's warning and dream; 'I cannot make it out.'</p>
+<p>'Nor can I. However, we must make the best of it.'</p>
+<p>By the time supper was finished they had almost forgotten
+all about it. Only before lying down that night&mdash;</p>
+<p>'I say, Archie,' said Dugald, 'why didn't we think of
+it?'</p>
+<p>'Think of what?'</p>
+<p>'Why, of putting Wolf the mastiff on the track. If
+there have been Indians here he would have found them out.'</p>
+<p>'It will not be too late to-morrow, perhaps.'</p>
+<p>Dugald lay awake till it must have been long past
+midnight. He tried to sleep, but failed, though he could
+tell from his regular breathing that nothing was disturbing
+Archie's repose. It was a beautiful night outside, and the
+light from a full moon streamed in at one window and fell
+on the form of good Wolf, who was curled up on the floor;
+the other window was shaded by the branches of the
+ombu-tree. No matter how calm it might be in the
+valley below, away up here there was always a light breeze
+blowing, and to-night the whispering in the tree at times
+resembled the sound of human voices. So thought Dugald.
+Several times he started and listened, and once he felt
+almost sure he heard footsteps as of people moving outside.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_241' name='page_241'></a>241</span>
+Then again all sounds&mdash;if sounds there had been&mdash;ceased,
+and nothing was audible save the sighing wind in the
+ombu-tree. Oh, that strange waving ombu-tree! He
+wondered if it really had some dark secret to whisper to
+him, and had chosen this silent hour of night to reveal it.</p>
+<p>Hark, that was a sound this time! The mournful but
+piercing cry of a night-bird. 'Chee-hee-ee! chee-hee-ee!'
+It was repeated farther up the hill. But could the dog be
+deceived? Scarcely; and growling low as if in anger,
+Wolf had arisen and stood pointing towards the ombu-shaded
+window.</p>
+<p>With one accord both Dugald and Archie, seizing their
+revolvers and jumping from their hammocks, ran out just
+in time to see a tall figure cross a patch of moonlit sward
+and disappear in the cactus jungle.</p>
+<p>Both fired in the direction, but of course aimlessly, and
+it was with the greatest difficulty they succeeded in keeping
+the great dog from following into the bush.</p>
+<p>They were disturbed no more that night; and daylight
+quite banished their fears, though it could not dispel the
+mystery of the newly-dug grave.</p>
+<p>Indeed, they could even afford to joke a little over the
+matter now.</p>
+<p>'There is something in it, depend upon that,' said
+Dugald, as the two stood together looking into the hole.</p>
+<p>'There doesn't seem to be,' said Archie, quizzingly.</p>
+<p>'And I mean to probe it to the bottom.'</p>
+<p>'Suppose you commence now, Dugald. Believe me,
+there is no time like the present. Here are the tools.
+They look quite antediluvian. Do you think now that it
+really was a flesh-and-blood Indian we saw here; or was
+it the ghost of some murdered priest? And has he been
+digging down here to excavate his own old bones, or have
+a peep to see that they are safe?'</p>
+<p>'Archie,' said Dugald, at last, as if he had not listened
+to a word of his companion's previous remarks, 'Archie,
+we won't go shooting to-day.'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_242' name='page_242'></a>242</span></p>
+<p>'No?'</p>
+<p>'No, we will go home instead, and bring Moncrieff and my
+brothers here. I begin to think this is no grave after all.'</p>
+<p>'Indeed, Dugald, and why?'</p>
+<p>'Why, simply for this reason: Yambo has told me a
+wonderful blood-curdling story of two hermit priests who
+lived here, and who had found treasure among the hills,
+and were eventually murdered and buried in this very ruin.
+According to the tradition the slaughtering Indians were
+themselves afterwards killed, and since then strange
+appearances have taken place from time to time, and until
+we made a shooting-box of the ruin no Gauchos could
+be found bold enough to go inside it, nor would any
+Indian come within half a mile of the place. That they
+have got more courageous now we had ample evidence last
+night.'</p>
+<p>'And you think that&mdash;'</p>
+<p>'I think that Indians are not far away, and that&mdash;but
+come, let us saddle our mules and be off.'</p>
+<p>It was high time, for at that very moment over a dozen
+pairs of fierce eyes were watching them from the cactus
+jungle. Spears were even poised ready for an attack, and
+only perhaps the sight of that ferocious-looking dog
+restrained them.</p>
+<p>No one could come more speedily to a conclusion than
+Moncrieff. He hardly waited to hear Dugald's story before
+he had summoned Yambo, and bade him get ready with
+five trusty Gauchos to accompany them to the hills.</p>
+<p>'Guns, señor?'</p>
+<p>'Ay, guns, Yambo, and the other dog. We may have
+to draw a trigger or two. Sharp is the word, Yambo!'</p>
+<p>In two hours more, and just as the winter's sun was at
+its highest, we all reached the cactus near the old monastic
+ruin. Here a spear flew close past Moncrieff's head. A
+quick, fierce glance of anger shot from the eyes of this
+buirdly Scot. He called a dog, and in a moment more
+disappeared in the jungle. A minute after there was the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_243' name='page_243'></a>243</span>
+sharp ring of a revolver, a shriek, a second shot, and all
+was still. Presently Moncrieff rode back, looking grim,
+but calm and self-possessed.</p>
+<p>There was no one near the ruin when we advanced, but
+the Indians had been here. The grave was a grave no
+longer in shape, but a huge hole.</p>
+<p>'Set to work, Yambo, with your men. They have saved
+us trouble. Dugald and Archie and Donald, take three
+men and the dogs and scour the bush round here. Then
+place sentinels about, and post yourselves on top of the
+red dune.'</p>
+<p>Yambo and his men set to work in earnest, and laboured
+untiringly for hours and hours, but without finding anything.
+A halt was called at last for rest and refreshment;
+then the work was commenced with greater heart than
+ever.</p>
+<p>I had ridden away to the red dune to carry food to my
+brothers and the dogs and the sentinels.</p>
+<p>The day was beginning already to draw to a close.
+The sky all above was blue and clear, but along the
+horizon lay a bank of grey rolling clouds, that soon would
+be changed to crimson and gold by the rays of the setting
+sun. Hawks were poised high in the air, and flocks of
+kites were slowly winging their way to the eastward.</p>
+<p>From our position on the summit of the red dune we
+had a most extended view on all sides. We could even see
+the tall waving poplars of our own <i>estancias</i>, and away
+westward a vast rolling prairie of pampa land, bounded by
+the distant <i>sierras</i>. My eyes were directed to one level
+and snow-white patch in the plain, which might have been
+about three square miles in extent, when suddenly out
+from behind some dunes that lay beyond rode a party of
+horsemen. We could tell at a glance they were Indians,
+and that they were coming as fast as fleet horses could
+carry them, straight for the hill on which we stood. There
+was not a moment to lose, so, leaping to the back of my
+mule, I hurried away to warn our party.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XXIII_A_RIDE_FOR_LIFE' id='XXIII_A_RIDE_FOR_LIFE'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_244' name='page_244'></a>244</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2>
+<h3>A RIDE FOR LIFE.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>'Moncrieff!' I cried, as soon as I got within hail,
+'the Indians will be on us in less than half an
+hour!'</p>
+<p>'Then, boy,' replied Moncrieff, 'call in your brothers and
+the men; they cannot hold the dune. We must fight
+them here, if it be fighting they mean. Hurry back, I
+have something to show you.'</p>
+<p>We had all returned in less than ten minutes. Greatly
+to our astonishment, we found no one in the pit now, but
+we heard voices beneath, and I hurried in and down.</p>
+<p>They had found a cave; whether natural or not we
+could not at present say. At one side lay a heap of
+mouldering bones, in the opposite corner a huge wooden
+chest. Moncrieff had improvised a torch, and surely
+Aladdin in his cave could not have been more astonished
+at what he saw than we were now! The smoky light fell
+on the golden gleam of nuggets! Yes, there they were, of
+all shapes and sizes. Moncrieff plunged his hand to the
+bottom of the box and stirred them up as he might have
+done roots or beans.</p>
+<p>This, then, was the secret the ruin had held so long&mdash;the
+mystery of the giant ombu-tree.</p>
+<p>That the Indians in some way or other had got scent of
+this treasure was evident, and as these wandering savages
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_245' name='page_245'></a>245</span>
+care little if anything for gold on their own account, it was
+equally evident that some white man&mdash;himself not caring
+to take the lead or even appear&mdash;was hounding them on
+to find it, with the promise doubtless of a handsome
+reward.</p>
+<p>Not a moment was there to be lost now. The treasure
+must be removed. An attempt was first made to lift the
+chest bodily. This was found to be impossible owing to
+the decayed condition of the wood. The grain-sacks,
+therefore, which formed a portion of the Gaucho's mule-trappings,
+were requisitioned, and in a very short time
+every gold nugget was carried out and placed in safety in
+a corner of our principal room in the hunting-box.</p>
+<p>The beasts were placed for safety in another room of the
+ruin, a trench being dug before the door, which could be
+commanded from one of our windows.</p>
+<p>'How many horsemen did you count?' said Moncrieff
+to me.</p>
+<p>'As near as I could judge,' I replied, 'there must be
+fifty.'</p>
+<p>'Yes, there may be a swarm more. One of you boys
+must ride to-night to the <i>estancia</i> and get assistance.
+Who volunteers?'</p>
+<p>'I do,' said Dugald at once.</p>
+<p>'Then it will be well to start without delay before we
+are surrounded. See, it is already dusk, and we may
+expect our Indian friends at any moment. Mount, lad, and
+Heaven preserve you!'</p>
+<p>Dugald hardly waited to say another word. He saw to
+the revolvers in his saddle-bows, slung his rifle over his
+shoulder, sprang to the saddle, and had disappeared like a
+flash.</p>
+<p>And now we had but to wait the turn of events&mdash;turn
+how they might.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>Dugald told us afterwards that during that memorable
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_246' name='page_246'></a>246</span>
+ride to the <i>estancia</i> he felt as if the beast beneath him
+was a winged horse instead of his own old-fashioned and
+affectionate mule. Perhaps it was fear that lent him such
+speed, and possibly it was fear transmitted even from his
+rider. Times without number since we had come out to
+our new home in the Silver West my brother had shown
+what sort of stuff he was made of, but a ride like this is
+trying to a heart like oak or nerves like steel, and a young
+man must be destitute of soul itself not to feel fear on
+such an occasion. Besides, the very fact of flying from
+unseen foes adds to the terror.</p>
+<p>Down through the cactus jungle he went, galloping in
+and out and out and in, himself hardly knowing the road,
+trusting everything to the sagacity of the wondrous mule.
+Oftentimes when returning from a day on the hills, tired
+and weary, he had thought the way through this strange
+green bushland interminably long; but now, fleetly though
+he was speeding on, he thought it would never, never end,
+that he would never, never come out into the open
+braeland, and see, miles away beneath him, the twinkling
+lights of the <i>estancia</i>. Many an anxious glance, too, did
+he cast around him or into the gloomiest shades of the
+jungle, more than once imagining he saw dusky figures
+therein with long spears ready to launch at him.</p>
+<p>He is out at last, however; but the path is now loose
+and rough and stony. After riding for some hundred
+yards he has to cut across at right angles to the jungle he
+has left. To his horror, a dozen armed Indians at that
+very moment leave the cactus, and with levelled spears
+and wild shouts dash onward to intercept him. This is
+indeed a ride for life, for to his immediate left is a precipice
+full twenty feet in height. He must gain the end of this
+before he can put even a yard of actual distance betwixt
+himself and the savages who are thirsting for his life.
+More than once he has half made up his mind to dare the
+leap, but the venture is far too great.</p>
+<p>Nearer and nearer sweep the Indians. Dugald is close
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_247' name='page_247'></a>247</span>
+at the turning-point now, but he sees the foremost savage
+getting the deadly lasso ready. He must shoot, though he
+has to slacken speed slightly to take better aim.</p>
+<p>He fires. Down roll horse and man, and Dugald is
+saved.</p>
+<p>They have heard that rifle-shot far away on the <i>estancia</i>.
+Quick eyes are turned towards the braelands, and, dusk
+though it is, they notice that something more than usual is
+up. Five minutes afterwards half a dozen armed horsemen
+thunder out to meet Dugald. They hear his story, and all
+return to alarm the colony and put the whole place in a
+state of defence. Then under the guidance of Dugald they
+turn back once more&mdash;a party of twenty strong now&mdash;towards
+the hills, just as the moon, which is almost full, is
+rising and shining through between the solemn steeple-like
+poplars.</p>
+<p>To avoid the jungle, and a probable ambuscade, they
+have to make a long <i>détour</i>, but they reach the ruin at last,
+to find all safe and sound. The Indians know that for a
+time their game is played, and they have lost; and they
+disappeared as quickly and mysteriously as they came
+leaving not a trace behind.</p>
+<p>The gold is now loaded on the backs of the mules, and
+the journey home commenced.</p>
+<p>As they ride down through the giant cacti two huge
+vultures rise with flapping wings and heavy bodies at no
+great distance. It was into that very thicket that
+Moncrieff rode this morning. It was there he fired his
+revolver. The vultures had been disturbed at a feast&mdash;nothing
+more.</p>
+<p>Great was the rejoicing at the safe return of Moncrieff
+and his party from the hills. Our poor aunt had been
+troubled, indeed, but Aileen was frantic, and threw herself
+into her husband's arms when she saw him in quite a
+passion of hysterical joy.</p>
+<p>Now although there was but little if any danger of an
+attack to-night on the <i>estancias</i>, no one thought of retiring
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_248' name='page_248'></a>248</span>
+to bed. There was much to be done by way of preparation,
+for we were determined not to lose a horse, nor even a
+sheep, if we could help it. So we arranged a code of
+signals by means of rifle-shots, and spent the whole of the
+hours that intervened betwixt the time of our return and
+sunrise in riding round the farms and visiting even distant
+<i>puestos</i>.</p>
+<p>My brothers and I and Moncrieff lay down when day
+broke to snatch a few hours of much-needed rest.</p>
+<p>It was well on in the forenoon when I went over to
+Moncrieff's mansion. I had already been told that
+strangers had arrived from distant <i>estancias</i> bringing evil
+tidings. The poor men whom I found in the drawing-room
+with Moncrieff had indeed brought dreadful news.
+They had escaped from their burned <i>estancias</i> after seeing
+their people massacred by savages before their eyes. They
+had seen others on the road who had suffered even worse,
+and did not know what to do or where to fly. Many
+had been hunted into the bush and killed there. Forts
+had been attacked further south, and even the soldiers of
+the republic in some instances had been defeated and
+scattered over the country.</p>
+<p>The year, indeed, was one that will be long remembered
+by the citizens of the Argentine Republic. Happily
+things have now changed for the better, and the Indians
+have been driven back south of the Rio Negro, which
+will for ever form a boundary which they must not cross
+on pain of death.</p>
+<p>More fugitives dropped in that day, and all had pitiful,
+heartrending stories to tell.</p>
+<p>Moncrieff made every one welcome, and so did we all,
+trying our very best to soothe the grief and anguish they
+felt for those dear ones they would never see more on
+earth.</p>
+<p>And now hardly a day passed that did not bring news
+of some kind of the doings of the Indians. Success had
+rendered them bold, while it appeared to have cowed for a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_249' name='page_249'></a>249</span>
+time the Government of this noble republic, or, at all
+events, had confused and paralyzed all its action. Forts
+were overcome almost without resistance. Indeed, some
+of them were destitute of the means of resisting, the men
+having no proper supply of ammunition. <i>Estancia</i> after
+<i>estancia</i> on the frontier had been raided and burned, with
+the usual shocking barbarities that make one shudder even
+to think of.</p>
+<p>It was but little likely that our small but wealthy
+colony would escape, for the fact that we were now possessed
+of the long-buried treasure&mdash;many thousands of
+pounds in value&mdash;must have spread like wild-fire.</p>
+<p>One morning Moncrieff and I started early, and rode to
+a distant <i>estancia</i>, which we were told had been attacked
+and utterly destroyed, not a creature being left alive about
+the place with the exception of the cattle and horses,
+which the Indians had captured. We had known this
+family. They had often attended Moncrieff's happy little
+evening parties, and the children had played in our garden
+and rowed with us in the gondola.</p>
+<p>Heaven forbid I should attempt to draw a graphic
+picture of all we saw! Let it be sufficient to say that the
+rumours which had reached us were all too true, and that
+Moncrieff and I saw sights which will haunt us both
+until our dying day.</p>
+<p>The silence all round the <i>estancia</i> when we rode up was
+eloquent, terribly eloquent. The buildings were blackened
+ruins, and it was painful to notice the half-scorched trailing
+flowers, many still in bloom, clinging around the
+wrecked and charred verandah. But everywhere about,
+in the out-buildings, on the lawn, in the garden itself, were
+the remains of the poor creatures who had suffered.</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto; '><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>'Alas! for love of this were all,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 1.47167034584253em;'>And none beyond, O earth!'</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>Moncrieff spoke but little all the way back. While
+standing near the verandah I had seen him move his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_250' name='page_250'></a>250</span>
+hand to his eyes and impatiently brush away a tear, but
+after that his face became firm and set, and for many a
+day after this I never saw him smile.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>At this period of our strange family story I lay down
+my pen and lean wearily back in my chair. It is not
+that I am tired of writing. Oh, no! Evening after evening
+for many and many a long week I have repaired up
+here to my turret chamber&mdash;my beautiful study in our
+Castle of Coila&mdash;and with my faithful hound by my feet
+I have bent over my sheets and transcribed as faithfully
+as I could events as I remember them. But it is the very
+multiplicity of these events as I near the end of my story
+that causes me to pause and think.</p>
+<p>Ah! here comes aunt, gliding into my room, pausing for
+a moment, curtain in hand, half apologetically, as she did
+on that evening described in our first chapter.</p>
+<p>'No, auntie, you do not disturb me. Far from it. I
+was longing for your company.'</p>
+<p>She is by my side now, and looking down at my manuscript.</p>
+<p>'Yes,' she says many times&mdash;nodding assent to every
+sentence, and ever turning back the pages for reference&mdash;'yes,
+and now you come near the last events of
+this story of the M'Crimmans of Coila. Come out to
+the castle roof, and breathe the evening air, and I will
+talk.'</p>
+<p>We sit there nearly an hour. Aunt's memory is better
+even than mine, and I listen to her without ever once
+opening my lips. Then I lead her back to the tower, and
+point smilingly to the harp.</p>
+<p>She has gone at last, and I resume my story.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>We, Moncrieff and I, saw no signs of Indians during our
+long ride that day. We had gone on this journey with
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_251' name='page_251'></a>251</span>
+our lives in our hands. The very daringness and dash of
+it was probably our salvation. The enemy were
+about&mdash;they might be here, there, anywhere. Every
+bush might conceal a foe, but they certainly made no
+appearance.</p>
+<p>All was the same apparently about our <i>estancias</i>; <i>but</i> I
+wondered a little that my brothers had not come out
+to meet me as usual, and that faithful, though plain-faced
+Yambo looked at me strangely, and I thought
+pityingly, as he took my mule to lead away to the
+compound.</p>
+<p>I went straight away through our gardens, and entered
+the drawing-room by the verandah window.</p>
+<p>I paused a moment, holding the casement in my hand.
+Coming straight out of the glare of the evening sunset,
+the room appeared somewhat dark, but I noticed Dugald
+sitting at the table with his face bent down over his hand,
+and Donald lying on the couch.</p>
+<p>'Dugald!'</p>
+<p>He started up and ran towards me, seizing and wringing
+my hand.</p>
+<p>'Oh, Murdoch,' he cried, 'our poor father!'</p>
+<p>'You have had a letter&mdash;he is ill?'</p>
+<p>'He is ill.'</p>
+<p>'Dugald,' I cried, 'tell me all! Dugald&mdash;is&mdash;father&mdash;dead?'</p>
+<p>No reply.</p>
+<p>I staggered towards the table, and dropped limp and
+stricken and helpless into a chair.</p>
+<p>I think I must have been ill for many, many days after
+this sad news. I have little recollection of the events of
+the next week&mdash;I was engrossed, engulfed in the one great
+sorrow. The unexpected death of so well-beloved a father
+in the meridian of life was a terrible blow to us all, but
+more so to me, with all I had on my mind.</p>
+<p>'And so, and so,' I thought, as I began to recover, 'there
+is an end to my bright dreams of future happiness&mdash;<i>the</i>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_252' name='page_252'></a>252</span>
+dream of all my dreams, to have father out here among us
+in our new home in the Silver West, and all the dark
+portions of the past forgotten. Heaven give me strength
+to bear it!'</p>
+<p>I had spoken the last words aloud, for a voice at my
+elbow said&mdash;</p>
+<p>'Amen! Poor boy! Amen!'</p>
+<p>I turned, and&mdash;<i>there stood Townley</i>.</p>
+<p>'You wonder to see me here,' he said, as he took
+my hand. 'Nay, but nobody should ever wonder at
+anything I do. I am erratic. I did not come over before,
+because I did not wish to influence your mind. You have
+been ill, but&mdash;I'm glad to see you weeping.'</p>
+<p>I did really sob and cry then as if my very heart would
+burst and break.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>I was well enough in a day or two to hear the rest of
+the news. Townley, who was very wise, had hesitated to
+tell me everything at once.</p>
+<p>But if anything could be called joyful news now surely
+this was&mdash;mother and Flora were at Villa Mercedes, and
+would be here in a day or two. Townley had come on
+before, even at considerable personal risk, to break the
+news to us, and prepare us all. Mother and sister were
+waiting an escort, not got up specially for them certainly,
+but that would see to their safety. It consisted
+of a large party of officers and men who were passing
+on to the frontiers to repel, or try to repel, the Indian invasion.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>We all went to meet mother and sister at the far-off
+cross roads. There was quite a large and very well-armed
+party of us, and we encamped for three days near an
+<i>estancia</i> to await their coming.</p>
+<p>It was on the morning of the fourth day that one of the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_253' name='page_253'></a>253</span>
+Gauchos reported an immense cloud of dust far away
+eastwards on the Mendoza road.</p>
+<p>'They might be Indians,' he added.</p>
+<p>'Perhaps,' said Moncrieff, 'but we will risk it.'</p>
+<p>So camp was struck and off we rode, my brothers and I
+forming the vanguard, Moncrieff and Archie bringing up
+the rear. How my heart beat with emotion when the first
+horsemen of the advancing party became visible through
+the cloud of dust, and I saw they were soldiers!</p>
+<p>On we rode now at the gallop.</p>
+<p>Yes, mother was there, and sister, and they were well.
+Our meeting may be better imagined than described.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>Both mother and Flora were established at the <i>estancia</i>,
+and so days and weeks flew by, and I was pleased to see
+them smile, though mother looked sad, so sad, yet so
+beautiful, just as she had ever looked to me.</p>
+<p>Dugald was the first to recover anything approaching
+to a chastened happiness. He had his darling sister
+with him. He was never tired taking her out and
+showing her all the outs-and-ins and workings of our new
+home.</p>
+<p>It appeared to give him the chiefest delight, however, to
+see her in the gondola.</p>
+<p>I remember him saying one evening:</p>
+<p>'Dear Flora! What a time it seems to look back since
+we parted in old Edina. But through all these long years
+I have worked for you and thought about you, and strange,
+I have always pictured you just as you are now, sitting
+under the gondola awnings, looking piquant and pretty,
+and on just such a lovely evening as this. But I didn't
+think you would be so big, Flora.'</p>
+<p>'Dear stupid Dugald!' replied Flora, blushing slightly
+because Archie's eyes were bent on her in admiration,
+respectful but unconcealable. 'Did you think I would
+always remain a child?'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_254' name='page_254'></a>254</span></p>
+<p>'You'll always be a child to me, Flo,' said Dugald.</p>
+<p>But where had the Indians gone?</p>
+<p>Had our bold troops beaten them back? or was the
+cloud still floating over the <i>estancia</i>, and floating only to
+burst?</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XXIV_THE_ATTACK_ON_THE_ESTANCIA' id='XXIV_THE_ATTACK_ON_THE_ESTANCIA'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_255' name='page_255'></a>255</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIV.</h2>
+<h3>THE ATTACK ON THE ESTANCIA.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>Shortly after we had all settled down at the <i>estancia</i>,
+and things began to resume their wonted appearance,
+albeit we lived in a state of constant preparation to repel
+attack, an interview took place one day in Moncrieff's
+drawing-room, at which, though I was not present, I now
+know all that happened.</p>
+<p>To one remark of Townley's my mother replied as
+follows:</p>
+<p>'No, Mr. Townley, I think with you. I feel even more
+firmly, I believe, than you do on the subject, for you speak
+with, pardon me, some little doubt or hesitancy. Our boy's
+conscience must not be tampered with, not for all the
+estates in the world. Much though I love Coila, from
+which villainy may have banished us, let it remain for
+ever in the possession of the M'Rae sooner than even hint
+to Murdoch that an oath, however imposed, is not binding.'</p>
+<p>'Yes,' said Townley, 'you are right, Mrs. M'Crimman;
+but the present possessor of Coila, the younger Le Roi, or
+M'Rae, as he was called before his father's death, has what
+he is pleased to call broader views on the subject than we
+have.'</p>
+<p>'Mr. Townley, the M'Rae is welcome to retain his broad
+views, and we will stick to the simple faith of our forefathers.
+The M'Rae is of French education.'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_256' name='page_256'></a>256</span></p>
+<p>'Yes, and at our meeting, though he behaved like a
+perfect gentleman&mdash;indeed, he is a gentleman&mdash;'</p>
+<p>'True, in spite of the feud I cannot forget that the
+M'Raes are distant relatives of the M'Crimmans. He
+must, therefore, be a gentleman.'</p>
+<p>'"My dear sir," he said to me, "I cannot conceive of such
+folly"&mdash;superstitious folly, he called it&mdash;"as that which
+your young friend Murdoch M'Crimman is guilty of. Let
+him come to me and say boldly that the ring found in the
+box and in the vault was on the finger of Duncan&mdash;villain
+he is, at all events&mdash;on the night he threatened to
+shoot him, and I will give up all claim to the estates of
+Coila; but till he does so, or until you bring me other
+proof, I must be excused for remaining where I am."'</p>
+<p>'Then let him,' said my mother quietly.</p>
+<p>'Nay, but,' said Townley, 'I do not <i>mean</i> to let him.
+It has become the one dream of my existence to see justice
+and right done to my dear old pupil Murdoch, and I think
+I begin to see land.'</p>
+<p>'Yes?'</p>
+<p>'I believe I do. I waited and watched untiringly.
+Good Gilmore, who still lives in Coila, watched for me
+too. I knew one thing was certain&mdash;namely, that the
+ex-poacher Duncan M'Rae would turn up again at the
+castle. He did. He went to beg money from the M'Rae.
+The M'Rae is a man of the world; he saw that this visit
+of Duncan's was but the beginning of a never-ending
+persecution. He refused Duncan's request point-blank.
+Then the man changed flank and breathed dark threatenings.
+The M'Rae, he hinted, had better not make him
+(Duncan) his enemy. He (M'Rae) was obliged to him for
+the house and position he occupied, but the same hand that
+<i>did</i> could <i>undo</i>. At this juncture the M'Rae had simply
+rung the bell, and the ex-poacher had to retire foiled, but
+threatening still. It was on that same day I confronted
+him and told him all I knew. Then I showed him the
+spurious ring, which, as I placed it on my finger, even he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_257' name='page_257'></a>257</span>
+could not tell from the original. Even this did not overawe
+him, but when I ventured a guess that this very ring
+had belonged to a dead man, and pretended I knew more
+than I did, he turned pale. He was silent for a time&mdash;thinking,
+I suppose. Then he put a question which
+staggered me with its very coolness, and, clergyman though
+I am, I felt inclined at that moment to throttle the man
+where he stood. Would we pay him handsomely for
+turning king's evidence on himself and confessing the
+whole was a conspiracy, and would we save him from the
+legal penalty of the confessed crime?</p>
+<p>'I assure you, Mrs. M'Crimman, that till then I had
+leaned towards the belief that, scoundrel though this
+Duncan be, some little spark of humanity remained in his
+nature, and that he might be inclined to do justice for
+justice's sake. I dare say he read my answer in my eyes,
+and he judged too that for the time being I was powerless
+to act. Could he have killed me then, I know he would
+have done so. Once more he was silent for a time. He
+did not dare to repeat his first question, but he put another,
+"Have you any charge to make against me about <i>anything</i>?"
+He placed a terribly-meaning emphasis on that word
+"anything." I looked at him. I was wondering whether he
+really had had anything to do with the death of old
+Mawsie, and if the ring of which I had the facsimile on my
+finger had in reality belonged to a murdered man. Seeing
+me hesitate, he played a bold card; it was, I suppose,
+suggested to him by the appearance at that moment of
+the village policeman walking calmly past the window of
+the little inn where we sat. He knocked, and beckoned
+to him, while I sat wondering and thinking that verily the
+man before me was cleverer by far than I. On the entrance
+of the policeman&mdash;"This gentleman, policeman," he said,
+quietly and slowly, "makes or insinuates charges against
+me in private which now in your presence I dare him to
+repeat." Then turning to me&mdash;"The ball is with you," he
+said. And what could I reply? Nothing. I do believe
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_258' name='page_258'></a>258</span>
+that at that very moment even the worthy village policeman
+noticed and pitied my position, for he turned to
+Duncan, and, nodding, made this remark in Gaelic: "I
+know Mr. Townley as a gentleman, and I know you, Duncan
+M'Rae, to be something very different. If Mr. Townley
+makes no charge against you it is no doubt because he is
+not prepared with proofs. But, Duncan, boy, if you like
+to remain in the glen for a few days, I'm not sure there
+isn't a charge or two I could rub up against you myself."</p>
+<p>'I left the room with the policeman. Now I knew
+that, although foiled, Duncan did not consider himself
+beaten. I had him watched therefore, and followed by a
+detective. I wanted to find out his next move. It was
+precisely what I thought it would be. He had heard of
+our poor chief M'Crimman's death, remember. Well, a
+day or two after our conversation in the little inn at Coila,
+Duncan presented himself at the M'Rae's advocate's office
+and so pleaded his case&mdash;so begged and partially hinted at
+disclosures and confessions&mdash;that this solicitor, not
+possessed of the extraordinary pride and independence
+of the M'Rae&mdash;'</p>
+<p>'A pride and independence, Mr. Townley,' said my aunt,
+'which the M'Raes take from their relatedness to our
+family.'</p>
+<p>'That is true,' said my mother.</p>
+<p>'Well, I was going to say,' continued Townley, 'that
+Duncan so far overcame the advocate that this gentleman
+thought it would be for his client's interest to accede in
+part to his demands, or rather to one of them&mdash;viz., to pay
+him a sum of money to leave the country for ever. But
+this money was not to be paid until he had taken his
+passage and was about to sail for some&mdash;any&mdash;country, not
+nearer than the United States of America, Mr. Moir's&mdash;the
+advocate's&mdash;clerk was to see him on board ship, and
+see him sail.'</p>
+<p>'And did he sail?' said my aunt, as Townley paused and
+looked at her.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_259' name='page_259'></a>259</span></p>
+<p>'Yes, in a passenger ship, for Buenos Ayres.'</p>
+<p>'I see it all now,' said my aunt. 'He thinks that no
+charge can be made against him there for conspiracy or
+crime committed at home.'</p>
+<p>'Yes, and he thinks still further: he thinks that he will
+be more successful with dear Murdoch than he was with
+either the M'Rae or myself.'</p>
+<p>There was a few minutes' pause, my aunt being the
+first to break the silence.</p>
+<p>'What a depth of well-schemed villainy!' was the remark
+she made.</p>
+<p>Moncrieff had listened to all the conversation without
+once putting in a word. Now all he said was&mdash;</p>
+<p>'Dinna forget, Miss M'Crimman, the words o' the
+immortal Bobbie Burns:</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto; '><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>"The best laid schemes o' mice and men</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 8.09418690213392em;'>Gang aft agley,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>And leave us naught but grief and pain</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 8.09418690213392em;'>For promised joy."'</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>To the fear and fever consequent upon the depredations
+committed by the Indians there succeeded a calmness and
+lull which the canny Moncrieff thought almost unnatural,
+considering all that had gone before. He took pains to
+find out whether, as had been currently reported, our
+Argentine troops had been victorious all along the frontier
+line. He found that the report, like many others, had
+been grossly exaggerated. If a foe retires, a foe is beaten
+by the army which <i>sees</i> that foe retire. This seems too
+often to be the logic of the war-path. In the present
+instance, however, the Indians belonged to races that lived
+a nomad life. They were constantly advancing and
+retreating. When they chose to advance in this particular
+year there was not a sufficient number of cavalry to oppose
+them, nor were the soldiers well mounted. The savages
+knew precisely on what part of the stage to enter, and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_260' name='page_260'></a>260</span>
+they did not think it incumbent on them to previously
+warn our Argentine troops. Indeed, they, like sensible
+savages, rather avoided a conflict than courted one. It
+was not conflict but cattle they were after principally;
+then if at any time strategy directed retreat, why, they
+simply turned their horses' heads to the desert, the pampas,
+or mountain wilds, and the troops for a time had seen the
+last of them.</p>
+<p>I think Moncrieff would have made a capital general,
+for fancied security never sent him to sleep. What had
+happened once might happen again, he thought, and his
+<i>estancias</i> were big prizes for Indians to try for, especially
+as there was plenty to gain by success, and little to lose
+by defeat.</p>
+<p>I have said that our Coila Villa was some distance
+from the fortified Moncrieff houses. It was now connected
+with the general rampart and ditches. It was part and
+parcel of the whole system of fortification; so my brothers
+and I might rest assured it would be defended, if ever
+there was any occasion.</p>
+<p>'It seems hard,' said Townley to Moncrieff one day,
+'that you should be put to so much trouble and expense.
+Why does not the Government protect its settlers?'</p>
+<p>'The Government will in course of time,' replied
+Moncrieff. 'At present, as we lie pretty low down in the
+western map, we are looked upon as rich pioneers, and
+left to protect ourselves.'</p>
+<p>They were riding then round the <i>estancias</i>, visiting
+outlying <i>puestos</i>.</p>
+<p>'You have your rockets and red-lights for night signals,
+and your flags for day use?' Moncrieff was saying to each
+<i>puestero</i> or shepherd.</p>
+<p>'We have,' was the invariable reply.</p>
+<p>'Well, if the Indians are sighted, signal at once, pointing
+the fan in their direction, then proceed to drive the flocks
+towards the <i>estancias</i>. There,' continued Moncrieff, 'there
+is plenty of corraling room, and we can concentrate a fire
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_261' name='page_261'></a>261</span>
+that will, I believe, effectually hold back these raiding
+thieves.'</p>
+<p>One day there came a report that a fort had been
+carried by a cloud of Indians.</p>
+<p>This was in the forenoon. Towards evening some
+Gauchos came in from a distant <i>estancia</i>. They brought
+the old ugly story of conflagration and murder, to which
+Moncrieff and his Welsh partner had long since become
+used.</p>
+<p>But now the cloud was about to burst over our <i>estancia</i>.
+We all ate our meals together at the present awful crisis,
+just, I think, to be company to each other, and to talk and
+keep up each other's heart.</p>
+<p>But to-day Moncrieff had ordered an early dinner, and
+this was ominous. Hardly any one spoke much during
+the meal. A heaviness was on every heart, and if any one
+of us made an effort to smile and look cheerful, others
+saw that this was only assumed, and scarcely responded.</p>
+<p>Perhaps old Jenny spoke more than all of us put
+together. And her remarks at times made us laugh,
+gloomy though the situation was.</p>
+<p>'They reeving Philistines are coming again, are they?
+Well, laddie, if the worst should happen I'll just treat
+them to a drap parridge.'</p>
+<p>'What, mither?'</p>
+<p>'A drap parridge, laddie. It was boiled maize I poured
+ower the shoulders o' them in the caravan. But oatmeal
+is better, weel scalded. Na, na, naething beats a drap
+parridge. Bombazo,' she said presently,'you've been unco
+quiet and douce for days back, I hope you'll no show the
+white feather this time and bury yoursel' in the moold like
+a rabbit.'</p>
+<p>Poor Bombazo winced, and really, judging from his
+appearance, he had been ill at ease for weeks back. There
+was no singing now, and the guitar lay unheeded in its case.</p>
+<p>'Do not fear for me, lady. I am burning already to see
+the foe.'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_262' name='page_262'></a>262</span></p>
+<p>'Weel, Bombazo man, ye dinna look vera warlike.
+You're unco white about the gills already, but wae worth
+the rigging o' you if ye dinna fecht. My arm is strong to
+wield the auld ginghamrella yet.'</p>
+<p>'Hush, mither, hush!' said Moncrieff.</p>
+<p>Immediately after dinner Moncrieff beckoned to
+Townley, and the two left the room and the house
+together.</p>
+<p>'You think the Indians will come to-night?' said
+Townley, after a time.</p>
+<p>'I know they will, and in force too.'</p>
+<p>'Well, I feel like an idler. You, General Moncrieff,
+have not appointed me any station.'</p>
+<p>Moncrieff smiled.</p>
+<p>'I am now going to do so,' he said, 'and it is probably
+the most important position and trust on the <i>estancia</i>.'</p>
+<p>They walked up as far as the great canal while they
+conversed.</p>
+<p>Arrived there, Moncrieff pointed to what looked like a
+bundle of brushwood.</p>
+<p>'You see those branches?'</p>
+<p>'Yes.'</p>
+<p>'And you see that wooden lock or huge doorway?'</p>
+<p>'I do.'</p>
+<p>'Well, my friend, the brushwood conceals a sentry-box.
+It overlooks the whole <i>estancia</i>. It conceals something
+else, a small barrel of gunpowder, which you are to hang
+to the hook yonder on the wooden lock, and explode the
+moment you have the signal.'</p>
+<p>'And the signal will be?'</p>
+<p>'A huge rocket sent up from either my <i>estancia</i> house
+or Coila Villa. There may be several, but you must act
+when you see the first. There is fuse enough to the bomb
+to give you time to escape, and the bomb is big enough to
+burst the lock and flood the whole ditch system in and
+around the <i>estancia</i>. You are to run as soon as you fire.
+Further on you will find another brushwood place of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_263' name='page_263'></a>263</span>
+concealment. Hide there. Heaven forbid I should
+endanger a hair of your head! Now you know your
+station!'</p>
+<p>'I do,' said Townley, 'and thankful I am to think I can
+be of service in this great emergency.'</p>
+<p>Before dark all the most valuable portion of our stock
+was safely corraled, and silence, broken only by the
+occasional lowing of the cattle or the usual night sounds
+of farm life, reigned around and over the <i>estancia</i>.</p>
+<p>Later on Townley stole quietly out, and betook himself
+to his station.</p>
+<p>Still later on Yambo rode in and right up to the
+verandah of our chief sitting-room. The horse he bestrode
+was drenched in sweat. He had seen Indians in force;
+they were even now advancing. He had ridden for his
+life.</p>
+<p>The order 'Every man to his quarters!' was now given.</p>
+<p>The night which was to be so terrible and so memorable
+in the annals of Moncrieff's <i>estancia</i> had begun. It was
+very still, and at present very dark. But by and by the
+moon would rise.</p>
+<p>'A rocket, sir!' we heard Archie shout from his post
+as sentinel; 'a rocket from the south-western <i>puesto</i>.'</p>
+<p>We waited, listening, starting almost at every sound.
+At length in the distance we could plainly hear the sound
+of horses' hoofs on the road, and before many minutes
+the first <i>puestero</i> rode to the gate and was admitted. The
+men from the other <i>puestos</i> were not far behind; and, all
+being safe inside, the gates were fastened and fortified by
+triple bars of wood.</p>
+<p>All along the ditches, and out for many yards, was
+spread such a thorny spikework of pointed wood as to
+defy the approach of the cleverest Indian for hours at
+least.</p>
+<p>While we waited I found time to run round to the
+drawing-room. There was no sign of fear on any face there,
+with the exception perhaps of that of poor Irish Aileen.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_264' name='page_264'></a>264</span>
+And I could well believe her when she told me it was
+not for herself she cared, but for her 'winsome man.'</p>
+<p>I was talking to them as cheerfully as I could, when I
+heard the sound of a rifle, and, waving them good-bye, I
+rushed off to my station.</p>
+<p>Slowly the moon rose, and before many minutes the
+whole <i>estancia</i> was flooded with its light. And how
+we thanked Heaven for that light only those who have
+been situated as we were now can fully understand.</p>
+<p>Up it sailed between the dark whispering poplars. Never
+had these trees seemed to me more stately, more noble.
+Towering up into the starry sky, they seemed like sentinels
+set to guard and defend us, while their taper fingers,
+piercing heavenwards, carried our thoughts to One who
+never deserts those who call on Him in faith in their hour
+of need.</p>
+<p>The moon rose higher and higher, and its light&mdash;for it
+was a full moon&mdash;got still more silvery as it mounted
+towards its zenith. But as yet there was no sign that a
+foe as remorseless and implacable as the tiger of the jungle
+was abroad on the plains.</p>
+<p>A huge fire had been erected behind the mansion, and
+about ten o'clock the female servants came round our lines
+with food, and huge bowls of steaming <i>maté</i>.</p>
+<p>Almost immediately after we were at our quarters again.</p>
+<p>I was stationed near our own villa. Leaning over a
+parapet, I could not help, as I gazed around me, being
+struck with the exceeding beauty of the night. Not far
+off the lake shone in the moon's rays like a silver mirror,
+but over the distant hills and among the trees and hedges
+was spread a thin blue gauzy mist that toned and softened
+the whole landscape.</p>
+<p>As I gazed, and was falling into a reverie, a puff of white
+smoke and a flash not fifty yards away, and the ping of a
+bullet close to my ear, warned me that the attack had
+commenced.</p>
+<p>There had been no living thing visible just before then,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_265' name='page_265'></a>265</span>
+but the field on one side of our villa was now one moving
+mass of armed Indians, rushing on towards the ditch and
+breastwork.</p>
+<p>At the same moment all along our lines ran the rattle of
+rifle-firing. That savage crowd, kept at bay by the spikework,
+made a target for our men that could hardly be
+missed. The war-cry, which they had expected to change
+in less than a minute to the savage shout of victory, was
+mingled now with groans and yells of anger and pain.</p>
+<p>But this, after all, was not the main attack. From a
+red signal-light far along the lines I soon discovered that
+Moncrieff was concentrating his strength there, and I
+hastened in that direction with five of my best men. The
+Indians were under the charge of a <i>cacique</i> on horseback,
+whose shrill voice sounded high over the din of battle and
+shrieks of the wounded. He literally hurled his men like
+seas against the gates and ramparts here.</p>
+<p>But all in vain. Our fellows stood; and the <i>cacique</i> at
+length withdrew his men, firing a volley or two as they
+disappeared behind the hedges.</p>
+<p>There was comparative silence for a space now. It was
+soon broken, however, by the thunder of Indian cavalry.
+The savages were going to change their tactics.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XXV_THE_LAST_ASSAULT' id='XXV_THE_LAST_ASSAULT'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_266' name='page_266'></a>266</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXV.</h2>
+<h3>THE LAST ASSAULT.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>Never before, perhaps, in all the annals of Indian
+warfare had a more determined attack been made
+upon a settler's <i>estancia</i>. The <i>cacique</i> or <i>caciques</i> who
+led the enemy seemed determined to purchase victory at
+any cost or hazard. Nor did the principal <i>cacique</i>
+hesitate to expose himself to danger. During the whole
+of the first onset he moved about on horseback close in
+the rear of his men, and appeared to bear a charmed
+life. The bullets must have been whizzing past him as
+thick as flies. Moncrieff himself tried more than once to
+bring him down, but all in vain.</p>
+<p>During the final assault he was equally conspicuous;
+he was here, there, and everywhere, and his voice and
+appearance, even for a moment, among them never failed
+to cause his men to redouble their efforts.</p>
+<p>It was not, however, until far on into the night that this
+last and awful charge was made.</p>
+<p>The savage foe advanced with a wild shout all along
+the line of rampart that connected the Moncrieff main
+<i>estancia</i> with our villa. This was really our weakest part.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_268' name='page_268'></a>268</span></div>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_13' id='linki_13'></a>
+<img src='images/illus267.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 374px; height: 604px;' /><br />
+</div>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_269' name='page_269'></a>269</span></div>
+<p>The assault was made on horseback. We heard them
+coming thundering on some time before we saw them
+and could fire. They seemed mad, furious; their tall
+feather-bedecked spears were waved high in air; they sat
+like huge baboons on their high saddles, and their very
+horses had been imbued with the recklessness of their
+riders, and came on bounding and flying over our frail
+field of spikes. It was to be all spear work till they
+came to close quarters; then they would use their deadly
+knives.</p>
+<p>Hardly had the first sound of the horses' hoofs reached
+our ears ere one, two, three rockets left Coila Villa; and
+scarcely had they exploded in the air and cast their
+golden showers of sparks abroad, before the roar of an
+explosion was heard high up on the braeland that shook
+the houses to their very foundations&mdash;and then&mdash;there is
+the awful rush of foaming, seething water.</p>
+<p>Nothing could withstand that unexpected flood; men
+and horses were floated and washed away, struggling and
+helpless, before it.</p>
+<p>Just at the time when the last assault was nearly at its
+grim close I felt my arm pulled, and looking quickly
+round found Yambo at my side. He still clutched me
+by the arm, but he was waving his blood-stained sword in
+the direction of Moncrieff's house, and I could see by the
+motions of his mouth and face he wished me to come with
+him.</p>
+<p>Something had occurred, something dreadful surely,
+and despite the excitement of battle a momentary cold
+wave of fear seemed to rush over my frame.</p>
+<p>Sandie Donaldson was near me. This bold big fellow
+had been everywhere conspicuous to-night for his bravery.
+He had fought all through with extraordinary intrepidity.</p>
+<p>Wherever I had glanced that night I had seen Sandie,
+the moon shining down on the white shirt and trousers he
+wore, and which made him altogether so conspicuous a
+figure, as he took aim with rifle or revolver, or dashed
+into a crowd of spear-armed Indians, his claymore hardly
+visible, so swiftly was it moved to and fro. I grasped his
+shoulder, pointed in the direction indicated by Yambo,
+and on we flew.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_270' name='page_270'></a>270</span></p>
+<p>As soon as we had rounded the wing of an outbuilding
+and reached Moncrieff's terraced lawn, the din of the fight
+we had just left became more indistinct, but we now heard
+sounds that, while they thrilled us with terror and anger,
+made us rush on across the grass with the speed of the
+panther.</p>
+<p>They were the voices of shrieking women, the crashing
+of glass and furniture, and the savage and exultant yell of
+the Indians.</p>
+<p>Looking back now to this episode of the night, I can
+hardly realize that so many terrible events could have
+occurred in so brief a time, for, from the moment we
+charged up across the lawn not six minutes could have
+elapsed ere all was over. It is like a dream, but a dream
+every turn of which has been burned into my memory, to
+remain while life shall last. Yonder is a tall <i>cacique</i>
+hurrying out into the bright moonlight from under the
+verandah. He bears in his arms the inanimate form of my
+dear sister Flora. Is it really <i>I</i> myself who rush up to
+meet him? Have <i>I</i> fired that shot that causes the savage
+to reel and fall? Is it I who lift poor Flora and lay her in
+the shade of a mimosa-tree? It must be I, yet every action
+seems governed by instinct; I am for the time being a
+strange psychological study. It is as if my soul had left
+the body, but still commanded it, standing aside, ruling
+every motion, directing every blow from first to last, and
+being implicitly obeyed by the other <i>ego</i>, the <i>ego</i>-incorporate.
+There is a crowd, nay, a cloud even it seems, around me;
+but see, I have cut my way through them at last: they
+have fallen before me, fallen at my side&mdash;fallen or fled. I
+step over bodies, I enter the room, I stumble over other
+bodies. Now a light is struck and a lamp is lit, and
+standing beside the table, calm, but very pale, I see my
+aunt dimly through the smoke. My mother is near her&mdash;my
+own brave mother. Both have revolvers in their hands;
+and I know now why bodies are stretched on the floor.
+One glance shows me Aileen, lying like a dead thing in a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_271' name='page_271'></a>271</span>
+chair, and beside her, smoothing her brow, chafing her
+hands, Moncrieff's marvellous mother.</p>
+<p>But in this life the humorous is ever mixed up with the
+tragic or sad, for lo! as I hurry away to join the fight that
+is still going on near the verandah I almost stumble across
+something else. Not a body this time&mdash;not quite&mdash;only
+Bombazo's ankles sticking out from under the sofa. I
+could swear to those striped silk socks anywhere, and the
+boots are the boots of Bombazo. I administer a kick to
+those shins, and they speedily disappear. I am out on the
+moonlit lawn now, and what do I see? First, good brave
+Yambo, down on one knee, being borne backwards, fierce
+hands at his throat, a short knife at his chest. The
+would-be assassin falls; Yambo rises intact, and together
+we rush on further down to where, on a terrace, Donaldson
+has just been overpowered. But see, a new combatant has
+come upon the scene; several revolver shots are fired in
+quick succession. A tall dark figure in semi-clerical garb
+is cutting right and left with a good broadsword. And
+now&mdash;why, now it is all over, and Townley stands beside
+us panting.</p>
+<p>Well might he pant&mdash;he had done brave work. But he
+had come all too late to save Sandie. He lies there quietly
+enough on the grass. His shirt is stained with blood, and
+it is his own blood this time.</p>
+<p>Townley bends over and quietly feels his arm. No pulse
+there. Then he breathes a half audible prayer and
+reverently closes the eyes.</p>
+<p>I am hurrying back now to the room with Flora.</p>
+<p>'All is safe, mother, now. Flora is safe. See, she is
+smiling: she knows us all. Oh, Heaven be praised, she is
+safe!'</p>
+<p>We leave Townley there, and hurry back to the
+ramparts.</p>
+<p>The stillness alone would have told us that the fight was
+finished and the victory won.</p>
+<p>A few minutes after this, standing high up on the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_272' name='page_272'></a>272</span>
+rampart there, Moncrieff is mustering his people. One
+name after another is called. Alas! there are many who
+do not answer, many who will never answer more, for our
+victory has been dearly bought.</p>
+<p>Four of our Scottish settlers were found dead in the
+trench; over a dozen Gauchos had been killed. Moncrieff
+and his partner were both wounded, though neither
+severely. Archie and Dugald were also badly cut, and
+answered but faintly and feebly to the roll-call. Sandie we
+know is dead, and Bombazo is&mdash;under the sofa. So I
+thought; but listen.</p>
+<p>'Captain Rodrigo de Bombazo!'</p>
+<p>'Here, general, here,' says a bold voice close behind me,
+and Bombazo himself presses further to the front.</p>
+<p>I can hardly believe my eyes and ears. Could those
+have been Bombazo's boots? Had I really kicked the
+shins of Bombazo? Surely the events of the night had
+turned my brain. Bombazo's boots indeed! Bombazo
+skulk and hide beneath a sofa! Impossible. Look at him
+now. His hair is dishevelled; there is blood on his brow.
+He is dressed only in shirt and trousers, and these are
+marked with blood; so is his right arm, which is bared
+over the elbow, and the sword he carries in his hand.
+Bold Bombazo! How I have wronged him! But the
+silk striped socks? No; I cannot get over that.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>Barely a month before the events just narrated took
+place at the <i>estancias</i> of Moncrieff there landed from a
+sailing ship at the port of Buenos Ayres a man whose age
+might have been represented by any number of years
+'twixt thirty and forty. There were grey hairs on his
+temples, but these count for nothing in a man whose life
+has been a struggle with Fortune and Fate. The
+individual in question, whom his shipmates called Dalston,
+was tall and tough and wiry. He had shown what he was
+and what he could do in less than a week from the time of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_273' name='page_273'></a>273</span>
+his joining. At first he had been a passenger, and had
+lived away aft somewhere, no one could tell exactly where,
+for he did not dine in the saloon with the other passengers,
+and he looked above messing with the stewards. As the
+mate and he were much together it was supposed that
+Dalston made use of the first officer's cabin. The ship
+had encountered dirty weather from the very outset; head
+winds and choppy seas all the way down Channel, so that
+she was still 'kicking about off the coast'&mdash;this is how the
+seamen phrased it&mdash;when she ought to have been crossing
+the Bay or stretching away out into the broad Atlantic.
+She fared worse by far when she reached the Bay, having
+met with a gale of wind that blew most of her cloth to
+ribbons, carried away her bowsprit, and made hurdles of
+her bulwarks both forward and amidships. Worse than all,
+two men were blown from aloft while trying to reef a sail
+during a squall of more than hurricane violence. I say
+blown from aloft, and I say so advisedly, for the squall
+came on after they had gone up, a squall that even the men
+on deck could not stand against, a squall that levelled the
+very waves, and made the sea away to leeward&mdash;no one
+could see to windward&mdash;look like boiling milk.</p>
+<p>The storm began to go down immediately after the
+squall, and next day the weather was fine enough to make
+sail, and mend sail. But the ship was short-handed, for
+the skipper had made no provision against loss by accident.
+He was glad then when the mate informed him that the
+'gentleman' Dalston was as good as any two men on
+board.</p>
+<p>'Send him to me,' said the skipper.</p>
+<p>'Good morning. Ahem, I hear, sir, you would be
+willing to assist in the working of the ship. May I ask on
+what terms?'</p>
+<p>'Certainly,' said Dalston. 'I'm going out to the
+Argentine, to buy a bit of land; well, naturally, money is
+some object to me. You see?'</p>
+<p>'I understand.'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_274' name='page_274'></a>274</span></p>
+<p>'Well, my terms are the return of my passage money
+and civility.'</p>
+<p>'Agreed; but why do you mention civility?'</p>
+<p>'Because I've heard you using rather rough language to
+your men. Now, if you forgot yourself so far as to call me
+a bad name I'd&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+<p>He paused, and there was a look in his eyes the captain
+hardly relished.</p>
+<p>'Well! What would you do?'</p>
+<p>'Why, I'd&mdash;retire to my cabin.'</p>
+<p>'All right then, I think we understand each other.'</p>
+<p>So Dalston was installed, and now dined forward. He
+became a favourite with his messmates. No one could tell
+a more thrilling and adventuresome yarn than Dalston,
+no one could sing a better song than himself or join more
+heartily in the chorus when another sang, and no one
+could work more cheerily on deck, or fly more quickly
+to tack a sheet.</p>
+<p>Smyth had been the big man in the forecastle before
+Dalston's day. But Smyth was eclipsed now, and I dare say
+did not like his rival. One day, near the quarter-deck,
+Smyth called Dalston an ugly name. Dalston's answer
+was a blow which sent the fellow reeling to leeward, where
+he lay stunned.</p>
+<p>'Have you killed him, Dalston?' said the captain.</p>
+<p>'Not quite, sir; but I could have.'</p>
+<p>'Well, Dalston, you are working for two men now; don't
+let us lose another hand, else you'll have to work for
+three.'</p>
+<p>Dalston laughed.</p>
+<p>Smyth gathered himself up and slunk away, but his look
+was one Dalston would have cause to remember.</p>
+<p>This good ship&mdash;Sevenoaks she was called, after the
+captain's wife's birthplace&mdash;had a long and a rough passage
+all along. The owners were Dutchmen, so it did not
+matter a very great deal. There was plenty of time, and the
+ship was worked on the cheap. Perhaps the wonder is she
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_275' name='page_275'></a>275</span>
+kept afloat at all, for at one period of the voyage she leaked
+so badly that the crew had to pump three hours out of
+every watch. Then she crossed a bank on the South
+American coast, and the men said she had sucked in a bit
+of seaweed, for she did not leak much after this.</p>
+<p>The longest voyage has an end, however, and when the
+Sevenoaks arrived at Buenos Ayres, Dalston bade his
+messmates adieu, had his passage money duly returned,
+and went on shore, happy because he had many more
+golden sovereigns to rattle than he had expected.</p>
+<p>Dalston went to a good hotel, found out all about the
+trains, and next day set out, in company with a waiter
+who had volunteered to be his escort, to purchase a proper
+outfit&mdash;only light clothes, a rifle, a good revolver, and a
+knife or two to wear in his belt, for he was going west to
+a rough country.</p>
+<p>In the evening, after the waiter and he had dined well at
+another hotel:</p>
+<p>'You go home now,' said Dalston; 'I'm going round to
+have a look at the town,'</p>
+<p>'Take care of yourself,' the waiter said.</p>
+<p>'No fear of me,' was the laughing reply.</p>
+<p>But that very night he was borne back to his inn, cut,
+bruised, and faint.</p>
+<p>And robbed of all his gold.</p>
+<p>'Who has done this?' said the waiter, aghast at his
+friend's appearance.</p>
+<p>'Smyth!' That was all the reply.</p>
+<p>Dalston lay for weeks between life and death. Then he
+came round almost at once, and soon started away on his
+journey. The waiter&mdash;good-natured fellow&mdash;had lent him
+money to carry him to Mendoza.</p>
+<p>But Dalston's adventures were not over yet.</p>
+<p>He arrived at Villa Mercedes well and hopeful, and was
+lucky enough to secure a passage in the diligence about to
+start under mounted escort to Mendoza. After a jolting
+ride of days, the like of which he had never been used to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_276' name='page_276'></a>276</span>
+in the old country, the ancient-looking coach had completed
+three-quarters of the journey, and the rest of the road
+being considered safe the escort was allowed to go on its
+way to the frontier.</p>
+<p>They had not departed two hours, however, before the
+travellers were attacked, the driver speared, and the horses
+captured. The only passenger who made the slightest
+resistance was Dalston. He was speedily overpowered,
+and would have been killed on the spot had not the
+<i>cacique</i> of the party whom Dalston had wounded interfered
+and spared his life.</p>
+<p>Spared his life! But for what? He did not know.
+Some of the passengers were permitted to go free, the rest
+were killed. He alone was mounted on horseback, his
+legs tied with thongs and his horse led by an Indian.</p>
+<p>All that night and all next day his captors journeyed
+on, taking, as far as Dalston could judge, a south-west
+course. His sufferings were extreme. His legs were
+swollen, cut, and bleeding; his naked shoulders&mdash;for they
+had stripped him almost naked&mdash;burned and blistered
+with the sun; and although his tongue was parched and
+his head drooping wearily on his breast, no one offered him
+a mouthful of water.</p>
+<p>He begged them to kill him. Perhaps the <i>cacique</i>,
+who was almost a white man, understood his meaning, for
+he grinned in derision and pointed to his own bullet-wounded
+arm. The <i>cacique</i> knew well there were
+sufferings possible compared to which death itself would
+be as pleasure.</p>
+<p>When the Indians at last went into camp&mdash;which they
+did but for a night&mdash;he was released, but guarded; a hunk
+of raw guanaco meat was thrown to him, which he tried
+to suck for the juices it contained.</p>
+<p>Next day they went on and on again, over a wild pampa
+land now, with here and there a bush or tussock of grass
+or thistles, and here and there a giant ombu-tree. His
+ankles were more painful than ever, his shoulders were
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_277' name='page_277'></a>277</span>
+raw, the horse he rode was often prodded with a spear, and
+he too was wounded at the same time. Once or twice the
+<i>cacique</i>, maddened by the pain of his wound, rushed at
+Dalston with uplifted knife, and the wretched prisoner
+begged that the blow might fall.</p>
+<p>Towards evening they reached a kind of hill and forest
+land, where the flowering cacti rose high above the tallest
+spear. Then they came to a ruin. Indians here were in
+full force, horses dashed to and fro, and it was evident
+from the bustle and stir that they were on the war-path,
+and soon either to attack or be attacked.</p>
+<p>The prisoner was now roughly unhorsed and cruelly
+lashed to a tree, and left unheeded by all. For a moment
+or two he felt grateful for the shade, but his position after
+a time became painful in the extreme. At night-fall all
+the Indians left, and soon after the sufferings of the poor
+wretch grew more dreadful than pen can describe. He
+was being slowly eaten alive by myriads of insects that
+crept and crawled or flew; horrid spiders with hairy legs
+and of enormous size ran over his neck and naked chest,
+loathsome centipedes wriggled over his shoulders and face
+and bit him, and ants covered him black from head to feet.
+Towards dusk a great jaguar went prowling past, looked
+at him with green fierce eyes, snarled low, and went on.
+Vultures alighted near him, but they too passed by; they
+could wait. Then it was night, and many of the insect pests
+grew luminous. They flitted and danced before his eyes
+till tortured nature could bear no more, and insensibility
+ended his sufferings for a time.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>The Indians must have thought that, although their
+attack on our <i>estancia</i> had failed, we were too weak or too
+frightened to pursue them. They did not know Moncrieff.
+Wounded though he was, he had issued forth from behind
+the ramparts with thirty well-armed and splendidly-mounted
+men. They followed the enemy up for seven long hours,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_278' name='page_278'></a>278</span>
+and succeeded in teaching them such a lesson that they
+have never been seen in that district since.</p>
+<p>Towards noon we were riding homewards, tired and
+weary enough now, when Donald suggested our visiting
+the old Jesuit ruin, and so we turned our horses' heads in
+that direction.</p>
+<p>Donald had ridden on before, and as I drew near I
+heard him cry, 'Oh, Moncrieff, come quickly! Here is
+some poor fellow lashed to the ombu-tree!'</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XXV_FAREWELL_TO_THE_SILVER_WEST' id='XXV_FAREWELL_TO_THE_SILVER_WEST'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_279' name='page_279'></a>279</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+<h3>FAREWELL TO THE SILVER WEST.</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>We cut the man's cords of thongs, we spread rugs on
+the grass and laid him gently down, then bathed
+his poor body with wine, and poured a little down his
+throat.</p>
+<p>In about half an hour the wretched being we had
+thought dead slowly raised himself on his elbow and
+gazed at <i>me</i> as well as his swollen eyes would permit him.
+His lips moved as if to speak, but no intelligible sound
+escaped them. The recollection dawned on my mind all
+at once, and in that sadly-distorted face I discovered traces
+of the man who had wrought us so much sorrow and evil.</p>
+<p>I took his hand in mine.</p>
+<p>'Am I right?' I said. 'Are you Duncan M'Rae?'</p>
+<p>He nodded drowsily, closed his eyes again, and lay back.</p>
+<p>We cut branches from the ombu-tree, tied them
+together with the thongs that had bound the victim's
+limbs, and so made a litter. On this we placed rugs and
+laid the man; and between two mules he was borne by
+the Gauchos slowly homewards to the <i>estancias</i>. Poor
+wretch! he had expected to come here all but a conqueror,
+and in a position to dictate his own terms&mdash;he arrived a
+dying man.</p>
+<p>Our <i>estancia</i> for many weeks was now turned almost
+into a hospital, for even those Indians who had crept
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_280' name='page_280'></a>280</span>
+wounded into the bush, preferring to die at the sides of
+hedges to falling into our hands, we had brought in and
+treated with kindness, and many recovered.</p>
+<p>All the dead we could find we buried in the humble
+little graveyard on the braeside. We buried them without
+respect of nationality, only a few feet of clay separating
+the white man's grave from that of his Indian foe.</p>
+<p>'It matters little,' said Moncrieff. 'where one rests,</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto; '><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>"For still and peaceful is the grave,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>Where, life's vain tumults past,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>The appointed house, by Heaven's decree,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>Receives us all at last."'</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>Both Dugald and Archie made excellent patients, and
+Flora and Aileen the best of nurses. But <i>the</i> nurse over
+even these was old Jenny. She was hospital superintendent,
+and saw to all the arrangements, even making
+the poultices and spreading the salves and plasters with
+her own hands.</p>
+<p>'My mither's a ma<i>rr</i>vel at he<i>rr</i>bs!' said Moncrieff over
+and over again, when he saw the old lady busy at work.</p>
+<p>There was one patient, and only one, whom old Jenny
+did not nurse. This was Duncan himself. For him
+Townley did all his skill could suggest, and was seldom
+two consecutive hours away from the room where he lay.</p>
+<p>In spite of all this it was evident that the ex-poacher
+was sinking fast.</p>
+<p>Then came a day when Moncrieff, Archie, and myself
+were called into the dying man's apartment, and heard
+him make the fullest confession of all his villainy, and beg
+for our forgiveness with the tears roiling down his wan,
+worn face.</p>
+<p>Yes, we forgave him willingly.</p>
+<p>May Heaven forgive him too!</p>
+<p>At the time of his confession he was strong enough to
+read over and sign the document that Townley placed
+before him. He told Townley too the addresses of the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_281' name='page_281'></a>281</span>
+men who had assisted him in the old vault at the ruined
+kirk in Coila.</p>
+<p>And Duncan had seemed brighter and calmer for
+several days after this. But he told us he had no desire
+to live now.</p>
+<p>Then, one morning the change came, and so he sank
+and died.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>It was several months before we could make up our
+minds to leave 'Our Home in the Silver West.' Indeed,
+there was considerable preparation to be made for the
+long homeward voyage that was before us; besides,
+Townley had no inclination to hurry matters now that he
+felt sure of victory.</p>
+<p>Victory was not even yet a certainty, however. The
+estate of Coila was well worth fighting for. Was there
+not the possibility, the bare possibility, that the solicitors
+or advocates of Le Roi, or the M'Rae, who now held the
+castle and glen, might find some fatal flaw in the evidence
+which Townley had spent so much time and care in
+working out and collecting?</p>
+<p>It was not at all probable. In fact, despite the blood-feud,
+that ancient family folly, I believed that M'Rae
+would act the part of a gentleman.</p>
+<p>'If,' said Townley to me one day, as we walked for
+almost the last time in the beautiful gardens around
+Moncrieff's mansion-house, 'we have anything to fear, I
+believe it is from the legal advisers of the present
+"occupier"'&mdash;Townley would not say 'owner'&mdash;'of the
+estate. These men, you know, Murdoch, can hardly
+expect to be <i>our</i> advocates. They are well aware that if
+they lose hold of Coila now the title-deeds thereof will
+never again rest in the fireproof safes of their offices.'</p>
+<p>'I am afraid,' I said, 'you have but a poor opinion of
+Edinburgh advocates.'</p>
+<p>'Not so, Murdoch, not so. But,' he added, meaningly
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_282' name='page_282'></a>282</span>
+'I have lived longer in life than you, and I have but a
+poor opinion of human nature.'</p>
+<p>'I suppose,' I said, 'that the M'Rae will know nothing
+of what is coming till our arrival on Scottish shores!'</p>
+<p>'On the contrary,' answered Townley; 'although it
+may really seem like playing into our opponent's hands, I
+have written a friendly letter to the M'Rae, and have told
+him to be prepared; that I have irrefragable evidence&mdash;mind,
+I do not particularize&mdash;that you, Murdoch M'Crimman,
+are the true and only proprietor of the estates of
+Coila. I want him to see and feel that I am treating him
+as the man of honour I believe him to be, and that the
+only thing we really desire is justice to all concerned.'</p>
+<p>I smiled, and could not help saying, 'Townley, my
+best of friends, what an excellent advocate you would have
+made!'</p>
+<p>Townley smiled in turn.</p>
+<p>'Say, rather,' he replied, 'what an excellent detective I
+should have made! But, after all, Murdoch, it may turn
+out that there is a spice of selfishness in all I am doing.'</p>
+<p>'I do not believe a word of it, Townley.'</p>
+<p>Townley only laughed, and looked mysterious.</p>
+<p>'Hold on a little,' he said; 'don't be too quick to express
+your judgment.'</p>
+<p>'I will wait, then,' I answered; 'but really I cannot
+altogether understand you.'</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>Perhaps nothing shows true physical courage better than
+the power to say 'Farewell' apparently unmoved. It is a
+kind of courage, however, that is very rare indeed, and all
+sorts of stratagems have been adopted to soften the grief
+of parting. I am not sure that I myself was not guilty of
+adopting one of these on the morning we left that pleasant
+home by the lake.</p>
+<p>'I'm not going to say "farewell" at all,' I insisted, as I
+shook hands with Irish Aileen and poor old Jenny,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_283' name='page_283'></a>283</span>
+Moncrieff's 'marvellous mither.' 'I'm coming out again
+to see you all as soon as ever I can get settled. Do you
+think I could leave this beautiful country entirely, without
+spending at least a few more years in it? Not I! And
+even if I do succeed in getting old Coila back once more&mdash;even
+that, mind, is uncertain&mdash;I sha'n't quite give up Coila
+New. So <i>au revoir</i>, Moncrieff; <i>au revoir</i>!'</p>
+<p>Then, turning to Jenny, '<i>Au revoir</i>, Jenny,' I said.</p>
+<p>'Guid-bye, laddie, and God be wi' ye. I canna speak
+French. I've tried a word or twa mair than once, and
+nearly knocked my jaws out o' the joint; so I'll just say
+"Guid-bye." Lang, lang ere you can come back to Coila
+New puir old Jenny's bones will be in the mools.'</p>
+<p>I felt a big lump in my throat just then, and was
+positively grateful when Bombazo strutted up dressed in
+full uniform.</p>
+<p>'<i>A dios</i>', he said; 'my friend, <i>a dios</i>. And now you
+have but to say the word, and if you have the least fear of
+being molested by Indians, my trusty sword is at your
+service, and I will gladly escort you as far as Villa
+Mercedes.'</p>
+<p>It is needless to say that I declined this truly heroic
+offer.</p>
+<p>Our party&mdash;the departing one&mdash;consisted of mother,
+aunt, Townley, Archie, and myself. My sister and my
+brothers came many miles on the road with us; then we
+bade them good-bye, and I felt glad when that was
+over.</p>
+<p>But Moncrieff's convoy was a truly Scottish one. He
+and his good men never thought of turning back till they
+had seen us safely on board the train, and rapidly being
+whirled away southwards.</p>
+<p>As long as I could see this honest settler he was waving
+his broad bonnet in the air, and&mdash;I felt sure of this&mdash;commending
+us all to a kind Providence.</p>
+<p>The vessel in which we took passage was a steamer
+that bore us straight to the Clyde. Our voyage was a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_284' name='page_284'></a>284</span>
+splendid one; in fact, I believe we were all just a little
+sorry when it was finished.</p>
+<p>Landing there in the Broomielaw on a cold forenoon in
+early spring would have possessed but little of interest for
+any of us&mdash;so full were our minds with the meeting that
+was before us, the meeting of M'Crimman and M'Rae&mdash;only
+we received a welcome that, being all so unexpected,
+caused tears of joy to spring to my eyes. For hardly was
+the gangway thrust on board from the quay ere more than
+twenty sturdy Highlanders, who somehow had got possession
+of it, came rushing and shouting on board. I knew every
+face at once, though some were changed&mdash;with illness,
+years, or sorrow.</p>
+<p>Perhaps few such scenes had ever before been witnessed
+on the Broomielaw, for those men were arrayed in the full
+Scottish costume and wore the M'Crimman tartan, and their
+shouts of joy might have been heard a good half-mile off,
+despite the noises of the great city.</p>
+<p>How they had heard of our coming it never occurred to
+me to inquire. Suffice it to say that here they were, and
+I leave the reader to guess the kind of welcome they gave
+us.</p>
+<p>No, nothing would satisfy them short of escorting us to
+our hotel.</p>
+<p>Our carriages, therefore, to please these kindly souls
+from Coila, were obliged to proceed but slowly, for five
+pipers marched in front, playing the bold old air of 'The
+March of the Cameron Men,' while the rest, with drawn
+claymores, brought up the rear.</p>
+<p>On the very next day Townley, Archie, and I received a
+message from M'Rae himself, announcing that he would
+gladly meet us at the Royal Hotel in Edinburgh. We
+were to bring no advocate with us, the letter advised; if
+any dispute arose, then, and not till then, would be the
+time to call in the aid of the law.</p>
+<p>I confess that I entered M'Rae's room with a beating
+heart. How would he receive us?
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_285' name='page_285'></a>285</span></p>
+<p>We found him quietly smoking a cigar and gazing out
+of the window.</p>
+<p>But he turned with a kindly smile towards us as soon
+as we entered, and the next minute we were all seated round
+the table, and business&mdash;<i>the</i> business&mdash;was entered into.</p>
+<p>M'Rae listened without a word. He never even
+moved a muscle while Townley told all his long story, or
+rather read it from paper after paper, which he took from
+his bag. The last of these papers was Duncan's own
+confession, with Archie's signature and mine as witnesses
+alongside Moncrieff's.</p>
+<p>He opened his lips at last.</p>
+<p>'This is your signature, and you duly attest all this?'</p>
+<p>He put the question first to Archie and then to me.</p>
+<p>Receiving a reply in the affirmative, it was but natural
+that I should look for some show of emotion in M'Rae's
+face. I looked in vain. I have never seen more consummate
+coolness before nor since. Indeed, it was a
+coolness that alarmed me.</p>
+<p>And when he rose from the table after a few minutes
+of apparently engrossing thought, and walked directly
+towards a casket that stood on the writing-table, I
+thought that after all our cause was lost.</p>
+<p>In that casket, I felt sure, lay some strange document
+that should utterly undo all Townley's work of years.</p>
+<p>M'Rae is now at the table. He opens the casket, and
+for a moment looks critically at its contents.</p>
+<p>I can hear my heart beating. I'm sure I look pale
+with anxiety.</p>
+<p>Now M'Rae puts his hand inside and quietly takes
+out&mdash;a fresh cigar.</p>
+<p>Then, humming a tune the while, he brings the casket
+towards Townley, and bids him help himself.</p>
+<p>Townley does as he is told, but at the same time bursts
+into a hearty laugh.</p>
+<p>'Mr. M'Rae,' he says, 'you are the coolest man that ever
+I met. I do believe that if you were taken out to be shot&mdash;'
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_286' name='page_286'></a>286</span></p>
+<p>'Stay,' said M'Rae, 'I <i>was</i> once. I was tried for a
+traitor&mdash;tried for a crime in France called "Treason," that
+I was as guiltless of as an unborn babe&mdash;and condemned.'</p>
+<p>'And what did you do?'</p>
+<p>'Some one on the ground handed me a cigar, and&mdash;I
+lit it.</p>
+<p>'Nay, my dear friends, I have lost my case here.
+Indeed, I never, it would seem, had one.</p>
+<p>'M'Crimman,' he continued, shaking me by the hand,
+'Coila is yours.'</p>
+<p>'Strathtoul,' I answered, 'is our blood feud at an
+end?'</p>
+<p>'It is,' was the answer; and once again hand met
+hand across the table.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>Need I tell of the home-coming of the M'Crimmans of
+Coila? Of the clansmen who met us in the glen and
+marched along with us? Of the cheering strains of music
+that re-echoed from every rock? Of the flags that
+fluttered over and around our Castle Coila? Of the
+bonfires that blazed that night on every hill, and cast
+their lurid light across the darkling lake? Or of the
+tears my mother shed when, looking round the tartan
+drawing-room, the cosiest in all the castle, she thought of
+father, dead and gone? No, for some things are better
+left to the reader's imagination.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>I throw down my pen with a sigh of relief.</p>
+<p>I think I have finished my story; my noble deerhound
+thinks so too. He gets slowly up from the hearthrug,
+conies towards me, and places his honest head on my
+arm, but his eyes are fixed on mine.</p>
+<p>It is not patting that he wants, nor petting either.</p>
+<p>'Come out now, master,' he seems to say, speaking
+with soft brown eyes and wagging tail; 'come out,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_287' name='page_287'></a>287</span>
+master; mount your fleetest horse, and let us have a
+glorious gallop across the hills. See how the sun shines
+and glitters on grass, on leaves and lake! While you
+have been writing there day after day, I, your faithful
+dog, have been languishing. Come, master, come!'</p>
+<p>And we go together.</p>
+<p>When I return, refreshed, and run up stairs to the
+room in the tower, I find dear auntie there. She has
+been reading my manuscript.</p>
+<p>'There is,' she says, 'only one addition to make.'</p>
+<p>'Name it, auntie,' I say; 'it is not yet too late.'</p>
+<p>But she hesitates.</p>
+<p>'It is almost a secret,' she says at last, bending down
+and smoothing the deerhound.</p>
+<p>'A secret, auntie? Ha, ha!' I laugh. 'I have it,
+auntie! I have it!'</p>
+<p>And I kiss her there and then.</p>
+<p>'It is Townley's secret and yours. He has proposed,
+and you are to&mdash;'</p>
+<p>But auntie has run out of the room.</p>
+<p>And now, come to think of it, there is something to
+add to all this.</p>
+<p>Can you guess <i>my</i> secret, reader mine?</p>
+<p>Irene, my darling Irene and I, Murdoch M'Crimman,
+are also to be&mdash;</p>
+<p>But, there, you have guessed my secret, as I guessed
+auntie's.</p>
+<p>And just let me ask this: Could any better plan
+have been devised of burying the hatchet betwixt two
+rival Highland clans, and putting an end for ever to a
+blood feud?</p>
+<div class='ce'>
+<p style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:3em;'>THE END.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='ppg-pb' />
+<div class='ce'>
+<p><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Richard Clay and Sons, Limited,</span></p>
+<p><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>London and Bungay.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='ppg-pb' />
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<img src='images/ad288.png' alt='' title=''  /><br />
+</div>
+
+<hr class='ppg-pb' />
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+
+<hr class='ppg-pb' />
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+</div>
+
+<hr class='ppg-pb' />
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<img src='images/ad293.png' alt='' title=''  /><br />
+</div>
+
+<hr class='ppg-pb' />
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<img src='images/ad294.png' alt='' title=''  /><br />
+</div>
+
+<hr class='ppg-pb' />
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<img src='images/ad295.png' alt='' title=''  /><br />
+</div>
+
+<!-- generated by ppgen.rb version: 2.67 -->
+<!-- timestamp: Tue Dec 23 03:01:44 -0700 2008 -->
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+<pre>
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+End of Project Gutenberg's Our Home in the Silver West, by Gordon Stables
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Home in the Silver West, by Gordon Stables
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Our Home in the Silver West
+       A Story of Struggle and Adventure
+
+Author: Gordon Stables
+
+Release Date: March 9, 2009 [EBook #28291]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR HOME IN THE SILVER WEST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank, Juliet Sutherland and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: The Figure Springs into the Air--See page 129.]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE BOYS OWN BOOKSHELF]
+
+OUR HOME IN THE SILVER WEST
+
+A Story of Struggle and Adventure
+
+BY
+
+GORDON STABLES, C.M., M.D., R.N.
+
+AUTHOR OF 'THE CRUISE OF THE SNOWBIRD,' 'WILD ADVENTURES ROUND THE POLE,'
+ETC., ETC.
+
+THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY
+
+56, Paternoster Row; 65, St. Paul's Churchyard and 164 Piccadilly
+
+
+
+
+Richard Clay and Sons, Limited,
+London and Bungay.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+CHAPTER                                           PAGE
+     I.  The Highland Feud.                         11
+    II.  Our Boyhood's Life.                        23
+   III.  A Terrible Ride.                           30
+    IV.  The Ring and the Book.                     44
+     V.  A New Home in the West.                    54
+    VI.  The Promised Land at Last.                 64
+   VII.  On Shore at Rio.                           77
+  VIII.  Moncrieff Relates His Experiences.         86
+    IX.  Shopping and Shooting.                     96
+     X.  A Journey That Seems Like a Dream.        106
+    XI.  The Tragedy at the Fonda.                 115
+   XII.  Attack by Pampa Indians.                  125
+  XIII.  The Flight and the Chase.                 134
+   XIV.  Life on an Argentine Estancia.            146
+    XV.  We Build our House and Lay Out Gardens.   155
+   XVI.  Summer in the Silver West.                165
+  XVII.  The Earthquake.                           175
+ XVIII.  Our Hunting Expedition.                   185
+   XIX.  In the Wilderness.                        197
+    XX.  The Mountain Crusoe.                      209
+   XXI.  Wild Adventures on Prairie and Pampas.    221
+  XXII.  Adventure With a Tiger.                   231
+ XXIII.  A Ride for Life.                          244
+  XXIV.  The Attack on the Estancia.               255
+   XXV.  The Last Assault.                         266
+    XXV  Farewell to the Silver West.              279
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+                                                    PAGE
+The Figure Springs into the Air             Frontispiece
+Orla thrusts his Muzzle into my Hand                  10
+Ray lay Stark and Stiff                               18
+'Look! He is Over!'                                   33
+He pointed his Gun at me                              41
+'I'll teach ye!'                                      74
+Fairly Noosed                                         99
+'Ye can Claw the Pat'                                138
+Comical in the Extreme                               195
+Tries to steady himself to catch the Lasso           203
+Interview with the Orang-outang                      214
+On the same Limb of the Tree                         236
+The Indians advanced with a Wild Shout               268
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Orla thrusts his Muzzle into my Hand]
+
+
+
+
+OUR HOME IN THE SILVER WEST
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE HIGHLAND FEUD.
+
+
+Why should I, Murdoch M'Crimman of Coila, be condemned for a period of
+indefinite length to the drudgery of the desk's dull wood? That is the
+question I have just been asking myself. Am I emulous of the honour and
+glory that, they say, float halo-like round the brow of the author? Have I
+the desire to awake and find myself famous? The fame, alas! that authors
+chase is but too often an _ignis fatuus_. No; honour like theirs I crave
+not, such toil is not incumbent on me. Genius in a garret! To some the
+words may sound romantic enough, but--ah me!--the position seems a sad
+one. Genius munching bread and cheese in a lonely attic, with nothing
+betwixt the said genius and the sky and the cats but rafters and tiles! I
+shudder to think of it. If my will were omnipotent, Genius should never
+shiver beneath the tiles, never languish in an attic. Genius should be
+clothed in purple and fine linen, Genius should---- 'Yes, aunt, come in;
+I'm not very busy yet.'
+
+My aunt sails into my beautiful room in the eastern tower of Castle
+Coila.
+
+'I was afraid,' she says, almost solemnly, 'I might be disturbing your
+meditations. Do I find you really at work?'
+
+'I've hardly arrived at that point yet, dear aunt. Indeed, if the truth
+will not displease you, I greatly fear serious concentration is not very
+much in my line. But as you desire me to write our strange story, and as
+mother also thinks the duty devolves on me, behold me seated at my table
+in this charming turret chamber, which owes its all of comfort to your
+most excellent taste, auntie mine.'
+
+As I speak I look around me. The evening sunshine is streaming into my
+room, which occupies the whole of one story of the tower. Glance where I
+please, nothing is here that fails to delight the eye. The carpet beneath
+my feet is soft as moss, the tall mullioned windows are bedraped with the
+richest curtains. Pictures and mirrors hang here and there, and seem part
+and parcel of the place. So does that dark lofty oak bookcase, the great
+harp in the west corner, the violin that leans against it, the
+_jardiniere_, the works of art, the arms from every land--the shields, the
+claymores, the spears and helmets, everything is in keeping. This is my
+garret. If I want to meditate, I have but to draw aside a curtain in
+yonder nook, and lo! a little baize-covered door slides aside and admits
+me to one of the tower-turrets, a tiny room in which fairies might live,
+with a window on each side giving glimpses of landscape--and landscape
+unsurpassed for beauty in all broad Scotland.
+
+But it was by the main doorway of my chamber that auntie entered, drawing
+aside the curtains and pausing a moment till she should receive my
+cheering invitation. And this door leads on to the roof, and this roof
+itself is a sight to see. Loftily domed over with glass, it is at once a
+conservatory, a vinery, and tropical aviary. Room here for trees even, for
+miniature palms, while birds of the rarest plumage flit silently from
+bough to bough among the oranges, or lisp out the sweet lilts that have
+descended to them from sires that sang in foreign lands. Yonder a
+fountain plays and casts its spray over the most lovely feathery ferns.
+The roof is very spacious, and the conservatory occupies the greater part
+of it, leaving room outside, however, for a delightful promenade. After
+sunset coloured lamps are often lit here, and the place then looks even
+more lovely than before. All this, I need hardly say, was my aunt's
+doing.
+
+I wave my hand, and the lady sinks half languidly into a fauteuil.
+
+'And so,' I say, laughingly, 'you have come to visit Genius in his
+garret.'
+
+My aunt smiles too, but I can see it is only out of politeness.
+
+I throw down my pen; I leave my chair and seat myself on the bearskin
+beside the ample fireplace and begin toying with Orla, my deerhound.
+
+'Aunt, play and sing a little; it will inspire me.'
+
+She needs no second bidding. She bends over the great harp and lightly
+touches a few chords.
+
+'What shall I play or sing?'
+
+'Play and sing as you feel, aunt.'
+
+'I feel thus,' my aunt says, and her fingers fly over the strings,
+bringing forth music so inspiriting and wild that as I listen, entranced,
+some words of Ossian come rushing into my memory:
+
+'The moon rose in the East. Fingal returned in the gleam of his arms. The
+joy of his youth was great, their souls settled as a sea from a storm.
+Ullin raised the song of gladness. The hills of Inistore rejoiced. The
+flame of the oak arose, and the tales of heroes were told.'
+
+Aunt is not young, but she looks very noble now--looks the very
+incarnation of the music that fills the room. In it I can hear the
+battle-cry of heroes, the wild slogan of clan after clan rushing to the
+fight, the clang of claymore on shield, the shout of victory, the wail for
+the dead. There are tears in my eyes as the music ceases, and my aunt
+turns once more towards me.
+
+'Aunt, your music has made me ashamed of myself. Before you came I
+recoiled from the task you had set before me; I longed to be out and away,
+marching over the moors gun in hand and dogs ahead. Now I--I--yes, aunt,
+this music inspires me.'
+
+Aunt rises as I speak, and together we leave the turret chamber, and,
+passing through the great conservatory, we reach the promenade. We lean on
+the battlement, long since dismantled, and gaze beneath us. Close to the
+castle walls below is a well-kept lawn trending downwards with slight
+incline to meet the loch which laps over its borders. This loch, or lake,
+stretches for miles and miles on every side, bounded here and there by
+bare, black, beetling cliffs, and in other places
+
+               'O'erhung by wild woods thickening green,
+
+a very cloudland of foliage. The easternmost horizon of this lake is a
+chain of rugged mountains, one glance at which would tell you the season
+was autumn, for they are crimsoned over with blooming heather. The season
+is autumn, and the time is sunset; the shadow of the great tower falls
+darkling far over the loch, and already crimson streaks of cloud are
+ranged along the hill-tops. So silent and still is it that we can hear the
+bleating of sheep a good mile off, and the throb of the oars of a boat far
+away on the water, although the boat itself is but a little dark speck.
+There is another dark speck, high, high above the crimson clouds. It comes
+nearer and nearer; it gets bigger and bigger; and presently a huge eagle
+floats over the castle, making homeward to his eyrie in the cliffs of Ben
+Coila.
+
+The air gets cooler as the shadows fall; I draw the shawl closer round my
+aunt's shoulders. She lifts a hand as if to deprecate the attention.
+
+'Listen, Murdoch,' she says. 'Listen, Murdoch M'Crimman.'
+
+She seldom calls me by my name complete.
+
+'I may leave you now, may I not?'
+
+'I know what you mean, aunt,' I reply. 'Yes; to the best of my ability I
+will write our strange story.'
+
+'Who else would but you, Murdoch M'Crimman, chief of the house of Crimman,
+chief of the clan?'
+
+I bow my head in silent sorrow.
+
+'Yes, aunt; I know. Poor father is gone, and I _am_ chief.'
+
+She touches my hand lightly--it is her way of taking farewell. Next moment
+I am alone. Orla thrusts his great muzzle into my hand; I pat his head,
+then go back with him to my turret chamber, and once more take up my pen.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+A blood feud! Has the reader ever heard of such a thing? Happily it is
+unknown in our day. A blood feud--a quarrel 'twixt kith and kin, a feud
+oftentimes bequeathed from bleeding sire to son, handed down from
+generation to generation, getting more bitter in each; a feud that not
+even death itself seems enough to obliterate; an enmity never to be
+forgotten while hills raise high their heads to meet the clouds.
+
+Such a feud is surely cruel. It is more, it is sinful--it is madness. Yet
+just such a feud had existed for far more than a hundred years between our
+family of M'Crimman and the Raes of Strathtoul.
+
+There is but little pleasure in referring back to such a family quarrel,
+but to do so is necessary. Vast indeed is the fire that a small spark may
+sometimes kindle. Two small dead branches rubbing together as the wind
+blows may fire a forest, and cause a conflagration that shall sweep from
+end to end of a continent.
+
+It was a hundred years ago, and forty years to that; the head of the house
+of Stuart--Prince Charles Edward, whom his enemies called the
+Pretender--had not yet set foot on Scottish shore, though there were
+rumours almost daily that he had indeed come at last. The Raes were
+cousins of the M'Crimmans; the Raes were head of the clan M'Rae, and their
+country lay to the south of our estates. It was an ill-fated day for both
+clans when one morning a stalwart Highlander, flying from glen to glen
+with the fiery cross waving aloft, brought a missive to the chief of
+Coila. The Raes had been summoned to meet their prince; the M'Crimman had
+been _solicited_. In two hours' time the straths were all astir with
+preparations for the march. No boy or man who could carry arms, 'twixt the
+ages of sixteen and sixty, but buckled his claymore to his side and made
+ready to leave. Listen to the wild shout of the men, the shrill notes of
+bagpipes, the wailing of weeping women and children! Oh, it was a stirring
+time; my Scotch blood leaps in all my veins as I think of it even now.
+Right on our side; might on our side! We meant to do or die!
+
+        'Rise! rise! lowland and highland men!
+           Bald sire to beardless son, each come and early.
+        Rise! rise! mainland and island men,
+           Belt on your claymores and fight for Prince Charlie.
+                Down from the mountain steep--
+                Up from the valley deep--
+        Out from the clachan, the bothy and shieling;
+                Bugle and battle-drum,
+                Bid chief and vassal come,
+        Loudly our bagpipes the pibroch are pealing.'
+
+M'Crimman of Coila that evening met the Raes hastening towards the lake.
+
+'Ah, kinsman,' cried M'Crimman, 'this is indeed a glorious day! I have
+been summoned by letter from the royal hands of our bold young prince
+himself.'
+
+'And I, chief of the Raes, have been summoned by cross. A letter was none
+too good for Coila. Strathtoul must be content to follow the pibroch and
+drum.'
+
+'It was an oversight. My brother must neither fret nor fume. If our prince
+but asked me, I'd fight in the ranks for him, and carry musket or pike or
+pistol.'
+
+[Illustration: Ray lay Stark and Stiff]
+
+'It's good being you, with your letter and all that. Kinsman though you
+be, I'd have you know, and I'd have our prince understand, that the Raes
+and Crimmans are one and the same family, and equal where they stand or
+fall.'
+
+'Of that,' said the proud Coila, drawing himself up and lowering his
+brows, 'our prince is the best judge.'
+
+'These are pretty airs to give yourself, M'Crimman! One would think your
+claymore drank blood every morning!'
+
+'Brother,' said M'Crimman, 'do not let us quarrel. I have orders to see
+your people on the march. They are to come with us. I must do my duty.'
+
+'Never!' shouted Rae. 'Never shall my clan obey your commands!'
+
+'You refuse to fight for Charlie?'
+
+'Under your banner--yes!'
+
+'Then draw, dog! Were you ten times more closely related to me, you should
+eat your words or drown them in your blood!'
+
+Half an hour afterwards the M'Crimmans were on the march southwards, their
+bold young chief at their head, banners streaming and pibroch ringing!
+but, alas! their kinsman Rae lay stark and stiff on the bare hillside.
+
+There and then was established the feud that lasted so long and so
+bitterly. Surrounded by her vassals and retainers, loud in their wailing
+for their departed chief, the widowed wife had thrown herself on the body
+of her husband in a paroxysm of wild, uncontrollable grief.
+
+But nought could restore life and animation to that lowly form. The dead
+chief lay on his back, with face up-turned to the sky's blue, which his
+eyes seemed to pierce. His bonnet had fallen off, his long yellow hair
+floated on the grass, his hand yet grasped the great claymore, but his
+tartans were dyed with blood.
+
+Then a brother of the Rae approached and led the weeping woman gently
+away. Almost immediately the warriors gathered and knelt around the
+corpse and swore the terrible feud--swore eternal enmity to the house of
+Coila--'to fight the clan wherever found, to wrestle, to rackle and rive
+with them, and never to make peace
+
+                   'While there's leaf on the forest
+                      Or foam on the river.'
+
+We all know the story of Prince Charlie's expedition, and how, after
+victories innumerable, all was lost to his cause through disunions in his
+own camps; how his sun went down on the red field of Culloden Moor; how
+true and steadfast, even after defeat, the peasant Highlanders were to
+their chief; and how the glens and straths were devastated by fire and
+sword; and how the streams ran red with the innocent blood of old men and
+children, spilled by the brutal soldiery of the ruthless duke.
+
+The M'Crimmans lost their estates. The Raes had never fought for Charlie.
+Their glen was spared, but the hopes of M'Rae--the young chief--were
+blighted, for after years of exile the M'Crimman was pardoned, and fires
+were once more lit in the halls of Castle Coila.
+
+Long years went by, many of the Raes went abroad to fight in foreign lands
+wherever good swords were needed and lusty arms to wield them withal; but
+those who remained in or near Strathtoul still kept up the feud with as
+great fierceness as though it had been sworn but yesterday.
+
+Towards the beginning of the present century, however, a strange thing
+happened. A young officer of French dragoons came to reside for a time in
+Glen Coila. His name was Le Roi. Though of Scotch extraction, he had never
+been before to our country. Now hospitality is part and parcel of the
+religion of Scotland; it is not surprising, therefore, that this young son
+of the sword should have been received with open arms at Coila, nor that,
+dashing, handsome, and brave himself, he should have fallen in love with
+the winsome daughter of the then chief of the M'Crimmans. When he sought
+to make her his bride explanations were necessary. It was no uncommon
+thing in those days for good Scotch families to permit themselves to be
+allied with France; but there must be rank on both sides. Had a
+thunderbolt burst in Castle Coila then it could have caused no greater
+commotion than did the fact when it came to light that Le Roi was a direct
+descendant of the chief of the Raes. Alas! for the young lovers now. Le
+Roi in silence and sorrow ate his last meal at Castle Coila. Hospitality
+had never been shown more liberally than it was that night, but ere the
+break of day Le Roi had gone--never to return to the glen _in propria
+persona_. Whether or not an aged harper who visited the castle a month
+thereafter was Le Roi in disguise may never be known; but this, at least,
+is fact--that same night the chief's daughter was spirited away and seen
+no more in Coila.
+
+There was talk, however, of a marriage having been solemnized by
+torchlight, in the little Catholic chapel at the foot of the glen, but of
+this we will hear more anon, for thereby hangs a tale.
+
+In course of time Coila presented the sad spectacle of a house without a
+head. Who should now be heir? The Scottish will of former chiefs notified
+that in event of such an occurrence the estates should pass 'to the
+nearest heirs whatever.'
+
+But was there no heir of direct descent? For a time it seemed there would
+be or really was. To wit, a son of Le Roi, the officer who had wedded into
+the house of M'Crimman.
+
+Now our family was brother-family to the M'Crimmans. M'Crimmans we were
+ourselves, and Celtic to the last drop of blood in our veins.
+
+Our claim to the estate was but feebly disputed by the French Rae's son.
+His father and mother had years ago crossed the bourne from which no
+traveller ever returns, and he himself was not young. The little church or
+chapel in which the marriage had been celebrated was a ruin--it had been
+burned to the ground, whether as part price of the terrible feud or not,
+no one could say; the priest was dead, or gone none knew whither; and old
+Mawsie, a beldame, lived in the cottage that had once been the Catholic
+manse.
+
+Those were wild and strange times altogether in this part of the Scottish
+Highlands, and law was oftentimes the property of might rather than
+right.
+
+At the time, then, our story really opens, my father had lived in the
+castle and ruled in the glens for many a long year. I was the first-born,
+next came Donald, then Dugald, and last of all our one sister Flora.
+
+What a happy life was ours in Glen Coila, till the cloud arose on our
+horizon, which, gathering force amain, burst in storm at last over our
+devoted heads!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+OUR BOYHOOD'S LIFE.
+
+
+On our boyhood's life--that, I mean, of my brothers and myself--I must
+dwell no longer than the interest of our strange story demands, for our
+chapters must soon be filled with the relation of events and adventures
+far more stirring than anything that happened at home in our day.
+
+And yet no truer words were ever spoken than these--'the boy is father of
+the man.' The glorious battle of Waterloo--Wellington himself told us--was
+won in the cricket field at home. And in like manner our greatest pioneers
+of civilisation, our most successful emigrants, men who have often
+literally to lash the rifle to the plough stilts, as they cultivate and
+reclaim the land of the savage, have been made and manufactured, so to
+speak, in the green valleys of old England, and on the hills and moors of
+bonnie Scotland.
+
+Probably the new M'Crimman of Coila, as my father was called on the lake
+side and in the glens, had mingled more, far more, in life than any chief
+who had ever reigned before him. He would not have been averse to drawing
+the sword in his country's cause, had it been necessary, but my brothers
+and I were born in peaceful times, shortly after the close of the war with
+Russia. No, my father could have drawn the claymore, but he could also use
+the ploughshare--and did.
+
+There were at first grumblers in the clans, who lamented the advent of
+anything that they were pleased to call new-fangled. Men there were who
+wished to live as their forefathers had done in the 'good old
+times'--cultivate only the tops of the 'rigs,' pasture the sheep and
+cattle on the upland moors, and live on milk and meal, and the fish from
+the lake, with an occasional hare, rabbit, or bird when Heaven thought fit
+to send it.
+
+They were not prepared for my father's sweeping innovations. They stared
+in astonishment to see the bare hillsides planted with sheltering spruce
+and pine trees; to see moss and morass turned inside out, drained and made
+to yield crops of waving grain, where all was moving bog before; to see
+comfortable cottages spring up here and there, with real stone walls and
+smiling gardens front and rear, in place of the turf and tree shielings of
+bygone days; and to see a new school-house, where English--real
+English--was spoken and taught, pour forth a hundred happy children almost
+every weekday all the year round.
+
+This was 'tempting Providence, and no good could come of it;' so spoke the
+grumblers, and they wondered indeed that the old warlike chiefs of
+M'Crimman did not turn in their graves. But even the grumblers got fewer
+and further between, and at last long peace and plenty reigned contentedly
+hand in hand from end to end of Glen Coila, and all around the loch that
+was at once the beauty and pride of our estate.
+
+Improvements were not confined to the crofters' holdings; they extended to
+the castle farm and to the castle itself. Nothing that was old about the
+latter was swept away, but much that was new sprang up, and rooms long
+untenanted were now restored.
+
+A very ancient and beautiful castle was that of Coila, with its one huge
+massive tower, and its dark frowning embattled walls. It could be seen
+from far and near, for even the loch itself was high above the level of
+the sea. I speak of it, be it observed, in the past tense, solely because
+I am writing of the past--of happy days for ever fled. The castle is still
+as beautiful--nay, even more so, for my aunt's good taste has completed
+the improvements my father began.
+
+I do not think any one could have come in contact with father, as I
+remember him during our early days at Coila, without loving and respecting
+him. He was our hero--my brothers' and mine--so tall, so noble-looking, so
+handsome, whether ranging over the heather in autumn with his gun on his
+shoulder, or labouring with a hoe or rake in hand in garden or meadow.
+
+Does it surprise any one to know that even a Highland chieftain, descended
+from a long line of warriors, could handle a hoe as deftly as a claymore?
+I grant he may have been the first who ever did so from choice, but was he
+demeaned thereby? Assuredly not; and work in the fields never went half so
+cheerfully on as when father and we boys were in the midst of the
+servants. Our tutor was a young clergyman, and he, too, used to throw off
+his black coat and join us.
+
+At such times it would have done the heart of a cynic good to have been
+there; song and joke and hearty laugh followed in such quick succession
+that it seemed more like working for fun than anything else.
+
+And our triumph of triumphs was invariably consummated at the end of
+harvest, for then a supper was given to the tenants and servants. This
+supper took place in the great hall of the castle--the hall that in
+ancient days had witnessed many a warlike meeting and Bacchanalian feast.
+
+Before a single invitation was made out for this event of the season every
+sheaf and stook had to be stored and the stubble raked, every rick in the
+home barn-yards had to be thatched and tidied; 'whorls' of turnips had to
+be got up and put in pits for the cattle, and even a considerable portion
+of the ploughing done.
+
+'Boys,' my father would say then, pointing with pride to his lordly stacks
+of grain and hay, 'Boys,
+
+                          '"Peace hath her victories,
+                  No less renowned than war."
+
+And now,' he would add, 'go and help your tutor to write out the
+invitations.'
+
+So kindly-hearted was father that he would even have extended the right
+hand of peace and fellowship to the Raes of Strathtoul. The head of this
+house, however, was too proud; yet his pride was of a different kind from
+father's. It was of the stand-aloof kind. It was even rumoured that Le
+Roi, or Rae, had said at a dinner-party that my good, dear father brought
+disgrace on the warlike name of M'Crimman because he mingled with his
+servants in the field, and took a very personal interest in the welfare of
+his crofter tenantry.
+
+But my father had different views of life from this semi-French Rae of
+Strathtoul. He appreciated the benefits and upheld the dignity, and even
+sanctity, of honest labour. Had he lived in the days of Ancient Greece, he
+might have built a shrine to Labour, and elevated it to the rank of
+goddess. Only my father was no heathen, but a plain, God-fearing man, who
+loved, or tried to love, his neighbour as himself.
+
+If our father was a hero to us boys, not less so was he to our darling
+mother, and to little Sister Flora as well. So it may be truthfully said
+that we were a happy family. The time sped by, the years flew on without,
+apparently, ever a bit of change from one Christmas Day to another. Mr.
+Townley, our tutor, seemed to have little ambition to 'better himself,' as
+it is termed. When challenged one morning at breakfast with his want of
+desire to push,
+
+'Oh,' said Townley, 'I'm only a young man yet, and really I do not wish to
+be any happier than I am. It will be a grief to me when the boys grow
+older and go out into the world and need me no more.'
+
+Mr. Townley was a strict and careful teacher, but by no means a hard
+taskmaster. Indoors during school hours he was the pedagogue all over. He
+carried etiquette even to the extent of wearing cap and gown, but these
+were thrown off with scholastic duties; he was then--out of doors--as
+jolly as a schoolboy going to play at his first cricket-match.
+
+In the field father was our teacher. He taught us, and the 'grieve,' or
+bailiff, taught us everything one needs to know about a farm. Not in
+headwork alone. No; for, young as we were at this time, my brothers and I
+could wield axe, scythe, hoe, and rake.
+
+We were Highland boys all over, in mind and body, blood and bone.
+I--Murdoch--was fifteen when the cloud gathered that finally changed our
+fortunes. Donald and Dugald were respectively fourteen and thirteen, and
+Sister Flora was eleven.
+
+Big for our years we all were, and I do not think there was anything on
+dry land, or on the water either, that we feared. Mr. Townley used very
+often to accompany us to the hills, to the river and lake, but not
+invariably. We dearly loved our tutor. What a wonderful piece of
+muscularity and good-nature he was, to be sure, as I remember him! Of both
+his muscularity and good-nature I am afraid we often took advantage. Flora
+invariably did, for out on the hills she would turn to him with the utmost
+_sang-froid_, saying, 'Townley, I'm tired; take me on your back.' And for
+miles Townley would trudge along with her, feeling her weight no more than
+if she had been a moth that had got on his shoulders by accident. There
+was no tiring Townley.
+
+To look at our tutor's fair young face, one would never have given him the
+credit of possessing a deal of romance, or believed it possible that he
+could have harboured any feeling akin to love. But he did. Now this is a
+story of stirring adventure and of struggle, and not a love tale; so the
+truth may be as well told in this place as further on--Townley loved my
+aunt. It should be remembered that at this time she was young, but little
+over twenty, and in every way she was worthy to be the heroine of a
+story.
+
+Townley, however, was no fool. Although he was admitted to the
+companionship of every member of our family, and treated in every respect
+as an equal, he could not forget that there was a great gulf fixed between
+the humble tutor and the youngest sister of the chief of the M'Crimmans.
+If he loved, he kept the secret bound up in his own breast, content to
+live and be near the object of his adoration. Perhaps this hopeless
+passion of Townley's had much to do with the formation of his history.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Those dear old days of boyhood! Even as they were passing away we used to
+wish they would last for ever. Surely that is proof positive that we were
+very happy, for is it not common for boys to wish they were men? We never
+did.
+
+For we had everything we could desire to make our little lives a pleasure
+long drawn out. Boys who were born in towns--and we knew many of these,
+and invited them occasionally to visit us at our Highland home--we used to
+pity from the bottom of our hearts. How little they knew about country
+sports and country life!
+
+One part of our education alone was left to our darling mother--namely,
+Bible history. Oh, how delightful it used to be to listen to her voice as,
+seated by our bedside in the summer evenings, she told us tales from the
+Book of Books! Then she would pray with us, for us, and for father; and
+sweet and soft was the slumber that soon visited our pillows.
+
+Looking back now to those dear old days, I cannot help thinking that the
+practice of religion as carried on in our house was more Puritanical in
+its character than any I have seen elsewhere. The Sabbath was a day of
+such solemn rest that one lived as it were in a dream. No food was cooked;
+even the tables in breakfast-room and dining-hall were laid on Saturday;
+no horse left the stables, the servants dressed in their sombrest and
+best, moved about on tiptoe, and talked in whispers. We children were
+taught to consider it sinful even to think our own thoughts on this holy
+day. If we boys ever forgot ourselves so far as to speak of things
+secular, there was Flora to lift a warning finger and with terrible
+earnestness remind us that this was God's day.
+
+From early morn to dewy eve all throughout the Sabbath we felt as if our
+footsteps were on the boundaries of another world--that kind, loving
+angels were near watching all our doings.
+
+I am drawing a true picture of Sunday life in many a Scottish family, but
+I would not have my readers mistake me. Let me say, then, that ours was
+not a religion of fear so much as of love. To grieve or vex the great Good
+Being who made us and gave us so much to be thankful for would have been a
+crime which would have brought its own punishment by the sorrow and
+repentance created in our hearts.
+
+Just one other thing I must mention, because it has a bearing on events to
+be related in the next chapter. We were taught then never to forget that a
+day of reckoning was before us all, that after death should come the
+judgment. But mother's prayers and our religion brought us only the most
+unalloyed happiness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+A TERRIBLE RIDE.
+
+
+I have but to gaze from the window of the tower in which I am writing to
+see a whole fieldful of the daftest-looking long-tailed, long-maned ponies
+imaginable. These are the celebrated Castle Coila ponies, as full of
+mischief, fun, and fire as any British boy could wish, most difficult to
+catch, more difficult still to saddle, and requiring all the skill of a
+trained equestrian to manage after mounting. As these ponies are to-day,
+so they were when I was a boy. The very boys whom I mentioned in the last
+chapter would have gone anywhere and done anything rather than attempt to
+ride a Coila pony. Not that they ever refused, they were too courageous
+for that. But when Gilmore led a pony round, I know it needed all the
+pluck they could muster to put foot in stirrup. Flora's advice to them was
+not bad.
+
+'There is plenty of room on the moors, boys,' she would say, laughing; and
+Flora always brought out the word 'boys' with an air of patronage and
+self-superiority that was quite refreshing. 'Plenty of room on the moors,
+so you keep the ponies hard at the gallop, till they are quite tired.
+Mind, don't let them trot. If you do, they will lie down and tumble.'
+
+Poor Archie Bateman! I shall never forget his first wild scamper over the
+moorland. He would persist in riding in his best London clothes, spotless
+broad white collar, shining silk hat, gloves, and all. Before mounting he
+even bent down to flick a little tiny bit of dust off his boots.
+
+The ponies were fresh that morning. In fact, the word 'fresh' hardly
+describes the feeling of buoyancy they gave proof of. For a time it was as
+difficult to mount one as it would be for a fly to alight on a top at full
+spin. We took them to the paddock, where the grass and moss were soft.
+Donald, Dugald, and I held Flora's fiery steed _vi et armis_ till she got
+into the saddle.
+
+'Mind to keep them at it, boys,' were her last words, as she flew out and
+away through the open gateway. Then we prepared to follow. Donald, Dugald,
+and I were used to tumbles, and for five minutes or more we amused
+ourselves by getting up only to get off again. But we were not hurt.
+Finally we mounted Archie. His brother was not going out that morning, and
+I do believe to this day that Archie hoped to curry favour with Flora by a
+little display of horsemanship, for he had been talking a deal to her the
+evening before of the delights of riding in London.
+
+At all events, if he had meant to create a sensation he succeeded
+admirably, though at the expense of a portion of his dignity.
+
+No sooner was he mounted than off he rode. Stay, though, I should rather
+say that no sooner did we mount him than off he was carried. That is a way
+of putting it which is more in accordance with facts, for we--Donald,
+Dugald, and I--mounted him, and the pony did the rest, he, Archie, being
+legally speaking _nolens volens_. When my brothers and I emerged at last,
+we could just distinguish Flora waiting on the horizon of a braeland, her
+figure well thrown out against the sky, her pony curveting round and
+round, which was Flora's pet pony's way of keeping still. Away at a
+tangent from the proper line of march, Archie on his steed was being
+rapidly whirled. As soon as we came within sight of our sister, we
+observed her making signs in Archie's direction and concluded to follow.
+Having duly signalled her wishes, Flora disappeared over the brow of the
+hill. Her intention was, we afterwards found out, to take a cross-cut and
+intercept, if possible, the mad career of Archie's Coila steed.
+
+'Hurry up, Donald,' I shouted to my nearest brother; 'that pony is mad. It
+is making straight for the cliffs of Craigiemore.'
+
+On we went at furious speed. It was in reality, or appeared to be, a race
+for life; but should we win? The terrible cliffs for which Archie's pony
+was heading away were perpendicular bluffs that rose from a dark slimy
+morass near the lake. Fifty feet high they were at the lowest, and pointed
+unmistakably to some terrible convulsion of Nature in ages long gone by.
+They looked like hills that had been sawn in half--one half taken, the
+other left.
+
+Our ponies were gaining on Archie's. The boy had given his its head, but
+it was evident he was now aware of his danger and was trying to rein in.
+Trying, but trying in vain. The pony was in command of the situation.
+
+On--on--on they rush. I can feel my heart beating wildly against my ribs
+as we all come nigher and nigher to the cliffs. Donald's pony and Dugald's
+both overtake me. Their saddles are empty. My brothers have both been
+unhorsed. I think not of that, all my attention is bent on the rider
+ahead. If he could but turn his pony's head even now, he would be saved.
+But no, it is impossible. They are on the cliff. There! they are over it,
+and a wild scream of terror seems to rend the skies and turn my blood to
+water.
+
+[Illustration: 'Look! He is Over!']
+
+But lo! I, too, am now in danger. My pony has the bit fast between his
+teeth. He means to play at an awful game--follow my leader! I feel dizzy;
+I have forgotten that I might fling myself off even at the risk of broken
+bones. I am close to the cliff--I--hurrah! I am saved! Saved at the very
+moment when it seemed nothing could save me, for dear Flora has dashed in
+front of me--has cut across my bows, as sailors would say, striking my
+pony with all the strength of her arm as she is borne along. Saved, yes,
+but both on the ground. I extricate myself and get up. Our ponies are all
+panting; they appear now to realize the fearfulness of the danger, and
+stand together cowed and quiet. Poor Flora is very pale, and blood is
+trickling from a wound in her temple, while her habit is torn and soiled.
+We have little time to notice this; we must ride round and look for the
+body of poor Archie.
+
+It was a ride of a good mile to reach the cliff foot, but it took us but a
+very short time to get round, albeit the road was rough and dangerous. We
+had taken our bearings aright, but for a time we could see no signs of
+those we had come to seek. But presently with her riding-whip Flora
+pointed to a deep black hole in the slimy bog.
+
+'They are there!' she cried; then burst into a flood of tears.
+
+We did the best we could to comfort our little sister, and were all
+returning slowly, leading our steeds along the cliff foot, when I stumbled
+against something lying behind a tussock of grass.
+
+The something moved and spoke when I bent down. It was poor Archie, who
+had escaped from the morass as if by a miracle.
+
+A little stream was near; it trickled in a half-cataract down the cliffs.
+Donald and Dugald hurried away to this and brought back Highland
+bonnetfuls of water. Then we washed Archie's face and made him drink. How
+we rejoiced to see him smile again! I believe the London accent of his
+voice was at that moment the sweetest music to Flora she had ever heard in
+her life.
+
+'What a pwepostewous tumble I've had! How vewy, _vewy_ stoopid of me to be
+wun away with!'
+
+Poor Flora laughed one moment at her cousin and cried the next, so full
+was her heart. But presently she proved herself quite a little woman.
+
+'I'll ride on to the castle,' she said, 'and get dry things ready. You'd
+better go to bed, Archie, when you come home; you are not like a Highland
+boy, you know. Oh, I'm so glad you're alive! But--ha, ha, ha! excuse
+me--but you do look _so_ funny!' and away she rode.
+
+We mounted Archie on Dugald's nag and rode straight away to the lake. Here
+we tied our ponies to the birch-trees, and, undressing, plunged in for a
+swim. When we came out we arranged matters thus: Dugald gave Archie his
+shirt, Donald gave him a pair of stockings, and I gave him a cap and my
+jacket, which was long enough to reach his knees. We tied the wet things,
+after washing the slime off, all in a bundle, and away the procession went
+to Coila. Everybody turned out to witness our home-coming. Well, we did
+look rather motley, but--Archie was saved.
+
+My own adventures, however, had not ended yet. Neither my brothers nor
+Flora cared to go out again that day, so in the afternoon I shouldered my
+fishing rod and went off to enjoy a quiet hour's sport.
+
+What took my footsteps towards the stream that made its exit from the
+loch, and went meandering down the glen, I never could tell. It was no
+favourite stream of mine, for though it contained plenty of trout, it
+passed through many woods and dark, gloomy defiles, with here and there a
+waterfall, and was on the whole so overhung with branches that there was
+difficulty in making a cast. I was far more successful than I expected to
+be, however, and the day wore so quickly away that on looking up I was
+surprised to find that the sun had set, and I must be quite seven miles
+from home. What did that matter? there would be a moon! I had Highland
+legs and a Highland heart, and knew all the cross-cuts in the country
+side. I would try for that big trout that had just leapt up to catch a
+moth. It took me half an hour to hook it. But I did, and after some pretty
+play I had the satisfaction of landing a lovely three-pounder. I now
+reeled up, put my rod in its canvas case, and prepared to make the best of
+my way to the castle.
+
+It was nearly an hour since the sun had gone down like a huge crimson
+ball in the west, and now slowly over the hills a veritable facsimile of
+it was rising, and soon the stars came out as gloaming gave place to
+night, and moonlight flooded all the woods and glen.
+
+The scene around me was lovely, but lonesome in the extreme, for there was
+not a house anywhere near, nor a sound to break the stillness except now
+and then the eerisome cry of the brown owl that flitted silently past
+overhead. Had I been very timid I could have imagined that figures were
+creeping here and there in the flickering shadows of the trees, or that
+ghosts and bogles had come out to keep me company. My nearest way home
+would be to cross a bit of heathery moor and pass by the neglected
+graveyard and ruined Catholic chapel; and, worse than all, the ancient
+manse where lived old Mawsie.
+
+I never believed that Mawsie was a witch, though others did. She was said
+to creep about on moonlight nights like a dry aisk,[1] so people said,
+'mooling' among heaps of rubbish and the mounds over the graves as she
+gathered herbs to concoct strange mixtures withal. Certainly Mawsie was no
+beauty; she walked 'two-fold,' leaning on a crutch; she was gray-bearded,
+wrinkled beyond conception; her head was swathed winter and summer in
+wraps of flannel, and altogether she looked uncanny. Nevertheless, the
+peasant people never hesitated to visit her to beg for herb-tea and oil to
+rub their joints. But they always chose the daylight in which to make
+their calls.
+
+'Perhaps,' I thought, 'I'd better go round.' Then something whispered to
+me, 'What! you a M'Crimman, and confessing to fear!'
+
+That decided me, and I went boldly on. For the life of me, however, I
+could not keep from mentally repeating those weird and awful lines in
+Burns' 'Tam o' Shanter,' descriptive of the hero's journey homewards on
+that unhallowed and awful night when he forgathered with the witches:
+
+              'By this time he was 'cross the ford
+              Whare in the snaw the chapman smo'red;[2]
+              And past the birks[3] and meikle stane
+              Whare drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane;
+              And through the furze and by the cairn
+              Where hunters found the murdered bairn,
+              And near the thorn, aboon the well,
+              Where Mungo's mither hanged hersel',
+              When glimmering through the groaning trees,
+              Kirk Alloway seemed in a bleeze.'
+
+I almost shuddered as I said to myself, 'What if there be lights
+glimmering from the frameless windows of the ruined chapel? or what if old
+Mawsie's windows be "in a bleeze"?'
+
+Tall, ghostly-looking elder-trees grew round the old manse, which people
+had told me always kept moving, even when no breath of wind was blowing.
+
+If I had shuddered before, my heart stood still now with a nameless dread,
+for sure enough, from both the 'butt' and the 'ben' of the so-called
+witch's cottage lights were glancing.
+
+What could it mean? She was too old to have company, almost an invalid,
+with age alone and its attendant infirmities--so, at least, people said.
+But it had also been rumoured lately that Mawsie was up to doings which
+were far from canny, that lights had been seen flitting about the old
+churchyard and ruin, and that something was sure to happen. Nobody in the
+parish could have been found hardy enough to cross the glen-foot where
+Mawsie lived long after dark. Well, had I thought of all this before, it
+is possible that I might have given her house a wide berth. It was now too
+late. I felt like one in a dream, impelled forward towards the cottage. I
+seemed to be walking on the air as I advanced.
+
+To get to the windows, however, I must cross the graveyard yard and the
+ruin. This last was partly covered with tall rank ivy, and, hearing sounds
+inside, and seeing the glimmer of lanterns, I hid in the old porch, quite
+shaded by the greenery.
+
+From my concealment I could notice that men were at work in a vault or pit
+on the floor of the old chapel, from which earth and rubbish were being
+dislodged, while another figure--not that of a workman--was bending over
+and addressing them in English. It was evident, therefore, those people
+below were not Highlanders, for in the face of the man who spoke I was
+able at a glance to distinguish the hard-set lineaments of the villain
+Duncan M'Rae. This man had been everything in his time--soldier,
+school-teacher, poacher, thief. He was abhorred by his own clan, and
+feared by every one. Even the school children, if they met him on the
+road, would run back to avoid him.
+
+Duncan had only recently come back to the glen after an absence of years,
+and every one said his presence boded no good. I shuddered as I gazed,
+almost spellbound, on his evil countenance, rendered doubly ugly in the
+uncertain light of the lantern. Suppose he should find me! I crept closer
+into my corner now, and tried to draw the ivy round me. I dared not run,
+for fear of being seen, for the moonlight was very bright indeed, and
+M'Rae held a gun in his hand.
+
+After a time, which appeared to be interminable, I heard Duncan invite the
+men into supper, and slowly they clambered up out of the pit, and the
+three prepared to leave together.
+
+All might have been well now, for they passed me without even a glance in
+my direction; but presently I heard one of the men stumble.
+
+'Hullo!' he said; 'is this basket of fish yours, Mr. Mac?'
+
+'No,' was the answer, with an imprecation that made me quake. 'We are
+watched!'
+
+In another moment I was dragged from my place of concealment, and the
+light was held up to my face.
+
+'A M'Crimman of Coila, by all that is furious! And so, youngster, you've
+come to watch? You know the family feud, don't you? Well, prepare to meet
+your doom. You'll never leave here alive.'
+
+He pointed his gun at me as he spoke.
+
+'Hold!' cried one of the men. 'We came from town to do a bit of honest
+work, but we will not witness murder.'
+
+'I only wanted to frighten him,' said M'Rae, lowering his gun. 'Look you,
+sir,' he continued, addressing me once more, 'I don't want revenge, even
+on a M'Crimman of Coila. I'm a poacher; perhaps I'm a distiller in a quiet
+way. No matter, you know what an oath is. You'll swear ere you leave here,
+not to breathe a word of what you've seen. You hear?'
+
+'I promise I won't,' I faltered.
+
+He handled his fowling-piece threateningly once again. Verily, he had just
+then a terribly evil look.
+
+'I swear,' I said, with trembling lips.
+
+His gun was again lowered. He seemed to breathe more freely--less
+fiercely.
+
+'Go, now,' he said, pointing across the moor. 'If a poor man like myself
+wants to hide either his game or his private still, what odds is it to a
+M'Crimman of Coila?'
+
+How I got home I never knew. I remember that evening being in our front
+drawing-room with what seemed a sea of anxious faces round me, some of
+which were bathed in tears. Then all was a long blank, interspersed with
+fearful dreams.
+
+It was weeks before I recovered consciousness. I was then lying in bed. In
+at the open window was wafted the odour of flowers, for it was a summer's
+evening, and outside were the green whispering trees. Townley sat beside
+the bed, book in hand, and almost started when I spoke.
+
+[Illustration: He pointed his Gun at me]
+
+'Mr. Townley!'
+
+'Yes, dear boy.'
+
+'Have I been long ill?'
+
+'For weeks--four, I think. How glad I am you are better! But you must keep
+very, _very_ quiet. I shall go and bring your mother now, and Flora.'
+
+I put out my thin hand and detained him.
+
+'Tell me, Mr. Townley,' I said, 'have I spoken much in my sleep, for I
+have been dreaming such foolish dreams?'
+
+Townley looked at me long and earnestly. He seemed to look me through and
+through. Then he replied slowly, almost solemnly,
+
+'Yes, dear boy, you have spoken _much_.'
+
+I closed my eyes languidly. For now I knew that Townley was aware of more
+than ever I should have dared to reveal.
+
+-----
+
+  [1] Triton.
+
+  [2] Smothered.
+
+  [3] Birch-trees.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE RING AND THE BOOK.
+
+
+My return to health was a slow though not a painful one. My mind, however,
+was clear, and even before I could partake of food I enjoyed hearing
+sister play to me on her harp. Sometimes aunt, too, would play. My mother
+seldom left the room by day, and one of my chief delights was her stories
+from Bible life and tales of Bible lands.
+
+At last I was permitted to get up and recline in fauteuil or on sofa.
+
+'Mother,' I said one day, 'I feel getting stronger, but somehow I do not
+regain spirits. Is there some sorrow in your heart, mother, or do I only
+imagine it?'
+
+She smiled, but there were tears in her eyes.
+
+'I'm sure we are all very, _very_ happy, Murdoch, to have you getting well
+again.'
+
+'And, mother,' I persisted, 'father does not seem easy in mind either. He
+comes in and talks to me, but often I think his mind is wandering to other
+subjects.'
+
+'Foolish child! nothing could make your father unhappy. He does his duty
+by us all, and his faith is fixed.'
+
+One day they came and told me that the doctor had ordered me away to the
+seaside. Mother and Flora were to come, and one servant; the rest of our
+family were to follow.
+
+It was far away south to Rothesay we went, and here, my cheeks fanned by
+the delicious sea-breezes, I soon began to grow well and strong again. But
+the sorrow in my mother's face was more marked than ever, though I had
+ceased to refer to it.
+
+The rooms we had hired were very pleasant, but looked very small in
+comparison with the great halls I had been used to.
+
+Well, on a beautiful afternoon father and my brothers arrived, and we all
+had tea out on the shady lawn, up to the very edge of which the waves were
+lapping and lisping.
+
+I was reclining in a hammock chair, listening to the sea's soft, soothing
+murmur, when father brought his camp-stool and sat near me.
+
+'Murdoch, boy,' he said, taking my hand gently, almost tenderly, in his,
+'are you strong enough to bear bad news?'
+
+My heart throbbed uneasily, but I replied, bravely enough, 'Yes, dear
+father; yes.'
+
+'Then,' he said, speaking very slowly, as if to mark the effect of every
+word, 'we are--never--to return--to Castle Coila!'
+
+I was calm now, for, strange to say, the news appeared to be no news at
+all.
+
+'Well, father,' I answered, cheerfully, 'I can bear that--I could bear
+anything but separation.'
+
+I went over and kissed my mother and sister.
+
+'So this is the cloud that was in your faces, eh? Well, the worst is over.
+I have nothing to do now but get well. Father, I feel quite a man.'
+
+'So do we both feel men,' said Donald and Dugald; 'and we are all going to
+work. Won't that be jolly?'
+
+In a few brief words father then explained our position. There had arrived
+one day, some weeks after the worst and most dangerous part of my illness
+was over, an advocate from Aberdeen, in a hired carriage. He had, he
+said, a friend with him, who seemed, so he worded it, 'like one risen
+from the dead.'
+
+His friend was helped down, and into father's private room off the hall.
+
+His friend was the old beldame Mawsie, and a short but wonderful story she
+had to tell, and did tell, the Aberdeen advocate sitting quietly by the
+while with a bland smile on his face. She remembered, she said with many a
+sigh and groan, and many a doleful shake of head and hand, the marriage of
+Le Roi the dragoon with the Miss M'Crimman of Coila, although but a girl
+at the time; and she remembered, among many other things, that the
+priest's books were hidden for safety in a vault, where he also kept all
+the money he possessed. No one knew of the existence of this vault except
+her, and so on and so forth. So voluble did the old lady become that the
+advocate had to apply the _cloture_ at last.
+
+'It is strange--if true,' my father had muttered. 'Why,' he added, 'had
+the old lady not spoken of this before?'
+
+'Ah, yes, to be sure,' said the Aberdonian. 'Well, that also is strange,
+but easily explained. The shock received on the night of the fire at the
+chapel had deprived the poor soul of memory. For years and years this
+deprivation continued, but one day, not long ago, the son of the present
+claimant, and probably rightful heir, to Coila walked into her room at the
+old manse, gun in hand. He had been down shooting at Strathtoul, and
+naturally came across to view the ruin so intimately connected with his
+father's fate and fortune. No sooner had he appeared than the good old
+dame rushed towards him, calling him by his grandfather's name. Her memory
+had returned as suddenly as it had gone. She had even told him of the
+vault. 'Perhaps,' continued he, with a meaning smile,
+
+           '"'Tis the sunset of life gives her mystical lore,
+           And coming events cast their shadow before."'
+
+A fortnight after this visit a meeting of those concerned took place at
+the beldame's house. She herself pointed to the place where she thought
+the vault lay, and with all due legal formality digging was commenced, and
+the place was found not far off. At first glance the vault seemed empty.
+In one corner, however, was found, covered lightly over with withered
+ferns, many bottles of wine and--a box. The two men of law, Le Roi's
+solicitor and M'Crimman's, had a little laugh all to themselves over the
+wine. Legal men will laugh at anything.
+
+'The priest must have kept a good cellar on the sly,' one said.
+
+'That is evident,' replied the other.
+
+The box was opened with some little difficulty. In it was a book--an old
+Latin Bible. But something else was in it too. Townley was the first to
+note it. Only a silver ring such as sailors wear--a ring with a little
+heart-shaped ruby stone in it. Book and ring were now sealed up in the
+box, and next day despatched to Edinburgh with all due formality. The best
+legal authorities the Scotch metropolis could boast of were consulted on
+both sides, but fate for once was against the M'Crimmans of Coila. The
+book told its tale. Half-carelessly written on fly-leaves, but each duly
+dated and signed by Stewart, the priest, were notes concerning many
+marriages, Le Roi's among the rest.
+
+Even M'Crimman himself confessed that he was satisfied--as was every one
+else save Townley.
+
+'The book has told one tale--or rather its binding has,' said Townley;
+'but the ring may yet tell another.'
+
+All this my father related to me that evening as we sat together on the
+lawn by the beach of Rothesay.
+
+When he had finished I sat silently gazing seawards, but spoke not. My
+brothers told me afterwards that I looked as if turned to stone. And,
+indeed, indeed, my heart felt so. When father first told me we should go
+back no more to Coila I felt almost happy that the bad news was no worse;
+but now that explanations had followed, my perplexity was extreme.
+
+One thing was sure and certain--there was a conspiracy, and the events of
+that terrible night at the ruin had to do with it. The evil man Duncan
+M'Rae was in it. Townley suspected it from words I must have let fall in
+my delirium; but, worst of all, my mouth was sealed. Oh, why, why did I
+not rather die than be thus bound!
+
+It must be remembered that I was very young, and knew not then that an
+oath so forced upon me could not be binding.
+
+Come weal, come woe, however, I determined to keep my word.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The scene of our story changes now to Edinburgh itself. Here we had all
+gone to live in a house owned by aunt, not far from the Calton Hill. We
+were comparatively poor now, for father, with the honour and Christian
+feeling that ever characterized him, had even paid up back rent to the new
+owner of Coila Castle and Glen.
+
+That parting from Coila had been a sad one. I was not there--luckily for
+me, perhaps; but Townley has told me of it often and often.
+
+'Yes, Murdoch M'Crimman,' he said, 'I have been present at the funeral of
+many a Highland chief, but none of these impressed me half so much as the
+scene in Glen Coila, when the carriage containing your dear father and
+mother and Flora left the old castle and wound slowly down the glen. Men,
+women, and little ones joined in procession, and marched behind it, and so
+followed on and on till they reached the glen-foot, with the bagpipes
+playing "Farewell to Lochaber." This affected your father as much, I
+think, as anything else. As for your mother, she sat silently weeping, and
+Flora dared hardly trust herself to look up at all. Then the parting! The
+chief, your father, stood up and addressed his people--for "his people" he
+still would call them. There was not a tremor in his voice, nor was
+there, on the other hand, even a spice of bravado. He spoke to them
+calmly, logically. In the old days, he said, might had been right, and
+many a gallant corps of heroes had his forefathers led from the glen, but
+times had changed. They were governed by good laws, and good laws meant
+fair play, for they protected all alike, gentle and simple, poor as well
+as rich. He bade them love and honour the new chief of Coila, to whom, as
+his proven right, he not only heartily transferred his lands and castle,
+but even, as far as possible, the allegiance of his people. They must be
+of good cheer, he said; he would never forget the happy time he had spent
+in Coila, and if they should meet no more on this earth, there was a
+Happier Land beyond death and the grave. He ended his brief oration with
+that little word which means so much, "Good-bye." But scarcely would they
+let him go. Old, bare-headed, white-haired men crowded round the carriage
+to bless their chief and press his hand; tearful women held children up
+that he might but touch their hair, while some had thrown themselves on
+the heather in paroxysms of a grief which was uncontrollable. Then the
+pipes played once more as the carriage drove on, while the voices of the
+young men joined in chorus--
+
+   "Youth of the daring heart, bright be thy doom
+       As the bodings that light up thy bold spirit now.
+   But the fate of M'Crimman is closing in gloom,
+       And the breath of the grey wraith hath passed o'er his brow."
+
+'When,' added Townley, 'a bend of the road and the drooping birch-trees
+shut out the mournful sight, I am sure we all felt relieved. Your father,
+smiling, extended his hand to your mother, and she fondled it and wept no
+more.'
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+For a time our life, to all outward seeming, was now a very quiet one.
+Although Donald and Dugald were sent to that splendid seminary which has
+given so many great men and heroes to the world, the 'High School of
+Edinburgh,' Townley still lived on with us as my tutor and Flora's.
+
+What my father seemed to suffer most from was the want of something at
+which to employ his time, and what Townley called his 'talent for
+activity.' 'Doing nothing' was not father's form after leading so
+energetic a life for so many years at Coila. Like the city of Boston in
+America, Edinburgh prides itself on the selectness of its society. To
+this, albeit we had come down in the world, pecuniarily speaking, our
+family had free _entree_. This would have satisfied some men; it did not
+satisfy father. He missed the bracing mountain air, he missed the freedom
+of the hills and the glorious exercise to which he had been accustomed.
+
+He missed it, but he mourned it not. His was the most unselfish nature one
+could imagine. Whatever he may have felt in the privacy of his own
+apartment, however much he may have sorrowed in silence, among us he was
+ever cheerful and even gay. Perhaps, on the whole, it may seem to some
+that I write or speak in terms too eulogistic. But it should not be
+forgotten that the M'Crimman was my father, and that he is--gone. _De
+mortuis nil nisi bonum._
+
+The ex-chief of Coila was a gentleman. And what a deal there is in that
+one wee word! No one can ape the gentleman. True gentlemanliness must
+come from the heart; the heart is the well from which it must
+spring--constantly, always, in every position of life, and wherever the
+owner may be. No amount of exterior polish can make a true gentleman.
+The actor can play the part on the stage, but here he is but acting, after
+all. Off the stage he may or may not be the gentleman, for then he must
+not be judged by his dress, by his demeanour in company, his calmness, or
+his ducal bow, but by his actions, his words, or his spoken thoughts.
+
+                 'Chesterfields and modes and rules
+                   For polished age and stilted youth.
+                 And high breeding's choicest school
+                   Need to learn this deeper truth:
+                 That to act, whate'er betide,
+                   Nobly on the Christian plan,
+                 This is still the surest guide
+                   How to be a gentleman.'
+
+About a year after our arrival in Edinburgh, Townley was seated one day
+midway up the beautiful mountain called Arthur's Seat. It was early
+summer; the sky was blue and almost cloudless; far beneath, the city of
+palaces and monuments seemed to sleep in the sunshine; away to the east
+lay the sea, blue even as the sky itself, except where here and there a
+cloud shadow passed slowly over its surface. Studded, too, was the sea
+with many a white sail, and steamers with trailing wreaths of smoke.
+
+The noise of city life, faint and far, fell on the ear with a hum hardly
+louder than the murmur of the insects and bees that sported among the wild
+flowers.
+
+Townley would not have been sitting here had he been all by himself, for
+this Herculean young parson never yet set eye on a hill he meant to climb
+without going straight to the top of it.
+
+'There is no tiring Townley.' I have often heard father make that remark;
+and, indeed, it gave in a few words a complete clue to Townley's
+character.
+
+But to-day my aunt Cecilia was with him, and it was on her account he was
+resting. They had been sitting for some time in silence.
+
+'It is almost too lovely a day for talking,' she said, at last.
+
+'True; it is a day for thinking and dreaming.'
+
+'I do not imagine, sir, that either thinking or dreaming is very much in
+your way.'
+
+He turned to her almost sharply.
+
+'Oh, indeed,' he said, 'you hardly gauge my character aright, Miss
+M'Crimman.'
+
+'Do I not?'
+
+'No, if you only knew how much I think at times; if you only knew how much
+I have even dared to dream--'
+
+There was a strange meaning in his looks if not in his words. Did she
+interpret either aright, I wonder? I know not. Of one thing I am sure, and
+that is, my friend and tutor was far too noble to seem to take advantage
+of my aunt's altered circumstances in life to press his suit. He might be
+her equal some day, at present he was--her brother's guest and domestic.
+
+'Tell me,' she said, interrupting him, 'some of your thoughts; dreams at
+best are silly.'
+
+He heaved the faintest sigh, and for a few moments appeared bent only on
+forming an isosceles triangle of pebbles with his cane.
+
+Then he put his fingers in his pocket.
+
+'I wish to show you,' he said, 'a ring.'
+
+'A ring, Mr. Townley! What a curious ring! Silver, set with a ruby heart.
+Why, this is the ring--the mysterious ring that belonged to the priest,
+and was found in his box in the vault.'
+
+'No, that is not _the_ ring. _The_ ring is in a safe and under seal. That
+is but a facsimile. But, Miss M'Crimman, the ring in question did not, I
+have reason to believe, belong to the priest Stewart, nor was it ever worn
+by him.'
+
+'How strangely you talk and look, Mr. Townley!'
+
+'Whatever I say to you now, Miss M'Crimman, I wish you to consider
+sacred.'
+
+The lady laughed, but not lightly.
+
+'Do you think,' she said, 'I can keep a secret?'
+
+'I do, Miss M'Crimman, and I want a friend and occasional adviser.'
+
+'Go on, Mr. Townley. You may depend on me.'
+
+'All we know, or at least all he will tell us of Murdoch's--your
+nephew's--illness, is that he was frightened at the ruin that night. He
+did not lead us to infer--for this boy is honest--that the terror partook
+of the supernatural, but he seemed pleased we did so infer.'
+
+'Yes, Mr. Townley.'
+
+'I watched by his bedside at night, when the fever was at its hottest. I
+alone listened to his ravings. Such ravings have always, so doctors tell
+us, a foundation in fact. He mentioned this ring over and over again. He
+mentioned a vault; he mentioned a name, and starting sometimes from uneasy
+slumber, prayed the owner of that name to spare him--to shoot him not.'
+
+'And from this you deduce----'
+
+'From this,' said Townley, 'I deduce that poor Murdoch had seen that ring
+on the left hand of a villain who had threatened to shoot him, for some
+potent reason or another, that Murdoch had seen that vault open, and that
+he has been bound down by sacred oath not to reveal what he did see.'
+
+'But oh, Mr. Townley, such oath could not, cannot be binding on the boy.
+We must----'
+
+'No, we must _not_, Miss M'Crimman. We must not put pressure on Murdoch at
+present. We must not treat lightly his honest scruples. _You_ must leave
+_me_ to work the matter out in my own way. Only, whenever I need your
+assistance or friendship to aid me, I may ask for it, may I not?'
+
+'Indeed you may, Mr. Townley.'
+
+Her hand lay for one brief moment in his; then they got up silently and
+resumed their walk.
+
+Both were thinking now.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+A NEW HOME IN THE WEST.
+
+
+To-night, before I entered my tower-room study and sat down to continue
+our strange story, I was leaning over the battlements and gazing
+admiringly at the beautiful sunset effects among the hills and on the
+lake, when my aunt came gliding to my side. She always comes in this
+spirit-like way.
+
+'May I say one word,' she said, 'without interrupting the train of your
+thoughts?'
+
+'Yes, dear aunt,' I replied; 'speak as you please--say what you will.'
+
+'I have been reading your manuscript, Murdoch, and I think it is high time
+you should mention that the M'Raes of Strathtoul were in no degree
+connected with or voluntarily mixed up in the villainy that banished your
+poor father from Castle Coila.'
+
+'It shall be as you wish,' I said, and then Aunt Cecilia disappeared as
+silently as she had come.
+
+Aunt is right. Nor can I forget that--despite the long-lasting and
+unfortunate blood-feud--the Strathtouls were and are our kinsmen. It is
+due to them to add that they ever acted honourably, truthfully; that there
+was but one villain, and whatever of villainy was transacted was his. Need
+I say his name was Duncan M'Rae? A M'Rae of Strathtoul? No; I am glad and
+proud to say he was not. I even doubt if he had any right or title to the
+name at all. It may have been but an _alias_. An _alias_ is often of the
+greatest use to such a man as this Duncan; so is an _alibi_ at times!
+
+I have already mentioned the school in the glen which my father the chief
+had built. M'Rae was one of its first teachers. He was undoubtedly clever,
+and, though he had not come to Coila without a little cloud on his
+character, his plausibility and his capability prevailed upon my father to
+give him a chance. There used at that time to be services held in the
+school on Sunday evenings, to which the most humbly dressed peasant could
+come. Humble though they were, they invariably brought their mite for the
+collection. It was dishonesty--even sacrilegious dishonesty--in Duncan to
+appropriate such moneys to his use, and to falsify the books. It is
+needless to say he was dismissed, and ever after he bore little good-will
+to the M'Crimmans of Coila.
+
+He had now to live on his wits. His wits led him to dishonesty of a
+different sort--he became a noted poacher. His quarrels with the
+glen-keepers often led to ugly fights and to bloodshed, but never to
+Duncan's reform. He lived and lodged with old Mawsie. It suited him to do
+so for several reasons, one of which was that she had, as I have already
+said, an ill-name, and the keepers were superstitious; besides, her house
+was but half a mile from a high road, along which a carrier passed once a
+week on his way to a distant town, and Duncan nearly always had a
+mysterious parcel for him.
+
+The poacher wanted a safe or store for his ill-gotten game. What better
+place than the floor of the ruined church? While digging there, to his
+surprise he had discovered a secret vault or cell; the roof and sides had
+fallen in, but masons could repair them. Such a place would be invaluable
+in his craft if it could be kept secret, and he determined it should be.
+After this, strange lights were said to be seen sometimes by belated
+travellers flitting among the old graves; twice also a ghost had been met
+on the hill adjoining--some _thing_ at least that disappeared immediately
+with eldritch scream.
+
+It was shortly after this that Duncan had imported two men to do what they
+called 'a bit of honest work.' Duncan had lodged and fed them at Mawsie's;
+they worked at night, and when they had done the 'honest work,' he took
+them to Invergowen and shipped them back to Aberdeen.
+
+But the poacher's discovery of the priest's Bible turned his thoughts to a
+plan of enriching himself far more effectually and speedily than he ever
+could expect to do by dealing in game without a licence.
+
+At the same time Duncan had found the poor priest's modest store of wine.
+A less scientific villain would have made short work with this, but the
+poacher knew better at present than to 'put an enemy in his mouth to steal
+away his brains;' besides, the vault would look more natural, when
+afterwards 'discovered,' with a collection of old bottles of wine in it.
+
+To forge an entry on one of the fly-leaves of the book was no difficult
+task, nor was it difficult to deal with Mawsie so as to secure the end he
+had in view in the most natural way. Once again his villain-wit showed its
+ascendency. A person of little acumen would have sought to work upon the
+old lady's greed--would have tried to bribe her to say this or that, or to
+swear to anything. But well Duncan knew how treacherous is the aged
+memory, and yet how easily acted on. He began by talking much about the Le
+Roi marriage which had taken place when she was a girl. He put words in
+the old lady's mouth without seeming to do so; he manufactured an
+artificial memory for her, and neatly fitted it.
+
+'Surely, mother,' he would say, 'you remember the marriage that took place
+in the chapel at midnight--the rich soldier, you know, Le Roi, and the
+bonnie M'Crimman lady? You're not so _very_ old as to forget that.'
+
+'Heigho! it's a long time ago, _ma yhillie og_, a long time ago, and I was
+young.'
+
+'True, but old people remember things that happened when they were young
+better than more recent events.'
+
+They talked in Gaelic, so I am not giving their exact words.
+
+'Ay, ay, lad--ay, ay! And, now that you mention it, I do remember it
+well--the lassie M'Crimman and the bonnie, bonnie gentleman.'
+
+'Gave you a guinea--don't you remember?'
+
+'Ay, ay, the dear man!'
+
+'Is this it?' continued Duncan, holding up a golden coin.
+
+Her eyes gloated over the money, her birdlike claw clutched it; she
+'crooned' over it, sang to it, rolled it in a morsel of flannel, and put
+it away in her bosom.
+
+A course of this kind of tuition had a wonderful effect on Mawsie. After
+the marriage came the vault, and she soon remembered all that. But
+probably the guinea had more effect than anything else in fixing her mind
+on the supposed events of the past.
+
+You see, Duncan was a psychologist, and a good one, too. Pity he did not
+turn his talents to better use.
+
+The poacher's next move was to hurry up to London, and obtain an interview
+with the chief of Strathtoul's son. He seldom visited Scotland, being an
+officer of the Guards--a soldier, as his grandfather had been.
+
+Is it any wonder that Duncan M'Rae's plausible story found a ready
+listener in young Le Roi, or that he was only too happy to pay the poacher
+a large but reasonable sum for proofs which should place his father in
+possession of fortune and a fine estate?
+
+The rest was easy. A large coloured sketch was shown to old Mawsie as a
+portrait of the Le Roi who had been married in the old chapel in her
+girlhood. It was that of his grandson, who shortly after visited the manse
+and the ruin.
+
+Duncan was successful beyond his utmost expectations. Only 'the wicked
+flee when no man pursueth' them, and this villain could not feel easy
+while he remained at home. Two things preyed on his mind--first, the
+meeting with myself at the ruin; secondly, the loss of his ring. Probably
+had the two men not interfered that night he would have made short work of
+me. As for the ring, he blamed his own carelessness for losing it. It was
+a dead man's ring; would it bring him ill-luck?
+
+So he fled--or departed--put it as you please; but, singular to say, old
+Mawsie was found dead in her house the day _after_ he had been seen to
+take his departure from the glen. It was said she had met her death by
+premeditated violence; but who could have slain the poor old crone, and
+for what reason? It was more charitable and more reasonable to believe
+that she had fallen and died where she was found. So the matter had been
+allowed to rest. What could it matter to Mawsie?
+
+Townley alone had different and less charitable views about the matter.
+Meanwhile Townley's bird had flown. But everything comes to him who can
+wait, and--there was no tiring Townley.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+A year or two flew by quickly enough. I know what that year or two did for
+me--_it made me a man!_
+
+Not so much in stature, perhaps--I was young, barely seventeen--but a man
+in mind, in desire, in ambition, and in brave resolve. Do not imagine that
+I had been very happy since leaving Coila; my mind was racked by a
+thousand conflicting thoughts that often kept me awake at night when all
+others were sunk in slumber. Something told me that the doings of that
+night at the ruin had undone our fortunes, and I was bound by solemn
+promise never to divulge what I had seen or what I knew. A hundred times
+over I tried to force myself to the belief that the poacher was only a
+poacher, and not a villain of deeper dye, but all in vain.
+
+Time, however, is the _edax rerum_--the devourer of all things, even of
+grief and sorrow. Well, I saw my father and mother and Flora happy in
+their new home, content with their new surroundings, and I began to take
+heart. But to work I must go. What should I do? What should I be? The
+questions were answered in a way I had little dreamt of.
+
+One evening, about eight o'clock, while passing along a street in the new
+town, I noticed well-dressed mechanics and others filing into a hall,
+where, it was announced, a lecture was to be delivered--
+
+                       'A NEW HOME IN THE WEST.'
+
+Such was the heading of the printed bills. Curiosity led me to enter with
+others.
+
+I listened entranced. The lecture was a revelation to me. The 'New Home in
+the West' was the Argentine Republic, and the speaker was brimful of his
+subject, and brimful to overflowing with the rugged eloquence that goes
+straight to the heart.
+
+There was wealth untold in the silver republic for those who were healthy,
+young, and willing to work--riches enough to be had for the digging to buy
+all Scotland up--riches of grain, of fruit, of spices, of skins and wool
+and meat--wealth all over the surface of the new home--wealth _in_ the
+earth and bursting through it--wealth and riches everywhere.
+
+And beauty everywhere too--beauty of scenery, beauty of woods and wild
+flowers; of forest stream and sunlit skies. Why stay in Scotland when
+wealth like this was to be had for the gathering? England was a glorious
+country, but its very over-population rendered it a poor one, and poorer
+it was growing every day.
+
+                 'Hark! old Ocean's tongue of thunder,
+                   Hoarsely calling, bids you speed
+                 To the shores he held asunder
+                   Only for these times of need.
+                 Now, upon his friendly surges
+                   Ever, ever roaring "Come,"
+                 All the sons of hope he urges
+                   To a new, a richer home.
+
+                 There, instead of festering alleys,
+                   Noisome dirt and gnawing dearth,
+                 Sunny hills and smiling valleys
+                   Wait to yield the wealth of earth.
+                 All she seeks is human labour,
+                   Healthy in the open air;
+                 All she gives is--every neighbour
+                   Wealthy, hale, and happy There!'
+
+Language like this was to me simply intoxicating. I talked all next day
+about what I had heard, and when evening came I once more visited the
+lecture-hall, this time in company with my brothers.
+
+'Oh,' said Donald, as we were returning home, 'that is the sort of work we
+want.'
+
+'Yes,' cried Dugald the younger; 'and that is the land to go to.'
+
+'You are so young--sixteen and fifteen--I fear I cannot take you with me,'
+I put in.
+
+Donald stopped short in the street and looked straight in my face.
+
+'So _you_ mean to go, then? And you think you can go without Dugald and
+me? Young, are we? But won't we grow out of that? We are not town-bred
+brats. Feel my arm; look at brother's lusty legs! And haven't we both got
+hearts--the M'Crimman heart? Ho, ho, Murdoch! big as you are, you don't go
+without Dugald and me!'
+
+'That he sha'n't!' said Dugald, determinedly.
+
+'Come on up to the top of the craig,' I said; 'I want a walk. It is only
+half-past nine.'
+
+But it was well-nigh eleven before we three brothers had finished
+castle-building.
+
+Remember, it was not castles in the air, either, we were piling up. We had
+health, strength, and determination, with a good share of honest ambition;
+and with these we believed we could gather wealth. The very thoughts of
+doing so filled me with a joy that was inexpressible. Not that I valued
+money for itself, but because wealth, if I could but gain it, would enable
+me to in some measure restore the fortunes of our fallen house.
+
+We first consulted father. It was not difficult to secure his acquiescence
+to our scheme, and he even told mother that it was unnatural to expect
+birds to remain always in the parent nest.
+
+I have no space to detail all the outs and ins of our arguments; suffice
+it to say they were successful, and preparations for our emigration were
+soon commenced. One stipulation of dear mother's we were obliged to give
+in to--namely, that Aunt Cecilia should go with us. Aunt was very wise,
+though very romantic withal--a strange mixture of poetry and common-sense.
+My father and mother, however, had very great faith in her. Moreover, she
+had already travelled all by herself half-way over the world. She had
+therefore the benefit of former experiences. But in every way we were fain
+to admit that aunt was eminently calculated to be our friend and mentor.
+She was and is clever. She could talk philosophy to us, even while darning
+our stockings or seeing after our linen; she could talk half a dozen
+languages, but she could talk common-sense to the cook as well; she was
+fitted to mix in the very best society, but she could also mix a salad.
+She played entrancingly on the harp, sang well, recited Ossian's poems by
+the league, had a beautiful face, and the heart of a lion, which well
+became the sister of a chief.
+
+It is only fair to add that it was aunt who found the sinews of war--our
+war with fortune. She, however, made a sacrifice to our pride in promising
+to consider any and all moneys spent upon us as simply loans, to be repaid
+with interest when we grew rich, if not--and this was only an honest
+stipulation--worked off beforehand.
+
+But poor dear aunt, her love of travel and adventure was quite wonderful,
+and she had a most childlike faith in the existence and reality of the El
+Dorado we were going in search of.
+
+The parting with father, mother, and Flora was a terrible trial. I can
+hardly think of it yet without a feeling akin to melancholy. But we got
+away at last amid prayers and blessings and tears. A hundred times over
+Flora had begged us to write every week, and to make haste and get ready a
+place for her and mother and father and all in our new home in the West,
+for she would count the days until the summons came to follow.
+
+Fain would honest, brawny Townley have gone with us. What an acquisition
+he would have proved! only, he told me somewhat significantly, he had work
+to do, and if he was successful he might follow on. I know, though, that
+parting with Aunt Cecilia almost broke his big brave heart.
+
+There was so much to do when we arrived in London, from which port we were
+to sail, so much to buy, so much to be seen, and so many people to visit,
+that I and my brothers had little time to revert even to the grief of
+parting from all we held dear at home.
+
+We did not forget to pay a visit to our forty-second cousins in their
+beautiful and aristocratic mansion at the West End. Archie Bateman was our
+favourite. My brothers and I were quite agreed as to that. The other
+cousin--who was also the elder--was far too much swamped in _bon ton_ to
+please Highland lads such as we were.
+
+But over and over again Archie made us tell him all we knew or had heard
+of the land we were going to. The first night Archie had said,
+
+'Oh, I wish I were going too!'
+
+The second evening his remark was,
+
+'Why _can't_ I go?'
+
+But on the third and last day of our stay Archie took me boldly by the
+hand--
+
+'Don't tell anybody,' he said, 'but I'm going to follow you very soon.
+Depend upon that. I'm only a younger son. Younger sons are nobodies in
+England. The eldest sons get all the pudding, and we have only the dish to
+scrape. They talk about making me a barrister. I don't mean to be made a
+barrister; I'd as soon be a bumbailiff. No, I'm going to follow you,
+cousin, so I sha'n't say good-bye--just _au revoir_.'
+
+And when we drove away from the door, I really could not help admiring the
+handsome bold-looking English lad who stood in the porch waving his
+handkerchief and shouting,
+
+'_Au revoir--au revoir._'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE PROMISED LAND AT LAST.
+
+
+'There is nothing more annoyin' than a hitch at the hin'eren'. What think
+you, young sir?'
+
+'I beg pardon,' I replied, 'but I'm afraid I did not quite understand
+you.'
+
+I had been standing all alone watching our preparations for dropping down
+stream with the tide. What a wearisome time it had been, too!
+
+The Canton was advertised to sail the day before, but did not. We were
+assured, however, she would positively start at midnight, and we had gone
+to bed expecting to awake at sea. I had fallen asleep brimful of all kinds
+of romantic thoughts. But lo! I had been awakened early on the dark
+morning of this almost wintry day with the shouting of men, the rattling
+of chains, and puff-puff-puffing of that dreadful donkey-engine.
+
+'Oh yes, we'll be off, sure enough, about eight bells.'
+
+This is what the steward told us after breakfast, but all the forenoon had
+slipped away, and here we still were. The few people on shore who had
+stayed on, maugre wind and sleet, to see the very, _very_ last of friends
+on board, looked very worn and miserable.
+
+But surely we were going at last, for everything was shipped and
+everything was comparatively still--far too still, indeed, as it turned
+out!
+
+'I said I couldn't stand a hitch at the hin'eren', young sir--any trouble
+at the tail o' the chapter.'
+
+I looked up--I _had_ to look up, for the speaker was a head and shoulders
+bigger than I--a broad-shouldered, brawny, brown-bearded Scotchman. A
+Highlander evidently by his brogue, but one who had travelled south, and
+therefore only put a Scotch word in here and there when talking--just, he
+told me afterwards, to make better sense of the English language.
+
+'Do I understand you to mean that something has happened to delay the
+voyage?'
+
+'I dinna care whether you understand me or not,' he replied, with almost
+fierce independence, 'but we're broken down.'
+
+It was only too true, and the news soon went all over the ship--spread
+like wild-fire, in fact. Something had gone wrong in the engine-room, and
+it would take a whole week to make good repairs.
+
+I went below to report matters to aunt and my brothers, and make
+preparations for disembarking again.
+
+When we reached the deck we found the big Scot walking up and down with
+rapid, sturdy strides; but he stopped in front of me, smiling. He had an
+immense plaid thrown Highland-fashion across his chest and left shoulder,
+and clutched a huge piece of timber in his hand, which by courtesy might
+have been called a cane.
+
+'You'll doubtless go on shore for a spell?' he said. 'A vera judicious
+arrangement. I'll go myself, and take my mither with me. And are these
+your two brotheries, and your sister? How d'ye do, miss?'
+
+He lifted his huge tam-o'-shanter as he made these remarks--or, in other
+words, he seized it by the top and raised it into the form of a huge
+pyramid.
+
+'My aunt,' I said, smiling.
+
+'A thousand pa_rr_dons, ma'am!' he pleaded, once more making a pyramid of
+his 'bonnet,' while the colour mounted to his brow. 'A thousand
+pa_rr_dons!'
+
+Like most of his countrymen, he spoke broader when taken off his guard or
+when excited. At such times the _r_'s were thundered or rolled out.
+
+Aunt Cecilia smiled most graciously, and I feel sure she did not object to
+be mistaken for our sister.
+
+'It seems,' he added, 'we are to be fellow-passengers. My name is
+Moncrieff, and if ever I can be of the slightest service to you, pray
+command me.'
+
+'You mentioned your mother,' said aunt, by way of saying something. 'Is
+the old--I mean, is she going with you?'
+
+'What else, what else? And you wouldn't be wrong in calling her "old"
+either. My mither's no' a spring chicken, but--she's a marvel. Ay,
+mither's a marvel.'
+
+'I presume, sir, you've been out before?'
+
+'I've lived for many years in the Silver West. I've made a bit of money,
+but I couldn't live a year longer without my mither, so I just came
+straight home to take her out. I think when you know my mither you'll
+agree with me--she's a marvel.'
+
+On pausing here for a minute to review a few of the events of my past
+life, I cannot agree with those pessimists who tell us we are the victims
+of chance; that our fates and our fortunes have nothing more certain to
+guide them to a good or a bad end than yonder thistle-down which is the
+sport of the summer breeze.
+
+When I went on board the good ship Canton, had any one told me that in a
+few days more I would be standing by the banks of Loch Coila, I would have
+laughed in his face.
+
+Yet so it was. Aunt and Donald stayed in London, while I and Dugald formed
+the strange resolve of running down and having one farewell glance at
+Coila. I seemed impelled to do so, but how or by what I never could say.
+
+No; we did not go near Edinburgh. Good-byes had been said, why should we
+rehearse again all the agony of parting?
+
+Nor did we show ourselves to many of the villagers, and those who did see
+us hardly knew us in our English dress.
+
+Just one look at the lake, one glance at the old castle, and we should be
+gone, never more to set foot in Coila.
+
+And here we were close by the water, almost under shadow of our own old
+home. It was a forenoon in the end of February, but already the
+larch-trees were becoming tinged with tender green, a balmy air went
+whispering through the drooping silver birches, the sky was blue, flecked
+only here and there with fleecy clouds that cast shadow-patches on the
+lake. Up yonder a lark was singing, in adjoining spruce thickets we could
+hear the croodle of the ringdove, and in the swaying branches of the elms
+the solemn-looking rooks were already building their nests. Dugald and I
+were lying on the moss.
+
+'Spring always comes early to dear Coila,' I was saying; 'and I'm so glad
+the ship broke down, just to give me a chance of saying "Good-bye" to the
+loch. You, Dugald, did say "Good-bye" to it, you know, but I never had a
+chance.
+
+Ahem! We were startled by the sound of a little cough right behind us--a
+sort of made cough, such as people do when they want to attract
+attention.
+
+Standing near us was a gentleman of soldierly bearing, but certainly not
+haughty in appearance, for he was smiling. He held a book in his hand, and
+on his arm leant a beautiful young girl, evidently his daughter, for both
+had blue eyes and fair hair.
+
+Dugald and I had started to our feet, and for the life of me I could not
+help feeling awkward.
+
+'I fear,' I stammered, 'we are trespassing. But--but my brother and I ran
+down from London to say good-bye to Coila. We will go at once.'
+
+'Stay one moment,' said the gentleman. 'Do not run away without
+explaining. You have been here before?'
+
+'We are the young M'Crimmans of Coila, sir.'
+
+I spoke sadly--I trust not fiercely.
+
+'Pardon me, but something seemed to tell me you were. We are pleased to
+meet you. Irene, my daughter. It is no fault of ours--at least, of
+mine--that your family and the M'Raes were not friendly long ago.'
+
+'But my father _would_ have made friends with the chief of Strathtoul,' I
+said.
+
+'Yes, and mine had old Highland prejudices. But look, yonder comes a
+thunder-shower. You _must_ stay till it is over.'
+
+'I feel, sir,' I said, 'that I am doing wrong, and that I have done wrong.
+My father, even, does not know we are here. _He_ has prejudices now,
+too,'
+
+'Well,' said the officer, laughing, 'my father is in France. Let us both
+be naughty boys. You must come and dine with me and my daughter, anyhow.
+Bother old-fashioned blood-feuds! We must not forget that we are living in
+the nineteenth century.'
+
+I hesitated a moment, then I glanced at the girl, and next minute we were
+all walking together towards the castle.
+
+We did stop to dinner, nor did we think twice about leaving that night.
+The more I saw of these, our hereditary enemies, the more I liked them.
+Irene was very like Flora in appearance and manner, but she had a greater
+knowledge of the world and all its ways. She was very beautiful. Yes, I
+have said so already, but somehow I cannot help saying it again. She
+looked older than she really was, and taller than most girls of fourteen.
+
+'Well,' I said in course of the evening, 'it _is_ strange my being here.'
+
+'It is only the fortune of war our both being here,' said M'Rae.
+
+'I wonder,' I added, 'how it will all end!'
+
+'If it would only end as I should wish, it would end very pleasantly
+indeed. But it will not. You will write filially and tell your good father
+of your visit. He will write cordially, but somewhat haughtily, to thank
+us. That will be all. Oh, Highland blood is very red, and Highland pride
+is very high. Well, at all events, Murdoch M'Crimman--if you will let me
+call you by your name without the "Mr."--we shall never forget your visit,
+shall we, darling?'
+
+I looked towards Miss M'Rae. Her answer was a simple 'No'; but I was much
+surprised to notice that her eyes were full of tears, which she tried in
+vain to conceal.
+
+I saw tears in her eyes next morning as we parted. Her father said
+'Good-bye' so kindly that my whole heart went out to him on the spot.
+
+'I'm not sorry I came,' I said; 'and, sir,' I added, 'as far as you and I
+are concerned, the feud is at an end?'
+
+'Yes, yes; and better so. And,' he continued, 'my daughter bids me say
+that she is happy to have seen you, that she is going to think about you
+very often, and is so sorrowful you poor lads should have to go away to a
+foreign land to seek your fortune while we remain at Coila. That is the
+drift of it, but I fear I have not said it prettily enough to please
+Irene. Good-bye.'
+
+We had found fine weather at Coila, and we brought it back with us to
+London. There was no hitch this time in starting. The Canton got away
+early in the morning, even before breakfast. The last person to come on
+board was the Scot, Moncrieff. He came thundering across the plank gangway
+with strides like a camel, bearing something or somebody rolled in a
+tartan plaid.
+
+Dugald and I soon noticed two little legs dangling from one end of the
+bundle and a little old face peeping out of the other. It was his mother
+undoubtedly.
+
+He put her gently down when he gained the deck, and led her away amidships
+somewhere, and there the two disappeared. Presently Moncrieff came back
+alone and shook hands with us in the most friendly way.
+
+'I've just disposed of my mither,' he said, as if she had been a piece of
+goods and he had sold her. 'I've just disposed of the poor dear creature,
+and maybe she won't appear again till we're across the bay.'
+
+'You did not take the lady below?'
+
+'There's no' much of the lady about my mither, though I'm doing all I can
+to make her one. No; I didn't take her below. Fact is, we have state
+apartments, as you might say, for I've rented the second lieutenant's and
+purser's cabins. There they are, cheek-by-jowl, as cosy as wrens'-nests,
+just abaft the cook's galley amidships yonder.'
+
+'Well,' I said, 'I hope your mother will be happy and enjoy the voyage.'
+
+'Hurrah!' shouted the Scot; 'we're off at last! Now for a fair wind and a
+clear sea to the shores of the Silver West. I'll run and tell my mither
+we're off.'
+
+That evening the sun sank on the western waves with a crimson glory that
+spoke of fine weather to follow. We were steaming down channel with just
+enough sail set to give us some degree of steadiness.
+
+Though my brothers and I had never been to sea before, we had been used to
+roughing it in storms around the coast and on Loch Coila, and probably
+this may account for our immunity from that terror of the ocean,
+_mal-de-mer_. As for aunt, she was an excellent sailor. The saloon, when
+we went below to dinner, was most gay, beautifully lighted, and very
+home-like. The officers present were the captain, the surgeon, and one
+lieutenant. The captain was president, while the doctor occupied the chair
+of _vice_. Both looked thorough sailors, and both appeared as happy as
+kings. There seemed also to exist a perfect understanding between the
+pair, and their remarks and anecdotes kept the passengers in excellent
+good humour during dinner.
+
+The doctor had been the first to enter, and he came sailing in with aunt,
+whom he seated on his right hand. Now aunt was the only young lady among
+the passengers, and she certainly had dressed most becomingly. I could not
+help admiring her--so did the doctor, but so also did the captain.
+
+When he entered he gave his surgeon a comical kind of a look and shook his
+head.
+
+'Walked to windward of me, I see!' he said. 'Miss M'Crimman,' he added,
+'we don't, as a rule, keep particular seats at table in this ship.'
+
+'Don't believe a word he says, Miss M'Crimman!' cried the doctor. 'Look,
+he's laughing! He never is serious when he smiles like that. Steward, what
+is the number of this chair?'
+
+'Fifteen, sir.'
+
+'Fifteen, Miss M'Crimman, and you won't forget it; and this table-napkin
+ring, observe, is Gordon tartan, green and black and orange.'
+
+'Miss M'Crimman,' the captain put in, as if the doctor had not said a
+word, 'to-morrow evening, for example, you will have the honour to sit on
+my right.'
+
+'Honour, indeed!' laughed the doctor.
+
+'The honour to sit on my right. You will find I can tell much better
+stories than old Conserve-of-roses there; and I feel certain you will not
+sit anywhere else all the voyage!'
+
+'Ah, stay one moments!' cried a merry-looking little Spaniard, who had
+just entered and seated himself quietly at the table; 'the young lady weel
+not always sit dere, or dere, for sometime she weel have de honour to sit
+at my right hand, for example, eh, capitan?'
+
+There was a hearty laugh at these words, and after this, every one seemed
+on the most friendly terms with every one else, and willing to serve every
+one else first and himself last. This is one good result that accrues from
+travelling, and I have hardly ever yet known a citizen of the world who
+could be called selfish.
+
+There were three other ladies at table to-night, each of whom sat by her
+husband's side. Though they were all in what Dr. Spinks afterwards termed
+the sere and yellow leaf, both he and the good captain really vied with
+each other in paying kindly attention to their wants.
+
+So pleasantly did this our first dinner on board pass over that by the
+time we had risen from our seats we felt, one and all, as if we had known
+each other for a very long time indeed.
+
+Next came our evening concert. One of the married ladies played
+exceedingly well, and the little Spanish gentleman sang like a minor Sims
+Reeves.
+
+'Your sister sings, I feel sure,' he said to me.
+
+'My aunt plays the harp and sings,' I answered.
+
+'And the harp--you have him?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Oh, bring him--bring him! I do love de harp!'
+
+While my aunt played and sang, it would have been difficult to say which
+of her audience listened with the most delighted attention. The doctor's
+face was a study; the captain looked tenderly serious; Captain Bombazo,
+the black-moustachioed Spaniard, was animation personified; his dark eyes
+sparkled like diamonds, his very eyelids appeared to snap with pleasure.
+Even the stewards and stewardess lingered in the passage to listen with
+respectful attention, so that it is no wonder we boys were proud of our
+clever aunt.
+
+When she ceased at last there was that deep silence which is far more
+eloquent than applause. The first to break it was Moncrieff.
+
+'Well,' he said, with a deep sigh, 'I never heard the like o' that
+afore!'
+
+The friendly relations thus established in the saloon lasted all the
+voyage long--so did the captain's, the doctor's, and little Spanish
+officer's attentions to my aunt. She had made a triple conquest; three
+hearts, to speak figuratively, lay at her feet.
+
+Our voyage was by no means a very eventful one, and but little different
+from thousands of others that take place every month.
+
+Some degree of merriment was caused among the men, when, on the fourth
+day, big Moncrieff led his mother out to walk the quarter-deck leaning on
+his arm. She was indeed a marvel. It would have been impossible even to
+guess at her age; for though her face was as yellow as a withered lemon,
+and as wrinkled as a Malaga rasin, she walked erect and firm, and was
+altogether as straight as a rush. She was dressed with an eye to comfort,
+for, warm though the weather was getting, her cloak was trimmed with fur.
+On her head she wore a neat old-fashioned cap, and in her hand carried a
+huge green umbrella, which evening and morning she never laid down except
+at meals.
+
+[Illustration: 'I'll teach ye!']
+
+This umbrella was a weapon of offence as well as defence. We had proof of
+that on the very first day, for as he passed along the deck the second
+steward had the bad manners to titter. Next moment the umbrella had
+descended with crushing force on his head, and he lay sprawling in the lee
+scuppers.
+
+'I'll teach ye,' she said, 'to laugh at an auld wife, you gang-the-gate
+swinger.'
+
+'Mither! mither!' pleaded Moncrieff, 'will you never be able to behave
+like a lady?'
+
+The steward crawled forward crestfallen, and the men did not let him
+forget his adventure in a hurry.
+
+'Mither's a ma_rr_vel,' Moncrieff whispered to me more than once that
+evening, for at table no 'laird's lady' could have behaved so well, albeit
+her droll remarks and repartee kept us all laughing. After dinner it was
+just the same--there were no bounds to her good-nature, her excellent
+spirits and comicality. Even when asked to sing she was by no means taken
+aback, but treated us to a ballad of five-and-twenty verses, with a chorus
+to each; but as it told a story of love and war, of battle and siege, of
+villainy for a time in the ascendant, and virtue triumphant at the end, it
+really was not a bit wearisome; and when Moncrieff told us that she could
+sing a hundred more as good, we all agreed that his mother was indeed a
+marvel.
+
+I have said the voyage was uneventful, but this is talking as one who has
+been across the wide ocean many times and oft. No long voyage can be
+uneventful; but nothing very dreadful happened to mar our passage to Rio
+de Janeiro. We were not caught in a tornado; we were not chased by a
+pirate; we saw no suspicious sail; no ghostly voice hailed us from aloft
+at the midnight hour; no shadowy form beckoned us from a fog. We did not
+even spring a leak, nor did the mainyard come tumbling down. But we _did_
+have foul weather off Finisterre; a man _did_ fall overboard, and was duly
+picked up again; a shark _did_ follow the ship for a week, but got no
+corpse to devour, only the contents of the cook's pail, sundry bullets
+from sundry revolvers, and, finally, a red-hot brick rolled in a bit of
+blanket. Well, of course, a man fell from aloft and knocked his shoulder
+out--a man always does--and Mother Carey's chickens flew around our stern,
+boding bad weather, which never came, and shoals of porpoises danced
+around us at sunset, and we saw huge whales pursuing their solitary path
+through the bosom of the great deep, and we breakfasted off flying fish,
+and caught Cape pigeons, and wondered at the majestic flight of the
+albatross; and we often saw lightning without hearing thunder, and heard
+thunder without seeing lightning; and in due course we heard the thrilling
+shout from aloft of 'Land ho!' and heard the officer of the watch sing
+out, 'Where away?'
+
+And lo and behold! three or four hours afterwards we were all on deck
+marvelling at the rugged grandeur of the shores of Rio, and the wondrous
+steeple-shaped mountain that stands sentry for ever and ever and ever at
+the entrance to the marvellous haven.
+
+When this was in sight, Moncrieff rushed off into the cabin and bore his
+mother out.
+
+He held the old lady aloft, on one arm, shouting, as he pointed
+landwards--
+
+'Look, mither, look! the Promised Land! Our new home in the Silver West!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+ON SHORE AT RIO.
+
+
+It was well on in the afternoon when land was sighted, but so accurately
+had the ship been navigated for all the long, pleasant weeks of our voyage
+that both the captain and his first officer might easily have been excused
+for showing a little pride in their seamanship. Your British sailor,
+however, is always a modest man, and there was not the slightest approach
+to bombast. The ship was now slowed, for we could not cross the bar that
+night.
+
+At the dinner-table we were all as merry as schoolboys on the eve of a
+holiday. Old Jenny, as Moncrieff's mother had come to be called, was in
+excellent spirits, and her droll remarks not only made us laugh, but
+rendered it very difficult indeed for the stewards to wait with anything
+approaching to _sang-froid_. Moncrieff was quietly happy. He seemed
+pleased his mother was so great a favourite. Aunt, in her tropical toilet,
+looked angelic. The adjective was applied by our mutual friend Captain
+Roderigo de Bombazo, and my brothers and I agreed that he had spoken the
+truth for once in a way. Did he not always speak the truth? it may be
+asked. I am not prepared to accuse the worthy Spaniard of deliberate
+falsehood, but if everything he told us was true, then he must indeed have
+come through more wild and terrible adventures, and done more travelling
+and more fighting, than any lion-hunter that ever lived and breathed.
+
+He was highly amusing nevertheless, and as no one, with the exception of
+Jenny, ever gave any evidence of doubting what he said and related
+concerning his strange career, he was encouraged to carry on; and even the
+exploits of Baron Munchausen could not have been compared to some of his.
+I think it used to hurt his feelings somewhat that old Jenny listened so
+stolidly to his relations, for he used to cater for her opinion at times.
+
+'Ah!' Jenny would say, 'you're a wonderful mannie wi' your way o't! And
+what a lot you've come through! I wonder you have a hair in your heed!'
+
+'But the senora believes vot I say?'
+
+'Believe ye? If a' stories be true, yours are no lees, and I'm not goin'
+ahint your back to tell ye, sir.'
+
+Once, on deck, he was drawing the long-bow, as the Yankees call it, at a
+prodigious rate. He was telling how, once upon a time, he had caught a
+young alligator; how he had tamed it and fed it till it grew a monster
+twenty feet long; how he used to saddle it and bridle it, and ride through
+the streets of Tulcora on its back--men, women, and children screaming and
+flying in all directions; how, armed only with his good sabre, he rode it
+into a lake which was infested with these dread saurians; how he was
+attacked in force by the awful reptiles, and how he had killed and wounded
+so many that they lay dead in dozens next day along the banks.
+
+'Humph!' grunted old Jenny when he had finished.
+
+The little captain put the questions,
+
+'Ah! de aged senora not believe! De aged senora not have seen much of de
+world?'
+
+Jenny had grasped her umbrella.
+
+'Look here, my mannie,' she said, 'I'll gie ye a caution; dinna you refer
+to my age again, or I'll "aged-snorer" you. If ye get the weight o' my
+gingham on your shou'ders, ye'll think a coo has kick't ye--so mind.'
+
+And the Spanish captain had slunk away very unlike a lion-hunter, but he
+never called Jenny old again.
+
+To-night, however, even before we had gone below, Jenny had given proofs
+that she was in an extra good temper, for being a little way behind
+Bombazo--as if impelled by some sudden and joyous impulse--she lifted that
+everlasting umbrella and hit him a friendly thwack that could be heard
+from bowsprit to binnacle.
+
+'Tell as mony lees the nicht as ye like, my mannie,' she cried, 'and I'll
+never contradict ye, for I've seen the promised land!'
+
+'And so, captain, you must stay at Rio a whole week?' said my aunt at
+dessert.
+
+'Yes, Miss M'Crimman,' replied the captain. 'Are you pleased?'
+
+'I'm delighted. And I propose that we get up a grand picnic in "the
+promised land," as good old Jenny calls it.'
+
+And so it was arranged. Bombazo and Dr. Spinks, having been at Rio de
+Janeiro before, were entrusted with the organization of the 'pig-neeg,' as
+Bombazo called it, and held their first consultation on ways and means
+that very evening. Neither I nor my brothers were admitted to this
+meeting, though aunt was. Nevertheless, we felt confident the picnic would
+be a grand success, for, to a late hour, men were hurrying fore and aft,
+and the stewards were up to their eyes packing baskets and making
+preparations, while from the cook's gally gleams of rosy light shot out
+every time the door was opened, to say nothing of odours so appetising
+that they would have awakened Van Winkle himself.
+
+Before we turned in, we went on deck to have a look at the night. It was
+certainly full of promise. We were not far from the shore--near enough to
+see a long line of white which we knew was breakers, and to hear their
+deep sullen boom as they spent their fury on the rocks. The sky was
+studded with brilliant stars--far more bright, we thought them, than any
+we ever see in our own cold climate. Looking aloft, the tall masts seemed
+to mix and mingle with the stars at every roll of the ship. The moon, too,
+was as bright as silver in the east, its beams making strange quivering
+lines and crescents in each approaching wave. And somewhere--yonder among
+those wondrous cone-shaped hills, now bathed in this purple moonlight--lay
+the promised land, the romantic town of Rio, which to-morrow we should
+visit.
+
+We went below, and, as if by one accord, my brothers and I knelt down
+together to thank the Great Power on high who had guided us safely over
+the wide illimitable ocean, and to implore His blessing on those at home,
+and His guidance on all our future wanderings.
+
+Early next morning we were awakened by a great noise on deck, and the dash
+and turmoil of breaking water. The rudder-chains, too, were constantly
+rattling as the men at the wheel obeyed the shouts of the officer of the
+watch.
+
+'Starboard a little!'
+
+'Starboard it is, sir!'
+
+'Easy as you go! Steady!'
+
+'Steady it is, sir!'
+
+'Port a little! Steady!'
+
+Then came a crash that almost flung us out of our beds. Before we gained
+the deck of our cabin there was another, and still another. Had we run on
+shore? We dreaded to ask each other.
+
+But just then the steward, with kindly thought, drew back our curtain and
+reassured us.
+
+'We're only bumping over the bar, young gentlemen--we'll be in smooth
+water in a jiffey.'
+
+We were soon all dressed and on deck. We were passing the giant hill
+called Sugar Loaf, and the mountains seemed to grow taller and taller, and
+to frown over us as we got nearer.
+
+Once through the entrance, the splendid bay itself lay spread out before
+us in all its silver beauty. Full twenty miles across it is, and
+everywhere surrounded by the grandest hills imaginable. Not even in our
+dreams could we have conceived of such a noble harbour, for here not only
+could all the fleets in the world lie snug, but even cruise and manoeuvre.
+Away to the west lay the picturesque town itself, its houses and public
+buildings shining clear in the morning sun, those nearest nestling in a
+beauty of tropical foliage I have never seen surpassed.
+
+My brothers and I felt burning to land at once, but regulations must be
+carried out, and before we had cleared the customs, and got a clean bill
+of health, the day was far spent. Our picnic must be deferred till
+to-morrow.
+
+However, we could land.
+
+As they took their seats in the boat and she was rowed shoreward, I
+noticed that Donald and Dugald seemed both speechless with delight and
+admiration; as for me, I felt as if suddenly transported to a new world.
+And such a world--beauty and loveliness everywhere around us! How should I
+ever be able to describe it, I kept wondering--how give dear old mother
+and Flora any notion, even the most remote, of the delight instilled into
+our souls by all we saw and felt in this strange, strange land! Without
+doubt, the beauty of our surroundings constitutes one great factor in our
+happiness, wherever we are.
+
+When we landed--indeed, before we landed--while the boat was still
+skimming over the purple waters, the green mountains appearing to mingle
+and change places every moment as we were borne along, I felt conquered,
+if I may so express it, by the enchantment of my situation. I gave in my
+allegiance to the spirit of the scene, I abandoned all thoughts of being
+able to describe anything, I abandoned myself to enjoyment. _Laisser
+faire_, I said to my soul, is to live. Every creature, every being here
+seems happy. To partake of the _dolce far niente_ appears the whole aim
+and object of their lives.
+
+And so I stepped on shore, regretting somewhat that Flora was not here,
+feeling how utterly impossible it would be to write that 'good letter'
+home descriptive of this wondrous medley of tropical life and loveliness,
+but somewhat reckless withal, and filled with a determination to give full
+rein to my sense of pleasure. I could not help wondering, however, if
+everything I saw was real. Was I in a dream, from which I should presently
+be rudely awakened by the rattle and clatter of the men hauling up ashes,
+and find myself in bed on board the Canton? Never mind, I would enjoy it
+were it even a dream.
+
+What a motley crowd of people of every colour! How jolly those negroes
+look! How gaily the black ladies are dressed! How the black men laugh!
+What piles of fruit and green stuff! What a rich, delicious, warm aroma
+hovers everywhere!
+
+An interpreter? You needn't ask _me_. I'm not in charge. Ask my aunt here;
+but she herself can talk many languages. Or ask that tall brawny Scot, who
+is hustling the darkies about as if South America all belonged to him.
+
+'A carriage, Moncrieff? Oh, this is delightful! Auntie, dear, let me help
+you on board. Hop in, Dugald. Jump, Donald. No, no, Moncrieff, I mean to
+have the privilege of sitting beside the driver. Off we go. Hurrah! Do you
+like it, Donald? But aren't the streets rough! I won't talk any more; I
+want to watch things.'
+
+I wonder, though, if Paradise itself was a bit more lovely than the
+gardens we catch glimpses of as we drive along?
+
+How cool they look, though the sun is shining in a blue and cloudless sky!
+What dark shadows those gently waving palm-trees throw! Look at those
+cottage verandahs! Look, oh, look at the wealth of gorgeous flowers--the
+climbing, creeping, wreathing flowers! What colours! What fantastic
+shapes! What a merry mood Nature must have been in when she framed them
+so! And the perfume from those fairy gardens hangs heavy on the air; the
+delicious balmy breeze that blows through the green, green palm-leaves is
+not sufficient to waft away the odour of that orange blossom. Behold those
+beautiful children in groups, on terraces and lawns, at windows, or in
+verandahs--so gaily are they dressed that they themselves might be
+mistaken for bouquets of lovely flowers!
+
+I wonder what the names of all those strange blossom-bearing shrubs are.
+But, bah! who would bother about names of flowers on a day like this? The
+butterflies do not, and the bees do not. Are those really butterflies,
+though--really and truly? Are they not gorgeously painted fans, waved and
+wafted by fairies, themselves unseen?
+
+The people we meet chatter gaily as we pass, but they do not appear to
+possess a deal of curiosity; they are too contented for anything. All life
+here must be one delicious round of enjoyment. And nobody surely ever dies
+here; I do not see how they could.
+
+'Is this a cave we are coming to, Moncrieff? What is that long row of
+columns and that high, green, vaulted roof, through which hardly a ray of
+sunshine can struggle? Palm-trees! Oh, Moncrieff, what glorious palms! And
+there is life upon life there, for the gorgeous trees, not apparently
+satisfied with their own magnificence of shape and foliage, must array
+themselves in wreaths of dazzling orchids and festoons of trailing
+flowers. The fairies _must_ have hung those flowers there? Do not deny it,
+Moncrieff!'
+
+And here, in the Botanical Gardens, imagination must itself be dumb--such
+a wild wealth of all that is charming in the vegetable and animal
+creation.
+
+'Donald, go your own road. Dugald, go yours; let us wander alone. We may
+meet again some day. It hardly matters whether we do or not. I'm in a
+dream, and I don't think I want to awaken for many a long year.'
+
+I go wandering away from my brothers, away from every one.
+
+A fountain is sending its spray aloft till the green drooping branches of
+the bananas and those feathery tree-ferns are everywhere spangled with
+diamonds. I will rest here. I wish I could catch a few of those wondrous
+butterflies, or even one of those fairylike humming-birds--mere sparks of
+light and colour that flit and buzz from flower to flower. I wish I
+could--that I--I mean--I--wish--'
+
+'Hullo! Murdoch. Where are you? Why, here he is at last, sound asleep
+under an orange-tree!'
+
+It is my wild Highland brothers. They have both been shaking me by the
+shoulders. I sit up and rub my eyes.
+
+'Do you know we've been looking for you for over an hour?'
+
+'Ah, Dugald!' I reply, 'what is an hour, one wee hour, in a place like
+this?'
+
+We must now go to visit the market-place, and then we are going to the
+hotel to dine and sleep.
+
+The market is a wondrously mixed one, and as wondrously foreign and
+strange as it is possible to conceive. The gay dresses of the women--some
+of whom are as black as an ebony ball; their gaudy head-gear; their
+glittering but tinselled ornaments; their round laughing faces, in which
+shine rows of teeth as white perhaps as alabaster; the jaunty men folks;
+the world of birds and beasts, all on the best of terms with themselves,
+especially the former, arrayed in all the colours of the rainbow; the
+world of fruit, tempting in shape, in beauty, and in odour; the world of
+fish, some of them beautiful enough to have dwelt in the coral caves of
+fairyland beneath the glittering sea--some ugly, even hideous enough to be
+the creatures of a demon's dream, and some, again, so odd-looking or so
+grotesque as to make one smile or laugh outright;--the whole made up a
+picture that even now I have but to close my eyes to see again!
+
+When night falls the streets get for a time more crowded; side-paths
+hardly exist--at all events, the inhabitants show their independence by
+crowding along the centre of the streets. Not much light to guide them,
+though, except where from open doors or windows the rays from lamps shoot
+out into the darkness.
+
+Away to the hotel. A dinner in a delightfully cool, large room, a punkah
+waving overhead, brilliant lights, joy on all our faces, a dessert fit to
+set before a king. Now we shall know how those strange fruits taste, whose
+perfume hung around the market to-day. To bed at last in a room scented
+with orange-blossoms, and around the windows of which the sweet
+stephanotis clusters in beauty--to bed, to sleep, and dream of all we have
+done and seen.
+
+We awaken--at least, I do--in the morning with a glad sensation of
+anticipated pleasure. What is it? Oh yes, the picnic!
+
+But it is no ordinary picnic. It lasts for three long days and nights,
+during which we drive by day through scenes of enchantment apparently, and
+sleep by night under canvas, wooed to slumber by the wind whispering in
+the waving trees.
+
+'Moncrieff,' I say on the second day, 'I should like to live here for ever
+and ever and ever.'
+
+'Man!' replies Moncrieff, 'I'm glad ye enjoy it, and so does my mither
+here. But dinna forget, lads, that hard work is all before us when we
+reach Buenos Ayres.'
+
+'But I will, and I _shall_ forget, Moncrieff,' I cry. 'This country is
+full of forgetfulness. Away with all thoughts of work; let us revel in the
+sunshine like the bees, and the birds, and the butterflies.'
+
+'Revel away, then,' says Moncrieff; and dear aunt smiles languidly.
+
+On the last day of 'the show,' as Dugald called it, and while our mule
+team is yet five good miles from town, clouds dark and threatening bank
+rapidly up in the west. The driver lashes the beasts and encourages them
+with shout and cry to do their speedy utmost; but the storm breaks over us
+in all its fury, the thunder seems to rend the very mountains, the rain
+pours down in white sheets, the lightning runs along the ground and looks
+as if it would set the world on fire; the wind goes tearing through the
+trees, bending the palms like reeds, rending the broad banana-leaves to
+ribbons; branches crack and fall down, and the whole air is filled with
+whirling fronds and foliage.
+
+Moncrieff hastily envelopes his mother in that Highland plaid till nought
+is visible of the old lady save the nose and one twinkling eye. We laugh
+in spite of the storm. Louder and louder roars the thunder, faster and
+faster fly the mules, and at last we are tearing along the deserted
+streets, and hastily draw up our steaming steeds at the hotel door. And
+that is almost all I remember of Rio; and to-morrow we are off to sea once
+more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+MONCRIEFF RELATES HIS EXPERIENCES.
+
+
+Our life at sea had been like one long happy dream. That, at all events,
+is how it had felt to me. 'A dream I could have wished to last for aye.' I
+was enamoured of the ocean, and more than once I caught myself yearning to
+be a sailor. There are people who are born with strange longings, strange
+desires, which only a life on the ever-changing, ever-restless waves
+appears to suit and soothe. To such natures the sea seems like a mother--a
+wild, hard, harsh mother at times, perhaps, but a mother who, if she
+smiles but an hour, makes them forget her stormy anger of days or weeks.
+
+But the dream was past and gone. And here we had settled down for a spell
+at Buenos Ayres. We had parted with the kindly captain and surgeon of the
+Canton, with many a heartily expressed hope of meeting again another day,
+with prayers on their side for our success in the new land, with kindliest
+wishes on ours for a pleasant voyage and every joy for them.
+
+Dear me! What a very long time it felt to look back to, since we had
+bidden them 'good-bye' at home! How very old I was beginning to feel! I
+asked my brothers if their feelings were the same, and found them
+identical. Time had been apparently playing tricks on us.
+
+And yet we did not look any older in each other's eyes, only just a little
+more serious. Yes, that was it--_serious_. Even Dugald, who was usually
+the most light-hearted and merry of the three of us, looked as if he fully
+appreciated the magnitude of what we had undertaken.
+
+Here we were, three--well, young men say, though some would have called us
+boys--landed on a foreign shore, without an iota of experience, without
+much knowledge of the country apart from that we had gleaned from books or
+gathered from the conversations of Bombazo and Moncrieff. And yet we had
+landed with the intention, nay, even the determination, to make our way in
+the new land--not only to seek our fortunes, but to find them.
+
+Oh, we were not afraid! We had the glorious inheritance of courage,
+perseverance, and self-reliance. Here is how Donald, my brother, argued
+one night:
+
+'Look, here, Murdo,' he said. 'This _is_ a land of milk and honey, isn't
+it? Well, we're going to be the busy bees to gather it. It _is_ a silver
+land, isn't it? Well, we're the boys to tap it. Fortunes _are_ made here,
+and _have_ been made. What is done once can be done five hundred times.
+Whatever men dare they can do. _Quod erat demonstrandum._'
+
+'_Et nil desperandum_,' added Dugald.
+
+'I'm not joking, I can tell you, Dugald, I'm serious now, and I mean to
+remain so, and stick to work--aren't you, Murdo?'
+
+'I am, Donald.'
+
+Then we three brothers, standing there, one might say, on the confines of
+an unknown country, with all the world before us, shook hands, and our
+looks, as we gazed into each other's eyes, said--if they said
+anything--'We'll do the right thing one by the other, come weal, come
+woe.'
+
+Aunt entered soon after.
+
+'What are you boys so serious about?' she said, laughing merrily, as she
+seated herself on the couch. 'You look like three conspirators.'
+
+'So we are, aunt. We're conspiring together to make our fortunes.'
+
+'What! building castles in the air?'
+
+'Oh, no, no, _no_,' cried Donald, 'not in the air, but on the earth. And
+our idols are not going to have feet of clay, I assure you, auntie, but of
+solid silver.'
+
+'Well, we shall hope for the best. I have just parted with Mr. Moncrieff,
+whom I met down town. We have had a long walk together and quite a nice
+chat. He has made me his confidant--think of that!'
+
+'What! you, auntie?'
+
+'Yes, me. Who else? And that sober, honest, decent, Scot is going to take
+a wife. It was so good of him to tell _me_. We are all going to the
+wedding next week, and I'm sure I wish the dear man every happiness and
+joy.'
+
+'So do we, aunt.'
+
+'And oh, by the way, he is coming to dine here to-night, and I feel sure
+he wants to give you good advice, and that means me too, of course.'
+
+'Of course, auntie, you're one of us.'
+
+Moncrieff arrived in good time, and brought his mother with him.
+
+'Ye didn't include my mither in the invitation, Miss M'Crimman,' said the
+Scot; 'but I knew you meant her to come. I've been so long without the
+poor old creature, that I hardly care to move about without her now.'
+
+'Poor old creature, indeed!' Mrs. Moncrieff was heard to mumble. 'Where,'
+she said to a nattily dressed waiter, 'will you put my umbrella?'
+
+'I'll take the greatest care of it, madam,' the man replied.
+
+'Do, then,' said the little old dame, 'and I may gi'e ye a penny, though I
+dinna mak' ony promises, mind.'
+
+A nicer little dinner was never served, nor could a snugger room for such
+a _tete-a-tete_ meal be easily imagined. It was on the ground floor, the
+great casement windows opening on to a verandah in a shady garden, where
+grass was kept green and smooth as velvet, where rare ferns grew in
+luxurious freedom with dwarf palms and drooping bananas, and where
+stephanotis and the charming lilac bougainvillea were still in bloom.
+
+When the dessert was finished, and old Jenny was quite tired talking, it
+seemed so natural that she should curl up in an easy-chair and go off to
+sleep.
+
+'I hope my umbrella's safe, laddie,' were her last words as her son
+wrapped her in his plaid.
+
+'As safe as the Union Bank,' he replied.
+
+So we left her there, for the waiter had taken coffee into the verandah.
+
+Aunt, somewhat to our astonishment, ordered cigars, and explained to
+Moncrieff that she did not object to smoking, but _did_ like to see men
+happy.
+
+Moncrieff smiled.
+
+'You're a marvel as well as my mither,' he said.
+
+He smoked on in silence for fully five minutes, but he often took the
+cigar from his mouth and looked at it thoughtfully; then he would allow
+his eyes to follow the curling smoke, watching it with a smile on his face
+as it faded into invisibility, as they say ghosts do.
+
+'Mr. Moncrieff,' said aunt, archly, 'I know what you are thinking about.'
+
+Moncrieff waved his hand through a wreath of smoke as if to clear his
+sight.
+
+'If you were a man,' he answered, 'I'd offer to bet you couldn't guess my
+thoughts. I was not thinking about my Dulcinea, nor even about my mither;
+I was thinking about you and your britheries--I mean your nephews.'
+
+'You are very kind, Mr. Moncrieff.'
+
+'I'm a man of the wo_rrr_ld, though I wasn't aye a man of the wo_rrr_ld. I
+had to pay deep and dear for my experience, Miss M'Crimman.'
+
+'I can easily believe that; but you have benefited by it.'
+
+'Doubtless, doubtless; only it was concerning yourselves I was about to
+make an observation or two.'
+
+'Oh, thanks, do. You are so kind.'
+
+'Never a bit. This is a weary wo_rrr_ld at best. Where would any of us
+land if the one didn't help the other? Well then, there you sit, and woman
+of the wo_rrr_ld though you be, you're in a strange corner of it. You're
+in a foreign land now if ever you were. You have few friends. Bah! what
+are all your letters of introduction worth? What do they bring you in? A
+few invitations to dinner, or to spend a week up country by a wealthy
+_estanciero_, advice from this friend and the next friend, and from a
+dozen friends maybe, but all different. You are already getting puzzled.
+You don't know what to do for the best. You're stopping here to look about
+you, as the saying is. You might well ask me what right have I to advise
+you. The right of brotherhood, I may answer. By birth and station you may
+be far above me, but--you are friends--you are from dear auld Scotland.
+Boys, you are my brothers!'
+
+'And I your sister!' Aunt extended her hand as she spoke, and the worthy
+fellow 'coralled' it, so to speak, in his big brown fist, and tears sprang
+to his eyes.
+
+He pulled himself up sharp, however, and surrounded himself with smoke, as
+the cuttle-fish does with black water, and probably for the same
+reason--to escape observation.
+
+'Now,' he said, 'this is no time for sentiment; it is no land for
+sentiment, but for hard work. Well, what are you going to do? Simply to
+say you're going to make your fortune is all fiddlesticks and folly. How
+are you going to begin?'
+
+'We were thinking--' I began, but paused.
+
+'_I_ was thinking--' said my aunt; then she paused also.
+
+Moncrieff laughed, but not unmannerly.
+
+'I was thinking,' he said. '_You_ were thinking; _he_, _she_, or _it_ was
+thinking. Well, my good people, you may stop all your life in Buenos Ayres
+and conjugate the verb "to think"; but if you'll take my advice you will
+put a shoulder to the wheel of life, and try to conjugate the verb "to
+do".'
+
+'We all want to _do_ and act,' said Donald, energetically.
+
+'Right. Well, you see, you have one thing already in your favour. You have
+a wee bit o' siller in your pouch. It is a nest egg, though; it is not to
+be spent--it is there to bring more beside it. Now, will I tell you how I
+got on in the world? I'm not rich, but I am in a fair way to be
+independent. I am very fond of work, for work's sake, and I'm thirty years
+of age. Been in this country now for over fourteen years. Had I had a nest
+egg when I started, I'd have been half a millionaire by now. But, wae's
+me! I left the old country with nothing belonging to me but my crook and
+my plaid.'
+
+'You were a shepherd before you came out, then?' said aunt.
+
+'Yes; and that was the beauty of it. You've maybe heard o' Foudland, in
+Aberdeenshire? Well, I came fra far ayant the braes o' Foudland. That's,
+maybe, the way my mither's sae auldfarrent. There, ye see, I'm talkin'
+Scotch, for the very thought of Foudland brings back my Scotch tongue. Ay,
+dear lady, dear lady, my father was an honest crofter there. He owned a
+bit farm and everything, and things went pretty well with us till death
+tirled at the door-sneck and took poor father away to the mools. I was
+only a callan o' some thirteen summers then, and when we had to leave the
+wee croft and sell the cows we were fain to live in a lonely shieling on
+the bare brae side, just a butt and a ben with a wee kailyard, and barely
+enough land to grow potatoes and keep a little Shetland cowie. But, young
+though I was, I could herd sheep--under a shepherd at first, but finally
+all by myself. I'm not saying that wasn't a happy time. Oh, it was, lady!
+it was! And many a night since then have I lain awake thinking about it,
+till every scene of my boyhood's days rose up before me. I could see the
+hills, green with the tints of spring, or crimson with the glorious
+heather of autumn; see the braes yellow-tasselled with the golden broom
+and fragrant with the blooming whins; see the glens and dells, the silver,
+drooping birch-trees, the grand old waving pines, the wimpling burns, the
+roaring linns and lochs asleep in the evening sunset. And see my mither's
+shieling, too; and many a night have I lain awake to pray I might have her
+near me once again.'
+
+'And a kind God has answered that prayer!'
+
+'Ay, Miss M'Crimman, and I'll have the sad satisfaction of one day closing
+her een. Never mind, we do our duty here, and we'll all meet again in the
+great "Up-bye." But, dear boys, to continue my story--if story I dare call
+it. Not far from the hills where I used to follow Laird Glennie's sheep,
+and down beside a bonnie wood and stream, was a house, of not much
+pretension, but tenanted every year by a gentleman who used to paint the
+hills and glens and country all round. They say he got great praise for
+his pictures, and big prices as well. I used often to arrange my sheep and
+dogs for him into what he would call picturesque groups and attitudes.
+Then he painted them and me and dogs and all. He used to delight to listen
+to my boyish story of adventure, and in return would tell me tales of
+far-off lands he had been in, and about the Silver Land in particular.
+Such stories actually fired my blood. He had sown the seeds of ambition in
+my soul, and I began to long for a chance of getting away out into the
+wide, wide world, and seeing all its wonders, and, maybe, becoming a great
+man myself. But how could a penniless laddie work his way abroad?
+Impossible.
+
+'Well, one autumn a terrible storm swept over the country. It began with a
+perfect hurricane of wind, then it settled down to rain, till it became a
+perfect "spate." I had never seen such rain, nor such tearing floods as
+came down from the hills.
+
+'Our shieling was a good mile lower down the stream than the artist's
+summer hut. It was set well up the brae, and was safe. But on looking out
+next day a sight met my eyes that quite appalled me. All the lowlands and
+haughs were covered with a sea of water, down the centre of which a mighty
+river was chafing and roaring, carrying on its bosom trees up-torn from
+their roots, pieces of green bank, "stooks" of corn and "coles" of hay,
+and, saddest of all, the swollen bodies of sheep and oxen. My first
+thought was for the artist. I ran along the bank till opposite his house.
+Yes, there it was flooded to the roof, to which poor Mr. Power was
+clinging in desperation, expecting, doubtless, that every moment would be
+his last, for great trees were surging round the house and dashing against
+the tiles.
+
+'Hardly knowing what I did, I waved my plaid and shouted. He saw me, and
+waved his arm in response. Then I remembered that far down stream a man
+kept a boat, and I rushed away, my feet hardly seeming to touch the
+ground, till I reached--not the dwelling, that was covered, but the bank
+opposite; and here, to my delight, I found old M'Kenzie seated in his
+coble. He laughed at me when I proposed going to the rescue of Mr. Power.
+
+'"Impossible!" he said. "Look at the force of the stream."
+
+'"But we have not to cross. We can paddle up the edge," I insisted.
+
+'He ventured at last, much to my joy. It was hard, dangerous work, and
+often we found it safest to land and haul up the boat along the side.
+
+'We were opposite the artist's hut at length, hardly even the chimney of
+which was now visible. But Power was safe as yet.
+
+'At the very moment our boat reached him the chimney disappeared, and with
+it the artist. The turmoil was terrible, for the whole house had
+collapsed. For a time I saw nothing, then only a head and arm raised above
+the foaming torrent, far down stream. I dashed in, in spite of M'Kenzie's
+remonstrances, and in a minute more I had caught the drowning man. I must
+have been struck on the head by the advancing boat. That mattered
+little--the sturdy old ferryman saved us both; and for a few days the
+artist had the best room in mither's shieling.
+
+'And this, dear lady, turned out to be--as I dare say you have guessed--my
+fairy godfather. He went back to Buenos Ayres, taking me as servant. He is
+here now. I saw him but yesterday, and we are still the fastest friends.
+
+'But, boys, do not let me deceive you. Mr. Power was not rich; all he
+could do for me was to pay my passage out, and let me trust to Providence
+for the rest.
+
+'I worked at anything I could get to do for a time, principally holding
+horses in the street, for you know everybody rides here. But I felt sure
+enough that one day, or some day, a settler would come who could value the
+services of an honest, earnest Scottish boy.
+
+'And come the settler did. He took me away, far away to the west, to a
+wild country, but one that was far too flat and level to please me, who
+had been bred and born among the grand old hills of Scotland.
+
+'Never mind, I worked hard, and this settler--a Welshman he
+was--appreciated my value, and paid me fairly well. The best of it was
+that I could save every penny of my earnings.
+
+'Yes, boys, I roughed it more than ever you'll have to do, though remember
+you'll have to rough it too for a time. You don't mind that, you say.
+Bravely spoken, boys. Success in the Silver Land rarely fails to fall to
+him who deserves it.
+
+'Well, in course of time I knew far more about sheep and cattle-raising
+than my master, so he took me as a partner, and since then I have done
+well. We changed our quarters, my partner and I. We have now an excellent
+steading of houses, and a grand place for the beasts.'
+
+'And to what qualities do you chiefly attribute your success?' said my
+aunt.
+
+'Chiefly,' replied Moncrieff, 'to good common-sense, to honest work and
+perseverance. I'm going back home in a week or two, as soon as I get
+married and my mither gets the "swimming" out of her head. She says she
+still feels the earth moving up and down with her; and I don't wonder, an
+auld body like her doesn't stand much codging about.
+
+'Well, you see, boys, that I, like yourselves, had one advantage to begin
+with. You have a bit o' siller--I got a fairy godfather. But if I had a
+year to spare I'd go back to Scotland and lecture. I'd tell them all my
+own ups and downs, and I'd end by saying that lads or young men, with
+plenty of go in them and willingness to work, will get on up country here
+if they can once manage to get landed. Ay, even if they have hardly one
+penny to rattle against another.
+
+'Now, boys, do you care to go home with me? Mind it is a wild border-land
+I live on. There are wild beasts in the hill jungles yet, and there are
+wilder men--the Indians. Yes, I've fought them before, and hope to live to
+fight them once again.'
+
+'I don't think _we'll_ fear the Indians _very_ much,' said my bold brother
+Donald.
+
+'And,' I added, 'we are so glad you have helped us to solve the problem
+that we stood face to face with--namely, how to begin to do something.'
+
+'Well, if that is all, I'll give you plenty to do. I've taken out with me
+waggon-loads of wire fencing as well as a wife. Next week, too, I expect a
+ship from Glasgow to bring me seven sturdy Scotch servant men that I
+picked myself. Every one of them has legs like pillar post-offices, hands
+as broad as spades, and a heart like a lion's. And, more than all this, we
+are trying to form a little colony out yonder, then we'll be able to hold
+our own against all the reeving Indians that ever strode a horse. Ah!
+boys, this Silver Land has a mighty future before it! We have just to
+settle down a bit and work with a will and a steady purpose, then we'll
+fear competition neither with Australia nor the United States of America
+either.
+
+'But you'll come. That's right. And now I have you face to face with fate
+and fortune.
+
+                   "Now's the day and now's the hour,
+                   See the front of battle lower."
+
+Yes, boys, the battle of life, and I would not give a fig for any lad who
+feared to face it.
+
+'Coming, mither, coming. That's the auld lady waking up, and she'll want a
+cup o' tea.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+SHOPPING AND SHOOTING.
+
+
+We all went to Moncrieff's wedding, and it passed off much the same way as
+do weddings in other parts of the world. The new Mrs. Moncrieff was a very
+modest and charming young person indeed, and a native of our sister
+island--Ireland. I dare say Moncrieff loved his wife very much, though
+there was no extra amount of romance about his character, else he would
+hardly have spoken about his wife and a truck-load of wire fencing in the
+self-same sentence. But I dare say this honest Scot believed that wire
+fencing was quite as much a matter of necessity in the Silver West as a
+wife was.
+
+As for my brothers and me, and even aunt, we were impatient now--'burning'
+bold Donald called it--to get away to this same Silver West and begin the
+very new life that was before us.
+
+But ships do not always arrive from England exactly to a day; the vessel
+in which Moncrieff's men, dogs, goods, and chattels were coming was
+delayed by contrary winds, and was a whole fortnight behind her time.
+
+Meanwhile we restrained ourselves as well as we could, and aunt went
+shopping. She had set her heart upon guanaco robes or ponchos for each of
+us; and though they cost a deal of money, and were, according to
+Moncrieff, a quite unnecessary expense, she bought them all the same.
+
+'They will last for ever, you know,' was aunt's excuse for the
+extravagance.
+
+'Yes,' he said, 'but we won't. Besides,' he added, 'these ponchos may
+bring the Gaucho malo (the bad Gaucho) round us.'
+
+'All the better,' persisted aunt. 'I've heard such a deal about this
+Gaucho malo that I should very much like to see a live specimen.'
+
+Moncrieff laughed.
+
+'I much prefer _dead_ specimens,' he said, with that canny twinkle in his
+eye. 'That's the way I like to see them served up. It is far the safest
+plan.'
+
+We were very fond of aunt's company, for she really was more of a sister
+to us than our auntie; but for all that we preferred going shopping with
+Moncrieff. The sort of stores he was laying in gave such earnest of future
+sport and wild adventure.
+
+Strange places he took us to sometimes--the shop of a half-caste Indian,
+for instance, a fellow from the far south of Patagonia. Here Moncrieff
+bought quite a quantity of ordinary ponchos, belts, and linen trousers of
+great width with hats enough of the sombrero type to thatch a rick. This
+mild and gentle savage also sold Moncrieff some dozen of excellent lassoes
+and bolas as well. From the way our friend examined the former, and tried
+the thong-strength of the latter, it was evident he was an expert in the
+use of both. Bolas may be briefly described as three long leather thongs
+tied together at one end, and having a ball at the free end of each. On
+the pampas, these balls are as often as not simply stones tied up in bits
+of skin; but the bolas now bought by Moncrieff were composed of shining
+metal, to prevent their being lost on the pampas. These bolas are waved
+round the heads of the horsemen hunters when chasing ostriches, or even
+pumas. As soon as the circular motion has given them impetus they are
+dexterously permitted to leave the hand at a tangent, and if well thrown
+go circling round the legs, or probably neck of the animal, and bring it
+to the ground by tripping it up, or strangling it.
+
+The lasso hardly needs any description.
+
+'Can you throw that thing well?' said Dugald, his eyes sparkling with
+delight.
+
+'I think I can,' replied Moncrieff. 'Come to the door and see me lasso a
+dog or something.'
+
+Out we all went.
+
+'Oh!' cried Dugald, exultingly, 'here comes little Captain Bombazo,
+walking on the other side of the street with my aunt. Can you lasso him
+without hurting auntie?'
+
+'I believe I can,' said Moncrieff. 'Stand by, and let's have a good try.
+Whatever a man dares he can do. Hoop la!'
+
+The cord left the Scotchman's hand like a flash of lightning, and next
+moment Bombazo, who at the time was smiling and talking most volubly, was
+fairly noosed.
+
+The boys in the street got up a cheer. Bombazo jumped and struggled, but
+Moncrieff stood his ground.
+
+'He must come,' he said, and sure enough, greatly to the delight of the
+town urchins, Moncrieff rounded in the slack of the rope and landed the
+captain most beautifully.
+
+'Ah! you beeg Scot,' said Bombazo, laughing good-humouredly. 'I would not
+care so mooch, if it were not for de lady.'
+
+'Oh, she won't miss you, Bombazo.'
+
+'On the contraire, she veel be inconsolabeel.'
+
+'Ha, ha, ha!' laughed Moncrieff. 'What a tall opinion of yourself you
+have, my little friend!'
+
+Bombazo drew himself up, but it hardly added an inch to his height, and
+nothing to his importance.
+
+Saddles of the pampas pattern the semi-savage had also plenty of, and
+bridles too, and Moncrieff gave a handsome order.
+
+A more respectable and highly civilized saddler's store was next visited,
+and real English gear was bought, including two charming ladies' saddles
+of the newest pattern, and a variety of rugs of various kinds.
+
+Off we went next to a wholesale grocer's place. Out came Moncrieff's
+great note-book, and he soon gave evidence that he possessed a wondrous
+memory, and was a thorough man of business. He kept the shopman hard at it
+for half an hour, by which time one of the pyramids of Egypt, on a small
+scale, was built upon the counter.
+
+[Illustration: Fairly Noosed]
+
+'Now for the draper's, and then the chemist's,' said our friend. From the
+former--a Scot, like himself--he bought a pile of goods of the better
+sort, but from their appearance all warranted to wear a hundred years.
+
+His visit to the druggist was of brief duration.
+
+'Is my medicine chest filled?'
+
+'Yes, sir, all according to your orders.'
+
+'Thanks; send it, and send the bill.'
+
+'Never mind about the bill, Mr. Moncrieff. You'll be down here again.'
+
+'Send the bill, all the same. And I say, Mr. Squills--'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Don't forget to deduct the discount.'
+
+But Moncrieff's shopping was not quite all over yet, and the last place he
+went to was a gunsmith's shop.
+
+And here I and my brothers learned a little about Silver West shooting,
+and witnessed an exhibition that made us marvel.
+
+Moncrieff, after most careful examination, bought half a dozen good
+rifles, and a dozen fowling pieces. It took him quite a long time to
+select these and the ammunition.
+
+'You have good judgment, sir,' said the proprietor.
+
+'I require it all,' said Moncrieff. 'But now I'd look at some revolvers.'
+
+He was shown some specimens.
+
+'Toys--take them away.'
+
+He was shown others.
+
+'Toys again. Have you nothing better?'
+
+'There is nothing better made.'
+
+'Very well. Your bill please. Thanks.'
+
+'If you'll wait one minute,' the shopkeeper said, 'I should feel obliged.
+My man has gone across the way to a neighbour gunsmith.'
+
+'Couldn't I go across the way myself?'
+
+'No,' and the man smiled. 'I don't want to lose your custom.'
+
+'Your candour is charming. I'll wait.'
+
+In a few minutes the man returned with a big basket.
+
+'Ah! these are beauties,' cried Moncrieff. 'Now, can I try one or two?'
+
+'Certainly.'
+
+The man led the way to the back garden of the premises. Against a wall a
+target was placed, and Moncrieff loaded and took up his position. I
+noticed that he kept his elbow pretty near his side. Then he slowly raised
+the weapon.
+
+Crack--crack--crack! six times in all.
+
+'Bravo!' cried the shopkeeper. 'Why, almost every shot has hit the spot.'
+
+Moncrieff threw the revolver towards the man as if it had been a
+cricket-ball.
+
+'Take off the trigger,' he said.
+
+'Off the trigger, sir?'
+
+'Yes,' said Moncrieff, quietly; 'I seldom use the trigger.'
+
+The man obeyed. Then he handed back the weapon, which he had loaded.
+
+Moncrieff looked one moment at the target, then the action of his arm was
+for all the world like that of throwing stones or cracking a whip.
+
+He seemed to bring the revolver down from his ear each time.
+
+Bang--bang--bang! and not a bullet missed the bull's-eye.
+
+'How is it done?' cried Dugald, excitedly.
+
+'I lift the hammer a little way with my thumb and let it go again as I get
+my aim--that is all. It is a rapid way of firing, but I don't advise you
+laddies to try it, or you may blow off your heads. Besides, the aim,
+except in practised hands like mine, is not so accurate. To hit well it is
+better to raise the weapon. First fix your eye on your man's
+breast-button--if he has one--then elevate till you have your sight
+straight, and there you are, and there your Indian is, or your "Gaucho
+malo."'
+
+Moncrieff pointed grimly towards the ground with his pistol as he spoke,
+and Dugald gave a little shudder, as if in reality a dead man lay there.
+
+'It is very simple, you see.'
+
+'Oh, Mr. Moncrieff,' said Dugald, 'I never thought you were so terrible a
+man!'
+
+Moncrieff laughed heartily, finished his purchases, ordering better
+cartridges, as these, he said, had been badly loaded, and made the weapon
+kick, and then we left the shop.
+
+'Now then, boys, I'm ready, and in two days' time hurrah for the Silver
+West! Between you and me, I'm sick of civilization.'
+
+And in two days' time, sure enough, we had all started.
+
+The train we were in was more like an American than an English one. We
+were in a very comfortable saloon, in which we could move about with
+freedom.
+
+Moncrieff, as soon as we had rattled through the streets and found
+ourselves out in the green, cool country, was brimful of joy and spirits.
+Aunt said he reminded her of a boy going off on a holiday. His wife, too,
+looked 'blithe' and cheerful, and nothing could keep his mother's tongue
+from wagging.
+
+Bombazo made the old lady a capital second, while several other settlers
+who were going out with us--all Scotch, by the way--did nothing but smile
+and wonder at all they saw. We soon passed away for a time beyond the
+region of trees into a rich green rolling country, which gave evidence of
+vast wealth, and sport too. Of this latter fact Dugald took good notice.
+
+'Oh, look!' he would cry, pointing to some wild wee lake. 'Murdoch!
+Donald! wouldn't you like to be at the lochside yonder, gun in hand?'
+
+And, sure enough, all kinds of feathered game were very plentiful.
+
+But after a journey of five hours we left the train, and now embarked on a
+passenger steamer, and so commenced our journey up the Parana. Does not
+the very name sound musical? But I may be wrong, according to some, in
+calling the Parana beautiful, for the banks are not high; there are no
+wild and rugged mountains, nor even great forests; nevertheless, its very
+width, its silent moving power, and its majesticness give it a beauty in
+my eye that few rivers I know of possess. We gazed on it as the sunset lit
+up its wondrous waters till an island we were passing appeared to rise
+into the sky and float along in the crimson haze. We gazed on it again ere
+we retired for the night. The stars were now all out, and the river's dark
+bosom was studded here and there with ripples and buttons of light; but
+still it was silent, as if it hid some dark mysterious secret which it
+must tell only to the distant ocean.
+
+We slept very soundly this night, for the monotonous throb-throb of the
+engine's great pulse and the churning rush of the screw not only wooed us
+to slumber, but seemed to mingle even with our dreams.
+
+All night long, then, we were on the river, and nearly all next day as
+well. But the voyage appeared to my brothers and me to be all too short.
+We neared Rosario about sunset, and at last cast anchor. But we did not
+land. We were too snug where we were, and the hotel would have had far
+fewer charms.
+
+To-night we had a little impromptu concert, for several of Moncrieff's
+friends came on board, and, strange to say, they were nearly all Scotch.
+So Scotch was spoken, Scotch songs were sung, and on deck, to the wild
+notes of the great bagpipes, Scotch reels and strathspeys were danced.
+After that,
+
+              'The nicht drave on wi' songs and clatter,'
+
+till it was well into the wee short hours of the morning.
+
+At Rosario we stopped for a day--more, I think, because Moncrieff wished
+to give aunt and his young wife a chance of seeing the place than for any
+business reason. Neither my brothers nor I were very much impressed by it,
+though it is a large and flourishing town, built somewhat on Philadelphia
+principles, in blocks, and, like Philadelphia, gridironed all over with
+tramway lines. It is a good thing one is able to get off the marble
+pavements into the cars without having far to go, for the streets are at
+times mere sloughs of despond. It is the same in all new countries.
+
+Rosario lies in the midst of a flat but fertile country, on the banks of
+the Parana. The hotel where we lodged was quite Oriental in its
+appearance, being built round a beautiful square, paved with marble, and
+adorned with the most lovely tropical shrubs, flowers, and climbing
+plants.
+
+There seems to be a flea in Rosario, however--just one flea; but he is a
+most ubiquitous and a most insatiably blood-thirsty little person. The
+worst of it is that, night or day, you are never perfectly sure where he
+may be. It is no use killing him either--that is simply labour thrown
+away, for he appears to come to life again, and resumes his evil courses
+as merrily as before.
+
+Fifty times a day did I kill that flea, and Dugald said he had slain him
+twice as often; but even as Dugald spoke I could have vowed the lively
+_pulex_ was thoroughly enjoying a draught of my Highland blood inside my
+right sock.
+
+Although none of our party shed tears as we mounted into the train, still
+the kindly hand-shakings and the hearty good-byes were affecting enough;
+and just as the train went puffing and groaning away from the station they
+culminated in one wild Highland hurrah! repeated three times thrice, and
+augmented by the dissonance of a half-ragged crew of urchins, who must
+needs wave their arms aloft and shout, without the faintest notion what it
+was all about.
+
+We were now _en route_ for Cordoba, westward ho! by Frayle Muerto and
+Villa Neuva.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+A JOURNEY THAT SEEMS LIKE A DREAM.
+
+
+It was towards sunset on the day we had left Rosario, and we had made what
+our guard called a grand run, though to us it was a somewhat tedious one.
+Moncrieff had tucked his mother up in the plaid, and she had gone off to
+sleep on the seat 'as gentle as "ewe lammie,"' according to her son. My
+aunt and the young bride were quietly talking together, and I myself was
+in that delightful condition called "twixt sleeping and waking,' when
+suddenly Dugald, who had been watching everything from the window, cried,
+'Oh, Donald, look here. What a lovely changing cloud!'
+
+Had Moncrieff not been busy just then--very earnestly busy
+indeed--discussing the merits of some sample packets of seeds with one of
+his new men, he might have come at once and explained the mystery.
+
+It was indeed a lovely cloud, and it lay low on the north-western horizon.
+But we had never before seen so strange a cloud, for not only did it
+increase in length and breadth more rapidly than do most clouds, but it
+caught the sun's parting rays in quite a marvellous manner. When first we
+looked at it the colour throughout was a bluish purple; suddenly it
+changed to a red with resplendent border of fiery orange. Next it
+collapsed, getting broader and rounder, and becoming a dark blue, almost
+approaching to black, while the border beneath was orange-red. But the
+glowing magnificence of the colour it is impossible to describe in words;
+and the best artist would have failed to reproduce it even were he ten
+times a Turner.
+
+At this moment, and just as the cloud was becoming elongated again,
+Moncrieff came to our side. His usually bright face fell at once as soon
+as he glanced at it.
+
+'Locusts!' He almost gasped the word out.
+
+'Locusts!' was re-echoed from every corner of the carriage; and
+immediately all eyes were strained in the direction of our 'lofty golden
+cloud.'
+
+As we approached nearer to it, and it came nearer to us, even the light
+from the setting sun was obscured, and in a short time we were in the
+cloud, and apparently part of it. It had become almost too dark to see
+anything inside our carriage, owing to that dense and awful fog of insect
+life. We quickly closed the windows, for the loathsome insects were now
+pattering against the glass, and many had already obtained admittance,
+much to the horror of young Mrs. Moncrieff, though aunt took matters easy
+enough, having seen such sights before.
+
+The train now slowly came to a standstill. Something--no one appeared to
+know what--had happened on ahead of us, and here we must wait till the
+line was clear. Even Moncrieff's mother had awakened, and was looking out
+with the rest of us.
+
+'Dearie me! Dearie me!' she exclaimed. 'A shower o' golochs! The very
+licht o' day darkened wi' the fu'some craiters. Ca' you this a land o'
+milk and honey? Egyptian darkness and showers o' golochs!'
+
+We descended and walked some little distance into the country, and the
+sight presented to our astonished gaze I, for one, will not forget to my
+dying day. The locusts were still around us, but were bearing away
+southward, having already devastated the fields in this vicinity. But they
+fell in hundreds and thousands around us; they struck against our hands,
+our faces, and hats; they got into our sleeves, and even into our pockets;
+and we could not take a step without squashing them under foot.
+
+Only an hour before we had been passing through a country whose green
+fertility was something to behold once and dream about for ever. Evidence
+of wealth and contentment had been visible on all sides. Beautiful,
+home-looking, comfortable _estancias_ and out-buildings, fat, sleek cattle
+and horses, and flocks of beautiful sheep, with feathered fowls of every
+description. But here, though there were not wanting good farmsteadings,
+all was desolation and threatened famine; hardly a green blade or leaf was
+left, and the woebegone looks of some of the people we met wandering
+aimlessly about, dazed and almost distracted, were pitiful to behold. I
+was not sorry when a shriek from the engine warned us that it was time to
+retrace our slippery footsteps.
+
+'Is this a common occurrence?' I could not help asking our friend
+Moncrieff.
+
+He took me kindly by the arm as he replied,
+
+'It's a depressing sight to a youngster, I must allow; but we should not
+let our thoughts dwell on it. Sometimes the locusts are a terrible plague,
+but they manage to get over even that. Come in, and we'll light up the
+saloon.'
+
+For hours after this the pattering continued at the closed windows,
+showing that the shower of golochs had not yet ceased to fall. But with
+lights inside, the carriage looked comfortable and cheerful enough, and
+when presently Moncrieff got out Bombazo's guitar and handed it to him,
+and that gentleman began to sing, we soon got happy again, and forgot even
+the locusts--at least, all but Moncrieff's mother did. She had gone to
+sleep in a corner, but sometimes we heard her muttering to herself, in her
+dreams, about the 'land o' promise,' 'showers of golochs,' and 'Egyptian
+darkness.'
+
+The last thing I remember as I curled up on the floor of the saloon, with
+a saddle for a pillow and a rug round me--for the night had grown bitterly
+cold--was Bombazo's merry face as he strummed on his sweet guitar and sang
+of tresses dark, and love-lit eyes, and sunny Spain. This was a delightful
+way of going to sleep; the awakening was not quite so pleasant, however,
+for I opened my eyes only to see a dozen of the ugly 'golochs' on my rug,
+and others asquat on the saddle, washing their faces as flies do. I got up
+and went away to wash mine.
+
+The sun was already high in the heavens, and on opening a window and
+looking out, I found we were passing through a woodland country, and that
+far away in the west were rugged hills. Surely, then, we were nearing the
+end of our journey.
+
+I asked our mentor Moncrieff, and right cheerily he replied,
+
+'Yes, my lad, and we'll soon be in Cordoba now.'
+
+This visit of ours to Cordoba was in reality a little pleasure trip, got
+up for the special delectation of our aunt and young Mrs. Moncrieff. It
+formed part and parcel of the Scotchman's honeymoon, which, it must be
+allowed, was a very chequered one.
+
+If the reader has a map handy he will find the name Villa Maria thereon, a
+place lying between Rosario and Cordoba. This was our station, and there
+we had left all heavy baggage, including Moncrieff's people. On our return
+we should once more resume travelling together westward still by Mercedes.
+And thence to our destination would be by far and away the most eventful
+portion of the journey.
+
+'Look out,' continued Moncrieff, 'and behold the rugged summits of the
+grand old hills.'
+
+'And these are the Sierras?'
+
+'These are the Sierras; and doesn't the very sight of mountains once again
+fill your heart with joy? Don't you want to sing and jump--'
+
+'And call aloud for joy,' said his mother, who had come up to have a peep
+over our shoulders. 'Dearie me,' she added, 'they're no half so bonny and
+green as the braes o' Foudland.'
+
+'Ah! mither, wait till you get to our beautiful home in Mendoza. Ye'll be
+charmed wi' a' you see.'
+
+'I wish,' I said, 'I was half as enthusiastic as you are, Moncrieff.'
+
+'You haven't been many days in the Silver Land. Wait, lad, wait! When once
+you've fairly settled and can feel at home, man, you'll think the time as
+short as pleasure itself. Days and weeks flee by like winking, and every
+day and every week brings its own round o' duty to perform. And all the
+time you'll be makin' money as easy as makin' slates.'
+
+'Money isn't everything,' I said.
+
+'No, lad, money isn't everything; but money is a deal in this wo_rrr_ld,
+and we mustn't forget that money puts the power in our hands to do others
+good, and that I think is the greatest pleasure of a'. And you know,
+Murdoch, that if God does put talents in our hands He expects us to make
+use of them.'
+
+'True enough, Moncrieff,' I said.
+
+'See, see! that is Cordoba down in the hollow yonder, among the hills.
+Look, mither! see how the domes and steeples sparkle in the mornin's
+sunshine. Yonder dome is the cathedral, and further off you see the
+observatory, and maybe, mither, you'll have a peep through a telescope
+that will bring the moon so near to you that you'll be able to see the
+good folks thereon ploughin' fields and milkin' kye.'
+
+We stayed at Cordoba for four days. I felt something of the old pleasant
+languor of Rio stealing over me again as I lounged about the handsome
+streets, gazed on the ancient churches and convent, and its world-renowned
+University, or climbed its _barranca_, or wandered by the Rio Balmeiro,
+and through the lovely and romantic suburbs. In good sooth, Cordoba is a
+dreamy old place, and I felt better for being in it. The weather was all
+in our favour also, being dry, and neither hot nor cold, although it was
+now winter in these regions. I was sorry to leave Cordoba, and so I feel
+sure was aunt, and even old Jenny.
+
+Then came the journey back to Villa Maria, and thence away westward to
+Villa Mercedes. The railway to the latter place had not long been opened.
+
+It seems all like a beautiful halo--that railway ride to the _Ultima
+Thule_ of the iron horse--and, like a dream, it is but indistinctly
+remembered. Let me briefly catch the salient points of this pleasant
+journey.
+
+Villa Maria we reach in the evening. The sun is setting in a golden haze;
+too golden, for it bodes rain, and presently down it comes in a steady
+pour, changing the dust of the roads into the stickiest of mud, and
+presently into rivers. Moncrieff is here, there, and everywhere, seeing
+after his manifold goods and chattels; but just as the short twilight is
+deepening into night, he returns 'dressed and dry,' as he calls it, to the
+snug little room of the inn, where a capital dinner is spread for us, and
+we are all hungry. Even old Jenny, forgetting her troubles and travels,
+makes merry music with knife and fork, and Bombazo is all smiles and
+chatter. It rains still; what of that? It will drown the mosquitoes and
+other flying 'jerlies.' It is even pleasant to listen to the rattle of the
+rain-drops during the few lulls there were in the conversation. The sound
+makes the room inside seem ever so much more cosy. Besides, there is a
+fire in the grate, and, to add to our enjoyment, Bombazo has his guitar.
+
+Even the landlord takes the liberty of lingering in the room, standing
+modestly beside the door, to listen. It is long, he tells us, since he has
+had so cheerful a party at his house.
+
+Aileen, as Moncrieff calls his pretty bride, is not long in discovering
+that the innkeeper hails from her own sweet Isle of Sorrow, and many
+friendly questions are asked on both sides.
+
+Bed at last. A bright morning, the sun coming up red and rosy through an
+ocean of clouds more gorgeous than ever yet was seen in tame old England.
+
+We are all astir very early. We are all merry and hungry. Farewells are
+said, and by and by off we rattle. The train moves very slowly at first,
+but presently warms to her work and settles down to it. We catch a glimpse
+of a town some distance off, and nearer still the silver gleam of a river
+reflecting the morning sun. By and by we are on the river bridge, and
+over it, and so on and away through an open pampa. Such, at least, I call
+it. Green swelling land all around, with now and then a lake or loch
+swarming with web-footed fowl, the sight of which makes Dugald's eyes
+water.
+
+We pass station after station, stopping at all. More woods, more pampa;
+thriving fields and fertile lands; _estancias_, flocks of sheep, herds of
+happy cattle. A busy, bustling railway station, with as much noise around
+it as we find at Clapham Junction; another river--the Rio Cuarto, if my
+memory does not play me false; pampas again, with hills in the distance.
+Wine and water-melons at a station; more wine and more water-melons at
+another.
+
+After this I think I fall asleep, and I wonder now if the wine and the
+water-melons had anything to do with that. I awake at last and rub my
+eyes. Bombazo is also dozing; so is old Jenny. Old Jenny is a marvel to
+sleep. Dugald is as bright as a humming bird; he says I have lost a
+sight.
+
+'What was the sight?'
+
+'Oh, droves upon droves of real wild horses, wilder far than our ponies at
+Coila.'
+
+I close my eyes again. Dear old Coila! I wish Dugald had not mentioned the
+word. It takes me back again in one moment across the vast and mighty
+ocean we have crossed to our home, to father, mother, and Flora.
+
+Before long we are safe at Villa Mercedes. Not much to see here, and the
+wind blows cold from west and south.
+
+We are not going to lodge in the town, however. We are independent of
+inns, if there are any, and independent of everything. We are going under
+canvas.
+
+Already our pioneers have the camp ready in a piece of ground sheltered by
+a row of lordly poplars; and to-morrow morning we start by road for the
+far interior.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another glorious morning! There is a freshness in the air which almost
+amounts to positive cold, and reminds one of a November day in Scotland.
+Bombazo calls it bitterly cold, and my aunt has distributed guanaco
+ponchos to us, and has adorned herself with her own. Yes, adorned is the
+right word to apply to auntie's own travelling toilet; but we brothers
+think we look funny in ours, and laugh at each other in turn. Moncrieff
+sticks to the Highland plaid, but the sight of a guanaco poncho to old
+Jenny does, I verily believe, make her the happiest old lady in all the
+Silver Land. She is mounted in the great canvas-covered waggon, which is
+quite a caravan in every respect. It has even windows in the sides and
+real doorways, and is furnished inside with real sofas and Indian-made
+chairs, to say nothing of hammocks and tables and a stove. This caravan is
+drawn by four beautiful horses, and will be our sitting-room and
+dining-room by day, and the ladies' boudoir and bedroom for some time to
+come.
+
+Away we rattle westwards, dozens of soldiers, half-bred Chilians, Gauchos,
+and a crowd of dark-eyed but dirty children, giving us a ringing cheer as
+we start.
+
+What a cavalcade it is, to be sure! Waggons, drays, carts, mules, and
+horses. All our imported Scotchmen are riding, and glorious fellows they
+look. Each has a rifle slung across his shoulder, belts and sheath knives,
+and broad sombrero hat. The giant Moncrieff himself is riding, and looks
+to me the bravest of the brave. I and each of my brothers have undertaken
+to drive a cart or waggon, and we feel men from hat to boots, and as proud
+all over as a cock with silver spurs.
+
+We soon leave behind us those tall, mysterious-looking poplar trees. So
+tall are they that, although when we turned out not a breath of wind was
+blowing on the surface of the ground, away aloft their summits were waving
+gently to and fro, with a whispering sound, as if they were talking to
+unseen spirits in the sky.
+
+We leave even the _estancias_ behind. We are out now on the lonesome
+rolling plain. Here and there are woods; away, far away, behind us are the
+jagged summits of the everlasting hills. By and by the diligence, a
+strange-looking rattle-trap of a coach--a ghost of a coach, I might call
+it--goes rattling and swaying past us. Its occupants raise a feeble cheer,
+to which we respond with a three times three; for we seem to like to hear
+our voices.
+
+After this we feel more alone than ever. On and on and on we jog. The road
+is broad and fairly good; our waggons have broad wheels; this retards our
+speed, but adds to our comfort and that of the mules and horses.
+
+Before very long we reach a broad river, and in we plunge, the horsemen
+leading the van, with the water up to their saddle-girths. I give the
+reins of my team to my attendant Gaucho, and, running forward, jump on
+board the caravan to keep the ladies company while we fight the ford. But
+the ladies are in no way afraid; they are enjoying themselves in the front
+of the carriage, which is open. Old Jenny is in an easy-chair and buried
+to the nose in her guanaco robe. She is muttering something to herself,
+and as I bend down to listen I can catch the words: 'Dearie me! Dearie me!
+When'll ever we reach the Land o' Promise? Egyptian darkness! Showers of
+golochs! Chariots and horsemen! Dearie me! Dearie me!'
+
+But we are over at last, and our whole cavalcade looks sweeter and fresher
+for the bath.
+
+Presently we reach a corral, where two men beckon to Moncrieff. They are
+wild and uncouth enough in all conscience; their baggy breeches and
+ponchos are in sad need of repair, and a visit to a barber would add to
+the respectability of their appearance. They look excited, wave their
+arms, and point southwards. But they talk in a strange jargon, and there
+are but two words intelligible to me. These, however, are enough to set my
+heart throbbing with a strange feeling of uneasiness I never felt before.
+
+'_Los Indios! Los Indios!_'
+
+Moncrieff points significantly to his armed men and smiles. The Gauchos
+wave their arms in the air, rapidly opening and shutting their hands in a
+way that to me is very mysterious. And so they disappear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE TRAGEDY AT THE FONDA.
+
+
+I could not help wondering, as I glanced at aunt whether she had heard and
+understood the meaning of those wild Gauchos' warning. If she did she made
+no sign. But aunt is a M'Crimman, and the sister of a bold Highland chief.
+She would not _show_ fear even if she _felt_ it. Yes, the brave may feel
+fear, but the coward alone is influenced by it.
+
+Old Jenny had gone to sleep, so I said good-bye to aunt, nodded to Aileen,
+and went back to my waggon once more.
+
+We made good progress that day, though we did not hurry. We stopped to
+feed our cattle, and to rest and feed ourselves. The jolting had been
+terrible on some parts of the road. But now the sun was getting very low
+indeed, and as we soon came to a piece of high, hard ground, with a view
+of the country round us for miles, we determined to bivouac for the
+night.
+
+The horses and mules were hobbled and turned off to graze under the charge
+of sentry Gauchos. No fear of their wandering off far. They were watered
+not an hour ago, and would be fresh by daybreak.
+
+Now, Moncrieff had been too long in the wilds to neglect precautions while
+camping out. I had taken an early opportunity to-day to interview our
+leader concerning the report that Indians were abroad.
+
+'Ah!' he answered, 'you heard and understood what that half-breed said,
+then?'
+
+'Just a word or two. He appeared to give us a warning of some kind. Is it
+of any account?'
+
+'Well, there's always some water where the stirkie drowns; there's always
+some fire where you see smoke; and it is better to be sure than sorry.'
+
+I could elicit no more information from my canny countryman than that. I
+said nothing to any one, not even my brothers. Why should I cause them the
+slightest alarm, and speak a word that might tend to make them sleep less
+soundly?
+
+However, as soon as the halt was made, I was glad to see that Moncrieff
+took every precaution against a surprise. The caravan was made the centre
+of a square, the waggons being 'laggered' around it. The fire was lit and
+the dinner cooked close beside a sheltering _barranca_, and as soon as
+this meal was discussed the fire was extinguished.
+
+                     'Then came still evening on,'
+
+and we all gathered together for prayer. Even the Gauchos were summoned,
+though I fear paid but little attention, while Moncrieff, standing
+bare-headed in the midst of us, read a chapter from the Book by the pale
+yellow light of the western sky. Then, still standing--
+
+'Brothers, let us pray,' he said.
+
+Erect there, with the twilight shadows falling around him, with open eyes
+and face turned skywards, with the sunset's after-glow falling on his hard
+but comely features, his plaid depending from his broad shoulders, I could
+not help admiring the man. His prayer--and it was but brief--had all the
+trusting simplicity of a little child's, yet it was in every way the
+prayer of a man communing with his God; in every tone thereof was breathed
+belief, reliance, gratitude, and faith in the Father.
+
+As he finished, Dugald pressed my arm and pointed eastwards, smiling. A
+star had shone out from behind a little cloud, and somehow it seemed to
+me as if it were an angel's eye, and that it would watch over us all the
+live-long night. Our evening service concluded with that loveliest of
+hymns, commencing--
+
+                   'O God of Bethel, by whose hand
+                     Thy children still are fed;
+                   Who through this weary wilderness
+                     Hath all our fathers led.'
+
+He gave it out in the old Scotch way, two lines at a time, and to the tune
+'Martyrdom.'
+
+It was surely appropriate to our position and our surroundings, especially
+that beautiful verse--
+
+                 'Oh, spread Thy covering wings around,
+                   Till all our wanderings cease,
+                 And at our Father's loved abode
+                   Our souls arrive in peace.'
+
+We now prepared for rest. The sentries were set, and in a short time all
+was peace and silence within our camp. More than once during the night the
+collies--dogs brought out by Moncrieff's men--gave an uneasy bark or two,
+their slumbers being probably disturbed by the cry of some night bird, or
+the passing of a prowling fox.
+
+So, wrapped in our guanaco robes--the benefit of which we felt now--my
+brothers and I slept sweetly and deeply till the sun once more rose in the
+east.
+
+Soon all was bustle and stir again.
+
+Thus were our days spent on the road, thus our evenings, and eke our
+nights. And at the end of some days we were still safe and sound, and
+happy. No one sick in the camp; no horse or mule even lame; while we were
+all hardening to travel already.
+
+So far, hardly anything had happened to break the even tenour of our
+journey. Our progress, however, with so much goods and chattels, and over
+such roads, was necessarily slow; yet we never envied the lumbering
+diligence that now and then went rattling past us.
+
+We saw many herds of wild horses. Some of these, led by beautiful
+stallions, came quite close to us. They appeared to pity our horses
+and mules, condemned to the shafts and harness, and compelled to work
+their weary lives away day after day. Our beasts were slaves. They were
+free--free as the breezes that blew over the pampas and played with
+their long manes, as they went thundering over the plains. We had seen
+several ostriches, and my brothers and I had enjoyed a wild ride or
+two after them. Once we encountered a puma, and once we saw an
+armadillo. We had never clapped eyes on a living specimen before, but
+there could be no mistaking the gentleman in armour. Not that he gave us
+much time for study, however. Probably the creature had been asleep as
+we rounded the corner of a gravel bank, but in one moment he became
+alive to his danger. Next moment we saw nothing but a rising cloud of
+dust and sand; lo! the armadillo was gone to the Antipodes, or somewhere
+in that direction--buried alive. Probably the speed with which an
+armadillo--there are several different species in the Silver
+West--disappears at the scent of any one belonging to the _genus homo_,
+is caused by the decided objection he has to be served up as a side-dish.
+He is excellent eating--tender as a chicken, juicy as a sucking-pig, but
+the honour of being roasted whole and garnished is one he does not crave.
+
+Riding on ahead one day--I had soon got tired of the monotony of driving,
+and preferred the saddle--at a bend of the road I came suddenly upon two
+horsemen, who had dismounted and were lying on a patch of sward by the
+roadside. Their horses stood near. Both sprang up as I appeared, and quick
+as lightning their hands sought the handles of the ugly knives that
+depended in sheaths from their girdles. At this moment there was a look in
+the swarthy face of each that I can only describe as diabolical. Hatred,
+ferocity, and cunning were combined in that glance; but it vanished in a
+moment, and the air assumed by them now was one of cringing humility.
+
+'The Gaucho malo,' I said to myself as soon as I saw them. Their horses
+were there the nobler animals. Bitted, bridled, and saddled, the latter
+were in the manner usual to the country, the saddle looking like a huge
+hillock of skins and rags; but rifles were slung alongside, to say nothing
+of bolas and lasso. The dress of the men was a kind of nondescript garb.
+Shawls round the loins, tucked up between their legs and fastened with a
+girdle, did duty as breeches; their feet were encased in _potro_ boots,
+made of the hock-skin of horses, while over their half-naked shoulders
+hung ponchos of skin, not without a certain amount of wild grace.
+
+Something else as well as his rifle was lashed to the saddle of one of
+these desert gipsies, and being new to the country, I could not help
+wondering at this--namely, a guitar in a case of skin.
+
+With smiles that I knew were false one now beckoned me to alight, while
+the other unslung the instrument and began to tune it. The caravan must
+have been fully two miles behind me, so that to some extent I was at the
+mercy of these Gauchos, had they meant mischief. This was not their plan
+of campaign, however.
+
+Having neighed in recognition of the other horses, my good nag stood as
+still as a statue; while, with my eyes upon the men and my hand within
+easy distance of my revolver, I listened to their music. One sang while
+the other played, and I must confess that the song had a certain
+fascination about it, and only the thought that I was far from safe
+prevented me from thoroughly enjoying it. I knew, as if by instinct,
+however, that the very fingers that were eliciting those sweet sad tones
+were itching to clutch my throat, and that the voice that thrilled my
+senses could in a moment be changed into a tiger yell, with which men like
+these spring upon their human prey.
+
+On the whole I felt relieved when the rumble of the waggon wheels fell
+once more on my ears. I rode back to meet my people, and presently a halt
+was made for the midday feed.
+
+If aunt desired to feast her eyes on the Gaucho malo she had now a chance.
+They played to her, sang to her, and went through a kind of wild dance for
+her especial delectation.
+
+'What romantic and beautiful blackguards they are!' was the remark she
+made to Moncrieff.
+
+Moncrieff smiled, somewhat grimly, I thought.
+
+'It's no' for nought the cland[4] whistles,' he said in his broadest,
+canniest accents.
+
+These Gauchos were hunting, they told Moncrieff. Had they seen any Indians
+about? No, no, not an Indian. The Indians were far, far south.
+
+Aunt gave them some garments, food, and money; and, with many bows and
+salaams, they mounted their steeds and went off like the wind.
+
+I noticed that throughout the remainder of the day Moncrieff was unusually
+silent, and appeared to wish to be alone. Towards evening he beckoned to
+me.
+
+'We'll ride on ahead,' he said, 'and look for a good bit of
+camping-ground.'
+
+Then away we both went at a canter, but in silence.
+
+We rode on and on, the ground rising gently but steadily, until we stopped
+at last on a high plateau, and gazed around us at the scene. A more bleak
+and desolate country it would be impossible to imagine. One vast and
+semi-desert plain, the eye relieved only by patches of algarrobo bushes,
+or little lakes of water. Far ahead of us the cone of a solitary mountain
+rose on the horizon, and towards this the sun was slowly declining. Away
+miles in our rear were the waggons and horses struggling up the hill. But
+silence as deep as death was everywhere. Moncrieff stretched his arm
+southwards.
+
+'What do you see yonder, Murdo?' he said.
+
+'I see,' I replied, after carefully scanning the rolling plain, 'two
+ostriches hurrying over the pampas.'
+
+'Those are not ostriches, boy. They are those same villain Gauchos, and
+they are after no good. I tell you this, that you may be prepared for
+anything that may happen to-night. But look,' he added, turning his
+horse's head; 'down here is a corral, and we are sure to find water.'
+
+We soon reached it. Somewhat to our surprise we found no horses anywhere
+about, and no sign of life around the little inn or _fonda_ except one
+wretched-looking dog.
+
+As we drew up at the door and listened the stillness felt oppressive.
+Moncrieff shouted. No human voice responded; but the dog, seated on his
+haunches, gave vent to a melancholy howl.
+
+'Look,' I said, 'the dog's paws are red with blood. He is wounded.'
+
+'It isn't _his_ blood, boy.'
+
+The words thrilled me. I felt a sudden fear at my heart, born perhaps of
+the death-like stillness. Ah! it was indeed a death-like stillness, and
+the stillness of death itself as well.
+
+Moncrieff dismounted. I followed his example, and together we entered the
+_fonda_.
+
+We had not advanced a yard when we came on an awesome sight--the dead body
+of a Gaucho! It lay on its back with the arms spread out, the face hacked
+to pieces, and gashes in the neck. The interior of the hut was a chaos of
+wild confusion, the little furniture there was smashed, and evidently
+everything of value had been carried away. Half buried in the _debris_ was
+the body of a woman, and near it that of a child. Both were slashed and
+disfigured, while pools of blood lay everywhere about. Young though I was,
+I had seen death before in several shapes, but never anything so ghastly
+and awful as this.
+
+A cold shudder ran through my frame and seemed to pierce to the very
+marrow of my bones. I felt for a few moments as if in some dreadful
+nightmare, and I do not hesitate to confess that, M'Crimman and all as I
+am, had those Gauchos suddenly appeared now in the doorway, I could not
+have made the slightest resistance to their attack. I should have taken my
+death by almost rushing on the point of their terrible knives. But
+Moncrieff's calm earnest voice restored me in a moment. At its tones I
+felt raised up out of my coward self, and prepared to face anything.
+
+'Murdoch,' he said, 'this is a time for calm thought and action.'
+
+'Yes,' I answered; 'bid me do anything, and I will do it. But come out of
+this awful place. I--I feel a little faint.'
+
+Together we left the blood-stained _fonda_, Moncrieff shutting the door
+behind him.
+
+'No other eye must look in there,' he said. 'Now, Murdoch, listen.'
+
+He paused, and I waited; his steadfast eyes bent on my face.
+
+'You are better now? You are calm, and no longer afraid?'
+
+'I am no longer afraid.'
+
+'Well, I can trust _you_, and no one else. Led by those evil fiends whom
+we saw to-day, the Indians will be on us to-night in force. I will prepare
+to give them a warm reception--'
+
+'And I will assist,' I hastened to say.
+
+'No, Murdoch, you will not be here to help us at the commencement. I said
+the Indians would attack in _force_, because they know our numbers. Those
+_malo_ men have been spying on us when we little thought it. They know our
+strength to a gun, and they will come in a cloud that nothing can
+withstand, or that nothing could withstand in the open. But we will
+entrench and defend ourselves till your return.'
+
+'My return!'
+
+'Twelve miles from here,' he went on, 'is a fort. It contains two officers
+and over a score soldiers. In two hours it will be dusk, in an hour after
+that the moon rises. 'Twixt twilight and moonrise you must ride to that
+fort and bring assistance. Depend upon it, we can defend ourselves till
+you come with your men, and you must attack the savages in the rear. You
+understand?'
+
+'Perfectly. But had I not better ride away at once?'
+
+'No, the Indians would waylay you. You never would reach the frontier
+fort. Even if you did escape from the chase, the knowledge that the troops
+were coming would prevent them from attacking to-night.'
+
+'And you want them to attack to-night?'
+
+'I wish them to attack to-night. We may never be able to give a good
+account of them again, but all depends on your success.'
+
+In a short time the first waggons came up. They would have stopped, but
+Moncrieff beckoned them onwards. When the last waggon had gone we mounted
+our horses and slowly followed. At a stream not far distant we watered,
+and once more continued our journey.
+
+The road now rose rapidly, till in half an hour we were on high ground,
+and here the halt was made. I could breathe more easily now we had left
+that blood-stained hollow, though well I knew the sight I had witnessed
+would not leave my thoughts for years to come.
+
+Everything was done as quietly and orderly as if no cloud were hovering
+over us, so soon to burst. The big fire was lit as usual, supper cooked,
+prayers said, and the fire also lit in the ladies' caravan, for the nights
+were cold and raw now.
+
+The night began to fall. Moncrieff and I had kept our secret to ourselves
+hitherto, but we could no longer conceal from any one that there was
+danger in the air. Yet the news seemed to astonish no one, not even aunt.
+
+'Dear brother,' she said to our leader, 'I read it in your face all the
+afternoon.'
+
+It was almost dusk now, and work was commenced in earnest. Spades were got
+out, and every man worked like a slave to entrench the whole position. The
+strength that I was to leave behind me was seven-and-twenty men all told,
+but this included ten Gauchos. Nevertheless, behind trenches, with plenty
+of guns, revolvers, and ammunition, they were powerful enough to defend
+the position against hundreds of badly-armed Indians. Not far off was a
+patch of wood which stretched downwards into a rocky ravine. Luckily it
+lay on the north side of the road, and hither, as soon as it was dark
+enough, every horse and mule was led and secured to the trees. Nor even in
+this extremity of danger were their wants forgotten, for grass mixed with
+grains was placed in front of each.
+
+My horse was now led round. Each hoof was encased in a new and strong
+_potro_ boot, secured by thongs around the legs.
+
+'You must neither be heard nor seen,' said Moncrieff, as he pointed to
+these. 'Now, good-night, boy; God be wi' ye, and with us all!'
+
+'Amen!' I responded, earnestly.
+
+Then away I rode in silence, through the starlight; but as I looked back
+to the camp my heart gave an uneasy throb. Should I ever see them alive
+again?
+
+-----
+
+  [4] Cland, a kind of hawk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+ATTACK BY PAMPA INDIANS.
+
+
+So lonesome a ride in the darkness of night, through a country wild and
+bleak, with danger lurking perhaps on either side of me, might easily have
+daunted a bolder heart than mine.
+
+Something of the unspeakable feeling of dread I had experienced in the
+_fonda_ while surrounded by those awful corpses came back to me now. I
+tried to banish it, but failed. My nervousness became extreme, and
+appeared to increase rather than diminish as I left the camp farther and
+farther behind me. It was almost a superstitious fear that had gotten
+possession of my soul. It was fear of the unseen; and even at this
+distance of time I can only say I would willingly face death in open day a
+hundred times over rather than endure for an hour the terrors I suffered
+that night. Every bush I saw I took for a figure lurking by the roadside,
+while solitary trees I had to pass assumed the form and shape and even
+movement of an enemy on horseback riding silently down to meet me. Again
+and again I clutched my revolver, and even now I cannot tell what power
+prevented me from firing at my phantom foes. Over and over again I reined
+up to listen, and at such times the wind whispering through the tall grass
+sounded to me like human voices, while the cry of birds that now and then
+rose startlingly close to me, made my heart beat with a violence that in
+itself was painful.
+
+Sometimes I closed my eyes, and gave the horse his head, trying to carry
+my thoughts back to the lights of the camp, or forward to the fort which I
+hoped soon to reach.
+
+I had ridden thus probably five good miles, when I ventured to look behind
+me, and so great had been the strain on my nerves that the sight I now
+witnessed almost paralyzed me.
+
+It was the reflection as of a great fire on the brow of the hill where my
+people were beleaguered.
+
+'The camp is already attacked, and in flames,' I muttered. Whither should
+I ride now--backwards or forwards?
+
+While I yet hesitated the flames appeared to wax fiercer and fiercer, till
+presently--oh, joy!--a big round moon gradually shook itself clear of a
+cloud and began slowly to climb the eastern sky.
+
+All fear fled now. I muttered a prayer of thankfulness, dashed the spurs
+into my good horse's sides, and went on at the gallop.
+
+The time seemed short after this, and almost before I knew I came right
+upon the fort, and was challenged by the sentry.
+
+'_Amigo!_' I yelled. '_Amigo! Angleese!_'
+
+I dare say I was understood, for soon after lights appeared on the
+ramparts, and I was hailed again, this time in English, or for what passed
+as English. I rode up under the ramparts, and quickly told my tale.
+
+In ten minutes more I was received within the fort. A tumble-down place I
+found it, but I was overjoyed to be in it, nevertheless. In the principal
+room most of the men were playing games, and smoking and talking, while
+the commandant himself lounged about with a cigarette in his mouth.
+
+He considered for a minute or two--an age it appeared to me--ere he
+answered. Yes; he would come, and take with him fifteen soldiers, leaving
+the rest to guard the fort. I could have embraced him, so joyful did I
+feel on hearing these words.
+
+How long would he be? One hour, no more. For arms had to be cleaned, and
+ammunition to be got ready; and the men must feed.
+
+A whole hour! No wonder I sighed and looked anxious. Why, every minute was
+precious to my poor beleaguered friends. It would be long past midnight
+ere I reached the camp again, for these men would not be mounted. Yet I
+saw the good little commander was doing his best, not only to expedite
+matters, but to treat me with kindness and hospitality. He brought forth
+food and wine, and forced me to eat and drink. I did so to please him; but
+when he proposed a game to pass the time, I began to think the man was
+crazed. He was not. No; but possessed a soldierly virtue which I could not
+boast of--namely, patience.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The work of entrenchment was soon completed after my departure; then there
+was nothing more to be done except to appoint the men to their quarters,
+place sentinels on the highest of the waggons, and wait.
+
+Ah, but this waiting is a weary thing under circumstances like the
+present--waiting and watching, not knowing from what quarter the attack
+will come, what form it will take, or when it will commence.
+
+Except in the chief caravan itself, where Moncrieff and Donald sat for a
+time to keep up the hearts of the ladies, no lights were lit.
+
+There was no singing to-night, hardly a smile on any face, and no one
+spoke much above a whisper. Poor old Jenny had gone to sleep, as usual.
+
+'Wake me,' had been her last words. 'Wake me, laddie, when the Philistines
+are upon us.'
+
+'The old lady's a marvel!' Moncrieff had whispered to aunt.
+
+Moncrieff was doing all he could to keep conversation alive, though,
+strange to say, Bombazo seldom spoke. Surely he could not be afraid.
+Moncrieff had his suspicions. Brave as my aunt was, the waiting made her
+nervous.
+
+'Hark!' she would say every now and then; or, 'Listen! What was that?'
+
+'Only the cry of a burrowing owl,' Moncrieff might have to answer; or,
+'Only the yap of a prowling fox.' Oh, the waiting, the weary waiting!
+
+The moon rose at last, and presently it was almost as light as day.
+
+'Will they come soon, think you?' whispered poor Aileen.
+
+'No, darling; not for hours yet. Believe me there is no danger. We are
+well prepared.'
+
+'Oh, Alec, Alec!' she answered, bursting into tears; 'it is you I fear
+for, not myself. Let me go with you when they come. I would not then be
+afraid; but waiting here--oh, it is the waiting that takes all the heart
+out of me.'
+
+'Egyptian darkness!' murmured the old lady in her sleep. Then in louder,
+wilder key, 'Smite them!' she exclaimed. 'Smite this host of the
+Philistines from Gideon to Gaza.'
+
+'Dear old mither, she's dreaming,' said Moncrieff. 'But, oh, we'll laugh
+at all this by to-morrow night, Aileen, my darling.'
+
+One hour, two hours went slowly, painfully past. The moon mounted higher
+and higher, and shone clearer and clearer, but not yet on all the plains
+were there signs of a mounted Indian.
+
+Yet even at that moment, little though our people knew it, swarthy forms
+were creeping stealthily through the pampas grass, with spears and guns at
+trail, pausing often to glance towards the camp they meant so soon to
+surprise and capture.
+
+The moon gets yet brighter. Moncrieff is watching. Shading his eyes from
+the light, he is gazing across the marsh and listening to every sound. Not
+a quarter of a mile away is a little marshy lake. From behind it for
+several minutes he has heard mournful cries. They proceed from the
+burrowing owls; but they must have been startled! They even fly towards
+the camp, as if to give warning of the approach of the swarthy foe.
+
+Suddenly from the edge of the lake a sound like the blast of a trumpet is
+heard; another and another, and finally a chorus of trumpet notes; and
+shortly after a flock of huge flamingoes are seen wheeling in the moonlit
+air.
+
+'It is as I thought,' says Moncrieff; 'they are creeping through the
+grass. Hurry round, Dugald, and call the men quietly to quarters.'
+
+Moncrieff himself, rifle in hand, climbs up to the top of the waggon.
+
+'Go down now,' he tells the sentry. 'I mean to fire the first shot.'
+
+He lies down to wait and watch. No bloodhound could have a better eye.
+Presently he sees a dark form raise itself near a tussock of grass. There
+is a sharp report, and the figure springs into the air, then falls dead on
+the pampas.
+
+No need for the foe to conceal themselves any longer. With a wild and
+unearthly scream, that the very earth itself seems to re-echo, they spring
+from their hiding and advance at the double towards the fort--for fort it
+is now. As they come yelling on they fire recklessly towards it. They
+might as well fire in the air.
+
+Moncrieff's bold Doric is heard, and to some purpose, at this juncture.
+
+'Keep weel down, men! Keep weel to cove_rrr_! Fire never a shot till he
+has the o_rr_der. Let every bullet have its billet. Ready!
+Fire-_r_-_r_-_r_!'
+
+Moncrieff rattled out the _r_'s indefinitely, and the rifles rattled out
+at the same time. So well aimed was the volley that the dark cloud seemed
+staggered. The savages wavered for a time, but on they came again,
+redoubling their yells. They fired again, then, dropping their guns,
+rushed on towards the breastwork spears in hand. It was thus that the
+conflict commenced in dread earnest, and the revolvers now did fearful
+execution. The Indians were hurled back again and again, and finally they
+broke and sought cover in the bush. Their wounded lay writhing and crying
+out close beneath the rampart, and among these were also many who would
+never move more in this world.
+
+On seeing the savages take to the bush, Moncrieff's anxiety knew no
+bounds. The danger of their discovering the horses was extreme. And if
+they did so, revenge would speedily follow defeat. They would either drive
+them away across the pampas, or in their wrath slaughter them where they
+stood.
+
+What was to be done to avert so great a catastrophe? A forlorn hope was
+speedily formed, and this my two brothers volunteered to lead. On the
+first shout heard down in the hollow--indicating the finding of our
+horses--Donald, Dugald, and fifteen men were to rush out and turn the
+flank of the swarthy army if they could, or die in the attempt.
+
+Meanwhile, however, the enemy appeared bent on trying cunning and
+desperate tactics. They were heard cutting down the bushes and smaller
+trees, and not long afterwards it looked as if the whole wood was
+advancing bodily up towards the breastwork on that side.
+
+A rapid and no doubt effective fire was now kept up by Moncrieff and his
+men. This delayed the terrible _denoument_, but it was soon apparent that
+if some more strategic movement was not made on our part it could not
+wholly thwart it.
+
+At all hazards that advancing wood must be checked, else the horrors of
+fire would be the prelude to one of the most awful massacres that ever
+took place on the lonely pampas.
+
+'How is the wind?' asked Moncrieff, as if speaking to himself.
+
+'It blows from the wood towards the camp,' said Dugald, 'but not quite in
+a line. See, I am ready to rush out and fire that pile.'
+
+'No, Dugald,' cried Donald; 'I am the elder--I will go.'
+
+'Brother, I spoke first.'
+
+'Yes,' said Moncrieff, quietly, 'Dugald must go, and go now. Take five
+men, ten if you want them.'
+
+'Five will do--five Gauchos,' said Dugald.
+
+It was wise of Dugald to choose Gauchos. If the truth must be told,
+however, he did so to spare more valuable lives. But these wild plainsmen
+are the bravest of the brave, and are far better versed in the tactics of
+Indian warfare than any white man could be.
+
+Dugald's plan would have been to issue out and make a bold rush across the
+open space of seventy and odd yards that intervened between the moving
+pile of brushwood and the camp. Had this been done, every man would have
+been speared ere he got half across.
+
+The preparations for the sally were speedily made. Each man had a revolver
+and knife in his belt, and carried in his hands matches, a bundle of _pob_
+(or tarred yarn), and a small cask of petroleum oil. They issued from the
+side of the camp farthest from the wood, and, crawling on their faces,
+took advantage of every tussock of grass, waving thistle, or hemlock bush
+in their way. Meanwhile a persistent fire was kept up from behind the
+breastwork, which, from the screams and yells proceeding from the savages,
+must have been doing execution.
+
+Presently, close behind the bush and near the ground, Moncrieff could see
+Dugald's signal, the waving of a white handkerchief, and firing
+immediately ceased.
+
+Almost immediately afterwards smoke and flames ran all along the wood and
+increased every moment. There was a smart volley of revolver firing, and
+in a minute more Dugald and his Gauchos were safe again within the fort.
+
+'Stand by now, lads, to defend the ramparts!' cried Moncrieff; 'the worst
+is yet to come.'
+
+The worst was indeed to come. For under cover of the smoke the Indians now
+made ready for their final assault. In the few minutes of silence that
+elapsed before the attack, the voice of a Gaucho malo was heard haranguing
+his men in language that could not but inflame their blood and passions.
+He spoke of the riches, the wealth of the camp, of the revenge they were
+going to have on the hated white man who had stolen their hunting fields,
+and driven them to the barren plains and mountains to seek for food with
+the puma and the snake, and finally began to talk of the pale-face
+prisoners that would become their possession.
+
+'Give them another volley, men,' said Moncrieff, grimly. 'Fire low through
+the smoke.'
+
+It would have been better, probably, had our leader waited.
+
+Little need to precipitate an onslaught that could have but one
+ending--unless indeed assistance arrived from the fort.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The long, long hour of waiting came to an end at last, and the commander
+and myself left the frontier fort at the head of the men.
+
+How terribly tedious the march back seemed! The officer would keep talking
+as cheerfully as if going to a concert or evening party. I hardly
+answered, I hardly heard him. I felt ashamed of my anxiety, but still I
+could not help it. I was but a young soldier.
+
+At last we are within sight, ay, and hearing, of the camp, and the events
+of the next hour float before my memory now as I write, like the shadowy
+pantomime of some terrible dream.
+
+First we see smoke and fire, but hear no sound. All must be over, I
+think--tragedy and massacre, all--and the camp is on fire.
+
+Even the commander of our little force takes a serious view of the case
+now. He draws his sword, looks to his revolver, and speaks to his men in
+calm, determined tones.
+
+For long minutes the silence round the camp is unbroken, but suddenly
+rifles ring out in the still air, and I breathe more freely once again.
+Then the firing ceases, and is succeeded by the wild war-cries of the
+attacking savages, and the hoarse, defiant slogan of the defending Scots.
+
+'Hurrah!' I shout, 'we are yet in time. Oh, good sir, hurry on! Listen!'
+
+Well might I say listen, for now high above the yell of savages and ring
+of revolvers rises the shriek of frightened women.
+
+I can stand this no longer. I set spur to my horse, and go dashing on
+towards the camp.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE FLIGHT AND THE CHASE.
+
+
+The very last thing I had seen that cool Argentine commander do, was to
+light a fresh cigarette with the stump of the old one. The next time I saw
+him, he was standing by his wounded horse, in the moonlight, with a spear
+wound in his brow, but smoking still.
+
+The onslaught of the savages had been for a while a terrible one, but the
+soldiers came in time, and the camp was saved.
+
+Hardly knowing what I did--not knowing till this day how I did it--I had
+put my good steed at the breastwork, and, tired though he was, he fairly
+cleared it. Next I remember hewing my way, sword in hand, through a crowd
+of spear-armed savages, finding myself close to the ladies' caravan, and
+next minute inside it.
+
+A single glance showed me all were safe. Aileen lay pale and motionless on
+the sofa. Near her, revolver in hand, stood my brave aunt, and by the
+stove was old Jenny herself.
+
+'Oh, bless you, dear boy!' cried auntie. 'How glad we are to see you!'
+
+"Deed are we, laddie!' chimed old Jenny; 'but--' and she grinned as she
+spoke, 'they rievin' Philistines will be fools if they come this road
+again. I've gi'en some o' them het [hot] hurdies. Ha, ha! I'm makin' a
+drap mair for them in case they come again.'
+
+'Poor thing!' I think; 'she has gone demented.'
+
+There was no time now, however, to ask for explanation; for although the
+Indians had really been driven off, the chase, and, woe is me, the
+slaughter, had commenced.
+
+And I shudder even yet when I think of that night's awful work on the
+moonlit pampas. Still, the sacrifice of so many redskins was calculated to
+insure our safety. Moreover, had our camp fallen into the hands of those
+terrible Indians, what a blood-blotted page would have been added to the
+history of the Silver West!
+
+It is but just and fair to Moncrieff, however, to say that he did all in
+his power to stay the pursuit; but in vain. The soldiers were just
+returning, tired and breathless, from a fruitless chase after the now
+panic-stricken enemy, when a wild shout was heard, and our Gauchos were
+seen riding up from the woods, brandishing the very spears they had
+captured from the Indians, and each one leading a spare horse.
+
+The _soldados_ welcomed them with a shout. Next minute each was mounted
+and galloping across the pampas in one long extended line.
+
+They were going to treat the Indians to a taste of their own tactics, for
+between each horse a lasso rope was fastened.
+
+All our men who were safe and unwounded now clambered into the waggon to
+witness the pursuit. Nothing could exceed the mad grandeur of that
+charge--nothing could withstand that wild rash. The Indians were mowed
+down by the lasso lines, then all we could see was a dark commingled mass
+of rearing horses, of waving swords and spears, and struggling, writhing
+men.
+
+Yells and screams died away at last, and no sound was now heard on the
+pampas except the thunder of the horses' hoofs, as our people returned to
+the camp, and occasionally the trumpet-like notes of the startled
+flamingoes.
+
+As soon as daylight began to appear in the east the ramparts were razed,
+and soon after we were once more on the move, glad to leave the scene of
+battle and carnage.
+
+From higher ground, at some distance, I turned and looked back. Already
+the air was darkened by flocks of pampas kites, among them many
+slow-winged vultures, and I knew the awful feast that ever follows
+slaughter had already commenced.
+
+We had several Gauchos killed and one of our own countrymen, but many more
+were wounded, some severely enough, so that our victory had cost us dear,
+and yet we had reason to be thankful, and my only surprise to this day is
+that we escaped utter annihilation.
+
+It would be anything but fair to pass on to other scenes without
+mentioning the part poor old Jenny played in the defence of the caravan.
+
+Jenny was not demented--not she. Neither the fatigue of the journey, the
+many wonders she had witnessed, including the shower of golochs, nor the
+raid upon the camp had deprived Moncrieff's wonderful mither of her wits.
+I have said there was a stove burning in the caravan. As soon, then, as
+Jenny found out that they were fortifying or entrenching the camp, and
+that the Philistines, as she called them, might be expected at any moment,
+she awoke to a true sense of the situation. The first thing she did was to
+replenish the fire, then she put the biggest saucepan on top of the stove,
+and as soon as it commenced to boil she began 'mealing in,' as she called
+it.
+
+'Oatmeal would have been best,' she told my aunt; 'but, after a',' she
+added, 'Indian meal, though it be but feckless stuff, is the kind o' kail
+they blackamoors are maist used to.'
+
+Aunt wondered what she meant, but was silent, and, indeed, she had other
+things to think about than Jenny and her strange doings, for Aileen
+required all her attention.
+
+[Illustration: 'Ye can Claw the Pat']
+
+When, however, the fight had reached its very fiercest, when the camp
+itself was enveloped in smoke, and the constant cracking of revolvers, the
+shrieks of the wounded men and clashing of weapons would have daunted a
+less bold heart than Jenny's--the old lady took her saucepan from the
+stove and stationed herself by the front door of the caravan. She had not
+long to wait. Three of the fiercest of the Indian warriors had sprung to
+the _coupe_ and were half up,
+
+                'But little kenned they Jenny's mettle,
+                Or dreamt what lay in Jenny's kettle.'
+
+With eyes that seemed to flash living fire, her grey hair streaming over
+her shoulders, she must have looked a perfect fury as she rushed out and
+deluged the up-turned faces and shoulders of the savages with the boiling
+mess. They dropped yelling to the ground, and Jenny at once turned her
+attention to the back door of the van, where already one of the leading
+Gaucho malos--aunt's beautiful blackguards of the day before--had gained
+footing. This villain she fairly bonneted with the saucepan.
+
+'Your brithers have gotten the big half o' the kail,' she cried, 'and ye
+can claw the pat.'
+
+It was not till next evening that aunt told Moncrieff the brave part old
+Jenny had played. He smiled in his quiet way as he patted his mother's
+hand.
+
+'Just as I told ye, Miss M'Crimman,' he said; 'mither's a ma_rrr_vel!'
+
+But where had the bold Bombazo been during the conflict? Sword and
+revolver in hand, in the foremost ranks, and wherever the battle raged the
+fiercest? Nay, reader, nay. The stern truth remains to be told. During all
+the terrible tulzie Bombazo had never once been either seen or heard. Nor
+could he be anywhere found after the fight, nor even after the camp was
+struck, though search was made for him high and low.
+
+Some one suggested that he might have been overcome by fear, and might
+have hidden himself. Moncrieff looked incredulous. What! the bold Bombazo
+be afraid--the hero of a hundred fights, the slayer of lions, the terror
+of the redskins, the brave hunter of pampas and prairie? Captain Rodrigo
+de Bombazo hide himself? Yet where could he be? Among the slain? No. Taken
+prisoner? Alas! for the noble redman. Those who had escaped would hardly
+have thought of taking prisoners. Bombazo's name was shouted, the wood was
+searched, the waggons overhauled, not a stone was left unturned,
+figuratively speaking, yet all in vain.
+
+But, wonderful to relate, what _men_ failed to do a _dog_ accomplished. An
+honest collie found Bombazo--actually scraped him up out of the sand,
+where he lay buried, with his head in a tussock of grass. It would be
+unfair to judge him too harshly, wrong not to listen to his vouchsafed
+explanation; yet, sooth to say, to this very day I believe the little man
+had hidden himself after the manner of the armadillos.
+
+'Where is my sword?' he shouted, staggering to his feet. 'Where is the
+foe?'
+
+The Scotchmen and even the Gauchos laughed in his face. He turned from
+them scornfully on his heel and addressed Moncrieff.
+
+'Dey tried to keel me,' he cried. 'Dey stunned me and covered me up wit'
+sand. But here I am, and now I seek revenge. Ha! ha! I will seek
+revenge!'
+
+Old Jenny could stand it no longer.
+
+'Oh, ye shameless sinner!' she roared. 'Oh, ye feckless fusionless winner!
+Let me at him. _I'll_ gie him revenge.'
+
+There was no restraining Jenny. With a yell like the war cry of a clucking
+hen, she waved her umbrella aloft, and went straight for the hero.
+
+The blow intended for his head alighted lower down. Bombazo turned and
+fled, pursued by the remorseless Jenny; and not even once did she miss her
+aim till the terror of the redskins, to save his own skin, had taken
+refuge beneath the caravan.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+As at sea, so in travelling. Day after day, amid scenes that are for ever
+new, the constantly recurring adventure and incident suffice to banish
+even thoughts of the dead themselves. But neither seafarers nor travellers
+need be ashamed of this; it is only natural. God never condemns His
+creatures to constant sorrow. The brave fellows, the honest Scot and the
+Gauchos, that we had laid side by side in one grave in the little
+burying-place at the frontier fort, were gone beyond recall. No amount of
+sorrowing could bring them back. We but hoped they were happier now than
+even we were, and so we spoke of them no more; and in a week's time
+everything about our caravan and camp resumed its wonted appearance, and
+we no longer feared the Indians.
+
+One Gaucho, however, had escaped, and there was still the probability he
+might seek for revenge some other day.
+
+We have left the bleak pampas land, although now and then we come to bare
+prairie land but scantily furnished with even bushes, and destitute of
+grass; houses and _estancias_ become more frequent, and _fondas_ too, but
+nothing like that fearful _fonda_ in the prairie--the scene of the
+massacre.
+
+We have passed through San Lui--too wretched a place to say much about;
+and even La Paz and Santa Rosa; and on taking her usual seat one forenoon
+in front of the caravan, old Jenny's eyes grew bright and sparkling with
+very delight.
+
+'Saw anybody ever the like o' that?' she cried, as she raised both her
+hands and eyes cloudwards. But it was not the clouds old Jenny was
+marvelling at--for here we were in the Province of Mendoza, and a
+measurable distance from the beautiful city itself; and instead of the
+barren lands we had recently emerged from, beheld a scene of such natural
+loveliness and fertility, that we seemed to have suddenly dropped into a
+new world.
+
+The sky was blue and almost cloudless; winter though it was, the fields
+were clad in emerald green; the trees, the vineyards, the verandahed
+houses, the comfortable dwellings, the cattle, the sheep, and flocks of
+poultry--all testified to the fact that in summer this must indeed be a
+paradise.
+
+'What do you think of all this, mither?' said Moncrieff, with a happy
+smile. He was riding close to the caravan _coupe_.
+
+'Think o' it, laddie! Loshie me, laddie! it beats the braes o' Foudlan'!
+It is surely the garden o' Eden we're coming to at last.'
+
+It was shortly after this that Moncrieff went galloping on ahead. We could
+see him miles and miles away, for the road was as straight as one of the
+avenues in some English lord's domains. Suddenly he disappeared. Had the
+earth swallowed him up? Not quite. He had merely struck into a side path,
+and here we too turned with our whole cavalcade; and our road now lay away
+across a still fertile but far more open country. After keeping to this
+road for miles, we turned off once more and headed for the distant
+mountains, whose snow-clad, rugged tops formed so grand a horizon to the
+landscape.
+
+On we journey for many a long hour, and the sun goes down and down in the
+west, and sinks at last behind the hills; and oh, with what ineffably
+sweet tints and shades of pink and blue and purple his farewell rays paint
+the summits!
+
+Twilight is beginning to fall, and great bats are flitting about. We come
+within sight of a wide and well-watered valley; and in the very centre
+thereof, and near a broad lagoon which reminds us somewhat of dear old
+Coila, stands a handsome _estancia_ and farmyard. There are rows and rows
+of gigantic poplar-trees everywhere in this glen, and the house
+itself--mansion, I might almost say--lies in the midst of a cloud of trees
+the names of which we cannot even guess. There was altogether such a
+home-like look about the valley, that I knew at once our long, long
+journey was over, and our weary wanderings finished for a time. There was
+not a very great deal of romance in honest Moncrieff's nature, but as he
+pointed with outstretched arm to the beautiful _estancia_ by the lake, and
+said, briefly, 'Mither, there's your hame!' I felt sure and certain those
+blue eyes of his were moist with tears, and that there was the slightest
+perceptible waver in his manly voice.
+
+But, behold! they have seen us already at the _estancia_.
+
+There is a hurrying and scurrying to and fro, and out and in. We notice
+this, although the figures we see look no larger than ants, so clear and
+transparent is even the gloaming air in this wonderful new land of ours.
+
+By and by we see these same figures on horseback, coming away from the
+farm, and hurrying down the road towards us. One, two, three, six! Why,
+there must be well-nigh a score of them altogether. Nearer and nearer they
+come, and now we see their arms wave. Nearer still, and we hear them
+shout; and now at length they are on us, with us, and around us, waving
+their caps, laughing, talking, and shaking hands over and over again--as
+often as not twice or thrice with the same person. Verily they are half
+delirious with joy and wholly hysterical.
+
+What volleys of questions have to be asked and answered! What volumes of
+news to get and to give! What hurrying here and there and up and down to
+admire the new horses and mules, the new waggons and caravan--to admire
+everything! while the half-frightened looks those sturdy, sun-browned,
+bearded men cast at auntie and Aileen were positively comical to witness!
+
+Then, when the first wave of joyous excitement had partially expended
+itself--
+
+'Stand back, boys!' shouted Moncrieff's partner, a bold-faced little
+Welshman, with hair and beard just on the turn; 'stand back, my lads, and
+give them one more little cheer.'
+
+But was it a little cheer? Nay, but a mighty rattling cheer--a cheer that
+could have issued only from brave British throats; a cheer that I almost
+expected to hear re-echoed back from the distant mountains.
+
+Ah! but it _was_ echoed back. Echoed by us, the new-comers, and with
+interest too, our faithful Gauchos swelling the chorus with their shrill
+but not unmusical voices.
+
+But look! more people are coming down the road. The welcome home is not
+half over yet. Yonder are the lads and lasses, English, Irish, Castilian
+and Scotch, who have no horses to ride. Foremost among them is a
+Highlander in tartan trews and bagpipes. And if the welcome these give us
+is not altogether so boisterous it is none the less sincere.
+
+In another hour we are all safe at home. All and everything appears to us
+very strange at first, but we soon settle down, and if we marvelled at the
+outside of Moncrieff's mansion, the interior of it excites our wonder to
+even a greater degree. Who could have credited the brawny Scot with so
+much refinement of taste? The rooms were large, the windows were bowers,
+and bowers of beauty too, around which climbed and trailed--winter though
+it was--flowers of such strange shapes and lovely colours that the best of
+our floral favourites in this country would look tame beside them. None of
+the walls were papered, but all were painted, and many had pictures in
+light, airy and elegant frames. The furniture too was all light and
+elegant, and quite Oriental in appearance. Oriental did I say? Nay, but
+even better; it was Occidental. One room in particular took my aunt's
+fancy. This was to be the boudoir, and everything in it was the work of
+Indian hands. It opened on to a charming trellised verandah, and thence
+was a beautiful garden which to-night was lit up with coloured lanterns,
+and on the whole looked like a scene in some Eastern fairy tale.
+
+'And would you believe it, Aileen,' said Moncrieff, when he was done
+showing us round the rooms; 'would you believe it, auntie, when I came
+here first my good partner and I had no place to live in for years but a
+reed shanty, a butt and a ben, mither mine, with never a stick of
+furniture in it, and neither a chair nor stool nor table worth the
+name?'
+
+'That is so, Miss M'Crimman,' said the partner, Mr. Jones. 'And I think my
+dear friend Moncrieff will let the ladies see the sort of place we lived
+in.'
+
+'This way, then, ladies,' said the big Scot. He seized a huge naphtha lamp
+as he spoke, and strode before them through the garden. Arrived at the end
+of it they came to a strange little hut built apparently of mud and
+straw.
+
+With little ceremony he kicked open the rickety door, and made them enter.
+Both aunt and Aileen did so, marvelling much to find themselves in a room
+not ten feet wide, and neither round nor square. The roof was blackened
+rafters and straw, the floor was hardened clay. A bed--a very rude
+one--stood in one corner. It was supported by horses' bones; the table in
+the centre was but a barrel lid raised on crossed bones.
+
+'Won't you sit down, ladies?' said Moncrieff, smiling.
+
+He pointed to a seat as he spoke. It was formed of horses' skulls.
+
+Aunt smiled too, but immediately after looked suddenly serious, gathered
+her dress round her with a little shudder, and backed towards the door.
+
+'Come away,' she said; 'I've seen enough.'
+
+What she had seen more particularly was an awful-looking crimson and grey
+spider as big as a soft-shell crab. He was squatting on a bone in one
+corner, glaring at her with his little evil eyes, and moving his
+horizontal mandibles as if he would dearly like to eat her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+LIFE ON AN ARGENTINE ESTANCIA.
+
+
+I verily believe that Britons, whether English, Irish, or Scotch, are all
+born to wander, and born colonists. There really seems to be something in
+the very air of a new land, be it Australia, America, or the Silver West,
+that brings all their very best and noblest qualities to the surface, and
+oftentimes makes men--bold, hardy, persevering men--of individuals who,
+had they stayed in this old cut-and-dry country, would never have been
+anything better than louts or Johnnie Raws. I assure the reader that I
+speak from long experience when I make these remarks, and on any Saturday
+evening when I happen to be in London, and see poor young fellows coming
+home to garrets, perhaps with their pittance in their pockets, I feel for
+them from the very depths of my soul. And sometimes I sigh and murmur to
+myself----
+
+'Oh dear me!' I say, 'if my purse were only half as big as my heart,
+wouldn't I quickly gather together a thousand of these white slaves and
+sail merrily off with them to the Land of the Silver West! And men would
+learn to laugh there who hardly ever smiled before, and tendons would wax
+wiry, and muscles hard, and pale faces grow brown with the tints of
+health. And health would mean work, and work would mean wealth, and--but,
+heigho! what is the good of dreaming? Only some day--yes, _some_ day--and
+what a glorious sunrise it will be for this empire--Government will see
+its way to grant free passages to far-off lands, in which there is peace
+and plenty, work and food for all, and where the bread one eats is never
+damped by falling tears. God send that happy day! And send it soon!
+
+It is the memory of our first months and years of a downright pleasant
+life that makes me write like this. We poor lads--my brothers and I--poor,
+but determined, found everything so enjoyable at our new home in the
+Silver West that oftentimes we could not help wishing that thousands of
+toiling mortals from Glasgow and other great overcrowded cities would only
+come out somehow and share our posy. For really, to put it in plain and
+simple language, next to the delight of enjoying anything oneself, should
+it only be an apple, is the pleasure of seeing one's neighbour have a
+bite.
+
+Now here is a funny thing, but it is a fact. The air of Mendoza is so
+wonderfully dry and strong and bracing that it makes men of boys in a very
+short time, and makes old people young again. It might not smooth away
+wrinkles from the face, or turn grey hair brown, or even make two hairs
+grow where only one grew before; but it does most assuredly rejuvenate the
+heart, and shakes all the wrinkles out of that. Out here it is no uncommon
+thing for the once rheumatic to learn to dance, while stiff-jointed
+individuals who immigrated with crutches under their arms, pitch these
+crutches into the irrigation canals, and take to spades and guns instead.
+
+It is something in the air, I think, that works these wondrous changes,
+though I am sure I could not say what. It may be oxygen in double doses,
+or it may be ozone, or even laughing gas; but there it is, and whosoever
+reads these lines and doubts what I say, has only to take flight for the
+beautiful province of Mendoza, and he shall remain a sceptic no longer.
+
+Well, as soon as we got over the fatigues of our long journey, and began
+to realize the fact that we were no longer children of the desert, no
+longer nomads and gipsies, my brothers and I set to work with a hearty
+good-will that astonished even ourselves. In preparing our new homes we,
+and all the other settlers of this infant colony as well, enjoyed the same
+kind of pleasure that Robinson Crusoe must have done when he and his man
+Friday set up house for themselves in the island of Juan Fernandez.
+
+Even the labourers or 'hands' whom Moncrieff had imported had their own
+dwellings to erect, but instead of looking upon this as a hardship, they
+said that this was the fun of the thing, and that it was precisely here
+where the laugh came in.
+
+Moreover they worked for themselves out of hours, and I dare say that is
+more than any of them would have done in the old country.
+
+Never once was the labour of the _estancia_ neglected, nor the state of
+the aqueducts, nor Moncrieff's flocks and herds, nor his fences.
+
+Some of these men had been ploughmen, others shepherds, but every one of
+them was an artisan more or less, and it is just such men that do
+well--men who know a good deal about country life, and can deftly use the
+spade, the hoe, the rake, the fork, as well as the hammer, the axe, the
+saw, and the plane. Thanks to the way dear father had brought us up, my
+brothers and I were handy with all sorts of tools, and we were rather
+proud than otherwise of our handicraft.
+
+I remember that Dugald one day, as we sat at table, after looking at his
+hands--they had become awfully brown--suddenly said to Moncrieff,
+
+'Oh, by the by, Brother Moncrieff, there is one thing that I'm ready to
+wager you forgot to bring out with you from England.'
+
+'What was that?' said Moncrieff, looking quite serious.
+
+'Why, a supply of kid gloves, white and coloured.'
+
+We all laughed.
+
+'My dear boy,' said this huge brother of ours, 'the sun supplies the kid
+gloves, and it strikes me, lad, you've a pair of coloured ones already.'
+
+'Yes,' said Dugald, 'black-and-tan.'
+
+'But, dear laddies,' old Jenny put in, 'if ye really wad like mittens,
+I'll shortly shank a curn for ye.'
+
+'Just listen to the old braid Scotch tongue o' that mither o'
+moine--"shortly shank a curn."[5] Who but an Aberdonian could understand
+that?'
+
+But indeed poor old Jenny was a marvel with her 'shank,' as she called her
+knitting, and almost every third day she turned off a splendid pair of
+rough woollen stockings for one or other of her bairns, as she termed us
+generically. And useful weather-defiant articles of hosiery they were too.
+When our legs were encased in these, our feet protected by a pair of
+double-soled boots, and our ankles further fortified by leather gaiters,
+there were few snakes even we were afraid to tackle.
+
+The very word 'snake,' or 'serpent,' makes some people shudder, and it is
+as well to say a word or two about these ophidians here, and have done
+with them. I have, then, no very wild adventures to record concerning
+those we encountered on our _estancias_. Nor were either my brothers or
+myself much afraid of them, for a snake--this is my firm belief--will
+never strike a human being except in self-defence; and, of all the
+thousands killed annually in India itself by ophidians, most of the
+victims have been tramping about with naked feet, or naked legs at least.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Independent of the pure, wholesome, bracing air, there appeared to us to
+be another peculiarity in the climate which is worthy of note. It is
+_calmative_. There is more in that simple sentence than might at first be
+imagined, and the effect upon settlers might be best explained by giving
+an example: A young man, then, comes to this glorious country fresh from
+all the excitement and fever of Europe, where people are, as a rule,
+overcrowded and elbowing each other for a share of the bread that is not
+sufficient to feed all; he settles down, either to steady work under a
+master, or to till his own farm and mind his own flocks. In either case,
+while feeling labour to be not only a pleasure, but actually a luxury,
+there is no heat of blood and brain; there is no occasion to either chase
+or hurry. Life now is not like a game of football on Rugby lines--all
+scurry, push, and perspiration. The new-comer's prospects are everything
+that could be desired, and--mark this--_he does not live for the future
+any more than the present_. There is enough of everything around him
+_now_, so that his happiness does not consist in building upon the far-off
+_then_, which strugglers in this Britain of ours think so much about. The
+settler then, I say, be he young or old, can afford to enjoy himself
+to-day, certain in his own mind that to-morrow will provide for itself.
+
+But this calmness of mind, which really is a symptom of glorious health,
+never merges into the dreamy laziness and ignoble activity exhibited by
+Brazilians in the east and north of him.
+
+My brothers and I were happily saved a good deal of business worry in
+connection with the purchase of our _estancia_, so, too, were the new
+settlers, for Moncrieff, with that long Scotch head of his, had everything
+cut and dry, as he called it, so that the signing of a few papers and the
+writing of a cheque or two made us as proud as any Scottish laird in the
+old country.
+
+'You must creep before you walk,' Moncrieff told us; 'you mustn't go like
+a bull at a gate. Just look before you "loup."'
+
+So we consulted him in everything.
+
+Suppose, for instance, we wanted another mule or horse, we went to
+Moncrieff for advice.
+
+'Can you do without it?' he would say. 'Go home and settle that question
+between you, and if you find you can't, come and tell me, and I'll let you
+have the beast as cheap as you can buy it anywhere.'
+
+Well, we started building our houses. Unlike the pampas, Mendoza _can_
+boast of stone and brick, and even wood, though round our district a deal
+of this had been planted. The woods that lay on Moncrieff's colony had
+been reared more for shelter to the flocks against the storms and tempests
+that often sweep over the country.
+
+In the more immediate vicinity of the dwelling-houses, with the exception
+of some splendid elms and plane-trees, and the steeple-high solemn-looking
+poplar, no great growth of wood was encouraged. For it must be remembered
+we were living in what Moncrieff called uncanny times. The Indians[6] were
+still a power in the country, and their invasions were looked for
+periodically. The State did not then give the protection against this foe
+it does now. True, there existed what were called by courtesy frontier
+forts; they were supposed to billet soldiers there, too, but as these men
+were often destitute of a supply of ammunition, and spent much of their
+time playing cards and drinking the cheap wines of the country, the
+settlers put but little faith in them, and the wandering pampa Indians
+treated them with disdain.
+
+Our houses, then, for safety's sake, were all built pretty close together,
+and on high ground, so that we had a good view all over the beautiful
+valley. They could thus be more easily defended.
+
+Here and there over the _estancias_, _puestos_, as they were called, were
+erected for the convenience of the shepherds. They were mere huts, but,
+nevertheless, they were far more comfortable in every way than many a
+crofter's cottage in the Scottish Highlands.
+
+Round the dwellings of the new settlers, which were built in the form of a
+square, each square, three in all, having a communication, a rampart and
+ditch were constructed. The making of these was mere pastime to these
+hardy Scots, and they took great delight in the work, for not only would
+it enable them to sleep in peace and safety, but the keeping of it in
+thorough decorative repair, as house agents say, would always form a
+pleasant occupation for spare time.
+
+The mansion, as Moncrieff's beautiful house came to be called, was
+similarly fortified, but as it stood high in its grounds the rampart did
+not hide the building. Moreover, the latter was partially decorated inside
+with flowers, and the external embankment always kept as green as an
+English lawn in June.
+
+The ditches were wide and deep, and were so arranged that in case of
+invasion they could be filled with water from a natural lake high up on
+the brae lands. For that matter they might have been filled at any time,
+or kept filled, but Moncrieff had an idea--and probably he was right--that
+too much stagnant, or even semi-stagnant water near a house rendered it
+unhealthy.
+
+As soon as we had bought our claims and marked them out, each settler's
+distinct from the other, but ours--my brothers' and mine--all in one lot,
+we commenced work in earnest. There was room and to spare for us all about
+the Moncrieff mansion and farmyard, we--the M'Crimmans--being guests for a
+time, and living indoors, the others roughing it as best they could in the
+out-houses, some of which were turned into temporary huts.
+
+Nothing could exceed the beauty of Moncrieff's _estancia_. It was miles
+and miles in extent, and more like a lovely garden than anything else. The
+fields were all square. Round each, in tasteful rows, waved noble trees,
+the weird and ghostly poplar, whose topmost branches touched the clouds
+apparently, the wide-spreading elm, the shapely chestnut, the dark,
+mysterious cypress, the fairy-leaved acacia, the waving willow and sturdy
+oak. These trees had been planted with great taste and judgment around the
+fields, and between all stretched hedges of laurel, willow, and various
+kinds of shrubs. The fields themselves were not without trees; in fact,
+trees were dotted over most of them, notably chestnuts, and many species
+of fruit trees.
+
+But something else added to the extreme beauty of these fields, namely,
+the irrigation canals--I prefer the word canals to ditches. The highest of
+all was very deep and wide, and was supplied with water from the distant
+hills and river, while in its turn it supplied the whole irrigation system
+of the _estancia_. The plan for irrigating the fields was the simplest
+that could be thought of, but it was quite as perfect as it was simple.
+
+Add to the beauty of the trees and hedges the brilliancy of trailing
+flowers of gorgeous hues and strange, fantastic shapes; let some of those
+trees be actually hanging gardens of beauty; let flowers float ever on the
+waters around the fields, and the fields themselves be emerald green--then
+imagine sunshine, balmy air, and perfume everywhere, and you will have
+some idea of the charm spread from end to end of Moncrieff's great
+_estancia_.
+
+But there was another kind of beauty about it which I have not yet
+mentioned--namely, its flocks and herds and poultry.
+
+A feature of the strath, or valley, occupied by this little Scoto-Welsh
+colony was the sandhills or dunes.
+
+'Do you call those sandhills?' I said to Moncrieff one day, shortly after
+our arrival. 'Why, they are as green and bonnie as the Broad Hill on the
+links of Aberdeen.'
+
+Moncrieff smiled, but looked pleased.
+
+'Man!' he replied, 'did you ever hear of the proverb that speaks about
+making mountains of mole-hills? Well, that's what I've done up yonder.
+When my partner and I began serious work on these fields of ours, those
+bits of hills were a constant trouble and menace to us. They were just as
+big then, maybe, as they are now--about fifty feet high at the highest,
+perhaps, but they were bare sandy hillocks, constantly changing shape and
+even position with every big storm, till a happy thought struck my
+partner, and we chose just the right season for acting on it. We got the
+Gauchos to gather for us pecks and bushels of all kinds of wild seed,
+especially that of the long-rooted grasses, and these we sowed all over
+the mole-hills, as we called them, and we planted bushes here and there,
+and also in the hollows, and, lo! the mole-hills were changed into fairy
+little mountains, and the bits o' glens between into bosky dells.'
+
+'Dear Brother Moncrieff,' I said, 'you are a genius, and I'm so glad I met
+you. What would I have been without you?'
+
+'Twaddle, man! nonsensical havers and twaddle! If you hadn't met me you
+would have met somebody else; and if you hadn't met him, you would have
+foregathered wi' experience; and, man, experience is the best teacher in
+a' the wide worruld.'
+
+In laying out and planning our farm, my brothers and I determined,
+however, not to wait for experience of our own, but just take advantage of
+Moncrieff's. That would sustain us, as the oak sustains the ivy.
+
+-----
+
+  [5] 'Shortly shank a curn'--speedily knit a few pairs.
+
+  [6] Since then the Indians have been swept far to the south,
+      and so hemmed in that the provinces north of their
+      territory are as safe from invasion as England
+      itself.--G. S.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+WE BUILD OUR HOUSE AND LAY OUT GARDENS.
+
+
+About a hundred yards to the left of the buildings erected for the new
+colony and down near the lake, or laguna, was an elevated piece of ground
+about an acre in extent. It was bounded on two sides by water, which would
+thus form for it a kind of natural protection in case of Indian invasion.
+It really was part and parcel of Moncrieff's claim or land, and at an
+early date in his career, thinking probably it might come in handy some
+day for a site on which to build, he had taken considerable pains to plant
+it with rows of beautiful trees, especially on the sides next the water
+and facing the west.
+
+My brothers and I arranged to have this, and Moncrieff was well pleased to
+have us so near to him. A more excellent position for a house could hardly
+be, and we determined it should be a good substantial one, and of as great
+architectural beauty as possible.
+
+Having therefore laid out our farm proper, and stocked it with sheep and
+cattle, positioned our shepherds, and installed our labourers and general
+servants under the charge of a _capataz_, or working bailiff, we turned
+our attention to the erection of our house, or mansion, as Dugald grandly
+called it.
+
+'Of course you will cut your coat according to your cloth,' said
+Moncrieff, as he came one evening into the room we had set apart for our
+private study. He had found us to-night with our heads all together over
+a huge sheet of paper on which we were planning out our house.
+
+'Oh yes,' said Donald, 'that we must do.'
+
+'But,' said Dugald, 'we do not expect to remain all our lives downright
+poor settlers.'
+
+'That I am sure you won't.'
+
+'Well, I propose building a much bigger house than we really want, so that
+when we do get a bit rich we can furnish it and set up--set up--'
+
+'Set up a carriage and pair, eh?' said Donald, who was very matter of
+fact--'a carriage and pair, Dugald, a billiard-room, Turkey carpets, woven
+all in one piece, a cellar of old wine, a butler in black and flunkeys in
+plush--is that your notion?'
+
+Donald and I laughed, and Dugald looked cross.
+
+Moncrieff did not laugh: he had too much tact, and was far too
+kind-hearted to throw cold water over our young brother's ambitions and
+aspirations.
+
+'And what sort of a house do you propose?' he said to us.
+
+As he spoke he took a chair at Dugald's side of the table and put his arm
+gently across the boy's shoulders. There was very much in this simple act,
+and I feel sure Dugald loved him for it, and felt he had some one to
+assist his schemes.
+
+'Oh,' replied Donald, 'a small tasteful cottage. That would suit well for
+the present, I think. What do you think, Murdoch?'
+
+'I think with you,' I replied.
+
+After having heard Moncrieff speaking so much about cutting coats
+according to cloth and looking before 'louping,' and all the rest of it,
+we were hardly prepared to hear him on the present occasion say boldly,
+
+'And _I_ think with Dugald.'
+
+'Bravo, Moncrieff!' cried Dugald. 'I felt sure--'
+
+'Bide a wee, though, lad. Ca' canny.[7] Now listen, the lot o' ye. Ye see,
+Murdoch man, your proposed cottage would cost a good bit of money and
+time and trouble, and when you thought of a bigger place, down that
+cottage must come, with an expense of more time and more trouble, even
+allowing that money was of little object. Besides, where are you going to
+live after your cottage is knocked down and while your mansion is
+building? So I say Dugald is right to some extent. Begin building your big
+house bit by bit.'
+
+'In wings?'
+
+'Preceesely, sirs; ye can add and add as you like, and as you can afford
+it.'
+
+It was now our time to cry, 'Bravo, Moncrieff!'
+
+'I wonder, Donald, we didn't think of this plan.'
+
+'Ah,' said Moncrieff, 'ye canna put young he'ds on auld shoulders, as my
+mither says.'
+
+So Moncrieff's plan was finally adopted--we would build our house wing by
+wing.
+
+It took us weeks, however, to decide in what particular style of
+architecture it should be built. Among the literature which Moncrieff had
+brought out from England with him was a whole library in itself of the
+bound volumes of good magazines; and it was from a picture in one of these
+that we finally decided what our Coila Villa should be like, though, of
+course, the plan would be slightly altered to suit circumstances of
+climate, &c. It was to be--briefly stated--a winged bungalow of only one
+story, with a handsome square tower and portico in the centre, and
+verandahs nearly all round. So one wing and the tower was commenced at
+once. But bricks were to be made, and timber cut and dried and fashioned,
+and no end of other things were to be accomplished before we actually set
+about the erection.
+
+To do all these things we appointed a little army of Gauchos, with two or
+three handy men-of-all-work from Scotland.
+
+Meanwhile our villa gardens were planned and our bushes and trees were
+planted.
+
+Terraces, too, were contrived to face the lake, and Dugald one evening
+proposed a boat-house and boat, and this was carried without a dissentient
+voice.
+
+Dugald was extremely fond of our sister Flora. We only wondered that he
+now spoke about her so seldom. But if he spoke but little of her he
+thought the more, and we could see that all his plans for the
+beautification and adornment of the villa had but one end and object--the
+delight and gratification of its future little mistress.
+
+Dear old Dugald! he had such a kind lump of a heart of his own, and never
+took any of our chaff and banter unpleasantly. But I am quite sure that as
+far as he himself was concerned he never would have troubled himself about
+even the boat-house or the terraced gardens either, for every idle hour
+that he could spare he spent on the hill, as he called it, with his dog--a
+lovely Irish setter--and his gun.
+
+I met him one morning going off as usual with Dash, the setter, close
+beside the little mule he rode, and with his gun slung over his back.
+
+'Where away, old man?' I said.
+
+'Only to a little laguna I've found among the hills, and I mean to have a
+grand bag to-day.'
+
+'Well, you're off early!'
+
+'Yes; there is little to be done at home, and there are some rare fine
+ducks up yonder.'
+
+'You'll be back to luncheon?'
+
+'I'll try. If not, don't wait.'
+
+'Not likely; ta-ta! Good luck to you! But you really ought to have a
+Gaucho with you.'
+
+'Nonsense, Murdoch! I don't need a groom. Dash and old Tootsie, the mule,
+are all I want.'
+
+It was the end of winter, or rather beginning of spring, but Moncrieff had
+not yet declared close time, and Dugald managed to supply the larder with
+more species of game than we could tell the names of. Birds, especially,
+he brought home on his saddle and in his bag; birds of all sizes, from
+the little luscious dove to the black swan itself; and one day he actually
+came along up the avenue with a dead ostrich. He could ride that mule of
+his anywhere. I believe he could have ridden along the parapet of London
+Bridge, so we were never surprised to see Dugald draw rein at the lower
+sitting-room window, within the verandah. He was always laughing and merry
+and mischievous-looking when he had had extra good luck; but the day he
+landed that ostrich he was fairly wild with excitement. The body of it was
+given to the Gauchos, and they made very merry over it: invited their
+friends, in fact, and roasted the huge bird whole out of doors. They did
+so in true Patagonian fashion--to wit, the ostrich was first trussed and
+cleaned, a roaring fire of wood having been made, round stones were made
+almost red-hot. The stones were for stuffing, though this kind of stuffing
+is not very eatable, but it helps to cook the bird. The fire was then
+raked away, and the dinner laid down and covered up. Meanwhile the
+Gauchos, male and female, girls and boys, had a dance. The ubiquitous
+guitars, of course, were the instruments, and two of these made not a bad
+little band. After dinner they danced again, and wound up by wishing
+Dugald all the good luck in the world, and plenty more ostriches. The
+feathers of this big game-bird were carefully packed and sent home to
+mother and Flora.
+
+Well, we had got so used to Dugald's solitary ways that we never thought
+anything of even his somewhat prolonged absence on the hill, for he
+usually dropped round when luncheon was pretty nearly done. There was
+always something kept warm for 'old Dugald,' as we all called him, and I
+declare it did every one of us good to see him eat. His appetite was
+certainly the proverbial appetite of a hunter.
+
+On this particular day, however, old Dugald did not return to luncheon.
+
+'Perhaps,' said Donald, 'he is dining with some of the shepherds, or
+having "a pick at a priest's," as he calls it.'
+
+'Perhaps,' I said musingly. The afternoon wore away, and there were no
+signs of our brother coming, so I began to get rather uneasy, and spoke to
+Donald about it.
+
+'He may have met with an accident,' I said, 'or fifty things may have
+happened.'
+
+'Well,' replied Donald, 'I don't suppose fifty things have happened; but
+as you seem a bit anxious, suppose we mount our mules, take a Gaucho with
+us, and institute a search expedition?'
+
+'I'm willing,' I cried, jumping up, 'and here's for off!'
+
+There was going to be an extra good dinner that day, because we expected
+letters from home, and our runner would be back from the distant
+post-office in good time to let us read our epistles before the gong
+sounded and so discuss them at table.
+
+'Hurry up, boys; don't be late, mind!' cried aunt, as our mules were
+brought round to the portico, and we were mounted.
+
+'All right, auntie dear!' replied Donald, waving his hand; 'and mind those
+partridges are done to a turn; we'll be all delightfully hungry.'
+
+The Gaucho knew all Dugald's trails well, and when we mentioned the small
+distant laguna, he set out at once in the direction of the glen. He made
+so many windings, however, and took so many different turns through bush
+and grass and scrub, that we began to wonder however Dugald could have
+found the road.
+
+But Dugald had a way of his own of getting back through even a cactus
+labyrinth. It was a very simple one, too. He never 'loaded up,' as he
+termed it; that is, he did not hang his game to his saddle till he meant
+to start for home; then he mounted, whistled to Dash, who capered and
+barked in front of the mule, permitted the reins to lie loosely on the
+animal's neck, and--there he was! For not only did the good beast take him
+safely back to Coila, as we called our _estancia_, but he took him by the
+best roads; and even when he seemed to Dugald's human sense to be going
+absolutely and entirely wrong, he never argued with him.
+
+              'Reason raise o'er instinct, if you can;
+              In this 'tis God directs, in that 'tis man.'
+
+'You are certain he will come this way, Zambo?' I said to our Gaucho.
+
+'Plenty certain, senor. I follow de trail now.'
+
+I looked over my saddle-bow; so did Donald, but no trail could we
+see--only the hard, yellow, sandy gravel.
+
+We came at last to the hilly regions. It was exceedingly quiet and still
+here; hardly a creature of any kind to be seen except now and then a kite,
+or even condor, the latter winging his silent way to the distant
+mountains. At times we passed a biscacha village. The biscacha is not a
+tribe of Indians, but, like the coney, a very feeble people, who dwell in
+caves or burrow underground, but all day long may be seen playing about
+the mounds they raise, or sitting on their hind legs on top of them. They
+are really a species of prairie-dog. With them invariably live a tribe of
+little owls--the burrowing owls--and it seems to be a mutual understanding
+that the owls have the principal possession of these residential chambers
+by day, while the biscachas occupy them by night. This arrangement answers
+wonderfully well, and I have proved over and over again that they are
+exceedingly fond of each other. The biscachas themselves are not very
+demonstrative, either in their fun or affection, but if one of them be
+killed, and is lying dead outside the burrow, the poor owl often exhibits
+the most frantic grief for the murder of his little housekeeper, and will
+even show signs of a desire to attack the animal--especially if a
+dog--which has caused his affliction.
+
+Donald and I, with our guide, now reached the land of the giant cacti. We
+all at home here in Britain know something of the beauty of the common
+prickly cactus that grows in window-gardens or in hot-houses, and
+surprises us with the crimson glory of its flowers, which grow from such
+odd parts of the plant; but here we were in the land of the cacti. Dugald
+knew it well, and used to tell us all about them; so tall, so stately, so
+strange and weird, that we felt as if in another planet. Already the bloom
+was on some of them--for in this country flowers soon hear the voice of
+spring--but in the proper season nothing that ever I beheld can surpass
+the gorgeous beauty of these giant cacti.
+
+The sun began to sink uncomfortably low down on the horizon, and my
+anxiety increased every minute. Why did not Dugald meet us? Why did we not
+even hear the sound of his gun, for the Gaucho told us we were close to
+the laguna?
+
+Presently the cacti disappeared behind us, and we found ourselves in open
+ground, with here and there a tall, weird-looking tree. How those
+trees--they were not natives--had come there we were at first at a loss to
+understand, but when we reached the foot of a grass-grown hill or sand
+dune, and came suddenly on the ruins of what appeared a Jesuit hermitage
+or monastery, the mystery was explained.
+
+On rounding a spur of this hill, lo! the lake; and not far from the foot
+of a tree, behold! our truant brother. Beside him was Dash, and not a
+great way off, tied to a dwarf algaroba tree, stood the mule. Dugald was
+sitting on the ground, with his gun over his arm, gazing up into the
+tree.
+
+'Dugald! Dugald!' I cried.
+
+But Dugald never moved his head. Was he dead, or were these green sand
+dunes fairy hillocks, and my brother enchanted?
+
+I leapt off my mule, and, rifle in hand, went on by myself, never taking
+my eyes off my brother, and with my heart playing pit-a-pat against my
+ribs.
+
+'Dugald!' I said again.
+
+He never moved.
+
+'Dugald, speak!'
+
+He spoke now almost in a stage whisper:
+
+'A lion in the tree. Have you your rifle?'
+
+I beckoned to my brother to come on, and at the same moment the monster
+gave voice. I was near enough now to take aim at the puma; he was lying in
+a cat-like attitude on one of the highest limbs. But the angry growl and
+the moving tail told me plainly enough he was preparing to spring, and
+spring on Dugald. It was the first wild beast I had ever drawn bead upon,
+and I confess it was a supreme moment; oh, not of joy, but,--shall I say
+it?--fear.
+
+What if I should miss!
+
+But there was no time for cogitation. I raised my rifle. At the self-same
+moment, as if knowing his danger, the brute sprang off the bough. The
+bullet met him in mid-air, and--_he fell dead at Dugald's feet_.
+
+The ball had entered the neck and gone right on and through the heart. One
+coughing roar, an opening and shutting of the terrible jaws--which were
+covered with blood and froth--and a few convulsive movements of the hind
+legs, and all was over.
+
+'Thank Heaven, you are saved, dear old Dugald!' I cried.
+
+'Yes,' said Dugald, getting up and coolly stretching himself; 'but you've
+been a precious long time in coming.'
+
+'And you were waiting for us?'
+
+'I couldn't get away. I was sitting here when I noticed the lion. Dash and
+I were having a bit of lunch. My cartridges are all on the mule, so I've
+been staring fixedly at that monster ever since. I knew it was my only
+chance. If I had moved away, or even turned my head, he would have had me
+as sure as--'
+
+'But, I say,' he added, touching the dead puma with his foot, '_isn't_ he
+a fine fellow? What a splendid skin to send home to Flora!'
+
+This shows what sort of a boy Brother Dugald was; and now that all danger
+was past and gone, although I pretended to be angry with him for his
+rashness, I really could not help smiling.
+
+'But what a crack shot you are, Murdoch!' he added; 'I had no idea--I--I
+really couldn't have done much better myself.'
+
+'Well, Dugald,' I replied, 'I may do better next time, but to tell the
+truth I aimed at the beast _when he was on the branch_.'
+
+'And hit him ten feet below it. Ha! ha! ha!'
+
+We all laughed now. We could afford it.
+
+The Gaucho whipped the puma out of his skin in less than a minute, and off
+we started for home.
+
+I was the hero of the evening; though Dugald never told them of my funny
+aim. Bombazo, who had long since recovered his spirits, was well to the
+front with stories of his own personal prowess and narrow escapes; but
+while relating these he never addressed old Jenny, for the ancient and
+humorsome dame had told him one day that 'big lees were thrown awa' upon
+her.'
+
+What a happy evening we spent, for our Gaucho runner had brought
+
+                         'Good news from Home!'
+
+-----
+
+  [7] 'Ca' Canny' = Drive slowly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+SUMMER IN THE SILVER WEST.
+
+
+Though it really was not so very long since we had said farewell to our
+friends in Scotland and the dear ones at home, it seemed an age. So it is
+no wonder, seeing that all were well, our letters brought us joy. Not for
+weeks did we cease to read them over and over again and talk about them.
+One of mine was from Archie Bateman, and, much to my delight and that of
+my brothers, he told us that he had never ceased worrying his father and
+mother to let him come out to the Silver West and join us, and that they
+were yielding fast. He meant, he said, to put the screw on a little harder
+soon, by running away and taking a cruise as far as Newcastle-on-Tyne in a
+coal-boat. He had no doubt that this would have the desired effect of
+showing his dearly-beloved _pater et mater_ that he was in downright
+earnest in his desire to go abroad. So we were to expect him next
+summer--'that is,' he added, 'summer in England, and winter with you.'
+
+Another letter of mine was from Irene M'Rae. I dare say there must have
+been a deal of romance about me even then, for Irene's delightful little
+matter-of-fact and prosaic letter gave me much pleasure, and I--I believe
+I carried it about with me till it was all frayed at every fold, and I
+finally stowed it away in my desk.
+
+Flora wrote to us all, with a postscript in addition to Dugald. And we
+were to make haste and get rich enough to send for pa and ma and her.
+
+I did not see Townley's letter to aunt, but I know that much of it related
+to the 'Coila crime,' as we all call it now. The scoundrel M'Rae had
+disappeared, and Mr. Townley had failed to trace him. But he could wait.
+He would not get tired. It was as certain as Fate that as soon as the
+poacher spent his money--and fellows like him could not keep money
+long--he would appear again at Coila, to extort more by begging or
+threatening. Townley had a watch set for him, and as soon as he should
+appear there would be an interview.
+
+'It would,' the letter went on, 'aid my case very much indeed could I but
+find the men who assisted him to restore the vault in the old ruin. But
+they, too, are spirited away, apparently, and all I can do fails to find
+them. But I live in hope. The good time is bound to come, and may Heaven
+in justice send it soon!'
+
+Moncrieff had no letters, but I am bound to say that he was as much
+delighted to see us happy as if we were indeed his own brothers, and our
+aunt his aunt, if such a thing could have been possible.
+
+But meanwhile the building of our Coila Villa moved on apace, and only
+those situated as we were could understand the eager interest we took in
+its gradual rise. At the laying of the foundation-stone we gave all the
+servants and workmen, and settlers, new and old, an entertainment. We had
+not an ostrich to roast whole this time, but the supper placed before our
+guests under Moncrieff's biggest tent was one his cook might well have
+been proud of. After supper music commenced, only on this special and
+auspicious occasion the guitars did not have it all their own way, having
+to give place every now and then to the inspiring strains of the Highland
+bagpipes. That was a night which was long remembered in our little
+colony.
+
+While the villa was being built our furniture was being made. This, like
+that in Moncrieff's mansion, was all, or mostly, Indian work, and
+manufactured by our half-caste Gauchos. The wood chiefly used was
+algaroba, which, when polished, looked as bright as mahogany, and quite as
+beautiful. This Occidental furniture, as we called it, was really very
+light and elegant, the seats of the couches, fauteuils and sofas, and
+chairs being worked with thongs, or pieces of hardened skin, in quite a
+marvellous manner.
+
+We had fences to make all round our fields, and hedges to plant, and even
+trees. Then there was the whole irrigation system to see to, and the land
+to sow with grain and lucerne, after the soil had been duly ploughed and
+attended to. All this kept us young fellows very busy indeed, for we
+worked with the men almost constantly, not only as simple superintendents,
+but as labourers.
+
+Yes, the duties about an _estancia_, even after it is fairly established,
+are very varied; but, nevertheless, I know of no part of the world where
+the soil responds more quickly or more kindly to the work of the tiller
+than it does in the Silver West. And this is all the more wonderful when
+we consider that a great part of the land hereabouts is by nature barren
+in the extreme.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+I do not think I am wrong in saying that sheep, if not first introduced
+into the _estancias_ of the Silver West by the Scotch, have at all events
+been elevated to the rank of a special feature of produce in the country
+by them. Moncrieff had done much for the improvement of the breed, not
+only as regards actual size of body, but in regard to the texture of the
+wool; and it was his proudest boast to be able to say that the land of his
+adoption could already compare favourably with Australia itself, and that
+in the immediate future it was bound to beat that island.
+
+It is no wonder, therefore, that we all looked forward to our first great
+shearing as a very busy time indeed. Our great wool harvest was, indeed,
+one of the principal events of the year. Moncrieff said he always felt
+young again at the sheep-shearing times.
+
+Now there are various styles of wool harvesting. Moncrieff's was simple
+enough. Preparations were made for it, both out-doors and in, at least a
+fortnight beforehand. Indoors, hams, &c., were got ready for cooking, and
+the big tent was erected once more near and behind the mansion, for extra
+hands to the number of twenty at least were to be imported; several
+neighbour settlers--they lived ten miles off, and still were
+neighbours--were coming over to lend a hand, and all had to eat, and most
+had to sleep, under canvas.
+
+If sheep-shearing prospects made Moncrieff young again, so they did his
+mother. She was here, there, and everywhere; now in parlour or
+dining-room, in kitchen and scullery, in out-houses and tent, giving
+orders, leading, directing, ay, and sometimes even driving, the servants,
+for few of the Gauchos, whether male or female, could work with speed
+enough to please old Jenny.
+
+Well, the sheds had to be cleared out, and a system of corralling adopted
+which was only called for during times like these. Then there were the
+weighing machines to be seen to; the tally tables and all the packing and
+pressing machinery--which on this large _estancia_ was carried almost to
+perfection--had all to be got into the very best working order imaginable.
+For, in the matter of sheep-shearing, Moncrieff was fastidious to a
+degree.
+
+The sheep were washed the day before. This was hard work, for no animal I
+know of is more obstinate than a sheep when it makes up its mind to be
+so.
+
+So the work commenced, and day after day it went merrily on. Moncrieff did
+not consider this a very large shearing, and yet in six days' time no less
+than 11,000 sheep were turned away fleeceless.
+
+And what a scene it was, to be sure!
+
+I remember well, when quite a little lad, thinking old Parson McGruer's
+shearing a wonderful sight. The old man, who was very fat and podgy, and
+seldom got down to breakfast before eleven in the morning, considered
+himself a sheep farmer on rather a large scale. Did he not own a flock of
+nearly six hundred--one shepherd's work--that fed quietly on the
+heath-clad braes of Coila? One shepherd and two collies; and the collies
+did nearly all the duty in summer and a great part of it in winter. The
+shepherd had his bit of shieling in a clump of birch-trees at the
+glen-foot, and at times, crook in hand, his Highland plaid dangling from
+his shoulder, he might be seen slowly winding along the braes, or
+standing, statue-like, on the hill-top, his romantic figure well defined
+against the horizon, and very much in keeping with the scene. I never yet
+saw the minister's shepherd running. His life was almost an idyllic one in
+summer, when the birks waved green and eke, or in autumn, when the hills
+were all ablaze with the crimson glory of the heather. To be sure, his pay
+was not a great deal, and his fare for the most part consisted of oatmeal
+and milk, with now and then a slice of the best part of a 'braxied' sheep.
+Here, in our home in the Silver West, how different! Every _puestero_ had
+a house or hut as good as the minister's shepherd; and as for living, why,
+the worthy Mr. McGruer himself never had half so well-found a table. Our
+dogs in the Silver West lived far more luxuriously than any farm servant
+or shepherd, or even gamekeeper, 'in a' braid Scotland.'
+
+But our shepherds had to run and to ride both. Wandering over miles upon
+miles of pasturage, sheep learn to be dainty, and do not stay very long in
+any one place; so it is considered almost impossible to herd them on foot.
+It is not necessary to do so; at all events, where one can buy a horse for
+forty shillings, and where his food costs _nil_, or next to _nil_, one
+usually prefers riding to walking.
+
+But it was a busy time in May even at the Scotch minister's place when
+sheep-shearing came round. The minister got up early then, if he did not
+do so all the year round again. The hurdles were all taken to the
+river-side, or banks of the stream that, leaving Loch Coila, went
+meandering through the glen. Here the sheep were washed and penned, and
+anon turned into the enclosures where the shearers were. Lads and lasses
+all took part in the work in one capacity or another. The sun would be
+brightly shining, the 'jouking burnie' sparkling clear in its rays; the
+glens and hills all green and bonnie; the laughing and joking and lilting
+and singing, and the constant bleating of sheep and lambs, made altogether
+a curious medley; but every now and then Donald the piper would tune his
+pipes and make them 'skirl,' drowning all other sounds in martial melody.
+
+But here on Moncrieff's _estancia_ everything was on a grander scale.
+There was the same bleating of sheep, the same laughing, joking, lilting,
+singing, and piping; the same hurry-scurry of dogs and men; the same
+prevailing busy-ness and activity; but everything was multiplied by
+twenty.
+
+McGruer at home in Coila had his fleeces thrust into a huge sack, which
+was held up by two stalwart Highlanders. Into this not only were the
+fleeces put, but also a boy, to jump on them and pack them down. At the
+_estancia_ we had the very newest forms of machinery to do everything.
+
+Day by day, as our shearing went on, Moncrieff grew gayer and gayer, and
+on the final morning he was as full of life and fun as a Harrow schoolboy
+out on the range. The wool harvest had turned out well.
+
+It had not been so every year with Moncrieff and his partner. They had had
+many struggles to come through--sickness had at one time more than
+decimated the flocks. The Indians, though they do not as a rule drive away
+sheep, had played sad havoc among them, and scattered them far and wide
+over the adjoining pampas, and the pampero[8] had several times destroyed
+its thousands, before the trees had grown up to afford protection and
+shelter.
+
+I have said before that Moncrieff was fond of doing things in his own
+fashion. He was willing enough to adopt all the customs of his adopted
+country so long as he thought they were right, but many of the habits of
+his native land he considered would engraft well with those of Mendoza.
+Moncrieff delighted in dancing--that is, in giving a good hearty rout,
+and he simply did so whenever there was the slightest excuse. The cereal
+harvest ended thus, the grape harvest also, and making of the wine and
+preserves, and so of course did the shearing.
+
+The dinner at the mansion itself was a great success; the supper in the
+marquee, with the romp to follow, was even a greater. Moncrieff himself
+opened the fun with Aunt Cecilia as a partner, Donald and a charming
+Spanish girl completing the quartette necessary for a real Highland reel.
+The piper played, of course (guitars were not good enough for this sort of
+thing), and I think we must have kept that first 'hoolichin' up for nearly
+twenty minutes. Then Moncrieff and aunt were fain to retire
+'for-fochten.'[9]
+
+Well Moncrieff might have been 'for-fochten,' but neither Donald nor his
+Spanish lassie were half tired. Nor was the piper.
+
+'Come on, Dugald,' cried Donald, 'get a partner, lad. Hooch!'
+
+'Hooch!' shouted Dugald in response, and lo and behold! he gaily led
+forth--whom? Why, whom but old Jenny herself? What roars of laughter there
+was as, keeping time to a heart-stirring strathspey, the litle lady
+cracked her thumbs and danced, reeling, setting, and deeking! roars of
+laughter, and genuine hearty applause as well.
+
+Moncrieff was delighted with his mother's performance. It was glorious, he
+said, and so true to time; surely everybody would believe him now that
+mither was a downright ma_r-r-r-_vel. And everybody did.
+
+During the shearing Donald and I had done duty as clerks; and very busy we
+had been kept. As for Dugald, it would have been a pity to have parted him
+and his dear gun, so the work assigned to him was that of lion's
+provider--we, the shearing folk, being the lion.
+
+For a youth of hardly sixteen Dugald was a splendid shot, and during the
+shearing he really kept up his credit well. Moncrieff objected to have
+birds killed when breeding; but in this country, as indeed in any other
+where game is numerous, there are hosts of birds that do not, for various
+reasons, breed or mate every season. These generally are to be found
+either singly and solitary, as if they had some great grief on their minds
+that they desired to nurse in solitude, or in small flocks of gay young
+bachelors. Dugald knew such birds well, and it was from the ranks of these
+he always filled the larder.
+
+To the supply thus brought daily by Dugald were added fowls, ducks, and
+turkeys from the _estancia's_ poultry-yard, to say nothing of joints of
+beef, mutton, and pork. Nor was it birds alone that Dugald's seemingly
+inexhaustible creels and bags were laden with, but eggs of the swan[10]
+and the wild-duck and goose, with--to serve as tit-bits for those who
+cared for such desert delicacies--cavies, biscachas, and now and then an
+armadillo. If these were not properly appreciated by the new settlers, the
+eyes of the old, and especially the Gauchos, sparkled with anticipation of
+gustatory delight on beholding them.
+
+For some days after the shearing was over comparative peace reigned around
+and over the great _estancia_. But nevertheless preparations were being
+made to send off a string of waggons to Villa Mercedes. The market at
+Mendoza was hardly large enough to suit Moncrieff, nor were the prices so
+good as could be obtained in the east. Indeed, Moncrieff had purchasing
+agents from Villa Mercedes to meet his waggons on receipt of a telegram.
+
+So the waggons were loaded up--wool, wine, and preserves, as well as
+raisins.
+
+To describe the vineyards at our _estancia_ would take up far too much
+space. I must leave them to the reader's imagination; but I hardly think I
+am wrong in stating that there are no grapes in the world more delicious
+or more viniferous than those that grow in the province of Mendoza. The
+usual difficulty is not in the making of wine, but in the supply of
+barrels and bottles. Moncrieff found a way out of this; and in some hotels
+in Buenos Ayres, and even Monte Video, the Chateau Moncrieff had already
+gained some celebrity.
+
+The manufacture of many different kinds of preserves was quite an industry
+at the _estancia_, and one that paid fairly well. There were orangeries as
+well as vineries; and although the making of marmalade had not before been
+attempted, Moncrieff meant now to go in for it on quite a large scale.
+This branch was to be superintended by old Jenny herself, and great was
+her delight to find out that she was of some use on the estate, for
+'really 'oman,' she told aunt, 'a body gets tired of the stockin'--shank,
+shank, shank a' day is hard upon the hands, though a body maun do
+something.'
+
+Well, the waggons were laden and off at last. With them went Moncrieff's
+Welsh partner as commander, to see to the sale, and prevent the Gauchos
+and drivers generally from tapping the casks by the way. The force of men,
+who were all well armed, was quite sufficient to give an excellent account
+of any number of prowling Indians who were likely to put in an
+appearance.
+
+And now summer, in all its glory, was with us. And such glory! Such glory
+of vegetable life, such profusion of foliage, such wealth of colouring,
+such splendour of flowers! Such glory of animal life, beast and bird and
+insect! The flowers themselves were not more gay and gorgeous than some of
+these latter.
+
+Nor were we very greatly plagued with the hopping and blood-sucking
+genera. Numerous enough they were at times, it must be confessed, both by
+day and night; but somehow we got used to them. The summer was wearing to
+a close, the first wing of our Coila Villa was finished and dry, the
+furniture was put in, and as soon as the smell of paint left we took
+possession.
+
+This was made the occasion for another of Moncrieff's festive gatherings.
+Neighbours came from all directions except the south, for we knew of none
+in this direction besides the wild Pampean Indians, and they were not
+included in the invitation. Probably we should make them dance some other
+day.
+
+About a fortnight after our opening gathering, or 'house-warming,' as
+Moncrieff called it, we had a spell of terribly hot weather. The heat was
+of a sultry, close description, difficult to describe: the cattle, sheep,
+and horses seemed to suffer very much, and even the poor dogs. These last,
+by the way, we found it a good plan to clip. Long coats did not suit the
+summer season.
+
+One evening it seemed hotter and sultrier than ever. We were all seated
+out in the verandah, men-folk smoking, and aunt and Aileen fanning
+themselves and fighting the insects, when suddenly a low and ominous
+rumbling was heard which made us all start except Moncrieff.
+
+Is it thunder? No; there is not at present a cloud in the sky, although a
+strange dark haze is gathering over the peaks on the western horizon.
+
+'Look!' said Moncrieff to me. As he spoke he pointed groundwards. Beetles
+and ants and crawling insects of every description were heading for the
+verandah, seeking shelter from the coming storm.
+
+The strange rumbling grew louder!
+
+It was not coming from the sky, but from the earth!
+
+-----
+
+  [8] Pampero, a storm wind that blows from the south.
+
+  [9] For-fochten = worn out. The term usually applies to
+      barn-yard roosters, who have been settling a quarrel, and
+      pause to pant, with their heads towards the ground.
+
+  [10] Swans usually commence laying some time before either
+       ducks or geese; but much depends upon the season.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+THE EARTHQUAKE.
+
+
+With a rapidity that was truly alarming the black haze in the west crept
+upwards over the sky, the sun was engulfed in a few minutes, and before
+half an hour, accompanied by a roaring wind and a whirl of dust and
+decayed leaves, the storm was with us and on us, the whole _estancia_
+being enveloped in clouds and darkness.
+
+The awful earth sounds still continued--increased, in fact--much to the
+terror of every one of us. We had retreated to the back sitting-room.
+Moncrieff had left us for a time, to see to the safety of the cattle and
+the farm generally, for the Gauchos were almost paralyzed with fear, and
+it was found afterwards that the very shepherds had left their flocks and
+fled for safety--if safety it could be called--to their _puestos_.
+
+Yet Gauchos are not as a rule afraid of storms, but--and it is somewhat
+remarkable--an old Indian seer had for months before been predicting that
+on this very day and night the city of Mendoza would be destroyed by an
+earthquake, and that not only the town but every village in the province
+would be laid low at the same time.
+
+It is difficult to give the reader any idea of the events of this dreadful
+night. I can only briefly relate my own feelings and experiences. As we
+all sat there, suddenly a great river of blood appeared to split the dark
+heavens in two, from zenith to horizon. It hung in the sky for long
+seconds, and was followed by a peal of thunder of terrific violence,
+accompanied by sounds as if the whole building and every building on the
+estate were being rent and riven in pieces. At the self-same moment a
+strange, dizzy, sleepy feeling rushed through my brain. I could only see
+those around me as if enshrouded in a blue-white mist. I tried to rise
+from my chair, but fell back, not as I thought into a chair but into a
+boat. Floor and roof and walls appeared to meet and clasp. My head swam. I
+was not only dizzy but deaf apparently, not too deaf, however, to hear the
+wild, unearthly, frightened screams of twenty at least of our Gaucho
+servants, who were huddled together in the centre of the garden. It was
+all over in a few seconds: even the thunder was hushed and the wind no
+longer bent the poplars or roared through the cloud-like elm-trees. A
+silence that could be felt succeeded, broken only by the low moan of
+terror that the Gauchos kept up; a silence that soon checked even that
+sound itself; a silence that crept round the heart, and held us all
+spellbound; a silence that was ended at last by terrible thunderings and
+lightnings and earth-tremblings, with all the same dizzy, sleepy,
+sickening sensations that had accompanied the first shock. I felt as if
+chaos had come again, and for a time felt also as if death itself would
+have been a relief.
+
+But this shock passed next, and once more there was a solemn silence, a
+drear stillness. And now fear took possession of every one of us, and a
+desire to flee away somewhere--anywhere. This had almost amounted to
+panic, when Moncrieff himself appeared in the verandah.
+
+'I've got our fellows to put up the marquee,' he said, almost in a
+whisper. 'Come--we'll be safer there. Mither, I'll carry you. You're not
+afraid, are you?'
+
+'Is the worruld comin' tae an end?' asked old Jenny, looking dazed as her
+son picked her up. 'Is the worruld comin' tae an end, _and the marmalade
+no made yet_?'
+
+In about an hour after this the storm was at its worst. Flash followed
+flash, peal followed peal: the world seemed in flames, the hills appeared
+to be falling on us. The rain and hailstones came down in vast sheets, and
+with a noise so great that even the thunder itself was heard but as a
+subdued roar.
+
+We had no light here--we needed none. The lightning, or the reflection of
+it, ran in under the canvas on the surface of the water, which must have
+been inches deep. The hail melted as soon as it fell, and finally gave
+place to rain alone; then the water that flowed through the tent felt
+warm, if not hot, to the touch. This was no doubt occasioned by the force
+with which it fell to the ground. The falling rain now looked like cords
+of gold and silver, so brightly was it illuminated by the lightning.
+
+While the storm was still at its height suddenly there was a shout from
+one of the Gauchos.
+
+'Run, run! the tent is falling!' was the cry.
+
+It was only too true. A glance upwards told us this. We got into the open
+air just in time, before, weighted down by tons of water, the great
+marquee came groundwards with a crash.
+
+But though the rain still came down in torrents and the thunder roared and
+rattled over and around us, no further shock of earthquake was felt. Fear
+fled then, and we made a rush for the house once more. Moncrieff reached
+the casement window first, with a Gaucho carrying a huge lantern. This man
+entered, but staggered out again immediately.
+
+'The ants! the ants!' he shouted in terror.
+
+Moncrieff had one glance into the room, as if to satisfy himself. I took
+the lantern from the trembling hands of the Gaucho and held it up, and the
+sight that met my astonished gaze was one I shall never forget. The whole
+room was in possession of myriads of black ants of enormous size; they
+covered everything--walls, furniture, and floor--with one dense and awful
+pall.
+
+The room looked strange and mysterious in its living, moving covering.
+Here was indeed the blackness of darkness. Yes, and it was a darkness too
+that could be felt. Of this I had a speedy proof of a most disagreeable
+nature. I was glad to hand the lantern back and seek for safety in the
+rain again.
+
+Luckily the sitting-room door was shut, and this was the only room not
+taken possession of.
+
+After lights had been lit in the drawing-room the storm did not appear
+quite so terrible; but no one thought of retiring that night. The vague
+fear that something more dreadful still might occur kept hanging in our
+minds, and was only dispelled when daylight began to stream in at the
+windows.
+
+By breakfast-time there was no sign in the blue sky that so fearful a
+storm had recently raged there. Nor had any very great violence been done
+about the farmyards by the earthquake.
+
+Many of the cattle that had sought shelter beneath the trees had been
+killed, however; and in one spot we found the mangled remains of over one
+hundred sheep. Here also a huge chestnut-tree had been struck and
+completely destroyed, pieces of the trunk weighing hundreds of pounds
+being scattered in every direction over the field.
+
+Earthquakes are of common occurrence in the province of Mendoza, but
+seldom are they accompanied by such thunder, lightning, and rain as we had
+on this occasion. It was this demonstration, coupled with the warning
+words of the Indian seer, which had caused the panic among our worthy
+Gaucho servants. But the seer had been a false prophet for once, and as
+the Gauchos seized him on this same day and half drowned him in the lake,
+there was but little likelihood that he would prophesy the destruction of
+Mendoza again.
+
+Mendoza had been almost totally destroyed already by an awful earthquake
+that occurred in 1861. Out of a population of nearly sixteen thousand
+souls no less than thirteen thousand, we are told, were killed--swallowed
+up by the yawning earth. Fire broke out afterwards, and, as if to
+increase the wretchedness and sad condition of the survivors, robbers from
+all directions--even from beyond the Andes--flocked to the place to loot
+and pillage it. But Mendoza is now built almost on the ashes of the
+destroyed city, and its population must be equal to, even if it does not
+exceed, its former aggregate.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the exception of a few losses, trifling enough to one in Moncrieff's
+position, the whole year was a singularly successful one. Nor had my
+brothers nor I and the other settlers any occasion to complain, and our
+prospects began to be very bright indeed.
+
+Nor did the future belie the present, for ere another year had rolled over
+our heads we found ourselves in a fair way to fortune. We felt by this
+time that we were indeed old residents. We were thoroughly acclimatized:
+healthy, hardy, and brown. In age we were, some would say, mere lads; in
+experience we were already men.
+
+Our letters from home continued to be of the most cheering description,
+with the exception of Townley's to aunt. He had made little if any
+progress in his quest. Not that he despaired. Duncan M'Rae was still
+absent, but sooner or later--so Townley believed--poverty would bring him
+to bay, and _then_--
+
+Nothing of this did my aunt tell me at the time. I remained in blissful
+ignorance of anything and everything that our old tutor had done or was
+doing.
+
+True, the events of that unfortunate evening at the old ruin sometimes
+arose in my mind to haunt me. My greatest sorrow was my being bound down
+by oath to keep what seemed to me the secret of a villain--a secret that
+had deprived our family of the estates of Coila, had deprived my
+parents--yes, that was the hard and painful part. For, strange as it may
+appear, I cared nothing for myself. So enamoured had I become of our new
+home in the Silver West, that I felt but little longing to return to the
+comparative bleakness and desolation of even Scottish Highland scenery. I
+must not be considered unpatriotic on this account, or if there was a
+decay of patriotism in my heart, the fascinating climate of Mendoza was to
+blame for it. I could not help feeling at times that I had eaten the
+lotus-leaf. Had we not everything that the heart of young men could
+desire? On my own account, therefore, I felt no desire to turn the good
+soldier M'Rae away from Coila, and as for Irene--as for bringing a tear to
+the eyes of that beautiful and engaging girl, I would rather, I thought,
+that the dark waters of the laguna should close over my head for ever.
+
+Besides, dear father was happy. His letters told me that. He had even come
+to like his city life, and he never wrote a word about Coila.
+
+Still, the oath--the oath that bound me! It was a dark spot in my
+existence.
+
+_Did_ it bind me? I remember thinking that question over one day. Could an
+oath forced upon any one be binding in the sight of Heaven? I ran off to
+consult my brother Moncrieff. I found him riding his great bay mare, an
+especial favourite, along the banks of the highest _estancia_ canal--the
+canal that fed the whole system of irrigation. Here I joined him, myself
+on my pet brown mule.
+
+'Planning more improvements, Moncrieff?' I asked.
+
+He did not speak for a minute or two.
+
+'I'm not planning improvements,' he said at last, 'but I was just thinking
+it would be well, in our orra[11] moments, if we were to strengthen this
+embankment. There is a terrible power o' water here. Now supposing that
+during some awful storm, with maybe a bit shock of earthquake, it were to
+burst here or hereabouts, don't you see that the flood would pour right
+down upon the mansion-house, and clean it almost from its foundations?'
+
+'I trust,' I said, 'so great a catastrophe will not occur in our day.'
+
+'It would be a fearful accident, and a judgment maybe on my want of
+forethought.'
+
+'I want to ask you a question,' I said, 'on another subject, Moncrieff.'
+
+'You're lookin' scared, laddie. What's the matter?'
+
+I told him as much as I could.
+
+'It's a queer question, laddie--a queer question. Heaven give me help to
+answer you! I think, as the oath was to keep a secret, you had best keep
+the oath, and trust to Heaven to set things right in the end, if it be for
+the best.'
+
+'Thanks, Moncrieff,' I said; 'thanks. I will take your advice.'
+
+That very day Moncrieff set a party of men to strengthen the embankment;
+and it was probably well he did so, for soon after the work was finished
+another of those fearful storms, accompanied as usual by shocks of
+earthquake, swept over our valley, and the canal was filled to
+overflowing, but gave no signs of bursting. Moncrieff had assuredly taken
+time by the forelock.
+
+One day a letter arrived, addressed to me, which bore the London
+post-mark.
+
+It was from Archie, and a most spirited epistle it was. He wanted us to
+rejoice with him, and, better still, to expect him out by the very first
+packet. His parents had yielded to his request. It had been the voyage to
+Newcastle that had turned the scale. There was nothing like pluck, he
+said; 'But,' he added, 'between you and me, Murdoch, I would not take
+another voyage in a Newcastle collier, not to win all the honour and glory
+of Livingstone, Stanley, Gordon-Cumming, and Colonel Frederick Burnaby put
+in a bushel basket.'
+
+I went tearing away over the _estancia_ on my mule, to find my brothers
+and tell them the joyful tidings. And we rejoiced together. Then I went
+off to look for Moncrieff, and he rejoiced, to keep me company.
+
+'And mind you,' he said, 'the very day after he arrives we'll have a
+dinner and a kick-up.'
+
+'Of course we will,' I said. 'We'll have the dinner and fun at Coila
+Villa, which, remember, can now boast of two wings besides the tower.'
+
+'Very well,' he assented, 'and after that we can give another dinner and
+rout at my diggings. Just a sort of return match, you see?'
+
+'But I don't see,' I said; 'I don't see the use of two parties.'
+
+'Oh, but I do, Murdoch. We must make more of a man than we do of a
+nowt[12] beast. Now you mind that bull I had sent out from England--Towsy
+Jock that lives in the Easter field?--well, I gave a dinner when he came.
+L250 I paid for him too.'
+
+'Yes, and I remember also you gave a dinner and fun when the prize ram
+came out. Oh, catch you not finding an excuse for a dinner! However, so be
+it: one dinner and fun for a bull, two for Archie.'
+
+'That's agreed then,' said Moncrieff.
+
+Now, my brothers and I and a party of Gauchos, with the warlike Bombazo
+and a Scot or two, had arranged a grand hunt into the guanaco country; but
+as dear old Archie was coming out so soon we agreed to postpone it, in
+order that he might join in the fun. Meanwhile we commenced to make all
+preparations.
+
+They say that the principal joy in life lies in the anticipation of
+pleasure to come. I think there is a considerable amount of truth in this,
+and I am sure that not even bluff old King Hal setting out to hunt in the
+New Forest could have promised himself a greater treat than we did as we
+got ready for our tour in the land of the guanaco, and country of the
+condor.
+
+We determined to be quite prepared to start by the time Archie was due.
+Not that we meant to hurry our dear cockney cousin right away to the wilds
+as soon as he arrived. No; we would give him a whole week to 'shake
+down,' as Moncrieff called it, and study life on the _estancia_.
+
+And, indeed, life on the _estancia_, now that we had become thoroughly
+used to it, was exceedingly pleasant altogether.
+
+I cannot say that either my brothers or I were ever much given to lazing
+in bed of a morning in Scotland itself. To have done so we should have
+looked upon as bad form; but to encourage ourselves in matutinal sloth in
+a climate like this would have seemed a positive crime.
+
+Even by seven in the morning we used to hear the great gong roaring
+hoarsely on Moncrieff's lawn, and this used to be the signal for us to
+start and draw aside our mosquito curtains. Our bedrooms adjoined, and all
+the time we were splashing in our tubs and dressing we kept up an
+incessant fire of banter and fun. The fact is, we used to feel in such
+glorious form after a night's rest. Our bedroom windows were very large
+casements, and were kept wide open all the year round, so that virtually
+we slept in the open air. We nearly always went to bed in the dark, or if
+we did have lights we had to shut the windows till we had put them out,
+else moths as big as one's hand, and all kinds and conditions of insect
+life, would have entered and speedily extinguished our candles. Even had
+the windows been protected by glass, this insect life would have been
+troublesome. In the drawing and dining rooms we had specially prepared
+blinds of wire to exclude these creatures, while admitting air enough.
+
+The mosquito curtains round our beds effectually kept everything
+disagreeable at bay, and insured us wholesome rest.
+
+But often we were out of bed and galloping over the country long before
+the gong sounded. This ride used to give us such appetites for breakfast,
+that sometimes we had to apologize to aunt and Aileen for our apparent
+greediness. We were out of doors nearly all day, and just as often as not
+had a snack of luncheon on the hills at some settler's house or at an
+outlying _puesto_.
+
+Aunt was now our housekeeper, but nevertheless so accustomed had we and
+Moncrieff and Aileen become to each other's society that hardly a day
+passed without our dining together either at his house or ours.
+
+The day, what with one thing and another, used to pass quickly enough, and
+the evening was most enjoyable, despite even the worry of flying and
+creeping insects. After dinner my brothers and I, with at times Moncrieff
+and Bombazo, used to lounge round to see what the servants were doing.
+
+They had a concert, and as often as not some fun, every night with the
+exception of Sabbath, when Moncrieff insisted that they should retire
+early.
+
+At many _estancias_ wine is far too much in use--even to the extent of
+inebriety. Our places, however, owing to Moncrieff's strictness, were
+models of temperance, combined with innocent pleasures. The master, as he
+was called, encouraged all kinds of games, though he objected to gambling,
+and drinking he would not permit at any price.
+
+One morning our post-runner came to Coila Villa in greater haste than
+usual, and from his beaming eyes and merry face I conjectured he had a
+letter for me.
+
+I took it from him in the verandah, and sent him off round to the kitchen
+to refresh himself. No sooner had I glanced at its opening sentences than
+I rushed shouting into the breakfast-room.
+
+'Hurrah!' I cried, waving the letter aloft. 'Archie's coming, and he'll be
+here to-day. Hurrah! for the hunt, lads, and hurrah! for the hills!'
+
+-----
+
+  [11] Orra = leisure, idle. An orra-man is one who does all
+       kinds of odd jobs about a farm.
+
+  [12] Nowt = cattle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+OUR HUNTING EXPEDITION.
+
+
+If not quite so exuberant as the welcome that awaited us on our arrival in
+the valley, Archie's was a right hearty one, and assuredly left our cousin
+nothing to complain of.
+
+He had come by diligence from Villa Mercedes, accomplishing the journey,
+therefore, in a few days, which had occupied us in our caravan about as
+many weeks.
+
+We were delighted to see him looking so well. Why, he had even already
+commenced to get brown, and was altogether hardy and hearty and manlike.
+
+We were old _estancieros_, however, and it gave us unalloyed delight to
+show him round our place and put him up to all the outs and ins of a
+settler's life.
+
+Dugald even took him away to the hills with him, and the two of them did
+not get home until dinner was on the table.
+
+Archie, however, although not without plenty of pluck and willingness to
+develop into an _estanciero_ pure and simple, had not the stamina my
+brothers and I possessed, but this only made us all the more kind to him.
+In time, we told him, he would be quite as strong and wiry as any of us.
+
+'There is one thing I don't think I shall ever be able to get over,' said
+Archie one day. It may be observed that he did not now talk with the
+London drawl; he had left both his cockney tongue and his tall hat at
+home.
+
+'What is it you do not think you will ever get over, Arch?' I asked.
+
+'Why, the abominable creepies,' he answered, looking almost miserable.
+
+'Why,' he continued, 'it isn't so much that I mind being bitten by
+mosquitoes--of which it seems you have brutes that fly by day, and gangs
+that go on regular duty at night--but it is the other abominations that
+make my blood run positively cold. Now your cockroaches are all very well
+down in the coal-cellar, and centipedes are interesting creatures in glass
+cases with pins stuck through them; but to find cockroaches in your boots
+and centipedes in your bed is rather too much of a good thing.'
+
+'Well,' said Dugald, laughing, 'you'll get used to even that. I don't
+really mind now what bites me or what crawls over me. Besides, you know
+all those creepie-creepies, as you call them, afford one so excellent an
+opportunity of studying natural history from the life.'
+
+'Oh, bother such life, Dugald! My dear cousin, I would rather remain in
+blissful ignorance of natural history all my life than have even an earwig
+reposing under my pillow.  Besides, I notice that even your Yahoo
+servants--'
+
+'I beg your pardon, cousin; Gaucho, not Yahoo.'
+
+'Well, well, Gaucho servants shudder, and even run from our common bedroom
+creepies.'
+
+'Oh! they are nothing at all to go by, Archie. They think because a thing
+is not very pretty it is bound to be venomous.'
+
+'But does not the bite of a centipede mean death?'
+
+'Oh dear no. It isn't half as bad as London vermin.'
+
+'Then there are scorpions. Do they kill you? Is not their bite highly
+dangerous?'
+
+'Not so bad as a bee's sting.'
+
+'Then there are so many flying beetles.'
+
+'Beauties, Archie, beauties. Why, Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed
+like some of these.'
+
+'Perhaps not. But then, Solomon or not Solomon, how am I to know which
+sting and which don't?'
+
+'_Experientia docet_, Archie.'
+
+Archie shuddered.
+
+'Again, there are spiders. Oh, they do frighten me. They're as big as
+lobsters. Ugh!'
+
+'Well, they won't hurt. They help to catch the other things!'
+
+'Yes, and that's just the worst of it. First a lot of creepies come in to
+suck your blood and inject poison into your veins, to say nothing of half
+scaring a fellow to death; and then a whole lot of flying creepies, much
+worse than the former, come in to hunt them up; and bats come next, to say
+nothing of lizards; and what with the buzzing and singing and hopping and
+flapping and beating and thumping, poor _me_ has to lie awake half the
+night, falling asleep towards morning to dream I'm in purgatory.'
+
+'Poor _you_ indeed!' said Dugald.
+
+'You have told me, too, I must sleep in the dark, but I want to know what
+is the good of that when about one half of those flying creepies carry a
+lamp each, and some of them two. Only the night before last I awoke in a
+fright. I had been dreaming about the great sea-serpent, and the first
+thing I saw was a huge creature about as long as a yard stick wriggling
+along my mosquito curtains.'
+
+'Ah! How could you see it in the dark?'
+
+'Why, the beggar carried two lamps ahead of him, and he had a smaller chap
+with a light. Ugh!'
+
+'These were some good specimens of the _Lampyridae_, no doubt.'
+
+'Well, perhaps; but having such a nice long name doesn't make them a bit
+less hideous to me. Then in the morning when I looked into the glass I
+didn't know myself from Adam. I had a black eye that some bug or other
+had given me--I dare say he also had a nice long name. I had a lump on my
+brow as large as a Spanish onion, and my nose was swollen and as big as a
+bladder of lard. From top to toe I was covered with hard knots, as if I'd
+been to Donnybrook Fair, and what with aching and itching it would have
+been a comfort to me to have jumped out of my skin.'
+
+'Was that all?' I said, laughing.
+
+'Not quite. I went to take up a book to fling at a monster spider in the
+corner, and put my hand on a scorpion. I cracked him and crushed the
+spider, and went to have my bath, only to find I had to fish out about
+twenty long-named indescribables that had committed suicide during the
+night. Other creepies had been drowned in the ewer. I found earwigs in my
+towels, grasshoppers in my clothes, and wicked-looking little beetles even
+in my hairbrushes. This may be a land flowing with milk and honey and all
+the rest of it, Murdoch, but it is also a land crawling with
+creepie-creepies.'
+
+'Well, anyhow,' said Dugald, 'here comes your mule. Mount and have a ride,
+and we'll forget everything but the pleasures of the chase. Come, I think
+I know where there is a jaguar--an immense great brute. I saw him killing
+geese not three days ago.'
+
+'Oh, that will be grand!' cried Archie, now all excitement.
+
+And five minutes afterwards Dugald and he were off to the hills.
+
+But in two days more we would be off to the hills in earnest.
+
+For this tour we would not of our own free-will have made half the
+preparations Moncrieff insisted on, and perhaps would hardly have provided
+ourselves with tents. However, we gave in to his arrangements in every
+way, and certainly we had no cause to repent it.
+
+The guide--he was to be called our _cacique_ for the time being--that
+Moncrieff appointed had been a Gaucho malo, a pampas Cain. No one ever
+knew half the crimes the fellow had committed, and I suppose he himself
+had forgotten. But he was a reformed man and really a Christian, and it is
+difficult to find such an anomaly among Gauchos. He knew the pampas well,
+and the Andes too, and was far more at home in the wilds than at the
+_estancia_. A man like this, Moncrieff told us, was worth ten times his
+weight in gold.
+
+And so it turned out.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The summer had well-nigh gone when our caravan at length left Moncrieff's
+beautiful valley. The words 'caravan at length' in the last sentence may
+be understood in two ways, either as regards space or time. Ours was no
+caravan on wheels. Not a single wheeled waggon accompanied us, for we
+should cross deserts, and pass through glens where there would be no road,
+perhaps hardly even a bridle-path. So the word caravan is to be understood
+in the Arab sense of the word. And it certainly was a lengthy one. For we
+had a pack mule for every two men, including our five Gauchos.
+
+Putting it in another way, there were five of us Europeans--Donald,
+Dugald, Archie Bateman, Sandie Donaldson, and myself; each European had a
+horse and a Gaucho servant, and each Gaucho had a mule.
+
+Bombazo meant to have come; he said so to the very last, at all events,
+but an unfortunate attack of toothache confined him to bed. Archie, who
+had no very exalted idea of the little Spanish captain's courage, was rude
+enough to tell us in his hearing that he was 'foxing.' I do not pretend to
+understand what Archie meant, but I feel certain it was nothing very
+complimentary to Bombazo's bravery.
+
+'Dear laddies,' old Jenny had said, 'if you think you want onybody to darn
+your hose on the road, I'll gang wi' ye mysel'. As for that feckless loon
+Bombazo, the peer[13] body is best in bed.'
+
+Our arms consisted of rifles, shot-guns, the bolas, and lasso. Each man
+carried a revolver as well, and we had also abundance of fishing tackle.
+Our tents were only three in all, but they were strong and waterproof, a
+great consideration when traversing a country like this.
+
+We were certainly prepared to rough it, but had the good sense to take
+with us every contrivance which might add to our comfort, so long as it
+was fairly portable.
+
+Archie had one particular valise of his own that he declared contained
+only a few nicknacks which no one ought to travel without. He would not
+gratify us by even a peep inside, however, so for a time we had to be
+content with guessing what the nicknacks were. Archie got pretty well
+chaffed about his Gladstone bag, as he called it.
+
+'You surely haven't got the tall hat in it,' said Dugald.
+
+'Of course you haven't forgotten your nightcap,' said Donald.
+
+'Nor your slippers, Archie?' I added.
+
+'And a dressing-gown would be indispensable in the desert,' said Sandie
+Donaldson.
+
+Archie only smiled to himself, but kept his secret.
+
+What a lovely morning it was when we set out! So blue was the sky, so
+green the fields of waving lucerne, so dense the foliage and flowers and
+hedgerows and trees, it really seemed that summer would last for many and
+many a month to come.
+
+We were all fresh and happy, and full of buoyant anticipation of pleasures
+to come. Our very dogs went scampering on ahead, barking for very joy. Of
+these we had quite a pack--three pure Scotch collies, two huge
+bloodhound-mastiffs, and at least half a dozen animals belonging to our
+Gauchos, which really were nondescripts but probably stood by greyhounds.
+These dogs were on exceedingly good terms with themselves and with each
+other--the collies jumping up to kiss the horses every minute by way of
+encouragement, the mastiffs trotting steadily on ahead cheek-by-jowl, and
+the hounds everywhere--everywhere at once, so it appeared.
+
+Being all so fresh, we determined to make a thorough long day's journey of
+it. So, as soon as we had left the glen entirely and disappeared among the
+sand dunes, we let our horses have their heads, the _capataz_ Gaucho
+riding on ahead on a splendid mule as strong as a stallion and as lithe as
+a Scottish deerhound.
+
+Not long before our start for the hunting grounds men had arrived from the
+Chilian markets to purchase cattle. The greatest dainty to my mind they
+had brought with them was a quantity of _Yerba mate_, as it is called. It
+is the dried leaves of a species of Patagonian ilex, which is used in this
+country as tea, and very delightful and soothing it is. This was to be our
+drink during all our tour. More refreshing than tea, less exciting than
+wine, it not only seems to calm the mind but to invigorate the body. Drunk
+warm, with or without sugar, all feeling of tiredness passes away, and one
+is disposed to look at the bright side of life, and that alone.
+
+We camped the first night on high ground nearly forty miles from our own
+_estancia_. It was a long day's journey in so rough a country, but we had
+a difficulty earlier in the afternoon in finding water. Here, however, was
+a stream as clear as crystal, that doubtless made its way from springs in
+the _sierras_ that lay to the west of us at no very great distance. Behind
+these jagged hills the sun was slowly setting when we erected our tents.
+The ground chosen was at some little distance from the stream, and on the
+bare gravel. The cacti that grew on two sides of us were of gigantic
+height, and ribboned or edged with the most beautiful flowers. Our horses
+and mules were hobbled and led to the stream, then turned on to the grass
+which grew green and plentiful all along its banks.
+
+A fire was quickly built and our great stewpan put on. We had already
+killed our dinner in the shape of a small deer or fawn which had crossed
+our path on the plains lower down. With biscuits, of which we had a
+store, some curry, roots, which the Gauchos had found, and a handful or
+two of rice, we soon had a dinner ready, the very flavour of which would
+have been enough to make a dying man eat.
+
+The dogs sat around us and around the Gauchos as we dined, and, it must be
+allowed, behaved in a most mannerly way; only the collies and mastiffs
+kept together. They must have felt their superiority to those mongrel
+greyhounds, and desired to show it in as calm and dignified a manner as
+possible.
+
+After dinner sentries were set, one being mounted to watch the horses and
+mules. We were in no great fear of their stampeding, but we had promised
+Moncrieff to run as little risk of any kind as possible on this journey,
+and therefore commenced even on this our first night to be as good as our
+word.
+
+The best Gauchos had been chosen for us, and every one of them could talk
+English after a fashion, especially our bold but not handsome _capataz_,
+or _cacique_ Yambo. About an hour after dinner the latter began serving
+out the _mate_. This put us all in excellent humour and the best of
+spirits. As we felt therefore as happy as one could wish to be, we were
+not surprised when the _capataz_ proposed a little music.
+
+'It is the pampas fashion, senor,' he said to me.
+
+'Will you play and sing?' I said.
+
+'Play and sing?' he replied, at once producing his guitar, which lay in a
+bag not far off. '_Si_, senor, I will play and sing for you. If you bid
+me, I will dance; every day and night I shall cook for you; when de
+opportunity come I will fight for you. I am your servant, your slave, and
+delighted to be so.'
+
+'Thank you, my _capataz_; I have no doubt you are a very excellent
+fellow.'
+
+'Oh, senor, do not flatter yourself too mooch, too very mooch. It is not
+for the sake of you young senors I care, but for the sake of the dear
+master.'
+
+'Sing, _capataz_,' I said, 'and talk after.'
+
+To our surprise, not one but three guitars were handed out, and the songs
+and melodies were very delightful to listen to.
+
+Then our Sandie Donaldson, after handing his cup to be replenished, sang,
+_Ye banks and braes_ with much feeling and in fine manly tenor. We all
+joined in each second verse, while the guitars gave excellent
+accompaniment. One song suggested another, and from singing to
+conversational story-telling the transition was easy. To be sure, neither
+my brothers nor I nor Archie had much to tell, but some of the experiences
+of the Gauchos, and especially those of our _capataz_, were thrilling in
+the extreme, and we never doubted their truth.
+
+But now it was time for bed, and we returned to the tents and lit our
+lamps.
+
+Our beds were the hard ground, with a rug and guanaco robe, our saddles
+turned upside down making as good a pillow as any one could wish.
+
+We had now the satisfaction of knowing something concerning the contents
+of that mysterious grip-sack of Archie's. So judge of our surprise when
+this wonderful London cousin of ours first produced a large jar of what he
+called mosquito cream, and proceeded to smear his face and hands with the
+odorous compound.
+
+'This cream,' he said, 'I bought at Buenos Ayres, and it is warranted to
+keep all pampas creepies away, or anything with two wings or four, six
+legs or sixty. Have a rub, Dugald?'
+
+'Not I,' cried Dugald. 'Why, man, the smell is enough to kill bees.'
+
+Archie proceeded with his preparations. Before enshrouding himself in his
+guanaco mantle he drew on a huge waterproof canvas sack and fastened it
+tightly round his chest. He next produced a hooped head-dress. I know no
+other name for it.
+
+'It is an invention of my own,' said Archie, proudly, 'and is, as you see,
+composed of hoops of wire--'
+
+'Like a lady's crinoline,' said Dugald.
+
+'Well, yes, if you choose to call it so, and is covered with mosquito
+muslin. This is how it goes on, and I'm sure it will form a perfect
+protection.'
+
+He then inserted his head into the wondrous muslin bladder, and the
+appearance he now presented was comical in the extreme. His body in a
+sack, his head in a white muslin bag, nothing human-looking about him
+except his arms, that, encased in huge leather gloves, dangled from his
+shoulders like an immense pair of flippers.
+
+We three brothers looked at him just for a moment, then simultaneously
+exploded into a perfect roar of laughter. Sandie Donaldson, who with the
+_capataz_ occupied the next tent, came rushing in, then all the Gauchos
+and even the dogs. The latter bolted barking when they saw the apparition,
+but the rest joined the laughing chorus.
+
+And the more we looked at Archie the more we laughed, till the very sand
+dunes near us must have been shaken to their foundations by the
+manifestation of our mirth.
+
+'Laugh away, boys,' said our cousin. 'Laugh and grow fat. I don't care how
+I look, so long as my dress and my cream keep the creepies away.'
+
+-----
+
+  [13] Peer = poor.
+
+[Illustration: Comical in the Extreme]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+IN THE WILDERNESS.
+
+
+Some days afterwards we found ourselves among the mountains in a region
+whose rugged grandeur and semi-desolation, whose rock-filled glens, tall,
+frowning precipices, with the stillness that reigned everywhere around,
+imparted to it a character approaching even to sublimity.
+
+The _capataz_ was still our guide, our foremost man in everything; but
+close beside him rode our indefatigable hunter, Dugald.
+
+We had already seen pumas, and even the terrible jaguar of the plains; we
+had killed more than one rhea--the American ostrich--and deer in
+abundance. Moreover, Dugald had secured about fifty skins of the most
+lovely humming-birds, with many beetles, whose elytra, painted and adorned
+by Nature, looked like radiant jewels. All these little skins and beetles
+were destined to be sent home to Flora. As yet, however, we had not come
+in contact with the guanaco, although some had been seen at a distance.
+
+But to-day we were in the very country of the guanaco, and pressing
+onwards and ever upwards, in the hopes of soon being able to draw trigger
+on some of these strange inhabitants of the wilderness.
+
+Only this morning Dugald and I had been bantering each other as to who
+should shoot the first.
+
+'I mean to send my first skin to Flora,' Dugald had said.
+
+'And I my first skin to Irene,' I said.
+
+On rounding the corner of a cliff we suddenly came in sight of a whole
+herd of the creatures, but they were in full retreat up the glen, while
+out against the sky stood in bold relief a tall buck. It was the trumpet
+tones of his voice ringing out plaintively but musically on the still
+mountain air that had warned the herd of our approach.
+
+Another long ride of nearly two hours. And now we must have been many
+thousands of feet above the sea level, or even the level of the distant
+plains.
+
+It is long past midday, so we determine to halt, for here, pure, bubbling
+from a dark green slippery rock, is a spring of water as clear as crystal
+and deliciously cool. What a treat for our horses and dogs! What a treat
+even for ourselves!
+
+I notice that Dugald seems extra tired. He has done more riding to-day
+than any of us, and made many a long _detour_ in search of that guanaco
+which he has hitherto failed to find.
+
+A kind of brotherly rivalry takes possession of me, and I cannot help
+wishing that the first guanaco would fall to my rifle. The Gauchos are
+busy preparing the stew and boiling water for the _mate_, so shouldering
+my rifle, and carelessly singing to myself, I leave my companions and
+commence sauntering higher up the glen. The hill gets very steep, and I
+have almost to climb on my hands and knees, starting sometimes in dread as
+a hideous snake goes wriggling past me or raises head and body from behind
+a stone, and hisses defiance and hate almost in my face. But I reach the
+summit at last, and find myself on the very edge of a precipice.
+
+Oh, joy! On a little peak down beneath, and not a hundred yards away,
+stands one of the noblest guanacos I have ever seen. He has heard
+something, or scented something, for he stands there as still as a statue,
+with head and neck in the air sniffing the breeze.
+
+How my heart beats! How my hand trembles! I cannot understand my anxiety.
+Were I face to face with a lion or tiger I could hardly be more nervous. A
+thousand thoughts seem to cross my mind with a rush, but uppermost of all
+is the fear that, having fired, I shall miss.
+
+He whinnies his warning now: only a low and undecided one. He is evidently
+puzzled; but the herd down in the bottom of the canon hear it, and every
+head is elevated. I have judged the distance; I have drawn my bead. If my
+heart would only keep still, and there were not such a mist before my
+eyes! Bang! I have fired, and quickly load again. Have I missed? Yes--no,
+no; hurrah! hurrah! yonder he lies, stark and still, on the very rock on
+which he stood--my first guanaco!
+
+The startled herd move up the canon. They must have seen their leader
+drop.
+
+I am still gazing after them, full of exultation, when a hand is laid on
+my shoulder, and, lo! there stands Dugald laughing.
+
+'You sly old dog,' he says, 'to steal a march on your poor little brother
+thus!'
+
+For a moment I am startled, mystified.
+
+'Dugald,' I say, 'did I really kill that guanaco?'
+
+'No one else did.'
+
+'And you've only just come--only just this second? Well, I'm glad to hear
+it. It was after all a pure accident my shooting the beast. I _did_ hold
+the rifle his way. I _did_ draw the trigger----'
+
+'Well, and the bullet did the rest, boy. Funny, you always kill by the
+merest chance! Ah, Murdoch, you're a better shot than I am, for all you
+won't allow it.'
+
+Wandering still onwards and still upwards next day, through lonely glens
+and deep ravines, through canons the sides of which were as perpendicular
+as walls, their flat green or brown bottoms sometimes scattered with huge
+boulders, casting shadows so dark in the sunlight that a man or horse
+disappeared in them as if the earth had opened and swallowed him up, we
+came at length to a dell, or strath, of such charming luxuriance that it
+looked to us, amid all the barrenness of this dreary wilderness, like an
+oasis dropped from the clouds, or some sweet green glade where fairies
+might dwell.
+
+I looked at my brother. The same thought must have struck each of us, at
+the same moment--Why not make this glen our _habitat_ for a time?
+
+'Oh!' cried Archie, 'this is a paradise!'
+
+'Beautiful! lovely!' said Dugald. 'Suppose now--'
+
+'Oh, I know what you are going to say,' cried Donald.
+
+'And I second the motion,' said Sandie Donaldson.
+
+'Well,' I exclaimed, 'seeing, Sandie, that no motion has yet been made--'
+
+'Here is the motion, then,' exclaimed Dugald, jumping out of his saddle.
+
+It was a motion we all followed at once; and as the day was getting near
+its close, the Gauchos set about looking for a bit of camping-ground at
+once. As far as comfort was concerned, this might have been chosen almost
+anywhere, but we wanted to be near to water. Now here was the mystery: the
+glen was not three miles long altogether, and nowhere more than a mile
+broad; all along the bottom it was tolerably level and extremely well
+wooded with quite a variety of different trees, among which pines, elms,
+chestnuts, and stunted oak-trees were most abundant; each side of the glen
+was bounded by rising hills or braes covered with algorroba bushes and
+patches of charmingly-coloured cacti, with many sorts of prickly shrubs,
+the very names of which we could not tell. Curious to say, there was very
+little undergrowth; and, although the trees were close enough in some
+places to form a jungle, the grass was green beneath. But at first we
+could find no water. Leaving the others to rest by the edge of the
+miniature forest, Dugald and I and Archie set out to explore, and had not
+gone more than a hundred yards when we came to a little lake. We bent
+down and tasted the water; it was pure and sweet and cool.
+
+'What a glorious find!' said Dugald. 'Why, this place altogether was
+surely made for us.'
+
+We hurried back to tell the news, and the horses and mules were led to the
+lake, which was little more than half an acre in extent. But not satisfied
+with drinking, most of the dogs plunged in; and horses and mules followed
+suit.
+
+'Come,' cried Donald, 'that is a sort of motion I will willingly second.'
+He commenced to undress as he spoke. So did we all, and such splashing and
+dashing, and laughing and shouting, the birds and beasts in this romantic
+dale had surely never witnessed before.
+
+Dugald was an excellent swimmer, and as bold and headstrong in the water
+as on the land. He had left us and set out to cross the lake. Suddenly we
+saw him throw up his arms and shout for help, and we--Donald and I--at
+once commenced swimming to his assistance. He appeared, however, in no
+danger of sinking, and, to our surprise, although heading our way all the
+time, he was borne away from us one minute and brought near us next.
+
+When close enough a thrill of horror went through me to hear poor Dugald
+cry in a feeble, pleading voice,
+
+'Come no nearer, boys: I soon must sink. Save yourselves: I'm in a
+whirlpool.'
+
+It was too true, though almost too awful to be borne. I do not know how
+Donald felt at that moment, but as for myself I was almost paralyzed with
+terror.
+
+'Back, back, for your lives!' shouted a voice behind us.
+
+It was our Gaucho _capataz_. He was coming towards us with powerful
+strokes, holding in one hand a lasso. Instead of swimming on with us when
+he saw Dugald in danger, he had gone ashore at once and brought the
+longest thong.
+
+We white men could have done nothing. We knew of nothing to do. We should
+have floated there and seen our dear brother go down before our eyes, or
+swam recklessly, madly on, only to sink with him.
+
+Dugald, weak as he had become, sees the Gaucho will make an attempt to
+save him, and tries to steady himself to catch the end of the lasso that
+now flies in his direction.
+
+But to our horror it falls short, and Dugald is borne away again, the
+circles round which he is swept being now narrower.
+
+The Gaucho is nearer. He is perilously near. He will save him or perish.
+
+Again the lasso leaves his hand. Dugald had thrown up his hands and almost
+leapt from the water. He is sinking. Oh, good Gaucho! Oh, good _capataz_,
+surely Heaven itself directed that aim, for the noose fell over our
+brother's arms and tightened round the chest!
+
+In a few minutes more we have laid his lifeless body on the green bank.
+
+Lifeless only for a time, however. Presently he breathes, and we carry him
+away into the evening sunshine and place him on the soft warm moss. He
+soon speaks, but is very ill and weak; yet our thanks to God for his
+preservation are very sincere. Surely there is a Providence around one
+even in the wilderness!
+
+We might have explored our glen this same evening, perhaps we really ought
+to have done so, but the excitement caused by Dugald's adventure put
+everything else out of our heads.
+
+In this high region, the nights were even cold enough to make a position
+near the camp fire rather a thing to be desired than otherwise. It was
+especially delightful, I thought, on this particular evening to sit around
+the fire and quietly talk. I reclined near Dugald, who had not yet quite
+recovered. I made a bed for him with extra rugs; and, as he coughed a good
+deal, I begged of him to consider himself an invalid for one night at
+least; but no sooner had he drunk his mug of _mate_ than he sat up and
+joined in the conversation, assuring us he felt as well as ever he had in
+his life.
+
+[Illustration: Tries to steady himself to catch the Lasso]
+
+It was a lovely evening. The sky was unclouded, the stars shining out very
+clear, and looking very near, while a round moon was rising slowly over
+the hill-peaks towards the east, and the tall dark pine-trees were casting
+gloomy shadows on the lake, near which, in an open glade, we were
+encamped. I could not look at the dark waters without a shudder, as I
+thought of the danger poor Dugald had so narrowly escaped. I am not sure
+that the boy was not always my mother's favourite, and I know he was
+Flora's. How could I have written and told them of his fearful end? The
+very idea made me creep nearer to him and put my arm round his shoulder. I
+suppose he interpreted my thoughts, for he patted my knee in his brotherly
+fond old fashion.
+
+Our Gaucho _capataz_ was just telling a story, an adventure of his own, in
+the lonely pampas. He looked a strange and far from comely being, with his
+long, straggling, elf-like locks of hair, his low, receding forehead, his
+swarthy complexion, and high cheek bones. The mark of a terrible spear
+wound across his face and nose did not improve his looks.
+
+'Yes, senors,' he was saying, 'that was a fearful moment for me.' He threw
+back his poncho as he spoke, revealing three ugly scars on his chest. 'You
+see these, senors? It was that same tiger made the marks. It was a
+keepsake, ha! ha! that I will take to de grave with me, if any one should
+trouble to bury me. It was towards evening, and we were journeying across
+the pampa. We had come far that day, my Indians and me. We felt
+tired--sometimes even Indians felt tired on de weary wide pampa. De sun
+has been hot all day. We have been chased far by de white settlers. Dey
+not love us. Ha! ha! We have five score of de cattle with us. And we have
+spilt blood, and left dead and wounded Indians plenty on de pampa. Never
+mind, I swear revenge. Oh, I am a bad man den. Gaucho malo, mucho malo,
+Nandrin, my brother _cacique_, hate me. I hate him. I wish him dead. But
+de Indians love him all de same as me. By and by de sun go down, down,
+down, and we raise de _toldo_[14] in de canon near a stream. Here grow
+many ombu-trees. The young senors have not seen this great tree; it is de
+king of the lonely pampa. Oh, so tall! Oh, so wide! so spreading and
+shady! Two, three ombu-trees grow near; but I have seen de great tiger
+sleep in one. My brother _cacique_ have seen him too. When de big moon
+rise, and all is bright like de day, and no sound make itself heard but de
+woo-hoo-woo of de pampa owl, I get quietly up and go to de ombu-tree. I
+think myself much more brave as my brother _cacique_. Ha! ha! he think
+himself more brave as me. When I come near de ombu-trees I shout. Ugh! de
+scream dat comes from de ombu-tree make me shake and shiver. Den de
+terrible tiger spring down; I will not run, I am too brave. I shoot. He
+not fall. Next moment I am down--on my back I lie. One big foot is on me;
+his blood pour over my face. He pull me close and more close to him. Soon,
+ah, soon, I think my brother _cacique_ will be chief--I will be no more.
+De tiger licks my arm--my cheek. How he growl and froth! He is now going
+to eat me. But no! Ha! ha! my brother _cacique_ have also leave de camp to
+come to de ombu-tree. De tiger see him. P'r'aps he suppose his blood more
+sweet as mine. He leave poor me. Ha! ha! he catch my brother _cacique_ and
+carry him under de shade of de ombu-tree. By and by I listen, and hear my
+brother's bones go crash! crash! crash! De tiger is enjoying his supper!'
+
+'But, _capataz_,' I said, with a shudder, 'did you make no attempt to save
+your brother chief?'
+
+'Not much! You see, he all same as dead. Suppose I den shoot, p'r'aps I
+kill him for true; 'sides, I bad Gaucho den; not love anybody mooch. Next
+day I kill dat tiger proper, and his skin make good ponchos. Ha! ha!'
+
+Many a time during the Gaucho's recital he had paused and looked uneasily
+around him, for ever and anon the woods re-echoed with strange cries. We
+white men had not lived long enough in beast-haunted wildernesses to
+distinguish what those sounds were, whether they proceeded from bird or
+beast.
+
+As the _capataz_ stopped speaking, and we all sat silent for a short time,
+the cries were redoubled. They certainly were not calculated to raise our
+spirits: some were wild and unearthly in the extreme, some were growls of
+evident anger, some mere groanings, as if they proceeded from creatures
+dying in pain and torment, while others again began in a low and most
+mournful moan, rising quickly into a hideous, frightened, broken, or
+gurgling yell, then dying away again in dreary cadence.
+
+I could not help shuddering a little as I looked behind me into the
+darkness of the forest. The whole place had an uncanny, haunted sort of
+look, and I even began to wonder whether we might not possibly be the
+victims of enchantment. Would we awaken in the morning and find no trees,
+no wood, no water, only a green canon, with cliffs and hills on every
+side?
+
+'Look, look!' I cried, starting half up at last. 'Did none of you see
+that?'
+
+'What is it? Speak, Murdoch!' cried Archie; 'your face is enough to
+frighten a fellow.'
+
+I pressed my hand to my forehead.
+
+'Surely,' I said, 'I am going to be ill, but I thought I could distinctly
+see a tall grey figure standing among the trees.'
+
+We resumed talking, but in a lower, quieter key. The events of the
+evening, our strange surroundings, the whispering trees, the occasional
+strange cries, and the mournful beauty of the night, seemed to have cast a
+glamour over every heart that was here; and though it was now long past
+our usual hour for bed, no one appeared wishful to retire.
+
+All at once Archie grasped me by the shoulder and glanced fearfully into
+the forest behind me. I dared scarcely turn my head till the click of
+Yambo's revolver reassured me.
+
+Yes, there was the figure in grey moving silently towards us.
+
+'Speak, quick, else I fire!' shouted our _capataz_.
+
+'_Ave Maria!_'
+
+Yambo lowered the revolver, and we all started to our feet to confront the
+figure in grey.
+
+-----
+
+  [14] Toldo = a tent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE MOUNTAIN CRUSOE.
+
+
+The figure in grey--the grey was a garment of skin, cap, coat, breeches,
+and even boots, apparently all of the same material--approached with
+extended hand. We could see now it was no ghost who stood before us, but a
+man of flesh and blood. Very solid flesh, too, judging from the cheeks
+that surmounted the silvery beard. The moon shone full on his face, and a
+very pleasant one it was, with a bright, merry twinkle in the eye.
+
+'Who are you?' said I.
+
+'Nay, pardon me,' was the bold reply, 'but the question would come with
+greater propriety from my lips. I need not ask it, however. You are right
+welcome to my little kingdom. You are, I can see, a party of roving
+hunters. Few of your sort have ever come here before, I can tell you.'
+
+'And you?' I said, smiling.
+
+'_I_ am--but there, what need to give myself a name? I have not heard my
+name for years. Call me Smith, Jones, Robinson; call me a hunter, a
+trapper, a madman, a fool--anything.'
+
+'A hermit, anyhow,' said Dugald.
+
+'Yes, boy, a hermit.'
+
+'And an Englishman?'
+
+'No; I am a Portuguese by birth, but I have lived in every country under
+the sun, and here I am at last. Have I introduced myself sufficiently?'
+
+'No,' I said; 'but sit down. You have,' I continued, 'only introduced
+yourself sufficiently to excite our curiosity. Yours must be a strange
+story.'
+
+'Oh, anybody and everybody who lives for over fifty years in the world as
+I have done has a strange story, if he cared to tell it. Mine is too long,
+and some of it too sad. I have been a soldier, a sailor, a traveller; I
+have been wealthy, I have been poor; I have been in love--my love left
+_me_. I forgot _her_. I have done everything except commit crime. I have
+not run away from anywhere, gentlemen. There is no blood on my hands. I
+can still pray. I still love. She whom I love is here.'
+
+'Oh!' cried Dugald, 'won't you bring the lady?'
+
+The hermit laughed.
+
+'She _is_ here, there, all around us. My mistress is Nature. Ah! boys,' he
+said, turning to us with such a kind look, 'Nature breaks no hearts; and
+the more you love her, the more she loves you, and leads you
+upwards--always upwards, never down.'
+
+It was strange, but from the very moment he began to talk both my brothers
+and I began to like this hermit. His ways and his manners were quite
+irresistible, and before we separated we felt as if we had known him all
+our lives.
+
+He was the last man my brothers and I saw that night, and he was the first
+we met in the morning. He had donned a light cloth poncho and a broad
+sombrero hat, and really looked both handsome and picturesque.
+
+We went away together, and bathed, and I told him of Dugald's adventure.
+He looked interested, patted my brother's shoulder, and said:
+
+'Poor boy, what a narrow escape you have had!
+
+'The stream,' he continued, 'that flows through this strange glen rises in
+the hills about five miles up. It rises from huge springs--you shall see
+them--flows through the woods, and is sucked into the earth in the middle
+of that lake. I have lived here for fifteen years. Walk with me up the
+glen. Leave your rifles in your tents; there is nothing to hurt.'
+
+We obeyed, and soon joined him, and together we strolled up the path that
+led close by the banks of a beautiful stream. We were enchanted with the
+beauty displayed everywhere about us, and our guide seemed pleased.
+
+'Almost all the trees and shrubs you see,' he said, 'I have planted, and
+many of the beautiful flowers--the orchids, the climbers, and creepers,
+all are my pets. Those I have not planted I have encouraged, and I believe
+they all know me.'
+
+At this moment a huge puma came bounding along the path, but stopped when
+he saw us.
+
+'Don't be afraid, boys,' said the hermit. 'This, too, is a pet. Do not be
+shy, Jacko. These are friends.'
+
+The puma smelt us, then rubbed his great head against his master's leg,
+and trotted along by his side.
+
+'I have several. You will not shoot while you live here? Thanks. I have a
+large family. The woods are filled with my family. I have brought them
+from far and near, birds and beasts of every kind. They see us now, but
+are shy.'
+
+'I say, sir,' said Dugald, 'you are Adam, and this is Paradise.'
+
+The hermit smiled in recognition of the compliment, and we now approached
+his house.
+
+'I must confess,' I said, 'that a more Crusoe-looking establishment it has
+never been my luck to behold.'
+
+'You are young yet,' replied the hermit, laughing, 'although you speak so
+like a book.
+
+'Here we are, then, in my compound. The fence, you see, is a very open
+one, for I desire neither to exclude the sunshine nor the fresh air from
+my vegetables. Observe,' he continued, 'that my hut, which consists of one
+large room, stands in the centre of a gravel square.'
+
+'It is strange-looking gravel!' said Dugald.
+
+'It is nearly altogether composed of salt. My house is built of stone, but
+it is plastered with a kind of cement I can dig here in the hills. There
+is not a crevice nor hollow in all the wall, and it is four feet thick.
+The floor is also cemented, and so is the roof.'
+
+'And this,' I remarked, 'is no doubt for coolness in summer.'
+
+'Yes, and warmth in winter, if it comes to that, and also for cleanliness.
+Yonder is a ladder that leads to the roof. Up there I lounge and think,
+drink my _mate_ and read. Oh yes, I have plenty of books, which I keep in
+a safe with bitter-herb powder--to save them, you know, from literary ants
+and other insects who possess an ambition to solve the infinite. Observe
+again, that I have neither porch nor verandah to my house, and that the
+windows are small. I object to a porch and to climbing things on the same
+principle that I do to creeping, crawling creatures. The world is wide
+enough for us all. But they must keep to their side of the house at night,
+and I to mine. And mine is the inside. This is also the reason why most of
+the gravel is composed of salt. As a rule, creepies don't like it.'
+
+'Oh, I'm glad you told us that,' said Archie; 'I shall make my mule carry
+a bushel of it. I'm glad you don't like creepies, sir.'
+
+'But, boy, I _do_. Only I object to them indoors. Walk in. Observe again,
+as a showman would say, how very few my articles of furniture are. Notice,
+however, that they are all scrupulously clean. Nevertheless, I have every
+convenience. That thong-bottomed sofa is my bed. My skins and rugs are
+kept in a bag all day, and hermetically sealed against the prying
+probosces of insectivora. Here is my stove, yonder my kitchen and
+scullery, and there hangs my armoury. Now I am going to call my servant.
+He is a Highlander like yourselves, boys; at any rate, he appears to be,
+for he never wears anything else except the kilt, and he talks a language
+which, though I have had him for ten years, I do not yet understand.
+Archie, Archie, where are you?'
+
+'Another Archie!' said Dugald, 'and a countryman, too?'
+
+'He is shy of strangers. Archie, boy! He is swinging in some tree-top, no
+doubt.'
+
+'What a queer fellow he must be! Wears nothing but the kilt, speaks
+Gaelic, swings in tree-tops, and is shy! A _rara avis_ indeed.'
+
+'Ah! here he comes. Archie, spread the awning out of doors, lay the table,
+bring a jug of cold _mate_ and the cigars.'
+
+Truly Archie was a curious Highlander. He was quite as tall as our Archie,
+and though the hermit assured us he was only a baby when he bought him in
+Central Africa for about sevenpence halfpenny in Indian coin, he had now
+the wrinkled face of an old man of ninety--wrinkled, wizened, and weird.
+But his eye was singularly bright and young-looking. In his hand he
+carried a long pole from which he had bitten all the bark, and his only
+dress was a little petticoat of skunk skin, which the hermit called his
+kilt. He was, in fact, an African orang-outang.
+
+'Come and shake hands with the good gentlemen, Archie.'
+
+Archie knitted his brows, and looked at us without moving. The hermit
+laughingly handed him a pair of big horn-rimmed spectacles. These he put
+on with all the gravity of some ancient professor of Sanscrit, then looked
+us all over once again.
+
+We could stand this no longer, and so burst into a chorus of laughing.
+
+'Don't laugh longer than you can help, boys. See, Archie is angry.'
+
+Archie was. He showed a mouth full of fearful-looking fangs, and fingered
+his club in a way that was not pleasant.
+
+'Archie, you may have some peaches presently.'
+
+[Illustration: Interview with the Orang-outang]
+
+Archie grew pleasant again in a moment, and advanced and shook hands with
+us all round, looking all the time, however, as if he had some silent
+sorrow somewhere.  I confess he wrung our hands pretty hard. Neither my
+brother nor I made any remark, but when it came to Archie's turn--
+
+'Honolulu!' he shouted, shaking his fingers, and blowing on them. 'I
+believe he has made the blood come!'
+
+'I suppose,' said Dugald, laughing, 'he knows you are a namesake.'
+
+Off went the great baboon, and to our intense astonishment spread the
+awning, placed table and camp-stools under it, and fetched the cold _mate_
+with all the gravity and decorum of the chief steward on a first-class
+liner.
+
+I looked at my brothers, and they looked at me.
+
+'You seem all surprised,' the hermit said, 'but remember that in olden
+times it was no rare thing to see baboons of this same species waiting at
+the tables of your English nobility. Well, I am not only a noble, but a
+king; why should not I also have an anthropoid as a butler and valet?'
+
+'I confess,' I said, 'I for one am very much surprised at all I have seen
+and all that has happened since last night, and I really cannot help
+thinking that presently I shall awake and find, as the story-books say, it
+is all a dream.'
+
+'You will find it all a very substantial dream, I do assure you, sir. But
+help yourself to the _mate_. You will find it better than any imported
+stuff.'
+
+'Archie! Archie! Where are you?'
+
+'Ah! ah! Yah, yah, yah!' cried Archie, hopping round behind his master.
+
+'The sugar, Archie.'
+
+'Ah, ah, ah! Yah, yah!'
+
+'Is that Gaelic, Dugald?' said our Archie.
+
+'Not quite, my cockney cousin.'
+
+'I thought not.'
+
+'Why?' said Dugald.
+
+'It is much more intelligible.'
+
+The hermit laughed.
+
+'I think, Dugald,' he said, 'your cousin has the best of you.'
+
+He then made us tell him all our strange though brief history, as the
+reader already knows it. If he asked us questions, however, it was
+evidently not for the sake of inquisitiveness, but to exchange
+experiences, and support the conversation. He was quite as ready to impart
+as to solicit information; but somehow we felt towards him as if he were
+an elder brother or uncle; and this only proves the hermit was a perfect
+gentleman.
+
+'Shall you live much longer in this beautiful wilderness?' asked Donald.
+
+'Well, I will tell you all about that,' replied the hermit. 'And the all
+is very brief. When I came here first I had no intention of making a long
+stay.  I was a trapper and hunter then pure and simple, and sold my skins
+and other odds and ends which these hills yield--and what these are I must
+not even tell to you--journeying over the Andes with mules twice every
+year for that purpose.  But gradually, as my trees and bushes and all the
+beauty of this wild garden-glen grew up around me, and so many of God's
+wild children came to keep me company, I got to love my strange life. So
+from playing at being a hermit, I dare say I have come to be one in
+reality. And now, though I have money--much more than one would
+imagine--in the Chilian banks, I do not seem to care to enter civilized
+life again. For some years back I have been promising myself a city
+holiday, but I keep putting it off and off.  I should not wonder if it
+never comes, or, to speak more correctly, I should wonder if it ever came.
+Oh, I dare say I shall die in my own private wilderness here, with no one
+to close my eyes but old Archie.'
+
+'Do you still go on journeys to Chili?'
+
+'I still go twice a year. I have strong fleet mules. I go once in summer
+and once in winter.'
+
+'Going in winter across the Andes! That must be a terribly dreary
+journey.'
+
+'It is. Yet it has its advantages. I never have to flee from hostile
+Indians then. They do not like the hills in winter.'
+
+'Are you not afraid of the pampas Indians?'
+
+'No, not at all. They visit me occasionally here, but do not stay long. I
+trust them, I am kind to them, and I have nothing they could find to
+steal, even if they cared to be dishonest. But they are _not_. They are
+good-hearted fellows in their own way.'
+
+'Yes,' I said, 'very much in their own way.'
+
+'My dear boy,' said the hermit, 'you do not know all. A different policy
+would have made those Indians the sworn friends, the faithful allies and
+servants of the white man. They would have kept then to their own
+hunting-grounds, they would have brought to you wealth of skins, and
+wealth of gold and silver, too, for believe me, they (the Indians) have
+secrets that the white trader little wots of. No, it is the dishonest,
+blood-stained policy of the Republic that has made the Indian what he
+is--his hand against every man, every man's hand against him.'
+
+'But they even attack you at times, I think you gave us to understand?'
+
+'Nay, not the pampas or pampean Indians: only prowling gipsy tribes from
+the far north. Even they will not when they know me better. My fame is
+spreading as a seer.'
+
+'As a seer?'
+
+'Yes, a kind of prophet. Do not imagine that I foster any such folly, only
+they will believe that, living here all alone in the wilds, I must have
+communication with--ha! ha! a worse world than this.'
+
+As we rose to go the hermit held out his hand.
+
+'Come and see me to-night,' he said; 'and let me advise you to make this
+glen your headquarters for a time. The hills and glens and bush for
+leagues around abound in game. Then your way back lies across a pampa
+north and east of here; not the road you have come.'
+
+'By the by,' said Archie, 'before we go, I want to ask you the question
+which tramps always put in England: "Are the dogs all safe?"'
+
+'Ah,' said the hermit, smiling, 'I know what you mean. Yes, the dogs are
+safe. My pet pumas will not come near you. I do not think that even my
+jaguars would object to your presence; but for safety's sake Archie shall
+go along with you, and he shall also come for you in the evening. Give him
+these peaches when you reach camp. They are our own growing, and Archie
+dotes upon them.'
+
+So away back by the banks of the stream we went, our strange guide, club
+in hand, going hopping on before. It did really seem all like a scene of
+enchantment.
+
+We gave Archie the peaches, and he looked delighted.
+
+'Good-bye, old man,' said Dugald, as he presented him with his.
+
+'Speak a word or two of Gaelic to him,' said our Archie.
+
+Sandie Donaldson was indeed astonished at all we told him.
+
+'I suppose it's all right,' he said, 'but dear me, that was an
+uncanny-looking creature you had hirpling on in front of you!'
+
+In the evening, just as we had returned from a most successful guanaco
+hunt, we found Donaldson's uncanny creature coming along the path.
+
+'I suppose he means us to dine with him,' I remarked.
+
+'Ah, ah, ah! Yah, ah, yah!' cried the baboon.
+
+'Well, will you come, Sandie?'
+
+Sandie shook his head.
+
+'Not to-night,' said Sandie. 'Take care of yourselves, boys. Mind what the
+old proverb says: "They need a lang spoon wha sup wi' the deil."'
+
+We found the hermit at his gate, and glad he seemed to see us.
+
+'I've been at home all the afternoon,' he said, 'cooking your dinner. Most
+enjoyable work, I can assure you. All the vegetables are fresh, and even
+the curry has been grown on the premises. I hope you are fond of
+armadillo; that is a favourite dish of mine. But here we have roast ducks,
+partridges, and something that perhaps you have never tasted before,
+roast or boiled. For bread we have biscuit; for wine we have _mate_ and
+milk. My goats come every night to be milked. Archie does the milking as
+well as any man could. Ah, here come my dogs.'
+
+Two deerhounds trotted up and made friends with us.
+
+'I bought them from a roving Scot two years ago while on a visit to
+Chili.'
+
+'How about the pumas? Don't they--'
+
+'No, they come from the trees to sleep with Rob and Rory. Even the jaguars
+do not attempt to touch them. Sit down; you see I dine early. We will have
+time before dusk to visit some of my pets. I hope they did not keep you
+awake.'
+
+'No, but the noise would have done so, had we not known what they were.'
+
+Conversation never once flagged all the time we sat at table. The hermit
+himself had put most of the dishes down, but Archie duly waited behind his
+master's chair, and brought both the _mate_ and the milk, as well as the
+fruit. This dessert was of the most tempting description; and not even at
+our own _estancia_ had I tasted more delicious grapes. But there were many
+kinds of fruit here we had never even seen before. As soon as we were done
+the waiter had _his_ repast, and the amount of fruit he got through
+surprised us beyond measure. He squatted on the ground to eat. Well, when
+he commenced his dinner he looked a little old gentleman of somewhat spare
+habit; when he rose up--by the aid of his pole--he was decidedly plump,
+not to say podgy. Even his cheeks were puffed out; and no wonder, they
+were stuffed with nuts to eat at his leisure.
+
+'I dare say Archie eats at all odd hours,' I said.
+
+'No, he does not,' replied the hermit. 'I never encouraged him to do so,
+and now he is quite of my way of thinking, and never eats between meals.
+But come, will you light a cigarette and stroll round with me?'
+
+'We will stroll round without the cigarette,' I said.
+
+'Then fill your pockets with nuts and raisins; you must do something.'
+
+'Feed the birds, Archie.'
+
+'Ah, ah, ah! Yah, ah! Yah, yah!'
+
+'The birds need not come to be fed; there is enough and to spare for them
+in the woods, but they think whatever we eat must be extra nice.  We have
+all kinds of birds except the British sparrow. I really hope you have not
+brought him.  They say he follows Englishmen to the uttermost parts of the
+world.'
+
+We waited for a moment, and wondered at the flocks of lovely bright-winged
+doves and pigeons and other birds that had alighted round the table to
+receive their daily dole, then followed our hermit guide, to feast our
+eyes on other wonders not a whit less wonderful than all we had seen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+WILD ADVENTURES ON PRAIRIE AND PAMPAS.
+
+
+If I were to describe even one half of the strange creatures we saw in the
+hermit's glen, the reader would be tired before I had finished, and even
+then I should not have succeeded in conveying anything like a correct
+impression of this floral wilderness and natural menagerie.
+
+It puzzled me to know, and it puzzles me still, how so many wild creatures
+could have been got together in one place.
+
+'I brought many of them here,' the hermit told us, 'but the others came,
+lured, no doubt, by the water, the trees, and the flowers.'
+
+'But was the water here when you arrived?'
+
+'Oh yes, else I would not have settled down here. The glen was a sort of
+oasis even then, and there were more bushes and trees than ever I had seen
+before in one place. The ducks and geese and swans, in fact, all the
+web-footed fraternity, had been here before me, and many birds and beasts
+besides--the biscachas, the armadilloes, the beetle-eating pichithiego,
+for instance--the great ant-eater, and the skunk--I have banished that,
+however--wolves, foxes, kites, owls, and condors. I also found peccaries,
+and some deer. These latter, and the guanaco, give me a wide berth now.
+They do not care for dogs, pumas, and jaguars. Insects are rather too
+numerous, and I have several species of snakes.'
+
+Archie's--_our_ Archie's--face fell.
+
+'Are they?' he began, 'are they very--'
+
+'Very beautiful? Yes; indeed, some are charming in colour. One, for
+example, is of the brightest crimson streaked with black.'
+
+'I was not referring to their beauty; I meant were they dangerous?'
+
+'Well, I never give them a chance to bite me, and I do not think they want
+to; but all snakes are to be avoided and left severely alone.'
+
+'Or killed, sir?'
+
+'Yes, perhaps, if killed outright; for the pampan Indians have an idea
+that if a rattlesnake be only wounded, he will come back for revenge. But
+let us change the subject. You see those splendid butterflies? Well, by
+and by the moths will be out; they are equally lovely, but when I first
+came here there were very few of either. They followed the flowers, and
+the humming-birds came next, and many other lovely gay-coloured little
+songsters. I introduced most of the parrots and toucans. There are two up
+there even now. They would come down if you were not here.'
+
+'They are very funny-looking, but very pretty,' said Dugald. 'I could stop
+and look at them for hours.'
+
+'But we must proceed. Here are the trees where the parrots mostly live.
+Early as it is, you see they are retiring.'
+
+What a sight! What resplendency of colour and beauty! Such bright metallic
+green, lustrous orange, crimson and bronze!
+
+'Why do they frequent this particular part of the wood?' said Dugald.
+
+'Ah, boy,' replied the hermit, 'I see you want to know everything. Don't
+be ashamed of that; you are a true naturalist at heart. Well, the parrots
+like to be by themselves, and few of my birds care to live among them.
+You will notice, too, that yonder are some eucalyptus trees, and farther
+up some wide-spreading, open-branched trees, with flowers creeping and
+clinging around the stems. Parrots love those trees, because while there
+they have sunshine, and because birds of prey cannot easily tell which is
+parrot and which is flower or flame-coloured lichen.'
+
+'That is an advantage.'
+
+'Well, yes; but it is an advantage that also has a disadvantage, for our
+serpents are so lovely that even they are not easily seen by the parrots
+when they wriggle up among the orchids.'
+
+'Can the parrots defend themselves against snakes?'
+
+'Yes, they can, and sometimes even kill them. I have noticed this, but as
+a rule they prefer to scare them off by screaming. And they can scream,
+too. "As deaf as an adder," is a proverb; well, I believe it was the
+parrot that first deafened the adder, if deaf it be.'
+
+'Have you many birds of prey?'
+
+'Yes, too many. But, see here.'
+
+'I see nothing.'
+
+'No, but you soon shall. Here in the sunniest bank, and in this sunniest
+part of the wood, dwell a family of that remarkable creature the blind
+armadillo, or pichithiego. I wonder if any one is at home.'
+
+As he spoke, the hermit knelt down and buried his hands in the sand, soon
+bringing to the surface a very curious little animal indeed, one of the
+tenderest of all armadilloes.
+
+It shivered as it cuddled into the hermit's arms.
+
+Dugald laughed aloud.
+
+'Why,' he cried, 'it seems to end suddenly half-way down; and that droll
+tail looks stuck on for fun.'
+
+'Yes, it is altogether a freak of Nature, and the wonder to me is how,
+being so tender, it lives here at all. You see how small and delicate a
+thing it is. They say it is blind, but you observe it is not; although
+the creatures live mostly underground. They also say that the
+_chlamyphorus truncatus_--which is the grand name for my wee
+friend,--carries its young under this pink or rosy shell jacket, but this
+I very much doubt. Now go to bed, little one.
+
+'I have prettier pets than even these, two species of agoutis, for
+instance, very handsome little fellows indeed, and like rats in many of
+their ways and in many of their droll antics. They are not fond of
+strangers, but often come out to meet me in my walks about the woods. They
+live in burrows, but run about plentifully enough in the open air,
+although their enemies are very numerous. Even the Indians capture and eat
+them, as often raw as not.
+
+'You have heard of the peccary. Well, I have never encouraged these wild
+wee pigs, and for some years after I came, there were none in the woods.
+One morning I found them, however, all over the place in herds. I never
+knew where they came from, nor how they found us out. But I do know that
+for more than two years I had to wage constant war with them.'
+
+'They were good to eat?'
+
+'They were tolerably good, especially the young, but I did not want for
+food; and, besides, they annoyed my wee burrowing pets, and, in fact, they
+deranged everything, and got themselves thoroughly hated wherever they
+went.'
+
+'And how did you get rid of them?'
+
+'They disappeared entirely one night as if by magic, and I have never seen
+nor heard one since. But here we are at my stable.'
+
+'I see no stable,' I said.
+
+'Well, it is an enclosure of half an acre, and my mules and goats are
+corralled here at night.'
+
+'Do not the pumas or jaguars attempt to molest the mules or goats?'
+
+'Strange to say, they do not, incredible as it may seem. But come in, and
+you will see a happy family.'
+
+'What are these?' cried Dugald. 'Dogs?'
+
+'No, boy, one is a wolf, the other two are foxes. All three were suckled
+by one of my dogs, and here they are. You see, they play with the goats,
+and are exceedingly fond of the mules. They positively prefer the company
+of the mules to mine, although when I come here with their foster-dam, the
+deerhound, they all condescend to leave this compound and to follow me
+through the woods.
+
+'Here come my mules. Are they not beauties?'
+
+We readily admitted they were, never having seen anything in size and
+shape to equal them.
+
+'Now, you asked me about the jaguars. Mine are but few; they are also very
+civil; but I do believe that one of these mules would be a match even for
+a jaguar. If the jaguar had one kick he would never need another. The
+goats--here they come--herd close to the mules, and the foxes and wolf are
+sentinels, and give an alarm if even a strange monkey comes near the
+compound. Ah, here come my pet toucans!'
+
+These strange-beaked birds came floating down from a tree to the number of
+nearly a dozen, nor did they look at all ungainly, albeit their beaks are
+so wondrously large.
+
+'What do they eat?'
+
+'Everything; but fruit is the favourite dish with them. But look up. Do
+you see that speck against the cloud yonder, no bigger in appearance than
+the lark that sings above the cornfields in England? See how it circles
+and sweeps round and round. Do you know that bird is a mile above us?'
+
+'That is wonderful!'
+
+'And what think you it is doing? Why, it is eyeing you and me. It is my
+pet condor. The only bird I do not feed; but the creature loves me well
+for all that. He is suspicious of your presence. Now watch, and I will
+bring him down like an arrow.'
+
+The hermit waved a handkerchief in a strange way, and with one fell
+downward swoop, in a few seconds the monster eagle had alighted near us.
+
+Well may the condor be called 'king of the air,' I thought, for never
+before had I seen so majestic a bird. He was near us now, and scrutinizing
+us with that bold fierce eye of his, as some chieftain in the brave days
+of old might have gazed upon spies that he was about to order away to
+execution. I believed then--and I am still of the same opinion--that there
+was something akin to pity and scorn in his steadfast looks, as if we had
+been brought here for his especial delectation and study.
+
+'Poor wretched bipeds!' he seemed to say; 'not even possessed of feathers,
+no clothes of their own, obliged to wrap themselves in the hair and skins
+of dead quadrupeds. No beaks, no talons; not even the wings of a miserable
+bat. Never knew what it was to mount and soar into the blue sky to meet
+the morning sun; never floated free as the winds far away in the realms of
+space; never saw the world spread out beneath them like a living panorama,
+its woods and forests mere patches of green or purple, its lakes like
+sheets of shimmering ice, its streams like threads of spiders' webs before
+the day has drunk the dew, its very deserts dwarfed by distance till the
+guanacos and the ostriches[15] look like mites, and herds of wild horses
+appear but crawling ants. Never knew what it was to circle round the
+loftiest summits of the snow-clad voiceless Andes, while down in the
+valleys beneath dark clouds rolled fiercely on, and lightnings played
+across the darkness; nor to perch cool and safe on peak or pinnacle, while
+below on earth's dull level the hurricane Pampero was levelling house and
+hut and tree; or the burning breath of the Zonda was sweeping over the
+land, scorching every flower and leaf, drinking every drop of dew,
+draining even the blood of moving beings till eyes ache and brains reel,
+till man himself looks haggard, wild, and worn, and the beasts of the
+forest, hidden in darkling caves, go mad and rend their young.'
+
+The hermit returned with us to our camping-ground just as great bats began
+to circle and wheel around, as butterflies were folding their wings and
+going to sleep beneath the leaves, and the whole woodland glen began to
+awake to the screaming of night-birds, to the mournful howling of strange
+monkeys, and hoarse growl of beasts of prey.
+
+We sat together till far into the night listening to story after story of
+the wild adventures of our new but nameless hero, and till the moon--so
+high above us now that the pine-trees no longer cast their shadows across
+the glade--warned us it was time to retire.
+
+'Good night, boys all,' said the hermit; 'I will come again to-morrow.'
+
+He turned and walked away, his _potro_ boots making no sound on the sward.
+We watched him till the gloom of the forest seemed to swallow him up.
+
+'What a strange being!' said Archie, with a sigh.
+
+'And what a lonely life to lead!' said Donald.
+
+'Ah!' said Dugald, 'you may sigh as you like, Archie, and say what you
+please, I think there is no life so jolly, and I've half a mind to turn
+hermit myself.'
+
+We lived in the glen for many weeks. No better or more idyllic
+headquarters could possibly have been found or even imagined, while all
+around us was a hunter's paradise. We came at last to look upon the
+hermit's dell as our home, but we did not bivouac there every night. There
+were times when we wandered too far away in pursuit of the guanaco, the
+puma, jaguar, or even the ostrich, which we found feeding on plains at no
+great distance from our camp.
+
+It was a glorious treat for all of us to find ourselves on these miniature
+pampas, across which we could gallop unfettered and free.
+
+Under the tuition of Yambo, our _capataz_, and the other Gauchos, we
+became adepts in the use of both bolas and lasso. Away up among the
+beetling crags and in the deep, gloomy caverns we had to stalk the
+guanacos as the Swiss mountaineer stalks the chamois. Oh, our adventures
+among the rocks were sometimes thrilling enough! But here on the plains
+another kind of tactics was pursued. I doubt if we could have ridden near
+enough to the ostriches to bola them, so our plan was to make _detours_ on
+the pampas until we had outflanked, encircled, and altogether puzzled our
+quarry. Then riding in a zigzag fashion, gradually we narrowed the ring
+till near enough to fire. When nearer still the battue and stampede
+commenced, and the scene was then wild and confusing in the extreme. The
+frightened whinny or neigh of the guanacos, the hoarse whirr of the flying
+ostriches, the shouts of the Gauchos, the bark and yell of dogs, the
+whistling noise of lasso or bolas, the sharp ringing of rifle and
+revolver--all combined to form a medley, a huntsman's chorus which no one
+who has once heard it and taken part in it is likely to forget.
+
+When too far from the camp, then we hobbled our horses at the nearest spot
+where grass and water could be found, and after supping on broiled guanaco
+steak and ostrich's gizzard--in reality right dainty morsels--we would
+roll ourselves in our guanaco robes, and with saddles for pillows go
+quietly to sleep. Ah, I never sleep so soundly now as I used to then
+beneath the stars, fanned by the night breeze; and although the dews lay
+heavy on our robes in the morning, we awoke as fresh as the daisies and as
+happy as puma cubs that only wake to play.
+
+We began to get wealthy ere long with a weight of skins of birds and
+beasts. Some of the most valuable of these were procured from a species of
+otter that lived in the blackest, deepest pools of a stream we had fallen
+in with in our wanderings. The Gauchos had a kind of superstitious dread
+of the huge beast, whom they not inappropriately termed the river tiger.
+
+We had found our dogs of the greatest use in the hills, especially our
+monster bloodhound-mastiffs. These animals possessed nearly all the
+tracking qualities of the bloodhound, with more fierceness and speed than
+the mastiff, and nearly the same amount of strength. Their courage, too,
+and general hardiness were very great.
+
+Among our spoils we could count the skins of no less than fifteen splendid
+pumas. Several of these had shown fight. Once, I remember, Archie had
+leapt from his horse and was making his way through a patch of bush on the
+plains, in pursuit of a young guanaco which he had wounded. He was all
+alone: not even a dog with him; but Yambo's quick ear had detected the
+growl of a lion in that bit of scrub, and he at once started off three of
+his best dogs to the scene of Archie's adventure. Not two hundred yards
+away myself, but on high ground, I could see everything, though powerless
+to aid. I could see Archie hurrying back through the bush. I could see the
+puma spring, and my poor cousin fall beneath the blow--then the death
+struggle began. It was fearful while it lasted, which was only the
+briefest possible time, for, even as I looked, the dogs were on the puma.
+The worrying, yelling, and gurgling sounds were terrible. I saw the puma
+on its hind legs, I saw one dog thrown high in the air, two others on the
+wild beast's neck, and next moment Yambo himself was there, with every
+other horseman save myself tearing along full tilt for the battle-field.
+
+Yambo's long spear had done the work, and all the noise soon ceased.
+Though stunned and frightened, Archie was but little the worse. One dog
+was killed. It seemed to have been Yambo's favourite. I could not help
+expressing my astonishment at the exhibition of Yambo's grief. Here was a
+man, once one of the cruellest and most remorseless of desert wanderers,
+whose spear and knife had many a time and oft drunk human blood, shedding
+tears over the body of his poor dog! Nor would he leave the place until he
+had dug a grave, and, placing the bleeding remains therein, sadly and
+slowly covered them up.
+
+But Yambo would meet his faithful hound again in the happy hunting-grounds
+somewhere beyond the sky. That, at least, was Yambo's creed, and who
+should dare deny him the comfort and joy the thought brings him!
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was now the sweetest season of all the year in the hills--the Indian
+summer. The fierce heat had fled to the north, fled beyond the salt plains
+of San Juan, beyond the wild desert lands of Rioja and arid sands of
+Catamarca, lingering still, perhaps, among the dreamland gardens of
+Tucuman, and reaching its eternal home among the sun-kissed forests of
+leafy Brazil and Bolivia. The autumn days were getting shorter, the sky
+was now more soft, the air more cool and balmy, while evening after
+evening the sun went down amidst a fiery magnificence of colouring that
+held us spellbound and silent to behold.
+
+A month and more in the hermit's glen! We could hardly believe it. How
+quickly the time had flown! How quickly time always does fly when one is
+happy!
+
+And now our tents are struck, our mules are laden. We have but to say
+good-bye to the solitary being who has made the garden in the wilderness
+his home, and go on our way.
+
+'Good-bye!'
+
+'Good-bye!'
+
+Little words, but sometimes _so_ hard to say.
+
+We had actually begun to like--ay, even to love the hermit, and we had not
+found it out till now. But I noticed tears in Dugald's eye, and I am not
+quite sure my own were not moist as we said farewell.
+
+We glanced back as we rode away to wave our hands once more. The hermit
+was leaning against a tree. Just then the sun came struggling out from
+under a cloud, the shadow beneath the tree darkened and darkened, till it
+swallowed him up.
+
+And we never saw the hermit more.
+
+-----
+
+  [15] The _Rhea Americana_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+ADVENTURE WITH A TIGER.
+
+
+Two years more have passed away, four years in all, since we first set
+foot in the Silver West. What happy, blithesome years they had been, too!
+Every day had brought its duties, every duty its pleasures as well. During
+all this time we could not look back with regret to one unpleasant hour.
+Sometimes we had endured some crosses as well, but we brothers bore them,
+I believe, without a murmur, and Moncrieff without one complaining word.
+
+'Boys,' he would say, quietly, 'nobody gets it all his own way in this
+world. We must just learn to take the thick wi' the thin.'
+
+Moncrieff was somewhat of a proverbial philosopher; but had he been
+entrusted with the task of selecting proverbs that should smooth one's
+path in life, I feel sure they would have been good ones.
+
+Strath Coila New, as we called the now green valley in which our little
+colony had been founded, had improved to a wonderful extent in so brief a
+time. The settlers had completed their houses long ago; they, like
+ourselves, had laid out their fields and farms and planted their
+vineyards; the hedges were green and flowering; the poplar-trees and
+willows had sprung skywards as if influenced by magic--the magic of a
+virgin soil; the fields were green with waving grain and succulent
+lucerne; the vines needed the help of man to aid them in supporting their
+wondrous wealth of grapes; fruit grew everywhere; birds sang everywhere,
+and to their music were added sounds even sweeter still to our ears--the
+lowing of herds of sleek fat cattle, the bleating armies of sheep, the
+home-like noise of poultry and satisfied grunting of lazy pigs. The latter
+sometimes fed on peaches that would have brought tears of joy to the eyes
+of many an English market gardener.
+
+Our villa was complete now; wings and tower, and terraced lawns leading
+down to the lake, close beside which Dugald had erected a boat-house that
+was in itself like a little fairy palace. Dugald had always a turn for the
+romantic, and nothing would suit him by way of a boat except a gondola.
+What an amount of time and taste he had bestowed on it too! and how the
+Gaucho carpenters had worked and slaved to please him and make it
+complete! But there it was at last, a thing of beauty, in all
+conscience--prows and bows, cushioned seats, and oars, and awnings, all
+complete.
+
+It was his greatest pleasure to take auntie, Aileen, and old Jenny out to
+skim the lake in this gondola, and sit for long happy hours reading or
+fishing.
+
+Even Bombazo used to form an item in these pleasant little excursions. He
+certainly was no use with an oar, but it was the 'bravo' captain's delight
+to dress as a troubadour and sit twanging the light guitar under the
+awnings, while Aileen and auntie plied the oars.
+
+Dugald was still our mighty hunter, the fearless Nimrod of hill and strath
+and glen. But he was amply supported in all his adventures by Archie, who
+had wonderfully changed for the better. He was brown and hard now, an
+excellent horseman, and crack shot with either the revolver or rifle.
+
+Between the two of them, though ably assisted by a Gaucho or two, they had
+fitted up the ancient ruined monastery far away among the hills as a kind
+of shooting-box, and here they spent many a day, and many a night as
+well. Archie had long since become acclimatized to all kinds of
+creepies--they no longer possessed any terrors for him.
+
+The ruin, as I have before hinted, must have, at some bygone period,
+belonged to the Jesuits; but so blown up with sand was it when Dugald took
+possession that the work of restoration to something like its pristine
+form had been a task of no little difficulty. The building stood on a
+slight eminence, and at one side grew a huge ombu-tree. It was under this
+that the only inhabitable room lay. This room had two windows, one on each
+side, facing each other, one looking east, the other west. Neither glass
+nor frames were in these windows, and probably had not existed even in the
+Jesuits' time. The room was cooler without any such civilized
+arrangements.
+
+It was a lonesome, eerie place at the very best, and that weird looking
+ombu-tree, spreading its dark arms above the grey old walls, did not
+detract from the air of gloom that surrounded it. Sometimes Archie said
+laughingly that the tree was like a funeral pall. Well, the half-caste
+Indians of the _estancias_ used to give this ruin a wide berth; they had
+nasty stories to tell about it, stories that had been handed down through
+generations. There were few indeed of even the Gauchos who would have
+cared to remain here after night-fall, much less sleep within its walls.
+But when Dugald's big lamp stood lighted on the table, when a fire of wood
+burned on the low hearth, and a plentiful repast, with bowls of steaming
+fragrant _mate_, stood before the young men, then the room looked far from
+uncomfortable.
+
+There was at each side a hammock hung, which our two hunters slept in on
+nights when they had remained too long on the hill, or wanted to be early
+at the chase in the morning.
+
+'Whose turn is it to light the fire to-night?' said Dugald, one winter
+evening, as the two jogged along together on their mules towards the ruin.
+
+'I think it is mine, cousin. Anyhow, if you feel lazy I'll make it so.'
+
+'No, I'm not lazy, but I want to take home a bird or two to-morrow that
+auntie's very soul loveth, so if you go on and get supper ready I shall go
+round the red dune and try to find them.'
+
+'You won't be long?'
+
+'I sha'n't be over an hour.'
+
+Archie rode on, humming a tune to himself. Arrived at the ruin, he cast
+the mule loose, knowing he would not wander far away, and would find juicy
+nourishment among the more tender of the cacti sprouts.
+
+Having lit a roaring fire, and seen it burn up, Archie spread asunder some
+of the ashes, and placed thereon a huge pie-dish--not an empty one--to
+warm. Meanwhile he hung a kettle of water on the hook above the fire, and,
+taking up a book, sat down by the window to read by the light of the
+setting sun until the water should boil.
+
+A whole half-hour passed away. The kettle had rattled its lid, and Archie
+had hooked it up a few links, so that the water should not be wasted. It
+was very still and quiet up here to-night, and very lonesome too. The sun
+had just gone down, and all the western sky was aglow with clouds, whose
+ever-changing beauty it was a pleasure to watch. Archie was beginning to
+wish that Dugald would come, when he was startled at hearing a strange and
+piercing cry far down below him in the cactus jungle. It was a cry that
+made his flesh quiver and his very spine feel cold. It came from no human
+lips, and yet it was not even the scream of a terror-struck mule. Next
+minute the mystery was unravelled, and Dugald's favourite mule came
+galloping towards the ruin, pursued by an enormous tiger, as the jaguar is
+called here.
+
+[Illustration: On the same Limb of the Tree]
+
+Just as he had reached the ruin the awful beast had made his spring. His
+talons drew blood, but the next moment he was rolling on the ground with
+one eye apparently knocked out, and the foam around his fang-filled mouth
+mixed with blood; and the mule was over the hills and safe, while the
+jaguar was venting his fume and fury on Archie's rugs, which, with his
+gun, he had left out there.
+
+There is no occasion to deny that the young man was almost petrified with
+fear, but this did not last long: he must seek for safety somehow,
+somewhere. To leave the ruin seems certain death, to remain is impossible.
+Look, the tiger even already has scented him; he utters another fearful
+yell, and makes direct for the window. The tree! the tree! Something seems
+to utter those words in his ear as he springs from the open window. The
+jaguar has entered the room as Archie, with a strength he never knew he
+possessed, catches a lower limb and hoists himself up into the tree. He
+hears yell after yell; now first in the ruin, next at the tree foot, and
+then in the tree itself. Archie creeps higher and higher up, till the
+branches can no longer bear him, and after him creeps death in the most
+awful form imaginable. Already the brute is so close that he sees his
+glaring eye and hears his awful scenting and snuffling. Archie is
+fascinated by that tiger's face so near him--on the same limb of the tree,
+he himself far out towards the point. This must be fascination. He feels
+like one in a strange dream, for as the time goes by and the tiger springs
+not, he takes to speculating almost calmly on his fate, and wondering
+where the beast will seize him first, and if it will be very painful; if
+he will hear his own bones crash, and so faint and forget everything. What
+fangs the tiger has! How broad the head, and terribly fierce the grin! But
+how the blood trickles from the wound in the skull! He can hear it
+pattering on the dead leaves far beneath.
+
+Why doesn't the tiger spring and have it over? Why does--but look, look,
+the brute has let go the branch and fallen down, down with a crash, and
+Archie hears the dull thud of the body on the ground.
+
+Dead--to all intents and purposes. The good mule's hoof had cloven the
+skull.
+
+'Archie! Archie! where on earth are you? Oh, Archie!'
+
+It is Dugald's voice. The last words are almost a shriek.
+
+Then away goes fear from Archie's heart, and joy unspeakable takes its
+place.
+
+'Up here, Dugald,' he shouts, 'safe and sound.'
+
+I leave the reader to guess whether Dugald was glad or not to see his
+cousin drop intact from the ombu-tree, or whether or not they enjoyed
+their pie and _mate_ that evening after this terrible adventure.
+
+'I wonder,' said Archie, later on, and just as they were preparing for
+hammock, 'I wonder, Dugald, if that tiger has a wife. I hope she won't
+come prowling round after her dead lord in the middle of the night.'
+
+'Well, anyhow, Archie, we'll have our rifles ready, and Dash will give us
+ample warning, you know. So good-night.'
+
+'Good-night. Don't be astonished if you hear me scream in my sleep. I feel
+sure I'll dream I'm up in that dark ombu-tree, and perhaps in the clutches
+of that fearsome tiger.'
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+About a month after the above related adventure the young men had another
+at that very ruin, which, if not quite so stirring, was at all events far
+more mysterious.
+
+It happened soon after a wild storm, a kind of semi-pampero, had swept
+over the glen with much thunder and lightning and heavy rains. It had
+cleared the atmosphere, however, which previously had been hazy and close.
+It had cooled it as well, so that one afternoon, Dugald, addressing
+Archie, said,
+
+'What do you say to an early morning among the birds to-morrow, cousin?'
+
+'Oh, I'm ready, Dugald, if you are,' was the reply.
+
+'Well, then, off you trot to the kitchen, and get food ready, and I'll see
+to the shooting tackle and the mules.'
+
+When Dugald ran over to say good-night to Moncrieff and Aileen before they
+started, he met old Jenny in the door.
+
+'Dear laddie,' she said, when she heard he was bound for the hills, 'I
+hope nae ill will come over ye; but I wot I had an unco' ugly dream last
+night. Put your trust in Providence, laddie. And ye winna forget to say
+your prayers, will ye?'
+
+'That we won't, mother. Ta, ta!'
+
+Moncrieff saw Dugald to his own gate. With them went Wolf, the largest
+bloodhound-mastiff.
+
+'Dreams,' said Moncrieff, 'may be neither here nor there; but you'll be
+none the worse for taking Wolf.'
+
+'Thank you,' said Dugald; 'he shall come, and welcome.'
+
+The sun had quite set before they reached the ruin, but there was a
+beautiful after-glow in the west--a golden haze beneath, with a kind of
+crimson blush over it higher up. When they were on a level with the ruin,
+the two windows of which, as already stated, were opposite to each other,
+Archie said, musingly,
+
+'Look, Dugald, what a strange and beautiful light is streaming through the
+windows!'
+
+'Yes,' replied Dugald, 'but there is something solemn, even ghostly, about
+it. Don't you think so?'
+
+'True; there always is something ghostly about an empty ruin, I think. Are
+you superstitious?'
+
+'No; but--see. What was that? Why, there is some one there! Look to your
+rifle, Archie. It was an Indian, I am certain.'
+
+What had they seen? Why, only the head and shoulders of a passing figure
+in the orange light of the two windows. It had appeared but one
+moment--next it was gone. Rifles in left hand, revolvers in right, they
+cautiously approached the ruin and entered. Never a soul was here. They
+went out again, and looked around; they even searched the ombu-tree, but
+all in vain.
+
+'Our eyes must have deceived us,' said Dugald.
+
+'I think,' said Archie, 'I have a theory that might explain the mystery.'
+
+'What is it, then?'
+
+'Well, that was no living figure we saw.'
+
+'What! You don't mean to say, Archie, it was a ghost?'
+
+'No, but a branch of that ghostly ombu-tree moved by a passing wind
+between us and the light.'
+
+As he spoke they rounded the farthest off gable of the ruin, and there
+both stopped as suddenly as if shot. Close beside the wall, with some rude
+digging tools lying near, was a newly-opened grave!
+
+'This is indeed strange,' said Dugald, remembering old Jenny's warning and
+dream; 'I cannot make it out.'
+
+'Nor can I. However, we must make the best of it.'
+
+By the time supper was finished they had almost forgotten all about it.
+Only before lying down that night--
+
+'I say, Archie,' said Dugald, 'why didn't we think of it?'
+
+'Think of what?'
+
+'Why, of putting Wolf the mastiff on the track. If there have been Indians
+here he would have found them out.'
+
+'It will not be too late to-morrow, perhaps.'
+
+Dugald lay awake till it must have been long past midnight. He tried to
+sleep, but failed, though he could tell from his regular breathing that
+nothing was disturbing Archie's repose. It was a beautiful night outside,
+and the light from a full moon streamed in at one window and fell on the
+form of good Wolf, who was curled up on the floor; the other window was
+shaded by the branches of the ombu-tree. No matter how calm it might be in
+the valley below, away up here there was always a light breeze blowing,
+and to-night the whispering in the tree at times resembled the sound of
+human voices. So thought Dugald. Several times he started and listened,
+and once he felt almost sure he heard footsteps as of people moving
+outside. Then again all sounds--if sounds there had been--ceased, and
+nothing was audible save the sighing wind in the ombu-tree. Oh, that
+strange waving ombu-tree! He wondered if it really had some dark secret to
+whisper to him, and had chosen this silent hour of night to reveal it.
+
+Hark, that was a sound this time! The mournful but piercing cry of a
+night-bird. 'Chee-hee-ee! chee-hee-ee!' It was repeated farther up the
+hill. But could the dog be deceived? Scarcely; and growling low as if in
+anger, Wolf had arisen and stood pointing towards the ombu-shaded window.
+
+With one accord both Dugald and Archie, seizing their revolvers and
+jumping from their hammocks, ran out just in time to see a tall figure
+cross a patch of moonlit sward and disappear in the cactus jungle.
+
+Both fired in the direction, but of course aimlessly, and it was with the
+greatest difficulty they succeeded in keeping the great dog from following
+into the bush.
+
+They were disturbed no more that night; and daylight quite banished their
+fears, though it could not dispel the mystery of the newly-dug grave.
+
+Indeed, they could even afford to joke a little over the matter now.
+
+'There is something in it, depend upon that,' said Dugald, as the two
+stood together looking into the hole.
+
+'There doesn't seem to be,' said Archie, quizzingly.
+
+'And I mean to probe it to the bottom.'
+
+'Suppose you commence now, Dugald. Believe me, there is no time like the
+present. Here are the tools. They look quite antediluvian. Do you think
+now that it really was a flesh-and-blood Indian we saw here; or was it the
+ghost of some murdered priest? And has he been digging down here to
+excavate his own old bones, or have a peep to see that they are safe?'
+
+'Archie,' said Dugald, at last, as if he had not listened to a word of his
+companion's previous remarks, 'Archie, we won't go shooting to-day.'
+
+'No?'
+
+'No, we will go home instead, and bring Moncrieff and my brothers here. I
+begin to think this is no grave after all.'
+
+'Indeed, Dugald, and why?'
+
+'Why, simply for this reason: Yambo has told me a wonderful blood-curdling
+story of two hermit priests who lived here, and who had found treasure
+among the hills, and were eventually murdered and buried in this very
+ruin. According to the tradition the slaughtering Indians were themselves
+afterwards killed, and since then strange appearances have taken place
+from time to time, and until we made a shooting-box of the ruin no Gauchos
+could be found bold enough to go inside it, nor would any Indian come
+within half a mile of the place. That they have got more courageous now we
+had ample evidence last night.'
+
+'And you think that--'
+
+'I think that Indians are not far away, and that--but come, let us saddle
+our mules and be off.'
+
+It was high time, for at that very moment over a dozen pairs of fierce
+eyes were watching them from the cactus jungle. Spears were even poised
+ready for an attack, and only perhaps the sight of that ferocious-looking
+dog restrained them.
+
+No one could come more speedily to a conclusion than Moncrieff. He hardly
+waited to hear Dugald's story before he had summoned Yambo, and bade him
+get ready with five trusty Gauchos to accompany them to the hills.
+
+'Guns, senor?'
+
+'Ay, guns, Yambo, and the other dog. We may have to draw a trigger or two.
+Sharp is the word, Yambo!'
+
+In two hours more, and just as the winter's sun was at its highest, we all
+reached the cactus near the old monastic ruin. Here a spear flew close
+past Moncrieff's head. A quick, fierce glance of anger shot from the eyes
+of this buirdly Scot. He called a dog, and in a moment more disappeared in
+the jungle. A minute after there was the sharp ring of a revolver, a
+shriek, a second shot, and all was still. Presently Moncrieff rode back,
+looking grim, but calm and self-possessed.
+
+There was no one near the ruin when we advanced, but the Indians had been
+here. The grave was a grave no longer in shape, but a huge hole.
+
+'Set to work, Yambo, with your men. They have saved us trouble. Dugald and
+Archie and Donald, take three men and the dogs and scour the bush round
+here. Then place sentinels about, and post yourselves on top of the red
+dune.'
+
+Yambo and his men set to work in earnest, and laboured untiringly for
+hours and hours, but without finding anything. A halt was called at last
+for rest and refreshment; then the work was commenced with greater heart
+than ever.
+
+I had ridden away to the red dune to carry food to my brothers and the
+dogs and the sentinels.
+
+The day was beginning already to draw to a close. The sky all above was
+blue and clear, but along the horizon lay a bank of grey rolling clouds,
+that soon would be changed to crimson and gold by the rays of the setting
+sun. Hawks were poised high in the air, and flocks of kites were slowly
+winging their way to the eastward.
+
+From our position on the summit of the red dune we had a most extended
+view on all sides. We could even see the tall waving poplars of our own
+_estancias_, and away westward a vast rolling prairie of pampa land,
+bounded by the distant _sierras_. My eyes were directed to one level and
+snow-white patch in the plain, which might have been about three square
+miles in extent, when suddenly out from behind some dunes that lay beyond
+rode a party of horsemen. We could tell at a glance they were Indians, and
+that they were coming as fast as fleet horses could carry them, straight
+for the hill on which we stood. There was not a moment to lose, so,
+leaping to the back of my mule, I hurried away to warn our party.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+A RIDE FOR LIFE.
+
+
+'Moncrieff!' I cried, as soon as I got within hail, 'the Indians will be
+on us in less than half an hour!'
+
+'Then, boy,' replied Moncrieff, 'call in your brothers and the men; they
+cannot hold the dune. We must fight them here, if it be fighting they
+mean. Hurry back, I have something to show you.'
+
+We had all returned in less than ten minutes. Greatly to our astonishment,
+we found no one in the pit now, but we heard voices beneath, and I hurried
+in and down.
+
+They had found a cave; whether natural or not we could not at present say.
+At one side lay a heap of mouldering bones, in the opposite corner a huge
+wooden chest. Moncrieff had improvised a torch, and surely Aladdin in his
+cave could not have been more astonished at what he saw than we were now!
+The smoky light fell on the golden gleam of nuggets! Yes, there they were,
+of all shapes and sizes. Moncrieff plunged his hand to the bottom of the
+box and stirred them up as he might have done roots or beans.
+
+This, then, was the secret the ruin had held so long--the mystery of the
+giant ombu-tree.
+
+That the Indians in some way or other had got scent of this treasure was
+evident, and as these wandering savages care little if anything for gold
+on their own account, it was equally evident that some white man--himself
+not caring to take the lead or even appear--was hounding them on to find
+it, with the promise doubtless of a handsome reward.
+
+Not a moment was there to be lost now. The treasure must be removed. An
+attempt was first made to lift the chest bodily. This was found to be
+impossible owing to the decayed condition of the wood. The grain-sacks,
+therefore, which formed a portion of the Gaucho's mule-trappings, were
+requisitioned, and in a very short time every gold nugget was carried out
+and placed in safety in a corner of our principal room in the
+hunting-box.
+
+The beasts were placed for safety in another room of the ruin, a trench
+being dug before the door, which could be commanded from one of our
+windows.
+
+'How many horsemen did you count?' said Moncrieff to me.
+
+'As near as I could judge,' I replied, 'there must be fifty.'
+
+'Yes, there may be a swarm more. One of you boys must ride to-night to the
+_estancia_ and get assistance. Who volunteers?'
+
+'I do,' said Dugald at once.
+
+'Then it will be well to start without delay before we are surrounded.
+See, it is already dusk, and we may expect our Indian friends at any
+moment. Mount, lad, and Heaven preserve you!'
+
+Dugald hardly waited to say another word. He saw to the revolvers in his
+saddle-bows, slung his rifle over his shoulder, sprang to the saddle, and
+had disappeared like a flash.
+
+And now we had but to wait the turn of events--turn how they might.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dugald told us afterwards that during that memorable ride to the
+_estancia_ he felt as if the beast beneath him was a winged horse instead
+of his own old-fashioned and affectionate mule. Perhaps it was fear that
+lent him such speed, and possibly it was fear transmitted even from his
+rider. Times without number since we had come out to our new home in the
+Silver West my brother had shown what sort of stuff he was made of, but a
+ride like this is trying to a heart like oak or nerves like steel, and a
+young man must be destitute of soul itself not to feel fear on such an
+occasion. Besides, the very fact of flying from unseen foes adds to the
+terror.
+
+Down through the cactus jungle he went, galloping in and out and out and
+in, himself hardly knowing the road, trusting everything to the sagacity
+of the wondrous mule. Oftentimes when returning from a day on the hills,
+tired and weary, he had thought the way through this strange green
+bushland interminably long; but now, fleetly though he was speeding on, he
+thought it would never, never end, that he would never, never come out
+into the open braeland, and see, miles away beneath him, the twinkling
+lights of the _estancia_. Many an anxious glance, too, did he cast around
+him or into the gloomiest shades of the jungle, more than once imagining
+he saw dusky figures therein with long spears ready to launch at him.
+
+He is out at last, however; but the path is now loose and rough and stony.
+After riding for some hundred yards he has to cut across at right angles
+to the jungle he has left. To his horror, a dozen armed Indians at that
+very moment leave the cactus, and with levelled spears and wild shouts
+dash onward to intercept him. This is indeed a ride for life, for to his
+immediate left is a precipice full twenty feet in height. He must gain the
+end of this before he can put even a yard of actual distance betwixt
+himself and the savages who are thirsting for his life. More than once he
+has half made up his mind to dare the leap, but the venture is far too
+great.
+
+Nearer and nearer sweep the Indians. Dugald is close at the turning-point
+now, but he sees the foremost savage getting the deadly lasso ready. He
+must shoot, though he has to slacken speed slightly to take better aim.
+
+He fires. Down roll horse and man, and Dugald is saved.
+
+They have heard that rifle-shot far away on the _estancia_. Quick eyes are
+turned towards the braelands, and, dusk though it is, they notice that
+something more than usual is up. Five minutes afterwards half a dozen
+armed horsemen thunder out to meet Dugald. They hear his story, and all
+return to alarm the colony and put the whole place in a state of defence.
+Then under the guidance of Dugald they turn back once more--a party of
+twenty strong now--towards the hills, just as the moon, which is almost
+full, is rising and shining through between the solemn steeple-like
+poplars.
+
+To avoid the jungle, and a probable ambuscade, they have to make a long
+_detour_, but they reach the ruin at last, to find all safe and sound. The
+Indians know that for a time their game is played, and they have lost; and
+they disappeared as quickly and mysteriously as they came leaving not a
+trace behind.
+
+The gold is now loaded on the backs of the mules, and the journey home
+commenced.
+
+As they ride down through the giant cacti two huge vultures rise with
+flapping wings and heavy bodies at no great distance. It was into that
+very thicket that Moncrieff rode this morning. It was there he fired his
+revolver. The vultures had been disturbed at a feast--nothing more.
+
+Great was the rejoicing at the safe return of Moncrieff and his party from
+the hills. Our poor aunt had been troubled, indeed, but Aileen was
+frantic, and threw herself into her husband's arms when she saw him in
+quite a passion of hysterical joy.
+
+Now although there was but little if any danger of an attack to-night on
+the _estancias_, no one thought of retiring to bed. There was much to be
+done by way of preparation, for we were determined not to lose a horse,
+nor even a sheep, if we could help it. So we arranged a code of signals by
+means of rifle-shots, and spent the whole of the hours that intervened
+betwixt the time of our return and sunrise in riding round the farms and
+visiting even distant _puestos_.
+
+My brothers and I and Moncrieff lay down when day broke to snatch a few
+hours of much-needed rest.
+
+It was well on in the forenoon when I went over to Moncrieff's mansion. I
+had already been told that strangers had arrived from distant _estancias_
+bringing evil tidings. The poor men whom I found in the drawing-room with
+Moncrieff had indeed brought dreadful news. They had escaped from their
+burned _estancias_ after seeing their people massacred by savages before
+their eyes. They had seen others on the road who had suffered even worse,
+and did not know what to do or where to fly. Many had been hunted into the
+bush and killed there. Forts had been attacked further south, and even the
+soldiers of the republic in some instances had been defeated and scattered
+over the country.
+
+The year, indeed, was one that will be long remembered by the citizens of
+the Argentine Republic. Happily things have now changed for the better,
+and the Indians have been driven back south of the Rio Negro, which will
+for ever form a boundary which they must not cross on pain of death.
+
+More fugitives dropped in that day, and all had pitiful, heartrending
+stories to tell.
+
+Moncrieff made every one welcome, and so did we all, trying our very best
+to soothe the grief and anguish they felt for those dear ones they would
+never see more on earth.
+
+And now hardly a day passed that did not bring news of some kind of the
+doings of the Indians. Success had rendered them bold, while it appeared
+to have cowed for a time the Government of this noble republic, or, at
+all events, had confused and paralyzed all its action. Forts were overcome
+almost without resistance. Indeed, some of them were destitute of the
+means of resisting, the men having no proper supply of ammunition.
+_Estancia_ after _estancia_ on the frontier had been raided and burned,
+with the usual shocking barbarities that make one shudder even to think
+of.
+
+It was but little likely that our small but wealthy colony would escape,
+for the fact that we were now possessed of the long-buried treasure--many
+thousands of pounds in value--must have spread like wild-fire.
+
+One morning Moncrieff and I started early, and rode to a distant
+_estancia_, which we were told had been attacked and utterly destroyed,
+not a creature being left alive about the place with the exception of the
+cattle and horses, which the Indians had captured. We had known this
+family. They had often attended Moncrieff's happy little evening parties,
+and the children had played in our garden and rowed with us in the
+gondola.
+
+Heaven forbid I should attempt to draw a graphic picture of all we saw!
+Let it be sufficient to say that the rumours which had reached us were all
+too true, and that Moncrieff and I saw sights which will haunt us both
+until our dying day.
+
+The silence all round the _estancia_ when we rode up was eloquent,
+terribly eloquent. The buildings were blackened ruins, and it was painful
+to notice the half-scorched trailing flowers, many still in bloom,
+clinging around the wrecked and charred verandah. But everywhere about, in
+the out-buildings, on the lawn, in the garden itself, were the remains of
+the poor creatures who had suffered.
+
+                   'Alas! for love of this were all,
+                       And none beyond, O earth!'
+
+Moncrieff spoke but little all the way back. While standing near the
+verandah I had seen him move his hand to his eyes and impatiently brush
+away a tear, but after that his face became firm and set, and for many a
+day after this I never saw him smile.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+At this period of our strange family story I lay down my pen and lean
+wearily back in my chair. It is not that I am tired of writing. Oh, no!
+Evening after evening for many and many a long week I have repaired up
+here to my turret chamber--my beautiful study in our Castle of Coila--and
+with my faithful hound by my feet I have bent over my sheets and
+transcribed as faithfully as I could events as I remember them. But it is
+the very multiplicity of these events as I near the end of my story that
+causes me to pause and think.
+
+Ah! here comes aunt, gliding into my room, pausing for a moment, curtain
+in hand, half apologetically, as she did on that evening described in our
+first chapter.
+
+'No, auntie, you do not disturb me. Far from it. I was longing for your
+company.'
+
+She is by my side now, and looking down at my manuscript.
+
+'Yes,' she says many times--nodding assent to every sentence, and ever
+turning back the pages for reference--'yes, and now you come near the last
+events of this story of the M'Crimmans of Coila. Come out to the castle
+roof, and breathe the evening air, and I will talk.'
+
+We sit there nearly an hour. Aunt's memory is better even than mine, and I
+listen to her without ever once opening my lips. Then I lead her back to
+the tower, and point smilingly to the harp.
+
+She has gone at last, and I resume my story.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+We, Moncrieff and I, saw no signs of Indians during our long ride that
+day. We had gone on this journey with our lives in our hands. The very
+daringness and dash of it was probably our salvation. The enemy were
+about--they might be here, there, anywhere. Every bush might conceal a
+foe, but they certainly made no appearance.
+
+All was the same apparently about our _estancias_; _but_ I wondered a
+little that my brothers had not come out to meet me as usual, and that
+faithful, though plain-faced Yambo looked at me strangely, and I thought
+pityingly, as he took my mule to lead away to the compound.
+
+I went straight away through our gardens, and entered the drawing-room by
+the verandah window.
+
+I paused a moment, holding the casement in my hand. Coming straight out of
+the glare of the evening sunset, the room appeared somewhat dark, but I
+noticed Dugald sitting at the table with his face bent down over his hand,
+and Donald lying on the couch.
+
+'Dugald!'
+
+He started up and ran towards me, seizing and wringing my hand.
+
+'Oh, Murdoch,' he cried, 'our poor father!'
+
+'You have had a letter--he is ill?'
+
+'He is ill.'
+
+'Dugald,' I cried, 'tell me all! Dugald--is--father--dead?'
+
+No reply.
+
+I staggered towards the table, and dropped limp and stricken and helpless
+into a chair.
+
+I think I must have been ill for many, many days after this sad news. I
+have little recollection of the events of the next week--I was engrossed,
+engulfed in the one great sorrow. The unexpected death of so well-beloved
+a father in the meridian of life was a terrible blow to us all, but more
+so to me, with all I had on my mind.
+
+'And so, and so,' I thought, as I began to recover, 'there is an end to my
+bright dreams of future happiness--_the_ dream of all my dreams, to have
+father out here among us in our new home in the Silver West, and all the
+dark portions of the past forgotten. Heaven give me strength to bear it!'
+
+I had spoken the last words aloud, for a voice at my elbow said--
+
+'Amen! Poor boy! Amen!'
+
+I turned, and--_there stood Townley_.
+
+'You wonder to see me here,' he said, as he took my hand. 'Nay, but nobody
+should ever wonder at anything I do. I am erratic. I did not come over
+before, because I did not wish to influence your mind. You have been ill,
+but--I'm glad to see you weeping.'
+
+I did really sob and cry then as if my very heart would burst and break.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was well enough in a day or two to hear the rest of the news. Townley,
+who was very wise, had hesitated to tell me everything at once.
+
+But if anything could be called joyful news now surely this was--mother
+and Flora were at Villa Mercedes, and would be here in a day or two.
+Townley had come on before, even at considerable personal risk, to break
+the news to us, and prepare us all. Mother and sister were waiting an
+escort, not got up specially for them certainly, but that would see to
+their safety. It consisted of a large party of officers and men who were
+passing on to the frontiers to repel, or try to repel, the Indian
+invasion.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+We all went to meet mother and sister at the far-off cross roads. There
+was quite a large and very well-armed party of us, and we encamped for
+three days near an _estancia_ to await their coming.
+
+It was on the morning of the fourth day that one of the Gauchos reported
+an immense cloud of dust far away eastwards on the Mendoza road.
+
+'They might be Indians,' he added.
+
+'Perhaps,' said Moncrieff, 'but we will risk it.'
+
+So camp was struck and off we rode, my brothers and I forming the
+vanguard, Moncrieff and Archie bringing up the rear. How my heart beat
+with emotion when the first horsemen of the advancing party became visible
+through the cloud of dust, and I saw they were soldiers!
+
+On we rode now at the gallop.
+
+Yes, mother was there, and sister, and they were well. Our meeting may be
+better imagined than described.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Both mother and Flora were established at the _estancia_, and so days and
+weeks flew by, and I was pleased to see them smile, though mother looked
+sad, so sad, yet so beautiful, just as she had ever looked to me.
+
+Dugald was the first to recover anything approaching to a chastened
+happiness. He had his darling sister with him. He was never tired taking
+her out and showing her all the outs-and-ins and workings of our new
+home.
+
+It appeared to give him the chiefest delight, however, to see her in the
+gondola.
+
+I remember him saying one evening:
+
+'Dear Flora! What a time it seems to look back since we parted in old
+Edina. But through all these long years I have worked for you and thought
+about you, and strange, I have always pictured you just as you are now,
+sitting under the gondola awnings, looking piquant and pretty, and on just
+such a lovely evening as this. But I didn't think you would be so big,
+Flora.'
+
+'Dear stupid Dugald!' replied Flora, blushing slightly because Archie's
+eyes were bent on her in admiration, respectful but unconcealable. 'Did
+you think I would always remain a child?'
+
+'You'll always be a child to me, Flo,' said Dugald.
+
+But where had the Indians gone?
+
+Had our bold troops beaten them back? or was the cloud still floating over
+the _estancia_, and floating only to burst?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+THE ATTACK ON THE ESTANCIA.
+
+
+Shortly after we had all settled down at the _estancia_, and things began
+to resume their wonted appearance, albeit we lived in a state of constant
+preparation to repel attack, an interview took place one day in
+Moncrieff's drawing-room, at which, though I was not present, I now know
+all that happened.
+
+To one remark of Townley's my mother replied as follows:
+
+'No, Mr. Townley, I think with you. I feel even more firmly, I believe,
+than you do on the subject, for you speak with, pardon me, some little
+doubt or hesitancy. Our boy's conscience must not be tampered with, not
+for all the estates in the world. Much though I love Coila, from which
+villainy may have banished us, let it remain for ever in the possession of
+the M'Rae sooner than even hint to Murdoch that an oath, however imposed,
+is not binding.'
+
+'Yes,' said Townley, 'you are right, Mrs. M'Crimman; but the present
+possessor of Coila, the younger Le Roi, or M'Rae, as he was called before
+his father's death, has what he is pleased to call broader views on the
+subject than we have.'
+
+'Mr. Townley, the M'Rae is welcome to retain his broad views, and we will
+stick to the simple faith of our forefathers. The M'Rae is of French
+education.'
+
+'Yes, and at our meeting, though he behaved like a perfect
+gentleman--indeed, he is a gentleman--'
+
+'True, in spite of the feud I cannot forget that the M'Raes are distant
+relatives of the M'Crimmans. He must, therefore, be a gentleman.'
+
+'"My dear sir," he said to me, "I cannot conceive of such
+folly"--superstitious folly, he called it--"as that which your young
+friend Murdoch M'Crimman is guilty of. Let him come to me and say boldly
+that the ring found in the box and in the vault was on the finger of
+Duncan--villain he is, at all events--on the night he threatened to shoot
+him, and I will give up all claim to the estates of Coila; but till he
+does so, or until you bring me other proof, I must be excused for
+remaining where I am."'
+
+'Then let him,' said my mother quietly.
+
+'Nay, but,' said Townley, 'I do not _mean_ to let him. It has become the
+one dream of my existence to see justice and right done to my dear old
+pupil Murdoch, and I think I begin to see land.'
+
+'Yes?'
+
+'I believe I do. I waited and watched untiringly. Good Gilmore, who still
+lives in Coila, watched for me too. I knew one thing was certain--namely,
+that the ex-poacher Duncan M'Rae would turn up again at the castle. He
+did. He went to beg money from the M'Rae. The M'Rae is a man of the world;
+he saw that this visit of Duncan's was but the beginning of a never-ending
+persecution. He refused Duncan's request point-blank. Then the man changed
+flank and breathed dark threatenings. The M'Rae, he hinted, had better not
+make him (Duncan) his enemy. He (M'Rae) was obliged to him for the house
+and position he occupied, but the same hand that _did_ could _undo_. At
+this juncture the M'Rae had simply rung the bell, and the ex-poacher had
+to retire foiled, but threatening still. It was on that same day I
+confronted him and told him all I knew. Then I showed him the spurious
+ring, which, as I placed it on my finger, even he could not tell from the
+original. Even this did not overawe him, but when I ventured a guess that
+this very ring had belonged to a dead man, and pretended I knew more than
+I did, he turned pale. He was silent for a time--thinking, I suppose. Then
+he put a question which staggered me with its very coolness, and,
+clergyman though I am, I felt inclined at that moment to throttle the man
+where he stood. Would we pay him handsomely for turning king's evidence on
+himself and confessing the whole was a conspiracy, and would we save him
+from the legal penalty of the confessed crime?
+
+'I assure you, Mrs. M'Crimman, that till then I had leaned towards the
+belief that, scoundrel though this Duncan be, some little spark of
+humanity remained in his nature, and that he might be inclined to do
+justice for justice's sake. I dare say he read my answer in my eyes, and
+he judged too that for the time being I was powerless to act. Could he
+have killed me then, I know he would have done so. Once more he was silent
+for a time. He did not dare to repeat his first question, but he put
+another, "Have you any charge to make against me about _anything_?" He
+placed a terribly-meaning emphasis on that word "anything." I looked at
+him. I was wondering whether he really had had anything to do with the
+death of old Mawsie, and if the ring of which I had the facsimile on my
+finger had in reality belonged to a murdered man. Seeing me hesitate, he
+played a bold card; it was, I suppose, suggested to him by the appearance
+at that moment of the village policeman walking calmly past the window of
+the little inn where we sat. He knocked, and beckoned to him, while I sat
+wondering and thinking that verily the man before me was cleverer by far
+than I. On the entrance of the policeman--"This gentleman, policeman," he
+said, quietly and slowly, "makes or insinuates charges against me in
+private which now in your presence I dare him to repeat." Then turning to
+me--"The ball is with you," he said. And what could I reply? Nothing. I do
+believe that at that very moment even the worthy village policeman
+noticed and pitied my position, for he turned to Duncan, and, nodding,
+made this remark in Gaelic: "I know Mr. Townley as a gentleman, and I know
+you, Duncan M'Rae, to be something very different. If Mr. Townley makes no
+charge against you it is no doubt because he is not prepared with proofs.
+But, Duncan, boy, if you like to remain in the glen for a few days, I'm
+not sure there isn't a charge or two I could rub up against you myself."
+
+'I left the room with the policeman. Now I knew that, although foiled,
+Duncan did not consider himself beaten. I had him watched therefore, and
+followed by a detective. I wanted to find out his next move. It was
+precisely what I thought it would be. He had heard of our poor chief
+M'Crimman's death, remember. Well, a day or two after our conversation in
+the little inn at Coila, Duncan presented himself at the M'Rae's
+advocate's office and so pleaded his case--so begged and partially hinted
+at disclosures and confessions--that this solicitor, not possessed of the
+extraordinary pride and independence of the M'Rae--'
+
+'A pride and independence, Mr. Townley,' said my aunt, 'which the M'Raes
+take from their relatedness to our family.'
+
+'That is true,' said my mother.
+
+'Well, I was going to say,' continued Townley, 'that Duncan so far
+overcame the advocate that this gentleman thought it would be for his
+client's interest to accede in part to his demands, or rather to one of
+them--viz., to pay him a sum of money to leave the country for ever. But
+this money was not to be paid until he had taken his passage and was about
+to sail for some--any--country, not nearer than the United States of
+America, Mr. Moir's--the advocate's--clerk was to see him on board ship,
+and see him sail.'
+
+'And did he sail?' said my aunt, as Townley paused and looked at her.
+
+'Yes, in a passenger ship, for Buenos Ayres.'
+
+'I see it all now,' said my aunt. 'He thinks that no charge can be made
+against him there for conspiracy or crime committed at home.'
+
+'Yes, and he thinks still further: he thinks that he will be more
+successful with dear Murdoch than he was with either the M'Rae or
+myself.'
+
+There was a few minutes' pause, my aunt being the first to break the
+silence.
+
+'What a depth of well-schemed villainy!' was the remark she made.
+
+Moncrieff had listened to all the conversation without once putting in a
+word. Now all he said was--
+
+'Dinna forget, Miss M'Crimman, the words o' the immortal Bobbie Burns:
+
+               "The best laid schemes o' mice and men
+                                     Gang aft agley,
+               And leave us naught but grief and pain
+                                     For promised joy."'
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+To the fear and fever consequent upon the depredations committed by the
+Indians there succeeded a calmness and lull which the canny Moncrieff
+thought almost unnatural, considering all that had gone before. He took
+pains to find out whether, as had been currently reported, our Argentine
+troops had been victorious all along the frontier line. He found that the
+report, like many others, had been grossly exaggerated. If a foe retires,
+a foe is beaten by the army which _sees_ that foe retire. This seems too
+often to be the logic of the war-path. In the present instance, however,
+the Indians belonged to races that lived a nomad life. They were
+constantly advancing and retreating. When they chose to advance in this
+particular year there was not a sufficient number of cavalry to oppose
+them, nor were the soldiers well mounted. The savages knew precisely on
+what part of the stage to enter, and they did not think it incumbent on
+them to previously warn our Argentine troops. Indeed, they, like sensible
+savages, rather avoided a conflict than courted one. It was not conflict
+but cattle they were after principally; then if at any time strategy
+directed retreat, why, they simply turned their horses' heads to the
+desert, the pampas, or mountain wilds, and the troops for a time had seen
+the last of them.
+
+I think Moncrieff would have made a capital general, for fancied security
+never sent him to sleep. What had happened once might happen again, he
+thought, and his _estancias_ were big prizes for Indians to try for,
+especially as there was plenty to gain by success, and little to lose by
+defeat.
+
+I have said that our Coila Villa was some distance from the fortified
+Moncrieff houses. It was now connected with the general rampart and
+ditches. It was part and parcel of the whole system of fortification; so
+my brothers and I might rest assured it would be defended, if ever there
+was any occasion.
+
+'It seems hard,' said Townley to Moncrieff one day, 'that you should be
+put to so much trouble and expense. Why does not the Government protect
+its settlers?'
+
+'The Government will in course of time,' replied Moncrieff. 'At present,
+as we lie pretty low down in the western map, we are looked upon as rich
+pioneers, and left to protect ourselves.'
+
+They were riding then round the _estancias_, visiting outlying _puestos_.
+
+'You have your rockets and red-lights for night signals, and your flags
+for day use?' Moncrieff was saying to each _puestero_ or shepherd.
+
+'We have,' was the invariable reply.
+
+'Well, if the Indians are sighted, signal at once, pointing the fan in
+their direction, then proceed to drive the flocks towards the _estancias_.
+There,' continued Moncrieff, 'there is plenty of corraling room, and we
+can concentrate a fire that will, I believe, effectually hold back these
+raiding thieves.'
+
+One day there came a report that a fort had been carried by a cloud of
+Indians.
+
+This was in the forenoon. Towards evening some Gauchos came in from a
+distant _estancia_. They brought the old ugly story of conflagration and
+murder, to which Moncrieff and his Welsh partner had long since become
+used.
+
+But now the cloud was about to burst over our _estancia_. We all ate our
+meals together at the present awful crisis, just, I think, to be company
+to each other, and to talk and keep up each other's heart.
+
+But to-day Moncrieff had ordered an early dinner, and this was ominous.
+Hardly any one spoke much during the meal. A heaviness was on every heart,
+and if any one of us made an effort to smile and look cheerful, others saw
+that this was only assumed, and scarcely responded.
+
+Perhaps old Jenny spoke more than all of us put together. And her remarks
+at times made us laugh, gloomy though the situation was.
+
+'They reeving Philistines are coming again, are they? Well, laddie, if the
+worst should happen I'll just treat them to a drap parridge.'
+
+'What, mither?'
+
+'A drap parridge, laddie. It was boiled maize I poured ower the shoulders
+o' them in the caravan. But oatmeal is better, weel scalded. Na, na,
+naething beats a drap parridge. Bombazo,' she said presently,'you've been
+unco quiet and douce for days back, I hope you'll no show the white
+feather this time and bury yoursel' in the moold like a rabbit.'
+
+Poor Bombazo winced, and really, judging from his appearance, he had been
+ill at ease for weeks back. There was no singing now, and the guitar lay
+unheeded in its case.
+
+'Do not fear for me, lady. I am burning already to see the foe.'
+
+'Weel, Bombazo man, ye dinna look vera warlike. You're unco white about
+the gills already, but wae worth the rigging o' you if ye dinna fecht. My
+arm is strong to wield the auld ginghamrella yet.'
+
+'Hush, mither, hush!' said Moncrieff.
+
+Immediately after dinner Moncrieff beckoned to Townley, and the two left
+the room and the house together.
+
+'You think the Indians will come to-night?' said Townley, after a time.
+
+'I know they will, and in force too.'
+
+'Well, I feel like an idler. You, General Moncrieff, have not appointed me
+any station.'
+
+Moncrieff smiled.
+
+'I am now going to do so,' he said, 'and it is probably the most important
+position and trust on the _estancia_.'
+
+They walked up as far as the great canal while they conversed.
+
+Arrived there, Moncrieff pointed to what looked like a bundle of
+brushwood.
+
+'You see those branches?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'And you see that wooden lock or huge doorway?'
+
+'I do.'
+
+'Well, my friend, the brushwood conceals a sentry-box. It overlooks the
+whole _estancia_. It conceals something else, a small barrel of gunpowder,
+which you are to hang to the hook yonder on the wooden lock, and explode
+the moment you have the signal.'
+
+'And the signal will be?'
+
+'A huge rocket sent up from either my _estancia_ house or Coila Villa.
+There may be several, but you must act when you see the first. There is
+fuse enough to the bomb to give you time to escape, and the bomb is big
+enough to burst the lock and flood the whole ditch system in and around
+the _estancia_. You are to run as soon as you fire. Further on you will
+find another brushwood place of concealment. Hide there. Heaven forbid I
+should endanger a hair of your head! Now you know your station!'
+
+'I do,' said Townley, 'and thankful I am to think I can be of service in
+this great emergency.'
+
+Before dark all the most valuable portion of our stock was safely
+corraled, and silence, broken only by the occasional lowing of the cattle
+or the usual night sounds of farm life, reigned around and over the
+_estancia_.
+
+Later on Townley stole quietly out, and betook himself to his station.
+
+Still later on Yambo rode in and right up to the verandah of our chief
+sitting-room. The horse he bestrode was drenched in sweat. He had seen
+Indians in force; they were even now advancing. He had ridden for his
+life.
+
+The order 'Every man to his quarters!' was now given.
+
+The night which was to be so terrible and so memorable in the annals of
+Moncrieff's _estancia_ had begun. It was very still, and at present very
+dark. But by and by the moon would rise.
+
+'A rocket, sir!' we heard Archie shout from his post as sentinel; 'a
+rocket from the south-western _puesto_.'
+
+We waited, listening, starting almost at every sound. At length in the
+distance we could plainly hear the sound of horses' hoofs on the road, and
+before many minutes the first _puestero_ rode to the gate and was
+admitted. The men from the other _puestos_ were not far behind; and, all
+being safe inside, the gates were fastened and fortified by triple bars of
+wood.
+
+All along the ditches, and out for many yards, was spread such a thorny
+spikework of pointed wood as to defy the approach of the cleverest Indian
+for hours at least.
+
+While we waited I found time to run round to the drawing-room. There was
+no sign of fear on any face there, with the exception perhaps of that of
+poor Irish Aileen. And I could well believe her when she told me it was
+not for herself she cared, but for her 'winsome man.'
+
+I was talking to them as cheerfully as I could, when I heard the sound of
+a rifle, and, waving them good-bye, I rushed off to my station.
+
+Slowly the moon rose, and before many minutes the whole _estancia_ was
+flooded with its light. And how we thanked Heaven for that light only
+those who have been situated as we were now can fully understand.
+
+Up it sailed between the dark whispering poplars. Never had these trees
+seemed to me more stately, more noble. Towering up into the starry sky,
+they seemed like sentinels set to guard and defend us, while their taper
+fingers, piercing heavenwards, carried our thoughts to One who never
+deserts those who call on Him in faith in their hour of need.
+
+The moon rose higher and higher, and its light--for it was a full
+moon--got still more silvery as it mounted towards its zenith. But as yet
+there was no sign that a foe as remorseless and implacable as the tiger of
+the jungle was abroad on the plains.
+
+A huge fire had been erected behind the mansion, and about ten o'clock the
+female servants came round our lines with food, and huge bowls of steaming
+_mate_.
+
+Almost immediately after we were at our quarters again.
+
+I was stationed near our own villa. Leaning over a parapet, I could not
+help, as I gazed around me, being struck with the exceeding beauty of the
+night. Not far off the lake shone in the moon's rays like a silver mirror,
+but over the distant hills and among the trees and hedges was spread a
+thin blue gauzy mist that toned and softened the whole landscape.
+
+As I gazed, and was falling into a reverie, a puff of white smoke and a
+flash not fifty yards away, and the ping of a bullet close to my ear,
+warned me that the attack had commenced.
+
+There had been no living thing visible just before then, but the field on
+one side of our villa was now one moving mass of armed Indians, rushing on
+towards the ditch and breastwork.
+
+At the same moment all along our lines ran the rattle of rifle-firing.
+That savage crowd, kept at bay by the spikework, made a target for our men
+that could hardly be missed. The war-cry, which they had expected to
+change in less than a minute to the savage shout of victory, was mingled
+now with groans and yells of anger and pain.
+
+But this, after all, was not the main attack. From a red signal-light far
+along the lines I soon discovered that Moncrieff was concentrating his
+strength there, and I hastened in that direction with five of my best men.
+The Indians were under the charge of a _cacique_ on horseback, whose
+shrill voice sounded high over the din of battle and shrieks of the
+wounded. He literally hurled his men like seas against the gates and
+ramparts here.
+
+But all in vain. Our fellows stood; and the _cacique_ at length withdrew
+his men, firing a volley or two as they disappeared behind the hedges.
+
+There was comparative silence for a space now. It was soon broken,
+however, by the thunder of Indian cavalry. The savages were going to
+change their tactics.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+THE LAST ASSAULT.
+
+
+Never before, perhaps, in all the annals of Indian warfare had a more
+determined attack been made upon a settler's _estancia_. The _cacique_ or
+_caciques_ who led the enemy seemed determined to purchase victory at any
+cost or hazard. Nor did the principal _cacique_ hesitate to expose himself
+to danger. During the whole of the first onset he moved about on horseback
+close in the rear of his men, and appeared to bear a charmed life. The
+bullets must have been whizzing past him as thick as flies. Moncrieff
+himself tried more than once to bring him down, but all in vain.
+
+During the final assault he was equally conspicuous; he was here, there,
+and everywhere, and his voice and appearance, even for a moment, among
+them never failed to cause his men to redouble their efforts.
+
+It was not, however, until far on into the night that this last and awful
+charge was made.
+
+The savage foe advanced with a wild shout all along the line of rampart
+that connected the Moncrieff main _estancia_ with our villa. This was
+really our weakest part.
+
+[Illustration: The Indians advanced with a Wild Shout]
+
+The assault was made on horseback. We heard them coming thundering on some
+time before we saw them and could fire. They seemed mad, furious; their
+tall feather-bedecked spears were waved high in air; they sat like huge
+baboons on their high saddles, and their very horses had been imbued with
+the recklessness of their riders, and came on bounding and flying over our
+frail field of spikes. It was to be all spear work till they came to close
+quarters; then they would use their deadly knives.
+
+Hardly had the first sound of the horses' hoofs reached our ears ere one,
+two, three rockets left Coila Villa; and scarcely had they exploded in the
+air and cast their golden showers of sparks abroad, before the roar of an
+explosion was heard high up on the braeland that shook the houses to their
+very foundations--and then--there is the awful rush of foaming, seething
+water.
+
+Nothing could withstand that unexpected flood; men and horses were floated
+and washed away, struggling and helpless, before it.
+
+Just at the time when the last assault was nearly at its grim close I felt
+my arm pulled, and looking quickly round found Yambo at my side. He still
+clutched me by the arm, but he was waving his blood-stained sword in the
+direction of Moncrieff's house, and I could see by the motions of his
+mouth and face he wished me to come with him.
+
+Something had occurred, something dreadful surely, and despite the
+excitement of battle a momentary cold wave of fear seemed to rush over my
+frame.
+
+Sandie Donaldson was near me. This bold big fellow had been everywhere
+conspicuous to-night for his bravery. He had fought all through with
+extraordinary intrepidity.
+
+Wherever I had glanced that night I had seen Sandie, the moon shining down
+on the white shirt and trousers he wore, and which made him altogether so
+conspicuous a figure, as he took aim with rifle or revolver, or dashed
+into a crowd of spear-armed Indians, his claymore hardly visible, so
+swiftly was it moved to and fro. I grasped his shoulder, pointed in the
+direction indicated by Yambo, and on we flew.
+
+As soon as we had rounded the wing of an outbuilding and reached
+Moncrieff's terraced lawn, the din of the fight we had just left became
+more indistinct, but we now heard sounds that, while they thrilled us with
+terror and anger, made us rush on across the grass with the speed of the
+panther.
+
+They were the voices of shrieking women, the crashing of glass and
+furniture, and the savage and exultant yell of the Indians.
+
+Looking back now to this episode of the night, I can hardly realize that
+so many terrible events could have occurred in so brief a time, for, from
+the moment we charged up across the lawn not six minutes could have
+elapsed ere all was over. It is like a dream, but a dream every turn of
+which has been burned into my memory, to remain while life shall last.
+Yonder is a tall _cacique_ hurrying out into the bright moonlight from
+under the verandah. He bears in his arms the inanimate form of my dear
+sister Flora. Is it really _I_ myself who rush up to meet him? Have _I_
+fired that shot that causes the savage to reel and fall? Is it I who lift
+poor Flora and lay her in the shade of a mimosa-tree? It must be I, yet
+every action seems governed by instinct; I am for the time being a strange
+psychological study. It is as if my soul had left the body, but still
+commanded it, standing aside, ruling every motion, directing every blow
+from first to last, and being implicitly obeyed by the other _ego_, the
+_ego_-incorporate. There is a crowd, nay, a cloud even it seems, around
+me; but see, I have cut my way through them at last: they have fallen
+before me, fallen at my side--fallen or fled. I step over bodies, I enter
+the room, I stumble over other bodies. Now a light is struck and a lamp is
+lit, and standing beside the table, calm, but very pale, I see my aunt
+dimly through the smoke. My mother is near her--my own brave mother. Both
+have revolvers in their hands; and I know now why bodies are stretched on
+the floor. One glance shows me Aileen, lying like a dead thing in a
+chair, and beside her, smoothing her brow, chafing her hands, Moncrieff's
+marvellous mother.
+
+But in this life the humorous is ever mixed up with the tragic or sad, for
+lo! as I hurry away to join the fight that is still going on near the
+verandah I almost stumble across something else. Not a body this time--not
+quite--only Bombazo's ankles sticking out from under the sofa. I could
+swear to those striped silk socks anywhere, and the boots are the boots of
+Bombazo. I administer a kick to those shins, and they speedily disappear.
+I am out on the moonlit lawn now, and what do I see? First, good brave
+Yambo, down on one knee, being borne backwards, fierce hands at his
+throat, a short knife at his chest. The would-be assassin falls; Yambo
+rises intact, and together we rush on further down to where, on a terrace,
+Donaldson has just been overpowered. But see, a new combatant has come
+upon the scene; several revolver shots are fired in quick succession. A
+tall dark figure in semi-clerical garb is cutting right and left with a
+good broadsword. And now--why, now it is all over, and Townley stands
+beside us panting.
+
+Well might he pant--he had done brave work. But he had come all too late
+to save Sandie. He lies there quietly enough on the grass. His shirt is
+stained with blood, and it is his own blood this time.
+
+Townley bends over and quietly feels his arm. No pulse there. Then he
+breathes a half audible prayer and reverently closes the eyes.
+
+I am hurrying back now to the room with Flora.
+
+'All is safe, mother, now. Flora is safe. See, she is smiling: she knows
+us all. Oh, Heaven be praised, she is safe!'
+
+We leave Townley there, and hurry back to the ramparts.
+
+The stillness alone would have told us that the fight was finished and the
+victory won.
+
+A few minutes after this, standing high up on the rampart there,
+Moncrieff is mustering his people. One name after another is called. Alas!
+there are many who do not answer, many who will never answer more, for our
+victory has been dearly bought.
+
+Four of our Scottish settlers were found dead in the trench; over a dozen
+Gauchos had been killed. Moncrieff and his partner were both wounded,
+though neither severely. Archie and Dugald were also badly cut, and
+answered but faintly and feebly to the roll-call. Sandie we know is dead,
+and Bombazo is--under the sofa. So I thought; but listen.
+
+'Captain Rodrigo de Bombazo!'
+
+'Here, general, here,' says a bold voice close behind me, and Bombazo
+himself presses further to the front.
+
+I can hardly believe my eyes and ears. Could those have been Bombazo's
+boots? Had I really kicked the shins of Bombazo? Surely the events of the
+night had turned my brain. Bombazo's boots indeed! Bombazo skulk and hide
+beneath a sofa! Impossible. Look at him now. His hair is dishevelled;
+there is blood on his brow. He is dressed only in shirt and trousers, and
+these are marked with blood; so is his right arm, which is bared over the
+elbow, and the sword he carries in his hand. Bold Bombazo! How I have
+wronged him! But the silk striped socks? No; I cannot get over that.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Barely a month before the events just narrated took place at the
+_estancias_ of Moncrieff there landed from a sailing ship at the port of
+Buenos Ayres a man whose age might have been represented by any number of
+years 'twixt thirty and forty. There were grey hairs on his temples, but
+these count for nothing in a man whose life has been a struggle with
+Fortune and Fate. The individual in question, whom his shipmates called
+Dalston, was tall and tough and wiry. He had shown what he was and what he
+could do in less than a week from the time of his joining. At first he
+had been a passenger, and had lived away aft somewhere, no one could tell
+exactly where, for he did not dine in the saloon with the other
+passengers, and he looked above messing with the stewards. As the mate and
+he were much together it was supposed that Dalston made use of the first
+officer's cabin. The ship had encountered dirty weather from the very
+outset; head winds and choppy seas all the way down Channel, so that she
+was still 'kicking about off the coast'--this is how the seamen phrased
+it--when she ought to have been crossing the Bay or stretching away out
+into the broad Atlantic. She fared worse by far when she reached the Bay,
+having met with a gale of wind that blew most of her cloth to ribbons,
+carried away her bowsprit, and made hurdles of her bulwarks both forward
+and amidships. Worse than all, two men were blown from aloft while trying
+to reef a sail during a squall of more than hurricane violence. I say
+blown from aloft, and I say so advisedly, for the squall came on after
+they had gone up, a squall that even the men on deck could not stand
+against, a squall that levelled the very waves, and made the sea away to
+leeward--no one could see to windward--look like boiling milk.
+
+The storm began to go down immediately after the squall, and next day the
+weather was fine enough to make sail, and mend sail. But the ship was
+short-handed, for the skipper had made no provision against loss by
+accident. He was glad then when the mate informed him that the 'gentleman'
+Dalston was as good as any two men on board.
+
+'Send him to me,' said the skipper.
+
+'Good morning. Ahem, I hear, sir, you would be willing to assist in the
+working of the ship. May I ask on what terms?'
+
+'Certainly,' said Dalston. 'I'm going out to the Argentine, to buy a bit
+of land; well, naturally, money is some object to me. You see?'
+
+'I understand.'
+
+'Well, my terms are the return of my passage money and civility.'
+
+'Agreed; but why do you mention civility?'
+
+'Because I've heard you using rather rough language to your men. Now, if
+you forgot yourself so far as to call me a bad name I'd----'
+
+He paused, and there was a look in his eyes the captain hardly relished.
+
+'Well! What would you do?'
+
+'Why, I'd--retire to my cabin.'
+
+'All right then, I think we understand each other.'
+
+So Dalston was installed, and now dined forward. He became a favourite
+with his messmates. No one could tell a more thrilling and adventuresome
+yarn than Dalston, no one could sing a better song than himself or join
+more heartily in the chorus when another sang, and no one could work more
+cheerily on deck, or fly more quickly to tack a sheet.
+
+Smyth had been the big man in the forecastle before Dalston's day. But
+Smyth was eclipsed now, and I dare say did not like his rival. One day,
+near the quarter-deck, Smyth called Dalston an ugly name. Dalston's answer
+was a blow which sent the fellow reeling to leeward, where he lay
+stunned.
+
+'Have you killed him, Dalston?' said the captain.
+
+'Not quite, sir; but I could have.'
+
+'Well, Dalston, you are working for two men now; don't let us lose another
+hand, else you'll have to work for three.'
+
+Dalston laughed.
+
+Smyth gathered himself up and slunk away, but his look was one Dalston
+would have cause to remember.
+
+This good ship--Sevenoaks she was called, after the captain's wife's
+birthplace--had a long and a rough passage all along. The owners were
+Dutchmen, so it did not matter a very great deal. There was plenty of
+time, and the ship was worked on the cheap. Perhaps the wonder is she
+kept afloat at all, for at one period of the voyage she leaked so badly
+that the crew had to pump three hours out of every watch. Then she crossed
+a bank on the South American coast, and the men said she had sucked in a
+bit of seaweed, for she did not leak much after this.
+
+The longest voyage has an end, however, and when the Sevenoaks arrived at
+Buenos Ayres, Dalston bade his messmates adieu, had his passage money duly
+returned, and went on shore, happy because he had many more golden
+sovereigns to rattle than he had expected.
+
+Dalston went to a good hotel, found out all about the trains, and next day
+set out, in company with a waiter who had volunteered to be his escort, to
+purchase a proper outfit--only light clothes, a rifle, a good revolver,
+and a knife or two to wear in his belt, for he was going west to a rough
+country.
+
+In the evening, after the waiter and he had dined well at another hotel:
+
+'You go home now,' said Dalston; 'I'm going round to have a look at the
+town,'
+
+'Take care of yourself,' the waiter said.
+
+'No fear of me,' was the laughing reply.
+
+But that very night he was borne back to his inn, cut, bruised, and
+faint.
+
+And robbed of all his gold.
+
+'Who has done this?' said the waiter, aghast at his friend's appearance.
+
+'Smyth!' That was all the reply.
+
+Dalston lay for weeks between life and death. Then he came round almost at
+once, and soon started away on his journey. The waiter--good-natured
+fellow--had lent him money to carry him to Mendoza.
+
+But Dalston's adventures were not over yet.
+
+He arrived at Villa Mercedes well and hopeful, and was lucky enough to
+secure a passage in the diligence about to start under mounted escort to
+Mendoza. After a jolting ride of days, the like of which he had never been
+used to in the old country, the ancient-looking coach had completed
+three-quarters of the journey, and the rest of the road being considered
+safe the escort was allowed to go on its way to the frontier.
+
+They had not departed two hours, however, before the travellers were
+attacked, the driver speared, and the horses captured. The only passenger
+who made the slightest resistance was Dalston. He was speedily
+overpowered, and would have been killed on the spot had not the _cacique_
+of the party whom Dalston had wounded interfered and spared his life.
+
+Spared his life! But for what? He did not know. Some of the passengers
+were permitted to go free, the rest were killed. He alone was mounted on
+horseback, his legs tied with thongs and his horse led by an Indian.
+
+All that night and all next day his captors journeyed on, taking, as far
+as Dalston could judge, a south-west course. His sufferings were extreme.
+His legs were swollen, cut, and bleeding; his naked shoulders--for they
+had stripped him almost naked--burned and blistered with the sun; and
+although his tongue was parched and his head drooping wearily on his
+breast, no one offered him a mouthful of water.
+
+He begged them to kill him. Perhaps the _cacique_, who was almost a white
+man, understood his meaning, for he grinned in derision and pointed to his
+own bullet-wounded arm. The _cacique_ knew well there were sufferings
+possible compared to which death itself would be as pleasure.
+
+When the Indians at last went into camp--which they did but for a
+night--he was released, but guarded; a hunk of raw guanaco meat was thrown
+to him, which he tried to suck for the juices it contained.
+
+Next day they went on and on again, over a wild pampa land now, with here
+and there a bush or tussock of grass or thistles, and here and there a
+giant ombu-tree. His ankles were more painful than ever, his shoulders
+were raw, the horse he rode was often prodded with a spear, and he too
+was wounded at the same time. Once or twice the _cacique_, maddened by the
+pain of his wound, rushed at Dalston with uplifted knife, and the wretched
+prisoner begged that the blow might fall.
+
+Towards evening they reached a kind of hill and forest land, where the
+flowering cacti rose high above the tallest spear. Then they came to a
+ruin. Indians here were in full force, horses dashed to and fro, and it
+was evident from the bustle and stir that they were on the war-path, and
+soon either to attack or be attacked.
+
+The prisoner was now roughly unhorsed and cruelly lashed to a tree, and
+left unheeded by all. For a moment or two he felt grateful for the shade,
+but his position after a time became painful in the extreme. At night-fall
+all the Indians left, and soon after the sufferings of the poor wretch
+grew more dreadful than pen can describe. He was being slowly eaten alive
+by myriads of insects that crept and crawled or flew; horrid spiders with
+hairy legs and of enormous size ran over his neck and naked chest,
+loathsome centipedes wriggled over his shoulders and face and bit him, and
+ants covered him black from head to feet. Towards dusk a great jaguar went
+prowling past, looked at him with green fierce eyes, snarled low, and went
+on. Vultures alighted near him, but they too passed by; they could wait.
+Then it was night, and many of the insect pests grew luminous. They
+flitted and danced before his eyes till tortured nature could bear no
+more, and insensibility ended his sufferings for a time.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Indians must have thought that, although their attack on our
+_estancia_ had failed, we were too weak or too frightened to pursue them.
+They did not know Moncrieff. Wounded though he was, he had issued forth
+from behind the ramparts with thirty well-armed and splendidly-mounted
+men. They followed the enemy up for seven long hours, and succeeded in
+teaching them such a lesson that they have never been seen in that
+district since.
+
+Towards noon we were riding homewards, tired and weary enough now, when
+Donald suggested our visiting the old Jesuit ruin, and so we turned our
+horses' heads in that direction.
+
+Donald had ridden on before, and as I drew near I heard him cry, 'Oh,
+Moncrieff, come quickly! Here is some poor fellow lashed to the
+ombu-tree!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+FAREWELL TO THE SILVER WEST.
+
+
+We cut the man's cords of thongs, we spread rugs on the grass and laid him
+gently down, then bathed his poor body with wine, and poured a little down
+his throat.
+
+In about half an hour the wretched being we had thought dead slowly raised
+himself on his elbow and gazed at _me_ as well as his swollen eyes would
+permit him. His lips moved as if to speak, but no intelligible sound
+escaped them. The recollection dawned on my mind all at once, and in that
+sadly-distorted face I discovered traces of the man who had wrought us so
+much sorrow and evil.
+
+I took his hand in mine.
+
+'Am I right?' I said. 'Are you Duncan M'Rae?'
+
+He nodded drowsily, closed his eyes again, and lay back.
+
+We cut branches from the ombu-tree, tied them together with the thongs
+that had bound the victim's limbs, and so made a litter. On this we placed
+rugs and laid the man; and between two mules he was borne by the Gauchos
+slowly homewards to the _estancias_. Poor wretch! he had expected to come
+here all but a conqueror, and in a position to dictate his own terms--he
+arrived a dying man.
+
+Our _estancia_ for many weeks was now turned almost into a hospital, for
+even those Indians who had crept wounded into the bush, preferring to die
+at the sides of hedges to falling into our hands, we had brought in and
+treated with kindness, and many recovered.
+
+All the dead we could find we buried in the humble little graveyard on the
+braeside. We buried them without respect of nationality, only a few feet
+of clay separating the white man's grave from that of his Indian foe.
+
+'It matters little,' said Moncrieff. 'where one rests,
+
+                "For still and peaceful is the grave,
+                  Where, life's vain tumults past,
+                The appointed house, by Heaven's decree,
+                  Receives us all at last."'
+
+Both Dugald and Archie made excellent patients, and Flora and Aileen the
+best of nurses. But _the_ nurse over even these was old Jenny. She was
+hospital superintendent, and saw to all the arrangements, even making the
+poultices and spreading the salves and plasters with her own hands.
+
+'My mither's a ma_rr_vel at he_rr_bs!' said Moncrieff over and over again,
+when he saw the old lady busy at work.
+
+There was one patient, and only one, whom old Jenny did not nurse. This
+was Duncan himself. For him Townley did all his skill could suggest, and
+was seldom two consecutive hours away from the room where he lay.
+
+In spite of all this it was evident that the ex-poacher was sinking fast.
+
+Then came a day when Moncrieff, Archie, and myself were called into the
+dying man's apartment, and heard him make the fullest confession of all
+his villainy, and beg for our forgiveness with the tears roiling down his
+wan, worn face.
+
+Yes, we forgave him willingly.
+
+May Heaven forgive him too!
+
+At the time of his confession he was strong enough to read over and sign
+the document that Townley placed before him. He told Townley too the
+addresses of the men who had assisted him in the old vault at the ruined
+kirk in Coila.
+
+And Duncan had seemed brighter and calmer for several days after this. But
+he told us he had no desire to live now.
+
+Then, one morning the change came, and so he sank and died.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was several months before we could make up our minds to leave 'Our Home
+in the Silver West.' Indeed, there was considerable preparation to be made
+for the long homeward voyage that was before us; besides, Townley had no
+inclination to hurry matters now that he felt sure of victory.
+
+Victory was not even yet a certainty, however. The estate of Coila was
+well worth fighting for. Was there not the possibility, the bare
+possibility, that the solicitors or advocates of Le Roi, or the M'Rae, who
+now held the castle and glen, might find some fatal flaw in the evidence
+which Townley had spent so much time and care in working out and
+collecting?
+
+It was not at all probable. In fact, despite the blood-feud, that ancient
+family folly, I believed that M'Rae would act the part of a gentleman.
+
+'If,' said Townley to me one day, as we walked for almost the last time in
+the beautiful gardens around Moncrieff's mansion-house, 'we have anything
+to fear, I believe it is from the legal advisers of the present
+"occupier"'--Townley would not say 'owner'--'of the estate. These men, you
+know, Murdoch, can hardly expect to be _our_ advocates. They are well
+aware that if they lose hold of Coila now the title-deeds thereof will
+never again rest in the fireproof safes of their offices.'
+
+'I am afraid,' I said, 'you have but a poor opinion of Edinburgh
+advocates.'
+
+'Not so, Murdoch, not so. But,' he added, meaningly 'I have lived longer
+in life than you, and I have but a poor opinion of human nature.'
+
+'I suppose,' I said, 'that the M'Rae will know nothing of what is coming
+till our arrival on Scottish shores!'
+
+'On the contrary,' answered Townley; 'although it may really seem like
+playing into our opponent's hands, I have written a friendly letter to the
+M'Rae, and have told him to be prepared; that I have irrefragable
+evidence--mind, I do not particularize--that you, Murdoch M'Crimman, are
+the true and only proprietor of the estates of Coila. I want him to see
+and feel that I am treating him as the man of honour I believe him to be,
+and that the only thing we really desire is justice to all concerned.'
+
+I smiled, and could not help saying, 'Townley, my best of friends, what an
+excellent advocate you would have made!'
+
+Townley smiled in turn.
+
+'Say, rather,' he replied, 'what an excellent detective I should have
+made! But, after all, Murdoch, it may turn out that there is a spice of
+selfishness in all I am doing.'
+
+'I do not believe a word of it, Townley.'
+
+Townley only laughed, and looked mysterious.
+
+'Hold on a little,' he said; 'don't be too quick to express your
+judgment.'
+
+'I will wait, then,' I answered; 'but really I cannot altogether
+understand you.'
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Perhaps nothing shows true physical courage better than the power to say
+'Farewell' apparently unmoved. It is a kind of courage, however, that is
+very rare indeed, and all sorts of stratagems have been adopted to soften
+the grief of parting. I am not sure that I myself was not guilty of
+adopting one of these on the morning we left that pleasant home by the
+lake.
+
+'I'm not going to say "farewell" at all,' I insisted, as I shook hands
+with Irish Aileen and poor old Jenny, Moncrieff's 'marvellous mither.'
+'I'm coming out again to see you all as soon as ever I can get settled. Do
+you think I could leave this beautiful country entirely, without spending
+at least a few more years in it? Not I! And even if I do succeed in
+getting old Coila back once more--even that, mind, is uncertain--I sha'n't
+quite give up Coila New. So _au revoir_, Moncrieff; _au revoir_!'
+
+Then, turning to Jenny, '_Au revoir_, Jenny,' I said.
+
+'Guid-bye, laddie, and God be wi' ye. I canna speak French. I've tried a
+word or twa mair than once, and nearly knocked my jaws out o' the joint;
+so I'll just say "Guid-bye." Lang, lang ere you can come back to Coila New
+puir old Jenny's bones will be in the mools.'
+
+I felt a big lump in my throat just then, and was positively grateful when
+Bombazo strutted up dressed in full uniform.
+
+'_A dios_', he said; 'my friend, _a dios_. And now you have but to say the
+word, and if you have the least fear of being molested by Indians, my
+trusty sword is at your service, and I will gladly escort you as far as
+Villa Mercedes.'
+
+It is needless to say that I declined this truly heroic offer.
+
+Our party--the departing one--consisted of mother, aunt, Townley, Archie,
+and myself. My sister and my brothers came many miles on the road with us;
+then we bade them good-bye, and I felt glad when that was over.
+
+But Moncrieff's convoy was a truly Scottish one. He and his good men never
+thought of turning back till they had seen us safely on board the train,
+and rapidly being whirled away southwards.
+
+As long as I could see this honest settler he was waving his broad bonnet
+in the air, and--I felt sure of this--commending us all to a kind
+Providence.
+
+The vessel in which we took passage was a steamer that bore us straight to
+the Clyde. Our voyage was a splendid one; in fact, I believe we were all
+just a little sorry when it was finished.
+
+Landing there in the Broomielaw on a cold forenoon in early spring would
+have possessed but little of interest for any of us--so full were our
+minds with the meeting that was before us, the meeting of M'Crimman and
+M'Rae--only we received a welcome that, being all so unexpected, caused
+tears of joy to spring to my eyes. For hardly was the gangway thrust on
+board from the quay ere more than twenty sturdy Highlanders, who somehow
+had got possession of it, came rushing and shouting on board. I knew every
+face at once, though some were changed--with illness, years, or sorrow.
+
+Perhaps few such scenes had ever before been witnessed on the Broomielaw,
+for those men were arrayed in the full Scottish costume and wore the
+M'Crimman tartan, and their shouts of joy might have been heard a good
+half-mile off, despite the noises of the great city.
+
+How they had heard of our coming it never occurred to me to inquire.
+Suffice it to say that here they were, and I leave the reader to guess the
+kind of welcome they gave us.
+
+No, nothing would satisfy them short of escorting us to our hotel.
+
+Our carriages, therefore, to please these kindly souls from Coila, were
+obliged to proceed but slowly, for five pipers marched in front, playing
+the bold old air of 'The March of the Cameron Men,' while the rest, with
+drawn claymores, brought up the rear.
+
+On the very next day Townley, Archie, and I received a message from M'Rae
+himself, announcing that he would gladly meet us at the Royal Hotel in
+Edinburgh. We were to bring no advocate with us, the letter advised; if
+any dispute arose, then, and not till then, would be the time to call in
+the aid of the law.
+
+I confess that I entered M'Rae's room with a beating heart. How would he
+receive us?
+
+We found him quietly smoking a cigar and gazing out of the window.
+
+But he turned with a kindly smile towards us as soon as we entered, and
+the next minute we were all seated round the table, and business--_the_
+business--was entered into.
+
+M'Rae listened without a word. He never even moved a muscle while Townley
+told all his long story, or rather read it from paper after paper, which
+he took from his bag. The last of these papers was Duncan's own
+confession, with Archie's signature and mine as witnesses alongside
+Moncrieff's.
+
+He opened his lips at last.
+
+'This is your signature, and you duly attest all this?'
+
+He put the question first to Archie and then to me.
+
+Receiving a reply in the affirmative, it was but natural that I should
+look for some show of emotion in M'Rae's face. I looked in vain. I have
+never seen more consummate coolness before nor since. Indeed, it was a
+coolness that alarmed me.
+
+And when he rose from the table after a few minutes of apparently
+engrossing thought, and walked directly towards a casket that stood on the
+writing-table, I thought that after all our cause was lost.
+
+In that casket, I felt sure, lay some strange document that should utterly
+undo all Townley's work of years.
+
+M'Rae is now at the table. He opens the casket, and for a moment looks
+critically at its contents.
+
+I can hear my heart beating. I'm sure I look pale with anxiety.
+
+Now M'Rae puts his hand inside and quietly takes out--a fresh cigar.
+
+Then, humming a tune the while, he brings the casket towards Townley, and
+bids him help himself.
+
+Townley does as he is told, but at the same time bursts into a hearty
+laugh.
+
+'Mr. M'Rae,' he says, 'you are the coolest man that ever I met. I do
+believe that if you were taken out to be shot--'
+
+'Stay,' said M'Rae, 'I _was_ once. I was tried for a traitor--tried for a
+crime in France called "Treason," that I was as guiltless of as an unborn
+babe--and condemned.'
+
+'And what did you do?'
+
+'Some one on the ground handed me a cigar, and--I lit it.
+
+'Nay, my dear friends, I have lost my case here. Indeed, I never, it would
+seem, had one.
+
+'M'Crimman,' he continued, shaking me by the hand, 'Coila is yours.'
+
+'Strathtoul,' I answered, 'is our blood feud at an end?'
+
+'It is,' was the answer; and once again hand met hand across the table.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Need I tell of the home-coming of the M'Crimmans of Coila? Of the clansmen
+who met us in the glen and marched along with us? Of the cheering strains
+of music that re-echoed from every rock? Of the flags that fluttered over
+and around our Castle Coila? Of the bonfires that blazed that night on
+every hill, and cast their lurid light across the darkling lake? Or of the
+tears my mother shed when, looking round the tartan drawing-room, the
+cosiest in all the castle, she thought of father, dead and gone? No, for
+some things are better left to the reader's imagination.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+I throw down my pen with a sigh of relief.
+
+I think I have finished my story; my noble deerhound thinks so too. He
+gets slowly up from the hearthrug, conies towards me, and places his
+honest head on my arm, but his eyes are fixed on mine.
+
+It is not patting that he wants, nor petting either.
+
+'Come out now, master,' he seems to say, speaking with soft brown eyes and
+wagging tail; 'come out, master; mount your fleetest horse, and let us
+have a glorious gallop across the hills. See how the sun shines and
+glitters on grass, on leaves and lake! While you have been writing there
+day after day, I, your faithful dog, have been languishing. Come, master,
+come!'
+
+And we go together.
+
+When I return, refreshed, and run up stairs to the room in the tower, I
+find dear auntie there. She has been reading my manuscript.
+
+'There is,' she says, 'only one addition to make.'
+
+'Name it, auntie,' I say; 'it is not yet too late.'
+
+But she hesitates.
+
+'It is almost a secret,' she says at last, bending down and smoothing the
+deerhound.
+
+'A secret, auntie? Ha, ha!' I laugh. 'I have it, auntie! I have it!'
+
+And I kiss her there and then.
+
+'It is Townley's secret and yours. He has proposed, and you are to--'
+
+But auntie has run out of the room.
+
+And now, come to think of it, there is something to add to all this.
+
+Can you guess _my_ secret, reader mine?
+
+Irene, my darling Irene and I, Murdoch M'Crimman, are also to be--
+
+But, there, you have guessed my secret, as I guessed auntie's.
+
+And just let me ask this: Could any better plan have been devised of
+burying the hatchet betwixt two rival Highland clans, and putting an end
+for ever to a blood feud?
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
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+End of Project Gutenberg's Our Home in the Silver West, by Gordon Stables
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