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 magnificen