gs, 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