ed and thought it
was all up, for what a fool I should look if he woke and discovered me.
But it was all right: the music continued.

I led the horse for some little distance, then mounting, I rode him down
alongside the fence for about a mile until I came to a fresh gap in it.

Horror! Even though it was but what my suspicions had depicted, the
realisation came as a shock to me. "The--! The--!" To repeat my
expressions would edify no one.

Guided by the signal-lights at the station, I moved along at a smart
trot and soon recognised the quick tramping of animals ahead. Then I
drew back, and as the day was just breaking, I drew round to the west
side of the cavalcade, so that I might see without being seen. Yes, sure
enough, there were six military chacots outlined against the great sky
and a troop of animals ahead of them.

I halted to let them get well away from me, and then, with rage and
hatred in my heart, swearing vengeance all the while, I galloped as hard
as ever I could to the estancia, to impatiently await the uprising of my
boss.

"We must wire, or one of us must go to the Governor in Santa Fe at
once," I urged. But what was my disgust to be met with but a quiet smile
of amusement!

"Not if I know it," said he. "Why, good God, man, do you want to have
all our throats cut? This man is a personal friend of the Governor's,
and what satisfaction do you think we are likely to get out of that?"

"Then let us go to the Consul, the British Minister, or even to the
President of the Republic?"

A quiet smile with a negatory shake of the head was the only answer.

A fortnight later I sought him in his private sitting-room and found the
Chief of Police sitting in an easy-chair.

"Ha! ha! ha! Don Ernesto. So you caught us, did you? Well, it was worth
the fun. I never laughed so much in all my life as when I awoke that
morning and found that you had given me the slip!"

A VISIT TO THE NORTHERN CHACO.

After three years on an estancia in the vast monotonous, treeless, but
most fertile plains of the Central Argentine, under scorching sun,
driving rains, and biting wind, one feels that one would like to see a
river sometimes, animal life and more congenial surroundings; and so I
determined to visit the Northern Chaco, that enormous tract of land
which lies North of Santa Fe and stretches right away for many hundreds
of miles to North, East, and West.

Leaving Rosario by the night express, one crosses th