with him some day.

The three passengers did not trouble to turn in when night fell, but
lay on deck and leaned against bales of wool until the boat arrived at
the little port of La Dorada at two o'clock in the morning. Moonlight
and dawnlight lent an air of mystery and beauty to the solitary
country; there was a sort of vast stillness over the land, as the boat
glided to her moorings in the early morning. Nothing could be heard
but the chirping of a bicho, or the desolate neigh of one of the horses
that awaited them by the little quay. The stars shone and twinkled
overhead, and the air was clear and cool and marvellously still. Black
John woke the travellers up and told them it was time to disembark; and
Purvis, to whom sleep seemed quite unnecessary, was awake and ready to
give them a send-off.

'Anything I can do for you while you are out here,' he said to the two
friends as he bade them good-bye, 'I will do most willingly. I am
_passeando_ now, but I hope to be at my own place shortly, and will
ride over and see you. Ross has not been out here long, and perhaps
does not know so much about the country as I do.'

The Englishmen thanked him and mounted their horses, while their
luggage was put into a rough cart, and they then rode off in the
mysterious dawn across the great silent country to the little estancia
house amongst the paraiso trees.

Ross was a capital host, and as the only possible entertainment he
could offer his guests was work upon the estancia he gave them plenty
of it; and the out-of-door life, in spite of the heat and the want of
newspapers, the mosquitoes, and other minor ills, was full of interest
and touched with a sense of freedom and hardness.

Toffy was a man who could accommodate himself to every change of
circumstance. His present life suited him, and he had seldom been in
better health than in Argentine. He adopted Spanish phrases and spoke
them glibly, threw the lasso with the air of a strong man, and tried to
pick out a particular head of stock from the moving mass in the corral.
He chatted with the peons, hunted wild mares in the monte, and drank
cocktails as to the manner born. Ross had decided for an Argentine
style of dress. He wore a beard, and his hands were hard from the
strain of the lasso; but his old brown polo boots had been worn at
Hurlingham and Ranelagh, and were shapelier than were generally seen in
the corral. Ross was still at that enviable stage in life wh