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 th