ng my astonishment at the exhibition of Yambo's grief. Here was a
man, once one of the cruellest and most remorseless of desert wanderers,
whose spear and knife had many a time and oft drunk human blood, shedding
tears over the body of his poor dog! Nor would he leave the place until he
had dug a grave, and, placing the bleeding remains therein, sadly and
slowly covered them up.

But Yambo would meet his faithful hound again in the happy hunting-grounds
somewhere beyond the sky. That, at least, was Yambo's creed, and who
should dare deny him the comfort and joy the thought brings him!

* * * * *

It was now the sweetest season of all the year in the hills--the Indian
summer. The fierce heat had fled to the north, fled beyond the salt plains
of San Juan, beyond the wild desert lands of Rioja and arid sands of
Catamarca, lingering still, perhaps, among the dreamland gardens of
Tucuman, and reaching its eternal home among the sun-kissed forests of
leafy Brazil and Bolivia. The autumn days were getting shorter, the sky
was now more soft, the air more cool and balmy, while evening after
evening the sun went down amidst a fiery magnificence of colouring that
held us spellbound and silent to behold.

A month and more in the hermit's glen! We could hardly believe it. How
quickly the time had flown! How quickly time always does fly when one is
happy!

And now our tents are struck, our mules are laden. We have but to say
good-bye to the solitary being who has made the garden in the wilderness
his home, and go on our way.

'Good-bye!'

'Good-bye!'

Little words, but sometimes _so_ hard to say.

We had actually begun to like--ay, even to love the hermit, and we had not
found it out till now. But I noticed tears in Dugald's eye, and I am not
quite sure my own were not moist as we said farewell.

We glanced back as we rode away to wave our hands once more. The hermit
was leaning against a tree. Just then the sun came struggling out from
under a cloud, the shadow beneath the tree darkened and darkened, till it
swallowed him up.

And we never saw the hermit more.

-----

[15] The _Rhea Americana_.

CHAPTER XXII.

ADVENTURE WITH A TIGER.

Two years more have passed away, four years in all, since we first set
foot in the Silver West. What happy, blithesome years they had been, too!
Every day had brought its duties, every duty its pleasures as well. During
all this