yres,--had
quarrelled with his mother's relatives,--had run off to the Pampas, and
lived with the Gauchos;--had made friends with the Indians, and ridden
with them, it was rumored, in some of their savage forays,--had returned
and made up his quarrel,--had got money by inheritance or otherwise,--had
troubled the peace of certain magistrates,--had found it convenient to
leave the City of Wholesome Breezes for a time, and had galloped off on a
fast horse of his, (so it was said,) with some officers riding after him,
who took good care (but this was only the popular story) not to catch
him. A few days after this he was taking his ice on the Alameda of
Mendoza, and a week or two later sailed from Valparaiso for New York,
carrying with him the horse with which he had scampered over the Plains,
a trunk or two with his newly purchased outfit of, clothing and other
conveniences, and a belt heavy with gold and with a few Brazilian
diamonds sewed in it, enough in value to serve him for a long journey.

Dick Venner had seen life enough to wear out the earlier sensibilities of
adolescence. He was tired of worshipping or tyrannizing over the bistred
or umbered beauties of mingled blood among whom he had been living. Even
that piquant exhibition which the Rio de Mendoza presents to the amateur
of breathing sculpture failed to interest him. He was thinking of a
far-off village on the other side of the equator, and of the wild girl
with whom he used to play and quarrel, a creature of a different race
from these degenerate mongrels.

"A game little devil she was, sure enough!"--And as Dick spoke, he bared
his wrist to look for the marks she had left on it: two small white
scars, where the two small sharp upper teeth had struck when she flashed
at him with her eyes sparkling as bright as those glittering stones sewed
up in the belt he wore. "That's a filly worth noosing!" said Dick to
himself, as he looked in admiration at the sign of her spirit and
passion. "I wonder if she will bite at eighteen as she did at eight!
She shall have a chance to try, at any rate!"

Such was the self-sacrificing disposition with which Richard Venner,
Esq., a passenger by the Condor from Valparaiso, set foot upon his native
shore, and turned his face in the direction of Rockland, The Mountain,
and the mansion-house. He had heard something, from time to time, of his
New-England relatives, and knew that they were living together as he left
them. And