uck Cashel, while Linton was speaking, how effectually Maritana
herself, by one proud look, one haughty gesture, would have silenced
such flippant raillery; and he could not help feeling it a kind of
treason to their old friendship that he should listen to it in patient
endurance.

"Listen to me, amigo mio," said he, in a tone of earnest passion that
seemed almost estranged from his nature latterly,--"listen to me while
I tell you that in those faraway countries, whose people you regard with
such contemptuous pity, there are women--ay, young girls--whose daring
spirit would shame the courage of many of those fine gentlemen we spend
our lives with; and I, for one, have so much of the Indian in me, as to
think that courage is the first of virtues."

"I cannot help fancying," said Linton, with an almost imperceptible
raillery, "that there are other qualities would please me as well in a
wife or a mistress."

"I have no doubt of it--and suit you better, too," said Cashel,
savagely; then hastily correcting himself for his rude speech, he added,
"I believe, in good earnest, that you would as little sympathize
with that land and its people as I do with this. Ay, if you want a
confession, there's one for you. I'm longing to be back once more among
the vast prairies of the West, galloping free after the dark-backed
bisons, and strolling along in the silent forests. The enervation of
this life wearies and depresses me; worse than all, I feel that, with a
little more of it, I shall lose all energy and zest for that activity
of body, which, to men like myself, supplies the place of thought,--a
little more of it, and I shall sink into that languid routine where
dissipation supplies the only excitement."

"This is a mere passing caprice; a man who has wealth--"

"There it is," cried Cashel, interrupting him impetuously; "that is the
eternal burden of your song. As if wealth, in forestalling the necessity
for labor, did not, at the same time, deprive life of all the zeal of
enterprise. When I have stepped into my boat to board a Chilian frigate,
I have had a prouder throbbing at my heart than ever the sight of that
banker's check-book has given me. There's many a Gambusino in the Rocky
Mountains a happier--ay, and a finer fellow, too, than the gayest of
those gallants that ever squandered the gold _he_ quarried! But why go
on?--we are speaking in unknown tongues to each other."

The tone of irritation into which, as it seems unc