is house and heart; but he had tried authority and
tenderness by turns so long without any good effect, that he had become
sore perplexed, and, surrounding her with cautious watchfulness as he
best might, left her in the main to her own guidance and the merciful
influences which Heaven might send down to direct her footsteps.

Meantime the boy grew up to youth and early manhood through a strange
succession of adventures. He had been at school at Buenos Ayres,--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 a