venge. It is man's nature, as it is
the river's nature to flow down hill."

"It is man's fallen, not his first, nature," said Pedro. "Things were
as bad in England once. They are not quite so bad now. God's law has
made the difference. However, we must take things here as we find them,
and I'm sorry to think that up to this point my mission has been a
failure. Indeed, the last effort, as you know, nearly cost me my life."

"And what will you now do?" asked Tiger.

"I will visit a few more places in the hope that some of the people may
support us. After that, I'll mount and away over the Pampas to Buenos
Ayres; see the colonel, and deliver Manuela to her father."

"The white-haired chief?" asked Tiger.

"Even so," replied Pedro.

During the foregoing conversation Quashy had thrust his fat nose down on
a plank and gone to sleep, while Lawrence and Manuela, having nothing
better to do, taught each other Spanish and English respectively! And,
strange though it may appear, it is a fact that Manuela, with all her
quick-witted intelligence, was wonderfully slow at learning English. To
Lawrence's intense astonishment and, it must be confessed, to his no
small disappointment, the Indian maiden not only made the same blunders
over and over again, and seemed to be incapable of making progress, but
even laughed at her own stupidity. This somewhat cooled his admiration
of her character, which coolness afforded him satisfaction rather than
the reverse, as going far to prove that he was not really, (as how could
he be?) _in love_ with the brown-skinned, uneducated, half-savage girl,
but only much impressed with her amiable qualities. Poor fellow, he was
much comforted by these thoughts, because, had it been otherwise, how
terrible would have been his fate!--either, on the one hand, to marry
her and go and dwell with her savage relations--perhaps be compelled to
paint his visage scarlet with arabesque devices in charcoal, and go on
the war-path against the white man; or, on the other hand, to introduce
his Indian bride into the _salons_ of civilisation, with the certainty
of beholding the sneer of contempt on the face of outraged society; with
the probability of innumerable violations of the rules of etiquette, and
the possibility of Manuela exhibiting the squaw's preference for the
floor to a chair, fingers to knives and forks, and--pooh! the thing was
absurd, _utterly_ out of the question!

Towards sunset they came