can easily overtake him on the _bayo_.'

The Englishmen had learned to call their horses after their different
shades of colour, in the usual Argentine way; the one Peter spoke of
was a dun-coloured brute, three-parts English-bred.

Toffy protested, but Peter was obstinate. He had been worried and
unsettled all day, and he believed that it would be a good thing to let
off steam by a ride over the camp; besides which, Toffy's letters had
taken a good two hours to write, and Peter guessed they were important.
He could easily overtake Purvis with them before he should reach La
Dorada.

'I 'll sit up and trim the lamp like a faithful wife, until you
return,' said Toffy.

'You 'll go to bed, you ass!' shouted Peter. He was outside the house
fastening the girths of the _bayo_ as he spoke, and now he swung
himself into the saddle and sent his horse forward with the
characteristic quick movement of a hunting man.

The long ride in the moonlight did him good. The intensity of the
clear light had something strange and wonderful in it, touched with
unearthliness. Night with its thousand secrets whispered about him,
and he felt very small and insignificant riding alone under the great
silvery dome of heaven, hushed with a sense of the far-away and with
the mystery of its innumerable stars. Now and then he came across a
herd of cattle standing feeding in the short grass of the camp, their
shadows showing black beside them, or a frightened tropillo of horses
would start at the sound of the _bayo's_ hoofs. He took a short-cut
through the mimosa woods, where the ground was uneven. His horse
picked its way unfalteringly as it cantered forward, though Peter had
to stoop very often to save his head from touching the low branches of
the trees. Overhead some parakeets, disturbed in their slumbers, flew
from bough to bough, their green wings and tiny red heads turning to
strange colours in the moonlight. He got away through one of the rough
gates of the estancia out into the open camp again, where the earth was
full of a vast stillness about him, and the stars pulsated overhead to
the unspeakable music of the night.

And now he began to expect every minute to overtake Purvis, and he
strained his eyes eagerly for the solitary figure of the horseman. He
knew he was riding a much better horse than the one Purvis was on, and
still he failed to come up with him. The track on which he rode was
clear enough, and his horse knew the