'You sly old dog,' he says, 'to steal a march on your poor little brother thus!'
For a moment I am startled, mystified.
'Dugald,' I say, 'did I really kill that guanaco?'
'No one else did.'
'And you've only just come—only just this second? Well, I'm glad to hear it. It was after all a pure accident my shooting the beast. I did hold the rifle his way. I did draw the trigger——'
'Well, and the bullet did the rest, boy. Funny, you always kill by the merest chance! Ah, Murdoch, you're a better shot than I am, for all you won't allow it.'
Wandering still onwards and still upwards next day, through lonely glens and deep ravines, through cañons the sides of which were as perpendicular as walls, their flat green or brown bottoms sometimes scattered with huge boulders, casting shadows so dark in the sunlight that a 200 man or horse disappeared in them as if the earth had opened and swallowed him up, we came at length to a dell, or strath, of such charming luxuriance that it looked to us, amid all the barrenness of this dreary wilderness, like an oasis dropped from the clouds, or some sweet green glade where fairies might dwell.
I looked at my brother. The same thought must have struck each of us, at the same moment—Why not make this glen our habitat for a time?
'Oh!' cried Archie, 'this is a paradise!'
'Beautiful! lovely!' said Dugald. 'Suppose now—'