“Well, as my memory takes me back, thet was a most affectin’ walk home to the little town where she lived.  But she wasn’t troo to me, an’ married another feller.  I was too much a sport to kill him.  But thet low-down trick rankled in my breast.  Gurls is strange.  I’ve never stopped wonderin’ how any gurl who has been hugged an’ kissed by one man could marry another.  But matoor experience teaches me thet sich is the case.”

The cowboys roared; Helen and Mrs. Beck and Edith laughed till they cried; Madeline found repression absolutely impossible; Dorothy sat hugging her knees, her horror at the story no greater than at Monty’s unmistakable reference to her and to the fickleness of women; and Castleton for the first time appeared to be moved out of his imperturbability, though not in any sense by humor.  Indeed, when he came to notice it, he was dumfounded by the mirth.

“By Jove! you Americans are an extraordinary people,” he said.  “I don’t see anything blooming funny in Mr. Price’s story of his adventure.  By Jove! that was a bally warm occasion.  Mr. Price, when you speak of being frightened for the only time in your life, I appreciate what you mean.  I have experienced that.  I was frightened once.”

“Dook, I wouldn’t hev thought it of you,” replied Monty.  “I’m sure tolerable curious to hear about it.”

Madeline and her friends dared not break the spell, for fear that the Englishman might hold to his usual modest reticence.  He had explored in Brazil, seen service in the Boer War, hunted in India and Africa—­matters of experience of which he never spoke.  Upon this occasion, however, evidently taking Monty’s recital word for word as literal truth, and excited by it into a Homeric mood, he might tell a story.  The cowboys almost fell upon their knees in their importunity.  There was a suppressed eagerness in their solicitations, a hint of something that meant more than desire, great as it was, to hear a story told by an English lord.  Madeline divined instantly that the cowboys had suddenly fancied that Castleton was not the dense and easily fooled person they had made such game of; that he had played his part well; that he was having fun at their expense; that he meant to tell a story, a lie which would simply dwarf Monty’s.  Nels’s keen, bright expectation suggested how he would welcome the joke turned upon Monty.  The slow closing of Monty’s cavernous smile, the gradual sinking of his proud bearing, the doubt with which he began to regard Castleton—­these were proofs of his fears.

“I have faced charging tigers and elephants in India, and charging rhinos and lions in Africa,” began Castleton, his quick and fluent speech so different from the drawl of his ordinary conversation; “but I never was frightened but once.  It will not do to hunt those wild beasts if you are easily balled up.  This adventure I have in mind happened in British East Africa, in Uganda.  I was out with