But, imposing as the sight of the wild huntsmen of the Pampas might have been, Dick could not help laughing at the mock sublimity of his situation, as he tried his first experiment on an unhappy milky mother who had strayed from her herd and was wandering disconsolately along the road, laying the dust, as she went, with thready streams from her swollen, swinging udders.  “Here goes the Don at the windmill!” said Dick, and tilted full speed at her, whirling the lasso round his head as he rode.  The creature swerved to one side of the way, as the wild horse and his rider came rushing down upon her, and presently turned and ran, as only cows and—­it wouldn’t be safe to say it—­can run.  Just before he passed,—­at twenty or thirty feet from her,—­the lasso shot from his hand, uncoiling as it flew, and in an instant its loop was round her horns.  “Well cast!” said Dick, as he galloped up to her side and dexterously disengaged the lasso.  “Now for a horse on the run!”

He had the good luck to find one, presently, grazing in a pasture at the roadside.  Taking down the rails of the fence at one point, he drove the horse into the road and gave chase.  It was a lively young animal enough, and was easily roused to a pretty fast pace.  As his gallop grew more and more rapid, Dick gave the reins to the mustang, until the two horses stretched themselves out in their longest strides.  If the first feat looked like play, the one he was now to attempt had a good deal the appearance of real work.  He touched the mustang with the spur, and in a few fierce leaps found himself nearly abreast of the frightened animal he was chasing.  Once more he whirled the lasso round and round over his head, and then shot it forth, as the rattlesnake shoots his head from the loops against which it rests.  The noose was round the horse’s neck, and in another instant was tightened so as almost to stop his breath.  The prairie horse knew the trick of the cord, and leaned away from the captive, so as to keep the thong tensely stretched between his neck and the peak of the saddle to which it was fastened.  Struggling was of no use with a halter round his windpipe, and he very soon began to tremble and stagger,—­blind, no doubt, and with a roaring in his ears as of a thousand battle-trumpets,—­at any rate, subdued and helpless.  That was enough.  Dick loosened his lasso, wound it up again, laid it like a pet snake in a coil at his saddle-bow, turned his horse, and rode slowly along towards the mansion-house.

The place had never looked more stately and beautiful to him than as he now saw it in the moonlight.  The undulations of the land,—­the grand mountain-screen which sheltered the mansion from the northern blasts, rising with all its hanging forests and parapets of naked rock high towards the heavens,—­the ancient mansion, with its square chimneys, and bodyguard of old trees, and cincture of low walls with marble-pillared gateways,—­the fields, with their various coverings,—­the beds of flowers,—­the plots of turf, one with a gray column in its centre bearing a sun-dial on which the rays of the moon were idly shining, another with a white stone and a narrow ridge of turf,—­over all these objects, harmonized with all their infinite details into one fair whole by the moonlight, the prospective heir, as he deemed himself, looked with admiring eyes.