About this time it occurred to him also that there was an old accomplishment of his which he would be in danger of losing for want of practice, if he did not take some opportunity to try his hand and regain its cunning, if it had begun to be diminished by disuse.  For his first trial, he chose an evening when the moon was shining, and after the hour when the Rockland people were like to be stirring abroad.  He was so far established now that he could do much as he pleased without exciting remark.

The prairie horse he rode, the mustang of the Pampas, wild as he was, had been trained to take part in at least one exercise.  This was the accomplishment in which Mr. Richard now proposed to try himself.  For this purpose he sought the implement of which, as it may be remembered, he had once made an incidental use,—­the lasso, or long strip of hide with a slip-noose at the end of it.  He had been accustomed to playing with such a thong from his boyhood, and had become expert in its use in capturing wild cattle in the course of his adventures.  Unfortunately, there were no wild bulls likely to be met with in the neighborhood, to become the subjects of his skill.  A stray cow in the road, an ox or a horse in a pasture, must serve his turn,—­dull beasts, but moving marks to aim at, at any rate.

Never, since he had galloped in the chase over the Pampas, had Dick Venner felt such a sense of life and power as when he struck the long spurs into his wild horse’s flanks, and dashed along the road with the lasso lying like a coiled snake at the saddle-bow.  In skilful hands, the silent, bloodless noose, flying like an arrow, but not like that leaving a wound behind it,—­sudden as a pistol-shot, but without the telltale explosion,—­is one of the most fearful and mysterious weapons that arm the hand of man.  The old Romans knew how formidable, even in contest with a gladiator equipped with sword, helmet, and shield, was the almost naked retiarius, with his net in one hand and his three-pronged javelin in the other.  Once get a net over a man’s head, or a cord round his neck, or, what is more frequently done nowadays, bonnet him by knocking his hat down over his eyes, and he is at the mercy of his opponent.  Our soldiers who served against the Mexicans found this out too well.  Many a poor fellow has been lassoed by the fierce riders from the plains, and fallen an easy victim to the captor who had snared him in the fatal noose.

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 slue 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