Not far off lay the bones of a dead horse, with bits of hide adhering to them, shrivelled into mere parchment by the sun. All this I saw as in a camera-lucida, seated a little sideways on my horse, and thinking sadly that I, too, had looked my last on Bopicuá. It is not given to all men after a break of years to come back to the scenes of youth, and still find in them the same zest as of old. To return again to all the cares of life called civilised, with all its littlenesses, its newspapers all full of nothing, its sordid aims disguised under high-sounding nicknames, its hideous riches and its sordid poverty, its want of human sympathy, and, above all, its barbarous war brought on it by the folly of its rulers, was not just at that moment an alluring thought, as I felt the little “malacara” {201} that I rode twitching his bridle, striving to be off. When I had touched him with the spur he bounded forward and soon overtook the caballada, and the place which for so many months’ had been part of my life sank out of sight, just as an island in the Tropics fades from view as the ship leaves it, as it were, hull down. When we had passed into the great enclosure of La Pileta, and still four or five miles remained to go, we pressed the caballada into a long trot, certain that the danger of a stampede was past. Wonderful and sad it was to ride behind so many horses, trampling knee-high through the wild grasses of the Camp, snorting and biting at each other, and all unconscious that they would never more career across the plains. Strange and affecting, too, to see how those who had known each other all kept together in the midst of the great herd, resenting all attempts of their companions to separate them. A “tropilla” {202} that we had bought from a Frenchman called Leon, composed of five brown horses, had ranged itself around its bell mare, a fine chestnut, like a bodyguard. They fought off any of the other horses who came near her, and seemed to look at her both with affection and with pride. Two little bright bay horses, with white legs and noses, that were brothers, and what in Uruguay are known as “seguidores,” that is, one followed the other wherever it might go, ran on the outskirts of the herd. When either of them stopped to eat, its companion turned its head and neighed to it, when it came galloping up. Arena, our head man, riding beside me on a skewbald, looked at them, and, after dashing forward to turn a runaway, wheeled round his horse almost in the air and stopped it in a bound, so suddenly that for an instant they stood poised like an equestrian statue, looked at the “seguidores,” and remarked, “Patron, I hope one shell will kill them both in the Great War if they have got to die.” I did not answer, except to curse the Boches with all the intensity the Spanish tongue commands. The young law-student added his testimony, and we rode on in silence.