Drumpipes yawned frankly. “It’s time you turned in, Davie,” he remarked. “The lack of sleep aye makes you silly. I’ve no wish to ridicule your subject, as you call her. It’s not at all necessary. You’ll see for yourself how ridiculous it is in the morning. It merely occurred to me that if we must talk of women, I’d something in my mind worth the while--no strolling yellow-headed vagrant picked up at random on a bridge, but a gentlewoman in education and means and manners. Man, you should see her teeth when she smiles!” “Archie,” replied David, solemnly, “I should think your own better instincts might prompt you to recall that you’ve only been a widower four months.” “Four months?--Four hundred years!” cried the Earl, stoutly. He reached round and replenished his glass. “It is with the greatest difficulty that I recall any detail of the matrimonial state. Already the memory of my first pair of breeks is infinitely fresher to me than any of it. In another week or so the last vestige of a recollection of it will be clean gone. And a good riddance, too!” “It was an ill thought to remind you of it,” admitted Mosscrop. “Devil take all women--or all but one----” “And she black-haired,” interposed the Earl. “Deuce seize them all but two, then, for the rest of the night. Where have you been the long year-and-a-half, Archie?” “Just looking about me,” replied the other, with nonchalance. “Bechuanaland for a time, but it’s sore overrated. Then I had a shy at the Gaboon country, but there’s a conspiracy among the niggers to protect the gorilla--I think he’s a sort of uncle of theirs--and a white man can do no good by himself. I thought there might be some decent sport over in Brazil, where they advertised a revolution on, and I tried to travel around with the rebels for a while, but it wasn’t up to much. You brought down an occasional half-breed Portugueser with epaulettes on, but you couldn’t eat ’em, and you didn’t want ’em stuffed at any price; and besides, when you came to find out, the whole war was merely a fight between two firms of coffee-traders in New York, and that wasn’t good enough. I tell you what, though,” he went on, with more animation, “Arizona is damned good fun. I haven’t seen anything better anywhere than a good, square cattle-lifter hunt. They got up three or four, just on my account, I imagine, after they found I could ride, and shoot at a gallop. The charm of the thing is that there’s no close season for cattle-thieves, and they’re game to the death, I tell you. I got potted twice, and once they let daylight straight through me. I had to lie up for repairs for nearly three weeks. They went and hung the fellow while I was in bed. We had words about that. I insisted it wasn’t sportsmanlike--and that they ought to have given him a horse, and then sprung him out of a trap or something of that sort, and let him have a run for his money, the same as we do with rabbits that the ferrets bring up.