"He never hunts, because he has something better to do," retorted Bartholomew. "Ah, better?" murmured the Englishman, doubtfully. Bartholomew got up and took a chair which was nearer Fanny. "No--no tea," he said, as she made a motion towards a cup; then, without further explaining his change of position, he gave her a little smile. Dallas, who caught this smile on the wing, learned from it unexpectedly that there was a closer intimacy between his hostess and Bartholomew than he had suspected. "Bartholomew!" he thought, contemptuously. "Gray--spectacles--stout." Then suddenly recollecting the increasing plumpness of his own person, he drew in his out-stretched legs, and determined, from that instant, to walk fifteen miles a day. "Rod knows how to shoot, even though he doesn't hunt," said Bartholomew, addressing the Englishman. "I saw him once bring down a mad bull, who was charging directly upon an old man--the neatest sort of a hit." "He himself being in a safe place meanwhile," said Dallas. "On the contrary, he had to rush forward into an open field. If he had missed his aim by an eighth of an inch, the beast--a terrible creature--would have made an end of him." "And the poor old man?" said Eva. "He was saved, of course; he was a rather disreputable old darky. Another time Rod went out in a howling gale--the kind they have down there--to rescue two men whose boat had capsized in the bay. They were clinging to the bottom; no one else would stir; they said it was certain death; but Rod went out--he's a capital sailor--and got them in. I didn't see that myself, as I saw the bull episode; I was told about it." "By Rod?" said Dallas. "By one of the men he saved. As you've never been saved yourself, Dallas, you probably don't know how it feels." "He seems to be a modern Chevalier Bayard, doesn't he?" said good-natured Mark Ferguson. "He's modern, but no Bayard. He's a modern and a model pioneer--" "Pioneers! oh, pioneers!" murmured Gordon-Gray, half chanting it. None of the Americans recognized his quotation.