Mr. Alston stood by laughing at the scene, and awaited Ernest’s return. Presently he came strolling back, not having caught Mazooku. Indeed, it would not have greatly mattered if he had; for, as that swarthy gentleman very well knew, great indeed must be the provocation that could induce Ernest to touch a native. It was a thing to which he had an almost unconquerable aversion, in the same way that he objected to the word “nigger” as applied to a people who, whatever their faults may be, are, as a rule, gentlemen in the truest sense of the word. As he came strolling down the path towards him, his face a little flushed with the exertion, Mr. Alston thought to himself that Ernest was growing into a very handsome fellow. The tall frame, narrow at the waist and broad at the shoulders, the eloquent dark eyes, which so far surpass the loveliest gray or blue, the silken hair, which curled over his head like that on a Grecian statue, the curved lips, the quick intelligence and kindly smile that lit the whole face—all these things helped to make his appearance not so much handsome as charming, and to women captivating to a dangerous extent. His dress, too—which consisted of riding-breeches, boots and spurs, a white waistcoat and linen coat, with a very broad soft felt hat looped up at one side, so as to throw the face into alternate light and shadow—helped the general effect considerably. Altogether Ernest was a pretty fellow in those days. Jeremy was lounging on an easy-chair in the verandah, in company with the boy Roger Alston, and intensely interested in watching a furious battle between two lines of ants, black and red, who had their homes somewhere in the stonework. For a long while the issue of the battle remained doubtful, victory inclining, if anything, to the side of the thin red line, when suddenly, from the entrance to the nest of the black ants, there emerged a battalion of giants—great fellows, at least six times the size of the others—who fell upon the red ants and routed them, taking many prisoners. Then followed the most curious spectacle, namely, the deliberate execution of the captive red ants, by having their heads bitten off by the great black soldiers. Jeremy and Roger knew what was coming very well, for these battles were of frequent occurrence, and the casualties among the red ants simply frightful. On this occasion they determined to save the prisoners, which was effected by dipping a match in some of the nicotine at the bottom of a pipe, and placing it in front of the black giants. The ferocious insects would thereupon abandon their captives, and, rushing at the strange intruder, hang on like bulldogs till the poison did its work, and they dropped off senseless, to recover presently and stagger off home, holding their legs to their antennas and exhibiting every other symptom of frightful headache.