"
"An invalid?" I remarked.
Another long pause; then he shook his head and tapped his forehead
significantly; after which he resumed his mermaid task.
"Demented?" said I.
He elevated an eyebrow and shrugged his shoulders, but said nothing.
After a long silence, for I was anxious not to irritate him with too
much questioning, I ventured to remark:
"Well, they will not set the dogs on me, will they?"
He grinned, and said that it was an establishment without dogs.
I paid him for his information with a cigarette, which he took very
readily, and seemed to think smoking a pleasant relief after his
disentangling labours.
"An _estancia_ without dogs, and where the master has nothing to
say--that sounds strange," I remarked tentatively, but he puffed on
in silence.
"What is the name of the house?" I said, after remounting my horse.
"It is a house without a name," he replied; and after this rather
unsatisfactory interview I left him and slowly went on to the
_estancia_.
On approaching the house I saw that there had formerly been a large
plantation behind it, of which only a few dead stumps now remained,
the ditches that had enclosed them being now nearly obliterated. The
place was ruinous and overgrown with weeds. Dismounting, I led my horse
along a narrow path through a perfect wilderness of wild sunflowers,
horehound, red-weed, and thorn-apple, up to some poplar trees where
there had once been a gate, of which only two or three broken posts
remained standing in the ground.
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