Our hearts were heavy in us that day, while we waited apprehensively
for the appearance of the man who would exercise such a tremendous
power over us and would stand between us and our parents, especially
our mother, who had ever been our shield and refuge from all pains and
troubles. Up till now they had acted on the principle that children
were best left to themselves, that the more liberty they had the
better it was for them. Now it almost looked as if they were turning
against us; but we knew that it could not be so--we knew that every
slightest pain or grief that touched us was felt more keenly by our
mother than by ourselves, and we were compelled to believe her when
she told us that she, too, lamented the restraint that would be put
upon us, but knew that it would be for our ultimate good.

And on that very afternoon the feared man arrived, Mr. Trigg by name,
an Englishman, a short, stoutish, almost fat little man, with grey
hair, clean-shaved sunburnt face, a crooked nose which had been broken
or was born so, clever mobile mouth, and blue-grey eyes with a
humorous twinkle in them and crow's-feet at the corners. Only to us
youngsters, as we soon discovered, that humorous face and the
twinkling eyes were capable of a terrible sternness. He was loved, I
think, by adults generally, and regarded with feelings of an opposite
nature by children. For he was a schoolmaster who hated and despised
teaching as much as children in the wild hated to be taught. He
followed teaching because all work was excessively irksome to him, yet
he had to do something for a living, and this was the easiest thing he
could find to do. How such a man ever came to be so far from home in a
half-civilized country was a mystery, but there he was, a bachelor and
homeless man after twenty or thirty years on the pampas, with little
or no money in his pocket, and no belongings except his horse--he
never owned more than one at a time--and its cumbrous native saddle,