My sporting brother and the armoury - I attend him on his shooting
expeditions - Adventure with golden plover - A morning after wild duck -
Our punishment - I learn to shoot - My first gun - My first wild duck - My
ducking tactics - My gun's infirmities - Duck-shooting with a
blunderbuss - Ammunition runs out - An adventure with rosy-bill duck -
Coarse gunpowder and home-made shot - The war danger comes our way - We
prepare to defend the house - The danger over and my brother leaves
home
CHAPTER XXII
BOYHOOD'S END
The book - The Saladero, or killing-grounds, and their smell - Walls
built of bullocks' skulls - A pestilential city - River water and Aljibe
water - Days of lassitude - Novel scenes - Home again - Typhus - My first
day out - Birthday reflections - What I asked of life - A boy's mind - A
brother's resolution - End of our thousand and one nights - A reading
spell - My boyhood ends in disaster
CHAPTER XXIII
A DARKENED LIFE
A severe illness - Case pronounced hopeless - How it affected me -
Religious doubts and a mind distressed - Lawless thoughts - Conversation
with an old gaucho about religion - George Combe and the desire for
immortality
CHAPTER XXIV
LOSS AND GAIN
The soul's loneliness - My mother and her death - A mother's love for
her son - Her character - Anecdotes - A mystery and a revelation - The
autumnal migration of birds - Moonlight vigils - My absent brother's
return - He introduces me to Darwin's works - A new philosophy of life -
Conclusion
CHAPTER I
EARLIEST MEMORIES
Preamble - The house where I was born - The singular Ombu tree - A tree
without a name - The plain - The ghost of a murdered slave - Our
playmate, the old sheep-dog - A first riding-lesson - The cattle:
