The elegant shape he had already destroyed; the resplendent plumes he was plucking out and casting to the winds, as though they had been common feathers; and his whole action betokened that he had no more regard for those grand tail feathers and that gorgeous purple corselet, than if it had been a goose, or an old turkey-cock that lay stretched across his knee.
Without saying a word, when the others came up, there was that in Ossaroo's look--as he glanced furtively towards the young sahibs, and saw that both were empty-handed--that betrayed a certain degree of pride--just enough to show that he was enjoying a triumph.

To know that he was the only one who had made a _coup_, it was not necessary for him to look up.

Had either succeeded in killing game, or even in finding it, he must have heard the report of a gun, and none such on that morning had awakened the echoes of the valley.

Ossaroo, therefore, knew that a brace of empty game-bags were all that were brought back.
Unlike the young sahibs, he had no particular adventure to relate.

His "stalk" had been a very quiet one--ending, as most quiet stalks do, in the death of the animal stalked.