always seeking
food. It came over his rider with a sickening wave of apprehension and
disgust that the unscrupulous negro, taking advantage of his plight,
had sold him what the southern darky calls an ornery mule, a mule that
charged forward with fiery snorts and halted only when it pleased him,
kicked backward when he did stop and plunged forward immediately
afterward with a horrible air of purpose.

Kenny groaned. He was between the devil and the deep sea. The
prospect of staying lost in a world of trees filled him with hungry
foreboding. But he dreaded the open highway and pictured himself John
Gilpining through town and village, a thing of ridicule and helpless
progress. Puck in the guise of a hairbrained mule! He would pound
onward into the night and throw his rider with the dawn.

At dusk the mule came out unexpectedly upon a turnpike and halted with
a snort. Perfectly convinced that he was planning something or other
spectacular and public, Kenny slid instantly from his back and grabbed
his knapsack. He left Leath Macha in an attitude of hairtrigger
contemplation, apparently about to begin something at once. When Kenny
looked back the dusk or the forest had engulfed him. Likely the
latter. Trained for the purpose, he decided in a blaze of wrath, Leath
Macha had returned to the negro and a diet of pickets.

Kenny, swinging down the turnpike in the vigor of desperation, felt no
single pang of penance. His mood was primitive and pertinacious. He
went forward with bee-like undeviation until he found an inn where he
bathed and shaved and ate. He slept until midnight and ate again. He
slept through the night and the morning and ate again, still with the
mental monotony of a cave-dweller. Then he found a railroad and rode.
Not until he reached the town postmarked upon Brian's letter did he
trouble himself with anything but the primitive needs of primitive man.
Here, however, he permitted himself the luxury of a brief but wholly
satisfactory interval of summary. The fortunes of the road had forced
him into the prodigal acquirement of a corncrib and a mule when he had
meant to please Brian by his economy. He had burned the one and
abandoned the other, wholly necessary irregularities. He had thrashed
a farmer. A fugitive from justice he had suffered hunger and thirst
and every form of bodily torment. And he had tramped through a day of
rain with sodden shoes and steaming garments.

Glory be to God!