revented the load from rolling down hill. The carrier
stopped singing and swore, beating the beast with all his might, as it
lay still gasping for breath.

"Ah, assassin! Ah, carrion! I will teach thee! Curses on the dead of thy
house!" he roared.

Brook and Clare were coming nearer.

"That's not very intelligent of the fellow," observed Johnstone
indifferently. "He had much better get down."

"Oh, stop it, stop it!" cried the young girl, suffering acutely for the
helpless creature.

But the man had apparently recognised the impossibility of producing any
impression unless he descended from his perch. He threw the whip to the
ground and slid off the sacks. He stood looking at the mule for a
moment, and then kicked it in the back with all his might. Then, just as
Johnstone and Clare came up, he went round to the back of the cart,
walking unsteadily, for he was evidently drunk. The two stopped by the
parapet and looked on.

"He's going to unload," said Johnstone. "That's sensible, at all
events."

The sacks, as usual in Italy, were bound to the cart by cords, which
were fast in front, but which wound upon a heavy spindle at the back.
The spindle had three holes in it, in which staves were thrust as
levers, to turn it and hold the ropes taut. Two of the staves were
tightly pressed against the load, while the third stood nearly upright
in its hole.

The man took the third stave, a bar of elm four feet long and as thick
as a man's wrist, and came round to the mule again on the side away from
Clare and Johnstone. He lifted the weapon high in air, and almost before
they realised what horror he was perpetrating he had struck three or
four tremendous blows upon the creature's back, making as many bleeding
wounds. The mule kicked and shivered violently, and its eyes were almost
starting from its head.

Johnstone came up first, caught the stave in air as it was about to
descend again, wrenched it out of the man's hands, and hurled it over
Clare's head, across the parapet and into the sea. The man fell back a
step, and his face grew purple with rage. He roared out a volley of
horrible oaths, in a dialect perfectly incomprehensible even to Clare,
who knew Italian well.

"You needn't yell like that, my good man," said Johnstone, smiling at
him.

The man was big and strong, and drunk. He clenched his fists, and made
for his adversary, head down, in the futile Italian fashion. The
Englishman stepped aside, landed a left