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e Simplon"; who protected travellers and controlled the caravan traffic between Italy and Switzerland; now, to see the house which he had founded still occupied by his descendants, fixed more pictorially in my mind the stirring legends connected with the man. The little town of Brig seemed noisy and gay after the great silence of the Pass. Church bells were ringing, whips were cracking; in the central place there were crowding shops, bright with colour, and lights were beginning to shine out from the windows of the hotels. I was to meet the Winstons at the Hotel Couronne; and as I ventured to show my travel-stained person in the hall, I was greeted by a vision: Molly in white muslin, dressed for dinner. "What, you already!" she exclaimed. "You must have come over the Pass by steam or electricity. We didn't expect you for an hour. We've lots to tell you, and oh, I've bought you a sweet revolver, which you are always to have about you, on your walking trip, though Jack laughed at me for doing it. But now, for your adventures." In a few words I sketched them, and learned that the motor had again pulled wool over the eyes of the law; then Molly must have seen in mine that there was a question which I wished, but hesitated, to ask. If a man may have a beam in his eye, why not a mule? "We've been interviewing animals of various sorts for you all day," she said. "I've had a kind of employment agency for mules, and have taken their characters and capacities. But----" "There's a 'but,' is there?" I cut into her ominous pause. "Well, the nicest beasts are all engaged for days ahead, or else their owners can't spare them for a long trip; or else they're too young; or else they're too old; or else they're _hideous_. At least, there's one who's hideous, and I'm sorry to say he's the only one you can have." "'Twas ever thus, from childhood's hour.'" "But the landlord says there are dozens of mules at Martigny." "A mere mirage." "No, he has telephoned. But you'll look at the one here, I suppose, if only as a matter of form? I think he's outside now." "Let him be brought before me," I said, with the air of a tyrant in a melodrama; and, by the way, I have always thought it would be very pleasant being a tyrant by profession, like Him of Syracuse, for instance. You could do all the things you wanted to do, without consulting the convenience of anybody else, or having it on your conscience that you hadn't. At
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