“I feel there will be not so much as the ghost of a long-perished Roman mule in this hamlet,” I said despondently, hoping that Molly would contradict me.  But she, too, looked anxious, now that the great moment had come, for we were driving into a town, at the mouth of a deep gorge already dusky with purpling shadows, and there was no doubt that it was Piedimulera.

The gloom of the twilight settled upon our spirits, dissimulate as we might, as the car swept into the cobble-paved courtyard of an albergo, a venerable grandfather of a hostelry, old, grim, and forbidding.  Out came a large, fair man to welcome us, with calculation in his cold grey eye.  He looked to me like a spider in his web, greeting some inviting flies.  We broke the ice by asking for coffee, and when we were told that we must have it without milk, as there were no cows within a radius of many miles, I would have staked all my possessions (especially those acquired at Bern) that there would be no such comparatively useless animals as mules or donkeys.

Instinct is seldom wrong.  If ever there was nothing in a name, there was nothing in that of Piedimulera, which had evidently been applied in sheer mockery, or because, untold generations ago, the foot of that rare creature, a mule, had been preserved here in a museum.  When the landlord found that we did not intend to stop overnight, unless mules were at once forthcoming, he visibly lost interest in us, as inedible insects.  He shrugged his shoulders at the bare idea that Piedimulera might shelter such creatures as we were mad enough to desire, and assured us that there was not the least use in trying Domodossola.  We had much better spend the night with him, and to-morrow morning go on as best we might to Brig.  No?  Then he washed his hands of us.

I did not give my treasures to this person:  rather would I have burnt all, than picture him battening on my Instantaneous Breakfasts.  Molly would have had me keep them, at least until we knew what fate awaited us at Domodossola.  The moment I had irrevocably parted with my outfit, bought in happier days, I should find a mule, and how annoyed would I be, she prophesied.  But I was adamant.  Had I not made a vow?  Besides, if I were to find a mule or donkey the moment I had got rid of his paraphernalia, that alone was an inducement to throw the cargo overboard.

On our way to Domodossola, I saw a pretty dark-eyed young woman, with a cherubic baby in her arms, standing in the doorway of a tumble-down cottage.  Evidently she was waiting to greet her husband when he should come home, weary with his long day’s work.  Quickly I made a decision and with the same abruptness I had used in urging Molly to draw before the too attractive shop in Bern, I begged her now to stop.  My white elephants were stowed away in separate bundles in the tonneau, where, ever since Lucerne, they had been the cause of cramps and “pins and needles” to the feet of any member of the party who sat there.