“He’s got a powahful sight of appetite fo’ a po’ man,” explained the darky fluently.  “I’s glad to see him go.  Dat mule, sah, even eats de pickets on de fence.”

Kenny felt sincerely that he could understand.

“Just give him his haid, sah,” called the negro as he climbed aboard, “and he’ll find de road outside fo’ yoh.”

Mule and rider disappeared with a sort of plunge.  Kenny’s spirits soared.  Substance and speed here enough for any man.  He remembered in the first moment of his uplift that Cuchullin, foremost champion of the Red Branch, had had a magic steed that rose from a lake.  Its name was Leath Macha.

Very well, he would christen this amazing beast of sinews with the compass nose, Leath Macha, and make him a gift of his head as the darky advised.  Leath Macha—­Kenny later found less poetic names he liked better—­developed a sylvan taste for roving and lost himself in no time, pursuing elusive glints of greenness.  He seemed 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