' So I took Mula and paid the widow for
his services after each journey. When there was no freight to be had
I sometimes went to the lagoons to cut rushes, and, loading the carts
with them, we would go about the country to sell the rushes to those
who required them to thatch their houses. Mula loved not this work.
Often when we were all day wading up to our thighs in the water, cutting
the rushes down close to their roots, then carrying them in large
bundles on our shoulders to land, he would cry, complaining bitterly
of his hard lot. Sometimes I thrashed him, for it angered me to see
a poor boy so fastidious: then he would curse me and say that some day
he would have his revenge. 'When I am dead,' he often told me, 'my ghost
will come to haunt and terrify you for all the blows you have given
me.' This always made me laugh.
"At last, one day, while crossing a deep stream, swollen with rains,
my poor Mula fell down from his perch on the shaft and was swept away
by the current into deep water and drowned. Well, sirs, about a year
after that event I was out in search of a couple of strayed oxen when
night overtook me a long distance from home. Between me and my house
there was a range of hills running down to a deep river, so close that
there was only a narrow passage to get through, and for a long distance
there was no other opening. When I reached the pass I fell into a
narrow path with bushes and trees growing on either side; here,
suddenly, the figure of a young man stepped out from the trees and
stood before me.
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