Four men, with four mules, started forward eagerly, jostling each other, at sight of me accompanied by the landlord. But one held back a little, with a modest dignity, as if he were too proud to push himself into notice, or too generous to exalt himself at the expense of others. He was a slim, dark man of middle height, past thirty in age, perhaps, with a look of the soldier in the bearing of his shoulders and head. He had very short black hair; high cheekbones, where the rich brown of his skin was touched with russet; deep-set, thoughtful eyes, and a melancholy droop of the moustache. His collar was incredibly tall and shiny, with turn-down points; he wore a red tie; his thick brown clothes might have been bought ready made in the Edgeware Road; evidently he had honoured the occasion with his Sunday best. While his comrades jabbered together, in patois which flung in a French word now and then, like a sop to Cerberus, he spoke not a word; yet I saw his lips tighten, as he laid his arm over the neck of a small but well-built mule of a colour which matched its master's clothing. The animal rubbed a brown velvet head against the brown waistcoat which, perhaps, covered a fast-beating heart. From that instant I knew that this was my man, and this my mule, as certainly as if they had been tattooed with my family crest and truculent motto: "What I will, I take." "You've been a soldier, haven't you?" I asked the muleteer in French. He saluted as he replied that he had, and that for several years he had served a French general, as orderly. His name was Joseph Marcoz, and--he added--he was a Protestant. "And your mule?" I asked. "Finois, Monsieur." "Ah, but his persuasion? He is Protestant, too?" If Joseph had looked puzzled, I should have been disappointed, but a spark of humour lit the gloom of his sombre eye. "Finois is Pantheist, I think you call it, Monsieur. I am persuaded that he has a soul, for which there will be a place in the Beyond; and if he goes there first, I hope that he will be looking out for me."