“‘Now,’ I said, ‘drive on with this engine, or I’ll kill you and run it myself!’ I am not telling you _all_ the words I used, Nell, you’ll forgive me this time, I had to get to you, and honest English is wasted on fools and mules. ‘Hold off!’ he said, ‘and don’t put that d--d thing so close to my head, and you can ride up here and be d--d to you.’ The invitation was not very polite, but I accepted it. I gave him some good tobacco, and we got to be friends before I got off.” The short day was done. I was tired and warm and sleepy and went to sleep while Dan was talking. I don’t know how long I had dozed when the driver doubled up suddenly and turned head over heels backward into my lap. I struggled from under him, and Dan gave him a push that helped to free me and at the same time jumped on to the driver’s seat and caught up the lines. “Lord-a-mussy on me!” I heard the man groaning, “dat ar d--n mu-el! she have kicked me in de pit er my stummick!” He gathered himself together in a corner of the ambulance, and continued to express forcible opinions of the mule. “Dan,” I said, “please get away from there! That mule might kick you.” “Don’t be silly, Nell! Somebody’s got to drive.” “But, Dan, if you get kicked, you _can’t_ drive.” “I won’t get kicked. I know how to talk to a mule. Just shut your ears, Nell, if you don’t want to hear me. I’ve got to convince this mule. She’s just like that engineer and conductor. As soon as I get through giving her my opinion in language she can understand, she’ll travel all right.” Presently Dan called out: “You can unstop your ears now, Nell--I think she understands.” “Dan,” I said, “are you cold out there?” “Not a bit of it! This isn’t anything to a soldier. But a soldier’s wife, eh, Nell? Getting to be rather hard lines, isn’t it?” “Dan,” I said, my teeth chattering, “don’t it seem that I have had more adventures in one day than I am entitled to?” “Rather! By the way, Josh got on that same freight. How he managed it, the Lord only knows! Worked himself in with the brakeman, I suppose. But he got off--to look around, I reckon--just like him!--at some station before Milford and got left. He’ll come straggling into camp to-morrow. You see there’s another accident you can credit your account with. Josh could have driven these mules instead of that fool white man over there who don’t know what to do with a mule. Then I would have been back there entertaining you, and you would have been complimenting me by going to sleep.” He drove on singing: “Sweet Nellie is by my side!”