That prolonged bray so electrified him that he got up, to his knees, then to his swaying feet, a ghostly figure in his white suit, and with a last spurt of breath, cried:
“Billy! It’s—Billy!”
Billy it was. Why then and there his mulish brain couldn’t understand. He had come a tiresome way, through woods and along country roads and found it a painfully new experience. Of course, he had rested often and long. He had been bidden, innumerable times: “Billy, lie down!” and after an interval: “Billy, get up.” Now, as he was wearily trudging through the night came this apparition in white, right in his path.
Billy had heard the stumbling of human feet long before his rider had, and had announced the fact by mild remarks about it. But, sidewise upon Billy’s broad back—his head pillowed on Billy’s neck, the Colonel had known nothing of this until the mule’s abrupt stop shocked him awake and to a sight of the ghostly apparition on the roadside.
“Hello, Spook!” exclaimed the Colonel, inclined to be friends with anybody or anything which would relieve the loneliness of his night ride.
“Hel—Hello, yourself! Ha, ha, ha!” returned Gerald, in great delight yet half-confused by fatigue and the surprise of this meeting. They were mutual “apparitions,” arisen out of the earth to confront one another. “Where you come from? Where you going? I’m—I’m awful tired.”
“So ’m I. Always tired. Always expect to be. I come from going to and fro upon the earth seekin’ that I cayn’t find. No, I cayn’t. And of all the bad luck I’ve had this is the worst. Ah! hum.”
“I’m sorry,” murmured Gerald, stumbling near enough Billy to lay his head on the animal’s shoulder, where he immediately went to sleep.