"Is it swearing Your Riverence objects to?" said Macmillan, whose vocabulary still retained a slight flavour of the Old Land. "I do assure you that they won't pull a pound without it."
But the Bishop could not be persuaded of this, and urged upon Macmillan the necessity of eliminating this part of his persuasion.
"Just as you say, Your Riverence. I ain't hurried this trip and we'll do our best."
The next bad sleugh brought opportunity to make experiment of the new system. The team stuck fast in the black muck, and every effort to extricate them served only to imbed them more hopelessly in the sticky gumbo. Time passed on. A dark and lowering night was imminent. The Bishop grew anxious. Macmillan, with whip and voice, encouraged his team, but all in vain. The Bishop's anxiety increased with the approach of a threatening storm.
"It is growing late, Mr. Macmillan, and it looks like rain. Something must be done."
"It does that, Your Lordship, but the brutes won't pull half their own weight without I speak to them in the way they are used to."
The good man was in a sore strait. Another half hour passed, and still with no result. It was imperative that his goods should be brought under cover before the storm should break. Again the good Bishop urged Macmillan to more strenuous effort.
"We can't stay here all night, sir," he said. "Surely something can be done."
"Well, I'll tell Your Lordship, it's one of two things, stick or swear, and there's nothing else for it."
"Well, well, Mr. Macmillan," said the Bishop resignedly, "we must get on. Do as you think best, but I take no responsibility in the matter." At which Pilate's counsel he retired from the scene, leaving Macmillan an untrammelled course.