One night, Gruntli’s overseer was returning from Zurich. He reached the village of Plurs, late at night. There, the wine being good and the stabling cheap, he expected to make his stay, until next morning. So, stepping into the wine room, and calling for the hostler, he sat down [[254]]before the table, thinking that all was right, according to the usual way of beasts and man, until morning.
But when the stable boy went outdoors, he found the line of mules was some distance up the road, and that Gulick was leading them.
Running after the train, he brought the animals back, to the inn; but when, for a moment, being at the end of the line, he left the beasts, to open the stable door, off trotted Gulick and all the donkeys after their leader.
So the boy had another run and was in very bad temper. He seized the bridle of Gulick, and gave such a jerk, in his anger, that he nearly broke the strap, and pained the animal’s jaw.
Nevertheless, for a third time, the sagacious beast ran away. When the stable boy, out of patience, rushed into the wine room, and told the overseer of the strange behavior of his donkey, Gulick, the man had sense enough to follow the mule train.
Well for him and his master, that he did so, for, when hearing a frightful noise, he looked behind him, from the top of the hill, he saw a landslide, from the mountain flank, wipe out the whole town, leaving the houses, people and cattle buried under one white pall of earth, rock and snow.
After this, one would suppose that the owner [[255]]of Gulick would fully trust the animal’s wonderful instinct and unerring vision, as well as his sure footedness.
But this man, Gruntli was, as he called himself, “too much of a man of science” to consider such an affair, as that of Gulick and the landslide, as anything but an accident, a coincidence, or, as an example of “the doctrine of averages.”
Wishing, however, to see the ruin wrought by the landslide, he mounted Gulick, clapped his ankles against the animal’s sides, and was off. Gruntli wore spurs, more for show than for use, for Gulick instantly obeyed the pull of his master’s bridle, or the clap of his foot, and never was known to need urging. So there never had been any blood on the points of Gruntli’s spurs.
But this day, the master was in very bad humor, because seven of his houses, which he owned in the village, were now destroyed. Much of his income was thus lost, for he could no longer collect rents from the people who had been his tenants.