ce, you--but there's no use
talking of it. Only do look where you're walking, won't you, when
we're on a path like this? Now we can go on."

"Why, you little duffer, you're as white as a ghost!" I exclaimed. "If
the stone had slipped I should have jumped back. The path isn't really
so narrow. It only gives that effect because it's steep, and hangs
over the edge of a precipice. Still, many thanks for your solicitude."

"I believe, after all, I'll have to rest for a minute," the Boy said
apologetically. "I feel--a little queer. You needn't wait. I'm sorry
you should see me like this. You'll think that there's nothing to
choose between me and a girl. But I'm not always a coward."

"I know that well enough," I assured him. "You're not a coward now.
But come on. You shall rest when the path widens, where the others are
stopping."

I caught his hand to pull him along, since we could not walk abreast,
and it was icy cold. Yet it was not for himself that he had feared,
and my heart was very warm for the Little Pal, as I steered him
carefully past the loose, flat stone on the edge of the narrow path.

Joseph and Innocentina, who had been driving Finois and Souris,
allowing Fanny to follow at will, had called a halt with the three
animals, in a green dell where the way widened. The muleteer had a
handful of exquisite pink cyclamen, fragrant as violets, which he had
been gathering from hidden nooks among the rocks, and he was in the
act of presenting the flowers to Innocentina when we arrived, but she
waved them aside, exclaiming at her young master's pale face.

The Boy explained that there might have been an accident, owing to
Fanny, and the donkey girl broke into violent abuse of the brown
velvet creature who was her favourite.

"Daughter of a thrice-accursed mother, and of a despicable race!" she
cried in her odd patois, which it was often better not to understand
too well. "Blighted and bloodthirsty beast! But look at her now,
eating with an enormous appetite a branch as big as herself. Anaconda!
She would eat if the world burned. If she had, with a stroke of her
twenty times condemned hoof, hurled us all to death on the rocks
below, she would still eat, not even looking over the cliff to see
what had become of us."

"But you should not talk so," broke in Joseph, lover of animals. "It
was not the fault of the little _ane_ that the stone was loosened. How
could she know? It is you who are hard of heart, to turn upon h