"He says, 'ask Croesus'," commented the artist.
"Good!" cried the older man, with another laugh. "Let's put it up to the financier and let him choose."
"Wait,"--said the artist, as the other turned toward the burro,--"don't be hasty--the occasion calls for solemn meditation and lofty discourse."
"Your pardon,"--returned the novelist,--"'tis so. I will orate." Carefully selecting a pebble in readiness to emphasize his remarks, he addressed the shaggy arbiter of their fate. "Sir Croesus, thy pack is lighter by many meals than when first thou didst set out from that land where we did rescue thee from the hands of thy tormenting trader; but thy responsibilities are weightier, many fold. Upon the wisdom of thy choice, now, great issue rests. Thou hast thy chance, O illustrious ass, to recompense the world, this day, for the many evils wrought by thy odious ancestor and by all his long-eared kin. Choose, now, the way thy benefactors' feet shall go; and see to it, Croesus, that thou dost choose wisely; or, by thy ears, we'll flay thy woolly hide and hang it on the mountainside--a warning to thy kind."
The well-thrown pebble struck that part of the burro's anatomy at which it was aimed; the dog barked; and Croesus--with an indignant jerk of his head, and a flirt of his tail--started forward. At the fork of the trail, he paused. The two men waited with breathless interest. With an air of accepting the responsibility placed upon him, the burro whirled and trotted down the narrow path that led to the floor of the canyon below. Laughing, the men followed--but far enough in the rear to permit their leader to choose his own way when they should reach the wagon road at the foot of the mountain wall. Without an instant's hesitation, Croesus turned down the road--quickening his pace, almost, into a trot.
"By George!" ejaculated the novelist, "he acts like he knew where he was going."
"He's taking you at your word," returned the artist. "Look at him go! Evidently, he's still under the inspiration of your oratory."
The burro had broken into a ridiculous, little gallop that caused the frying-pan and coffee-pot, lashed on the outside of the pack, to rattle merrily. Splashing through the creek, he disappeared in the dark shadow of a thicket of alders and willows, where the road crosses a tiny rivulet that flows from a spring a hundred yards above. Climbing out of this gloomy hollow, the road turns sharply to the left, and the men hurried on to overtake their four-footed guide before he should be too long out of their sight. Just at the top of the little rise, before rounding the turn, they stopped. A few feet to the right of the road, with his nose at an old gate, stood Croesus. Nor would he heed Czar's bark commanding him to go on.