Griffith Roberts had allotted us but brief time for rest or refreshment at the Quellyn Arms. As the clock struck seven he had tapped fatefully at the parlour window, and we had followed him as unresistingly as the rats followed the Pied Piper. There are, however, rare occasions when it is agreeable to be coerced into doing what is right. As, at a steady three and a half miles an hour, we strode after Griffith Roberts, we began to be conscious of restored enthusiasm and intelligence, and, impartially, it seemed to us that we should be delightful charges for him--so affable, so active, so anxious for information. Griffith Roberts’s back had, however, not quite so social an aspect as might have been expected, and he maintained his lead of five yards with uncommunicative firmness. Miss O’Flannigan and I called on each other for a spurt, and for two or three minutes walked at the rate of four miles an hour without any appreciable result. It became clear that Griffith Roberts moved, planet-like, in a certain fixed relation to his satellites, and that his lead of five yards was an institution not easily to be set aside. All that we had effected was the raising of the pace from three and a half miles to four, and the discovery that the grasshopper, or its equivalent, the hand-satchel, had become a burden. Griffith Roberts might scorn us as companions, but he should not ignore his duties as a hireling. We hailed him, and having bestowed the satchel upon him, Miss O’Flannigan made a determined plunge into conversation.
“I suppose you have often been up Snowdon?” she began, in the strong, loud voice which is believed to force comprehension on the foreigner.
She had to say it thrice, and Griffith Roberts finally replied, “Oh yess, one time.”
This was a confession of startling frankness; and Miss O’Flannigan and I, recalling in a lightning-flash the Mahntooroch tourist’s tales of incompetent guides, and of a clergyman whose bones had been picked clean by Snowdon wild cats, regretted that our five-shilling fee had been squandered upon an amateur.
“And yesterday,” continued Griffith Roberts, after a pause, during which I suppose he was mustering his English vocabulary, “it wass two times also I wass on taap.”