Ordinarily Kenny would have found its music and its shadows infinitely
poetic. Now, wretchedly out of sorts, he plunged his face and hands
into a shady pool with a sigh of vast materialistic content, longed to
linger and cursed the village posse he fancied at his heels. The first
romance of his flight from justice was waning rapidly. With a groan he
plunged on, horribly full of aches and hunger. Always now he would
understand the Gaelic legend of Far Goila, the gaunt Man of Hunger who
goes touring up and down the land in times of famine bringing luck to
those who feed him. Even his taste for cheese was returning. The
holocaust of the morning filled him with bitter regret. As for his
feet, they felt shapeless and huge and fungus-like and full of burning
needles. Oh, for the sandals of power of Fergus Mac Roigh!

At noon in utter desperation he bought a mule.

The mule brayed temptation at him from the fence of a forest shanty. A
negress stood in the doorway. Kenny, in no mood for haggling,
recklessly offered what he thought the mule was worth. It looked
incredibly sturdy. His voice evoked a ragged husband who came up out
of a cellar doorway eating a dwarfed banana. The sight of the banana
made Kenny dizzy with emotion.

He demanded one at any price and bought six, ate them one after the
other without the pretense of a halt and moodily shied the last skin at
a sparrow, realizing then with a shock that the negro had already
untied the mule from the picket fence. The precipitancy of it all made
him slightly uncomfortable. Either the negro was too lazy to bargain
or the offer was out of all proportion to the mule's repute. Kenny
asked.