Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 7).pdf/84

 tex of his element, the happiest and most thoughtless of mortal men—and for a moment let us look after the mules, the abbess, and Margarita.

By virtue of the muleteer's two last strokes, the mules had gone quietly on, following their own consciences up the hill, till they had conquer'd about one half of it; when the elder of them, a shrewd crafty old devil, at the turn of an angle, giving a side glance, and no muleteer behind them

By my fig! said she, swearing, I'll go no further—And if I do, replied the other—they shall make a drum of my hide.

And so with one consent they stopp'd thus