Duchemin was
grateful for the moonlight which alone enabled him to keep the road and
avoid the worst of the going--until he remembered that without the moon
there would have been no expedition that night to view the mock ruins
of Montpellier by its unearthly light, and consequently no adventure to
entangle him.
Upon this reflection he swore softly but most fervently into his
becoming beard. He was well fed up with adventures, thank you, and
could have done very well without this latest. And especially at a time
when he desired nothing so much as to be permitted to remain the
footloose wanderer in a strange land, a bird of passage without ties or
responsibilities.
He thought it devilish hard that one may never do a service to another
without incurring a burden of irksome obligations to the served; that
bonds of interest forged in moments of unpremeditated and generous
impulse are never readily to be broken.
Now because Chance had seen fit to put him in the way of saving a
hapless party of sightseers from robbery or worse, he found himself
hopelessly committed to take a continuing interest in them.
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