The retreat from Hotel Helicon was in the extreme. There had been much difficulty in finding vehicles to take the retiring guests down the mountain to the railway station, but Tolliver had come to the rescue with a , a horse, a cart, and an ox. These, when added to the rather incongruous collection of and carts from every other available source, barely sufficed. Tolliver led the mule with Ferris on its back, while Miss Crabb and Miss Stackpole occupied the ox-cart, the former as driver.  
“Good-bye and good luck to ye!” the sheriff called after them. “Mighty sorry ter ye, but juty air juty, an’ a officer air no respecter of persons.”
 
Mrs. Nancy Jones Black sat beside Crane in a rickety , and between gave him many a word of wisdom on the subject of strong drink, which the handsome Bourbon poet stowed away for future consideration.
 
Dunkirk and Miss Moyne rode upon the “hounds” of a naked wood-wain, as happy as two blue-birds in April, while Bartley Hubbard, with little Mrs. Philpot and her child and some other ladies, was in an old weather-beaten barouche, a sad of the ante-bellum times. For the rest there were vehicles of every sort save the comfortable sort, and all went slowly[139] and zig-zagging down Mt. Boab toward the valley and the river. Why pursue them? Once they all looked up from far down the slope and saw Hotel Helicon shining like a castle of gold in the flood of summer sunlight. Its were empty, its windows closed, but the flag on its wooden tower still floated bravely in the bree............