"Curse me," returned Mr. Puddlebox very cheerfully, "I am nothing of the sort. Would that I were. I will tell you what I am, boy. I am the most miserable sinner that any man could be, and I am the most miserable in this—that I know where mercy comes from, which most poor sinners do not and therefore am less miserable than I. I have outraged my parents, and I outrage heaven in every breath I draw, particularly when, as, curse me, too often it is, my breath is whisky-ladened: which thing is abominable to the nose of godliness and very comfortable to my own. I know where mercy comes, loony, on the one hand because I was trained for the ministry, and on the other because I see it daily with my eyes. I know where mercy comes, yet I never can encompass it, for my flesh is ghastly weak and ghastly vile and, curse me, I have worn it thus so long that I prefer it so. But if I cannot encompass mercy, boy, I can return thanks for it; and if it comes in form of scourge—cold, hunger, pain, they are the three that fright me most—why, I deserve it the more surely and return it in praise the more lustily. That is how I live."
Many days hence it was to befall Mr. Wriford—in very bitter lesson, in hour of deepest anguish—to know a certain beauty in this odd testament of faith.
Just now, of his dizzy mood and of the teller's merry eye as he told it, little more than its whimsicality touched him; and when it was done, "Well, but that doesn't feed you," he said. "In that way—feeding and clothing and the rest of it—how do you live in that way?"
"Why, much in the same," returned Mr. Puddlebox. "Taking what comes, and if need be, which it is my constant prayer it need not, turning my hand to work, of which there is plenty. There is bread and raiment in every house, some for asking, some for working, and always some to get rid of me when I begin to work. What there is not in every house, boy, is whisky, and it is for that my brow has to sweat when, as now, my bottle is empty. But there are," continued Mr. Puddlebox, beginning to wriggle in his seat and draw up his legs with the evident intention of standing upon them, "there are, happily, or, curse me, unhappily, other ways of getting whisky; and the first is never to lose an opportunity of looking for it."
Mr. Puddlebox's feet were now upon the tail-board and he was clutching at the sacks, in great exertion to stand upright.
"What now?" inquired Mr. Wriford, beginning to laugh again.
"Why, to look for it," said Mr. Puddlebox. "In every new and likely place I always look for whisky. If none, I sing very heartily 'O ye disappointments' and am the better both for the praise and for the fact there is none. If some, I am both grateful and, curse me, happy. The top of these sacks is a new place, my loony, and a very likely. Our kind coachman, as I observed, wore no coat and had no bundle, nor were these beside him. They are likely on top."
"I'll come with you," said Mr. Wriford. "It's a devil of a climb."
"It's a devil of a prize," responded Mr. Puddlebox, "if it's there."
It proved to be both the one and the other. The sacks, stacked in ridges, provided steps of a sort, but each was of prodigious height, of very brief foothold, and the sacks so tightly stuffed as to afford but a scraping, digging hold for the fingers. When to these difficulties was added the swaying of the whole as the wagon jolted along, there was caused on the part of the climbers much panic clutching at each other, at the ropes which bound the sacks, and at the sacks themselves, together with much blowing and sounds of fear from Mr. Puddlebox, vastly incommoded by his bulging coattails, and much hysterical mirth from Mr. Wriford, incommoded no little by laughter at the absurdity of the escapade and at imagination of the grotesque spectacle they must present as they swarmed.