“Only a pack of lies, as I was just afther tellin’ you.”
“And what did he tell you about your future?”
“He said, Father, I would shortly be goin’ on a long, hard journey.”
“Well,” said the priest reflectively, “he may have lied to you about your past, but when he predicted that you would be going on a long, hard journey in the near future he was not far wrong, after all. You’ll do the Stations of the Cross twelve times!”
§ 159 It Wasn’t His Move, Either
A venerable mountaineer residing near the boundary between Tennessee and North Carolina sat one bright afternoon on the stile in front of his cabin, busily engaged in following his regular occupation of doing nothing at all. At the edge of the clearing, fifty yards away, suddenly appeared an individual in flannel shirt and laced boots who aimed at the old gentleman a round-barreled instrument mounted on a tripod, which the native naturally mistook for a new kind of repeating rifle. Up went both his hands.
“Don’t shoot!” he shouted. “I surrender.”
“I’m not fixing to shoot,” said the stranger, drawing nearer. “I belong to an engineering crew. We’re surveying the state line.”
“Shuckins, son,” said the old man, “you’re away off. The line runs through the gap nearly half a mile down the mounting below here.”
“That’s where it used to run,” said the engineer, “but it seems there was a mistake in the original job. According to the new survey it’ll pass about fifty feet from your house, on the upper side of the hill.”