“Yesterday I was a great man, an' wouldn't have sold out for a million dollars. I've rolled off the lap of luxury an' hit the floor with a bump. Old Aunt Luxury is a long lady, an' no mistake. It's forty feet to her knees, an' a good deal of a tumble. You see before you a melancholy ruin.”
“Here,” I said, “let me lend you some money. I'll trust you with all I've got.”
I had just received my pay, and showed it to him.
“I'm so poor that I wouldn't trust myself,” he answered; “an' that bein' so, I wouldn't ask you to trust me.”
He left me to get some wood for the fire, and I saw a Bible lying on his desk and put a twenty-dollar bill between its leaves, at the eleventh chapter of Job, and closed it again. I talked with him for an hour or so, and asked, when I was leaving, if he had read the Book of Job.
“Not sence I was a boy,” he answered.
“Read the eleventh chapter before you go to bed,” I suggested, and went away.
Next day he came to my office.
“We're off this evenin', with all our tools and implements,” said he. “If it hadn't been for you an' Job we couldn't have got away. You're a strong pair. I read in that chapter, 'Thou shalt forget thy misery and remember it as waters that pass away.' It was the very sermon I needed. My misery is gone. We have given you a vote o' thanks. It was hearty an' unanimous.”
He was to take the freight and accommodation which left Heartsdale about eleven o'clock. He did not tell me his destination, but said that I should hear from him by-and-by. I went to the depot with Pearl and Barker, and saw them off.