“When a sack o' potatoes sets down beside ye an' opens conversation, it's a little more than I can stan'.” He resumed his seat and took a look at me, and added, with a laugh, “You'd scare the devil.”
In a few words I told my story, and he seemed to believe and to pity me. He put a few queries, and I answered freely.
“You better go home an' tell the truth about it,” he said, as he hurried the horses. “The only thing I don't like about you is your runnin' away. God hates a coward, an' He don't seem to care if a coward suffers. Take that thing off. Be a man; don't be a sack o' potatoes. You'd cheat the man that bought ye for two bushels o' potatoes. They're worth more than a coward.”
He untied the string above my head, and I took off the sack. The lights of the village were just ahead. He drove to a store whose proprietor was awaiting him. There he paid me the sum of six dollars for my work, and I left him and went to a small inn.
So ended the adventure of the potato-sack. It taught me that a man is never so good as the thing he tries to be, whether it is a hero or a sack of potatoes.
ADVENTURE VIII.—IN WHICH CRICKET MEETS THE COLONEL AND THE YOUNG MISS
