"You will make fame and fortune in the business you are now in. Shows it in your face." I wasn't satisfied with that prediction; I preferred the fortune to be in my pocket.
"A kiss is awaiting you from a black-haired girl within two weeks' time. She loves you. A lot of girls want you, but they can't have you. Understand me?"
"I confess that I don't quite," I answered. "But I wish those poor girls did." And I looked real serious.
"Shows it in your face," she repeated. That fortune teller puzzled me. The quarter's worth of seance at an end, I plodded on toward the Hoosier country with my mute comrades, wondering how much of the fortune would come true.
Soon afterward we got out of the mud area and came to a hard, smooth, broken-stone road. I stopped my donkey and sat down to take off my rubber boots. Just when I got the first shoe on, Mac began to move down the level turnpike. I called, "Whoa, Mac! Huh!! You long-eared Mephisto!" The jackass paid no heed, but galloped on, shaking his head and kicking up his heels merrily with the dog in front of him, barking as if he enjoyed Mac's practical joke. By this time I was speeding after the runaway, a boot on one foot, a shoe on the other, and chased a half mile before I caught him. Then I led him back for my footgear.
Two miles beyond we again struck mud, thick and deep. Observing a little mound covered with long dried grass, I sat down again to change my footgear. Mac turned and eyed me mischievously, and wobbled his ears, then nodded to Don. I was so absorbed with the idea that he intended to lead me another chase that I failed to hear an ominous sound emanating from underneath my seat. Not until something seemed to burn me did I rise to the occasion, and light out, this time stocking foot, but making less speed through the black and sticky highway than on my former run.
Something less than a million bees swarmed about my head. I ran! Oh, how I ran! And I would be running still, perhaps, had not a farmer seen me and knocked down the swarm with a section of a rail fence. I was quite out of breath. The hero had only spared my life for future tortures.
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