St. Peter looked grave; he did not much like giving an encouragement to card-playing; but then he considered the poor fellow’s irreproachable character, his life of privations, and moreover his own unconditioned promise to grant his request, and finally, that each success, while it would do no harm to the well-regulated old man, would serve as a discouragement to all the other players; so he ended by giving his consent, only reserving one condition, that he should never play for stakes sufficiently high to injure his companions; and then hasted on to join the rest of his party, who had made some way while he was parleying.
“‘Fortune is certainly for those to whom she comes,’” moralized the woodman when he was left alone, “‘and not for those who seek her[3].’ How many are there who would have given their ears for such a chance as I have had to-day; and it is given to me, who, being already gifted with content, want for nothing!”
Time passed on, and the woodman, being a just man, never abused the favour he had received, which however served, by the satisfaction which success always confers, to cheer his solitary life. At last the time came when the measure of his days was full; and resigning his spirit to the care of his Lord, it was carried by his angel to the realms above.
Now, all through his life it had rankled in his mind that he might have made a better and less selfish use of the gift St. Peter had bestowed on him, when now, for the first time, it occurred to him how to apply it. Then he turned to his angel, and begged him to stop on his way, at the bedside of the first poor dying man they passed whose soul was most in danger of being lost. The angel, who descried some charitable design in the request, bore him to a room in a great city where an escribano[4] lay at the last gasp. The demon of avarice sat on his pillow, straining to clutch the passing soul, while his young son and a clergyman knelt beside him, entreating him to be reconciled to God. “Caramba!” exclaimed the woodman, “surely, our Lord died for all, without even excluding escribanos!” As the good angel hovered over the bed, a gentle sleep fell on the dying man, and the demon relaxed his watch.
“Come, now,” said the woodman, “you can’t do any thing while the man’s asleep, let’s have a game at cards to wile away the time.” “Agreed,” said the demon, for cards being invented by his crew, he thought himself safe to win; “but how shall we manage about the stakes? You see you’ve had to leave your pocket behind you, so how will you pay me?” “I’ll stake you something better than money,” replied the woodman. “What say you to staking my soul, which is on its way to glory, against this escribano’s soul, of which at best you are only three parts sure?” “All right,” said the demon, who thought it one of the best chances he had ever had.
The woodman let him cut and shuffle and play what tricks he liked with the pack, secure of his success; and in less than half an hour his triumph was secure. The demon could not believe his eyes, but could not, either, deny his defeat; so, putting his tail between his legs, he laid his ears back[5] and disappeared through the floor, quite ashamed of himself.
While this was going on, the escribano had awoke from his refreshing sleep; freed from the solicitations of the demon of avarice, he no longer refused the ministrations of the minister of the Church, but had expressed his contrition for the sins of the past, and was ready to depart in peace with God and all the world.
When the woodman arrived at the gate of Paradise, accompanied by the soul of the escribano, St. Peter called out, “Who goes there?” “I, of the hut on the bleak moor,” replied the woodman.
“Yes, you I know,” replied St. Peter; “but you don’t come alone—who is that black soul with you?”
“No, Señor, I don’t come alone, because I thought God loved to see men in good fellowship. This poor soul is only black because, being an escribano, some of his ink has stuck to him.”