ngs, consented to the arrangement, and
engaged to work for Mr. Wilson for six months, in payment for which,
the note was to be delivered up to his father. It was characteristic of
David that whatever he undertook he engaged in with all his might. He
was a rude, coarse boy. It was scarcely possible, with his past
training, that he should be otherwise. But he was very faithful in
fulfilling his obligations. Though his sense of right and wrong was
very obtuse, he was still disposed to do the right so far as his
uncultivated conscience revealed it to him.

For six months, David worked for Mr. Wilson with the utmost fidelity
and zeal. He then received the note, presented it to his father, and,
before he was sixteen years of age, stood up proudly his own man. His
father had no longer the right to whip him. His father had no longer
the right to call upon him for any service without paying him for it.
And on the other hand, he could no longer look to his father for food
or clothing. This thought gave him no trouble. He had already taken
care of himself for two years, and he felt no more solicitude in regard
to the future than did the buffalo's calf or the wolf's whelp.

Wilson was a bad man, dissipated and unprincipled. But he had found
David to be so valuable a laborer that he offered him high wages if he
would remain and work for him. It shows a latent, underlying principle
of goodness in David, that he should have refused the offer. He writes:

"The reason was, it was a place where a heap of bad company met to
drink and gamble; and I wanted to get away from them, for I know'd very
well, if I staid there, I should get a bad name, as nobody could be
respectable that would live there."

About this time a Quaker, somewhat advanced in years, a good, honest
man, by the name of John Kennedy, emigrated from North Carolina, and
selecting his four hundred acres of land about fifteen miles from John
Crockett's, reared a log hut and commenced a clearing. In some
transaction with Crockett he took his neighbor's note for forty
dollars. He chanced to see David, a stout lad of prepossessing
appearance, and proposed that he should work for him for two shillings
a day taking him one week upon trial. At the close of the week the
Quaker expressed himself as highly satisfied with his work, and offered
to pay him with his father's note of forty dollars for six months'
labor on his farm.

David knew full well how ready his father was to give