ed the hotel office he met me near the door and said:

"Johnston I'd rather have been caught stealing chickens than in that
horrible predicament; don't you ever do it again."

I assured him I had no idea of ever being able to do it again, or to
perpetrate a similar joke on him, even though I were ever so anxious to
do so.

After it was all over he seemed to appreciate the joke, but made me all
sorts of offers if I would not tell it to his wife when we got home.

I asked for the valise and he said he had paid a small boy to bring it
to the hotel, and he supposed it was at the office, for he wouldn't
carry it through town under any circumstances, and if those people where
he called would deed him their house and lot he wouldn't again go
through what he did during those few awful seconds. He said that when I
began talking about the house and lot he thought at first I had either
got things badly mixed up or had gone crazy; and then when he suddenly
thought of himself and the predicament it had left him in, he thought
_he_ would go crazy. The very first thing he thought of was that I had
up and told the same identical story that he was to tell, and that he
was actually left without a sign of an excuse for calling on those
people. It never occurred to him that he could possibly introduce
himself as a polish vender although he fully realized that the valise
had been saddled on to him; and he was sitting there in a dazed
condition wondering how he should get out of a scrape when I called the
lady's attention to him. And only for the fact that I mentioned him as a
man with something for sale he possibly never would have came to his
senses again, and would no doubt have been arrested or kicked out of the
house.

I asked him why he didn't ask the lady if she didn't wish to buy instead
of saying, "Madam, you don't want to buy do you?"

"Great Heavens, I was afraid as it was that she would say that she
wanted to buy and if she had I would have fainted dead away."

This satisfied me that Johnny would never make a polish vender and I
advised him to return home, which he did.

I then went to Clyde, Ohio, where my family were keeping house. I had
sent them there from Bronson, Michigan a few weeks before. It had taken
the greater portion of the money I had been making to get them
comfortably settled at housekeeping and to buy necessary clothing for
them. I had now begun to hand over a few dollars to Mr. Keefer
occasionally to he