"Where are you goin' to sleep to-night?" asked his quaint-visaged host.
"That is a problem I had been considering myself," answered Haldane, dubiously. "I had about concluded that, rather than walk back through the rain to the wretched place at which I slept last night, I would ask for the privilege of sleeping in your wood-shed. It wouldn't be much worse than the other place, or any place in which I could find lodging if I were known. Since I did not steal your silver I suppose you can trust me with your wood."
"Yet they say your folks is rich."
"Yes, I can go to as elegant a house as there is in this city."
"Why in thunder don't you go there, then?"
"Because I would rather be in your wood-shed and other places like it for the present."
"I can't understand that."
"Perhaps not, but there are worse things than sleeping hard and cold. There are people who suffer more through their minds than their bodies. I am not going back among my former acquaintances till I can go as a gentleman."
The old man looked at him approvingly a moment, and then said sententiously: "Well, you may be a bad cuss, but you ain't a mean one."
Haldane laughed outright. "Mr. Growther," said he, "you do me honor. I foresee you will trust me with your wood-pile to-night."
"No I won't nuther. You might not take my wood, but you would take cold, and then I'd have to nuss you and pay doctor's bills, and bother with you a week or more. I might even have your funeral on my hands. You needn't think you're goin' to get me into all this trouble, fur I'm one that hates trouble, unless it's fur myself; and, if I do say it, it's askin' a little too much of me, almost a stranger, to 'tend to your funeral. I don't like funerals--never did--and I won't have nothin' to do with yours. There's a room right upstairs here, over the kitchen, where you can sleep without wakin' up the hull neighborhood a coughin' before mornin'. Now don't say nothin' more about it. I'm thinkin' of myself plaguy sight more'n I am of you. If I could let you go to the dogs without worryin' about it, I'd do it quick enough; but I've got a miserable, sneakin' old conscience that won't stand right up and make me do right, like a man; but when I want to do some thin' mean it begins a gnawin' and a gnawin' at me till I have to do what I oughter for the sate of a little peace and comfort. A-a-h!"