"A-a-a-h!" ejaculated Mr. Growther, in prolonged and painful utterance, as if one of his teeth had just been drawn. "Now that is tough! I don't wonder you think Satan had a finger in that pie. Didn't I tell you the editors made up half that's in the papers? I don't know what started this story. There's generally a little beginning, like the seed of a big flauntin' weed; but I don't believe you did so mean a thing. In fact, I don't think I'm quite mean enough to have done it myself."
"You, and perhaps one other person, will be the only ones in town, then, who will not believe it against me. I know I've acted wrong and like a fool; but what chance has a fellow when he gets credit for evil only, and a hundred-fold more evil than is in him? Curse it all! since every one insists that I have gone wholly over to the devil, I might as well go."
"That's it, that's it! we're all right at his elbow, a-helpin' him along. But how did this story start? The scribbler in the German paper couldn't have spun it, like a spider, hully out of his own in'ards."
Haldane told him the whole story, sketching the "kind-hearted German" in his true colors.
At its conclusion Mr. Growther drew a long, meditative breath, and remarked sententiously, "Well, I've allers heard that 'sperience was an awfully dear school; but we do learn in it. I'll bet my head you will never pay another dollar without takin' a receipt."
"What chance will I ever have to make another dollar? They have raised a mad-dog cry against me, and I shall be treated as if I were a dog."
"Why don't you go home, then?"
"I'll go to the bottom of the river first."
"That would suit the devil, the crabs, and the eels," remarked Mr. Growther.
"Faugh! crabs and eels!" exclaimed Haldane with a shudder of disgust.
"That's all you'd find at the bottom of the river, except mud," responded Mr. Growther, effectually quenching all tragic and suicidal ideas by his prosaic statement of the facts. "Young man," he continued, tottering to his feet, "I s'pose you realize that you are in a pretty bad fix. I ain't much of a mother at comfortin'. When I feel most sorry for any one I'm most crabbed. It's one of my mean ways. If there's many screws loose in you, you will go under. If you are rash, or cowardly, or weak--that is, ready to give up-like--you will make a final mess of your life; but if you fight your way up you'll be a good deal of a man. Seems to me if I was as young and strong as you be, I'd pitch in. I'd spite myself; I'd spite the devil; I'd beat the world; I'd just grit my teeth, and go fur myself and everything else that stood in my way, and I'd whip 'em all out, or I'd die a-fightin'. But I've got so old and rheumatic that all I can do is cuss. A-a-h!"