I kept them carefully apart in different pockets, but mixed
they would get in spite of all. I had to call it square, however
far the footing was out of the way, or sit up all night, which I
would not do. I remember well the only time I came out even. I was
so astonished that I would not believe it, but had to go all over
the account again. That night I slept the sleep of the just. The
next morning, when I was starting out on my route with a clean
conscience and a clean slate, a shopkeeper rapped on his window
as I went by to tell me that I had given him the previous day a
twenty-dollar bill for a ten, in making change. After that I gave
up trying.
I was no longer alone. From Buffalo my old chum Ronne had come,
hearing that I was doing well, to join me, and from Denmark an old
schoolfellow, whose life at twenty-two had been wrecked by drink
and who wrote begging to be allowed to come. His mother pleaded
for him too, but it was not needed. He had enclosed in his letter
the strongest talisman of all, a letter written by Elizabeth in the
long ago when we were children together.
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