Exactly on time, a boy rides up the road on a bicycle, sees the box, puts a piece of paper into it and pedals away back to Summit.
I waited for an hour and then I got down from the tree, got the note and was back at the cave in another half an hour. I opened the note and read it to Bill.
Two Desperate Men.
Gentlemen: I got your letter. I think you ask too much, and I make you my offer, which I believe you will accept. You bring Johnny home and pay me two hundred and fifty dollars, and I agree to take him back. I advise you to come at night, because the neighbours believe he is lost, and I couldn't be responsible for what they would do to anybody who brought him back.
Very respectfully,
EBENEZER DORSET.
“Sam,” said Bill, “what's two hundred and fifty dollars? We've got the money. One more night of this kid will send me in Bedlam. You aren't going to let the chance go[16]?”
I wasn't.
We took him home that night. We made him go by telling him that his father bought a silver-mounted gun and a pair of moccasins for him, and we were going to hunt bears the next day.
When the kid found out that we were going to leave him at home, he started to cry and grabbed Bill's leg. His father peeled him away gradually, like a plaster.
“How long can you hold him?” asks Bill.
“I'm not as strong as I used to be,” says old Dorset, “but I think I can promise you ten minutes.”
“Enough,” says Bill. “In ten minutes I can cross the Central, Southern, Middle Western States and get to the Canadian border.”
And, as dark as it was, and as fat as Bill was, and as good a runner as I am, he was a mile and a half out of Summit before I could catch up with him.
Luck
Mark Twain
1. The student
It was at a banquet in London in honor of one of the two or three English military names of this generation. For some reasons I will not tell his real name and titles, and call him Lieutenant-General Lord Arthur Scoresby… What a fascination there is in a famous name!
I looked, and looked, and looked at him, searching, noting: the quietness, the noble gravity; the simple honesty.
The priest at my left was my friend – priest now, but he spent the first half of his life in the camp and field, and as an instructor in the military school at Woolwich. Just at the moment I was talking about, a singular light blinked in his eyes, and he leaned down and whispered to me – pointing at the hero of the banquet: 'Privately – his glory is an accident – just a result of luck.'
This was a great surprise to me. If its subject was Napoleon, or Socrates, or Solomon, my shock could not be greater.
Some days later came the explanation of this strange phrase, and this is what my friend told me.
“About forty years ago I was an instructor in the military academy at Woolwich. I was in one of the sections when young Scoresby passed his examination. Other students answered brightly, while he – dear me, he didn't know anything. He was good, and sweet, and lovable; and so it was painful to see him stand there and give stupid answers. I said to myself, that after the next exam he could be excluded; so it will be an act of charity to help him as much as I can.
I found out that he knew a little of Caesar's history; and he didn't know anything else. I trained him like a slave on questions about Caesar, which I knew would be used in test. If you'll believe me, he passed the exam brilliantly! He even got compliments, while others, who knew a thousand times more than he, were criticized. By some strangely lucky accident – an accident that happens once in a century – he was not asked any other questions except from those he prepared.