A Chapter that you can Skip

Donald knew that if they once began drinking they would stay inside for some time. Then presently he heard a great trampling sound, and he knew it must be a herd of cattle coming, and he knew there must be somebody driving them. With that he began singing, like he was the happiest man in the world.

"The man that was driving the cattle came up to him and he says: 'Who's inside the sack there, and what are you singing like that for?'

"'I'm singing because I'm the happiest man alive,' says Donald. 'I had plenty of troubles in my life, but I'm going to heaven now, and they're all over. There's a blessing on this same sack, you must know, and whoever's in it goes straight to heaven, and isn't it myself that's a right to be singing?'

"'Surely you have,' says the man, 'and it's glad I'ld be to take your place. What would you take from me now to let me get in that sack in your place?'

"'There's not money enough in the world to make me do it,' says Donald, and he began singing again.

"'Ah, be reasonable!' says the man. 'I'll pay you well.'

"'I tell you the whole world couldn't do it,' says Donald. 'It's not every day a man gets a chance to go to heaven. Think of being over with all the sorrows and the troubles of this world, and nothing but happiness any more forever. Sure I'ld be a fool if I'ld give it up.'

"'Oh, but think of me,' says the man. 'It's me that has the sorrows on me so that I can't bear them. There's my wife died three months ago, and all the children was dead before her, and it was she always helped me with the farm and knew how to manage better nor myself, so that now she's gone I can do nothing with it. And I've lost money on it till I can't pay the rent, and now I'll lose the farm itself, and here I am driving these cattle to town to sell them to get money to take another piece of land and keep the life in me, and yet I don't want to live at all. Oh, give me your place in that sack and you'll go to heaven in your own time, if it was only for that one good deed.