"I've stole a good many things in my time, but I'm here to bet that no other living Hoosier ever stole a railroad conductor, an' Fuller was the only one I ever stole. I stole him slicker 'n a eel. I had him 'fore he knowed it, and you jist better bet he was one clean beat conductor fore I was done wi' 'im. "I kin tell you the whole affair in a few minutes, and I da' say you'll laugh a good deal 'fore I'm through. You see I went down to Floridy for my health, and when I had about recivered I got onto a bum in Jacksonville and spent all my money and everything else but my very oldest suit o' clothes and my pistol, a Colt's repeater, ten inch barrel. None o' you can't tell how a feller feels in a predicament o' that sort. Somethin' got into my throat 'bout as big as a egg, and I felt kinder moist about the eyes when I had to stare the fact in the face that I was nigh onto, or possibly quite a thousand miles from home without ary a dime in my pocket. But if there's one thing I do have more 'n another in my nater it's common sense grit. Well, what you s'pose I done? W'y I jest lit out for home afoot. Well, sir, the derndest swamps is them Floridy and Georgy swamps. It's ra'lly all one swamp--the Okeefenokee. I follered the railroad that goes up to Savanny, and it led me deeper and deeper into the outlying fringes of that terrible old bog. When I had travelled a considerable distance into Georgy, and had pretty well wore my feet off up to my ankle j'ints, and was about as close onto starvation as a 'tater failure in Ireland, and when my under lip had got to hanging down like the skirt o' a wore out saddle, and when every step seemed like it'd be my last, I jest got clean despairing like and concluded to pray a little. So I got down upon my knee j'ints and put up a most extra-ornary supplication. I felt every word o' it, too, in all the marrer of my bones. The place where I was a prayin' was a sort o' hummock spot in a mighty bad part o' the swamp. Some awful tall pines towered stupenjisly above me. Well, jest as I was finished, and was a saying amen, the lordy mercy what a yowl something did give right over me in a tree! I think I jumped as high as your head, stranger, and come down flat-footed onto a railroad cross tie. Whillikins, how I was scared! It was one o' them whooping owls they have down there. It was while I was a running from that 'ere owl a thinkin' it was a panther, that the thought struck me somewhere in the back o' the head that I might steal a ride to Savanny on the first train 'at might pass. 'I'll try it!' says I, and so I sot right down there in the swamp and calmly waited for a train. In about a hour here come one, like the de'il a braking hemp, jist more'n a roaring through the swamp. I forgot to tell you 'at it was after dark, but the moon was dimly a shining through the fog that covers everything there o' nights. Well, here come the train, and as she passed I made a lunge at the hind platform of the last car