CHAPTER XVIII.
A COLLISION.
If this were a History of Metropolisville--but it isn't, and that is enough.

You do not want to hear, and I do not want to tell you, how Dave Sawney, like another Samson, overthrew the Philistines; how he sauntered into the room where all the county officers did business together, he and his associates, at noon, when most of the officers were gone to dinner; how he seized the records--there were not many at that early day--loaded them into his wagon, and made off.

You don't want to hear all that.

If you do, call on Dave himself.

He has told it over and over to everybody who would listen, from that time to this, and he would cheerfully get out of bed at three in the morning to tell it again, with the utmost circumstantiality, and with such little accretions of fictitious ornament as always gather about a story often and fondly told.