'See that you keep in the straight road.' 'If our brother had not left the straight road,' said one who stood near, 'he that was in danger would have gone down into the pit.' 'It matters much,' he answered, 'whether it was kindness or curiosity that led him out of the road.

But he that follows a fool hath much need of wisdom, for if he save the fool do ye not see that he hath encouraged folly ?' Of course I had then no proper understanding of the chiefs counsel, nor do I pretend even to remember it from that first telling, but the tale was told frequently in the course of my long acquaintance with Uncle Eb.
The diary of my good old friend lies before me as I write, the leaves turned yellow and the entries dim.

I remember how stern he grew of an evening when he took out this sacred little record of our wanderings and began to write in it with his stub of a pencil.

He wrote slowly and read and reread each entry with great care as I held the torch for him.

'Be still, boy--be still,' he would say when some pressing interrogatory passed my lips, and then he would bend to his work while the point of his pencil bored further into my patience.