a small settlement called Ellicott's Mills, David, a little ashamed
to approach the houses in the ragged and mud-bespattered clothes
which he wore on the way, crept into the wagon to put on his better
garments.

While there in the midst of the flour barrels piled up all around
him, the horses took fright at some strange sight which they
encountered, and in a terrible scare rushed down a steep hill,
turned a sharp corner, broke the tongue of the wagon and both of the
axle-trees, and whirled the heavy barrels about in every direction.
The escape of David from very serious injuries seemed almost
miraculous. But our little barbarian leaped from the ruins
unscathed. It does not appear that he had ever cherished any
conception whatever of an overruling Providence. Probably, a
religious thought had never entered his mind. A colt running by the
side of the horses could not have been more insensible to every idea
of death, and responsibility at God's bar, than was David Crockett.
And he can be hardly blamed for this. The savages had some idea of
the Great Spirit and of a future world. David was as uninstructed in
those thoughts as are the wolves and the bears. Many years
afterward, in writing of this occurrence, he says, with
characteristic flippancy, interlarded with coarse phrases:

"This proved to me, if a fellow is born to be hung he will never be
drowned; and further, that if he is born for a seat in Congress,
even flour barrels can't make a mash of him. I didn't know how soon
I should be knocked into a cocked hat, and get my walking-papers for
another country."

The wagon was quite demolished by the disaster. Another was