This man, whose name also chanced to be Myers, was of the tiger breed, fearing nothing, ever ready for a fight, and almost invariably coming off conqueror.  In his generous rage he halted his team, grasped his wagon-whip, and, accompanied by the trembling boy, turned back, breathing vengeance.  David was much alarmed, and told his protector that he was afraid to meet the wagoner, who had so often threatened him with his whip.  But his new friend said,” Have no fear.  The man shall give you back your money, or I will thrash it out of him.”

They had proceeded but about two miles when they met the approaching team of Adam Myers.  Henry Myers, David’s new friend, leading him by the hand, advanced menacingly upon the other teamster, and greeted him with the words: 

“You accursed scoundrel, what do you mean by robbing this friendless boy of his money?” Adam Myers confessed that he had received seven dollars of the boy’s money.  He said, however, that he had no money with him; that he had invested all he had in articles in his wagon, and that he intended to repay the boy as soon as they got back to Tennessee.  This settled the question, and David returned with Henry Myers to his wagon, and accompanied him for several days on his slow and toilsome journey westward.

The impatient boy, as once before, soon got weary of the loitering pace of the heavily laden team, and concluded to leave his friend and press forward more rapidly alone.  It chanced, one evening, that several wagons met, and the teamsters encamped for the night together.  Henry Myers told them the story of the friendless boy, and that he was now about to set out alone for the long journey, most of it through an entire wilderness, and through a land of strangers wherever there might chance to be a few scattered cabins.  They took up a collection for David, and presented him with three dollars.

The little fellow pressed along, about one hundred and twenty-five miles, down the valley between the Alleghany and the Blue ridges, until he reached Montgomery Court House.  The region then, nearly three quarters of a century ago, presented only here and there a spot where the light of civilization had entered.  Occasionally the log cabin of some poor emigrant was found in the vast expanse.  David, too proud to beg, when he had any money with which to pay, found his purse empty when he had accomplished this small portion of his journey.

In this emergence, he hired out to work for a man a month for five dollars, which was at the rate of about one shilling a day.  Faithfully he fulfilled his contract, and then, rather dreading to return home, entered into an engagement with a hatter, Elijah Griffith, to work in his shop for four years.  Here he worked diligently eighteen months without receiving any pay.  His employer then failed, broke up, and left the country.  Again this poor boy, thus the sport of fortune, found himself without a penny, with but few clothes, and those much worn.