Ransie and Ariela Bilbro come down out of the Cumberland Mountains to have their marriage undone. Justice of the Peace Benaja Widdup can find no law on the subject, so he invents one, and prices it at five dollars, which happens to be every cent Ransie made on his furs. Then Ariela wants alimony. What follows is a night ride, a masked man, a bill rolled tight and pushed down a rifle barrel, and a decree that nobody much wants by morning. O. Henry watches a single five-dollar bill travel in a perfect circle, and two stubborn people get carried around with it. A love story for anyone who ever meant it when they said they were leaving.

This is a episode from our archives recently remastered.

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Please note: "A Chance of Death" is the inaugural episode of my new podcast, New Tales Told. I published it here first to share it with my large Litreading audience. However, it will eventually only be available on New Tales Told. If you haven't yet done so, please search for New Tales Told on this podcast service or visit shortstoryverses.com to listen to this and my other original stories.

Publishing this story has been one of the scarier things I’ve done in my life. Reading the works of others is far different than narrating a creation of my own. Honestly, I haven’t written fiction since high school—but I’ve always wanted to. I hope to share more, depending on how this one lands.

While this story is purely fictional, it unfolds in the shadow of a real disaster—one that affected communities close to my own family in Asheville, where my mother, sister, and niece live. I want to express my sincere concern and empathy for those who were impacted. That said, this is not a story about the tragedy itself. It’s a tale of personal escape, buried secrets, and a woman who may have used chaos as cover for something darker—or perhaps something justified. The events are imagined, but the setting was chosen for its emotional weight, and I’ve tried to treat that weight with care.

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Mark Twain had a bone to pick with the Sunday-school storybook — that pious little genre where good children are showered with rewards and bad children are struck by lightning, broken by apple trees, and buried under weeping relatives by the final page. So he wrote two stories to set the record straight.

In this paired episode we run both, back-to-back, framed like an old-time radio hour. First, The Story of the Good Little Boy: meet Jacob Blivens, who obeys his parents, learns his book, never plays hooky, and longs above all else to be printed in a Sunday-school book of his own — funeral illustration and all. There is only one small problem. The world has not read the same books Jacob has, and it declines, spectacularly, to cooperate.

Then, in counterpoint, The Story of the Bad Little Boy: meet Jim — not "James," though the books would prefer it — who steals the jam, robs the orchard, frames the good boy, boats on Sunday without drowning, and grows up to prosper by every kind of rascality. His luck, like Jacob's misfortune, never quite runs out.

Twain's targets are sentimentality, easy moralizing, and the comfortable lie that the universe keeps a fair ledger. Told with a wink and a warm lamp, this is satire that still lands a century and a half on. Be good if it suits you. Be careful regardless.

This is a episode from our archives recently remastered.

If you enjoyed this story, buy me an e-book!

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or take a no cost path: Follow the podcast so you never miss one

and if you enjoyed this story, a five-star rating or review helps others find us.

Think of it as applause without waking anyone.

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