One For Me, One For You

Did you ever hear the story about the two little boys who went to gather nuts?  Their mothers asked them to go out one morning and each fill a pail full of walnuts.  The first little boy told his friend that he knew where there was a huge old walnut tree with lots of nuts all around it.  "We'll be able to fill our pails all the way full," he assured his friend.

So the two boys took off to find the big walnut tree, which happened to be growing inside the city cemetery.  Now this particular cemetery had a wall all around it, so no one outside could see what was going on inside.  The boys went inside the cemetery, and sure enough, there was a the biggest walnut tree either little fellow had ever seen.  Happily they plopped down on the ground and began filling their buckets. 

After a little while one little boy said to the other,  "This isn't a very fair way to gather walnuts.  You have lots more in your bucket than I have in mine." 

The second little boy wanted to be fair, so he said, "I'll tell you what.  Let's dump all the nuts out and start over.  Then we'll put one in your bucket, and one in mine, so we'll have exactly the same."  His friend thought that was a good idea, so they dumped both pails out and began again to divide up the walnuts.

"Here's one for you,"  the little boy put a nut in his friends bucket, "and one for me," and he put a nut in his.  "One for you, one for me." 

The two boys spent all morning carefully placing walnuts into their buckets.  "One for you, one for me.  One for you, one for me."  As they worked two walnuts rolled away from them and under the fence, but they decided they would wait and get them after they finished dividing the rest of the nuts.

In the meantime, another little boy was walking down the street on the other side of the fence.  He heard voices coming from inside the cemetery, and listening closer, his eyes grew big and he turned and ran back up the street.  Pretty soon he bumped into an elderly gentleman who was out for a stroll.  Tugging on his sleeve the little boy exclaimed, "Mr., Mr., you've got to come hear this!  The devil and the Lord are both inside the cemetery, and they are dividing up the souls!"

The elderly gentleman laughed and said, "No they're not."  But the little boy insisted, tugging on the man's arm until he finally followed him down the street.  As they approached the cemetery the little boy urged, "Listen, listen!  You'll hear them!"

The old man listened, and sure enough, from inside the cemetery he heard the words, "One for you, one for me.  One for you, one for me."

The old man's eyes grew big and he looked at his young companion in astonishment. 

Inside the cemetery the two boys were just finishing filling their pails.  Standing up they dusted the dirt from their pants, and the one little boy said to the other,  "Well, I guess we're through.  Let's go get those two nuts out on the street, and then we can go home."

The elderly gentleman and the little boy looked at each other in horror, then turned and ran up the street as fast as they could go.