It all happened after this manner,
neither no more nor no less."
He cleared his throat and gazed with undisguised hostility across the
parade ground. Thus he began:
"It was during the summer of 1888, some thirty odd years ago," quoth
he. "I was a bit young then, but never such a whey face as you,
certainly not."
"Positively," said I, in hearty agreement.
"At that time," he continued, not noticing my remark, "I was resting
easy on a soft job between cruises as night watchman on one of them
P.O. docks at Dover. The work warn't hard, but it was hard enough. I
would never have taken it had it not been for the unpleasant fact that
owing to some little trouble I had gotten into at one of the pubs my
wife was in one of her nasty, brow-beating moods. At these times the
solitude and the stars together with the grateful companionship of a
couple of buckets of beer was greatly to be preferred to my little old
home. So I took the job and accordingly spent my nights sitting with
my back to a pile, my legs comfortably stretched out along the rim of
the dock and a bucket of beer within easy reach."
"Could anything be fairer than that?" said I.
"Nothing," said he, and continued.
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