1. So I say, mates, you see now that I am right about that little girl coming from the school yonder.

2. She is going down the road there through the red gate on the left hand side of the way.

3. Sure enough, the child has gone straight up to the door of the wrong house,

4. where she will chance to find that drunken deaf shrivelled fellow of the name of Thomas.

5. We all know him very well.

6. Won't the old chap soon teach her not to do it again, poor thing!

0. Why John has no doubts.

1. Well, neighbour, you and he may both laugh at this news of mine. Who cares? That is neither here nor there.

2. Few men die because they are laughed at, we know, don't we? What should make them? It is not very likely, is it?

3. Howsoever these are the facts of the case, so just hold your noise, friend, and be quiet till I have done. Hearken!

4. I am certain I heard them say - some of those folks who went through the whole thing from the first themselves, - that did I, safe enough, -

5. that the youngest son himself, a great boy of nine, knew his father's voice at once, though it was so queer and squeaking, and I would trust him to speak the truth any day, aye, I would.

6. And the old woman herself will tell any of you that laugh now, and tell you straight off, too, without much bother, if you will only ask her, oh! won't she? -

7. leastways she told it me when I asked her, two or three times over, did she, and she ought not to be wrong on such a point as this, what do you think?

8. Well as I was saying, she would tell you, how, where and when she found the drunken beast that she calls her husband.

9. She swore she saw him with her own eyes, lying stretched at full length, on the ground, in his good Sunday coat, close by the door of the house, down at the corner of yon lane.

10. He was whining away, says she, for all the world like a sick child, or a little girl in a fret.

11. And that happened, as she and her daughter-in-law came through the back yard from hanging out the wet clothes to dry on a washing day,

12. while the kettle was boiling for tea, one fine bright summer afternoon, only a week ago come next Thursday.

13. And, do you know?, I never learned any more than this of that business up to to-day, as sure as my name is John Shepherd, and I don't want to either, there now!

14. And so I am going home to sup. Good night, and don't be so quick to crow over a body again, when he talks of this that and t'other.