further away from the dining-room of the nearest hotel--well, than"--he
turned suddenly--"than that fellow there is from here--that fat,
knock-kneed chap there who seems to have so much to say about me." The
second clerk, who was also the second head wit, yelped like a suddenly
squelched concertina and was quiet.

The new-comer, after a grave study of the knock-kneed one's person,
resumed his narrative. "Then oiler on a cattle steamer. Ever been on a
cattleman?"

"Huh!" The head clerk was scowling tremendously.

"No? You ought to try one sometime. Some are all right, but some
are"--he looked sidewise at the stenographer--"well, no matter. One
night two sweet-tempered, light-complexioned coal-passers hit me
together, one with a shovel, the other with a slice-bar. It was the
slice-bar, I think, that got me. I didn't see it coming--or going
either--but probably it was the slice-bar." He bent his neck and parted
the heavy black hair. A white welt showed through the hair.

The head clerk flashed an enlightening wink toward the second head
clerk; but the second clerk, seeming to be less interested than
formerly, the wink was flashed over to the stenographer; but as she,
too, seemed preoccupied, the head clerk, rather less buoyantly,
inquired, "And what did you do to the two coal-passers?"

"For what I did to them--after I came to--I had to jump into the Mersey
and swim ashore. British justice, you know. Inflexible!--especially to a
foreigner who cracks a couple of domestic skulls."