It may be that with his deepseeing insight (had not wishing often been but good time wasted) H.C.E. prayed all through that three and a half hour's agony in silence with unfeigned charity that his wordwounder might unfold into the first of a distinguished dynasty, his most ^|2cherished besetting^2| of ideas being the formation, as in more favoured climes, of a truly criminal stratum, thereby at last eliminating much general delinquency from all classes and masses ^|2with directly derivative decasualisation^2|.

The coffin was to turn in handy later. This is the how of that. A number of public bodies, before voting themselves ^|2by a fit and proper resolution^2| once for all out of existence, made him a present of a grave in a fair state of repair wherein the remains of an epileptic were to have been laid to rest as soon as he was regarded as dead but which nobody living had ever been man enough to dig still less occupy.
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This ^|2wastohavebeen^2| grave he openly blasted by means of a landmine exploded from a bombingpost of fourteen hundred feet in his aerial torpedo contacted with the expectant minefield by tins of ^|2improved^2| ammonia lashed to her sides and fused into tripup wires playing down into the ground battery fuseboxes and afterwards carefully lined the result with bricks and mortar, so encouraging the other useful public bodies to present him over and above that with a stone slab. Coffins, windingsheets, cinerary urns and for that matter any kind of funeral bric à brac would naturally follow in the ordinary course ^|2enabling him to live all the days of his life of opulence, embalmed, rich in death anticipated^2|.

The other spring offensive may have come about all quite by accident. From both camps (granted at the outset for the sake of argument that men on both sides ^|2during the ferment^2| had grand ideas) all conditions were drawn into the conflict, some for lack of proper feeding, others already caught in the act of carving honourable careers for self and family, and, if emaciated enough, the person garotted may have suggested incarnate whiggery, nay, even the grand old whig himself in the fleshº when falsesighted by the wouldbe burglar, a tory of the tories, fore for there circulated fairly freely the feeling that in so hibernating Earwicker^|2, who previous to that semidetached life had been known to eat his own length in rainbow trout,^2| was^|2, like the salmon of his ladderleap,^2| secretly feeding on his own misplaced fat.

Kate Strong, a widow, did all the scavenging
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from good King Charles' golden days onwards but ^|2she her lean besom^2| cleaned but sparingly and her bare statement reads that, there being no macadamised sidewalks in those old R.I.C. days barring a footpath which left off where the plaintiff was struck, she left, as scavengers who will be scavengers will, a filthdump near the dogpond in Phoenix parkº all over which fossil footprints, bootmarks, fingersigns, elbowdints, kneecaves, breechbowls were all successively traced of a very involved description. It was ^|2right there^2| on this resurfaced spot ^|2in the saddle of the pass miles from true civilisation^2| plainly that the attacker, though under medium, with truly native pluck tackled him whom he mistook to be somebody else to whom he bore some facial resemblance, making use of sacrilegious language to the effect that he would have his life and lay him out ^|2as soon as he ^|asaid his prayers had his prayers said^a|2| at the same time catching hold of a long bar he had and with which he usually broke furniture ^|2he rose the stick at him^2|. They struggled for some considerable time and in the course of ^|2it the tussle^2| the masked man said to the other: Let me go, Pat, I hardly knew you. Later on the same man asked ^|2with an ugly grin^2|: Was six pounds fifteen in round numbers taken off you, tell us, by anyone 3 or 4 months ago? There was some further severe mauling and a wooden affair in the shape of a Wembley fell from the intruder who thereupon became friendly and wanted to know^|2, laying all joking aside,^2| if
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his chance companion,who still had the fender, happened to have the loose change of a ten pound note about him at the moment as, if so, he would pay the six pounds odd back out of that for what was taken on him on last July. To this the other replied: Would you be greatly surprised to learn that as it so happens I honestly have not such a thing as the loose change of a tenpound anywhere about me ^|2for at^2| the present moment but I believe I can see my way to advance you something like four and sevenpence between hopping and trotting ^|2which you might just as well have^2| to buy whisky. At the mention of whisky the gunman became strangely calm and said he would go good to him some day yet and remarking, apparently much more highly pleased than tongue could tell: You stunning little Southdowner! Goalball I've struck this day of days, by golly! You have some bully German grit, Southdowner!: he went off with the four and seven and ^|2the his trusty^2| hurlbat ^|2or other uncertain ^|aarticle weapon^a| of lignum vitae^2|, picked up, ^|2to keep some business appointment^2| while the man left behind along with the fender, who bore up wonderfully under all of it with a number of plumsized bruises all over him, reported the occurrence ^|2in justifiable hope that some lotion ^|aor a fomentation of poppyheads^a| would be exhibited to the parts^2| to at the ^|2nearest^2| watch house in Vicar street, his face all covered with nonfatal mammalian blood as proof positive of the seriousness of his character and that he
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was bleeding from the nose, mouth and two ears while some of his hair had been pulled off his head though otherwise his allround health appeared to be middling enough ^|2that not one of the two hundred and six bones in his body was a whit the worse for the wear^2|.

Now coming on gradually to the question of unlawfully obtaining a pierced fender and fireguard there crops up the far more salient point of the political leanings of a person who, when mistakenly ambushed, ^|2as and as near as made no matter to being revolvered offhand when the ^|aother man with the Peter the Painter^a| wanted to hole him,^2| was solely exercising one of the most primary liberties of the subject by walking along one of our public thoroughfares in the broadest of daylight.

As if that were not to be enough for anybody but little headway, if any, was made ^|2in solving this wasnottobe crime conundrum^2| when a countryman, Festy King, who gave an address in Joyce's country in the heart of a wellfamed poteen district, was subsequently brought up on an improperly framed indictment of both the counts. ^|2When the prisoner^|a, soaked in methylated,^a| appeared in ^|athe dry^a| dock wearing a policeman's trousers as he had purposely torn up all his clothes in the cell, alleging that they had fallen off him unaccountably,^2| It was attempted ^|2by the crown^2| to show that King rubbed some dirt on his face as the best means of disguising himself and was at the fair of a Monday attended by large numbers with a pig when the animal ate some of the doorpost, King selling it because she ate a whole lot of the woodwork of her sty in order to pay off six pounds fifteen arrears of rent. ^|2Remarkable evidence was given by^2| an ^|2eyewitness eye, ear, nose and throat blank who^2| stated that heº was pleased to remember the fifth
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of November which was going to go down in the annals of ^|2profane^2| history and that one thing which particularly struck a person of his ^|2sorely^2| trained observational powers was that he saw or heard Pat O'Donnell ^|2with part of a dungfork^2| beat and murder singlehanded Simon and another two of the Kings, Simon ^|2D.^2| and ^|2Roaring^2| Peter, between whom bad blood existed ^|2on the head of trespass of fowl. There were cries in court of: Produce O'Donnell!:^2| but it oozed out in crossexamination that ^|2when and^2| where the ambush was laid there was not as much light as would dim a child's altar and to the perplexedly uncondemnatory bench, the first King of all, Festy, as soon as the outer layer of dirt had been removed at the request of ^|2the jury a few live jurors^2|, declared through his interpreter on his oath and before God and all their honours that he did not fire a stone either before or after he was born up to that day and this he had the neck to supplement by postasserting ^|2with a justbeencleaned barefacedness^2| in the same ^|2native^2| language what he would impart that he might never ask to see sight or light of this world or the ^|2next other^2| world or any other world if ever he up with a hand to take or throw the sign of a mortal ^|2stick or^2| stone at man, ^|2ewe yoelamb^2| or salvation army either before or after being baptised down to that most holy and blessed hour.