There was almost no likelihood of such an omission, but there was at least a possibility of it.
He glanced across the cemetery to Jerry Hurley"s unmarked mound, and shuddered.
Then he thought laboriously.
When he left the cemetery in such time as to avoid a delay of his evening meal and a consequent outburst of anger on the part of his old housekeeper, he had taken a resolution.
"Threescore years and ten, says the Bible," he muttered to himself as he walked homeward. "The scriptural lifetime"ll do for me."
A week thereafter old Tommy gazed proudly upon the finished inscription.
"Died November 11, 1890," was the newest bit of biography there engraved.
"But it"s two years and more till November 11, 1890," said a voice at his side.
Tommy merely cast an indifferent look upon the speaker and walked off without a word.
The whole village now thought that Tommy had become a monomaniac upon the subject of his tombstone. Perhaps he had. No one has been able to learn from his friend, Billy Skidmore, what thoughts he may have communicated to the latter upon the matter.
Tommy now lived for no other apparent purpose than to visit his tombstone daily. He no longer confined his walks thither to the pleasant days. He went in weather most perilous to so old and frail a man.
One of his prospective heirs took sufficient interest in him to advise more care of his health.
"I can easily keep alive till the time comes," returned the antique; "there"s only a year left."
Rapidly his hold upon life relaxed. A week before November 11, 1890, he went to bed and stayed there. People began to speculate as to whether his unique prediction--or I should say, his decree--would be fulfilled to the very day.
Upon the fifth day of his illness Death threatened to come before the time that had been set for receiving him.
"Isn"t this the tenth?" the old man mumbled.
"No," said his housekeeper, who with one of his nieces, the doctor, and Billy Skidmore, attended the ill man, "it"s only the 9th."
"Then I must fight for two days more; the tombstone must not lie."
And he rallied so well that it seemed as if the tombstone would lie, nevertheless, for Tommy was still alive at eleven-thirty on the night of November 11. Moreover he had been in his senses when last awake, and there was every likelihood that he would look at the clock whenever his eyes should next open.
"He can"t live till morning, that"s sure," said the doctor.
"But, good Lord! you don"t mean to say that he"ll hold out till after twelve o"clock," said Billy Skidmore, whose anxiety only had sustained him in his grief at the approaching dissolution of his friend.
"Quite probably," replied the doctor.
"Good heavens! Tommy won"t rest easy in his grave if he don"t die on the 11th. The monument will be wrong."
"Oh, that won"t matter," said the niece.
Billy looked at her in amazement. Was his old friend"s sacred wish to miscarry thus?
"Yes, "twill matter," he said, in a loud whisper. "And if time won"t wait for Tommy of its own accord, we"ll make it. When did he last see the clock?"
"Half-past nine," said the housekeeper.
"Then we"ll turn it back to ten," said Skidmore, acting as he spoke.
"But he may hear the town clock strike."
Billy said never a word, but plunged into his overcoat, threw on his hat, and hurried on into the cold night.
"Ten minutes to midnight," he said, as he looked up at the town clock upon the church steeple. "Can I skin up them ladders in time?"
Tommy awoke once before the last slumber. Billy was by his bedside, as were the doctor, the housekeeper, and the niece. The old man"s eyes sought the clock.
"Eleven," he murmured. Then he was silent, for the town clock had begun to strike. He counted the strokes--eleven. Then he smiled and tried to speak again.
"Almost--live out--birthday--seventy--tombstone--all right."
He closed his eyes, and, inasmuch as the town clock furnishes the official time for Rearward, the published report of Tommy McGuffy"s going records that he pa.s.sed at twenty-five minutes after eleven P.M., November 11, 1890.
Very few people know that time turned back one hour and a half in order that the reputation of Tommy McGuffy"s tombstone for veracity might be spotless in the eyes of future generations.
Billy Skidmore, the s.e.xton, arranged to have Rearward time ready for the sun when it rose upon the following morning.
IX. -- HE BELIEVED THEM
He was a bachelor, and he owned a little tobacco store in the suburbs.
All the labour, manual and mental, requisite to the continuance of the establishment, however, was done by the ex-newsboy, to whom the old soldier paid $4 per week and allowed free tobacco.
He had come into the neighbourhood from the interior of the state shortly after the war, and for a time there were not ten houses within a block of his shop. The shop is now the one architectural blemish in a long row of handsome stores. Miles of streets have been built up around it.
The old soldier used to sit in an antique armchair in the rear of his shop, smoking, from meal to meal.
"I l"arnt the habit in the army," he would say. "I never teched tobacker till I went to the war."
People would look inquiringly at his empty sleeve.
"I got that at Gettysburg in the second day"s fight," he would explain, complacently.
He was often asked whether he was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic.
"No; "tain"t worth while. I done my fightin" in "63 and "64--them times.
I don"t care about doin" it over again in talk. Talk"s cheap."
This made folks smile, for he was continually fighting his battles over again in conversation. Every regular customer had been made acquainted with the part that he had taken in each contest, where he had stood when he received his wound, what regiment had the honour of possessing him, and how promptly he had enlisted against the wishes of parents and sweetheart.