ffect me most unpleasantly, much in the same manner as daisies or
golden rod affect hay fever sufferers. The result was that every time
I had my shovel poised in readiness to hurl its burden into space a
monolithic sneeze overpowered me, shook me to the keel, and all the
coal that I had trapped with so much patience and cunning fell
miserably around my feet, from whence it had lately risen. Little
things like this become most discouraging when strung out for a great
period of time. In this manner I sneezed and sweated throughout the
course of a sweltering afternoon, and just as I was about to call it a
day along comes an evilly inclined coal wagon and dumps practically in
my lap one hundred times more coal than I had disturbed in the entire
course of my labors. On top of this Fogerty, who had been loafing
around all day with his tongue out disporting himself on the coal pile
like a dog in the first snow, started a landslide somewhere above and
came bearing down on me in a cloud of dust. I found myself buried
beneath the delighted Fogerty and a couple of tons of coal, from which
I emerged unbeamingly, but not before Mr. Fogerty had addressed his
tongue to my blackened face as an expression of high good humor.

[Illustration: "FOGERTY CAME BEARING DOWN ON ME IN A CLOUD OF DUST"]

"Take me to the brig," I said, walking over to the P.O., "I'm through.
You can put a service flag on that coal pile for me."

"What's consuming you, buddy?" asked the P.O. in not an unkindly
voice.

"Take me to the brig," I repeated, "it's too much. Here I've been
working diligently all day to reduce the size of this huge mass, when
up comes that old wagon and humps its back and belches forth its
horrid contents all over the place. It's ridiculous. I surrender my
shovel."

"Gord," breathed the P.O., looking at me pityingly, "we don't want to
go and reduce that coal pile, we want to enlarge it."

"Oh!" I replied, stunned, "I didn't quite understand. I thought you
wanted to make it smaller, so I've been trying to shovel it away all
afternoon."

"You shouldn't oughter have done that," replied the P.O. as if he were
talking to an idiot, "I suppose you've been shoveling her down hill
all day?"

I admitted that I had.

"You see," I added engagingly, "I began with trying to shovel her up
hill, but the old stuff kept on rolling down on me, so I drew the
natural conclusion that I'd better shovel her down hill. It seemed
more reasonable and--"