pt that divil a bit am I a Jew. But
history lies, as I have told ye. Are ye quite sure, sir, that ye
haven't a drop of whiskey convenient? Ye well know that I have many
miles of walking before me."

"I have none," said I, "and, if you please, I am about to leave for my
supper."

I pushed my chair back creakingly. This ancient landlubber was
becoming as great an affliction as any cross-bowed mariner. He shook a
musty effluvium from his piebald clothes, overturned my inkstand, and
went on with his insufferable nonsense.

"I wouldn't mind it so much," he complained, "if it wasn't for the
work I must do on Good Fridays. Ye know about Pontius Pilate, sir, of
course. His body, whin he killed himself, was pitched into a lake on
the Alps mountains. Now, listen to the job that 'tis mine to perform
on the night of ivery Good Friday. The ould divil goes down in the
pool and drags up Pontius, and the water is bilin' and spewin' like a
wash pot. And the ould divil sets the body on top of a throne on the
rocks, and thin comes me share of the job. Oh, sir, ye would pity me
thin--ye would pray for the poor Wandering Jew that niver was a Jew if
ye could see the horror of the thing that I must do. 'Tis I that must
fetch a bowl of water and kneel down before it till it washes its
hands. I declare to ye that Pontius Pilate, a man dead two hundred
years, dragged up with the lake slime coverin' him and fishes
wrigglin' inside of him widout eyes, and in the discomposition of the
body, sits there, sir, and washes his hands in the bowl I hold for him
on Good Fridays. 'Twas so commanded."

Clearly, the matter had progressed far beyond the scope of the
_Bugle's_ local column. There might have been employment here for the
alienist or for those who circulate the pledge; but I had had enough
of it. I got up, and repeated that I must go.

At this he seized my coat, grovelled upon my desk, and burst again
into distressful weeping. Whatever it was about, I said to myself that
his grief was genuine.

"Come now, Mr. Ader," I said, soothingly; "what is the matter?"

The answer came brokenly through his racking sobs:

"Because I would not . . . let the poor Christ . . . rest . . . upon
the step."

His hallucination seemed beyond all reasonable answer; yet the effect
of it upon him scarcely merited disrespect. But I knew nothing that
might assuage it; and I told him once more that both of us should be
leaving the office at once.

Obedient at l