“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 passed 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 sexton, 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. “Of course you get a pension,” many would observe. He would shake his head and answer, in a mild tone of a man consciously repressing a pardonable pride. “I never 'plied, and as long as the retail tobacker trade keeps up like this, I reckon I won't make no pull on the gover'ment treash'ry.” And he would puff at his cigar vigorously, beam upon the group that surrounded his chair, and start on one of his long trains of reminiscences.