You know me well, Tom, and you can vouch for it that I never had any objection to telling a story. It was, in truth, a kind of weakness with me, and some used to say that I was getting into the habit of telling the same ones too often. Be that as it may, I never was accused of relating a garbled, broken, and disjointed tale, and for the honor of my anecdotic powers, I resolved not to do so.
"My Lord," said I, "I 'm like the knife-grinder,—I have no story!"
Bad luck to my illustration, it took half an hour to show that my identity was not somehow mixed up with a wheel and a grinding-stone!
"Let him relate the affair," said the president, once more; and this time his voice and manner both proclaimed that his patience was not to be trifled with.
"Relate what?" asked I, tartly.
"All that you know,—anything you have heard," whispered Van, who was trembling for my rashness.
"My Lord," said I, "of myself I know nothing; I was in bed all the time."
"He was in bed all the time," said the president to the others.
"In bed," said red eyes; "let us see;" and he turned over a file of documents before him for several minutes. "Dodd père swears that he was in bed from the 7th of February, which is the first entry here, to the 19th of May, inclusive."
"I swear no such thing, my Lord," cried I.