He’ll serve thee better if he’s stroked and fed.’
None reasoned thus; and some, on hearing cries,
Said calmly, ‘Grimes is at his exercise.’”
At last Grimes, who seems to have been never quite sane in his brutality, went mad, and died raving at visions of his aged father and the boys he had done to death.
More inviting is a picture of another fisherman, the mayor of the borough:
“He was a fisher from his earliest day,
And placed his nets within the borough bay,
Where, by his skates, his herrings, and his soles,
He lived, nor dreamed of corporation doles.”
At last he saved £240 ($1200), and asked a friend what to do with it. The friend suggests “put it out on interest.”