"It was in Johannesburg three years back, when I was down on me luck. I had been rooked properly by a Welsh gaming chap who was no end of a bounder, and three quid was all that stood between me and—well," he broke in, suddenly, "I had three quid left. I wore down me feet walking the streets of that bally town looking for anything that would keep me going for a while, and give me a chance to look around and fetch breath, and there was nothing, but I tell ye nothing, and I was fair desperate. One dye, and a filthy wet dye it was, too, I had gone out to the race track, beyond Hospital Hill, where the pony races are run, thinking as might be I'd find a berth, handling ponies there, but the season was too far gone, and they turned me awye. I came back to town by another road—then by the waye that fetches around by the Mahomedan burying-ground. Well, the pauper burying-ground used to be alongside in those dyes, and as I came up, jolly well blown, I tell ye, for I'd but tightened me belt by wye of breakfast, I saw a chap diggin' a gryve. I was in a mind for gryves meself just then, so I pulled up and leaned over the fence and piped him off at his work. Then, like the geeser I'd come to be, I says:
"'What are ye doing there, friend?' He looked me over between shovelfuls a bit, and then says:
"'Oh, just setting out early violets;' and that shut me up properly.
"Well, I piped him digging that gryve for perhaps five minutes, and then, s' help me, I asked him for a job. I did—I asked that gryve-digger for a job—I was that low. He leans his back against the side of the gryve and looks me over, then by and bye, says he:
"'All right, pardner!'
"'I'm thinking your from the Stytes,' says I.
"'Guess yes,' he says, and goes on digging.
"Well, we came to terms after a while. He was to give me two bob a dye for helping him at his work, and I was to have a bunk in his 'shack', as he called it—a box of a house built of four boards, as I might sye, that stood just on the edge of the gryveyard. He was a rum 'un, was that Yankee chap. Over pipes that night he told me something of himself, and do y' know, that gryve-digger in the pauper burying-ground in Johannesburg, South Africa, was a Harvard graduate! Strike me straight if I don't believe he really was. The man was a wreck from strong drink, but that was the one thing he was proud of.
"'Yes, sir,' he'd say, over and over again, looking straight ahead of him, 'Yes, sir, I was a Harvard man once, and pulled at number five in the boat'—the 'varsity boat, mind ye; and then he'd go on talking half to himself. 'And now what am I? I'm digging gryves for hire—burying dead people for a living, when I ought to be dead meself. I am dead and buried long ago. Its just the whiskey that keeps me alive, Miller,' he would say; 'when I stop that I'm done for.'
"The first morning I came round for work I met him dressed as if to go to town, and carrying a wickered demijohn. 'Miller',' he says, 'I'm going into town to get this filled. You must stop here and be ready to answer any telephone call from the police station.' S' help me if there wasn't a telephone in that beastly shack. 'If a pauper cops off they'll ring you up from town and notify you to have the gryve ready. If I'm awye, you'll have to dig it. Remember, if it's a man, you must dig a six foot six hole; if it's a woman, five feet will do, and if it's a kid, three an' half'll be a plenty. S'long.' And off he goes.