Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/330

 The manager took time to digest this, and then asked:

'What was the song?'

'Oh, that was an old song we used to sing at the Dublin University,' said the doctor.

During his sober days Bogg used to fossick about among the old waste heaps, or split palings in the bush, and by these means he managed to keep out of debt. Strange to say, in spite of his drunken habits, his credit was as good as that of any man in the town. He was very unsociable, seldom speaking, whether drunk or sober; but a weary, hard-up sundowner was always pretty certain to get a meal and a shake-down at Bogg's lonely hut among the waste heaps. It happened one dark night that a little 'push' of local larrikins, having nothing better to amuse them, wended their way through the old mullock heaps in the direction of the lonely little hut, with the object of playing off an elaborately planned ghost joke on Bogg. Previously to commencing operations, the leader of the jokers put his eye to a crack in the bark to reconnoitre. He didn't see much, but what he did see seemed to interest him, for he kept his eye there till his companions grew impatient. Bogg sat in front of his rough little table with his elbows on the same, and his hands supporting his forehead. Before him on the table lay a few articles such as lady novelists and poets use in their work, and such as bitter cynics often wear secretly next their bitter and cynical hearts.

There was the usual faded letter, a portrait of a