watchmaker. He said the king-bolt was broken. I said I was glad it was
nothing more serious. To tell the plain truth, I had no idea what the
king-bolt was, but I did not choose to appear ignorant to a stranger.
He repaired the king-bolt, but what the watch gained in one way it lost
in another. It would run awhile and then stop awhile, and then run
awhile again, and so on, using its own discretion about the intervals.
And every time it went off it kicked back like a musket. I padded my
breast for a few days, but finally took the watch to another watchmaker.
He picked it all to pieces, and turned the ruin over and over under his
glass; and then he said there appeared to be something the matter with
the hair-trigger. He fixed it, and gave it a fresh start. It did well
now, except that always at ten minutes to ten the hands would shut
together like a pair of scissors, and from that time forth they would
travel together. The oldest man in the world could not make head or tail
of the time of day by such a watch, and so I went again to have the thing
repaired. This person said that the crystal had got bent, and that the
mainspring was not straight. He also remarked that part of the works
needed half-soling. He made these things all right, and then my
timepiece performed unexceptionably, save that now and then, after
working along quietly for nearly eight hours, everything inside would let
go all of a sudden and begin to buzz like a bee, and the hands would
straightway begin to spin round and round so fast that their
individuality was lost completely, and they simply seemed a delicate
spider's web over the face of the watch. She would reel off the next
twenty-four hours in six or seven minutes, and then stop with a bang.
I went with a heavy heart to one more watchmaker, and looked on while he
took her to pieces. Then I prepared to cross-question him rigidly, for
this thing was getting serious. The watch had cost two hundred dollars
originally, and I seemed to have paid out two or three thousand for
repairs. While I waited and looked on I presently recognized in this