he was sick _he_ wouldn't be carried to Watty's, for Watty knew
what a thirsty business a funeral was. Tom Hall reckoned that Watty
bribed the Army on the quiet.

I was sitting on a stool along the veranda wall with Donald Macdonald,
Bob Brothers (the Giraffe) and Mitchell, and one or two others, and
Jack Moonlight sat on the floor with his back to the wall and his hat
well down over his eyes. The Army came along at the usual time, but
we didn't see the Pretty Girl at first--she was a bit late. Mitchell
said he liked to be at Watty's when the Army prayed and the Pretty
Girl was there; he had no objection to being prayed for by a girl like
that, though he reckoned that nothing short of a real angel could save
him now. He said his old grandmother used to pray for him every night
of her life and three times on Sunday, with Christmas Day extra when
Christmas Day didn't fall on a Sunday; but Mitchell reckoned that the
old lady couldn't have had much influence because he became more
sinful every year, and went deeper in ways of darkness, until finally
he embarked on a career of crime.

The Army prayed, and then a thin "ratty" little woman bobbed up in
the ring; she'd gone mad on religion as women do on woman's rights and
hundreds of other things. She was so skinny in the face, her jaws so
prominent, and her mouth so wide, that when she opened it to speak it
was like a ventriloquist's dummy and you could almost see the cracks
open down under her ears.

"They say I'm cracked!" she screamed in a shrill, cracked voice.
"But I'm not cracked--I'm only cracked on the Lord Jesus Christ!
That's all I'm cracked on---." And just then the Amen man of the
Army--the Army groaner we called him, who was always putting both feet