They Hanged My Saintly Billy by Robert Graves

he's no great shakes at brandy drinking, but at this a young Rugeley fellow named Timmis, who had been at Bonney's school with Palmer, pipes up: 'Abley's damnably modest. He's one of the grandest brandy-drinkers in the county. Why, I've seen him toss down three tumblers full, one after t'other, and not turn a hair.'
    'I'll lay you three to one in half-sovereigns,' says Palmer, 'that he can't down more than one.'
    Timmis then takes Abley aside and says: 'Did you hear that? Palmer's word is his bond, and if you drink a couple of tumblers it will be worth thirty shillings to yours truly.'
    'What you win is of no interest at all to me,' says Abley. 'Nor am I any sort of a drinking man. All I want is my pint of ale, and if Mr Palmer grudges me that, I'll pay it myself.'
    'Come, don't be unreasonable,' says Timmis. 'What are two tumblers to a bold fellow like you? Drink them down quick, as if they were medicine, which indeed they are, and I'll give you one half-sovereign of my three.'
    'Agreed for fifteen shillings,' says Abley, 'which must be handed in cash to Mrs Bates, who'll pay me when I've sobered up.'
    'Very good,' says Timmis, and entrusts the money to Mrs Bates.
    Abley then accepts his first tumblerful of brandy—right French brandy from Cognac—and drains it, like a soldier of the line. While all eyes watch him do so, Palmer waits at the bar, with his hand on the second tumbler, which he presentl y takes over to Abley. 'You conquered that manfully,' he said, 'but I wager this will make you choke.'
    Abley downed his second dose, without heel-taps, neither. The men in the tap-room laughed and joked a bit at Palmer's expense. 'Never mind,' Abley says, 'I'd do the same again for fifteen shillings, these hard times.'
    Presently he turns greenish and, says he: 'I'll go into the stable. I'll be cleared out just now and ready for my pint at last.'
    'Good luck to you,' says Palmer. He pays his debt to Timmis, and then launches into a long, tantalizing story, a cruelly funny one too, so the fellows said, about the straits to which a ship s crew were reduced for lack of women on a long voyage of exploration in the Arctic Seas. Never you mind the details, but it kept the house in a roar, being very comically told. Timmis capped it, and then another customer chimed in—the landlady meanwhile hiding her blushes b ehind a row of bottl es. Everyone had forgotten Abley, and it was nigh an hour later that Palmer paid his score and sauntered off. Then someone remarks:' Abley's not come back for his pint, has he? I wonder how he's faring?'
    A search was made, and they found Abley stretched on a heap of sacks in the stable, groaning, with both hands pressed against his stomach. Two men carried him home and put him to bed between warmed sheets; but he died the same night.
    At the inquest we jurymen viewed the body, and some of us were satisfied that since Abley had been a thin, pale man in indifferent health, to drink two full tumblers of brandy on an empty stomach and then He in the cold stable for an hour or longer was a fatal act—even though the intention cannot have been suicidal.
    But I smelt a fishy smell to the business, and when the other parries wished to bring in a verdict of death from natural causes, I said: 'Gentlemen, that don't satisfy me, and I'll tell you why. Stafford is a small town, and a good deal of talk goes on in one tavern and another, some of it false, some of it true, some of it half and half. Well, I was at The Junction last night, and heard talk there about this Palmer, who laid with his old schoolfellow that Abley couldn't down more than a single tumblerful. It seems that Mrs Abley, a buxom young wench, has been an out-patient at the Infirmary—she goes to be dressed for a Severe scald on her thigh, caused by a jet of boiling water from a kettle. Palmer was directed to dress the wound in this intimate part of her frame, and from the confidences which she made to a neighbour's wife it seems that a mutual