Wednesday, January 8, 2014

....man, I dunno about this herrings book, Dorothy

'Och, ay,' said McAdam. 'Him and Mr. Jock Graham is juist at daggers drawn aboot it. Mr. Graham will be fishing the pool below Campbell's hoose. Not but there's plenty pools in the Fleet wi'out disturbin' Campbell, if the man wad juist be peaceable aboot it. But it's no his pool when a's said and dune - the river's free - and it's no to be expectit that Mr. Graham will pay ony heed to his claims, him that pays nae heed to onybody.'
//wilts


ETA

//skips to end

'A careful examination showed a slight difference between the form of lettering and that of the correctly-punched tickets in the same bunch, and also that, whereas the figures purporting to have been punched on it at Mauchline were LMS 23 A, the other tickets bore the cipher LMS 23 B. It was explained that in each case the letter following the numerals denoted the particular collector who clipped the tickets on that train, each man having his own pair of clippers. The Mauchline numbers ranged from 23A to 23G. Therefore, while in itself the punch-mark LMS 23 A was perfectly correct and in order it was suspicious that collector A should have punched only that one ticket out of all the tickets punched on that train. The previous inquiry had, of course, merely been directed to ascertain that the ticket had actually reached Glasgow, and therefore no special attention was paid to the punch-marks. Now, however, it was evident enough that the punch-marks were forgeries, very neatly executed.'

//just cries

(For actual coherent content, see this.)