So I paid the bill, and the very next day the alarm went to buzzing like ten thousand bee swarms at ten o'clock in the morning.
I turned the hands around twelve hours, according to instructions, and this took off the alarm; but there was another hitch at night, and I had to set her ahead twelve hours once more to get her to put the alarm on again.

That sort of nonsense went on a week or two, then the expert came up and put in a new clock.

He came up every three months during the next three years, and put in a new clock.

But it was always a failure.

His clocks all had the same perverse defect: they would put the alarm on in the daytime, and they would not put it on at night; and if you forced it on yourself, they would take it off again the minute your back was turned.
"Now there is the history of that burglar alarm--everything just as it happened; nothing extenuated, and naught set down in malice.