He took the watch all to pieces while I waited, and then said the barrel was "swelled." He said he could reduce it in three days.

After this the watch averaged well, but nothing more.

For half a day it would go like the very mischief, and keep up such a barking and wheezing and whooping and sneezing and snorting, that I could not hear myself think for the disturbance; and as long as it held out there was not a watch in the land that stood any chance against it.

But the rest of the day it would keep on slowing down and fooling along until all the clocks it had left behind caught up again.

So at last, at the end of twenty-four hours, it would trot up to the judges' stand all right and just in time.