And the side walls and surroundings were none the less shabby and quite as dilapidated.  Even the windows had long since given up the fight to maintain a decent amount of light, and as for the grated opening protected by iron shutters which would have had barely room to swing themselves clear of the building next door, no Patrick past or present had ever dared loosen their bolts for a peep even an inch wide into the canyon below, so gruesome was the collection of old shoes, tin cans, broken bottles and battered hats which successive generations had hurried into the narrow un-get-at-able space that lay between the two structures.

Indeed the only thing inside or out of this time-worn building which the most fertile of imaginations could consider as being at all up to date was the clock.  Not its face—­that was old-timey enough with its sun, moon and stars in blue and gold, and the name of the Liverpool maker engraved on its enamel; nor its hands, fiddle-shaped and stiff, nor its case, which always reminded me of a coffin set up on end awaiting burial—­but its strike.  Whatever divergences the Exeter allowed itself in its youth, or whatever latitude or longitude it had given its depositors, and that, we may be sure, was precious little so long as that Board of Directors was alive, there was no wabbling or wavering, no being behind time, when the hour hand of the old clock reached three and its note of warning rang out.

Peter obeyed the ominous sound and closed his Teller’s window with a gentle bang.  Patrick took notice and swung to the iron grating of the outer door.  You might peer in and beg ever so hard—­unless, of course, you were a visitor like myself, and even then Peter would have to give his consent—­you might peer through, I say, or tap on the glass, or you might plead that you were late and very sorry, but the ostrich egg never turned in its nest nor did the eyebrows vibrate.  Three o’clock was three o’clock at the Exeter, and everybody might go to the devil—­financially, of course—­ before the rule would be broken.  Other banks in panicky times might keep a side door open until four, five or six—­that is, the bronze-rail, marble-top, glass-front, certify-your-checks-as-early-as-ten-in-the-morn
ing-without-a-penny-on-deposit kind of banks—­but not the Exeter—­that is, not with Peter’s consent—­and Peter was the Exeter so far as his department was concerned—­and had been for nearly thirty years—­twenty as bookkeeper, five as paying teller and five as receiving teller.

And the regularity and persistency of this clock!  Not only did it announce the hours, but it sounded the halves and quarters, clearing its throat with a whirr like an admonitory cough before each utterance.  I had samples of its entire repertoire as I sat there:  One ...two...three...four...five—­then half an hour later a whir-r and a single note.  “Half-past five,” I said to myself.  “Will Peter never find that mistake?” Once during the long wait the night watchman shifted his leg—­he was on the other side of the stove—­and once Peter reached up above his head for a pile of papers, spreading them out before him under the white glare of the overhead light, then silence again, broken only by the slow, dogged tock-tick, tock-tick, or the sagging of a hot coal adjusting itself for the night.