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Updated: May 23, 2025
"I have parted with my inheritance," said Mac-an-Ward. "I have sold my soul and the angels have folded their wings, weeping." "In other words, I have bought a tin can," said Festus Clasby, and his frame and the entire cart shook with his chuckling. The tinker's wife chuckled with him in harmony. Then she reached out her hand with a gesture that claimed a sympathetic examination of the purchase.
The wife of Mac-an-Ward threw out her arms in a wild gesture of despair. "My God!" she cried. "I sold it. I wronged my sick brother." "Where did you sell it, mother?" "Here, to this handsome dark man." "How much did he pay?" "Eighteen-pence." The three youngsters raised their hard faces to the sky and raised a long howl, like beagles who had lost their quarry.
"Now," said the wife of Mac-an-Ward, putting the money away, "you have paid me for my brother's can and you would be within your right in getting back your one-and-six from this bad man." She hitched her shawl contemptuously in the direction of Mac-an-Ward. Festus Clasby looked at the Son of the Bard with his velvety soft eyes. "Come, sir," said he, his tone a little nervous. "My money!"
"It is the Can with the Diamond Notch," declared Mac-an-Ward. "Would it be worth a shilling now?" "He puts a price upon it! It is blasphemy. The man has no religion; he will lose his soul. The devils will have him by the heels. They will tear his red soul through the roof. Give me the can; don't hold it in those hands any longer.
"Well, my good man?" queried Festus Clasby, a phrase usually addressed across his counter, his hands outspread, to longstanding customers. "The last of a rare lot," said Mac-an-Ward, deftly poising the tin can on the top of his fingers, so that it stood level with Festus Clasby's great face. Festus Clasby took this as a business proposition, and the soul of the trader revolved within him.
The youngsters were shooting in and out through the group, sending up unearthly shrieks. Two of the men peeled off their coats and were sparring at each other wickedly, shouting all the time, while Mac-an-Ward was making a tumultuous peace. The commotion and the strife, or the illusion of strife, increased. "Oh," an onlooker cried, "the tinkers are murdering each other!"
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