 A man (which is also the narrator of the story) works for a Scottish company building fences. He s made foreman of a crew which consists of two sullen and lazy Scotsmen, Tam and Richie. The three of them are sent to England on a special job where they spend their days laying fence, often quite lackadaisically, and their nights drinking up all their wages in local pubs. They leave a trail of dissatisfied customers in their wake, but fortunately, a series of accidents contrives to also leave these customers quite dead, and buried, unceremoniously, beneath fence posts.