Roberts was apprenticed to a draper in Beaumaris whose master was strict. He had half an hour for dinner, which he took at his lodgings some way from the shop, and whenever he left he had to be back at the counter at half past twelve exactly.
One day he was late getting away. He was bolting his food, with his aunt at the table, when he looked up at the clock and saw it said half past twelve. He was thunderstruck, thinking of his master, and for a few minutes sat in a daze, which the others at the table noticed. When he shook it off and looked again, the clock actually said a quarter past twelve. He finished quickly and got back to the shop in time.
At the shop they told him something odd. At a quarter past twelve, they said, he had come in, hung up his hat, moved about in an absent sort of way, been told off, put his hat back on and walked out again. Several people in the shop said they had seen it. His aunt was equally certain that although he had gone into a strange fit of abstraction at that moment, he had never left the table.
The Chronicle ended by suggesting that there might still be people in Beaumaris who remembered it.
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