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Why, damme, sir, I could have made that scene in the tap-room historic; I could have made it so dramatic that it would have thrilled to the marrow every man, woman and child in the United States of America. That's what I mean. They allowed a chance like that to get away. Can you beat it? Tragedy at my very elbow, by gad, almost nudging me, you might say, and no one to tell me to get up.
The whole kitchen is hung round with branches of birch and the berries of the mountain-ash: the oat-cakes hang on long poles under the ceiling; the berries are suspended above the head of the old woman who is just scouring her brass kettle bright. The tap-room, where the peasant sits and carouse, is just as finely hung round with green.
There was the miller, the smith, the butcher, the sexton, everybody, in short, who had a groschen or two to spend, and a stock of curiosity to be gratified. Nor did they come alone. Their wives and children followed them en masse, till the tap-room was crowded. What could we do?
There on the slope below him he saw what he sought, stalking up and down, gaunt and grim, like a lion at feeding-time. And as the old dog watched, his tail was gently swaying as though he were well pleased. He walked back into the tap-room just as Teddy began his tale. Twice he made the round of the room, silent-footed.
At the one end of the hall, the one where he was, were judges, with abstracted air, in threadbare robes, who were gnawing their nails or closing their eyelids; at the other end, a ragged crowd; lawyers in all sorts of attitudes; soldiers with hard but honest faces; ancient, spotted woodwork, a dirty ceiling, tables covered with serge that was yellow rather than green; doors blackened by handmarks; tap-room lamps which emitted more smoke than light, suspended from nails in the wainscot; on the tables candles in brass candlesticks; darkness, ugliness, sadness; and from all this there was disengaged an austere and august impression, for one there felt that grand human thing which is called the law, and that grand divine thing which is called justice.
Indeed, the latter has taken complete command at the tap-room of the tavern, not so much because he has convinced, as because he has out-talked all the established oracles. The apothecary, with all his philosophy, was as nought before him.
Toal Finnigan, and about six or eight dissolute and drunken fellows, inhabitants of Ballykeerin, were his constant companions, and never had they a drinking bout that he was not sent for: sometimes they would meet in his own workshop, which was turned into a tap-room, and there drink the better part of the day.
When I reached the Old Swan, I soon found Betty, and there could be no mistake in my reading of the light I saw in her eyes. After talking with her a minute or two in the tap-room, I asked her to tell me of Hamilton, and she said hesitatingly that he had left the inn nearly two months ago. "Do you know where he is?" I asked. She answered hesitatingly, "N-o-o-o."
They may be honest men or they may be another pair of spies. I think I'll try and find out something about them. Do you stay here, Neal, and watch. Let me know if any of the three of them leave the house. I'll go down the passage to the tap-room. I'll drink a glass or two, and I'll see what information I can pick up.
There is barely room for Jack to foot it in a reel, the tap-room is so small; and as Jack is soon reeling after he is once on shore, it is a very great defect.
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