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He added, to the bar-keeper, that he guessed he would have some brandy and soda, and Bartley found himself at the bottom of his second tumbler. He ordered it replenished. The little man seemed to be getting further away. He said, from the distance to which he had withdrawn, "You want to go to bed with three nightcaps on, like an old-clothes man."
I remember an elderly gentleman, of most respectable exterior, who used to enter the cafe as if he had strayed there accidentally. After looking around carefully, and yet unostentatiously, he would walk to the bar, and, with an air of affected carelessness, state that "not feeling well this morning, he guessed he would take well, he would leave it to the bar-keeper."
"I do, for I know its virtue." The gentleman, who had in his hand a prescription for which he had paid five dollars to one of the most skilful and judicious physicians in New England, strange as it may seem, listened to this bar-keeper, and in the end actually destroyed the prescription, and poured down his throat a glass of "Mrs. 's Cordial."
The ferryman had gone up to the Ferry Mansion House, swinging his lantern, and had found the sleepy-looking "all night" bar-keeper on the point of withdrawing for the day on a mattress under the bar.
Then he answered, carelessly: "I've only been here six months another man had it before me. He put these fixtures in." "Maybe you can tell me?" and I turned to the bar-keeper. "Guess he means the feller who blew in here first month we come," the bar-keeper answered, addressing his remark to the proprietor. "He said he'd been runnin' the place once." "Oh, you mean that guy!
I did not dare follow them into the light, for I feared that the Doctor would recognise me. I'd have given my eye teeth, though, to have gathered the name of the schooner, or that of her master. As it was, I hung around until the two had emerged from the corner saloon. They paused outside, still talking earnestly. I ventured a hasty interview with the bar-keeper.
For it was largely autobiographical, and was meant to describe the adventures of a young Englishman who had come to grief in the usual manner on a Canadian farm, had then subsequently become bar-keeper, sub-editor on a Methodist magazine, a teacher of French and German to clerks at twenty-five cents per hour, a model for artists, a super on the stage, and, finally, a wanderer to the goldfields.
"Property?" echoed the bar-keeper with scornful incredulity. "Property? Means? The only property and means he ever had was the free lunches or drinks he took in at somebody else's expense. Why, the only chance he ever had of earning a square meal was when that fellow that was with you just now took him up and made him his partner. And the only way HE could get rid of him was to kill him!
Hollow circles were around their orbits; haggard lines were in his checks. But it was Ruth. He took the glass, and drained it at a single draught. "Yes," he said absently, "Ruth Pinkney," and fixed his eyes again on the distant rosy crest. "On your way up home?" suggested the bar-keeper, following the direction of Ruth's eyes. "Perhaps." "Been upon a pasear, hain't yer?
No word was spoken. As the bar-keeper silently swung a decanter and glass before him, he took a cracker from a dish, and mumbled it with affected unconcern. He lingered over his liquor until its potency stiffened his relaxed sinews, and dulled the nervous edge of his apprehension, and then he suddenly faced around.
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