The bar-room of the Stillwater hotel was a center of interest these nights; not only the bar-room proper, but the adjoining apartment, where the more exclusive guests took their seltzer-water and looked over the metropolitan newspapers.  Twice a week a social club met here, having among its members Mr. Craggie, the postmaster, who was supposed to have a great political future, Mr. Pinkham, Lawyer Perkins, Mr. Whidden, and other respectable persons.  The room was at all times in some sense private, with a separate entrance from the street, though another door, which usually stood open, connected it with the main salon.  In this was a long mahogany counter, one section of which was covered with a sheet of zinc perforated like a sieve, and kept constantly bright by restless caravans of lager-beer glasses.  Directly behind that end of the counter stood a Gothic brass-mounted beer-pump, at whose faucets Mr. Snelling, the landlord, flooded you five or six mugs in the twinkling of an eye, and raised the vague expectation that he was about to grind out some popular operatic air.  At the left of the pump stretched a narrow mirror, reflecting he gaily-colored wine-glasses and decanters which stood on each other’s shoulders, and held up lemons, and performed various acrobatic feats on a shelf in front of it.

The fourth night after the funeral of Mr. Shackford, a dismal southeast storm caused an unusual influx of idlers in both rooms.  With the rain splashing against the casements and the wind slamming the blinds, the respective groups sat discussing in a desultory way the only topic which could be discussed at present.  There had been a general strike among the workmen a fortnight before; but even that had grown cold as a topic.

“That was hard on Tom Blufton,” said Stevens, emptying the ashes out of his long-stemmed clay pipe, and refilling the bowl with cut cavendish from a jar on a shelf over his head.

Michael Hennessey sat down his beer-mug with an air of argumentative disgust, and drew one sleeve across his glistening beard.

“Stevens, you’ve as many minds as a weather-cock, jist!  Didn’t ye say yerself it looked mighty black for the lad when he was took?”

“I might have said something of the sort,” Stevens admitted reluctantly, after a pause.  “His driving round at daybreak with an empty cart did have an ugly look at first.”

“Indade, then.”

“Not to anybody who knew Tom Blufton,” interrupted Samuel Piggott, Blufton’s brother-in-law.  “The boy hasn’t a bad streak in him.  It was an outrage.  Might as well have suspected Parson Langly or Father O’Meara.”

“If this kind of thing goes on,” remarked a man in the corner with a patch over one eye, “both of them reverend gents will be hauled up, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“That’s so, Mr. Peters,” responded Durgin.  “If my respectability didn’t save me, who’s safe?”

“Durgin is talking about his respectability!  He’s joking.”